In spite of the regulations demanding the greatest care, it is easy to

understand that after a time even books written on vellum or parchment

would become disfigured and worn under the ardent fingers of

enthusiastic students, when comparatively so {154} few copies were

available for general use. In order to replace these worn-out copies

every abbey had its own scriptorium or writing room, where especially

the younger monks who were gifted with plain handwriting were required

to devote certain hours every day to the copying of manuscripts.

Manuscripts were borrowed from neighboring libraries and copied, or as

in our modern day exchanges of duplicate copies were made, so as to

avoid the risk that precious manuscripts might be subject to on the

journeys from one abbey to another. How much the duty of transcription

was valued may be appreciated from the fact, that in some abbeys every

novice was expected to bring on the day of his profession as a

religious, a volume of considerable size which had been carefully

copied by his own hands.

Besides these methods of increasing the number of books in the

library, a special sum of money was set aside in most of the abbeys

for the procuring of additional volumes for the library by purchase.

Usually this took the form of an ecclesiastical regulation requiring

that a certain percentage of the revenues should be spent on the

libraries. Scholars closely associated with monasteries frequently

bequeathed their books and besides left money or incomes to be

especially devoted to the improvement of the library. It is easy to

understand that with all these sources of enrichment many abbeys

possessed noteworthy libraries. To quote only those of France,

important collections of books were to be found at Cluny, Luxeuil,

Fleury, Saint-Martial, Moissac, Mortemer, Savigny, Fourcarmont, Saint

Pere de Chartres, Saint Denis, Saint-Maur-des-Fosses, Saint Corneille

de Compiegne, Corbie, Saint-Amand, Saint-Martin de Tournai, where

Vincent de Beauvais said that he found the greatest collections of

manuscripts that existed in his time, and then especially the great

Parisian abbeys already referred to, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Saint

Victor, Saint-Martin-des-Champs, the precious treasures of which are

well known to all those who are familiar with the Bibliotheque

Nationale of Paris, of whose manuscript department their relics

constitute the most valuable nucleus.

Some of the bequests of books that were made to libraries at this time

are interesting, because they show the spirit of the {155} testators

and at the same time furnish valuable hints as to the consideration in

which books were held and the reverent care of their possessors for

them. Peter of Nemours, the Bishop of Paris, when setting out on the

crusades with Louis IX. bequeathed to the famous Abbey of St. Victor,

his Bible in 22 volumes, which was considered one of the finest copies

of the scriptures at that time in existence. To the Abbey of Olivet he

gave his Psalter with Glosses, besides the Epistles of St. Paul and

his Book of Sentences, by which is evidently intended the well-known

work with that title by the famous Peter Lombard. Finally he gave to

the Cathedral of Paris all the rest of his books. Besides these he had

very little to leave. It is typical of the reputation of Paris in that

century and the devotion of her churchmen to learning and culture,

that practically all of the revenues that he considered due him for

his personal services had been invested in books, which he then

disposed of in such a way as would secure their doing the greatest

possible good to the largest number of people. His Bible was evidently

given to the abbey of St. Victor because it was the sort of work that

should be kept for the occasional reference of the learned rather than

the frequent consultation of students, who might very well find all

that they desired in other and less valuable copies. His practical

intention with regard to his books can be best judged from his gift to

Notre Dame, which, as we have noted already possessed a very valuable

library that was allowed to circulate among properly accredited

scholars in Paris.

According to the will of Peter Ameil, Archbishop of Narbonne, which is

dated 1238, he gave his books for the use of the scholars whom he had

supported at the University of Paris and they were to be deposited in

the Library at Notre Dame, but on condition that they were not to be

scattered for any reason nor any of them sold or abused. The effort of

the booklover to keep his books together is characteristic of all the

centuries since, only most people will be surprised to find it

manifesting itself so early in bibliophilic history. The Archbishop

reserved from his books, however, his Bible for his own church. Before

his death he had given the Dominicans in his diocese many books from

his library. This churchman of the first half of the {156} Thirteenth

Century seems evidently to deserve a prominent place among the bookmen

of all times.

There are records of many others who bequeathed libraries and gave

books during their lifetime to various institutions, as may be found

in the Literary History of France, [Footnote 16] already mentioned,

as well as in the various histories of the University of Paris. Many

of these gifts were made on condition that they should not be sold and

the constantly recurring condition made by these booklovers is that

their collections should be kept together. The libraries of Paris were

also in the market for books, however, and there is proof that the

Sorbonne purchased a number of volumes because the cost price of them

was noted inside the cover quite as libraries do in our own days. When

we realize the forbidding cost of them, it is surprising that there

should be so much to say about them and so many of them constantly

changing hands. An ordinary folio volume probably cost from 400 to 500

francs in our values, that is between $80 and $100.

[Footnote 16: Histoire Litteraire de la France, by the Benedictines

of St. Maur.]

While the older abbeys of the Benedictines and other earlier religious

orders possessed magnificent collections of books, the newer orders of

the Thirteenth Century, the Mendicants, though as their name indicates

they were bound to live by alms given them by the faithful, within a

short time after their foundation began to take a prominent part in

the library movement. It was in the southern part of France that the

Dominicans were strongest and so there is record of regulations for

libraries made at Toulouse in the early part of the Thirteenth

Century. In Paris, in 1239, considerable time and discussion was

devoted in one of the chapters of the order to the question of how

books should be kept, and how the library should be increased. With

regard to the Franciscans, though their poverty was, if possible,

stricter, the same thing is known before the end of the century. In

both orders arrangements were made for the copying of important works

and it is, of course, to the zeal and enthusiasm of the younger

members of these orders for this copying work, that we owe the

preservation by means of a large number of manuscript copies, of the

{157} voluminous writings of such men as Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas,

Duns Scotus and others.

{opp156}

[Illustration]

MONUMENT OF CARDINAL DE BRAY (ARNOLFO)

While the existence of libraries of various kinds, and even

circulating libraries, in the Thirteenth Century may seem definitely

settled, it will appear to most people that to speak of book

collecting at this time must be out of place. That fad is usually

presumed to be of much later origin and indeed to be comparatively

recent in its manifestations. We have said enough already, however, of

the various collections of books in libraries especially in France to

show that the book collector was abroad, but there is much more direct

evidence of this available from an English writer. Richard de Bury's

Philobiblon is very well known to all who are interested in books for

their own sake, but few people realize that this book practically had

its origin in the Thirteenth Century. The writer was born about the

beginning of the last quarter of that century, had completed his

education before its close, and it is only reasonable to attribute to

the formative influences at work in his intellectual development as a

young man, the germs of thought from which were to come in later life

the interesting book on bibliophily, the first of its kind, which was

to be a treasure for book-lovers ever afterwards.

Philobiblon tells us, among other things, of Richard's visits to the

continent on an Embassy to the Holy See and on subsequent occasions to

the Court of France, and the delight which he experienced in handling

many books which he had never seen before, in buying such of them as

his purse would allow, or his enthusiasm could tempt from their owners

and in conversing with those who could tell him about books and their

contents. Such men were the chosen comrades of his journeys, sat with

him at table, as Mr. Henry Morley tells us in his English Writers

(volume IV, page 51), and were in almost constant fellowship with him.

It was at Paris particularly that Richard's heart was satisfied for a

time because of the great treasures he found in the magnificent

libraries of that city. He was interested, of course, in the

University and the opportunity for intellectual employment afforded by

Academic proceedings, but above all he found delight in books, which

monks and monarchs and professors and churchmen of all kinds and

scholars {158} and students had gathered into this great intellectual

capital of Europe at that time. Anyone who thinks the books were not

valued quite as highly in the Thirteenth Century as at the present

time should read the Philobiblon. He is apt to rise from the reading

of it with the thought that it is the modern generations who do not

properly appreciate books.

One of the early chapters of Philobiblon argues that books ought

always to be bought whatever they cost, provided there are means to

pay for them, except in two cases, "when they are knavishly

overcharged, or when a better time for buying is expected." "That sun

of men, Solomon," Richard says, "bids us buy books readily and sell

them unwillingly, for one of his proverbs runs, 'Buy the truth and

sell it not, also wisdom and instruction and understanding.'" Richard

in his own quaint way thought that most other interests in life were

only temptations to-draw men away from books. In one famous paragraph

he has naively personified books as complaining with regard to the

lack of attention men now display for them and the unworthy objects,

in Richard's eyes at least, upon which they fasten their affections

instead, and which take them away from the only great life interest

that is really worth while--books.

"Yet," complain books, "in these evil times we are cast out of our

place in the inner chamber, turned out of doors, and our place taken

by dogs, birds, and the two-legged beast called woman. But that beast

has always been our rival, and when she spies us in a corner, with no

better protection than the web of a dead spider, she drags us out with

a frown and violent speech, laughing us to scorn as useless, and soon

counsels us to be changed into costly head-gear, fine linen, silk and

scarlet double dyed, dresses and divers trimmings, linens and woolens.

And so," complain the books still, "we are turned out of our homes,

our coats are torn from our backs, our backs and sides ache, we lie

about disabled, our natural whiteness turns to yellow--without doubt

we have the jaundice. Some of us are gouty, witness our twisted

extremities. Our bellies are griped and wrenched and are consumed by

worms; on each side the dirt cleaves to us, nobody binds up our

wounds, we lie ragged and weep in dark corners, or meet with Job upon

a dunghill, or, as seems hardly fit to be said, we are hidden in

abysses of the {159} sewers. We are sold also like slaves, and lie as

unredeemed pledges in taverns. We are thrust into cruel butteries, to

be cut up like sheep and cattle; committed to Jews, Saracens, heretics

and Pagans, whom we always dread as the plague, and by whom some of

our forefathers are known to have been poisoned."

Richard De Bury must not be thought to have been some mere wandering

scholar of the beginning of the Fourteenth Century, however, for he

was, perhaps, the most important historical personage, not even

excepting royalty or nobility, of this era and one of the striking

examples of how high a mere scholar might rise in this period quite

apart from any achievement in arms, though this is usually supposed to

be almost the only basis of distinguished reputation and the reason

for advancement at this time. While he was only the son of a Norman

knight, Aungervyle by name, born at Bury St. Edmund's, he became the

steward of the palace and treasurer of the royal wardrobe, then Lord

Treasurer of England and finally Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. While

on a mission to the Pope he so commended himself to the Holy See that

it was resolved to make him the next English bishop. Accordingly he

was made Bishop of Durham shortly after and on the occasion of his

installation there was a great banquet at which the young King and

Queen, the Queen Mother Isabelle, the King of Scotland, two

Archbishops, five bishops, and most of the great English lords were

present. At this time the Scots and the English were actually engaged

in war with one another and a special truce was declared, in order to

allow them to join in the celebration of the consecration of so

distinguished an individual to the See of Durham near the frontier.

Before he was consecrated Bishop, Richard De Bury had been for some

time the treasurer of the kingdom. Before the end of the year in which

he was consecrated he became Lord Chancellor, at a time when the

affairs of the kingdom needed a master hand and when the French and

the Scots were seriously disturbing English peace and prosperity. He

resigned his office of Chancellor, as Henry Morley states, only to go

abroad in the royal service as ambassador that he might exercise his

own trusted sagacity in carrying out the peaceful policy he had {160}

advised. During this diplomatic mission to the continent he visited

the courts of Paris, of Flanders, of Hainault and of Germany. He

succeeded in making terms of peace between the English king and the

Counts of Hainault and Namur, the Marquis of Juliers and the Dukes of

Brabant and Guelders. This would seem to indicate that he must be

considered as one of the most prominent men of Europe at this time.

His attitude toward books is then all the more noteworthy. Many people

were surprised that a great statesman like Gladstone in the Nineteenth

Century, should have been interested in so many phases of thought and

of literature and should himself have been able to find the time to

contribute important works to English letters. Richard De Bury was at

least as important a man in his time as Gladstone in ours, and

occupied himself as much with books as the great English commoner.

This is what will be the greatest source of surprise to those who in

our time have been accustomed to think, that the great scholars deeply

interested in books who were yet men of practical worth in helping

their generation in its great problems, are limited to modern times

and are least of all likely to be found in the heart of the Middle

Ages. In spite of his occupations as a politician and a bookman,

Richard De Bury was noted for his faithfulness in the fulfilment of

his duties as a churchman and a bishop. It is worthy of note that many

of the important clergymen of England, who were to find the highest

church preferment afterwards, were among the members of his household

at various times and that the post of secretary to the bishop,

particularly, was filled at various times by some of the best scholars

of the period, men who were devoted friends to the bishop, who

dedicated their works to him and generally added to the reputation

that stamped him as the greatest scholar of England and one of the

leading lights of European culture of his time.

This is not so surprising when we realize that to be a member of

Richard's household was to have access to the best library in England,

and that many scholars were naturally ambitious to have such an

opportunity, and as the results showed many took advantage of it.

Among Richard of Durham's chaplains were Thomas Bradwardine who

afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Fitzraufe,

subsequently Archbishop of {161} Armagh, Walter Seagrave, afterwards

Bishop of Chichester, and Richard Bentworth, who afterwards became

Bishop of London Among the distinguished scholars who occupied the

post were Robert Holcot, John Manduit, the astronomer of the

Fourteenth Century, Richard Kilmington, a distinguished English

theologian, and Walter Burley, a great commentator on Aristotle, who

dedicated to the bishop, who had provided him with so many

opportunities for study, his Commentaries upon the Politics and Ethics

of the ancient Greek philosopher.

That Richard's love for books and the time he had necessarily devoted

to politics did not dry up the fountains of charity in his heart, nor

cause him to neglect his important duties as the pastor of the people

and especially of the poor, we know very well from certain traditions

with regard to his charitable donations. According to a standing rule

in his household eight quarters of wheat were regularly every week

made into bread and given to the poor. In his alms giving Richard was

as careful and as discriminating as in his collection of books, and he

used a number of the regularly organized channels in his diocese to

make sure that his bounty should be really helpful and should not

encourage lack of thrift. This is a feature of charitable work that is

supposed to be modern, but the personal service of the charitably

inclined in the Thirteenth Century, far surpassed in securing this

even the elaborate organization of charity in modern times. Whenever

the bishop traveled generous alms were distributed to the poor people

along the way. Whenever he made the journey between Durham and New

Castle eight pounds sterling were set aside for this purpose; five

pounds for each journey between Durham and Stockton or Middleham, and

five marks between Durham and Auckland. Money had at that time at

least ten times the purchasing power which it has at present, so that

it will be easy to appreciate the good bishop's eminent liberality.

That Richard was justified in his admiration of the books of the time

we know from those that remain, for it must not be thought for a

moment that because the making of books was such a time-taking task in

the Thirteenth Century, they were not therefore made beautiful. On the

contrary, as we shall see {162} shortly, no more beautiful books have

ever been made than at this time. This of itself would show how

precious in the eyes of the collectors of the time their books were,

since they wanted to have them so beautifully made and were satisfied

to pay the high prices that had to be demanded for such works of art.

Very few books of any size cost less than the equivalent of $100 in

our time and illuminated books cost much higher than this, yet seem

never to have been a drug on the market. Indeed, considering the

number of them that are still in existence to this day, in spite of

the accidents of fire, and water, and war, and neglect, and

carelessness, and ignorance, there must have been an immense number of

very handsome books made by the generations of the Thirteenth Century.

While illumination was not an invention of the Thirteenth Century, as

indeed were very few of the great art features of the century, during

this time book decoration was carried to great perfection and reached

that development which artists of the next century were to improve on

in certain extrinsic features, though the intrinsic qualities were to

remain those which had been determined as the essential

characteristics of this branch of art in the earlier time. The

Thirteenth Century, for instance, saw the introduction of the

miniature as a principal feature and also the drawing out of initials

in such a way as to make an illuminated border for the whole side of

the page. After the development thus given to the art in the

Thirteenth Century further evolution could only come in certain less

important details. In this the Thirteenth Century generations were

accomplishing what they had done in practically everything else that

they touched, laying foundations broad and deep and giving the

superstructure the commanding form which future generations were only

able to modify to slight degree and not always with absolute good

grace.

Humphreys in his magnificent volume on The Illuminated Books of the

Middle Ages, which according to its title contains an account of the

development and progress of the art of illumination as a distinct

branch of pictorial ornamentation from the Fourth to the Seventeenth

centuries, [Footnote 17] has some very striking words of praise for

Thirteenth Century illuminations and the artists who made them. He

says:

[Footnote 17: The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages, by Henry

Noel Humphreys Longman. Green, Brown and Longmans, London, 1848.]

{163}

"Different epochs of the art of illumination present widely

different and distinct styles; the most showy and the best known,

though the least pure and inventive in design, being that of the

middle and end of the Fifteenth Century; whilst the period perhaps

the least generally known, that of the Thirteenth Century, may be

considered as the most interesting and original, many of the best

works of that period displaying an astonishing variety and profusion

of invention. The manuscript, of which two pages form the opposite

plate, may be ranked among the most elaborate and profusely

ornamented of the fine books of that era; every page being

sufficient to make the fortune of the modern decorator by the quaint

and unexpected novelties of inventions which it displays at every

turn of its intricate design."

The illuminations of the century then are worthy of the time and also

typical of the general work of the century. It is known by experts for

its originality and for the wealth of invention displayed in the

designs. Men did not fear that they might exhaust their inventive

faculty, nor display their originality sparingly, in order that they

might have enough to complete other work. As the workmen of the

Cathedrals, the artist illuminators devoted their very best efforts to

each piece of work that came to their hands, and the results are

masterpieces of art in this as in every other department of the

period. The details are beautifully wrought, showing the power of the

artist to accomplish such a work and yet his designs are never

overloaded, at least in the best examples of the century, with details

of ornamentation that obscure and minimize the effect of the original

design. This fault was to be the error of his most sophisticated

successors two centuries later.

Nor must it be thought the high opinion of the century is derived from

the fact that only a very few examples of its illumination and

bookmaking are now extant, and that these being the chosen specimens

give the illumination of the century a higher place than it might

otherwise have. Many examples {164} have been preserved and some of

them are the most beautiful books that were made. Paris was

particularly the home of this form of art in the Thirteenth Century,

and indeed the school established there influenced all the modes of

illumination everywhere, so much so that Dante speaks of the art with

the epithet "Parisian," as if it were exclusively done there. The

incentive to the development of this form of art came from St. Louis

who, as we have said, was very much interested in books. His taste as

exhibited in La Sainte Chapelle was such as to demand artistic

excellence of high grade in this department of art, which has many

more relations with the architecture of the period, and especially

with the stained glass, than might possibly be thought at the present

time, for most of the decoration of books partook of the character of

the architectural types of the moment.

Among the most precious treasures from the century are three books

which belonged to St. Louis himself. One of these is the Hours or

Office Book; a second, is his Psalter, which contains some extremely

beautiful initials; a third, which is in the Library of the Arsenal at

Paris, is sometimes known as the Prayer Book of St. Louis himself,

though a better name for it would be the Prayer Book of Queen Blanche,

for it was made at Louis' orders for his mother, the famous Blanche of

Castile, and is a worthy testimonial of the affectionate relations

which existed between mother and son.

Outside of Paris there are preserved many books of great value that

come from this century. One of them, a Bestiarum or Book of Beasts, is

in the Ashmoleam Museum at Oxford. This is said to be a very beautiful

example of the illumination of the Thirteenth Century, but it is even

more interesting because it shows the efforts of the artists of the

time to copy nature in the pictures of animals as they are presented.

There is said to be an acuity of observation and a vigor of

representation displayed in the book which is highly complimentary to

the powers of the Thirteenth Century artists.

Even these brief notes of the books and libraries of the Thirteenth

Century, will serve to make clear how enthusiastic was the interest of

the generations of this time in beautiful books and in collections of

them that were meant for show as {165} well as for practical

usefulness. There is perhaps nothing more amusing in the attitude of

modern generations with regard to the Middle Ages, than the assumption

that all the methods of education and of the distribution of knowledge

worth while talking about, are the inventions of comparatively modern

times. The fact that libraries were also a creation of that time and

that most of the regulations which are supposed to be the first fruit

of quite recent science in the circulation of books had been adopted

by these earlier generations, is commonly ignored utterly, though it

is a precious bit of knowledge that cannot help but increase our

sympathy with those bookmen of the olden times, who thought so much of

their books, yet wished to share the privilege of their use with all

those who would employ them properly, and who, in their great

practical way succeeded in working out the scheme by which many people

could have the opportunity of consulting the treasures they thought so

much of, without risk of their loss or destruction, even though use

might bring some deterioration of their value.

[Illustration]

DECORATION (XIII. CENT. PSALTER MSS.)

{166}

X

THE CID, THE HOLY GRAIL, THE NIBELUNGEN.

Anyone who has studied even perfunctorily the Books of the Arts and of

the Deeds of the Thirteenth Century, who has realized its

accomplishments in enduring artistic creations, sublime and exemplary

models and inspirations for all after time, who has appreciated what

it succeeded in doing for the education of the classes and of the

masses, the higher education being provided for at least as large a

proportion of the people as in our present century, while the creation

of what were practically great technical schools that culled out of

the masses the latent geniuses who could accomplish supreme artistic

results in the arts and crafts and did more and better for the masses

than any subsequent generation, can scarcely help but turn with

interest to read the Book of the Words of the period and to find out

what forms of literature interested this surprising people. One is

almost sure to think at the first moment of consideration that the

literature will not be found worthy of the other achievements of the

times. In most men's minds the Thirteenth Century does not readily

call up the idea of a series of great works in literature, whose

influence has been at all as profound and enduring as that of the

universities in the educational order, or of the Cathedrals in the

artistic order.

This false impression, however, is due only to the fact that the

literary creations of the Thirteenth Century are so diverse in subject

and in origin, that they are very seldom associated with each other,

unless there has been actual recognition of their contemporaneousness

from deliberate calling to mind of the dates at which certain basic

works in our modern literatures were composed. It is not the least

surprise that comes to the student of the Thirteenth Century, to find

that the great origins of what well deserves the name of classic

modern literature, comprising a series of immortal works in prose and

poetry, were initiated by the contemporaries of the makers of the

{167} universities and the builders of the Cathedrals. If we stop to

think for a moment it must be realized, that generations who succeeded

in expressing themselves so effectively in other departments of

esthetics could scarcely be expected to fail in literature alone, and

they did not. From the Cid in Spain, through the Arthur Legends in

England, the Nibelungen in Germany, the Minnesingers and the

Meistersingers in the southern part of what is now the German Empire,

the Trouveres in North France, the Troubadours in South France and in

Italy, down to Dante, who was 35 before the century closed, there has

never been such a mass of undying literature written within a little

more than a single hundred years, as came during the period from

shortly before 1200 down to 1300. Great as was the Fifth Century

before Christ in this matter it did not surpass the Thirteenth Century

after Christ in its influence on subsequent generations.

We have already pointed out in discussing the Cathedrals that one of

the most characteristic features of the Gothic architecture was the

marvelous ease with which it lent itself to the expression of national

peculiarities. Norman Gothic is something quite distinct from German

Gothic which arose in almost contiguous provinces, but so it is also

from English Gothic; these two were very closely related in origin and

undoubtedly the English Cathedrals owe much to the Norman influence so

prevalent in England at the end of the Twelfth Century, and the

beginning of the Thirteenth Century. Italian Gothic has the principal

characteristic peculiarities of the architectural style which passes

under the name developed to a remarkable degree, and yet its finished

product is far distant from any of the three other national forms that

have been mentioned, yet is not lacking in a similar interest. Spanish

Gothic has an identity of its own that has always had a special appeal

for the traveler. Any one who has ever visited the shores of the

Baltic sea and has seen what was accomplished in such places as

Stralsund, Greifswald, Luebeck, and others of the old Hansa towns, will

appreciate still more the power of Gothic to lend itself to the

feelings of the people and to the materials that they had at hand.

Here in the distant North they were far away from any sources of the

stone that would ordinarily be deemed absolutely {168} necessary for

Gothic construction. How effectively they used brick for

ecclesiastical edifices can only be realized by those who have seen

the remains of the Gothic monuments of this portion of Europe.

The distinguishing mark of all these different styles is the eminent

opportunity for the expression of nationality which, they afford. It

might be expected that since they were all Gothic, most of them would

be little better than servile copies, or at best scarce more than good

imitations of the great originals of the North of France. As a matter

of fact, the assertion of national characteristics, far from

destroying the effectiveness of Gothic, rather added new beauties to

this style of architecture. This was true even occasionally when

mistakes were made by architects and designers. As Ferguson has said

in his History of Architecture, St. Stephen's at Vienna is full of

architectural errors and yet the attractiveness of the Cathedral

remains. It was a poet who designed it and something of his poetic

soul gleams out of the material structure after the lapse of

centuries.

In nearly this same way the literatures of the different countries

during the Thirteenth Century are eminently national and mirror with

quite wonderful appropriateness the characteristics of the various

people. This is true even when similar subjects, as for instance the

Graal stories, are treated from nearly the same standpoint by the two

Teutonic nations, the Germans and the English. Parsifal and Galahad

are national as well as poetic heroes with a distinction of character

all their own. As we shall see, practically every nation finds in this

century some fundamental expression of its national feeling that has

been among its most cherished classics ever since.

{opp168}

[Illustration]

SANTA MARIA SOPRA MINERVA (ROME'S GOTHIC CATHEDRAL)

The first of these in time is the Cid, which was written in Spain

during the latter half of the Twelfth Century, but probably took its

definite form just about the beginning of the Thirteenth. It might

well be considered that this old-fashioned Spanish ballad would have

very little of interest for modern readers, and yet there are very few

scholars of the past century who have not been interested in this

literary treasure. Critics of all nations have been unstinted in their

praise of it. Since the Schlegels recalled world attention to Spanish

{169} literature, it has been considered almost as unpardonable for

anyone who pretended to literary culture not to have read the Cid, as

it would be not to have read Don Quixote.

As is true of all the national epics founded upon a series of ballads

which had been collecting in the mouth of the people for several

centuries before a great poetic genius came to give them their supreme

expression, there has been some doubt expressed as to the single

authorship of Cid. We shall find the same problem to be considered

when we come to discuss the Nibelungen Lied. A half a century ago or

more the fashion of the critics for insisting on the divided

authorship of such poems was much more prevalent than it is at

present. At that time a great many scholars, following the initiative

of Wolf and the German separatist critics, declared even that the

Homeric poems were due to more than one mind. There are still some who

cling to this idea with regard to many of these primal national epics,

but at the present time most literary men are quite content to accept

the idea of a single authorship. With regard to the Cid in this matter

Mr. Fitzmaurice Kelly, in his Short History of Spanish Literature in

the Literatures of the World Series, says very simply:

"There is a unity of conception and of language which forbids our

accepting the Poema (del Cid) as the work of several hands; and the

division of the poem into several cantares is managed with a

discretion which argues a single artistic intelligence. The first

part closes with the marriage of the hero's daughters; the second

with the shame of the Infantes de Carrion, and the proud

announcement that the Kings of Spain are sprung from the Cid's

loins. In both the singer rises to the level of his subject, but his

chiefest gust is in the recital of some brilliant deed of arms."

The Spanish ballad epic is a characteristic example of the epics

formed by the earliest poetic genius of a country, on the basis of the

patriotic stories of national origin that had been accumulating for

centuries. Of course the Cid had to be the Christian hero who did most

in his time against the Moslem in Spain. So interesting has his story

been made, and so glorious have been his deeds as recorded by the

poets, that there has been even some doubt of his existence expressed,

but that he {170} was a genuine historical character seems to be

clear. Many people will recall the Canons' argument in the forty-ninth

chapter of Don Quixote in which Cervantes, evidently speaking for

himself, says: "That there was a Cid no one will deny and likewise a

Bernardo Del Carpio, but that they performed all the exploits ascribed

to them, I believe there is good reason to doubt." The Cid derives his

name from the Arabic Seid which means Lord and owes his usual epithet.

El Campeador (champion), to the fact that he was the actual champion

of the Christians against the Moors at the end of the Eleventh

Century. How gloriously his warlike exploits have been described may

be best appreciated from the following description of his charge at

Alcocer:

"With bucklers braced before their breasts, with lances pointing low.

With stooping crests and heads bent down above the saddle-bow.

All firm of hand and high of heart they roll upon the foe.

And he that in good hour was born, his clarion voice rings out,

And clear above the clang of arms is heard his battle-shout,

'Among them, gentlemen! Strike home for the love of charity!

The Champion of Bivar is here--Ruy Diaz--I am he!'

Then bearing where Bermuez still maintains unequal fight.

Three hundred lances down they come, their pennons flickering white;

Down go three hundred Moors to earth, a man to every blow;

And, when they wheel, three hundred more, as charging back they go.

It was a sight to see the lances rise and fall that day;

The shivered shields and riven mail, to see how thick they lay;

The pennons that went in snow-white come out a gory red;

The horses running riderless, the riders lying dead;

While Moors call on Muhamed, and 'St. James!' the Christians cry."

While the martial interest of such early poems would be generally

conceded, it would usually be considered that they would be little

likely to have significant domestic, and even {171} what might be

called romantic, interests. The Cid's marriage is the result of not

what would exactly be called a romance nowadays, though in ruder times

there may have been a certain sense of sentimental reparation in it at

least. He had killed in fair fight the father of a young woman, who

being thus left without a protector appealed to the king to appoint

one for her. In the troublous Middle Ages an heiress was as likely to

be snapped up by some unsuitable suitor, more literally but with quite

as much haste, as in a more cultured epoch. The king knew no one whom

he could trust so well with the guardianship of the rich and fair

young orphan than the Cid, of whose bravery and honor he had had many

proofs. Accordingly he suggested him as a protector and the Cid

himself generously realizing how much the fair Jimena had lost by the

death of her father consented, and in a famous passage of the poem, a

little shocking to modern ideas, it must be confessed, frankly states

his feelings in the matter:

"And now before the altar the bride and bridegroom stand,

And when to fair Jimena the Cid stretched forth his hand,

He spake in great confusion: 'Thy father have I slain

Not treacherously, but face to face, my just revenge to gain

For cruel wrong; a man I slew, a man I give to thee;

In place of thy dead father, a husband find in me.'

And all who heard well liked the man, approving what he said;

Thus Rodrigo the Castilian his stately bride did wed."

There are tender domestic scenes between the Cid and his wife and his

daughters, which serve to show how sincere was his affection and with

what sympathetic humanity a great poet knew how to depict the tender

natural relations which have an interest for all times. Some of these

domestic scenes are not unworthy to be placed beside Homer's picture

of the parting of Hector and Andromache, though there is more naive

self-consciousness in the work of the Spanish bard, than in that of

his more artistic colleague of the Grecian olden times. There is

particularly a famous picture of the duties of noble ladies in Spain

of this time and of the tender solicitude of a father for his

daughters' innocence, that is quite beyond expectation at {172} the

hands of a poet whose forte was evidently war and its alarms, rather

than the expression of the ethical qualities of home life. The

following passage, descriptive of the Cid's parting from his wife,

will give some idea of these qualities better than could be conveyed

in any other way:

"Thou knowest well, senora, he said before he went,

To parting from each other our love doth not consent;

But love and joyance never may stand in duty's way,

And when the king commandeth the noble must obey.

Now let discretion guide thee, thou art of worthy name;

While I am parted from thee, let none in thee find blame.

Employ thy hours full wisely, and tend thy household well,

Be never slothful, woe and death with idleness do dwell.

Lay by thy costly dresses until I come again.

For in the husband's absence let wives in dress be plain;

And look well to thy daughters, nor let them be aware.

_Lest they comprehend the danger because they see thy care,

And lose unconscious innocence. At home they must abide,

For the safety of the daughter is at the mother's side_.

Be serious with thy servants, with strangers on thy guard,

With friends be kind and friendly, and well thy household ward,

To no one show my letters, thy best friends may not see.

Lest reading them they also may guess of thine to me.

And if good news they bring thee, and woman-like dost seek

The sympathy of others, with thy daughters only speak.

* * *

Farewell, farewell, Jimena, the trumpet's call I hear!

One last embrace, and then he mounts the steed without a peer."

The touch of paternal solicitude and prudence in the passage we have

put in italics is so apparently modern, that it can scarcely fail to

be a source of surprise, coming as it does from that crude period at

the end of the Twelfth Century when such minute psychological

observation as to young folks' ways would be little expected, and

least of all in the rough warrior {173} hero or his poet creator,

whose notions of right and wrong are, to judge from many passages of

the poem, so much coarser than those of our time.

After the Cid in point of time, the next enduring poetic work that was

destined to have an influence on all succeeding generations, was the

series of the Arthur Legends as completed in England. As in the case

of the Cid these stories of King Arthur's Court, his Knights and his

Round Table, had been for a long time the favorite subject of ballad

poets among the English people. Just where they originated is not very

clear, though it seems most likely that the original inspiration came

from Celtic sources. These old ballads, however, had very little of

literary form and it was not until the end of the Twelfth and the

beginning of the Thirteenth Century that they were cast in their

present mold, after having passed through the alembic of the mind of a

great poetic and literary genius, which refined away the dross and

left only the pure gold of supremely sympathetic human stories. To

whom we owe this transformation is not known with absolute certainty,

though the literary and historical criticism of the last quarter of a

century seems to have made it clear that the work must be attributed

to Walter Map or Mapes, an English clergyman who died during the first

decade of the Thirteenth Century.

His claims to the authorship of the Graal legend in its artistic

completeness and to the invention of the character of Lancelot, which

is one of the great triumphs of the Arthur legends as they were told

at this time, have been much discussed by French and English critics.

This discussion has perhaps been best summarized by Mr. Henry Morley,

the late Professor of Literature at the University of London, whose

third volume of English writers contains an immense amount of valuable

information with regard to the literary history, not alone of England

at this time but practically of all the countries of Europe. Mr.

Morley's plan was conceived with a breath of view that makes his work

a very interesting and authoritative guide in the literary matters of

the time. His summation of the position of critical opinion with

regard to the authorship of the Arthur Legends deserves to be quoted

in its entirety:

"The Arthurian Romances were, according to this opinion. {174} all

perfectly detached tales, till in the Twelfth Century Robert de

Borron (let us add, at Map's suggestion) translated the first

Romance of the St. Graal as an introduction to the series, and

shortly afterwards Walter Map added his Quest of the Graal,

Lancelot, and Mort Artus. The way for such work had been prepared by

Geoffrey of Monmouth's bold setting forward of King Arthur as a

personage of history, in a book that was much sought and discussed,

and that made the Arthurian Romances a fresh subject of interest to

educated men.

"But M. Paulin Paris, whose opinions, founded upon a wide

acquaintance with the contents of old MSS. I am now sketching, and

in part adopting, looked upon Walter Map as the soul of this work of

Christian spiritualisation. Was the romance of the St. Graal Latin,

before it was French? He does not doubt that it was. He sees in it

the mysticism of the subtlest theologian. It was not a knight or a

jongleur who was so well read in the apocryphal gospels, the legends

of the first Christian centuries, rabbinical fancies, and old Greek

mythology; and there is all this in the St. Graal. There is a

theory, too, of the sacrifice of the mass, an explanation of the

Saviour's presence in the Eucharist, that is the work, he says, of

the loftiest and the most brilliant imagination. These were not

matters that a knight of the Twelfth Century would dare to touch.

They came from an ecclesiastic and a man of genius. But if so, why

should we refuse credit to the assertion, repeated in every MS. that

they were first written in Latin? The earliest MSS. are of a date

not long subsequent to the death of Walter Map, Latinist,

theologian, wit, and Chaplain to King Henry II., who himself took

the liveliest interest in Breton legends. King Henry, M. Paris

supposes, wished them to be collected, but how? Some would prefer

one method, some another; Map reconciled all. He satisfied the

clergy, pleased the scholar, filled the chasms in the popular tales,

reconciled contradictions, or rejected inconsistencies, and by him

also the introductory tale of the Graal was first written in Latin

for Robert de Borron to translate into French."

The best literary appreciation of Map's genius, apart, of course, from

the fact that all generations ever since have acknowledged the supreme

human interest and eminently {175} sympathetic quality of his work, is

perhaps to be found in certain remarks of the modern critics who have

made special studies in these earlier literary periods. Prof. George

Saintsbury, of the University of Edinburgh, for instance, in the

second volume of Periods of English Literature, [Footnote 18] has

been quite unstinted in his praise of this early English writer. He

has not hesitated even to say in a striking passage that Map, or at

least the original author of the Launcelot story, was one of the

greatest of literary men and deserves a place only next to Dante in

this century so preciously full of artistic initiative.

[Footnote 18: The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory, by

George Saintsbury, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in

the University of Edinburgh (New York, Charles Scribner & Sons,

1897).]

"Whether it was Walter Map, or Chrestien de Troyes, or both, or

neither to whom the glory of at once completing and exalting the

story is due, I at least have no pretension to decide. Whoever did

it, if he did it by himself, was a great man indeed--a man second to

Dante among the men of the Middle Age. Even if it was done by an

irregular company of men, each patching and piecing the other's

efforts, the result shows a marvelous 'wind of the spirit' abroad

and blowing on that company."

Prof. Saintsbury then proceeds to show how much even readers of

Mallory miss of the greatness and especially of the sympathetic

humanity of the original poem, and in a further passage states his

firm conviction that the man who created Lancelot was one of the

greatest literary inventors and sympathetic geniuses of all times, and

that his work is destined, because the wellsprings of its action are

so deep down in the human heart, to be of interest to generations of

men for as long as our present form of civilization lasts.

"Perhaps the great artistic stroke in the whole legend, and one of

the greatest in all literature, is the concoction of a hero who

should be not only

'Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave,'

but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than Hector--not

only a 'greatest knight,' but at once the sinful lover of his queen

and the champion who should himself all but achieve and in the

person of his son actually achieve, the sacred {176} adventure of

the Holy Graal. If, as there seems no valid reason to disbelieve,

the hitting upon this idea, and the invention or adoption of

Lancelot to carry it out, be the work of Walter Mapes (or Map), then

Walter Mapes is one of the great novelists of the world, and one of

the greatest of them. If it was some unknown person (it could hardly

be Chrestien, for in Chrestien's form the Graal interest belongs to

Percevale, not to Lancelot or Galahad), then the same compliment

must be paid to that person unknown. Meanwhile the conception and

execution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due, are things

most happy. Entirely free from the faultlessness which is the curse

of the classical hero; his unequaled valor not seldom rewarded only

by reverses; his merits redeemed from mawkishness by his one great

fault, yet including all virtues that are themselves most amiable,

and deformed by no vice that is actually loathsome; the soul of

goodness in him always warring with his human frailty--Sir Lancelot

fully deserves the noble funeral eulogy pronounced over his grave,

felt by all the elect to be, in both senses, one of the first of all

extant pieces of perfect English prose."

To appreciate fully how much Walter Map accomplished by his series of

stories with regard to King Arthur's Court, it should be remembered

that poets and painters have in many generations ever since found

subjects for their inspiration within the bounds of the work which he

created. After all, the main interest of succeeding poets who have put

the legends into later forms, has centered more in the depth of

humanity that there is in the stories, than in the poetic details for

which they themselves have been responsible. In succeeding generations

poets have often felt that these stories were so beautiful that they

deserved to be retold in terms readily comprehensible to their own

generation. Hence Malory wrote his Morte D'Arthur for the Fifteenth

Century, Spenser used certain portions of the old myths for the

Sixteenth, and the late Poet-laureate set himself once more to retell

the Idyls of the King for the Nineteenth Century. Each of these was

adding little but new literary form, to a work that genius had drawn

from sources so close to the heart of human nature, that the stories

were always to remain of enduring interest.

{177}

For the treasure of poesy with which humanity was enriched when he

conceived the idea of setting the old ballads of King Arthur into

literary form, more must be considered as due to the literary original

writer than to any of his great successors. This is precisely the

merit of Walter Map. Of some of his less ambitious literary work we

have many examples that show us how thoroughly interested he was in

all the details of human existence, even the most trivial. He had his

likes and dislikes, he seems to have had some disappointed ambition

that made him rather bitter towards ecclesiastics, he seems to have

had some unfortunate experiences, especially with the Cistercians,

though how much of this is assumed rather than genuine, is hard to

determine at this modern day. Many of the extremely bitter things he

says with regard to the Cistercians might well be considered as

examples of that exaggeration, which in certain minds constitutes one

modality of humor, rather than as serious expressions of actual

thought. It is hard, for instance, to take such an expression as the

following as more than an example of this form of jesting by

exaggeration. Map heard that a Cistercian had become a Jew. His

comment was: "If he wanted to get far from the Cistercians why didn't

he become a Christian."

From England the transition to Germany is easy. Exactly contemporary

with the rise of the Arthur Legends in England to that standard of

literary excellence that was to give them their enduring poetic value,

there came also the definite arrangement and literary transformation

of the old ballads of the German people, into that form in which they

were to exert a lasting influence upon the German language and

national feeling. The date of the Nibelungen Lied has been set down

somewhat indefinitely as between 1190 and 1220. Most of the work was

undoubtedly accomplished after the beginning of the Thirteenth Century

and in the form in which we have it at present, there seems to be no

doubt that much was done after the famous meeting of the

Meistersingers on the Wartburg--the subject of song and story and

music drama ever since, which took place very probably in the year

1207. With regard to the Nibelungen Lied, as in the case of the other

great literary arrangements of folk-ballads, there has been question

as to the {178} singleness of authorship. Here, however, as with

regard to Homer and the Cid, the trend of modern criticism has all

been towards the attribution of the poem to one writer, and the

internal evidence of similarity of expression constantly maintained, a

certain simplicity of feeling and naivete of repetition seems to leave

no doubt in the matter.

As regards the merits of the Nibelungen Lied as a great work of

literature, there has been very little doubt in the English-speaking

world at least, because of the enthusiastic recognition accorded it by

German critics and the influence of German criticism in all branches

of literature over the whole Teutonic race during the Nineteenth

Century. English admiration for the poem began after Carlyle's

introduction of it to the English reading public in his essays. Since

this time it has come to be very well known and yet, notwithstanding

all that has been said about it no English critic has expressed more

fully the place of the great German poem in world literature, than did

this enthusiastic pro-German of the first half of the Nineteenth

Century.

For those for whom Carlyle's Essays are a sealed book because of loss

of interest in him with the passage of time, the citation of some of

his appreciative critical expressions may be necessary.

"Here in the old Frankish (Oberdeutsch) dialect of the Nibelungen,

we have a clear decisive utterance, and in a real system of verse,

not without essential regularity, great liveliness and now and then

even harmony of rhythm. Doubtless we must often call it a diffuse

diluted utterance; at the same time it is genuine, with a certain

antique garrulous heartiness, and has a rhythm in the thoughts as

well as the words. The simplicity is never silly; even in that

perpetual recurrence of epithets, sometimes of rhymes, as where two

words, for instance lip (body), lif (leib) and wip (woman), weib

(wife) are indissolubly wedded together, and the one never shows

itself without the other following--there is something which reminds

us not so much of poverty, as of trustfulness and childlike

innocence. Indeed a strange charm lies in those old tones, where, in

gay dancing melodies, the sternest tidings are sung to us; and deep

floods of sadness and strife play lightly in little {179} purling

billows, like seas in summer. It is as a meek smile, in whose still,

thoughtful depths a whole infinitude of patience, and love, and

heroic strength lie revealed. But in other cases too, we have seen

this outward sport and inward earnestness offer grateful contrasts,

and cunning excitement; for example, in Tasso; of whom, though

otherwise different enough, this old Northern Singer has more than

once reminded us. There too, as here, we have a dark solemn meaning

in light guise; deeds of high temper, harsh self-denial, daring and

death, stand embodied in that soft, quick-flowing joyfully-modulated

verse. Nay farther, as if the implement, much more than we might

fancy, had influenced the work done, these two poems, could we trust

our individual feeling, have in one respect the same poetical result

for us; in the Nibelungen as in the Gerusalemme, the persons and

their story are indeed brought vividly before us, yet not near and

palpably present; it is rather as if we looked on that scene through

an inverted telescope, whereby the whole was carried far away into

the distance, the life-large figures compressed into brilliant

miniatures, so clear, so real, yet tiny, elf-like and beautiful as

well as lessened, their colors being now closer and brighter, the

shadows and trivial features no longer visible. This, as we partly

apprehend, comes of singing epic poems; most part of which only

pretend to be sung. Tasso's rich melody still lives among the

Italian people; the Nibelungen also is what it professes to be, a

song."

The story of the Nibelungen would ordinarily be supposed to be so

distant from the interests of modern life, as scarcely to hold the

attention of a reader unless he were interested in it from a scholarly

or more or less antiquarian standpoint. For those who think thus,

however, there is only one thing that will correct such a false

impression and that is to read the Nibelungen itself. It has a depth

of simplicity and a sympathetic human interest all its own but that

reminds one more of Homer than of anything else in literature, and

Homer has faults but lack of interest is not one of them. From the

very beginning the story of the young man who does not think he will

marry, and whose mother does not think that any one is good enough for

him, and of the young woman who is sure that no one will come that

will attract enough of her attention so as to compel {180} her to

subject herself to the yoke of marriage, are types of what is so

permanent in humanity, that the readers' attention is at once caught.

After this the fighting parts of the story become the center of

interest and hold the attention in spite of the refining influences

that later centuries are supposed to have brought to humanity.

Hence it is that Prof. Saintsbury in the second volume of his Periods

of European Literature, already quoted from, is able to say much of

the modern interest in the story. "There may be," as he says, "too

many episodic personages--Deitrich of Bern, for instance, has

extremely little to do in this galley. But the strength, thoroughness,

and in its own savage way, charm of Kriemhild's character, and the

incomparable series of battles between the Burgundian princes and

Etzel's men in the later cantos--cantos which contain the very best

poetical fighting in the history of the world--far more than redeem

this. The Nibelungen Lied is a very great poem; and with Beowulf (the

oldest but the least interesting on the whole), Roland (the most

artistically finished in form), and the poem of the Cid (the

cheerfullest and perhaps the fullest of character), composes a

quartette of epics with which the literary story of the great European

literary nations most appropriately begins. In bulk, dramatic

completeness, and a certain furia, the Nibelungen Lied, though the

youngest and probably the least original is the greatest of the four."

Less need be said of the Nibelungen than of the Cid or Walter Map's

work because it is much more familiar, and even ordinary readers of

literature have been brought more closely in touch with it because of

its relation to the Wagnerian operas. Even those who know the fine old

German poems only passingly, will yet realize the supreme genius of

their author, and those who need to have the opinions of distinguished

critics to back them before they form an estimate for themselves, will

not need to seek far in our modern literature to find lofty praises of

the old German epic.

With even this brief treatment no reader will doubt that there is in

these three epics, typical products of the literary spirit of three

great European nations whose literatures rising high above these deep

firm substructures, were to be of the greatest {181} influence in the

development of the human mind, and yet were to remain practically

always within the limits of thought and feeling that had been traced

by these old founders of literature of the early Thirteenth Century,

whose work, like that of their contemporaries in every other form of

artistic expression, was to be the model and the source of inspiration

for future generations.

[Illustration]

CROZIER (OBVERSE AND REVERSE)

{182}

XI

MEISTERSINGERS, MINNESINGERS, TROUVERES, TROUBADOURS.

It would be a supreme mistake to think because the idea of literature

in the Thirteenth Century is usually associated with the Arthur

Legends, the Nibelungen and Dante, that all of the literary content of

the century was inevitably serious in character or always epical in

form. As a matter of fact the soul of wit and humor had entered into

the body social, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, and the

spirit of gaiety and the light-hearted admiration for nature found as

frequent expression as at any time in history. With these as always in

literary history there came outbursts of love in lyric strains that

were not destined to die. While the poets of South Germany and of

Italy sang of love that was of the loftiest description, never mingled

with anything of the merely sensual, their tuneful trifles are quite

as satisfying to the modern ear in both sense and sound as any of the

more elaborate _vers de societe_ of the modern times. The German poets

particularly did not hesitate to emphasize the fact that sensuality

had no part in Minne--their pretty term for love--and yet they sang

with all the natural grace and fervid rapture of the Grecian poets of

the old pagan times, worshiping at the shrines of fleshly goddesses,

or singing to the frail beauties of an unmoral period. Nothing in the

history of literature is better proof that ideal love can, unmixed

with anything sensual, inspire lyric outbursts of supreme and enduring

beauty, than the poems of the Minnesingers and of some of the French

and Italian Troubadours of this period. It is easier to understand

Dante's position in this matter after reading the poems of his

predecessors in the Thirteenth Century.

For this feeling of the lofty character of the love they sang was not,

in spite of what is sometimes said, confined only to the Germans,

though as is well known from time immemorial the {183} Teutonic

feeling towards woman was by racial influence of higher character than

that of the southern Nations. As Mr. H. J. Chaytor says in the

introduction to his Troubadours of Dante, there came a gradual change

over the mind of the Troubadour about the beginning of the Thirteenth

Century and "seeing that love was the inspiring force to good deeds,"

the later Troubadours gradually dissociated their love from the object

which had aroused it. Among them, "as among the Minnesingers, love is

no longer sexual passion, it is rather the motive to great works, to

self-surrender, to the winning an honorable name as Courtier and

Poet." Mr. Chaytor then quotes the well known lines from Bernart de

Ventadorn, one of the Troubadours to whom Dante refers, and whose

works Dante seems to have read with special attention since their

poems contain similar errors of mythology.

"for indeed I know

Of no more subtle passion under heaven

Than is the maiden passion for a maid.

Not only to keep down the base in man.

But teach high thought and amiable words.

And courtliness and the desire of fame.

And love of truth and all that makes a man."

A sentiment surely that will be considered as true now as it ever was,

be the time the Thirteenth Century or earlier or later, and that

represents the best solution of social problems that has ever been put

forward--nature's own panacea for ills that other remedies at best

only palliate.

In the early Nineteenth Century Carlyle said of this period what we

may well repeat here:

"We shall suppose that this Literary Period is partially known to

all readers. Let each recall whatever he has learned or figures

regarding it; represent to himself that brave young heyday of

Chivalry and Minstrelsy when a stern Barbarossa, a stern Lion-heart,

sang sirventes, and with the hand that could wield the sword and

sceptre twanged the melodious strings, when knights-errant tilted,

and ladies' eyes rained bright influences; and suddenly, as at

sunrise, the whole earth had grown {184} vocal and musical. Then

truly was the time of singing come; for princes and prelates,

emperors and squires, the wise and the simple, men, women and

children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in hearing it done. It

was a universal noise of Song; as if the Spring of Manhood had

arrived, and warblings from every spray, not, indeed, without

infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no

music, were bidding it welcome."

This is the keynote of the Century--song, blithesome and gay as the

birds, solemn and harmonious as the organ tones that accord so well

with the great Latin hymns--everywhere song.

"Believers," says Tieck, the great collector of Thirteenth Century

poetry, "sang of Faith; Lovers of Love; Knights described knightly

actions and battles; and loving, believing knights were their chief

audience. The Spring, Beauty, Gaiety, were objects that could never

tire; great duels and deeds of arms carried away every hearer, the

more surely the stronger they were painted; and as the pillars and

dome of the Church encircled the flock, so did Religion, as the

Highest, encircle Poetry and Reality; and every heart, in equal love,

humbled itself before her."

The names of the Meistersingers are well-known to musical lovers at

least, because of the music drama of that name and the famous war of

the Wartburg. The most familiar of all of them is doubtless Walter von

der Vogelweide who, when he was asked where he found the tuneful

melodies for his songs, said that he learned them from the birds.

Those who recall Longfellow's pretty ballad with regard to Walter and

his leaving all his substance to feed the birds over his grave near

Nuremberg's minster towers, will not find it surprising that this

Meistersinger's poetry breathes the deepest love of Nature, and that

there is in it a lyric quality of joy in the things of Nature that we

are apt to think of as modern, until we find over and over again in

these bards, that the spirit of the woods and of the fields and of the

spring time, meant as much for them as for any follower of the

Wordsworth school of poetry in the more conscious after-time. This

from Walter with regard to the May will serve to illustrate very well

this phase of his work.

{185}

Gentle May, thou showerest fairly

Gifts afar and near;

Clothest all the woods so rarely,

And the meadows here;

O'er the heath new colors glow;

Flowers and clover on the plain.

Merry rivals, strive amain

Which can fastest grow.

Lady! part me from my sadness.

Love me while 'tis May;

Mine is but a borrowed gladness

If thou frown alway;

Look around and smile anew!

All the world is glad and free;

Let a little joy from thee

Fall to my lot too!

Walter could be on occasion, however, as serious as any of the

Meistersingers and is especially known for his religious poems. It is

not surprising that any one who set woman on so high a pedestal as did

Walter, should have written beautiful poems to the Blessed Virgin. He

was the first, so it is said, to express the sentiment: "Woman, God

bless her, by that name, for it is a far nobler name than lady."

Occasionally he can be seriously didactic and he has not hesitated

even to express some sentiments with regard to methods of education.

Among other things he discusses the question as to whether children

should be whipped or not in the process of education and curiously

enough takes the very modern view that whipping is always a mistake.

In this, of course, he disagrees with all the practical educators of

his time, who considered the rod the most effective instrument for the

education of children and strictly followed the scriptural injunction

about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. Walter's opinion is for

that reason all the more interesting:

"Children with rod ruling--

'Tis the worst of schooling.

Who is honor made to know.

Him a word seems as a blow."

{186}

The birds were always a favorite subject for poetic inspiration on the

part of the Minnesingers. Bird music rapt poetic souls into ecstasies

in which the passage of time was utterly unnoticed. It is from the

Thirteenth Century that comes the beautiful legend with regard to the

monk who, having wondered how time could be kept from dragging in

Heaven, was permitted to listen to the song of a bird one day in the

forest and when he awoke from his rapture and went back to his convent

found that a hundred years had passed, that all of the monks of his

acquaintance were dead, and while his name was found on the rolls of

the monastery, after it there was a note that he had disappeared one

day and had never been heard of afterwards. Almost in the same tenor

as this is a pretty song from Dietmar von Eist, written at the

beginning of the Thirteenth Century, and which was a type of the

charming songs that were to be so characteristic of the times:

There sat upon the linden-tree

A bird, and sung its strain;

So sweet it sung that as I heard

My heart went back again.

It went to one remember'd spot,

It saw the rose-tree grow.

And thought again the thoughts of love,

There cherished long ago.

A thousand years to me it seems

Since by my fair I sate;

Yet thus to be a stranger long

Is not my choice, but fate;

Since then I have not seen the flowers,

Nor heard the birds' sweet song;

My joys have all too briefly past.

My griefs been all too long.

Hartman von Aue was a contemporary of Walter's and is best known for

his romantic stories. It is rather curiously interesting to find that

one of the old chroniclers considers it a great mark of distinction

that, though Hartman was a knight, he was able to read and write

whatever he found written in {187} books. It must not be forgotten,

however, that not all of these poets could read and write, and that

indeed so distinguished a literary man as Wolfram von Eschenbach, the

author of Percival, the story on which Wagner founded his opera of

Parsifal, could neither read nor write. He had developed a very

wonderful memory and was able to store faithfully his poems in the

course of their composition so that he was above the need of pen and

paper. Hartman is most famous for having written the story of Poor

Henry, which Longfellow has chosen so effectively for his Golden

Legend. Hartman's appreciation of women can be judged from the

following lines, which accord her an equal share in her lord's glory

because of her sufferings in prayer at home.

Glory be unto her whose word

Sends her dear lord to bitter fight;

Although he conquer by his sword.

She to the praise has equal right;

He with the sword in battle, she at home with prayer.

Both win the victory, and both the glory share.

Occasionally one finds, as we have said, among the little songs of the

Minnesingers of the time such tuneful trifles as could be included

very appropriately in a modern collection of _vers de societe_, or as

might even serve as a love message on a modern valentine or a

Christmas card. The surprise of finding such things at such a time

will justify the quotation of one of them from Brother Wernher, who

owes his title of brother not to his membership in any religious

order, very probably, but to the fact that he belonged to the

brotherhood of the poets of the time.

Since creation I was thine;

Now forever thou art mine.

I have shut thee fast

In my heart at last.

I have dropped the key

In an unknown sea.

Forever must thou my prisoner be!

{188}

Wolfram von Eschenbach was the chief of a group of poets who at the

close of the Twelfth and beginning of the Thirteenth centuries

gathered about the Landgraf Hermann of Thuringen in his court on the

Wartburg, at the foot of which lies Eisenach, in the present Grand

Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. They shaped tales of knightly adventure, blended

with reflection, spiritual suggestion, and a grace of verse that

represented the best culture of the court, and did not address itself

immediately to the people. Wolfram was a younger son of one of the

lower noble Bavarian families settled at Eschenbach, nine miles from

Ausbach, in Middle Franconia. He had a poor little home of his own,

Wildenberg, but went abroad to seek adventures as a knight, and tell

adventures as a poet welcome to great lords, and most welcome to the

lavish friend of poets, Hermann of Thuringen, at whose court on the

Wartburg he remained twenty years, from 1195 to 1215, in which latter

year his "Parzival" was finished. From some passages in his poem it

may safely be inferred that he was happily married, and had children.

The Landgraf Hermann died in 1216, and, was succeeded by Ludwig,

husband of St. Elizabeth.

We cannot ascribe to English writers alone the spiritualizing of the

Grail Legends, when there is Wolfram's "Parzival" drawing from the

same cycle of myths a noble poem of the striving to bind earthly

knighthood to the ever-living God. While Gawain, type of the earthly

knight wins great praise in love and chivalry,

Parzival--Percival--finds his way on from childhood up, through humble

searchings of the spirit, till he is ruler in the kingdom of the soul,

where he designs that Lohengrin, his eldest son, shall be his

successor, while Kardeiss, his younger son, has rule over his earthly

possessions.

How beautifully the Minnesingers could enter into the spirit of nature

and at the same time how much the spirit of Spring has always been

prone to appeal to poetic sensibilities may be judged from the

following song of Conrad of Kirchberg, which is translated very

closely and in the same meter as the original old high German poem. It

is very evident that none of the spirit of Spring was lost on this

poet of the olden time, nor on the other hand that any possibility of

poetic expression was missed by him. There is a music in the lilt of

the verselets, {189} eminently suggestive of the lyric effect that the

new birth of things had on the poet himself and that he wished to

convey to his readers. Of this, however, every one must judge for

himself and so we give the poem as it may be found in Roscoe's edition

of Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe.

May, sweet May, again is come;

May, that frees the land from gloom.

Up, then, children, we will go

Where the blooming roses grow.

In a joyful company

We the bursting flowers will see;

Up! your festal dress prepare!

Where gay hearts are meeting, there

May hath pleasures most inviting

Heart, and sight, and ear delighting:

Listen to the bird's sweet song.

Hark! how soft it floats along!

Courtly dames our pleasures share.

Never saw I May so fair;

Therefore, dancing will we go:

Youths rejoice, the flowrets blow;

Sing ye! join the chorus gay!

Hail this merry, merry May!

At least as beautiful in their tributes to their lady loves and their

lyric descriptions of the beauties of Spring, were the Troubadours

whose tuneful trifles, sometimes deserving of much more serious

consideration than the application of such a term to them would seem

to demand, have come down to us though the centuries. One of the best

known of these is Arnaud de Marveil, who was born in very humble

circumstances but who succeeded in raising himself by his poetic

genius to be the companion of ruling princes and the friend of the

high nobility. Among the provencals he has been called the great

Master of Love, though this is a name which Petrarch reserves

especially for Arnaud Daniel, while he calls Marveil the less famous

of the Arnauds. An example of his work as the Poet of Love, that is

typical of what is usually considered to have {190} been the favorite

mode of the Troubadour poets runs as follows:

All I behold recalls the memory

Of her I love. The freshness of the hour

Th' enamell'd fields, the many coloured flower,

Speaking of her, move me to melody.

Had not the poets, with their courtly phrase,

Saluted many a fair of meaner worth,

I could not now have render'd thee the praise

So justly due, of "Fairest of the Earth."

To name thee thus had been to speak thy name,

And waken, o'er thy cheek, the blush of modest shame.

An example of the love of nature which characterizes some of Arnaud de

Marveil's work will serve to show how thoroughly he entered into the

spirit of the spring-time and how much all the sights and sounds of

nature found an echo in his poetic spirit. The translation of this as

of the preceding specimen from Arnaud is taken from the English

edition of the Historical View of the Literature of the South of

Europe by Sismondi, and this translation we owe to Thomas Roscoe, the

well known author of the life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who

considering that Sismondi does not furnish enough of specimens of this

Troubadour poet, inserts the following verses, for the translation of

which he acknowledges himself indebted to the kindness of friends, a

modest concealment doubtless of his own work:

Oh! how sweet the breeze of April,

Breathing soft as May draws near!

While, through nights of tranquil beauty,

Songs of gladness meet the ear:

Every bird his well-known language

Uttering in the morning's pride,

Revelling in joy and gladness

By his happy partner's side.

When, around me, all is smiling,

When to life the young birds spring,

Thoughts of love, I cannot hinder,

Come, my heart inspiriting--

Nature, habit, both incline me

In such joy to bear my part:

With such sounds of bliss around me

Could I wear a sadden'd heart?

{191}

His description of his lady love is another example of his worship of

nature in a different strain, which serves to show that a lover's

exaggeration of the qualities of his lady is not a modern development

of _la belle passion_.

Fairer than the far-famed Helen,

Lovelier than the flow'rets gay.

Snow-white teeth, and lips truth-telling,

Heart as open as the day;

Golden hair, and fresh bright roses--

Heaven, who formed a thing so fair.

Knows that never yet another

Lived, who can with thee compare.

A single stanza from a love-song by Bertrand De Born will show better

than any amount of critical appreciation how beautifully he can treat

the more serious side of love. While the Troubadours are usually said

to have sung their love strains in less serious vein than their German

brother poets of the North, this has the ring of tenderness and truth

about it and yet is not in these qualities very different from others

of his songs that are well known. The translation we have chosen is

that made by Roscoe who has rendered a number of the songs of the

Troubadours into English verse that presents an excellent equivalent

of the original. Bertrand is insisting with his lady-love that she

must not listen to the rumors she may hear from others with regard to

his faithfulness.

I cannot hide from thee how much I fear

The whispers breathed by flatterers in thine ear

Against my faith. But turn not, oh, I pray!

That heart so true, so faithful, so sincere.

So humble and so frank, to me so dear.

Oh, lady! turn it not from me away.

{192}

At times one is surprised to find pretty tributes to nature even in

the midst of songs that are devoted to war. The two things that were

nearest the hearts of these Troubadour poets were war and their

lady-loves, but the beauties of nature became mixed up not only with

their love songs but also with their battle hymns, or at least with

their ardent descriptions of military preparations and the glories of

war. An excellent example of this is to be found in the following

stanza written by William of Saint Gregory, a Troubadour who is best

known for his songs of war rather than of tenderness.

The beautiful spring delights me well.

When flowers and leaves are growing;

And it pleases my heart to hear the swell

Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing

In the echoing wood;

And I love to see all scattered around

Pavilions and tents on martial ground;

And my spirit finds it good

To see on the level plains beyond

Gay knights and steeds caparison'd.

Occasionally the Troubadours indulge in religious poetry though

usually not of a mystical or profoundly devotional character. Even the

famous Peyrols, who is so well known for his love songs, sometimes

wandered into religious poetry that was not unworthy to be placed

beside his lyric effusions on other topics. Peyrols is best known

perhaps for his lamentations over King Richard the Lion Heart's fate,

for he had been with that monarch on the crusade, and like most of the

Troubadours who went with the army, drank in deep admiration for the

poetic king. After his visit to the Holy Land on this occasion one

stanza of his song in memory of that visit runs as follows: [Footnote

19: Translated by Roscoe.]

{193}

I have seen the Jordan river,

I have seen the holy grave.

Lord! to thee my thanks I render

For the joys thy goodness gave,

Showing to my raptured sight

The spot whereon thou saw'st the light.

Vessel good and favoring breezes,

Pilot, trusty, soon shall we

Once more see the towers of Marseilles

Rising o'er the briny sea.

Farewell, Acre, farewell, all.

Of Temple or of Hospital:

Now, alas! the world's decaying.

When shall we once more behold

Kings like lion-hearted Richard,

France's monarch, stout and bold?

[Illustration]

TOWER OF SCALIGERS (VERONA)

{194}

XII

GREAT LATIN HYMNS AND CHURCH MUSIC.

One of the most precious bequests of the Thirteenth Century to all the

succeeding centuries is undoubtedly the great Latin hymns. These

sublime religious poems, comparable only to the Hebrew psalms for

their wondrous expression of the awe and devotion of religious

feeling, present the beginnings of rhymed poetry, yet they have been

acclaimed by competent modern critics as among the greatest poems that

ever came from the mind of man. They come to us from this period and

were composed, most of them at least, during the Thirteenth Century

itself, a few, shortly before it, though all of them received during

this century the stamp of ecclesiastical and popular approval, which

made them for many centuries afterward the principal medium of the

expression of congregational devotion and the exemplar and incentive

for vernacular poetry. It is from these latter standpoints that they

deserve the attention of all students of literature quite apart from

their significance as great expressions of the mind of these wondrous

generations.

These Latin hymns have sometimes been spoken of with perhaps a certain

degree of contempt as "rhymed Latin poetry," as if the use of rhyme in

conjunction with Latin somehow lowered the dignity of the grand old

tongue in which Cicero wrote his graceful periods and Horace sang his

tuneful odes. As a matter of fact, far from detracting from the

beauties of Latin expression, these hymns have added new laurels to

the glory of the language and have shown the wonderful possibilities

of the Roman speech in the hands of generations long after the

classical period. If they served no other purpose than to demonstrate

beyond cavil how profoundly the scholars of this generation succeeded

in possessing themselves of the genius of the Latin language, they

would serve to contradict the foolish critics who talk of the

education of the period as superficial, or as negligent of everything

but scholastic philosophy and theology.

{195}

At least one distinguished philologist, Professor F. A. March, who has

now for the better part of half a century occupied the chair of

comparative philology at Lafayette College, does not hesitate to say

that the Latin hymns represent an expression of the genius of the

Latin people and language, more characteristic than the classical

poetry even of the golden or silver ages. "These hymns," he says,

"were the first original poetry of the people in the Latin language,

unless perhaps those Latin critics may be right who think they find in

Livy a prose rendering of earlier ballads. The so-called classic

poetry was an echo of Greece, both in substance and in form. The

matter and meters were both imitated and the poems were composed for

the lovers of Grecian art in the Roman Court. It did not spring from

the people, but the Christian hymns were proper folk poetry, the Bible

of the people--their Homeric poems. Their making was not so much

speech as action. They were in substance festive prayers, the simplest

rhythmic offering of thanks and praise to the Giver of Light and of

rest both natural and spiritual, at morning and evening and at other

seasons, suited to the remembrance and rhythmical rehearsal of the

truths of the Bible." Prof. March's opinion has been echoed by many

another enthusiastic student of these wonderful hymns. It is only

those who do not know them who fail to grow enthusiastic about them.

This of itself would stamp these great poems as worthy of careful

study. There is, however, an additional reason for modern interest in

them. These hymns were sung by the whole congregation at the many

services that they attended in the medieval period. In this regard it

seems well to recall, that it was the custom to go to church much

oftener then than at present. Besides the Sundays there were many holy

days of obligation, that is, religious festivals on which attendance

at Church was obligatory, and in addition a certain number of days of

devotion on which, because of special reverence for some particular

saint, or in celebration of some event in the life of the Lord or his

saints, the people of special parts of the country found themselves

drawn to attendance on church services. It seems probable that instead

of the sixty or so times a year that is now obligatory, people went to

Church during the Thirteenth {196} Century more than a hundred times

in the year. Twice a week then, at least, there was the uplifting

cultural influence of this congregational singing of wonderful hymns

that are among the greatest poems ever written and that belong to

literature of the very highest order. The educational value of such

intimate contact with what is best in literary expression could

scarcely fail to have a distinct effect upon the people. It is idle to

say that the hymns being in Latin they were not understood, since the

language of them was close akin to the spoken tongues, the subjects

were eminently familiar mysteries of religion and constant repetition

and frequent explanation must have led to a very general comprehension

even by the least educated classes. For anyone with any pretension to

education they must have been easy to understand, since Latin was

practically a universal language.

It is not always realized by the students whose interests have been

mainly confined to modern literature, in what estimation these Latin

hymns have been held by those who are in the best position to be able

to judge critically of their value as poetry. Take for example the

Dies Irae, confessedly the greatest of them, and it will be found that

many of the great poets and literary men of the Nineteenth Century

have counted it among their favorite poems. Such men as Goethe,

Friedrich and August Schlegel, Scott, Milman and Archbishop Trench

were enthusiastic in its praise. While such geniuses as Dryden,

Johnson and Jeremy Taylor, and the musicians Mozart and Hayden, avowed

supreme admiration for it. Herder, Fichte and August Schlegel besides

Crashaw, Drummond, Roscommon, Trench and Macaulay gave the proof of

their appreciation of the great Thirteenth Century hymn by devoting

themselves to making translations of it, and Goethe's use of it in

Faust and Scott's in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, show how much

poets, whose sympathies were not involved in its religious aspects,

were caught by its literary and esthetic merit.

In very recent times the Latin hymns have been coming more to their

own again and such distinguished critics as Prof. Henry Morley, and

Prof. George Saintsbury, have not hesitated to express their critical

appreciation of these hymns as great {197} literature. Prof.

Saintsbury says in his volume of the Thirteenth Century literature:

[Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory,

Volume II. of Periods of European Literature, Edited by George

Saintsbury, New York, Scribners, 1899.]

{opp197}

[Illustration]

ST. FRANCIS PROPHESIES THE DEATH OF CELANO (GIOTTO, UPPER CH., ASSISI)

"It will be more convenient to postpone to a later chapter of this

volume a consideration of the exact way in which Latin sacred poetry

affected the prosody of the vernacular; but it is well here to point

out that almost all the finest and most famous examples of the

medieval hymns, with perhaps the sole exception of the Veni Sancte

Spiritus, date from the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries. Ours (that

is, from this period) are the stately rhythms of Adam of St. Victor,

and the softer ones of St. Bernard the Greater. It was at this time

that Jacopone da Todi, in the intervals of his eccentric vernacular

exercises, was inspired to write the Stabat Mater. From this time

comes that glorious descant of Bernard of Morlaix, in which, the

more its famous and very elegant English paraphrase is read beside

it (Jerusalem the Golden), the more does the greatness and the

beauty of the original appear.

"And from this time comes the greatest of all hymns, and one of the

greatest of all poems, the Dies Irae. There have been attempts--more

than one of them--to make out that the Dies Irae is no such

wonderful thing after all; attempts which are, perhaps, the extreme

examples of that cheap and despicable paradox which thinks to escape

the charge of blind docility by the affectation of heterodox

independence. The judgment of the greatest (and not always of the

most pious) men of letters of modern times may confirm those who are

uncomfortable without authority in a different opinion. Fortunately

there is not likely ever to be lack of those who, authority or no

authority, in youth and in age, after much reading or without much,

in all time of their tribulation and in all time of their wealth,

will hold these wonderful triplets, be they Thomas of Celano's or

another's, as nearly or quite the most perfect wedding of sound to

sense that they know."

This seems almost the limit of praise but Prof. Saintsbury can say

even more than this: "It would be possible, indeed, to {198}

illustrate a complete dissertation on the methods of expression in

serious poetry from the fifty-one lines of the Dies Irae. Rhyme,

alliteration, cadence, and adjustment of vowel and consonant

values--all these things receive perfect expression in it, or, at

least, in the first thirteen stanzas, for the last four are a little

inferior. It is quite astonishing to reflect upon the careful art or

the felicitous accident of such a line as:

Tuba mirum spargens sonum,

with the thud of the trochee falling in each instance in a different

vowel; and still more on the continuous sequence of five stanzas, from

_Judex ergo_ to _non sit cassus_, in which not a word could be

displaced or replaced by another without loss. The climax of verbal

harmony, corresponding to and expressing religious passion and

religious awe, is reached in the last--

Quaerens me sedisti lassus,

Redemisti crucem passus:

Tantus labor non sit cassus!

where the sudden change from the dominant _e_ sounds (except

in the rhyme foot) of the first two lines to the _a's_ of the last

is simply miraculous and miraculously assisted by what may

be called the internal sub-rhyme of _sedisti_ and _redemisti_. This

latter effect can rarely be attempted without a jingle: there is

no jingle here, only an ineffable melody. After the Dies Irae,

no poet could say that any effect of poetry was, as far as sound

goes, unattainable, though few could have hoped to equal it,

and perhaps no one except Dante and Shakespeare has fully

done so."

Higher praise than this could scarcely be given and it comes from an

acknowledged authority, whose interests are moreover in secular rather

than religious literature, and whose enthusiastic praise is therefore

all the more striking. Here in America, Schaff, whose critical

judgment in religious literature is unquestionable and whose

sympathies with the old church and her hymns were not as deep as if he

had been a Roman Catholic, has been quite as unstinted in laudation.

"This marvelous hymn is the acknowledged masterpiece of Latin

poetry, and the most sublime of all uninspired hymns. {199} ... The

secret of its irresistible power lies in the awful grandeur of the

theme, the intense earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple

majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately meter, the

triple rhyme, and the vowel assonances, chosen in striking

adaptation to the sense--all combining to produce an overwhelming

effect, as if we heard the final crash of the universe, the

commotion of the opening graves, the trumpet of the archangel

summoning the quick and the dead, and saw the 'king of tremendous

majesty' seated on the throne of justice and of mercy, and ready to

dispense everlasting life and everlasting woe."

Neale says of Thomas Aquinas' great hymn the Pange Lingua: "This hymn

contests the second place among those of the Western Church, with the

'Vexilla Regis,' the 'Stabat Mater,' the 'Jesu Dulcis Memoria,' the

'Ad Regias Agni Dapes,' the 'Ad Supernam,' and one or two others,

leaving the 'Dies Irae' in its unapproachable glory," thus furnishing

another supreme testimony to the hymn we have been discussing, which

indeed only needs to be read to be appreciated, since it will

inevitably tempt to successive readings and these bring with them ever

and ever increasing admiration, showing in this more than in any other

way that it is a work of sublime genius.

With regard to rhyme particularly the triumph of art and the influence

of the Latin hymns is undoubted. This latest beauty of poetry reached

its perfection of expression in the Latin hymns. It is rather curious

to trace its gradual development. It constitutes the only feature of

literature which apparently did not come to us from the East. The

earlier specimens of poetry of which we know anything among the

Oriental nations other than the Hebrews, are beautiful examples of the

possibilities of rhythm and the beginnings of meter. As poetry goes

westward meter becomes as important as rhythm in poetry and these two

qualities differentiated it from prose. Both of these literary modes,

however, are eastern in origin. Rhyme comes from the distant West and

seems to have originated in the alliteration invented by the Celtic

bards. The vowel assonance was after a time completed by the addition

of consonantal assonance and then the invention of rhyme was

completed. The first fully rhymed hymns seem to have been written by

the {200} Irish monks and carried over to the Continent by them on

their Christianizing expeditions, after the irruption of the

barbarians had obliterated the civilization of Europe. During the

Tenth and Eleventh centuries rhyme developed mainly in connection with

ecclesiastical poetry. During the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries it

reached an acme of evolution which has never been surpassed during all

the succeeding generations.

It must not be thought that, because so much attention is given to the

Dies Irae, this constitutes the only supremely great hymn of the

Thirteenth Century. There are at least five or six others that well

deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. One of them, the famous

Stabat Mater of Jacopone da Todi, has been considered by some critics

as quite as beautiful as the Dies Irae in poetic expression, though

below it as poetry because of the lesser sublimity of its subject.

Certainly no more marvelously poetic expression of all that is saddest

in human sorrow has ever been put into words, than that which is to be

found in these stanzas of the Franciscan Monk who had himself known

all the depths of human sorrow and trial. Most people know the opening

stanzas of it well enough to scarce need their presentation and yet it

is from the poem itself, and not from any critical appreciation of it,

that its greatness must be judged.

{opp200}

[Illustration]

VIRGIN AND CHILD (PISA, CAMPO SANTO, GIOV. PISANO)

Stabat mater dolorosa

Juxta crucem lacrymosa,

Dum pendebat filius,

Cuius animan gementem,

Contristantem at dolentem

Pertransivit gladius.

O quam tristis et afflicta

Fuit illa benedicta

Mater unigeniti.

Quae moerebat et dolebat

Et tremebat, dum videbat

Nati poenas inclyti.

Quis est homo, qui non fleret,

Matrem Christi si videret,

In tanto supplicio?

Quis non posset contristari,

Piam matrem contemplari

Dolentem cum filio!

{201}

As in the case of the Dies Irae there have been many translations of

the Stabat Mater, most of them done by poets whose hearts were in

their work and who were accomplishing their purpose as labors of love.

While we realize how many beautiful translations there are, it is

almost pitiful to think what poor English versions are sometimes used

in the devotional exercises of the present day. One of the most

beautiful translations is undoubtedly that by Denis Florence

MacCarthy, who has been hailed as probably the best translator into

English of foreign poetry that our generation has known, and whose

translations of Calderon present the greatest of Spanish poets, in a

dress as worthy of the original as it is possible for a poet to have

in a foreign tongue. MacCarthy has succeeded in following the

intricate rhyme plan of the Stabat with a perfection that would be

deemed almost impossible in our harsher English, which does not

readily yield itself to double rhymes and which permits frequency of

rhyme as a rule only at the sacrifice of vigor of expression. The

first three stanzas, however, of the Stabat Mater will serve to show

how well MacCarthy accomplished his difficult task:

By the cross, on which suspended.

With his bleeding hands extended,

Hung that Son she so adored,

Stood the mournful Mother weeping.

She whose heart, its silence keeping.

Grief had cleft as with a sword.

O, that Mother's sad affliction--

Mother of all benediction--

Of the sole-begotten One;

Oh, the grieving, sense-bereaving,

Of her heaving breast, perceiving

The dread sufferings of her Son.

What man is there so unfeeling.

Who, his heart to pity steeling.

Could behold that sight unmoved?

Could Christ's Mother see there weeping,

See the pious Mother keeping

Vigil by the Son she loved?

{202}

A very beautiful translation in the meter of the original was also

made by the distinguished Irish poet, Aubrey de Vere. The last two

stanzas of this translation have been considered as perhaps the most

charmingly effective equivalent in English for Jacopone's wonderfully

devotional termination that has ever been written.

May his wounds both wound and heal me;

His blood enkindle, cleanse, anneal me;

Be his cross my hope and stay:

Virgin, when the mountains quiver,

From that flame which burns for ever,

Shield me on the judgment-day.

Christ, when he that shaped me calls me,

When advancing death appalls me.

Through her prayer the storm make calm:

When to dust my dust returneth

Save a soul to thee that yearneth;

Grant it thou the crown and palm.

Even distinguished professors of philosophy and theology occasionally

indulged themselves in the privilege of writing these Latin hymns and,

what is more surprising, succeeded in making poetry of a very high

order. At least two of the most distinguished professors in these

branches at the University of Paris in the latter half of the

Thirteenth Century, must be acknowledged as having written hymns that

are confessedly immortal, not because of any canonical usage that

keeps them alive, but because they express in very different ways, in

wondrously beautiful language some of the sublimest religious thoughts

of their time. These two are St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan, and St.

Thomas of Aquin, the Dominican. St. Bonaventure's hymns on the Passion

and Cross of Christ represent what has been most beautifully sung on

these subjects in all the ages. St. Thomas' poetic work centers around

the Blessed Sacrament in whose honor he was so ardent and so devoted

{203} that the composition of the office for its feast was confided to

him by the Pope. The hymns he wrote, far from being the series of

prosy theological formulas that might have been expected perhaps under

such circumstances, are great contributions to a form of literature

which contains more gems of purest ray in its collection than almost

any other. St. Thomas' poetic jewels shine with no borrowed radiance,

and their effulgence is not cast into shadow even by the greatest of

their companion pieces among the Latin hymns of a wonderfully

productive century. Neale's tribute to one of them has already been

quoted in an earlier part of this chapter.

It has indeed been considered almost miraculous, that this profoundest

of thinkers should have been able to attain within the bounds of rhyme

and rhythm, the accurate expression of some of the most intricate

theological thoughts that have ever been expressed, and yet should

have accomplished his purpose with a clarity of language, a simplicity

and directness of words, a poetic sympathy of feeling, and an utter

devotion, that make his hymns great literature in the best sense of

the word. One of them at least, the Pange Lingua Gloriosi, has been in

constant use in the church ever since his time, and its two last

stanzas beginning with Tantum Ergo Sacramentum, are perhaps the most

familiar of all the Latin hymns. Few of those most familiar with it

realize its place in literature, the greatness of its author, or its

own marvelous poetic merits.

It must not be forgotten that at the very time when these hymns were

most popular the modern languages were just assuming shape. Even at

the end of the Thirteenth Century none of them had reached anything

like the form that it was to continue to hold, except perhaps the

Italian and to some extent the Spanish. When Dante wrote his Divine

Comedy at the beginning of the Fourteenth Century, he was tempted to

use the Latin language, the common language of all the scholars of his

day, and the language ordinarily used for any ambitious literary

project for nearly a century later. It will not be forgotten that when

Petrarch in the Fourteenth Century wrote his epic, Africa, on which he

expected his fame as a poet to rest, he preferred to use the Latin

language. Fortunately Dante was large enough of mind to realize, that

the vulgar {204} tongue of the Italians would prove the best

instrument for the expression of the thoughts he wished to

communicate, and so he cast the Italian language into the mold in

which it has practically ever since remained.

His very hesitation, however, shows how incomplete as yet were these

modern languages considered by the scholars who used them. It was at

this very formative period, however, that the people on whose use of

the nascent modern languages their future character depended, were

having dinned into their ears in the numerous church services, the

great Latin hymns with their wonderful finish of expression.

Undoubtedly one of the most effective factors of whatever of sweetness

there is in the modern tongues, must be attributed to this influence

exerted all unconsciously upon the minds of the people. The rhythm and

the expressiveness of these magnificent poems could scarcely fail to

stamp itself to some degree upon the language, crude though it might

be, of the people who had become so familiar with them. It is, then,

to no small extent because of the influence of these Latin hymns that

our modern languages possess a rhythmic melodiousness that in time

enabled them to become the instruments for poetic diction in such a

way as to satisfy all the requirements of the modern ear in rhyme, and

rhythm, and meter. A striking corresponding effect upon the exactness

of expression in the modern languages, it will be noticed, is pointed

out in the chapter on the Prose of the Century as representing,

according to Professor Saintsbury, the greatest benefit that was

derived from the exaggerated practise of dialectic disputation in the

curriculum of the medieval Universities.

Those who would think that the Thirteenth Century was happy in

creative genius but lacking in the critical faculty that would enable

it to select the best, not only of the hymns presented by its own

generations but also of those which came from the preceding centuries,

should make themselves acquainted with the history of these Latin

hymns. Just before the Thirteenth Century the monks of the famous

Abbey of St. Victor took up the writing of hymns with wonderful

success and two of them, Adam and Hugh, became not only the favorites

of their own but of succeeding generations. The Thirteenth {205}

Century received the work of these men and gave them a vogue which has

continued down to our own time. Some of the hymns that were thus

acclaimed and made popular are among the greatest contributions to

this form of literature, and while they have had periods of eclipse

owing to bad taste in the times that followed, the reputation secured

during the Thirteenth Century has always been sufficient to recall

them to memory and bring men again to a realization of their beauty

when a more esthetic generation came into existence.

One of the hymns of the immediately preceding time, which attained

great popularity during the Thirteenth Century--a popularity that

reflects credit on those among whom it is noted as well as upon the

great hymn itself--was Bernard of Cluny's or Bernard of Morlaix's

hymn, concerning the contempt of the world, many of the ideas of which

were to be used freely in the book bearing this title written by the

first Pope of the century, Innocent III, whose name is usually, though

gratuitously associated with quite other ideas than those of contempt

for worldly grandeur. The description of the New Jerusalem to come,

which is found at the beginning of this great poem, is the basis of

all the modern religious poems on this subject. Few hymns have been

more praised. Schaff, in his Christ in Song says: "This glowing

description is the sweetest of all the new Jerusalem Hymns of Heavenly

Homesickness which have taken their inspiration from the last two

chapters of Revelation." The extreme difficulty of the meter which its

author selected and which would seem almost to preclude the

possibility of expressing great connected thought, especially in so

long a poem, became under the master hand of this poetic genius, whose

command of the Latin language is unrivaled, the source of new beauties

for his poem. Besides maintaining the meter of the old Latin

hexameters he added double rhymes in each line and yet had every

alternate line also end in a rhyme. To appreciate the difficulty this

must be read.

{206}

Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus,

Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus

Imminet, imminet ut mala terminet, aequa coronet.

Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, aethera donet,

Auferat aspera duraque pondera mentis onustae,

Sobria muniat, improba puniat, utraque juste.

Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur;

Non breve vivere, non breve plangere retribuetur;

O retributio! stat brevis actio, vita perennis;

O retributio! coelica mansio stat lue plenis;

Quid datur et quibus? aether egentibus et cruce dignis,

Sidera vermibus, optima sontibus, astra malignis.

There are many versions, but few translators have dared to attempt a

close imitation of the original meter. Its beauty is so great,

however, that even the labor required for this has not deterred some

enthusiastic admirers. Our English tongue, however, does not lend

itself readily to the production of hexameters, though in these lines

the rhyme and rhythm has been caught to some extent:

"These are the latter times, these are not better times;

Let us stand waiting;

Lo! how with, awfulness, He, first in lawfulness,

Comes arbitrating."

Even from this it may be realized that Doctor Neale is justified in

his enthusiastic opinion that "it is the most lovely, in the same way

that the Dies Irae is the most sublime, and the Stabat Mater the most

pathetic, of medieval poems."

While it scarcely has a place here properly, a word must be said with

regard to the music of the Thirteenth Century. It might possibly be

thought that these wondrous rhymes had been spoiled in their

effectiveness by the crude music to which they were set. To harbor any

such notion, however, would only be another exhibition of that

intellectual snobbery which concludes that generations so distant

could not have anything worth the consideration of our more developed

time. The music of the Thirteenth Century is as great a triumph as any

other feature of its accomplishment. It would be clearly absurd to

suppose, that the people who created the Cathedrals and made every

element associated with the church ceremonial so beautiful as to

attract the attention of all generations since, could have failed to

develop a music suitable to these {207} magnificent fanes. As a matter

of fact no more suitable music for congregational singing than the

Gregorian Chant, which reached the acme of its development in the

Thirteenth Century, has been invented, and the fact that the Catholic

Church, after having tried modern music, is now going back to this

medieval musical mode for devotional expression, is only a further

noteworthy tribute to the enduring character of another phase of

Thirteenth Century accomplishment.

Rockstro, who wrote the article on Plain Chant for Grove's Dictionary

of Music and for the Encyclopedia Britannica, declared that no more

wonderful succession of single notes, had even been strung into

melodies so harmoniously adapted to the expression of the words with

which they were to be sung, than some of these Plain Chants of the

Middle Ages and especially of the Thirteenth Century. No more

sublimely beautiful musical expression of all the depths there are in

sadness has ever found its way into music, than what is so simply

expressed in the Lamentations as they are sung in the office called

Tenebrae during Holy Week. Even more beautiful in its joyousness is

the marvelous melody of the Exultet which is sung in the Office of

Holy Saturday. This latter is said to be the sublimest expression of

joyful sound that has ever come from the human heart and mind. In a

word, in music as in every other artistic department, the men of the

Thirteenth Century reached a standard that has never been excelled and

that remains to the present day as a source of pleasure and admiration

for intellectual men, and will continue to be so for numberless

generations yet unborn.

Nor must it be thought that the Thirteenth Century men and women were

satisfied with Church music alone. About the middle of the century

part singing came into use in the churches at the less formal

ceremonials, and soon spread to secular uses. As the Mystery Plays

gave rise to the modern drama, so church music gave birth to the

popular music of the time. In England, particularly, about the middle

of the century, various glee songs were sung, portions of which have

come down to us, and a great movement of folk music was begun. Before

the end of the century the interaction of church and secular music had

given rise to many of the modes of modern musical {208} development,

and the musical movement was as substantially begun as were any of the

other great artistic and intellectual movements which this century so

marvelously initiated. This subject, of course, is of the kind that

needs to be studied in special works if any satisfactory amount of

information is to be obtained, but even the passing hint of it which

we have been able to give will enable the reader to realize the

important place of the Thirteenth Century in the development of modern

music.

[Illustration]

ENTOMBMENT OF BLESSED VIRGIN (NOTRE DAME, PARIS)

{209}

XIII

THREE MOST READ BOOKS OF THE CENTURY.