Three books were more read than any others during the Thirteenth

Century, that is, of course, apart from Holy Scriptures, which

contrary to the usually accepted notion in this matter, were

frequently the subject of study and of almost daily contact in one way

or another by all classes of people. These three books were, Reynard

the Fox, that is the series of stories of the animals in which they

are used as a cloak for a satire upon man and his ways, called often

the Animal Epic; the Golden Legend, which impressed Longfellow so much

that he spent many years making what he hoped might prove for the

modern world a bit of the self-revelation that this wonderful old

medieval book has been for its own and subsequent generations; and,

finally, the Romance of the Rose, probably the most read book during

the Thirteenth and Fourteenth and most of the Fifteenth centuries in

all the countries of Europe. Its popularity can be well appreciated

from the fact that, though Chaucer was much read, there are more than

three times as many manuscript copies of The Romance of the Rose in

existence as of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and it was one of the

earliest books to see the light in print. [Footnote 21]

[Footnote 21: It was a favorite occupation some few years ago to pick

out what were considered the ten best books. Sir John Lubbock first

suggested, that it would be an interesting thing to pick out the ten

books which, if one were to be confined for life, should be thought

the most likely to be of enduring interest. If this favorite game

were to be played with the selection limited to the authors of a

single century, it is reasonably sure that most educated people

would pick out the thirteenth century group of ten for their

exclusive reading for the rest of life, rather than any other. An

experimental list of ten books selected from the thirteenth century

writers would include the Cid, the Legends of King Arthur, the

Nibelungen Lied, the Romance of the Rose, Reynard the Fox, the

Golden Legend, the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, Parsifal or Perceval

by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Durandus's Symbolism and Dante. As will

readily be appreciated by anyone who knows literature well, these

are eminently books of enduring interest. When it is considered that

in making this list no call is made upon Icelandic Literature nor

Provencal Literature, both of which are of supreme interest, and

both reached their maturity at this time, the abounding literary

wealth of the century will be understood.]

{210}

It has become the fashion in recent years, to take the pains from time

to time to find out which are the most read books. The criterion of

worth thus set up is not very valuable, for unfortunately for the

increase in readers, there has not come a corresponding demand for the

best books nor for solid literature. The fact that a book has been the

best seller, or the most read for a time, usually stamps it at once as

trivial or at most as being of quite momentary interest and not at all

likely to endure. It is all the more interesting to find then, that

these three most read books of the Thirteenth Century, have not only

more than merely academic interest at the present time, but that they

are literature in the best sense of the word. They have always been

not only a means of helping people to pass the time, the sad office to

which the generality of books has been reduced in our time, but a

source of inspiration for literary men in many generations since they

first became popular. The story of Reynard the Fox is one of the most

profoundly humorous books that was ever written. Its satire was aimed

at its own time yet it is never for a moment antiquated for the modern

reader. At a time when, owing to the imperfect development of personal

rights, it would have been extremely dangerous to satirize as the

author does very freely, the rulers, the judges, the nobility, the

ecclesiastical authorities and churchmen, and practically all classes

of society, the writer, whose name has, unfortunately for the

completeness of literary history, not come down to us, succeeded in

painting all the foibles of men and pointing out all the differences

there are between men's pretensions and their actual accomplishments.

All the methods by which the cunning scoundrel could escape justice

are exploited. The various modes of escaping punishment by direct and

indirect bribery, by pretended repentance and reformation, by cunning

appeal to the selfishness of judges, are revealed with the fidelity to

detail of a modern muckraker; yet, all of it with a humanly humorous

quality which, while it takes away nothing from the completeness of

the exposure, removes most of the bitterness that probably would have

made the satire fail of its purpose. While every class in the

community of the time comes in for satirical allusions, that give us a

better idea of how closely the men and the women {211} of the time

resembled those of our own, than is to be found in any other single

literary work that has been preserved for us from this century, or,

indeed, any other, the series of stories seemed to be scarcely more

than a collection of fables for children, and probably was read quite

unsuspectingly by those who are so unmercifully satirized in it,

though doubtless, as is usually noted in such cases, each one may have

applied the satire of the story as he saw it to his neighbor and not

to himself.

A recent editor has said very well of Reynard the Fox that it is one

of the most universal of books in its interest for all classes.

Critics have at all times been ready to praise and few if any have

found fault. It is one of the books that answers well to what Cardinal

Newman declared to be at least the accidental definition of a classic;

it pleases in childhood, in youth, in middle age and even in declining

years. It is because of the eternal verity of the humanity in the

book, that with so much truth Froude writing of Reynard can say: "It

is not addressed to a passing mode of folly or of profligacy, but it

touches the perennial nature of mankind, laying bare our own

sympathies, and tastes, and weaknesses, with as keen and true an edge

as when the living world of the old Suabian poet winced under its

earliest utterance."

The writer who traced the portraits must be counted one of the great

observers of all time. As is the case with so many creative artists of

the Thirteenth Century, though this is truer elsewhere than in

literature, the author is not known. Perhaps he thought it safer to

shroud his identity in friendly obscurity, rather than expose himself

to the risks the finding of supposed keys to his satire might

occasion. Too much credit must not be given to this explanation,

however, though some writers have made material out of it to exploit

Church intolerance, which the conditions do not justify. We are not

sure who wrote the Arthur Legends, we do not know the author of the

Cid, even all-pervasive German scholarship has not settled the problem

of the writer of the Nibelungen, and the authorship of the Dies Irae

is in doubt, though all of these would be sources of honor and praise

rather than danger. Authors had evidently not as yet become

sophisticated to the extent of {212} seeking immortality for their

works. They even seem to have been indifferent as to whether their

names were associated with them or not. Enough for them apparently to

have had the satisfaction of doing, all else seemed futile.

The original of Reynard the Fox was probably written in the

Netherlands, though it may be somewhat difficult for the modern mind

to associate so much of wit and humor with the Dutchmen of the Middle

Ages. It arose there about the time that the Cid came into vogue in

Spain, the Arthur Legends were being put into shape in England, and

the Nibelungen reaching its ultimate form in Germany. Reynard thus

fills up the geographical chart of contemporary literary effort for

the Thirteenth Century, since France and Italy come in for their share

in other forms of literature, and no country is missing from the story

of successful, enduring accomplishment in letters. It was written from

so close to the heart of Nature, that it makes a most interesting gift

book even for the Twentieth Century child, and yet will be read with

probably even more pleasure by the parents. With good reason another

recent editor has thus summed up the catholicity of its appeal to all

generations:

"This book belongs to the rare class which is equally delightful to

children and to their elders. In this regard it may be compared to

'Gulliver's Travels,' 'Don Quixote' and 'Pilgrim's Progress.' For wit

and shrewd satire and for pure drollery both in situations and

descriptions, it is unsurpassed. The animals are not men dressed up in

the skin of beasts, but are throughout true to their characters, and

are not only strongly realized but consistently drawn, albeit in so

simple and captivating a way that the subtle art of the narrator is

quite hidden, and one is aware only of reading an absorbingly

interesting and witty tale." To have a place beside Gulliver, the old

Spanish Knight and Christian, shows the estimation in which the book

is held by those who are best acquainted with it.

The work is probably best known through the version of it which has

come to us from the greatest of German poets, Goethe, whose Reineke

Fuchs has perhaps had more sympathetic readers and a wider audience

than any other of Goethe's {213} works. The very fact that so deeply

intellectual a literary man should have considered it worth his while

to devote his time to making a modern version of it, shows not only

the estimation in which he held it, but also affords excellent

testimony to its worth as literature, for Goethe, unlike most poets,

was a fine literary critic, and one who above all knew the reasons for

the esthetic faith that was in him. Animal stories in every age,

however, have been imitations of it much more than is usually

imagined. While the author probably obtained the hint for his work

from some of the old-time fables as they came to him by tradition,

though we have no reason to think that AEsop was familiar to him and

many for thinking the Greek fabulist was not, he added so much to this

simple literary mode, transformed it so thoroughly from child's

literature to world literature, that the main merit of modern animal

stories must be attributed to him. Uncle Remus and the many

compilations of this kind that have been popular in our own

generation, owe much more to the animal Epic than might be thought

possible by one not familiar with the original Thirteenth Century

work.

Every language has a translation of the Animal Epic and most of the

generations since have been interested and amused by the quaint

conceits, which enable the author to picture so undisguisedly, men and

women under animal garb. It discloses better than any other specimen

of the literature of the time that men and women do not change even in

the course of centuries, and that in the heart of the Middle Ages a

wise observer could see the foibles of humanity just as they exist at

the present time. Any one who thinks that evolution after seven

centuries should have changed men somewhat in their ethical aspects,

at least, made their aspirations higher and their tendencies less

commonplace, not to say less degenerative, should read one of the old

versions of Reynard the Fox and be convinced that men and women in the

Thirteenth Century were quite the same as we are familiar with them at

the present moment.

The second of the most read books of the century is the famous Legenda

Aurea or, as it has been called in English, the Golden Legend, written

by Jacobus de Voragine, the distinguished Dominican preacher and

writer (born during the first half of the Thirteenth Century, died

just at its close), who, {214} after rising to the higher grades in

his own order, became the Archbishop of Genoa. His work at once sprang

into popular favor and continued to be perhaps the most widely read

book, with the exception of the Holy Scriptures, during the Fourteenth

and Fifteenth centuries. It was one of the earliest books printed in

Italy, the first edition appearing about 1570, and it is evident that

it was considered that its widespread popularity would not only

reimburse the publisher, but would help the nascent art of printing by

bringing it to the attention of a great many people. Its subject is

very different from that of the modern most read books; librarians do

not often have to supply lives of Saints nowadays, though some

similarities of material with that of books now much in demand help to

account for its vogue.

Jacobus de Voragine's work consisted of the lives of the greater

Saints of the Church since the time of Christ, and detailed especially

the wonderful things that happened in their lives, some of which of

course were mythical and all of them containing marvelous stories.

This gave prominence to many legends that have continued to maintain

their hold upon the popular imagination ever since. With all this

adventitious interest, however, the book contained a solid fund of

information with regard to the lives of the Saints, and besides it

taught the precious lessons of unselfishness and the care for others

of the men who had come to be greeted by the title of Saint. The work

must have done not a little to stir up the faith, enliven the charity,

and build up the characters of the people of the time, and certainly

has fewer objections than most popular reading at any period of the

world's history. For young folks the wonderful legends afforded

excellent and absolutely innocuous exercise of the functions of the

imagination quite as well as our own modern wonder books or fairy

tales, while the stories themselves presented many descriptive

portions out of which subjects for decorative purposes could readily

be obtained. It must be set down as another typical distinction of the

Thirteenth Century and an addition to its greatness, that it should

have made the Golden Legend popular and thus preserved it for future

generations, who became {215} deeply interested in it, as in most of

the other precious heritages they received from this great original

century.

{opp214}

[Illustration]

MADONNA AND CHILD (GIOV. PISANO, PADUA)

[Illustration]

ST. CHRISTOPHER (ALTO RELIEVO, VENICE)

The third of the most read books of the century, The Romance of the

Rose, is not so well known except by scholars as is the Animal Epic or

perhaps even the Golden Legend. Anyone who wants to understand the

burden of the time, however, and who wishes to put himself in the mood

and the tense to comprehend not only the other literature of the era,

and in this must be included even Dante, but also the social,

educational, and even scientific movements of the period, must become

familiar with it. It has been well said that a knowledge and study of

the three most read books of the century, those which we have named,

will afford a far clearer insight into the daily life and the spirit

working within the people for whom they were written, than the annals

of the wars or political struggles that were waged during the same

period between kings and nobles. For this clearer insight a knowledge

of the Romance of the Rose is more important than of the others. It

provides a better introduction to the customs and habits, the manners

of thought and of action, the literary and educational interests of

the people of the Thirteenth Century, than any mere history, however

detailed, could. In this respect it resembles Homer who, as Froude

declares, has given us a better idea of Greek life than a whole

encyclopedia of classified information would have done. The intimate

life stories of no other periods in history are so well illustrated,

nor so readily to be comprehended, as those of Homer and the authors

of the medieval Romaunt.

The Romance of the Rose continued to be for more than two centuries

the most read book in Europe. Every one with any pretense to

scholarship or to literary taste in any European country considered it

necessary to be familiar with it, and without exaggeration what Lowell

once declared with regard to Don Quixote, that it would be considered

a mark of lack of culture to miss a reference to it in any country in

Europe, might well have been repeated during the Fourteenth and

Fifteenth centuries of the Romance of the Rose. It has in recent years

been put into very suitable English dress by Mr. F. S. Ellis and

published among the Temple Classics, thus placing it {216} within easy

reach of English readers. Mr. Ellis must certainly be considered a

suitable judge of the interest there is in the work. He spent several

years in translating its two and twenty thousand six hundred and eight

lines and yet considers that few books deserve as much attention as

this typical Thirteenth Century allegory. He says:

"The charge of dulness once made against this highly imaginative and

brilliant book, successive English writers, until quite recent times

have been content to accept the verdict, though Professor Morley and

others have of late ably repelled the charge. If further testimony

were necessary as to the falsity of the accusation, and the opinion

of one who has found a grateful pastime in translating it might be

considered of any weight, he would not hesitate to traverse the

attribution of dulness, and to assert that it is a poem of extreme

interest, written as to the first part with delicate fancy, sweet

appreciation of natural beauty, clear insight, and skilful

invention, while J. de Meun's continuation is distinguished by

vigor, brilliant invention, and close observation of human nature.

The Thirteenth Century lives before us."

The Rose is written on a lofty plane of literary value, and the fact

that it was so popular, speaks well for the taste of the times and for

the enthusiasm of the people for the more serious forms of literature.

Not that the Romance of the Rose is a very serious book itself, but if

we compare it with the popular publications which barely touch the

realities of life in the modern time, it will seem eminently serious.

In spite of the years that have elapsed since its original publication

it has not lost all its interest, even for a casual reader, and

especially for one whose principal study is mankind in its varying

environment down the ages, for it presents a very interesting picture

of men and their ways in this wonderful century. Here, as in the

stories of Reynard the Fox, one is brought face to face with the fact

that men and women have not changed and that the peccadillos of our

own generation have their history in the Middle Ages also. Take, for

instance, the question of the too great love of money which is now the

subject of so much writing and sermonizing. One might think that at

least this was {217} modern. Here, however, is what the author of the

Romance of the Rose has to say about it:

Three cruel vengeances pursue

These miserable wretches who

Hoard up their worthless wealth: great toil

Is theirs to win it; then their spoil

They fear to lose; and lastly, grieve

Most bitterly that they must leave

Their hoards behind them. Cursed they die

Who living, lived but wretchedly;

For no man, if he lack of love.

Hath peace below or joy above.

If those who heap up wealth would show

Fair love to others, they would go

Through life beloved, and thus would reign

Sweet happy days. If they were fain,

Who hold so much of good to shower around

Their bounty unto those they found

In need thereof, and nobly lent

Their money, free from measurement

Of usury (yet gave it not

To idle gangrel men), I wot

That then throughout the land were seen

No pauper carl or starveling quean.

But lust of wealth doth so abase

Man's heart, that even love's sweet grace

Bows down before it; men but love

Their neighbors that their love may prove

A profit, and both bought and sold

Are friendships at the price of gold.

Nay, shameless women set to hire

Their bodies, heedless of hell-fire;

It is after reading a passage like this in a book written in the

Thirteenth Century that one feels the full truth of that expression of

the greatest of American critics, James Russell Lowell, which so often

comes back to mind with regard to the works of this century, that to

read a classic is like reading a commentary on the morning paper. When

this principle is {218} applied the other way, I suppose it may be

said, that when a book written in the long ago sounds as if it were

the utterance of some one aroused by the evils round him in our modern

life, then it springs from so close to the heart of nature that it is

destined to live and have an influence far beyond its own time. The

Romance of the Rose, written seven centuries ago, now promises to have

renewed youth in the awakening of interest in our Gothic ancestors and

their accomplishments, before the over-praised renaissance came to

trouble the stream of thought and writing.

Other passages serve to show how completely the old-time poet realized

all the abuses of the desire for wealth, and how much it makes men

waste their lives over unessentials, instead of trying to make

existence worth while for themselves and others. Here is an

arraignment of the strenuous life of business every line of which is

as true for us as it was for the poet's generation:

'Tis truth (though some 'twill little please)

To hear the trader knows no ease;

For ever in his soul a prey

To anxious care of how he may

Amass more wealth: this mad desire

Doth all his thought and actions fire.

Devising means whereby to stuff

His barns and coffers, for 'enough'

He ne'er can have, but hungreth yet

His neighbors' goods and gold to get.

It is as though for thirst he fain

Would quaff the volume of the Seine

At one full draught, and yet should fail

To find its waters of avail

To quench his longing. What distress,

What anguish, wrath, and bitterness

Devour the wretch! fell rage and spite

Possess his spirit day and night.

And tear his heart; the fear of want

Pursues him like a spectre gaunt.

The more he hath, a wider mouth

He opes, no draught can quench his drouth.

{219}

The old poet pictures the happiness of the poor man by contrast, and

can in conclusion depict even more pitilessly the real poverty of

spirit of the man who "having, struggleth still to get" and never

stops to enjoy life itself by helping his fellows:

Light-heart and gay

Goes many a beggar by the way,

But little heeding though his back

Be bent beneath a charcoal sack.

They labor patiently and sing.

And dance, and laugh at whatso thing

Befalls, for havings care they nought.

But feed on scraps and chitlings bought

Beside St. Marcel's, and dispend

Their gains for wassail, then, straight wend

Once more to work, not grumblingly.

But light of heart as bird on tree

Winning their bread without desire

To fleece their neighbors. Nought they tire

Of this their round, but week by week

In mirth and work contentment seek;

Returning when their work is done

Once more to swill the jovial tun.

And he who what he holds esteems

Enough, is rich beyond the dreams

Of many a dreary usurer,

And lives his life-days happier far;

For nought it signifies what gains

The wretched usurer makes, the pains

Of poverty afflict him yet

Who having, struggleth still to get.

The pictures are as true to life at the beginning of the Twentieth

Century as they were in the latter half of the Thirteenth. There are

little touches of realism in both the pictures, which show at once how

acute an observer, how full of humor his appreciation, and yet how

sympathetic a writer the author of the Romance was, and at the same

time reveal something of the sociological value of his work. It

discloses what is so easily concealed under the mask of formal

historical writing and {220} tells us of the people rather than of the

few great ones among them, or those whom time and chance had made

leaders of men. It seems long to read but as a recent translator has

said, it represents only the file of a newspaper for eighteen months,

and while it talks of quite as trivial things as the modern newspaper,

the information is of a kind that is likely to do more good, and prove

of more satisfaction, than the passing crimes and scandals that now

occupy over-anxious readers.

[Illustration]

CENTRAL TOWER (LINCOLN)

{221}

XIV

SOME THIRTEENTH CENTURY PROSE.

It would be unpardonable to allow the notion to be entertained that it

was only in poetry that the writers of the Thirteenth Century

succeeded in creating works of enduring influence. Some of the prose

writings of the time are deeply interesting for many reasons. Modern

prose was in its formative period, and the evolution of style, as of

other things in the making, is proverbially worthy of more serious

study than even the developed result. The prose writings of the

Thirteenth Century were mainly done in Latin, but that was not for

lack of command over the vernacular tongues, as we shall see, but

because this was practically a universal language. This century had

among other advantages that subsequent ages have striven for

unsuccessfully, our own most of all, a common medium of expression for

all scholars at least. There are, however, the beginnings of Prose in

all the modern languages and it is easy to understand that the Latin

of the time had a great influence on the vernacular and that the modes

of expression which had become familiar in the learned tongue, were

naturally transferred to the vulgar speech, as it was called, whenever

accuracy of thought and nicety of expression invited such

transmutation.

With regard to the Latin of the period it is the custom of many

presumably well-educated men to sniff a little and say deprecatingly,

that after all much cannot be expected from the writers of the time,

since they were dependent on medieval or scholastic Latin for the

expression of their ideas. This criticism is supposed to do away with

any idea of the possibility of there having been a praiseworthy prose

style, at this time in the Middle Ages. In the chapter on the Latin

Hymns, we call attention to the fact that this same mode of criticism

was supposed to preclude all possibility of rhymed Latin, as worthy to

occupy a prominent place in literature. The widespread {222}

encouragement of this false impression has, as a matter of fact, led

to a neglect of these wonderful poems, though they may in the opinion

of competent critics, even be considered as representing the true

genius of the Latin language and its powers of poetic expression

better than the Greek poetic modes, which were adopted by the Romans,

but which, with the possible exception of their two greatest poets,

never seem to have acquired that spontaneity that would characterize a

native outburst of lingual vitality.

As for the philosophic writers of the century that great period holds

in this, as in other departments, the position of the palmiest time of

the Middle Ages. To it belongs Alexander Hales, the Doctor

Irrefragabilis who disputes with Aquinas the prize for the best

example of the Summa Theologiae; Bonaventure the Mystic, and writer of

beautiful hymns; Roger Bacon, the natural philosopher; Vincent of

Beauvais, the encyclopedist. While of the four, greatest of all,

Albertus Magnus, the "Dumb Ox of Cologne," was born seven years before

its opening, his life lasted over four-fifths of it; that of Aquinas

covered its second and third quarters; Occam himself, though his main

exertions lie beyond this century, was probably born before Aquinas

died; while John Duns Scotus hardly outlived the century's close by a

decade. Raymond Lully, one of the most characteristic figures of

Scholasticism and of the medieval period (with his "great art" of

automatic philosophy), who died in 1315, was born as early as 1235.

Peter the Spaniard, Pope and author of the Summulae Logicales, the

grammar of formal logic for ages as well of several medieval treatises

that have attracted renewed attention in our day, died in 1277.

With regard to what was accomplished in philosophic and theologic

prose, examples will be found in the chapter on St. Thomas Aquinas,

which prove beyond all doubt the utter simplicity, the directness, and

the power of the prose of the Thirteenth Century. In the medical works

of the time there was less directness, but always a simplicity that

made them commendable. In general, university writers were influenced

by the scholastic methods and we find it reflected constantly in their

works. In the minds of many people this would be {223} enough at once

to condemn it. It will usually be found, however, as we have noted

before, that those who are readiest to condemn scholastic writing know

nothing about it, or so little that their opinion is not worth

considering. Usually they have whatever knowledge they think they

possess, at second hand. Sometimes all that they have read of

scholastic philosophy are some particularly obscure passages on

abstruse subjects, selected by some prejudiced historian, in order to

show how impossible was the philosophic writing of these centuries of

the later Middle Ages.

There are other opinions, however, that are of quite different

significance and value. We shall quote but one of them, written by

Professor Saintsbury of the University of Edinburgh, who in his volume

on the Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (the Twelfth

and Thirteenth centuries) of his Periods of European Literature, has

shown how sympathetically the prose writing of the Thirteenth Century

may appeal even to a scholarly modern, whose main interests have been

all his life in literature. Far from thinking that prose was spoiled

by scholasticism. Prof. Saintsbury considers that scholasticism was

the fortunate training school in which all the possibilities of modern

prose were brought out and naturally introduced into the budding

languages of the time. He says:

"However this may be" (whether the science of the Nineteenth Century

after an equal interval will be of any more positive value, whether

it will not have even less comparative interest than that which

appertains to the scholasticism of the Thirteenth Century) "the

claim modest, and even meager as it may seem to some, which has been

here once more put forward for this scholasticism--the claim of a

far-reaching educative influence in mere language, in mere system of

arrangement and expression, will remain valid. If at the outset of

the career of modern languages, men had thought with the looseness

of modern thought, had indulged in the haphazard slovenliness of

modern logic, had popularized theology and vulgarized rhetoric, as

we have seen both popularized and vulgarized since, we should indeed

have been in evil case. It used to be thought clever to moralize and

to felicitate mankind over the rejection of the stays, the fetters,

the prison in which its {224} thought was medievally kept. The

justice or the injustice, the taste or the vulgarity of these

moralizings, of these felicitations, may not concern us here. But in

expression, as distinguished from thought, the value of the

discipline to which these youthful languages was subjected is not

likely now to be denied by any scholar who has paid attention to the

subject. It would have been perhaps a pity if thought had not gone

through other phases; it would certainly have been a pity if the

tongues had been subjected to the fullest influence of Latin

constraint. But that the more lawless of them benefited by that

constraint there can be no doubt whatever. The influence of form

which the best Latin hymns of the Middle Ages exercised in poetry,

the influence in vocabulary and in logical arrangement which

scholasticism exercised in prose are beyond dispute: and even those

who will not pardon literature, whatever its historic and educative

importance be, for being something less than masterly in itself,

will find it difficult to maintain the exclusion of the Cur Deus

Homo, and impossible to refuse admission to the Dies Irae."

Besides this philosophic and scientific prose, there were two forms of

writing of which this century presents a copious number of examples.

These are the chronicles and biographies of the time and the stories

of travelers and explorers. These latter we have treated in a separate

chapter. The chronicles of the time deserve to be studied with patient

attention by anyone who wishes to know the prose writers of the

century and the character of the men of that time and their outlook on

life. It is usually considered that chroniclers are rather tiresome

old fogies who talk much and say very little, who accept all sorts of

legends on insufficient authority and who like to fill up their pages

with wonderful things regardless of their truth. In this regard it

must not be forgotten that in times almost within the memory of men

still alive, Herodotus now looked upon deservedly as the Father of

History and one of the great historical writers of all time, was

considered to have a place among these chroniclers, and his works were

ranked scarcely higher, except for the purity of their Greek style.

The first of the great chroniclers in a modern tongue was the famous

Geoffrey de Villehardouin, who was not only a writer {225} of, but an

actor in the scenes which he describes. He was enrolled among the

elite of French Chivalry, in that Crusade at the beginning of the

Thirteenth Century, which resulted in the foundation of the

Greco-Latin Empire. His book entitled "The Conquest of

Constantinople," includes the story of the expedition during the years

from 1198 to 1207. Modern war correspondents have seldom succeeded in

giving a more vivid picture of the events of which they were witnesses

than this first French chronicler of the Thirteenth Century. It is

evident that the work was composed with the idea that it should be

recited, as had been the old poetic Chansons de Geste, in the castles

of the nobles and before assemblages of the people, perhaps on fair

days and other times when they were gathered together. The consequence

is that it is written in a lively straightforward style with direct

appeals to its auditors.

It contains not a few passages of highly poetic description which show

that the chronicler was himself a literary man of no mean order and

probably well versed in the effusions of the old poets of this

country. His description of the fleet of the Crusaders as it was about

to set sail for the East and then his description of its arrival

before the imposing walls of the Imperial City, are the best examples

of this, and have not been surpassed even by modern writers on similar

topics.

Though the French writer was beyond all doubt not familiar with the

Grecian writers and knew nothing of Xenophon, there is a constant

reminder of the Greek historian in his work. Xenophon's simple

directness, his thorough-going sincerity, the impression he produces

of absolute good faith and confidence in the completeness of the

picture, so that one feels that one has been present almost at many of

the scenes described, are all to be encountered in his medieval

successor. Villehardouin went far ahead of his predecessors, the

chroniclers of foregoing centuries, in his careful devotion to truth.

A French writer has declared that to Villehardouin must be ascribed

the foundation of historical probity. None of his facts, stated as

such, has ever been impugned, and though his long speeches must

necessarily have been his own composition, there seems no doubt that

they contain the ideas which had been expressed on various occasions,

and besides were composed with due reference to {226} the character of

the speaker and convey something of his special style of expression.

Prof. Saintsbury in his article in the Encyclopedia Britannica on

Villehardouin, sums up very strikingly the place that this first great

vernacular historian's book must occupy.

He says: "It is not impertinent, and at the same time an excuse for

what has been already said, to repeat that Villehardouin's book, brief

as it is, is in reality one of the capital books of literature, not

merely for its merit, but because it is the most authentic and the

most striking embodiment in the contemporary literature of the

sentiments which determined the action of a great and important period

of history. There are but very few books which hold this position, and

Villehardouin's is one of them. If every other contemporary record of

the crusades perished, we should still be able by aid of this to

understand and realize what the mental attitude of crusaders, of

Teutonic Knights, and the rest was, and without this we should lack

the earliest, the most undoubtedly genuine, and the most

characteristic of all such records. The very inconsistency with which

Villehardouin is chargeable, the absence of compunction with which he

relates the changing of a sacred religious pilgrimage into something

by no means unlike a mere filibustering raid on a great scale, add a

charm to the book. For, religious as it is, it is entirely free from

the very slightest touch of hypocrisy or, indeed, of

self-consciousness of any kind. The famous description of the

Crusades, _gesta Dei per Francos_, was evidently to Villehardouin a

plain matter-of-fact description and it no more occurred to him to

doubt the divine favor being extended to the expeditions against

Alexius or Theodore than to doubt that it was shown to expeditions

against Saracens and Turks."

{opp226}

[Illustration]

PONTE ALLE GRAZIE (FLORENCE, LAPO)

[Illustration]

PORTA ROMANA GATE, (FLORENCE, N. PISANO)

It was especially in the exploitation of biographical material that

the Thirteenth Century chroniclers were at their best. Any one who

recalls Carlyle's unstinted admiration of Jocelyn of Brakelonds' life

of Abbot Sampson in his essays Past and Present, will be sure that at

least one writer in England had succeeded in pleasing so difficult a

critic in this rather thorny mode of literary expression. It is easy

to say too much or too little about the virtues and the vices of a man

whose biography one has chosen to write. Jocelyn's simple,

straightforward story {227} would seem to fulfill the best canons of

modern criticism in this respect. Probably no more vivid picture of a

man and his ways was ever given until Boswell's Johnson. Nor was the

English chronicler alone in this respect. The Sieur de Joinville's

biographical studies of the life of Louis IX. furnish another example

of this literary mode at its best, and modern writers of biography

could not do better than go back to read these intimate pictures of

the life of a great king, which are not flattered nor overdrawn but

give us the man as he actually was.

The English biographic chronicler of the olden time could picture

exciting scenes without any waste of words. A specimen of his work

will serve to show the merit of his style. After reading it one is not

likely to be surprised that Carlyle should have so taken the

Chronicler to heart nor been so enthusiastic in his praise. It is the

very type of that impressionism in style that has once more in the

course of time become the fad of our own day.

"The abbot was informed that the church of Woolpit was vacant,

Walter of Coutances being chosen to the bishopric of Lincoln. He

presently convened the prior and great part of the convent, and

taking up his story thus began: 'You well know what trouble I had in

respect of the church of Woolpit; and in order that it should be

obtained for your exclusive use I journeyed to Rome at your

instance, in the time of the schism between Pope Alexander and

Octavian. I passed through Italy at that time when all clerks

bearing letters of our lord the Pope Alexander were taken. Some were

imprisoned, some hanged, and some, with nose and lips cut off, sent

forward to the pope, to his shame and confusion. I, however,

pretended to be Scotch; and putting on the garb of a Scotchman, and

the gesture of one, I often brandished my staff, in the way they use

that weapon called, a gaveloc, at those who mocked me, using

threatening language, after the manner of the Scotch. To those that

met and questioned me as to who I was, I answered nothing, but,

"Ride ride Rome, turne Cantwereberei." This did I to conceal myself

and my errand, and that I should get to Rome safer in the guise of a

Scotchman.

"'Having obtained letters from the pope, even as I wished, on my

return I passed by a certain castle, as my way led me {228} from the

city; and behold the officers thereof came about me, laying hold

upon me, and saying, "This vagabond who makes himself out to be a

Scotchman is either a spy or bears letters from the false pope

Alexander." And while they examined my ragged clothes, and my boots,

and my breeches, and even the old shoes which I carried over my

shoulders, after the fashion of the Scotch, I thrust my hand into

the little wallet which I carried, wherein was contained the letter

of our lord the pope, placed under a little cup I had for drinking.

The Lord God and St. Edmund so permitting, I drew out both the

letter and the cup together, so that, extending my arm aloft, I held

the letter underneath the cup. They could see the cup plain enough,

but they did not see the letter; and so I got clear out of their

hands, in the name of the Lord. Whatever money I had about me they

took away; therefore I had to beg from door to door, without any

payment, until I arrived in England.'"

Another excellent example of the biographic prose of the century,

though this is the vernacular, is Joinville's life of St. Louis,

without doubt one of the precious biographical treasures of all times.

It contains a vivid portrait of Louis IX., made by a man who knew him

well personally, took part with him in some of the important actions

of the book, and in general was an active personage in the affairs of

the time. Those who think that rapid picturesque description such as

vividly recalls deeds of battle was reserved for the modern war

correspondent, should read certain portions of Joinville's book. As an

example we have ventured to quote the page on which the seneschal

historian himself recounts the role which he played in the famous

battle of Mansourah, at which, with the Count de Soissons and Pierre

de Neuville, he defended a small bridge against the enemy under a hail

of arrows.

He says: "Before us there were two sergeants of the king, one of whom

was named William de Boon and the other John of Gamaches. Against

these the Turks who had placed themselves between the river and the

little tributary, led a whole mob of villains on foot, who hurled at

them clods of turf or whatever came to hand. Never could they make

them recoil upon us, however. As a last resort the Turks sent forward

a foot soldier {229} who three times launched Greek fire at them. Once

William de Boon received the pot of green fire upon his buckler. If

the fire had touched anything on him he would have been entirely

burned up. We at the rear were all covered by arrows which had missed

the Sergeants. It happened that I found a waistcoat which had been

stuffed by one of the Saracens. I turned the open side of it towards

me and made a shield out of the vest which rendered me great service,

for I was wounded by their arrows in only five places though my horse

was wounded in fifteen. One of my own men brought me a banner with my

arms and a lance. Every time then that we saw that they were pressing

the Royal Sergeants we charged upon them and they fled. The good Count

Soissons, from the point at which we were, joked with me and said

'Senechal, let us hoot out this rabble, for by the headdress of God

(this was his favorite oath) we shall talk over this day you and I

many a time in our ladies' halls.'"

We have said that the writing of the Thirteenth Century must have been

done to a great extent for the sake of the women of the time, and that

its very existence was a proof that the women possessed a degree of

culture, that might not be realized from the few details that have

been preserved to us of their education and habits of life. In this

last passage of Joinville we have the proof of this, since evidently

the telling of the stories of these days of battle was done mainly in

order that the women folks might have their share in the excitement of

the campaign, and might be enabled vividly to appreciate what the

dangers had been and how gloriously their lords had triumphed. At

every period of the world's history it was true that literature was

mainly made for women and that some of the best portions of it always

concerned them very closely.

We have purposely left till last, the greatest of the chroniclers of

the Thirteenth Century, Matthew Paris, the Author of the Historia

Major, who owes his surname doubtless to the fact that he was educated

at the University of Paris. Instead of trying to tell anything about

him from our own slight personal knowledge, we prefer to quote the

passage from Green's History of the English People, in which one of

the greatest of our modern English historians pays such a magnificent

tribute to his colleague of the earlier times:

{230}

"The story of this period of misrule has been preserved for us by an

annalist whose pages glow with the new outburst of patriotic feeling

which this common expression of the people and the clergy had

produced. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he is in reality the

last of our monastic historians. The school of St. Albans survived

indeed till a far later time, but the writers dwindle into mere

annalists whose view is bounded by the Abbey precincts, and whose

work is as colorless as it is jejune. In Matthew the breadth and

precision of the narrative, the copiousness of his information on

topics whether national or European, the general fairness and

justice of his comments, are only surpassed by the patriotic fire

and enthusiasm of the whole. He had succeeded Roger of Wendover as

Chronicler of St. Albans; and the Greater Chronicle, with the

abridgement of it which has long passed under the name of Matthew of

Westminster, a "History of the English," and the "Lives of the

Earlier Abbots," were only a few among the voluminous works which

attest his prodigious industry. He was an eminent artist as well as

a historian, and many of the manuscripts which are preserved are

illustrated by his own hand. A large circle of

correspondents--bishops like Grosseteste, ministers like Hubert de

Burgh, officials like Alexander de Swinford--furnished him with

minute accounts of political and ecclesiastical proceedings.

Pilgrims from the East and Papal agents brought news of foreign

events to his scriptorium at St. Albans. He had access to and quotes

largely from state documents, charters, and exchequer rolls. The

frequency of the royal visits to the abbey brought him a store of

political intelligence and Henry himself contributed to the great

chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a faithfulness the

memory of his weakness and misgovernment. On one solemn feast-day

the King recognized Matthew, and bidding him sit on the middle step

between the floor and the throne, begged him to write the story of

the day's proceedings. While on a visit to St. Albans he invited him

to his table and chamber, and enumerated by name two hundred and

fifty of the English barons for his information. But all this royal

patronage has left little mark on his work. "_The case,_" as he

says, "_of historical writers is hard, for if they tell the truth

they provoke men, and if they write what is false they offend God._"

{231} With all the fullness of the school of court historians, such

as Benedict or Hoveden, Matthew Paris combines an independence and

patriotism which is strange to their pages. He denounces with the

same unsparing energy the oppression of the Papacy and the King. His

point of view is neither that of a courtier nor of a Churchman, but

of an Englishman, and the new national tone of his chronicle is but

an echo of the national sentiment which at last bound nobles and

yeomen and Churchmen together into an English people."

We of the Twentieth Century are a people of information and

encyclopedias rather than of literature, so that we shall surely

appreciate one important specimen of the prose writing of the

Thirteenth Century since it comprises the first modern encyclopedia.

Its author was the famous Vincent of Beauvais. Vincent consulted all

the authors, sacred and profane, that he could possibly lay hands on,

and the number of them was indeed prodigious. It has often been said

by men supposed to be authorities in history, that the historians of

the Middle Ages had at their disposition only a small number of books,

and that above all they were not familiar with the older historians.

While this was true as regards the Greek, it was not for the Latin

historical writers. Vincent of Beauvais has quotations from Caesar's

De Bello Gallico, from Sallust's Catiline and Jugurtha, from Quintus

Curtius, from Suetonius and from Valerius Maximus and finally from

Justin's Abridgement of Trogus Pompeius.

Vincent had the advantage of having at his disposition the numerous

libraries of the monasteries throughout France, the extent of which,

usually unrealized in modern times, will be appreciated from our

special chapter on the subject. Besides he consulted the documents in

the chapter houses of the Cathedrals especially those of Paris, of

Rouen, of Laon, of Beauvais and of Bayeux, which were particularly

rich in collections of documents. It might be thought that these

libraries and archives would be closely guarded. Far from being closed

to writers from the outer world they were accessible to all to such an

extent, indeed, that a number of them are mentioned by Vincent as

public institutions.

{232}

His method of collecting his information is interesting, because it

shows the system employed by him is practically that which has

obtained down to our own day. He made use for his immense

investigation of a whole army of young assistants, most of whom were

furnished him by his own order, the Dominicans. He makes special

mention in a number of places of quotations due to their

collaboration. The costliness of maintaining such a system would have

made the completion of the work absolutely impossible were it not for

the liberality of King Louis IX., who generously offered to defray the

expenses of the composition. Vincent has acknowledged this by

declaring in his prefatorial letter to the King that, "you have always

liberally given assistance even to the work of gathering the

materials."

{opp232}

[Illustration]

ST. CATHERINE'S (LUeBECK)

[Illustration]

CHURCH AND CLOISTERS, SAN ANTONIO (PADUA)

Vincent's method of writing is quite as interesting as his method of

compilation of facts. The great Dominican was not satisfied with being

merely a source of information. The philosophy of history has received

its greatest Christian contribution from St. Augustine's City of God.

In this an attempt was made to trace the meaning and causal sequence

of events as well as their mere external connection and place in time.

In a lesser medieval way Vincent tried deliberately to imitate this

and besides writing history attempted to trace the philosophy of it.

For him, as for the great French philosophic historian Bossuet in his

Universal History five centuries later, everything runs its provided

race from the creation to the redemption and then on toward the

consummation of the world. He describes at first the commencements of

the Church from the time of Abel, through its progress under the

Patriarchs, the Prophets, Judges, Kings, and leaders of the people,

down to the Birth of Christ. He traces the history of the Apostles and

of the first Disciples, though he makes it a point to find place for

the famous deeds of the great men of Pagan antiquity. He notes the

commencement of Empires and Kingdoms, their glory, their decadence,

their ruin, and the Sovereigns who made them illustrious in peace and

war. There was much that was defective in the details of history as

they were traced by Vincent, much that was lacking in completeness,

but the intention was evidently the best, and patience and labor were

devoted to the {233} sources of history at his command. Perhaps never

more than at the present moment have we been in a position to realize

that history at its best can be so full of defects even after further

centuries of consultation of documents and printed materials, that we

are not likely to be in the mood to blame this first modern historian

very much. As for the other portions of his encyclopedia, biographic,

literary and scientific, they were not only freely consulted by his

contemporaries and successors, but we find traces of their influence

in the writings and also in the decorative work of the next two

centuries. We have already spoken of the use of his book in the

provision of subjects for the ornamentation of Cathedrals and the same

thing might be said of edifices of other kinds.

Nor must it be thought that Vincent has only a historic or

ecclesiastical interest. Dr. Julius Pagel, in his Chapter on Medicine

in the Middle Ages in Puschmann's Hand-Book of the History of

Medicine, [Footnote 22] says, "that there were three writers whose

works were even more popular than those of Albertus Magnus. These

three were Bartholomew, the Englishman; Thomas, of Cantimprato, and

Vincent, of Beauvais, the last of whom must be considered as one of

the most important contributors to the generalization of scientific

knowledge, not alone in the Thirteenth but in the immediately

succeeding centuries. His most important work was really an

encyclopedia of the knowledge of his time. It was called the Greater

Triple Mirror and there is no doubt that it reflected the knowledge of

his period. He had the true scientific spirit and constantly cites the

authorities from whom his information was derived. He cites hundreds

of authors and there is scarcely a subject that he does not touch on.

One book of his work is concerned with human anatomy, and the

concluding portion of it is an abbreviation of history carried down to

the year 1250."

[Footnote 22: Puschmann. Hand-Buch der Geschichte der Medizin, Jena,

Fischer, 1902.]

It might be considered that such a compend of information would be

very dry-as-dust reading and that it would be fragmentary in character

and little likely to be attractive except to a serious student. Dr.

Pagel's opinion does not agree with this _a priori_ impression. He

says with regard to it: {234} "The language is clear, readily

intelligible, and the information is conveyed usually in an excellent,

simple style. Through the introduction of interesting similes the

contents do not lack a certain taking quality, so that the reading of

the work easily becomes absorbing." This is, I suppose, almost the

last thing that might be expected of a scientific teacher in the

Thirteenth Century, because, after all, Vincent of Beauvais must be

considered as one of the schoolmen, and they are supposed to be

eminently arid, but evidently, if we are to trust this testimony of a

modern German physician, only by those who have not taken the trouble

to read them.

One of the most important works of Thirteenth Century prose is the

well-known Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (Significance of the Divine

Offices) written by William Durandus, the Bishop of Mende, in France,

whose tomb and its inscription in the handsome old Gothic Cathedral of

Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, in Rome, shares with the body of St.

Catherine of Sienna the honor of attracting so many visitors. The book

has been translated into English under the title. The Symbolism of

Churches and Church Ornaments, and has been very widely read. It was

very popular in the Thirteenth Century, and the best possible idea of

its subsequent reputation can be gathered from the fact, that the

Rationale was the first work from the pen of an uninspired writer to

be accorded the privilege of being printed. The Editio Princeps, a

real first edition of supreme value, appeared from the press of John

Fust in 1459. The only other books that had been printed at that time

were the Psalters of 1457 and 1459. This edition is, of course, of the

most extreme rarity. According to the English translators of Durandus

the beauty of the typography has seldom been exceeded.

The style of Durandus has been praised very much by the critics of

succeeding centuries for its straightforwardness, simplicity and

brevity. Most of these qualities it evidently owes to the hours spent

by its author in the reading of Holy Scriptures. Durandus fashioned

his style so much on the sacred writings that most of his book

possesses something of the impressive character of the Bible itself.

The impression derived from it is that of reading a book on a

religious subject written {235} in an eminently suitable tone and

spirit. Most of this impression must be attributed without doubt to

the fact, that Durandus has not only formed his style on the

Scriptures, but has actually incorporated Scriptural expressions in

his writings to such an extent as to make them mostly a scriptural

composition. This, far from being a fault, appears quite appropriate

in his book because of its subject and the method of treatment. A

quotation from the proeme (as it is in the quaint spelling of the

English translation) will give the best idea of this.

"All things, as pertain to offices and matters ecclesiastical, be

full of divine significations and mysterious, and overflow with

celestial sweetness; if so be that a man be diligent in his study of

them, and know how to draw HONEY FROM THE ROCK, AND OIL FROM THE

HARDEST STONE. But who KNOWETH THE ORDINANCES OF HEAVEN, OR CAN FIX

THE REASONS THEREOF UPON THE EARTH? for he that prieth into their

majesty, is overwhelmed by the glory of them. Of a truth THE WELL IS

DEEP, AND I HAVE NOTHING TO DRAW WITH: unless he giveth it unto me

WHO GIVETH TO ALL MEN LIBERALLY, AND UPBRAIDETH NOT: so that WHILE I

JOURNEY THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS I may DRAW WATER WITH JOY OUT OF THE

WELLS OF SALVATION. Wherefore albeit of the things handed down from

our forefathers, capable we are not to explain all, yet if among

them there be any thing which is done without reason it should be

forthwith put away. Wherefore, I, WILLIAM, by the alone tender mercy

of God, Bishop of the Holy Church which is in Mende, will knock

diligently at the door, if so be that THE KEY OF DAVID will open

unto me: that the King may BRING ME INTO HIS TREASURE? and shew unto

me the heavenly pattern which was shewed unto Moses in the mount: so

that I may learn those things which pertain to Rites Ecclesiastical

whereof they teach and what they signify: and that I may be able

plainly to reveal and make manifest the reasons of them, by HIS

help, WHO HATH ORDAINED STRENGTH OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES AND

SUCKLINGS: WHOSE SPIRITS BLOWETH WHERE IT {236} LISTETH: DIVIDING TO

EACH SEVERALLY AS IT WILL to the praise and glory of the Trinity."

This passage alone of Durandus would serve as an excellent refutation

of the old-time Protestant tradition, fortunately now dying out though

not as yet entirely eradicated, which stated so emphatically that the

Bible was not allowed to be read before Luther's time.

Those who wish to obtain a good idea of Durandus' style and the way he

presents his material, can obtain it very well from his chapter on

Bells, the first two paragraphs of which we venture to quote. They

will be found quite as full of interesting information in their way as

any modern writer might have brought together, and have the dignity

and simplicity of the best modern prose.

"Bells are brazen vessels, and were first invented in Nola, a city

of Campania. Wherefore the larger bells are called Campanae, from

Campania the district, and the smaller Nolae, from Nola the town.

"You must know that bells, by the sound of which the people

assembleth together to the church to hear, and the Clergy to preach,

IN THE MORNING THE MERCY OF GOD AND HIS POWER BY NIGHT do signify

the silver trumpets, by which under the Old Law the people was

called together unto sacrifice. (Of these trumpets we shall speak in

our Sixth Book.) For just as the watchmen in a camp rouse one

another by trumpets, so do the Ministers of the Church excite each

other by the sound of bells to watch the livelong night against the

plots of the Devil. Wherefore our brazen bells are more sonorous

than the trumpets of the Old Law, because then GOD was known in

Judea only, but now in the whole earth. They be also more durable:

For they signify that the teaching of the New Testament will be more

lasting than the trumpets and sacrifices of the Old Law, namely,

even unto the end of the world.

"Again bells do signify preachers, who ought after the likeness of a

bell to exhort the faithful unto faith: the which was typified in

that the LORD commanded Moses to make a vestment for the High Priest

who entered into the Holy of Holies. Also the cavity of the bell

denoteth the mouth of the preacher, {237} according to the saying of

the Apostle, I AM BECOME AS SOUNDING BRASS ON A TINKLING CYMBAL."

Of course there are what we would be apt to consider exaggerations of

symbolic meanings and far-fetched explanations and references, but

this was of the taste of the time and has not in subsequent centuries

been so beyond the canons of good taste as at present. Durandus goes

on to tell that the hardness of the metal of the bell signifies

fortitude in the mind of the preacher, that the wood of the frame on

which the bell hangeth doth signify the wood of our Lord's Cross, that

the rope by which the bell is strung is humility and also showeth the

measure of life, that the ring in the length of the rope is the crown

of reward for perseverance unto the end, and then proceeds to show why

and how often the bells are rung and what the significance of each

ringing is. He explains why the bells are silent for three days before

Easter and also during times of interdict, and gives as the

justification for this last the quotation from the Prophet "I WILL

MAKE THY TONGUE CLEAVE TO THE ROOF OF THY MOUTH FOR THEY ARE A

REBELLIOUS HOUSE."

Even these few specimens of the prose of the Thirteenth Century, will

serve to show that the writers of the period could express themselves

with a vigor and directness which have made their books interesting

reading for generations long after their time, and which stamp their

authors as worthy of a period that found enduring and adequate modes

of expression for every form of thought and feeling.

[Illustration]

STONE CARVING (PARIS)

{238}

XV

ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA.

The last place in the world, perhaps, that one would look for a great

impulse to the development of the modern drama, which is entirely a

new invention, an outgrowth of Christian culture and has practically

no connection with the classic drama, would be in the life of St.

Francis of Assisi. His utter simplicity, his thorough-going and

cordial poverty, his sincere endeavor all during his life to make

little of himself, might seem quite enough to forbid any thought of

him as the father of a literary movement of this kind. "The poor

little man of God," however, as he liked to call himself, in his

supreme effort to get back to nature and out of the ways of the

conventional world, succeeded in accomplishing a number of utterly

unexpected results. His love for nature led to his wonderful

expression of his feelings in his favorite hymn, one of the first

great lyrical outbursts in modern poetry, a religious poem which as we

shall see in the chapter on the Father of the Renaissance, Renan

declares can only be appreciated properly by comparing it with the old

Hebrew psalms, beside which it is worthy to be placed.

Those who know the life of St. Francis best will easily appreciate how

dramatic, though unconsciously so, were all the actions of his life.

After all, his utter renunciation of all things, his taking of holy

poverty to be his bride, his address to the birds, his sisters, his

famous question of the butcher as to why he killed his brothers, the

sheep, his personification of the sun and the moon and even of the

death of the body as his brothers and sisters, are all eminently

dramatic moments. His life is full of incidents that lent themselves,

because of their dramatic quality, to the painters of succeeding

centuries as the subjects of their striking pictures. Before the end

of the century Giotto had picked out some of the most interesting of

these for the decorative illustration of the upper church at {239}

Assisi. During the succeeding century, the author of the Little

Flowers of St. Francis, embodied many of these beautiful scenes in his

little work, where they have been the favorite reading of poets for

many centuries since.

It should not be such a surprise as it might otherwise be, then, to

find that St. Francis may be considered in one sense as the father of

the modern drama. The story is a very pretty one and has an additional

value because it has been illustrated by no less a brush than that of

Giotto. One Christmas Eve just at the beginning of the Thirteenth

Century, St. Francis gathered round him some of the poor people living

outside of the town of Assisi, in order to recall vividly to them the

great event which had taken place on that night so many centuries

before. A little figure of a child, dressed in swaddling clothes, was

laid on some straw in a manger with the breath of the nearby animals

to warm it. To this manger throne of the Child King of Bethlehem,

there came in adoration, after the hymns that recalled the angels'

visit, first some of the shepherds from the surrounding country and

then some of the country people who represented the kings from the

East with their retinues, bringing with them their royal gifts. After

this little scene, probably one of the first Nativity plays that had

ever been given, St. Francis, according to the old legend, took the

little image in his arms and in an excess of devotion pressed it to

his heart. According to the old-time story, the infant came to life in

his embrace and putting its little arms around his neck embraced him

in return. Of course our modern generation is entirely too devoted to

"common sense" to accept any such pretty, pious story as this as more

than a beautiful poetic legend. The legend has provided a subject for

poet and painter many a time in subsequent centuries. Perhaps never

has it been used with better effect than by Giotto, whose

representation is one of the favorite pictures on the wall of the

upper church of Assisi. Whether the little baby figure of the play

actually came to life in his arms or not we do not know, but one thing

is certain, that infant modern dramatic literature did come to life at

the moment and that before the end of the Thirteenth Century it was to

have a vigor and an influence that made it {240} one of the great

factors in the social life of the period. The Franciscans were soon

spread over the world. With filial reverence they took with them all

the customs of their loved Father of Assisi, and especially such as

appealed to the masses and brought home to them in a vivid way the

great truths of religion. By the middle of the century many of the

towns had cycles of mystery plays given at various times during the

year, associated with the different feasts and illustrating and

enforcing the lessons of the liturgy for the people in a manner so

effective that it has probably never been equaled before or since.

While the most potent factor in the dissemination of the early

religious drama can be traced to Francis and the Franciscans, they

were but promoters of a movement already well begun. Mystery plays

were attempted before the Thirteenth Century in England and in North

France. There is a well-known story from Matthew Paris, who wrote

about the middle of the Thirteenth Century, of one Geoffrey who

afterwards became Abbot of St. Albans. While yet a secular he borrowed

certain precious religious vestments to be used in some sort of a

miracle play in honor of St. Catherine. During the performance of the

play, these vestments were destroyed by fire and Geogory was so much

afflicted by the misfortune that in a spirit of reparation he became a

religious in the Abbey of St. Albans. This must have been about the

beginning of the Twelfth Century. Towards the end of this century

mystery plays were not infrequent, though not in anything like the

developed form nor popular character which they acquired during the

Thirteenth Century. Fitz Stephen, writing the life of St. Thomas a

Becket, towards the end of the Twelfth Century, contrasts the holier

plays of London in his days with the theatrical spectacles of ancient

Rome. The plays he mentioned were, however, scarcely more than slight

developments of Church ceremonial with almost literal employment of

scripture and liturgical language.

{opp240}

[Illustration]

ST. FRANCIS' NATIVITY PLAY (GIOTTO)

The first cycle of mystery plays of which there is definite mention is

that of Chester. According to the proclamation of the Chester plays,

the representation of this cycle dates in some form from the mayoralty

of John Arneway, who was the {241} Mayor of Chester, between 1268 and

1276. Of the series of plays as given in the Thirteenth Century there

are few remains. It is probable, even, that at this early date they

were not acted in English but in French. English plays were probably

first given in some of the Cathedral towns along the east coast of

England, and perhaps York should have the credit of this innovation.

It is easy to understand how the simpler dramatic additions to the

ritual of the Church would inevitably develop in the earnest and very

full religious life of the people which came with the building of the

cathedrals, the evolution of Church ceremonial and the social life

fostered by the trade-guilds of the time. While we have none of the

remains of the actual plays of the Thirteenth Century, there is no

doubt that an excellent idea of their form and content can be gathered

from the English mystery plays, that have recently been edited in

modern form and which serve to show the characteristics of the various

cycles.

It might perhaps be thought that these mystery plays would not furnish

any great amount of entertainment for the populace, especially after

they had seen them a certain number of times. The yearly repetition

might naturally be expected to bring with it before long a satiety

that would lead to inattention. As is well known, however, there is an

enduring interest about these old religious stories that makes them of

much greater attractiveness than most ordinary historical traditions.

Many a faithful reader of the Bible finds constantly renewed interest

in the old Biblical stories in spite of frequent repetition. Their

significance to the eye of faith in the Middle Ages gave them, beyond

any doubt, that quality which in any literary work will exemplify and

fulfill Horace's dictum, _decies repetita placebit_. Besides, it must

not be forgotten that the men and women of the Thirteenth Century had

not the superficial facilities of the printing press to cloy their

intellectual curiosity, and by trivial titillation make them

constantly crave novelty.

It must not be thought, in spite of the fact that these were religious

plays, that they were always so serious as to be merely instructive

without being amusing. A large fund of amusement was injected into the

old biblical stories by the {242} writers of the different cycles and

undoubtedly the actors themselves added certain personal elements in

this matter, which still further enhanced some of the comical aspects

of the solemn stories. Nearly always the incidents of the Scriptural

narrative though followed more or less literally, were treated with a

large humanity that could scarcely fail to introduce elements of humor

into the dramatic performances. Such liberties, however, were taken

only with characters not mentioned by the Bible--the inventions of the

writers. A series of quotations from the Chester Cycle of Plays will

best illustrate this. We give them in the quaint spelling of the

oldest version extant. The scene we quote is from the play dealing

with Noah's flood and pictures Noah's wife as a veritable shrew.

NOYE--

Wyffe, in this vessel we shall be kepte:

My children and thou, I woulde in ye lepte.

Noye's Wiffe--

In fayth, Noye, I hade as leffe thou slepte!

For all thy frynishe fare,

I will not doe after thy reade.

Noye--

Good wyffe, doe nowe as I thee bydde.

Noye's Wiffe--

Be Christe! not or I see more neede,

Though thou stande all the daye and stare.

Noye--

Lorde, that wemen be crabbed aye,

And non are meke, I dare well saye.

This is well seene by me to daye,

In witnesse of you ichone (each one).

Goodwiffe, lett be all this beare,

That thou maiste in this place heare;

For all the wene that thou arte maister,

And so thou arte, by Sante John!

All Noah's artful concession of his wife's mastery in the household

does not avail to move her and so he tries objurgation.

Noye--

Wiffe, come in: why standes thou their?

Thou arte ever frowarde, I dare well sweare;

Come in, one Godes halfe! tyme yt were,

For feare leste that we drowne.

{243}

Noye's Wiffe--

Yes, sir, sette up youer saile,

And rowe fourth with evill haile,

For withouten (anye) fayle

I will not oute of this towne;

But I have my gossippes everyechone,

One foote further I will not gone:

The shall not drowne, by Sainte John!

And I may save ther life.

The loven me full well, by Christe!

But thou lett them into thy cheiste, (ark)

Elles rowe nowe wher thee leiste,

And gette thee a newe wiffe.

It is evident that he will not succeed so Noah, wise doubtless with

the wisdom of experience, forbears to urge but appeals to her sons to

bring her.

NOYE--

Seme, sonne, loe! thy mother is wrawe:

Forsooth, such another I doe not knowe.

Sem--

Father, I shall fetch her in, I trowe,

Withoutten anye fayle.--

Mother, my father after thee sends.

And byddes thee into yeinder shippe wende.

Loke up and see the wynde.

For we bene readye to sayle.

Noye's Wiffe--

Seme, goe againe to hym, I saie;

I will not come theirin to daye.

Noye--

Come in, wiffe, in twentye devilles waye!

Or elles stand there without.

Ham--

Shall we all feche her in?

Noye--

Yea, sonnes, in Christe blessinge and myne!

I woulde you hied you be-tyme.

For of this flude I am in doubte.

Jeffatte--

Mother, we praye you all together.

For we are heare, youer owne childer.

Come into the shippe for feare of the weither,

For his love that you boughte!

{244}

Noye's Wiffe--

That will not I, for all youer call,

But I have my gossippes all.

Sem--

In faith, mother, yett you shalle,

Wheither thou wylte or (nought).

_(Her sons bring her in; as she steps aboard she is greeted by Noah.)_

Noye--

Welckome, wiffe, into this botte.

Noye's Wiffe--

Have thou that for thy note!

(_Giving her husband a cuff on the head_).

Noye--

Ha, ha! Marye, this is hotte!

It is good for to be still.

Ha! children, me thinkes my botte remeves,

Our tarryinge heare highlye me greves,

Over the lande the watter spreades;

God doe as he will.

This quotation will give a good idea of the human interest of these

Mystery Plays and serve to show that they did not fail in dramatic

power for any lack of humor or acute observation. It would be easy to

illustrate this much more amply. The opportunities to enjoy these

plays were abundant. We have said that the Chester Cycle is the one of

which there is earliest mention. The method of its presentation has

been described by Mr. Henry Morley in the fourth volume of his English

Writers. He says:

"There were scaffolds erected for spectators in those places to

which the successive pageants would be drawn; and a citizen who on

the first day saw in any place the first pageant (that of the Fall

of Lucifer), if he kept his place and returned to it in good time on

each successive morning, would see the Scripture story, as thus

told, pass in its right order before him. Each pageant was drawn on

four or six wheels, and had a room in which the actors and

properties were concealed, under the upper room or stage on which

they played."

Mr. Morley then describes the action of the various parts of the

cycle, showing how clearly the lessons of the Old Testament history

and its symbolic and typical meaning were pointed out so that the

spectators could not miss them.

{245}

How completely the story of the Bible was told may be judged from the

order of the Pageants of the Play of Corpus Christi, in the time of

the mayoralty of William Alne, in the third year of the reign of King

Henry V., compiled by Roger Burton, town clerk.

1. Tanners.

God the Father Almighty creating and forming the heavens, angels and

archangels, Lucifer and the angels that fell with him to hell.

2. Plasterers.

God the Father, in his own substance, creating the earth and all

which is therein, in the space of five days.

3. Cardmakers.

God the Father creating Adam of the clay of the earth and making Eve

of Adam's rib, and inspiring them with the breath of life.

4. Fullers.

God forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life.

5. Coopers.

Adam and Eve and a tree betwixt them; the serpent deceiving them

with apples; God speaking to them and cursing the serpent, and with

a sword driving them out of paradise.

6. Armourers.

Adam and Eve, an angel with a spade and distaff assigning them work.

7. Gaunters (Glovers).

Abel and Cain offering victims in sacrifice.

8. Shipwrights.

God warning Noah to make an Ark of floatable wood,

9. Pessoners (Fishmongers) and Mariners.

Noah in the Ark, with his wife; the three sons of Noah with their

wives; with divers animals.

10. Parchment-makers, Bookbinders.

Abraham sacrificing his son, Isaac, on an altar, a boy with wood and

an angel.

11. Hosiers.

Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness; King Pharaoh; eight

Jews wondering and expecting.

12. Spicers.

A Doctor declaring the sayings of the prophets of the future birth

of Christ. Mary; an angel saluting her; Mary saluting Elizabeth.

13. Pewterers, Founders.

Mary, Joseph wishing to put her away; an angel speaking to them that

they go to Bethlehem.

{246}

14. Tylers.

Mary, Joseph, a midwife; the Child born, lying in a manger betwixt

an ox and an ass, and an angel speaking to the shepherds, and to the

players in the next pageant.

15. Chandlers.

The shepherds talking together, the star in the East; an angel

giving the shepherds the good tidings of the Child's birth.

16, 17. Orfevers (Goldsmiths), Goldbeaters, Moneymakers.

The three kings coming from the East, Herod asking them about the

child Jesus; the son of Herod, two counsellors, and a messenger.

Mary with the Child, a star above, and the three kings offering

gifts.

How completely the people of each town were engaged in the

presentation of the plays, can be judged from the following

supplementary list of the other trade guilds that took parts. Many of

them bear quaint names, which are now obsolete. They included the

girdellers, makers of girdles; nailers, sawyers, lorymers (bridle

makers), the spurriers (makers of spurs), the fevers or smiths, the

curriers, the plumbers, the pattern-makers, the bottlers, the

cap-makers, the skinners, the bladesmiths, the scalers, the

buckle-makers, the cordwainers, the bowyers (makers of bows), the

fletchers (arrow-featherers), the tilemakers, the hayresters (workers

in horse hair), the boilers (bowl-makers), the tunners, the sellers or

saddlers; the fuystours (makers of saddle tree), the verrours

(glaziers), the broggours (brokers), the dubbers (refurbishers of

clothes), the luminers or illuminators, the scriveners, the drapers,

the potters, the weavers, the hostlers and mercers. The men of no

occupation, however menial it may seem to us, were barred. Each of

these companies had a special pageant with a portion of the Old or New

Testament to represent and in each succeeding year spent much of their

spare time in preparing for their dramatic performance, studying and

practising their parts and making everything ready for competition

with their brother craftsmen in the other pageants. Only those who

know the supreme educative value of dramatic representations for those

actively interested in them, will appreciate all that these plays

meant for popular education in the best sense of the word, but all can

readily understand how much they stood for in popular occupation of

mind with high thoughts and how {247} much they must have acted as a

preventive of debasing dissipations.

It is extremely interesting to follow out some of the details of the

management of these Mystery Plays. We shall find in even the meagre

accounts that we have of them, sufficient to show us that men were not

expected to work for nothing, nor even to be satisfied with what

compensation there might be in the honor of being chosen for certain

parts, nor in the special banquets that were provided for the actors

after the performances. A definite salary was paid to each of the

actors according to the importance of the part he took. Not only this,

but the loans of garments for costume purposes, or of furniture or

other material for stage properties, was repaid by definite sums of

money. These are not large, but, considering the buying power of money

at that time and the wages paid workmen, which enabled them to live at

least as well, comparatively, as modern workmen, the compensation is

ample. Mr. Morley, in the fourth volume of his "English Writers," has

given us some of these details and as they have a special social

interest and the old documents rejoice in a comic literalness of

statement, they deserve citation.

When about to set up a play, each guild chose for itself a competent

manager, to whom it gave the rule of the pageant, and voted a fixed

sum for its expenses. The play-book and the standing wardrobe and

other properties were handed over to him, and he was accountable, of

course, for their return after the close of the performances. The

manager had to appoint his actors, to give them their several parts

written out for them (perhaps by the prompter, who was a regular

official), and to see to the rehearsals, of which there would be two

for an old play and at least five for a new one.

At rehearsal time, as well as during the great performance the actors

ate and drank at the cost of the guild, ending all with a supper, at

which they had roast beef and roast goose, with wine for the chiefs,

and beer for the rest. The actors were paid, of course, according to

the length of their parts and quantity of business in them, not their

dignity. Thus in a play setting forth the Trial and Crucifixion of our

Lord, the actors of Herod and Caiaphas received each 3s. 4d.; {248}

the representative of Annas, 2s. 2d.; and of Christ 2s.; which was

also the sum paid to each actor in the parts of His executioners, and

6d. more than was paid for acting the Devil or Judas. In the united

plays of the "Descent into Hell" and the "Ascension," the payment was

to the actor who represented Christ, 1s. 6d.; and 1s. 4d. to him who

played the Devil. In one play we find this gradation of the scale of

payment to performers:--"Paid, for playing of Peter, xvid.; to two

damsels, xiid.; to the demon, vid.; to Fawston for hanging Judas,

ivd.; paid to Fawston for cock-crowing, ivd."

{opp248}

[Illustration]

PALAZZO BUONDELMONTE (FLORENCE)

[Illustration]

PALAZZO TOLOMEI (SIENA)

Of the costume of the actors, and of the stage furniture a tolerably

clear notion is also to be drawn from the Coventry account-books, of

which Mr. Sharp printed all that bears upon such questions. They

record, of course, chiefly repairs and renewals of stage properties

and wardrobe. "In one year Pilate has a new green cloak, in another a

new hat. Pilate's wife was Dame Procula, and we have such entries as,

'For mending of Dame Procula's garments, viid.' 'To reward to Mrs.

Grimsby for lending of her gear for Pilate's wife, xiid.' 'For a quart

of wine for hiring Porcula's gown, iid.' No actor had naked hands.

Those not in masks had their faces prepared by a painter. The costume

of each part was traditional, varied little in the course of years,

and much of it was originally designed after the pictures and painted

sculpture in the churches. As in those medieval decorations, gilding

was used freely; the performer of Christ wore a gilt peruke and beard,

so did Peter, and probably all the Apostles or saints who would be

represented on church walls with a gilt nimbus." Christ's coat was of

white sheep-skin, painted and gilded, with a girdle and red sandals.

The part of the High Priests Caiaphas and Annas were often played in

ecclesiastical robes hired from a church, a practice (one sad result

of which because of fire has already been noted) that was eventually

condemned as likely to lead to disrespect for sacred objects. Herod,

who wore a mask, was set up as a sceptred royal warrior in a gilt and

silvered helmet, in armour and gown of blue satin, with such Saracen

details of dress as the Crusaders connected with the worship of

Mahomet, including the crooked faulchion, which was gilt. The

tormentors of Christ wore jackets of black {249} buckram with nails

and dice upon them. The Virgin Mary was crowned, as in her images. The

angels wore white surplices and wings. The devil also had wings, and

was played in an appropriate mask and leather dress trimmed with

feathers and hair. He was, as the Prologue to the Chester Plays

describes him, "the devil in his feathers all ragged and rent," or, as

the Coventry account-books show, carried three pounds of hair upon his

hose.

There was probably no greater impulse for social uplift and for real

education of the masses than these mystery and morality plays, in

which the people took part themselves and in which, as a consequence

of the presence of friends in the various roles, the spectators had a

livelier interest than would have been otherwise the case under even

the most favorable circumstances, or with elaborate presentation. In

recent years there has come the realization that the drama may thus be

made a real educational influence. Unfortunately at the present time,

whatever of influence it has is exerted almost exclusively upon the

better-to-do classes, who have so many other opportunities for

educational uplift. These plays during the Thirteenth Century brought

the people intimately into contact with the great characters of Old

Testament and New Testament history, and besides giving them precious

religious information, which of itself, however, might mean very

little for true education, helped them to an insight into character

and to a right appreciation of human actions and a sympathy with what

was right even though it entailed suffering, such as could not have

otherwise been obtained.

Of course it is easy to say that such dramas constantly repeated, the

subjects always the same and only the cast varying from year to year,

would become intolerably familiar and might after a time degenerate

into the merely contemptible. As a matter of fact, however, they did

not. These old stories of religious heroes were written so close to

the heart of nature, involved so intimately all the problems of life

that they are of undying interest. Their repetition was only from year

to year and this did not give the opportunity for the familiarity

which breeds contempt. Besides, though the plays in the various cycles

existed in definite forms there seems no doubt that {250} certain

changes were made by the players themselves and by the managers of the

plays from time to time, and indeed such changes of the text of a play

as we know from present-day experience, are almost inevitable.

It might be urged, too, that the people themselves would scarcely be

possessed of the histrionic talent necessary to make the plays

effective. Ordinarily, however, as we know from our modern city life,

much less of the actor's art is needed than of interest in the action,

to secure the attention of the gallery. It must not be assumed too

readily, however, that the guilds which were able to supply men for

the great artistic decoration of the cathedrals of the Thirteenth

Century, could not supply actors who would so enter into the artistic

expression of a part as to represent it to the life. The actor is more

born than made, in spite of the number of schools of acting that are

supposed to be turning out successful rivals of Roscius, on recurring

graduation days. It must not be forgotten that the only example of

these mystery plays which is still left to us is the Passion Play at

Oberammergau, and that is one of the world's greatest spectacles. On

the last occasion when it was given about half a million of people

from all over the world, many of them even from distant America and

Australia, found their way into the Tyrolese Mountains in order to be

present at it. It is only the old, old, old story of the Passion and

death of the Lord. It is represented by villagers chosen from among

the inhabitants of a little village of fourteen hundred inhabitants,

who while they have a distinct taste for the artistic and produce some

of the best wood-carving done anywhere in Europe, thus approximating

very interestingly the Thirteenth Century peoples, are not

particularly noted for their education, nor for their dramatic

ability. No one who went up to see the Passion Play came away

dissatisfied either with the interest of the play or with its manner

of representation. It is distinctly an example of how well men and

women do things when they are thoroughly interested in them, and when

they are under the influence of an old-time tradition according to

which they must have the ability to accomplish what is expected of

them. Such a tradition actually existed during the Thirteenth and

Fourteenth centuries, leading to a gradual development of {251}

dramatic power both in writers and actors, that eventually was to

result in the magnificent outburst of dramatic genius during the

Elizabethan period. For it must not be forgotten, that mystery and

morality plays continued to hold the stage down almost, if not quite,

to the time of Shakespeare's early manhood, and he probably saw the

Coventry Cycle of plays acted.

While we have a certain number of these old-time plays, most of them,

of course, have disappeared by time's attrition during the centuries

before the invention of printing, when they were handed round only in

manuscript form. Of some of these plays we shall have something to say

after a moment, stopping only to call attention to the fact that in

this literary mode of the mystery and morality plays, dramatic

literature in English reached a height of development which has been

equaled only by our greatest dramatic geniuses.

Within the last few years most of the large cities of the

English-speaking world, besides the more important universities, have

been given the opportunity to hear one of the great products of this

form of literary activity. "Everyman" is probably as great a play as

there is in English and comparable with the best work of Shakespeare,

Marlowe and Jonson. Its author only took the four last things to be

remembered--Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell--the things which must

come to every man, and wrote his story around them, yet he did it with

such artistic effectiveness as to make his drama a triumph of literary

execution.

The Mystery Plays were as interesting in their way to the medieval

generations as "Everyman" to us. As may be seen from the list quoted

from Mr. Morley, practically all the significant parts of the Bible

story were acted by these craftsmen. Too much can scarcely be said of

the educational value of such dramatic exercises; the Bible itself

with its deep religious teachings, with its simple but sublime style,

with its beautiful poetry, entered for a time into the very lives of

these people. No wonder that our English speech during these centuries

became saturated with biblical thoughts and words. Anyone who has ever

had any experience with amateur theatricals when a really great play

was given, will be able to realize how much more thoroughly every

quality, dramatic, literary, poetic, even lyric {252} and historical,

that there might be in the drama, entered into the hearts and minds of

those who took part. It is this feature that is especially deserving

of attention with regard to these mystery plays which began in the

Thirteenth Century. The people's interest in them, lifted them out of

themselves and their trivial round of life into the higher life of

this great religious poetry. On the other hand the teachings of the

Bible came down from the distant plane on which they might otherwise

have been set and entered into the very life of the people. Their

familiarity with scripture made it a something not to be discussed

merely, but to be applied in their everyday affairs.

Besides this, the organization of the company to give the play and the

necessity for the display and exercise of taste in the costumes and of

ingenuity in the stage settings, were of themselves of great educative

value. The rivalry that naturally existed between the various

companies chosen from the different guilds only added to the zest with

which rehearsals were taken up, and made the play more fully occupy

the minds of those actively engaged in its preparation. For several

dull winter months before Easter time there was an intense

preoccupation of mind with great thoughts and beautiful words, instead

of with the paltry round of daily duties, which would otherwise form

the burden of conversation. Gossip and scandal mongering had fewer

opportunities since people's minds were taken up by so much worthier

affairs. The towns in which the plays were given never had more than a

few thousand inhabitants and most of them must have been personally

interested in some way in the play. The Jesuits, whose acumen for

managing students is proverbial, have always considered it of great

importance to have their students prepare plays several times a year.

Their reason is the occupation of mind which it affords as well as the

intellectual and elocutionary training that comes with the work. What

they do with premeditation, the old guilds did unconsciously but even

more effectively, and their success must be considered as one of the

social triumphs of this wonderful Thirteenth Century.

Only in recent years has the idea succeeded in making way in

government circles on the continent, that the giving of free dramatic

entertainments for the poor would form an excellent {253} addition to

other educational procedures. Such performances have new been given

for nearly a score of years in Berlin. After all, the subvention

allowed by government to the great theaters and opera houses in Europe

is part of this same policy, though unfortunately they are calculated

to affect only the upper classes, who need the help and the stimulus

of great dramatic art and great music less than the lower classes, who

have so little of variety or of anything that makes for uplift in

their lives. In the Thirteenth Century this very modern notion was

anticipated in such a way as to benefit the very poorest of the

population, and that not only passively, that is by the hearing of

dramatic performances, but also actively, by taking parts in them and

so having all the details of the action and the words impressed upon

them.

[Illustration]

CAPITAL (LINCOLN)

{254}

XVI

FRANCIS THE SAINT--THE FATHER OF THE RENAISSANCE.

The Renaissance is often thought of as a movement which originated

about the middle of the Fifteenth Century. Careful students sometimes

trace its origin back somewhat further. In recent years it has come to

be realized, however, that the great intellectual development which

came during the century after the fall of Constantinople in Italy, and

gradually spread to all the civilized countries of Europe, had been

preparing for at least two centuries and a half. While the period from

the middle of the Fifteenth to the end of the Sixteenth Centuries well

deserves the name of Renaissance, because one of the most important

fructifying principles of the movement was the rebirth of Greek ideas

into the modern world after the dispersion of Greek scholars by the

Turkish advance into the Byzantine Empire, the term must not be

allowed to carry with it the mistaken notion which only too often has

been plausibly accepted, that there was a new birth of poetic,

literary and esthetic ideas at this time, just as if there had been

nothing worth considering in these lines before. Any such notion as

this would be the height of absurdity in the light of the history of

the previous centuries in Italy. It was a cherished notion of the

people of the Renaissance themselves that they were the first to do

artistic and literary work, hence they invented the term Gothic,

meaning thereby barbarous, for the art of the preceding time, but in

this they were only exercising that amusing, self-complacency which

each generation deems its right. Succeeding generations adopting their

depreciative term have turned it into one of glory so that Gothic art

is now in highest honor.

Fortunately in recent years there has come, as we have said, a growing

recognition of the fact that the real beginning of modern art lies

much farther back in history, and that the real {255} father of the

Italian Renaissance is a man whom very few people in the last three

centuries have appreciated at his true worth. Undoubtedly the leader

in that great return to nature, which constitutes the true basis of

modern poetic and artistic ideas of all kinds, was St. Francis of

Assisi. "The poor little man of God," as in his humility he loved to

call himself, would surely be the last one to suspect that he should

ever come to be thought of as the initiator of a great movement in

literature and art. Such he was, however, in the highest sense of the

term and because of the modern appreciation of him in this regard,

publications concerning him have been more frequent during the last

ten years than with regard to almost any other single individual. We

have under our hand at the present moment what by no means claims to

be a complete bibliography of St. Francis' life and work, yet we can

count no less than thirty different works in various languages (not

reckoning translations separate from the originals) which have issued

from the press during the last ten years alone. This gives some idea

of present day interest in St. Francis.

It must not be thought, however, that it is only in our time that

these significant tributes have been paid him. Much of his influence

in literature and art, as well as in life, was recognized by the

southern nations all during the centuries since his death. That it is

only during the last century that other nations have come to

appreciate him better, and especially have realized his literary

significance, has been their loss and that of their literatures. At

the beginning of the Nineteenth Century Goerres, the German historian

who was so sympathetic towards the Middle Ages, wrote of St. Francis

as one of the Troubadours, and even did not hesitate to add that

without St. Francis at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century there

would have been no Dante at the end. Renan, the well-known French

rationalist historian and literateur, did not hesitate to proclaim St.

Francis one of the great religious poets of all time and his famous

Canticle of the Sun as the greatest religious poem since the Hebrew

Psalms were written. It was from Renan that Matthew Arnold received

his introduction to St. Francis as a literary man, and his own studies

led him to write the famous passages in the Essays in Criticism, which

are usually so much a source of {256} surprise to those who think of

Mr. Arnold as the rationalizing critic, rather than the sympathetic

admirer of a medieval saint.

"In the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, when the clouds and

storms had come, when the gay sensuous pagan life was gone, when men

were not living by the senses and understanding, when they were

looking for the speedy coming of Antichrist, there appeared in

Italy, to the north of Rome, in the beautiful Umbrian country at the

foot of the Appennines, a figure of the most magical power and

charm, St. Francis. His century is, I think, the most interesting in

the history of Christianity after its primitive age; more

interesting than even the century of the Reformation; and one of the

chief figures, perhaps the very chief, to which this interest

attaches itself, is St. Francis. And why? Because of the profound

popular instinct which enabled him, more than any man since the

primitive age, to fit religion for popular use. He brought religion

to the people. He founded the most popular body of ministers of

religion that has ever existed in the Church. He transformed

monachism by uprooting the stationary monk, delivering him from the

bondage of property, and sending him, as a mendicant friar, to be a

stranger and sojourner, not in the wilderness, but in the most

crowded haunts of men, to console them and to do them good. This

popular instinct of his is at the bottom of his famous marriage with

poverty. Poverty and suffering are the condition of the people, the

multitude, the immense majority of mankind; and it was towards this

people that his soul yearned. "He listens," it was said of him, "to

those to whom God himself will not listen."

Matthew Arnold has thus surprisingly summed up Francis' age and his

work. With a sympathy that could scarcely be expected from the man for

whom the Deity had become merely "a stream of tendency that makes for

righteousness," he realized the influence that this supreme lover of a

personal God had over his generation, and his brother poet soul flew

to its affinity in spite of the apparently insurmountable obstacle of'

extreme aloofness of spiritual temperament.

{opp256}

[Illustration: ]

THE GLORIFICATION OF ST. FRANCIS (GIOTTO, LOWER CHURCH OF ASSISI)

Matthew Arnold proceeds:

"So in return, as no other man, St. Francis was listened to. When an

Umbrian town or village heard of his approach, the {257} whole

population went out in joyful procession to meet him, with green

boughs, flags, music, and songs of gladness. The master, who began

with two disciples, could in his own lifetime (and he died at

forty-five) collect to keep Whitsuntide with him, in presence of an

immense multitude, five thousand of his Minorites. He found

fulfilment to his prophetic cry: "I hear in my ears the sound of the

tongues of all the nations who shall come unto us; Frenchmen,

Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen. The Lord will make of us a great

people, even unto the ends of the earth."

When we reach the next paragraph the secret of this surprising

paradoxical sympathy is out. It is the literary and esthetic side of

St. Francis that has appealed to him, and like Renan he does not

hesitate to give "the poor little man of God" a place among the great

original geniuses of all time, associating his name with that of

Dante.

"Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he made poetry. Latin

was too learned for this simple, popular nature, and he composed in

his mother tongue, in Italian. The beginnings of the mundane poetry

of the Italians are in Sicily, at the court of kings; the beginnings

of their religious poetry are in Umbria, with St. Francis. His are

the humble upper waters of a mighty stream: at the beginning of the

Thirteenth Century, it is St. Francis, at the end, Dante. Now it

happens that St. Francis, too, like the Alexandrian songstress, has

his hymn for the sun, for Adonis; Canticle of the Sun, Canticle of

the Creatures, the poem goes by both names. Like the Alexandrian

hymn, it is designed for popular use, but not for use by King

Ptolemy's people; artless in language, irregular in rhythm, it

matches with the childlike genius that produced it, and the simple

natures that loved and repeated it."

Probably the most satisfactory translation for those who may not be

able to appreciate the original of this sublime hymn that has evoked

so many tributes, is the following literal rendering into English in

which a quite successful attempt to give the naif rhythm of the

original Italian, which necessarily disappears in any formal rhymed

translation, has been made by Father Paschal Robinson of the Order of

St. Francis for his recent edition of the writings of St. Francis.

[Footnote 23]

[Footnote 23: Philadelphia, The Dolphin Press, 1906.]

{258}

"Here begin the praises of the Creatures which the Blessed Francis

made to the praise and honor of God while he was ill at St. Damian's:

Most high, omnipotent, good Lord,

Praise, glory and honor and benediction all, are Thine.

To Thee alone do they belong, most High,

And there is no man fit to mention Thee.

Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures.

Especially to my worshipful brother sun,

The which lights up the day, and through him dost Thou brightness give;

And beautiful is he and radiant with splendor great;

Of Thee, Most High, signification gives.

Praised be my Lord, for sister moon and for the stars,

In heaven Thou hast formed them clear and precious and fair.

Praised be my Lord for brother wind

And for the air and clouds and fair and every kind of weather.

By the which Thou givest to Thy creatures nourishment.

Praised be my Lord for sister water,

The which is greatly helpful and humble and precious and pure.

Praised be my Lord for brother fire,

By the which Thou lightest up the dark.

And fair is he and gay and mighty and strong.

Praised be my Lord for our sister, mother earth.

The which sustains and keeps us

And brings forth diverse fruits with grass and flowers bright.

Praised be my Lord for those who for Thy love forgive

And weakness bear and tribulation.

Blessed those who shall in peace endure,

For by Thee, Most High, shall they be crowned.

Praised be my Lord for our sister, the bodily death.

From the which no living man can flee.

{259}

Woe to them who die in mortal sin;

Blessed those who shall find themselves in Thy most holy will,

For the second death shall do them no ill.

Praise ye and bless ye my Lord, and give Him thanks,

And be subject unto Him with great humility."

Except for his place in literature and art, the lives of few men would

seem to be of so little interest to the modern time as that of St.

Francis of Assisi, yet it is for the man himself that so many now turn

to him. His spirit is entirely opposed to the sordid principles that

have been accepted as the basis of success in modern life. His idea

was that happiness consisted in being free from unsatisfied desires

rather than seeking to secure the satisfaction of his wishes. Duty was

self-denial, not self-seeking under any pretext. He stripped himself

literally of everything and his mystic marriage to the Lady Poverty

was, so far as he was concerned, as absolute a reality, as if the

union had been actual instead of imaginary. The commonplace details of

his early years seem all the more interesting from these later

developments, and have been the subject of much sympathetic study in

recent years.

St. Francis' father was a cloth merchant and St. Francis had been

brought up and educated as became the son of a man whose commercial

journeys often took him to France. It was indeed while his father was

absent on one of these business expeditions that Francis was born and

on his father's return received from him the name of Francisco--the

Frenchman--in joyful commemoration of his birth.

As he grew up he did not differ from the ordinary young man of his

time, but seems to have taken the world and its pleasures quite as he

found them and after the fashion of those around him. At the age of

twenty-five he fell seriously ill and then, for the first time, there

came to him the realization of the true significance of life. As Dean

Stanley said shortly before his death, "life seemed different when

viewed from the horizontal position." Life lived for its own sake was

not worth while. To Francis there came the realization that when God

Himself became man he lived his life for others. Francis {260} set

about literally imitating him. Enthusiastic students of his life

consider him the great type of genuine Christian, the most real

disciple of Christ who ever lived. Some money and goods that came into

his hands having been disposed of for the poor, Francis' father made

serious objection and Francis was brought before the ecclesiastical

authorities. It was at this moment that he stripped himself of

everything that he had, the Bishop even having to provide a cloak to

cover his nakedness, and became the wonderful apostle to the poor that

he remained during all the rest of his life. Curious as it must ever

seem, it was not long before he had many who wished to imitate him and

who insisted on becoming his disciples and followers. St. Francis had

had no idea how infectious his example was to prove. Before his death

his disciples could be numbered by the thousands and the great order

of the Franciscans, that for centuries was to do so much work, had

come into existence not by any conscious planning, but by the mere

force of the great Christian principles that were the guiding factors

in St. Francis' own life.

Ruskin in his Mornings in Florence in discussing Giotto's famous

picture of St. Francis' renunciation of his inheritance, and his

incurrence thereby of his father's anger, has a characteristic passage

that sounds the very keynote of the Saint's life and goes to the heart

of things. In it he explains the meaning of this apparently

contradictory incident in St. Francis' life, since Francis' great

virtue was obedience, yet here, apparently as a beginning of his more

perfect Christian life, is an act of disobedience. After Ruskin's

explanation, however, it is all the more difficult to understand the

present generation's revival of interest in Francis unless it be

attributed to a liking for contrast.

"That is the meaning of St. Francis' renouncing his inheritance; and

it is the beginning of Giotto's gospel of Works. Unless this hardest

of deeds be done first--this inheritance of mammon and the world

cast away,--all other deeds are useless. You cannot serve, cannot

obey, God and mammon. No charities, no obedience, no self-denials,

are of any use while you are still at heart in conformity with the

world. You go to church, because the world goes. You keep Sunday,

because your {261} neighbor keeps it. But you dress ridiculously

because your neighbors ask it; and you dare not do a rough piece of

work, because your neighbors despise it. You must renounce your

neighbor, in his riches and pride, and remember him in his distress.

That is St. Francis' 'disobedience.'"

{opp261}

[Illustration]

ST. FRANCIS (CHURCH OF THE FRARI, VENICE, NIC. PISANO)

In spite of Ruskin's charming explanation of St. Francis' place in

history, and his elucidation of the hard passages in his life, most

people will only find it more difficult, after these explanations, to

understand the modern acute reawakening of interest in St. Francis.

Our generation in its ardent devotion to the things of this world does

not seem a promising field for the evangel, "Give up all thou hast and

follow me." The mystery of St. Francis' attraction only deepens the

more we know of him. An American Franciscan has tried to solve the

problem and his words are worth quoting. Father Paschal Robinson, O.

S. M., in his "The True St. Francis" says:--