THE MEDIAEVAL MIND
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
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Melbourne
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE MEDIAEVAL MIND
A HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT
OF THOUGHT AND EMOTION
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
BY HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1911
CONTENTS
PAGE
BOOK IV
THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: SOCIETY (_continued_)
CHAPTER XXV
THE HEART OF HELOÏSE 3
CHAPTER XXVI
GERMAN CONSIDERATIONS: WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE 28
BOOK V
SYMBOLISM
CHAPTER XXVII
SCRIPTURAL ALLEGORIES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES; HONORIUS OF AUTUN 41
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RATIONALE OF THE VISIBLE WORLD: HUGO OF ST. VICTOR 60
CHAPTER XXIX
CATHEDRAL AND MASS; HYMN AND IMAGINATIVE POEM 76
I. Guilelmus Durandus and Vincent of Beauvais.
II. The Hymns of Adam of St. Victor and the _Anticlaudianus_
of Alanus of Lille.
BOOK VI
LATINITY AND LAW
CHAPTER XXX
THE SPELL OF THE CLASSICS 107
I. Classical Reading.
II. Grammar.
III. The Effect upon the Mediaeval Man; Hildebert of Lavardin.
CHAPTER XXXI
EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN PROSE 148
CHAPTER XXXII
EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN VERSE 186
I. Metrical Verse.
II. Substitution of Accent for Quantity.
III. Sequence-Hymn and Student-Song.
IV. Passage of Themes into the Vernacular.
CHAPTER XXXIII
MEDIAEVAL APPROPRIATION OF THE ROMAN LAW 231
I. The Fontes Juris Civilis.
II. Roman and Barbarian Codification.
III. The Mediaeval Appropriation.
IV. Church Law.
V. Political Theorizing.
BOOK VII
ULTIMATE INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
CHAPTER XXXIV
SCHOLASTICISM: SPIRIT, SCOPE, AND METHOD 283
CHAPTER XXXV
CLASSIFICATION OF TOPICS; STAGES OF EVOLUTION 311
I. Philosophic Classification of the Sciences; the
Arrangement of Vincent’s Encyclopaedia, of the Lombard’s
_Sentences_, of Aquinas’s _Summa theologiae_.
II. The Stages of Development: Grammar, Logic, Metalogics.
CHAPTER XXXVI
TWELFTH-CENTURY SCHOLASTICISM 338
I. The Problem of Universals: Abaelard.
II. The Mystic Strain: Hugo and Bernard.
III. The Later Decades: Bernard Silvestris; Gilbert de la
Porrée; William of Conches; John of Salisbury, and Alanus
of Lille.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE UNIVERSITIES, ARISTOTLE, AND THE MENDICANTS 378
CHAPTER XXXVIII
BONAVENTURA 402
CHAPTER XXXIX
ALBERTUS MAGNUS 420
CHAPTER XL
THOMAS AQUINAS 433
I. Thomas’s Conception of Human Beatitude.
II. Man’s Capacity to know God.
III. How God knows.
IV. How the Angels know.
V. How Men know.
VI. Knowledge through Faith perfected in Love.
CHAPTER XLI
ROGER BACON 484
CHAPTER XLII
DUNS SCOTUS AND OCCAM 509
CHAPTER XLIII
THE MEDIAEVAL SYNTHESIS: DANTE 525
INDEX 561
BOOK IV
THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: SOCIETY
(_Continued_)
CHAPTER XXV
THE HEART OF HELOÏSE
The romantic growth and imaginative shaping of chivalric love having been
followed in the fortunes of its great exemplars, Tristan, Iseult,
Lancelot, Guinevere, Parzival, a different illustration of mediaeval
passion may be had by turning from these creations of literature to an
actual woman, whose love for a living man was thought out as keenly and as
tragically felt as any heart-break of imagined lovers, and was impressed
with as entire a self-surrender as ever ravished the soul of nun panting
with love of the God-man.
There has never been a passion between a man and woman more famous than
that which brought happiness and sorrow to the lives of Abaelard and
Heloïse. Here fame is just. It was a great love, and its course was a
perfect soul’s tragedy. Abaelard was a celebrity, the intellectual glory
of an active-minded epoch. His love-story has done as much for his
posthumous fame as all his intellectual activities. Heloïse became known
in her time through her relations with Abaelard; in his songs her name was
wafted far. She has come down to us as one of the world’s love-heroines.
Yet few of those who have been touched by her story have known that
Heloïse was a great woman, possessed of an admirable mind, a character
which proved its strength through years, and, above all, a capacity for
loving--for loving out to the full conclusions of love’s convictions, and
for feeling in their full range and power whatever moods and emotions
could arise from an unhappy situation and a passion as deeply felt as it
was deeply thought upon.
Abaelard was not a great character--aside from his intellect. He was vain
and inconsiderate, a man who delighted in confounding and supplanting his
teachers, and in being a thorn in the flesh of all opponents. But he
became chastened through his misfortunes and through Heloïse’s high and
self-sacrificing love. In the end, perhaps, his love was worthy of the
love of Heloïse. Yet her love from the beginning was nobler and deeper
than his love of her. Love was for him an incident in his experience, then
an element in his life. Love made the life of Heloïse; it remained her
all. Moreover, in the records of their passion, Heloïse’s love is unveiled
as Abaelard’s is not. For all these reasons, the heart of Heloïse rather
than the heart of Abaelard discloses the greatness of a love that wept
itself out in the twelfth century, and it is her love rather than his that
can teach us much regarding the mediaeval capacity for loving. Hers is a
story of mediaeval womanhood, and sin, and repentance perhaps, with peace
at last, or at least the lips shut close and further protest foregone.
Abaelard’s stormy intellectual career[1] and the story of the love between
him and the canon’s niece are well known. Let us follow him in those parts
of his narrative which disclose the depth and power of Heloïse’s love for
him. We draw from his _Historia calamitatum_, written “to a friend,”
apparently an open letter intended to circulate.
“There was,” writes he, referring to the time of his sojourn in Paris,
when he was about thirty-six years old, and at the height of his fame as a
lecturer in the schools--
“There was in Paris a young girl named Heloïse, the niece of a canon,
Fulbert. It was his affectionate wish that she should have the best
education in letters that could be procured. Her face was not unfair,
and her knowledge was unequalled. This attainment, so rare in women,
had given her great reputation.
“I had hitherto lived continently, but now was casting my eyes about,
and I saw that she possessed every attraction that lovers seek; nor
did I regard my success as doubtful, when I considered my fame and my
goodly person, and also her love of letters. Inflamed with love, I
thought how I could best become intimate with her. It occurred to me
to obtain lodgings with her uncle, on the plea that household cares
distracted me from study. Friends quickly brought this about, the old
man being miserly and yet desirous of instruction for his niece. He
eagerly entrusted her to my tutorship, and begged me to give her all
the time I could take from my lectures, authorizing me to see her at
any hour of the day or night, and punish her when necessary. I
marvelled with what simplicity he confided a tender lamb to a hungry
wolf. As he had given me authority to punish her, I saw that if
caresses would not win my object, I could bend her by threats and
blows. Doubtless he was misled by love of his niece and my own good
reputation. Well, what need to say more: we were united first by the
one roof above us, and then by our hearts. Our hours of study were
given to love. The books lay open, but our words were of love rather
than philosophy, there were more kisses than aphorisms; and love was
oftener reflected in our eyes than the lettered page. To avert
suspicion, I struck her occasionally--very gentle blows of love. The
joy of love, new to us both, brought no satiety. The more I was taken
up with this pleasure, the less time I gave to philosophy and the
schools--how tiresome had all that become! I became unproductive,
merely repeating my old lectures, and if I composed any verses, love
was their subject, and not the secrets of philosophy; you know how
popular and widely sung these have become. But the students! what
groans and laments arose from them at my distraction! A passion so
plain was not to be concealed; every one knew of it except Fulbert. A
man is often the last to know of his own shame. Yet what everybody
knows cannot be hid forever, and so after some months he learned all.
Oh how bitter was that uncle’s grief! and what was the grief of the
separated lovers! How ashamed I was, and afflicted at the affliction
of the girl! And what a storm of sorrow came over her at my disgrace.
Neither complained for himself, but each grieved at what the other
must endure.”
Although Abaelard was moved at the plight of Heloïse, he bitterly felt his
own discomfiture in the eyes of the once admiring world. But the sentence
touching Heloïse is a first true note of her devoted love: what a storm of
sorrow (_moeroris aestus_) came over her at my disgrace. Through this
trouble and woe, Heloïse never thought of her own pain save as it pained
her to be the source of grief to Abaelard.
Abaelard continues:
“The separation of our bodies joined our souls more closely and
inflamed our love. Shame spent itself and made us unashamed, so small
a thing it seemed compared with satisfying love. Not long afterwards
the girl knew that she was to be a mother, and in the greatest
exultation wrote and asked me to advise what she should do. One night,
as we agreed on, when Fulbert was away I bore her off secretly and
sent her to my own country, Brittany, where she stayed with my sister
till she gave birth to a son, whom she named Astralabius.
“The uncle, on his return to his empty house, was frantic. He did not
know what to do to me. If he should kill or do me some bodily injury,
he feared lest his niece, whom he loved, would suffer for it among my
people in Brittany. He could not seize me, as I was prepared against
all attempts. At length, pitying his anguish, and feeling remorse at
having caused it, I went to him as a suppliant and promised whatever
satisfaction he should demand. I assured him that nothing in my
conduct would seem remarkable to any one who had felt the strength of
love or would take the pains to recall how many of the greatest men
had been thrown down by women, ever since the world began. Whereupon I
offered him a satisfaction greater than he could have hoped, to wit,
that I would marry her whom I had corrupted, if only the marriage
might be kept secret so that it should not injure me in the minds of
men. He agreed and pledged his faith, and the faith of his friends,
and sealed with kisses the reconciliation which I had sought--so that
he might more easily betray me!”
It will be remembered that Abaelard was a clerk, a _clericus_, in virtue
of his profession of letters and theology. Never having taken orders, he
could marry; but while a clerk’s slip could be forgotten, marriage might
lead people to think he had slighted his vocation, and would certainly bar
the ecclesiastical preferment which such a famous _clericus_ might
naturally look forward to. Nevertheless, he at once set out to fetch
Heloïse from Brittany, to make her his wife.
The stand which she now took shows both her mind and heart:
“She strongly disapproved, and urged two reasons against the marriage,
to wit, the danger and the disgrace in which it would involve me. She
swore--and so it proved--that no satisfaction would ever appease her
uncle. She asked how she was to have any glory through me when she
should have made me inglorious, and should have humiliated both
herself and me. What penalties would the world exact from her if she
deprived it of such a luminary; what curses, what damage to the
Church, what lamentations of philosophers, would follow on this
marriage. How indecent, how lamentable would it be for a man whom
nature had made for all, to declare that he belonged to one woman, and
subject himself to such shame. From her soul, she detested this
marriage which would be so utterly ignominious for me, and a burden to
me. She expatiated on the disgrace and inconvenience of matrimony for
me and quoted the Apostle Paul exhorting men to shun it. If I would
not take the apostle’s advice or listen to what the saints had said
regarding the matrimonial yoke, I should at least pay attention to the
philosophers--to Theophrastus’s words upon the intolerable evils of
marriage, and to the refusal of Cicero to take a wife after he had
divorced Terentia, when he said that he could not devote himself to a
wife and philosophy at the same time. ‘Or,’ she continued, laying
aside the disaccord between study and a wife, ‘consider what a married
man’s establishment would be to you. What sweet accord there would be
between the schools and domestics, between copyists and cradles,
between books and distaffs, between pen and spindle! Who, engaged in
religious or philosophical meditations, could endure a baby’s crying
and the nurse’s ditties stilling it, and all the noise of servants?
Could you put up with the dirty ways of children? The rich can, you
say, with their palaces and apartments of all kinds; their wealth does
not feel the expense or the daily care and annoyance. But I say, the
state of the rich is not that of philosophers; nor have men entangled
in riches and affairs any time for the study of Scripture or
philosophy. The renowned philosophers of old, despising the world,
fleeing rather than relinquishing it, forbade themselves all
pleasures, and reposed in the embraces of philosophy.’”
Speaking thus, Heloïse fortified her argument with quotations from Seneca,
and the examples of Jewish and Gentile worthies and Christian saints, and
continued:
“It is not for me to point out--for I would not be thought to instruct
Minerva--how soberly and continently all these men lived who,
according to Augustine and others, were called philosophers as much
for their way of life as or their knowledge. If laymen and Gentiles,
bound by no profession of religion, lived thus, surely you, a clerk
and canon, should not prefer low pleasures to sacred duties, nor let
yourself be sucked down by this Charybdis and smothered in filth
inextricably. If you do not value the privilege of a clerk, at least
defend the dignity of a philosopher. If reverence for God be despised,
still let love of decency temper immodesty. Remember, Socrates was
tied to a wife, and through a nasty accident wiped out this blot upon
philosophy, that others afterwards might be more cautious; which
Jerome relates in his book against Jovinianus, how once when enduring
a storm of Xanthippe’s clamours from the floor above, he was ducked
with slops, and simply said, ‘I knew such thunder would bring rain.’
“Finally she said that it would be dangerous for me to take her back
to Paris; it was more becoming to me, and sweeter to her, to be called
my mistress, so that affection alone might keep me hers and not the
binding power of any matrimonial chain; and if we should be separated
for a time, our joys at meeting would be the dearer for their rarity.
When at last with all her persuasions and dissuasions she could not
turn me from my folly, and could not bear to offend me, with a burst
of tears she ended in these words: ‘One thing is left: in the ruin of
us both the grief which follows shall not be less than the love which
went before.’ Nor did she here lack the spirit of prophecy.”
Heloïse’s reasonings show love great and true and her absolute devotion to
Abaelard’s interests. None the less striking is her clear intelligence.
She reasoned correctly; she was right, the marriage would do great harm to
Abaelard and little good to her. We see this too, if we lay aside our
sense of the ennobling purity of marriage--a sentiment not commonly felt
in the twelfth century. Marriage was holy in the mind of Christ. But it
did not preserve its holiness through the centuries which saw the rise of
monasticism and priestly celibacy. A way of life is not pure and holy when
another way is holier and purer; this is peculiarly true in Christianity,
which demands the ideal best with such intensity as to cast reflection on
whatever falls below the highest standard. From the time of the barbarian
inroads, on through the Carolingian periods, and into the later Middle
Ages, there was enough barbarism and brutality to prevent the
preservation, or impede the development, of a high standard of marriage.
Not monasticism, but his own half-barbarian, lustful heart led Charlemagne
to marry and remarry at will, and have many mistresses besides. It was the
same with the countless barons and mediaeval kings, rude and half
civilized. This was barbarous lust, not due to the influence of
monasticism. But, on the other hand, it was always the virgin or celibate
state that the Church held before the eyes of all this semi-barbarous
laity as the ideal for a Christian man or woman. The Church sanctioned
marriage, but hardly lauded it or held it up as a condition in which lives
of holiness and purity could be led. Such were the sentiments in which
Heloïse was born and bred. They were subconscious factors in her thoughts
regarding herself and her lover. Devoted and unselfish was her love;
undoubtedly Heloïse would have sacrificed herself for Abaelard under any
social conditions. Nevertheless, with her, marriage added little to love;
it was a mere formal and binding authorization; love was no purer for it.
To her mind, for a man in Abaelard’s situation to be entangled in a
temporary _amour_ was better than to be chained to his passion, with his
career irrevocably ruined, in marriage. In so far as her thoughts or
Abaelard’s were influenced by the environment of priestly thinking,
marriage would seem a rendering permanent of a passionate and sinful
state, which it were _best_ to cast off altogether. For herself, as she
said truly, the marriage would bring obloquy rather than reinstatement.
She had been mistress to a clerk; marriage would make her the partner of
his abandonment of his vocation, the accomplice of broken purposes if not
of broken vows. And finally, as there was then no line of disgrace as now
between bastard and lawful issue, Heloïse had no thought that the
interests of her son demanded that his mother should become his father’s
wife.
“Leaving our son in my sister’s care, we stole back to Paris, and
shortly after, having in the night celebrated our vigils in a certain
church, we were married at dawn in the presence of her uncle and some
of his and our friends. We left at once separately and with secrecy,
and afterwards saw each other only in privacy, so as to conceal what
we had done. But her uncle and his household began at once to announce
the marriage and violate his word; while she, on the contrary,
protested vehemently and swore that it was false. At that he became
enraged and treated her vilely. When I discovered this I sent her to
the convent of Argenteuil, near Paris, where she had been educated.
There I had her take the garb of a nun, except the veil. Hearing this,
the uncle and his relations thought that I had duped them, ridding
myself of Heloïse by making her a nun. So having bribed my servant,
they came upon me by night, when I was sleeping, and took on me a
vengeance as cruel and irretrievable as it was vile and shameful. Two
of the perpetrators were pursued and vengeance taken.
“In the morning the whole town was assembled, crying and lamenting my
plight, especially the clerks and students; at which I was afflicted
with more shame than I suffered physical pain. I thought of my ruined
hopes and glory, and then saw that by God’s just judgment I was
punished where I had most sinned, and that Fulbert had justly
avenged treachery with treachery. But what a figure I should cut in
public! how the world would point its finger at me! I was also
confounded at the thought of the Levitical law, according to which I
had become an abomination to the Church.[2] In this misery the
confusion of shame--I confess it--rather than the ardour of conversion
drove me to the cover of the cloister, after she had willingly obeyed
my command to take the veil. I became a monk in the abbey of St.
Denis, and she a nun in the convent of Argenteuil. Many begged her not
to set that yoke upon her youth; at which, amid her tears, she broke
out in Cornelia’s lament: ‘O great husband! undeserving of my couch!
Has fortune rights over a head so high? Why did I, impious, marry thee
to make thee wretched? Accept these penalties, which I gladly pay.’[3]
With these words, she went straight to the altar, received the veil
blessed by the bishop, and took the vows before them all.”
Abaelard’s _Historia calamitatum_ now turns to troubles having no
connection with Heloïse: his difficulties with the monks of St. Denis,
with other monks, with every one, in fact, except his scholars; his
arraignment before the Council of Soissons, the public burning of his
book, _De Unitate et Trinitate divina_, and various other troubles, till,
seeking a retreat, he constructed an oratory on the bank of the Ardisson.
He named it the Paraclete, and there he taught and lectured. He was
afterwards elected abbot of a monastery in Brittany, where he discovered
that those under him were savage beasts rather than monks. Here the
_Historia calamitatum_ was written.
The monks of St. Denis had never ceased to hate Abaelard for his assertion
that their great Saint was not really Dionysius the Areopagite who heard
Paul preach. Their abbot now brought forward and proved an ancient title
to the land where stood the convent of Argenteuil, “in which,” to resume
Abaelard’s account,
“she, once my wife, now my sister in Christ, had taken the veil, and
was at this time prioress. The nuns were rudely driven out. News of
this came to me as a suggestion from the Lord to bethink me of the
deserted Paraclete. Going thither, I invited Heloïse and her nuns to
come and take possession. They accepted, and I gave it to them.
Afterward Pope Innocent II. confirmed this grant to them and their
successors in perpetuity. There for a time they lived in want; but
soon the Divine Pity showed itself the true Paraclete, and moved the
people of the neighbourhood to take compassion on them, and they soon
knew no lack. Indeed as women are the weaker sex, their need moves men
more readily to pity, and their virtues are the more grateful to both
God and man. And on our sister the Lord bestowed such favour in the
eyes of all, that the bishops loved her as a daughter, the abbots as a
sister, the laity as a mother; and all wondered at her piety, her
wisdom, and her gentle patience in everything. She rarely let herself
be seen, that she might devote herself more wholly to prayers and
meditations in her cell; but all the more persistently people sought
her spiritual counsel.”
What were those meditations and those prayers uttered or unuttered in that
cell? They did not always refer to the kingdom of heaven, judging from the
abbess’s first letter to her former lover. After the installation of
Heloïse and her nuns, Abaelard rarely visited the Paraclete, although his
advice and instruction was desired there. His visits gave rise to too much
scandal. In the course of time, however, the _Historia calamitatum_ came
into the hands of Heloïse, and occasioned this letter, which seems to
issue forth out of a long silence; ten years had passed since she became a
nun. The superscription is as follows:
“To her master, rather to a father, to her husband, rather to a
brother, his maid or rather daughter, his wife or rather sister, to
Abaelard, Heloïse.
“Your letter, beloved, written to comfort a friend, chanced recently
to reach me. Seeing by its first lines from whom it was, I burned to
read it for the love I bear the writer, hoping also from its words to
recreate an image of him whose life I have ruined. Those words dropped
gall and absinthe as they brought back the unhappy story of our
intercourse and thy ceaseless crosses, O my only one. Truly the letter
must have convinced the friend that his troubles were light compared
with yours, as you showed the treachery and persecutions which had
followed you, the calumnies of enemies and the burning of your
glorious book, the machinations of false brothers, and the vile acts
of those worthless monks whom you call your sons. No one could read it
with dry eyes. Your perils have renewed my griefs; here we all despair
of your life and each day with trembling hearts expect news of your
death. In the name of Christ, who so far has somehow preserved thee
for himself, deign with frequent letters to let these weak servants of
Him and thee know of the storms overwhelming the swimmer, so that we
who alone remain to thee may be participators of thy pain or joy. One
who grieves may gain consolation from those grieving with him; a
burden borne by many is more lightly borne. And if this tempest
abates, how happy shall we be to know it. Whatever the letters may
contain they will show at least that we are not forgotten. Has not
Seneca said in his letter to Lucilius, that the letters of an absent
friend are sweet? When no malice can stop your giving us this much of
you, do not let neglect prove a bar.
“You have written that long letter to console a friend with the story
of your own misfortunes, and have thereby roused our grief and added
to our desolation. Heal these new wounds. You owe to us a deeper debt
of friendship than to him, for we are not only friends, but friends
the dearest, and your daughters. After God, you alone are the founder
of this place, the builder of this oratory and of this congregation.
This new plantation for a holy purpose is your own; the delicate
plants need frequent watering. He who gives so much to his enemies,
should consider his daughters. Or, leaving out the others here, think
how this is owing me from thee: what thou owest to all women under
vows, thou shalt pay more devotedly to thine only one. How many books
have the holy fathers written for holy women, for their exhortation
and instruction! I marvel at thy forgetfulness of these frail
beginnings of our conversion. Neither respect of God nor love of us
nor the example of the blessed fathers, has led thee by speech or
letter to console me, cast about, and consumed with grief. This
obligation was the stronger, because the sacrament of marriage joined
thee to me, and I--every one sees it--cling to thee with unmeasured
love.
“Dearest, thou knowest--who knows not?--how much I lost in thee, and
that an infamous act of treachery robbed me of thee and of myself at
once. The greater my grief, the greater need of consolation, not from
another but from thee, that thou who art alone my cause of grief may
be alone my consolation. It is thou alone that canst sadden me or
gladden me or comfort me. And thou alone owest this to me, especially
since I have done thy will so utterly that, unable to offend thee, I
endured to wreck myself at thy command. Nay, more than this, love
turned to madness and cut itself off from hope of that which alone it
sought, when I obediently changed my garb and my heart too in order
that I might prove thee sole owner of my body as well as of my spirit.
God knows, I have ever sought in thee only thyself, desiring simply
thee and not what was thine. I asked no matrimonial contract, I looked
for no dowry; not my pleasure, not my will, but thine have I striven
to fulfil. And if the name of wife seemed holier or more potent, the
word mistress (_amica_) was always sweeter to me, or even--be not
angry!--concubine or harlot; for the more I lowered myself before
thee, the more I hoped to gain thy favour, and the less I should hurt
the glory of thy renown. This thou didst graciously remember, when
condescending to point out in that letter to a friend some of the
reasons (but not all!) why I preferred love to wedlock and liberty to
a chain. I call God to witness that if Augustus, the master of the
world, would honour me with marriage and invest me with equal rule, it
would still seem to me dearer and more honourable to be called thy
strumpet than his empress. He who is rich and powerful is not the
better man: that is a matter of fortune, this of merit. And she is
venal who marries a rich man sooner than a poor man, and yearns for a
husband’s riches rather than himself. Such a woman deserves pay and
not affection. She is not seeking the man but his goods, and would
wish, if possible, to prostitute herself to one still richer. Aspasia
put this clearly when she was trying to effect a reconciliation
between Xenophon and his wife: ‘Until you come to think that there is
nowhere else a better man or a woman more desirable, you will be
continually looking for what you think to be the best, and will wish
to be married to the man or woman who is the very best.’ This is
indeed a holy, rather than a philosophical sentiment, and wisdom, not
philosophy, speaks. This is the holy error and blessed deception
between man and wife, when affection perfect and unimpaired keeps
marriage inviolate not so much by continency of body as by chastity of
mind. But what with other women is an error, is, in my case, the
manifest truth: since what they suppose in their husbands, I--and the
whole world agrees--know to be in thee. My love for thee is truth,
being free from all error. Who among kings or philosophers can vie
with your fame? What country, what city does not thirst to see you?
Who, I ask, did not hurry to see you appearing in public and crane his
neck to catch a last glimpse as you departed? What wife, what maid did
not yearn for you absent, and burn when you were present? What queen
did not envy me my joys and couch? There were in you two qualities by
which you could draw the soul of any woman, the gift of poetry and the
gift of singing, gifts which other philosophers have lacked. As a
distraction from labour, you composed love-songs both in metre and in
rhyme, which for their sweet sentiment and music have been sung and
resung and have kept your name in every mouth. Your sweet melodies do
not permit even the illiterate to forget you. Because of these gifts
women sighed for your love. And, as these songs sung of our loves,
they quickly spread my name in many lands, and made me the envy of my
sex. What excellence of mind or body did not adorn your youth? No
woman, then envious, but now would pity me bereft of such delights.
What enemy even would not now be softened by the compassion due me?
“I have brought thee evil, thou knowest how innocently. Not the result
of the act but the disposition of the doer makes the crime; justice
does not consider what happens, but through what intent it happens. My
intent towards thee thou only hast proved and alone canst judge. I
commit everything to thy weighing and submit to thy decree.
“Tell me one thing: why, after our conversion, commanded by thee, did
I drop into oblivion, to be no more refreshed by speech of thine or
letter? Tell me, I say, if you can, or I will say what I feel and what
every one suspects: desire rather than friendship drew you to me, lust
rather than love. So when desire ceased, whatever you were manifesting
for its sake likewise vanished. This, beloved, is not so much my
opinion as the opinion of all. Would it were only mine and that thy
love might find defenders to argue away my pain. Would that I could
invent some reason to excuse you and also cover my cheapness. Listen,
I beg, to what I ask, and it will seem small and very easy to you.
Since I am cheated of your presence, at least put vows in words, of
which you have a store, and so keep before me the sweetness of thine
image. I shall vainly expect you to be bountiful in acts if I find you
a miser in words. Truly I thought that I merited much from you, when I
had done all for your sake and still continue in obedience. When
little more than a girl I took the hard vows of a nun, not from piety
but at your command. If I merit nothing from thee, how vain I deem my
labour! I can expect no reward from God, as I have done nothing from
love of Him. Thee hurrying to God I followed, or rather went before.
For, as you remembered how Lot’s wife turned back, you first delivered
me to God bound with the vow, and then yourself. That single act of
distrust, I confess, grieved me and made me blush. God knows, at your
command I would have followed or preceded you to fiery places. For my
heart is not with me, but with thee; and now more than ever, if not
with thee it is nowhere, for it cannot exist without thee. That my
heart may be well with thee, see to it, I beg; and it will be well if
it finds thee kind, rendering grace for grace--a little for much.
Beloved, would that thy love were less sure of me so that it might be
more solicitous; I have made you so secure that you are negligent.
Remember all I have done and think what you owe. While I enjoyed
carnal joy with you, many people were uncertain whether I acted from
love or lust. Now the end makes clear the beginning; I have cut myself
off from pleasure to obey thy will. I have kept nothing, save to be
more than ever thine. Think how wicked it were in thee where all the
more is due to render less, nothing almost; especially when little is
asked, and that so easy for you. In the name of God to whom you have
vowed yourself, give me that of thee which is possible, the
consolation of a letter. I promise, thus refreshed, to serve God more
readily. When of old you would call me to pleasures, you sought me
with frequent letters, and never failed with thy songs to keep thy
Heloïse on every tongue; the streets, the houses re-echoed me. How
much fitter that you should now incite me to God than then to lust?
Bethink thee what thou owest; heed what I ask; and a long letter I
will conclude with a brief ending: farewell only one!”
Remarks upon this letter would seem to profane a shrine--had the man
profaned that shrine? He had not always worshipped there. Heloïse knew
this, for all her love. She said it too, writing in phraseology which had
been brutalized through the denouncing spirit of Latin monasticism. How
truly she puts the situation and how clearly she thinks withal, discerning
as it were the beautiful and true in love and marriage. The whole letter
is well arranged, and written in a style showing the writer’s training in
Latin mediaeval rhetoric. It was not the less deeply felt because composed
with care and skill. Evidently the writer is of the Middle Ages; her
occasional prolixity was not of her sex but of her time; and she quotes
the ancients so naturally; what they say should be convincing. How the
letter bares the motives of her own conduct: not for God’s sake, or the
kingdom of heaven’s sake, but for Abaelard’s sake she became a nun. She
had no inclination thereto; her letters do not indicate that she ever
became really and spontaneously devoted to her calling. Abaelard was her
God, and as her God she held him to the end; though she applied herself to
the consideration of religious topics, as we shall see. Moreover, her
position as nun and abbess could not fail to force such topics on her
consideration.
Is there another such love-letter, setting forth a situation so
triple-barred and hopeless? And the love which fills the letter, which
throbs and burns in it, which speaks and argues in it, how absolute is
this love. It is love carried out to its full conclusions; it includes the
whole woman and the whole of her life; whatever lies beyond its ken and
care is scorned and rejected. This love is extreme in its humility, and
yet realizes its own purity and worth; it is grieved at the thought of
rousing a feeling baser than itself. Heloïse had been and still was
Heloïse, devoted and self-sacrificing in her love. But the situation has
become torture; her heart is filled with all manner of pain, old and new,
till it is driven to assert its right at least to consolation. Thus
Heloïse’s love becomes insistent and requiring. Was it possibly burdensome
to the man who now might wish to think no more of passion? who might wish
no longer to be loved in that way? In his reply Abaelard does not unveil
himself; he seems to take an attitude which may have been the most
faithful expression that he could devise of his changed self.
“To Heloïse his beloved sister in Christ, Abaelard her brother in the
Same.”
This superscription was a gentle reminder of their present
relationship--in Christ. The writer begins: his not having written since
their conversion was to be ascribed not to his negligence, but to his
confidence in her wisdom; he did not think that she who, so full of grace,
had consoled her sister nuns when prioress, could as abbess need teaching
or exhortation for the guidance of her daughters; but if, in her humility,
she felt the need of his instruction in matters pertaining to God, she
might write, and he would answer, as the Lord should grant. Thanks be to
God who had filled their hearts--hers and her nuns--with solicitude for
his perils, and had made them participators in his afflictions; through
their prayers the divine pity had protected him. He had hastened to send
the Psalter, requested by his sister, formerly dear to him in the world
and now most dear in Christ, to assist their prayers. The potency of
prayer, with God and the saints, and especially the prayer of women for
those dear to them, is frequently declared in Scripture; he cites a number
of passages to prove it. May these move her to pray for him. He refers
with affectionate gratitude to the prayers which the nuns had been
offering for him, and encloses a short prayer for his safety, which he
begs and implores may be used in their daily canonical hours. If the Lord,
however, delivers him into the hands of his enemies to kill him, or if he
meet his death in any way, he begs that his body may be brought to the
Paraclete for burial, so that the sight of his sepulchre may move his
daughters and sisters in Christ to pray for him; no place could be so safe
and salutary for the soul of one bitterly repenting of his sins, as that
consecrated to the true Paraclete--the Comforter; nor could fitter
Christian burial be found than among women devoted by their vows to
Christ. He begs that the great solicitude which they now have for his
bodily safety, they will then have for the salvation of his soul, and by
the suffrage of their prayer for the dead man show how they had loved him
when alive. The letter closes, not with a personal word to Heloïse, but
with this distich:
“Vive, vale, vivantque tuae valeantque sorores,
Vivite, sed Christo, quaeso, mei memores.”
Thus as against Heloïse’s beseeching love, Abaelard lifted his hands,
palms out, repelling it. His letter ignored all that filled the soul and
the letter of Heloïse. His reply did not lack words of spiritual
affection, and its tone was not as formal then as it now seems. When
Abaelard asked for the prayers of Heloïse and her nuns, he meant it; he
desired the efficacy of their prayers. Then he wished to be buried among
them. We are touched by this; but, again, Abaelard meant it, as he said,
for his soul’s welfare; it was no love sentiment. The letter stirred the
heart of Heloïse to a rebellious outcry against the cruelty of God, if not
of Abaelard, a soul’s cry against life and the calm attitude of one who no
longer was--or at least meant to be no longer--what he had been to her.
“To her only one, next to Christ, his only one in Christ.
“I wonder, my only one, that contrary to epistolary custom and the
natural order of things, in the salutation of your letter you have
placed me before you, a woman before a man, a wife before a husband, a
servant before her lord, a nun before a monk and priest, a deaconess
before an abbot. The proper order is for one writing to a superior to
put his own name last, but when writing to an inferior, the writer’s
name should precede. We also marvelled, that where you should have
afforded us consolation, you added to our desolation, and excited the
tears you should have quieted. How could we restrain our tears when
reading what you wrote towards the end: ‘If the Lord shall deliver me
into the hand of my enemies to slay me’! Dearest, how couldst thou
think or say that? May God never forget His handmaids, to leave them
living when you are no more! May He never allot to us that life, which
would be harder than any death! It is for you to perform our obsequies
and commend our souls to God, and send before to God those whom you
have gathered for Him--that you may have no further anxiety, and
follow us the more gladly because assured of our safety. Refrain, my
lord, I beg, from making the miserable most miserable with such words;
destroy not our life before we die. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof’--and that day will come to all with bitterness enough.
‘What need,’ says Seneca, ‘to add to evil, and destroy life before
death?’
“Thou askest, only one, that, in the event of thy death when absent
from us, we should have thy body brought to our cemetery, in order
that, being always in our memory, thou shouldst obtain greater benefit
from our prayers. Did you think that your memory could slip from us?
How could we pray, with distracted minds? What use of tongue or reason
would be left to us? When the mind is crazed against God it will not
placate Him with prayer so much as irritate Him with complaints. We
could only weep, pressing to follow rather than bury you. How could we
live after we had lost our life in you? The thought of your death is
death to us; what would be the actuality? God grant we shall not have
to pay those rites to one from whom we look for them; may we go before
and not follow! A heart crushed with grief is not calm, nor is a mind
tossed by troubles open to God. Do not, I beg, hinder the divine
service to which we are dedicated.
“What remains of hope for me when thou art gone? Or what reason to
continue in this pilgrimage, where I have no solace save thee? and of
thee I have but the bare knowledge that thou dost live, since thy
restoring presence is not granted me. Oh!--if it is right to say
it--how cruel has God been to me! Inclement Clemency! Fortune has
emptied her quiver against me, so that others have nothing to fear! If
indeed a single dart were left, no place could be found in me for a
new wound. Fortune fears only lest I escape her tortures by death.
Wretched and unhappy! in thee I was lifted above all women; in thee am
I the more fatally thrown down. What glory did I have in thee! what
ruin have I now! Fortune made me the happiest of women that she might
make me the most miserable. The injury was the more outrageous in that
all ways of right were broken. While we were abandoned to love’s
delights, the divine severity spared us. When we made the forbidden
lawful and by marriage wiped out fornication’s stains, the Lord’s
wrath broke on us, impatient of an unsullied bed when it long had
borne with one defiled. A man taken in adultery would have been amply
punished by what came to you. What others deserved for adultery, that
you got from the marriage which you thought had made amends for
everything. Adulteresses bring their paramours what your own wife
brought you. Not when we lived for pleasure, but when, separated, we
lived in chastity, you presiding at the Paris schools, I at thy
command dwelling with the nuns at Argenteuil; you devoted to study, I
to prayer and holy reading; it was then that you alone paid the
penalty for what we had done together. Alone you bore the punishment,
which you deserved less than I. When you had humiliated yourself and
elevated me and all my kin, you little merited that punishment either
from God or from those traitors. Miserable me, begotten to cause such
a crime! O womankind ever the ruin of the noblest men![4]
“Well the Tempter knows how easy is man’s overthrow through a wife. He
cast his malice over us, and the man whom he could not throw down
through fornication, he tried with marriage, using a good to bring
about an evil where evil means had failed. I thank God at least for
this, that the Tempter did not draw me to assent to that which became
the cause of the evil deed. Yet, although in this my mind absolves me,
too many sins had gone before to leave me guiltless of that crime. For
long a servant of forbidden joys, I earned the punishment which I now
suffer of past sins. Let the evil end be attributed to ill beginnings!
May my penitence be meet for what I have done, and may long remorse in
some way compensate for the penalty you suffered! What once you
suffered in the body, may I through contrition bear to the end of
life, that so I may make satisfaction to thee if not to God. To
confess the infirmities of my most wretched soul, I can find no
penitence to offer God, whom I never cease to accuse of utter cruelty
towards you. Rebellious to His rule, I offend Him with indignation
more than I placate Him with penitence. For that cannot be called the
sinner’s penitence where, whatever be the body’s suffering, the mind
retains the will to sin and still burns with the same desires. It is
easy in confession to accuse oneself of sins, and also to do penance
with the body; but hard indeed to turn the heart from the desire of
its greatest joys![5] Love’s pleasures, which we knew together, cannot
be made displeasing to me nor driven from my memory. Wherever I turn,
they press upon me, nor do they spare my dreams. Even in the solemn
moments of the Mass, when prayer should be the purest, their phantoms
catch my soul. When I should groan for what I have done, I sigh for
what I have lost. Not only our acts, but times and places stick fast
in my mind, and my body quivers. O truly wretched me, fit only to
utter this cry of the soul: ‘Wretched that I am, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?’ Would I could add with truth what
follows:--‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Such
thanksgiving, dearest, may be thine, by one bodily ill cured of many
tortures of the soul, and God may have been merciful where He seemed
against you; like a good physician who does not spare the pain needed
to save life. But I am tortured with passion and the fires of memory.
They call me chaste, who do not know me for a hypocrite. They look
upon purity of the flesh as virtue--which is of the soul, not of the
body. Having some praise from men, I merit none from God, who knows
the heart. I am called religious at a time when most religion is
hypocrisy, and when whoever keeps from offence against human law is
praised. Perhaps it seems praiseworthy and acceptable to God, through
decent conduct,--whatever the intent--to avoid scandalizing the Church
or causing the Lord’s name to be blasphemed or the religious Order
discredited. Perhaps it may be of grace just to abstain from evil. But
the Scripture says, ‘Refrain from evil and do good’; and vainly he
attempts either who does not act from love of God. God knows that I
have always feared to offend thee more than I feared to offend Him;
and have desired to please thee rather than Him. Thy command, not the
divine love, put on me this garb of religion. What a wretched life I
lead if I vainly endure all this here and am to have no reward
hereafter. My hypocrisy has long deceived you, as it has others, and
therefore you desire my prayers. Have no such confidence; I need your
prayers; do not withdraw their aid. Do not take away the medicine,
thinking me whole. Do not cease to think me needy; do not think me
strong; do not delay your help. Cease from praising me, I beg. No one
versed in medicine will judge of inner disease from outward view. Thy
praise is the more perilous because I love it, and desire to please
thee always. Be fearful rather than confident regarding me, so that I
may have the help of your care. Do not seek to spur me on, by quoting,
‘For strength is made perfect in weakness,’ or ‘He is not crowned
unless he have contended lawfully.’ I am not looking for the crown of
victory; enough for me to escape peril;--safer to shun peril than to
wage war! In whatever little corner of heaven God puts me, that will
satisfy me. Hear what Saint Jerome says: ‘I confess my weakness; I do
not wish to fight for the hope of victory, lest I lose.’ Why give up
certainties to follow the uncertain?”
This letter gives a view of Heloïse’s mind, its strong grasp and its
capacity for reasoning, though its reasoning is here distraught with
passion. Scathingly, half-blinded by her pain, she declares the
perversities of Providence, as they glared upon her. Such a disclosure of
the woman’s mind suggests how broadly based in thought and largely reared
was that great love into which her whole soul had been poured, the mind as
well as heart. Her love was great, unique, not only from its force of
feeling, but from the power and scope of thought by which passion and
feeling were carried out so far and fully to the last conclusions of
devotion. The letter also shows a woman driven by stress of misery to
utter cries and clutch at remedies that her calmer self would have put
by. It is not hypocrisy to conceal the desires or imaginings which one
would never act upon. To tell these is not true disclosure of oneself, but
slander. Torn by pain, Heloïse makes herself more vile and needy than in
other moments she knew herself to be. Yet the letter also uncovers her,
and in nakedness there is some truth. Doubtless her nun’s garb did clothe
a hypocrite. Whatever she felt--and here we see the worst she felt--before
the world she had to act the nun. We shall soon see how she forced herself
to act, or be, the nun toward Abaelard.
Abaelard replied in a letter filled with religious argument and
consolation. It was self-controlled, firm, authoritative, and strong in
those arguments regarding God’s mercy which have stood the test of time.
If they sometimes fail to satisfy the embittered soul, at least they are
the best that man has known. And withal, the letter is calmly and nobly
affectionate--what place was there for love’s protestations? They would
have increased the evil, adding fuel to Heloïse’s passionate misery.
The master-note is struck in the address: “To the spouse of Christ, His
servant.” The letter seeks to turn Heloïse’s thoughts to her nun’s calling
and her soul’s salvation. It divides her expressions of complaint under
four heads. First, he had put her name first, because she had become his
superior from the moment of her bridal with his master Christ. Jerome
writing to Eustochium called her Lady, when she had become the spouse of
Jerome’s Lord. Abaelard shows, with citations from the Song of Songs, the
glory of the spouse, and how her prayers should be sought by one who was
the servant of her Husband. Second, as to the terrors roused in her by his
mention of his peril and possible death, he points out that in her first
letter she had bidden him write of those perils; if they brought him
death, she should deem that a kind release. She should not wish to see his
miseries drawn out, even for her sake. Third, he shows that his praise of
her was justified even by her disclaimer of merit--as it is written, Who
humbles himself shall be exalted. He warns her against false modesty which
may be vanity.
He turns at last to the old and ceaseless plaint which she makes against
God for cruelty, when she should rather glorify Him; he had thought that
that bitterness had departed, so dangerous for her, so painful to him. If
she wished to please him, let her lay it aside; retaining it, she could
not please him or advance with him to blessedness; let her have this much
religion, not to separate herself from him hastening to God; let her take
comfort in their journeying to the same goal. He then shows her that his
punishment was just as well as merciful; he had deserved it from God and
also from Fulbert. If she will consider, she will see in it God’s justice
and His mercy; God had saved them from shipwreck; had raised a barrier
against shame and lust. For himself the punishment was purification, not
privation; will not she, as his inseparable comrade, participate in the
workings of this grace, even as she shared the guilt and its pardon? Once
he had thought of binding her to him in wedlock; but God found a means to
turn them both to Him; and the Lord was continuing His mercy towards her,
causing her to bring forth spiritual daughters, when otherwise she would
only have borne children in the flesh; in her the curse of Eve is turned
to the blessing of Mary. God had purified them both; whom God loveth He
correcteth. Oh! let her thoughts dwell with the Son of God, seized,
dragged, beaten, spit upon, crowned with thorns, hung on a vile cross. Let
her think of Him as her spouse, and for Him let her make lament; He bought
her with himself, He loved her. In comparison with His love, his own
(Abaelard’s) was lust, seeking the pleasure it could get from her. If he,
Abaelard, had suffered for her, it was not willingly nor for her sake, as
Christ had suffered, and for her salvation. Let her weep for Him who made
her whole, not for her corrupter; for her Redeemer, not for her defiler;
for the Lord who died for her, not for the living servant, himself just
freed from the death. Let his sister accept with patience what came to her
in mercy from Him who wounded the body to save the soul.
“We are one in Christ, as through marriage we were one flesh. Whatever
is thine is not alien to me. Christ is thine, because thou art His
spouse. And now thou hast me for a servant, who formerly was thy
master--a servant united to thee by spiritual love. I trust in thy
pleading with Him for such defence as my own prayers may not obtain.
That nothing may hinder this petition I have composed this prayer,
which I send thee: ‘O God, who formed woman from the side of man and
didst sanction the sacrament of marriage; who didst bestow upon my
frailty a cure for its incontinence; do not despise the prayers of thy
handmaid, and the prayers which I pour out for my sins and those of my
dear one. Pardon our great crimes, and may the enormity of our faults
find the greatness of thy ineffable mercy. Punish the culprits in the
present; spare, in the future. Thou hast joined us, Lord, and hast
divided us, as it pleased thee. Now complete most mercifully what thou
hast begun in mercy; and those whom thou hast divided in this world,
join eternally in heaven, thou who art our hope, our portion, our
expectation, our consolation, Lord blessed forever. Amen.’
“Farewell in Christ, spouse of Christ; in Christ farewell and in
Christ live. Amen.”
In her next letter Heloïse obeys, and turns her pen if not her thoughts to
the topics suggested by Abaelard’s admonitions. The short scholastically
phrased address cannot be rendered in any modern fashion: “Domino
specialiter sua singulariter.”
“That you may have no further reason to call me disobedient, your
command shall bridle the words of unrestrained grief; in writing I
will moderate my language, which I might be unable to do in speech.
Nothing is less in our power than our heart; which compels us to obey
more often than it obeys us. When our affections goad us, we cannot
keep the sudden impulse from breaking out in words; as it is written,
‘From the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ So I will withhold
my hand from writing whenever I am unable to control my words. Would
that the sorrowing heart were as ready to obey as the hand that
writes! You can afford some remedy to grief, even when unable to
dispel it quite. As one nail driven in drives out another, a new
thought pushes away its predecessor, and the mind is freed for a time.
A thought, moreover, takes the mind up and leads it from others more
effectually, if the subject of the thought is excellent and of great
importance.”
The rest of this long letter shows Heloïse putting her principles in
practice. She is forcing her mind to consider and her pen to discourse
upon topics which might properly occupy an abbess’s thoughts--topics,
moreover, which would satisfy Abaelard and call forth long letters in
reply. Whether she cared really for these matters or ever came to care
for them; or whether she turned to them to distract her mind and keep up
some poor makeshift of intercourse with one who would and could no longer
be her lover; or whether all these motives mingled, and in what
proportion, perhaps may best be left to Him who tries the heart.
The abbess writes:
“All of us here, servants of Christ and thy daughters, make two
requests of thy fathership which we deem most needful. The one is,
that you would instruct us concerning the origins of the order of nuns
and the authority for our calling. The other is, that you would draw
up a written _regula_, suitable for women, which shall prescribe and
set the order and usages of our convent. We do not find any adequate
_regula_ for women among the works of the holy Fathers. It is a
manifest defect in monastic institutions that the same rules should be
imposed upon both monks and nuns, and that the weaker sex should bear
the same monastic yoke as the stronger.”
Heloïse, having set this task for Abaelard, proceeds to show how the
various monastic _regulae_, from Benedict’s downward, failed to make
suitable provision for the habits and requirements and weaknesses of
women, the _regulae_ hitherto having been concerned with the weaknesses of
men. She enters upon matters of clothing and diet, and everything
concerning the lives of nuns. She writes as one learned in Scripture and
the writings of the Fathers, and sets the whole matter forth, in its
details, with admirable understanding of its intricacies. She concludes,
reminding Abaelard that it is for him in his lifetime to set a _regula_
for them to follow forever; after God, he is their founder. They might
thereafter have some teacher who would build in alien fashion; such a one
might have less care and understanding, and might not be as readily obeyed
as himself; it is for him to speak, and they will listen. _Vale._
The first of Heloïse’s letters is a great expression of a great love; in
the second, anguish drives the writer’s hand; in the third, she has gained
self-control; she suppresses her heart, and writes a letter which is
discursive and impersonal from the beginning to the little _Vale_ at the
end.
Abaelard returned a long epistle upon the Scriptural origin of the order
of nuns, and soon followed it with another, still longer, containing
instruction, advice, and rules for the nuns of the Paraclete. He also
wrote them a letter upon the study of Scripture. From this time forth he
proved his devotion to Heloïse and her nuns by the large body of writings
which he composed for their edification. Heloïse sent him a long list of
questions upon obscure phrases and knotty points of Scripture, which he
answered diligently in detail.[6] He then sent her a collection of hymns
written or “rearranged” by himself for the use of the nuns, accompanied by
a prefatory letter: “At thy prayers, my sister Heloïse, once dear to me in
the world, now most dear in Christ, I have composed what in Greek are
called hymns, and in Hebrew _tillim_.” He then explains why, yielding to
the requests of the nuns, he had written hymns, of which the Church had
such a store.
Next he composed for them a large volume of sermons, which he also sent
with a letter to Heloïse: “Having completed the book of hymns and
sequences, revered in Christ and loved sister Heloïse, I have hastened to
compose some sermons for your congregation; I have paid more attention to
the meaning than the language. But perhaps an unstudied style is well
suited to simple auditors. In composing and arranging these sermons I have
followed the order of Church festivals. Farewell in the Lord, servant of
His, once dear to me in the world, now most dear in Christ: in the flesh
then my wife, now my sister in the spirit and partner in our sacred
calling.”
At a subsequent period, when his opinions were condemned by the Council of
Sens, he sent to Heloïse a confession of faith. Shortly afterward his
stormy life found a last refuge in the monastery of Cluny. His closing
years (of peace?) are described in a letter to Heloïse from the good and
revered abbot, Peter the Venerable. He writes that he had received with
joy the letter which her affection had dictated,[7] and now took the first
opportunity to express his recognition of her affection and his reverence
for herself. He refers to her keenly prosecuted studies (so rare for
women) before taking the veil, and then to the glorious example of her
sage and holy life in the nun’s sacred calling--her victory over the proud
Prince of this World. His admiration for her was deep; his expression of
it was extreme. A learned, wise, and holy woman could not be praised more
ardently than Heloïse is praised by this good man. He had spoken of the
advantages his monastery would have derived from her presence, and then
continued:
“But although God’s providence denied us this, it was granted us to
enjoy the presence of him--who was yours--Master Peter Abaelard, a man
always to be spoken of with honour as a true servant of Christ and a
philosopher. The divine dispensation placed him in Cluny for his last
years, and through him enriched our monastery with treasure richer
than gold. No brief writing could do justice to his holy, humble, and
devoted life among us. I have not seen his equal in humility of garb
and manner. When in the crowd of our brethren I forced him to take a
first place, in meanness of clothing he appeared as the last of all.
Often I marvelled, as the monks walked past me, to see a man so great
and famous thus despise and abase himself. He was abstemious in food
and drink, refusing and condemning everything beyond the bare
necessities. He was assiduous in study, frequent in prayer, always
silent unless compelled to answer the question of some brother or
expound sacred themes before us. He partook of the sacrament as often
as possible. Truly his mind, his tongue, his act, taught and
exemplified religion, philosophy, and learning. So he dwelt with us, a
man simple and righteous, fearing God, turning from evil, consecrating
to God the latter days of his life. At last, because of his bodily
infirmities, I sent him to a quiet and salubrious retreat on the banks
of the Saone. There he bent over his books, as long as his strength
lasted, always praying, reading, writing, or dictating. In these
sacred exercises, not sleeping but watching, he was found by the
heavenly Visitor; who summoned him to the eternal wedding-feast not as
a foolish but as a wise virgin, bearing his lamp filled with oil--the
consciousness of a holy life. When he came to pay humanity’s last
debt, his illness was brief. With holy devotion he made confession of
the Catholic Faith, then of his sins. The brothers who were with him
can testify how devoutly he received the viaticum of that last
journey, and with what fervent faith he commended his body and soul to
his Redeemer. Thus this master, Peter, completed his days. He who was
known throughout the world by the fame of his teaching, entered the
school of Him who said, ‘Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of
heart’; and continuing meek and lowly he passed to Him, as we may
believe.
“Venerable and dearest sister in the Lord, the man who was once joined
to thee in the flesh, and then by the stronger chain of divine love,
him in thy stead, or as another thee, the Lord holds in His bosom; and
at the day of His coming, His grace will restore him to thee.”
The abbot afterwards visited the Paraclete, and on returning to Cluny
received this letter from the abbess:
“God’s mercy visiting us, we have been visited by the favour of your
graciousness. We are glad, kindest father, and we glory that your
greatness condescended to our insignificance. A visit from you is an
honour even to the great. The others may know the great benefit they
received from the presence of your highness. I cannot tell in words,
or even comprehend in thought, how beneficial and how sweet your
coming was to me. You, our abbot and our lord, celebrated mass with us
the sixteenth of the Calends of last December; you commended us to the
Holy Spirit; you nourished us with the Divine Word;--you gave us the
body of the master, and confirmed that gift from Cluny. To me also,
unworthy to be your servant, though by word and letter you have called
me sister, you gave as a pledge of sincere love the privilege of a
Tricenarium, to be performed by the brethren of Cluny, after my death,
for the benefit of my soul. You have promised to confirm this under
your seal. May you fulfil this, my lord. Might it please you also to
send to me that other sealed roll, containing the absolution of the
master, that I may hang it on his tomb. Remember also, for the love of
God, our--and your--Astralabius, to obtain for him a prebend from the
bishop of Paris or another. Farewell. May God preserve you, and grant
to us sometime your presence.”
The good abbot replied with a kind and affectionate letter, confirming his
gift of the Tricenarium, promising to do all he could for Astralabius, and
sending with his letter the record of Abaelard’s absolution, as follows:
“I, Peter, Abbot of Cluny, who received Peter Abaelard to be a monk in
Cluny, and granted his body, secretly transported, to the Abbess
Heloïse and the nuns of the Paraclete, absolve him, in the performance
of my office (_pro officio_) by the authority of the omnipotent God
and all the saints, from all his sins.”
Abaelard died in the year 1142, aged sixty-three. Twenty-one years
afterward Heloïse died at the same age, and was buried in the same tomb
with him at the Paraclete:
“Hoc tumulo abbatissa jacet prudens Heloïssa.”
CHAPTER XXVI
GERMAN CONSIDERATIONS: WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
A criticism of the world of feudalism, chivalry, and love may be had from
the impressions and temperamental reactions of a certain thinking atom
revolving in the same. The atom referred to was Walther von der
Vogelweide, a German, a knight, a Minnesinger, and a national poet whose
thoughts were moved by the instincts of his caste and race.
In language, temperament, and character, the Germans east of the Rhine
were Germans still in the thirteenth century. They had accepted, and even
vitally appropriated, Latin Christianity; those of them who were educated
had received a Latin education. Yet their natures, though somewhat
tempered, showed largely and distinctly German. Moreover, through the
centuries, they had acquired--or rather they had never lost--a national
antipathy toward those Roman papal well-springs of authority, which seemed
to suck back German gold and lands in return for spiritual assurance and
political betrayal.
A different and already mediaevalized element had also become part of
German culture, to wit, the matter of the French Arthurian romances and
the lyric fashions of Provence, which, working together, had captivated
modish German circles from the Rhine to the Danube. Nevertheless the
German character maintained itself in the _Minnelieder_ which followed
Provençal poetry, and in the _höfisch_ (courtly) epics which were palpable
translations from the French.[8] The distinguished group of German poets
whose lives fall around the year 1200, were as German as their language,
although they borrowed from abroad the form and matter of their
compositions.
There could be no better Germans than the two most thoughtful of this
group, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide. Most
Germanically the former wrestled with that ancient theme, “from suffering,
wisdom,” which he pressed into the tale of _Parzival_. His great poem,
achieved with toil and sweat, was mighty in its climaxes, and fit to
strengthen the hearts of those men who through sorrow and loneliness and
despair’s temptations were growing “slowly wise.”
The virtues which Wolfram praised and embodied in his hero were those
praised in the verses, and even, one may think, strugglingly exemplified
in the conduct, of Walther von der Vogelweide,[9] most famous of
Minnesingers, and a power in the German lands through his _Sprüche_, or
verses personal and political. Less is known of his life than of his whole
and manly views, his poetic fancies, his musings, his hopes, and great
depressions. Many places have claimed the honour of his birth, which took
place somewhat before 1170. He was poor, and through his youth and manhood
moved about from castle to castle, and from court to court, seeking to win
some recompense for his excellent verses and good company. Thus he learned
much of men, “climbing another’s stairs,” with his fellows, at the
Landgraf Hermann’s Wartburg, or at the Austrian ducal Court.
Walther’s _Sprüche_ render his moods most surely, and reflect his outlook
on the world. His charming _Minnelieder_ bear more conventional evidence.
The courtly German love-songs passing by this name were affected by the
conceits and conventions of the Provençal poetry upon which they were
modelled. A strong nature might use such with power, or break with their
influence. Walther made his own the high convention of trouvère and
troubadour, that love uplifts the lover’s being. Besides this, and besides
the lighter forms and phrases current in such poetry, his _Lieder_ carry
natural feeling, joy, and moral levity, according to the theme; they also
may express Walther’s convictions.
To take examples: Walther’s _Tagelied_[10] imitates the Provençal _alba_
(dawn), in which knight and truant lady bewail the coming of the light and
the parting which it brings. Far more joyous, and as immoral as one
pleases, is _Unter der Linde_, most famous of his songs. Marvellously it
gives the mood of love’s joy remembered--and anticipated too. The
immorality is complete (if we will be serious), and is rendered most
alluring by the utter gladness of the girl’s song--no repentance, no
regret; only joy and roguish laughter.
Walther was young, he was a knight and a Minnesinger; he had doubtless
loved, in this way! His love-songs have plenty to say of the red mouth,
good for kissing--I care not who knows it either. But he also realizes,
and greatly sings, the height and breadth and worth of love the true and
stable, the blessing and completion of two lives, which comes to a false
heart never.[11] He seems to feel it necessary to defend love for itself,
perhaps because _marriage_ was taken more seriously in this imitative
German literature than in the French and Provençal originals: “Who says
that love is sin, let him consider well. Many an honour dwells with her,
and troth and happiness. If one does ill to the other, love is grieved. I
do not mean false love; that were better named un-love. No friend of that,
am I.” But his thoughts turn quickly to love as a lasting union: “He happy
man, she happy woman, whose hearts are to each other true; both lives
increased in price and worth; blessed their years and all their days.”[12]
Giving play to his caustic temper, Walther puts scorn upon the light of
love: “Fool he who cannot understand what joy and good, love brings. But
the light man is ever pleased with light things, as is fit!”[13] This
Minnesinger applied most earnest standards to life; lofty his praise of
the qualities of womanhood, which are better than beauty or riches:
“woman” is a higher word than “lady”[14]--it took a German to say this.
“He who carries hidden sorrow in his heart, let him think upon a good
woman--he is freed.”[15] With a burst of patriotism, in one of his
greatest poems Walther praises German women as the best in all the
world.[16]
But even in the _Minnelieder_, Walther has his despondencies. One of the
most definite, and possibly conventional, was regret for love’s labour
lost, and the days of youth spent in service of an ungracious fair. The
poet wonders how it is that he who has helped other men is tongue-tied
before his lady. Again, his reflections broaden from thoughts of
unresponsive fair ones to a conviction of life’s thanklessness. “I have
well served the World (_Frau Welt_, Society), and gladly would serve her
more, but for her evil thanks and her way of preferring fools to me....
Come, World, give me better greeting--the loss is not all mine.” He knows
his good unbending temper which will not endure to hear ill spoken of the
upright. But he thinks, what is the use? why speak so sweetly, why sing,
when virtue and beauty are so lightly held, and every one does evil,
fearing nought? The verse which carries these reflections is tossing in
the squally haven of Society; soon the poet will encounter the wild sea
without. Still from the windy harbour comes one grand lament over art’s
decline: “The worst songs please, frogs’ voices! Oh, I laugh from anger!
Lady World, no score of mine is on your devil’s slate. Many a life of man
and woman have I made glad--might I so have gladdened mine! Here, I make
my Will, and bequeath my goods--to the envious my ill-luck, my sorrows to
the liars, my follies to false lovers, and to the ladies my heart’s
pain.”[17] He makes a solemn offering of his poems: “Good women, worthy
men, a loving greeting is my due. Forty years have I sung fittingly of
love; and now, take my songs which gladden, as my gift to you. Your favour
be my return. And with my staff I will fare on, still wooing worth with
undisheartened work, as from my childhood. So shall I be, in lowly lot,
one of the Noble--for me enough.”
To relish Walther’s love-songs, one need not know whether she was dark or
fair, kept forest-tryst or listened by some castle’s hearth, or in what
German land that castle stood. Likewise in his _Sprüche_, which have other
bearing, the roll of his protesting voice carries the universal human. To
comprehend them it were well to know that life was then as now niggardly
in rewarding virtue; beyond this, one needs to have the type-idea of the
Empire and the Papacy, those two powers which were set, somewhat
antagonistically, on the decree of God; both claiming the world’s
headship; the one, Roman in tradition, but in strength and temper German,
and of this world decidedly. The other, Roman in the genius of its
organization, and Christian in its subordination of the life below to the
life to come, if not in the methods of establishing this consummation;
Christian too, but more especially mediaeval, in its formal disdain for
whatever belonged to earth. In Germany these two partial opposites were
further antagonized, since the native resources recoiled from the foreign
drain upon them, and the struggling patriotism of a broken land resented
the pressure of a state within and above the state of duke and king and
emperor.
In Walther’s time Innocent III. swayed the nations from Peter’s throne.
Just before Innocent’s accession, Germany’s able emperor, Henry VI., died
suddenly in Sicily (September 1197), leaving an heir not two years old.
The queen-mother, dying the next year, bequeathed this child, Frederick,
to the paternal care of Innocent, his feudal as well as ghostly lord,
since the queen, for herself and child, had accepted the Pope as the
feudal suzerain of their kingdom of Sicily. In Germany (using that name
loosely and broadly) Philip Hohenstauffen, Henry’s brother and Duke of
Suabia, claimed the throne. His unequal opponent was Otto of Brunswick, of
the ever-rebellious house of Henry the Lion. The Pope opposed the
Hohenstauffen; but was obliged to acknowledge him when the course of the
ten years of wasting civil war in Germany decided in his
favour--whereupon, alack! Philip was murdered (1207). Quickly the Pope
turned back to Otto; but the latter, after he had been crowned king and
emperor, became intolerable to Innocent through the compulsion of his
position as the head of an empire inherently hostile to the papacy. To
thwart him Innocent set up his own ward, Frederick. Soon this precocious
youth began to make head against pope-forsaken Otto; and then the
excommunicated emperor was overthrown in 1214 by Philip Augustus of
France, who had intervened in Frederick’s favour. So Otto passed away,
and, some time after, Frederick was crowned German king at
Aix-la-Chapelle.[18] In the meanwhile Innocent died (1216), and amity
followed between Frederick and the gentle Honorius III., who crowned
Frederick emperor at Rome in 1220. This peace ended quickly when the
sterner Gregory IX. ascended the papal throne on the death of Honorius in
1227.
Walther’s life extended through these events. Though apparently changing
sides under the stress of his necessities, he was patriotically German to
the end. First he clave to the Hohenstauffen, Philip, as the true upholder
of German interests against Otto and the Pope. On Philip’s death, he
turned to Otto; but with all the world left him at last for Frederick. It
is known that Walther, an easily angered man, felt himself ill-used by
Otto and justified in turning to the open-handed Frederick, who finally
gave him a small fief. To the last, Walther upheld him as Germany’s
sovereign. Probably the poet died in the year 1228, just as Gregory was
succeeding Honorius, and the death-struggle of the Empire with the Papacy
was opening.
With no light heart, as well may be imagined, had Walther looked about him
on the death of the emperor Henry in 1197. “I sat upon a rock, crossed
knee on knee, and with elbow so supported, chin on hand I leaned.
Anxiously I pondered. I could see no way to win gain without loss. Honour
and riches do not go hand in hand, both of less value than God’s favour.
Would I have them all? Alas! riches and worldly honour and God’s favour
come not within the closure of one heart’s wishes. The ways are barred;
perfidy lurks in secret, and might walks the highroads. Peace and law are
wounded.”[19]
The personal dilemma of the poet with his fortune to make, but desirous of
doing right, mirrors the desperate situation of the State: “Woe is thee,
German tongue; ill stand thy order and thy honour!--I hear the lies of
Rome betraying two kings!” And in verses of wrath Walther inveighs against
the Pope. The sweeping nature of his denunciation raises the question
whether he merely attacked the supposed treachery of the reigning pope, or
was opposed to the papacy as an institution hostile to the German nation.
The answer is not clear. Mediaeval denunciations of the Church range from
indictments of particular abuses, on through more general invectives, to
the clear protests of heretics impugning the ecclesiastical system. It is
not always easy to ascertain the speaker’s meaning. Usually the abuse and
not the system is attacked. Hostility to the latter, however sweeping the
language of satirist or preacher, is not lightly to be inferred. The
invectives of St. Bernard and Damiani are very broad; but where had the
Church more devoted sons? Even the satirists composing in Old French
rarely intended an assault upon her spiritual authority. It would seem as
if, at least in the Romance countries, one must look for such hostility to
heretical circles, the Waldenses for example. And from the orthodox
mediaeval standpoint, this was their most accursed heresy.
It would have been hard for any German to use broader language than some
of the French satirists and Latin castigators. If there was a difference,
it must be sought in the specific matter of the German disapproval viewed
in connection with the political situation. Was a position ever taken
incompatible with the Church’s absolute spiritual authority? or one
intrinsically irreconcilable with the secular power of the papacy? At any
time, in any country, papal claims might become irreconcilable with the
royal prerogative--as William the Conqueror had held those of Gregory VII.
in England, and as, two centuries afterwards, Philip the Fair was to hold
those of Boniface VIII. in France. But in neither case was there such
sheer and fundamental antagonism as men felt to exist between the Empire
and the Papacy. Perhaps it was possible in the early thirteenth century
for a German whose whole heart was on the German side to dispute even the
sacerdotal principle of papal authority. It is hard to judge otherwise of
Freidank, the very German composer or collector of trenchant sayings in
the early thirteenth century. Many of these sneer at Rome and the Pope,
and some of them strike the gist of the matter: “Sunde nieman mac vergeben
wan Got alein” (“God alone can forgive sins”). This is the direct
statement; he gives its scornful converse: “Could the Pope absolve me from
my oaths and duties, I’d let other sureties go and fasten to him
alone.”[20] Such words mean denial of the Church’s authority to forgive,
and the Pope’s to grant absolution from oaths of allegiance. Freidank is
very near rejecting the principles of the ecclesiastical system.
Walther, Freidank’s contemporary, is more picturesque: “King Constantine,
he gave so much--as I will tell you--to the Chair of Rome: spear, cross,
and crown. At once the angels cried: ‘Alas! Alas! Alas! Christendom before
stood crowned with righteousness. Now is poison fallen on her, and her
honey turned to gall--sad for the world henceforth!’ To-day the princes
all live in honour; only their highest languishes--so works the priest’s
election. Be that denounced to thee, sweet God! The priests would upset
laymen’s rights: true is the angels’ prophecy.”[21]
On Constantine’s apocryphal gift, symbolized by the emblems of Christ’s
passion, rested the secular authority of the popes, which Walther laments
with the angels. “The Chair of Rome was first set up by Sorcerer Gerbert!
[Queer history this, but we see what he means.] He destroyed his own soul
only; but this one would bring down Christendom with him to perdition.
When will all tongues call Heaven to arms, and ask God how long He will
sleep? They bring to nought His work, distort His Word. His steward steals
His treasure; His judge robs here and murders there; His shepherd has
become a wolf among His sheep.”[22] The clergy point their fingers
heavenward while they travel fast to hell.[23] How laughs the Pope at us,
when at home with his Italians, at the way he empties our German pockets
into his “poor boxes.”[24] Walther’s hatred of the foreign Pope is roused
at every point. And at last, in a _Spruch_ full of implied meaning, he
declares that Christ’s word as to the tribute money meant that the emperor
should receive his royal due.[25]
These utterances, considered in the light of the political and racial
situation, seem to deny, at least implicitly, the secular power of the
papacy. Yet in matters of religion Walther apparently was entirely
orthodox, and a pious Christian. He has left a sweet prayer to Christ,
with ample recognition of the angels and the saints, and a beautiful verse
of penitent contrition, in which he confesses his sins to God very
directly--how that he does the wrong, and leaves the right, and fails in
love of neighbour. “Father, Son, may thy Spirit lighten mine; how may I
love him who does me ill? Ever dear to me is he who treats me well!”[26]
Walther’s questing spirit also pondered over God’s greatness and
incomprehensibility.[27] His open mind is shown by the famous line: “Him
(God) Christians, Jews, and heathen serve,”[28] a breadth of view shared
by his friend Wolfram von Eschenbach, who speaks of the chaste virtue of a
heathen lady as equal to baptism.[29]
The personal lot of this proud heart was not an easy one; homelessness
broke him down, and the bitterness of eating others’ bread. Too well had
he learned of the world and all its changing ways, and how poor becomes
the soul that follows them. Mortality is a trite sorrow; there are worse:
“We all complain that the old die and pass away; rather let us lament
taints of another hue, that troth and seemliness and honour are
dead.”[30] At the last Walther’s grey memory of life and his vainly
yearning hope took form in a great elegy. After long years he seemed, with
heavy steps, and leaning on his wanderer’s staff, to be returning to a
home which was changed forever: “Alas! whither are they vanished, my many
years! Did I dream my life, or is it real? what I once deemed it, was it
that? And now I wake, and all the things and people once familiar,
strange! My playmates, dull and old! And the fields changed; only that the
streams still flow as then they flowed, my heart would break with thinking
on the glad days, vanished in the sea. And the young people! slow and
mirthless! and the knights go clad as peasants! Ah! Rome! thy ban! Our
groans have stilled the song of birds. Fool I, to speak and so
despair,--and the earth looks fair! Up knights again: your swords, your
armour! would to God I might fare with your victor band, and gain my pay
too--not in lands of earth! Oh! might I win the eternal crown from that
sweet voyage beyond the sea, then would I sing O joy! and never more,
alas--never more, alas.”[31]
BOOK V
SYMBOLISM
CHAPTER XXVII
SCRIPTURAL ALLEGORIES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES; HONORIUS OF AUTUN
Words, pictures, and other vehicles of expression are symbols of whatever
they are intended to designate. A certain unavoidable symbolism also
inheres in human mental processes; for the mind in knowing “turns itself
to images,” as Aquinas says following Aristotle; and every statement or
formulation is a casting together of data in some presentable and
representative form. An example is the Apostles’ Creed, called also by
this very name of Symbol, being a casting together, an elementary formula,
of the essentials of the Christian Faith. In the same sense the “law of
gravitation” or a moral precept is a deduction, induction, or gathering
together into a representative symbol, of otherwise unassembled and
uncorrelated experience. In the present and following chapters, however,
the term symbol will be used in its common acceptation to indicate a
thing, an act, or a word invested with an adventitious representative
significance. All statements or expressions (through language or by means
of pictures) which are intended to carry, besides their palpable meaning,
another which is veiled and more spiritual, are symbolical or figurative,
and more specifically are called allegories.[32]
These devices of the mind have a history as old as humanity. From
inscrutable beginnings, in time they become recognized as makeshifts; yet
they remain prone to enter new stages of confusion. The mind seeking to
express the transcendental, avails itself of symbols. All religions have
teemed with them, in their primitive phases scarcely distinguishing
between symbol and fact; then a difference becomes evident to
clearer-minded men, while perhaps at the same time others are elaborately
maintaining that the symbol magically is, or brings to pass, that which it
represents. Such obscuring mysticism existed not merely in confused Egypt
and Brahminical India, but everywhere--in antique Greece and Rome, and
then afterwards through the times of the Christian Church Fathers and the
entire Middle Ages. Fact and symbol are seen constantly closing together
and becoming each other like the serpent-souls in the twenty-fifth canto
of Dante’s _Inferno_.
Allegory properly speaking, which involves a conscious and sustained
effort to invest concrete or material statements with more general or
spiritual meaning, played an interesting rôle in epochs antecedent to the
patristic and mediaeval periods. Even before Plato’s time the personal
myths of the gods shocked the Greek ethical intellect, which thereupon
proceeded to convert them into allegories. Greek allegorical
interpretation of ancient myth was apologetic to both the critical mind
and the moral sense.
With Philo, the Hellenizing Jew of Alexandria, whose philosophy revolted
from the literal text of Genesis, the motive for allegorical
interpretation was similar. But the document before him was most unlike
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. Genesis contained no palpably immoral stories
of Jehovah to be explained away. Its account of divine creation and human
beginnings merely needed to be invested with further ethical meaning. So
Philo made cardinal virtues of the four rivers of Eden, and through like
allegorical conceits transformed the Book of Genesis into a system of
Hellenistic ethics. Not cosmogonic myths, but moral meanings, he had
discovered in his document.
Advancing along the path which Philo found, Christian allegorical
interpretation undertook to substantiate the validity of the Gospel. To
this end it fixed special symbolical meanings upon the Old Testament
narratives, so as to make them into prefigurative testimonies to the truth
of Christian teachings.[33] Allegory was also called on to justify, as
against educated pagans, certain acts of that heroic but peccant “type” of
Christ, David, the son of Jesse. Such special apologetic needs hardly
affected the allegorical interpretation of the Gospel itself, which began
at an early day, and from the first was spiritual and anagogic, constantly
straining on to educe further salutary meaning from the text.
The Greek and Latin Church Fathers created the mass of doctrine, including
Scriptural interpretation,[34] upon which mediaeval theologians were to
expend their systematizing and reconstructive labours. Through the Middle
Ages, the course of allegory and symbolism strikingly illustrates the
mediaeval way of using the patristic heritage--first painfully learning
it, then making it their own, and at last creating by means of that which
they had organically appropriated. Allegory and symbolism were to impress
the Middle Ages as perhaps no other element of their inheritance. The
mediaeval man thought and felt in symbols, and the sequence of his thought
moved as frequently from symbol to symbol as from fact to fact.
The allegorical faculty with the Fathers was dogmatic and theological;
ingenious in devising useful interpretations, but oblivious to all
reasonable propriety in the meaning which it twisted into the text:
controversial necessities readily overrode the rational and moral
requirements of the “historical” or “literal” meaning. For the deeply
realized allegorical significance was a law unto itself. These
characteristics of patristic allegory passed over to the Middle Ages,
which in the course of time were to impress human qualities upon the
patristic material.
The Bathsheba and Uriah episode in the life of David was of course taken
allegorically, and affords a curious example of a patristic interpretation
originating in the exigencies of controversy, and then becoming
authoritative for later periods when the echoes of the old controversy had
long been silent. Augustine was called upon to answer the book of the
clever Manichaean, Faustus, the stress of whose attacks was directed
against the Old Testament. Faustus declared that he did not blaspheme “the
law and the prophets,” but rejected merely the special Hebrew customs and
the vile calumnies of the Old Testament writers, imputing shameful acts to
prophets and patriarchs. In his list of shocking narratives to be
rejected, was the story “that David after having had such a number of
wives, defiled the little woman of Uriah his soldier, and caused him to be
slain in battle.”[35]
Augustine responds with a general exclamation at the Manichaean’s failure
to understand the sacramental symbols (_sacramenta_) of the Law and the
deeds of the prophets. He then speaks of certain Old Testament statements
regarding God and His demands, and proceeds to consider the nature of sin
and the questionable deeds of the prophets. Some of the reprehended deeds
he justifies, as, for instance, Abraham’s intercourse with Hagar and his
deceit in telling Abimelech that Sara was his sister when she was his
wife. He also declares that Sara typifies the Church, which is the secret
spouse of Christ. Proceeding further, he does not justify, but palliates,
the conduct of Lot and his daughters, and then introduces its typological
significance. At length he comes to David. First he gives a noble estimate
of David’s character, his righteousness, his liability to sin, and his
quick penitence.[36] Afterwards he considers, briefly as he says, what
David’s sin with Bathsheba signifies prophetically.[37] The passage may be
given to show what a mixture of banality and disregard of moral propriety
in drawing analogies might emanate from the best mind among the Latin
Fathers, and be repeated by later transitional and mediaeval commentators.
“The names themselves when interpreted indicate what this deed
prefigured. David is interpreted ‘Strong of hand’ or ‘Desirable.’ And
what is stronger than that Lion of the tribe of Judah that overcame
the world? and what is more desirable than him of whom the prophet
says: ‘The desired of all nations shall come’ (Hag. ii. 7)? Bathsheba
means ‘well of satiety,’ or ‘seventh well.’ Whichever of these
interpretations we adopt will suit. For in Canticles the Bride who is
the Church is called a well of living water (Cant. iv. 15); and to
this well the name of the seventh number is joined in the sense of
Holy Spirit; and this because of Pentecost (the fiftieth), the day on
which the Holy Spirit came. For that same festival is of the weeks
(_de septimanis constare_) as the Book of Tobit testifies. Then to
forty-nine, which is seven times seven, one is added, whereby unity is
commended. By this spiritual, that is ‘Seven-natured’ (_septenario_)
gift the Church is made a well of satiety; because there is made in
her a well of living water springing up unto everlasting life, which
whoso has shall never thirst (John iv. 14). Uriah, indeed, who had
been her husband, what but devil does his name signify? In whose
vilest wedlock all those were bound whom the grace of God sets free,
that the Church without spot or wrinkle may be married to her own
Saviour. For Uriah is interpreted, ‘My light of God’; and Hittite
means ‘cut off,’ or he who does not stand in truth, but by the guilt
of pride is cut off from the supernal light which he had from God; or
it means, he who in falling away from his true strength which was
lost, nevertheless fashioneth himself into an angel of light (2 Cor.
xi. 14), daring to say: ‘My light is of God.’ Therefore this David
gravely and wickedly sinned; and God rebuked his crime through the
prophet with a threat; and he himself washed it away by repenting. Yet
likewise He, the desired of all nations, was enamoured of the Church
bathing upon the roof, that is cleansing herself from the filth of the
world, and in spiritual contemplation surmounting and trampling on her
house of clay; and knowledge of her having been had at their first
meeting, He afterwards killed the devil, apart from her, and joined
her to himself in perpetual marriage. Therefore we hate the sin but
will not quench the prophecy. Let us love that (_illum_) David, who is
so greatly to be loved, who through mercy freed us from the devil; and
let us also love that (_istum_) David who by the humility of penitence
healed in himself so deep a wound of sin.”[38]
Augustine’s interpretation of the story of David and Bathsheba was
embodied verbatim in a work upon the Old Testament by Isidore of
Seville.[39] The voluminous commentator Rabanus Maurus took the same, also
verbatim, either from Isidore or Augustine.[40] His pupil, Walafrid
Strabo, in his famous _Glossa ordinaria_, cited, probably from Rabanus,
the first part of the passage as far as the reference to the well of
living water from John’s Gospel. He abridged the matter somewhat, thus
showing the smoothing compiler’s art which was to bring his _Glossa
ordinaria_ into such general use. Walafrid omitted the lines declaring
that Uriah signified the devil. He did cite, however, again probably from
Rabanus, part of a long passage, taken by Rabanus from Gregory the Great,
where Bathsheba is declared to be the letter of the Law, united to a
carnal people, which David (Christ) joins to himself in a spiritual sense.
Uriah is that carnal people, to wit, the Jews.[41]
Thus far as to the comments on the narrative from the eleventh chapter of
the Second Book of Samuel, otherwise called the Second Book of Kings. When
Rabanus came to explain the sixth verse of the first chapter of
Matthew--“And David begat Solomon from her who was the wife of Uriah”--he
said: “Uriah indeed, that is interpreted ‘My light of God,’ signifies the
devil, who fashions himself into an angel of light, daring to say to God:
‘My light of God,’ and ‘I will be like unto the Most High’ (Isaiah
xiv.).”[42] Here pupil Walafrid follows his master, but adds: “Whose
bewedded Church Christ became enamoured of from the terrace of His
paternal majesty and joined her, made beautiful, to himself in
matrimony.”[43]
With Rabanus and Walafrid, as with Isidore and the Venerable Bede who were
the links between these Carolingians and the Fathers, the interest in
Scripture relates to its allegorical significance. Unmindful of the
obvious and literal meaning of the text, they were unabashed by the
incongruity of their allegorical interpretations.[44] Rabanus, for
instance, had unbounded enthusiasm for Exodus, because of its rich
symbolism:
“Among the Scriptures embraced in the Pentateuch of the Law, the Book
of Exodus excels in merit; in it almost all the sacraments by which
the present Church is founded, nourished, and ruled, are figuratively
set forth. For there, through the corporeal exit of the children of
Israel from the terrestrial Egypt, our exit from the spiritual Egypt
is made clear. There again, through the crossing of the Red Sea and
the submersion of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, the mystery of Baptism
and the destruction of spiritual enemies are figured. There the
immolation of the typifying lamb and the celebration of the Passover
suggest the passion of the true Lamb and our redemption. There manna
from heaven and drink from a rock are given in order to teach us to
desire the heavenly bread and the drink of life. There precepts and
judgments are delivered to the people of God upon a mountain in order
that we may learn to be subject to supernal discipline. There the
construction of the tabernacle and its vessels is ordered to take
place with worship and sacrifices, that therein the adornment of the
marvellous Church and the rites of spiritual sacrifices may be
indicated. There the perfumes of incense and anointment are prepared,
in order that the sanctification of the Holy Spirit and the mystery of
sacred prayers may be commended to us.”[45]
The same commentator compiled a dictionary of allegories entitled
_Allegoriae in universam sacram scripturam_,[46] saying in his lumbering
Preface:
“Whoever desires to arrive at an understanding of Holy Scripture
should consider when he should take the narrative historically, when
allegorically, when anagogically, and when tropologically. For these
four ways of understanding, to wit, history, allegory, tropology,
anagogy, we call the four daughters of wisdom, who cannot fully be
searched out without a prior knowledge of these. Through them Mother
Wisdom feeds her adopted children, giving to tender beginners drink in
the milk of history; to those advancing in faith, the food of
allegory; to the strenuous and sweating doers of good works, satiety
in the savoury refection of tropology; and finally, to those raised
from the depths through contempt of the earthly and through heavenly
desire progressing towards the summit, the sober intoxication of
theoretical contemplation in the wine of anagogy.... History, through
the ensample which it gives of perfect men, incites the reader to the
imitation of holiness; allegory, in the revelation of faith, leads to
a knowledge of truth; tropology, in the instruction of morals, to a
love of virtue; anagogy, in the display of everlasting joys, to a
desire of eternal felicity. In the house of our soul, history lays the
foundation, allegory erects the walls, anagogy puts on the roof, while
tropology provides ornament, within through the disposition, without
through the effect of the good work.”[47]
This work, alphabetically arranged, gave the allegorical significations of
words used in the Vulgate, with examples; for instance:
“_Ager_ (field) is the world, as in the Gospel: ‘To the man who sowed
good seed in his field,’ that is to Christ, who sows preaching through
the world.
“_Amicus_ (friend) is Christ, as in Canticles: ‘He is my friend,
daughters of Jerusalem,’ for He loved His Church so much that He would
die for her....
“_Ancilla_ (handmaid) is the Church, as in the Psalms: ‘Make safe the
son of thine handmaid,’ that is me, who am a member of the Church.
_Ancilla_, corruptible flesh, as in Genesis: ‘Cast out the handmaid
and her son,’ that is, despise the flesh and its carnal fruit.
_Ancilla_, preachers of the Church, as in Job: ‘He will bind her with
his handmaids,’[48] because the Lord through His preachers conquered
the devil. _Ancilla_, the effeminate minds of the Jews, as in Job:
‘Thy handmaids hold me as a stranger,’ because the effeminate minds of
the Jews knew me through faith.[49] _Ancilla_, the lowly, as in
Genesis, ‘and meal for his handmaids,’ because Holy Church affords
spiritual refection to the lowly.
“_Aqua_ is the Holy Spirit, Christ, subtle wisdom, loquacity, temporal
greed, baptism, the hidden speech of the prophets, the holy preaching
of Christ, compunction, temporal prosperity, adversity, human
knowledge, this world’s wealth, the literal meaning carnal pleasure,
eternal reflection, holy angels, souls of the blessed, saints,
humility’s lament, the devotions of the saints, sins of the elect
which God condones, knowledge of the heretics, persecutions, unstable
thoughts, the blandishments of temptations, the pleasures of the
wicked, the punishments of hell.
“_Mons_, mountain (in the singular) the Virgin Mary, _montes_ (in the
plural) angels, apostles, sublime precepts, the two Testaments, inner
meditations, proud men, the Gentiles, evil spirits.”[50]
Thus Rabanus dragged into his compilation every meaning that had ever been
ascribed to the words defined. In him and his contemporaries, the
allegorical material, apart from its utility for salvation, seems void of
human interest or poetic quality, as yet unstirred by a breath of life.
That was to enter, as allegory and all manner of symbolism began to form
the temper of mediaeval thought, and became a chosen vessel of the
mediaeval spirit in poetry and art. The vital change had taken place
before the twelfth century had turned its first quarter.[51]
There flourished at this time a worthy monk named Honorius of Autun, also
called “the Solitary.” It has been argued, and vehemently contradicted,
that he was of German birth. At all events, monk he was and teacher at
Autun. Those about him sought his instruction, and also requested him to
put his discourses into writing for their use; their request reads as if
at that time Honorius had retired from among them.[52] This is all that is
known of the man who composed the most popular handbook of sermons in the
Middle Ages. It was called the _Speculum ecclesiae_. Honorius may never
have preached these sermons; but still his book exists with sermons for
Sundays, saints’ days, and other Church festivals; a sermon also to be
preached at Church dedications, and one “sermo generalis,” very useful,
since it touched up all orders of society in succession, and a preacher
might take or omit according to his audience. Before beginning, the
preacher is directed to make the sign of the cross and invoke the Holy
Spirit: he is admonished first to pronounce his text of Scripture in the
Latin tongue, and then expound it in the vernacular;[53] he is instructed
as to what portions of certain sermons should be used under special
circumstances, and what parts he may omit in winter when the church is
cold, or when in summer it is too hot; or this is left quite to his
discretion: “Here make an end if you wish; but if time permits, continue
thus.”
Most of these sermons are short, and contain much excellent moral advice
put simply and directly. They also make constant use of allegory, and
evidently Honorius’s chief care in their composition was to expound his
text allegorically and point the allegory’s application to the needs of
his supposed audience. Neither he nor any man of his time devised many
novel allegorical interpretations; but the old ones had at length become
part of the mediaeval spirit and the regular means of apprehending the
force and meaning of Scripture. Consequently Honorius handles his
allegories more easily, and makes a more natural human application of
them, than Rabanus or Walafrid had done. Sometimes the allegory seems to
ignore the moral lesson of the literal facts; but while a smile may escape
us in reading Honorius, the allegories in his sermons are rarely strained
and shocking, likewise rarely dull. A general point from which he regards
the narratives and institutions of the Old Testament is summed up in his
statement, that for us Christ turned all provisions of the law into
spiritual sacraments.[54] The whole Old Testament has pre-figurative
significance and spiritual meaning; and likewise every narrative in the
Gospels is spiritual.
Two or three examples will illustrate Honorius’s edifying way of using
allegory. His sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost is typical of
his manner. The text is from the thirty-first[55] Psalm: “Blessed is the
man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” Opening with an exhortation to
penitence and tears and almsgiving, the preacher turns to the
self-righteous “whose obstinacy the Lord curbs in the Gospel for the day,
telling how two went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, to
wit, one of the Jewish clergy, the other a Publican.” After proceeding for
a while with sound and obvious comment on the situation, Honorius says:
“By the two men who went up into the temple to pray, two peoples, the
Jewish and the Gentile, are meant. The Pharisee who went close to the
altar is the Jewish people, who possessed the Sanctuary and the Ark.
He tells aloud his merits in the temple, because in the world he
boasts of his observance of the law.
“The Publican who stands afar off is the Gentile people, who were far
off from the worship of God. He did not lift up his eyes to heaven,
because the Gentile was agape at the things of earth. He beat his
breast when he bewailed his error through penitence; and because he
humbled himself in confession, God exalted him through pardon. Let us
also, beloved, thus stand afar off, deeming ourselves unworthy of the
holy sacraments and the companionship of the saints. Let us not lift
up our eyes to heaven, but deem ourselves unworthy of it. Let us beat
our breasts and punish our misdeeds with tears. Let us fall prostrate
before God; and let us weep in the presence of the Lord who made us,
so that He may turn our lament to joy, rend asunder our garb of
mourning, and clothe us with happiness.”
Honorius lingers a moment with some further exhortations suggested by his
parable, and then turns to the edification to be found in fables wisely
composed by profane writers. Let not the congregation be scandalized; for
the children of Israel despoiled the Egyptians of gold and gems and
precious vesture, which they afterwards devoted to completing the
tabernacle. Pious Christians spoil the Egyptians when they turn profane
studies to spiritual account. The philosophers tell of a woman bound to a
revolving wheel, her head now up now down. The wheel is this world’s
glory, and the woman is that fortune which depends on it. Again, they tell
of one who tries to roll a stone to the top of a mountain; but, near the
top, it hurls the wretch prostrate with its weight and crashes back to the
bottom; and again, of one whose liver is eaten by a vulture, and, when
consumed, grows again. The man who pushes up the stone is he who
toilsomely amasses dignities, to be plunged by them to hell; and he of the
liver is the man upon whose heart lust feeds. From that pest, they say,
Medusa sprang, with noble form exciting many to lust, but with her look
turning them to stone. She is wantonness, who turns to stone the hearts of
the lewd through their lustful pleasure. Perseus slew her, covering
himself with his crystalline shield; for the strong man, gazing into
virtue’s mirror, averts his heart’s countenance (_i.e._ from wantonness).
The sword with which he kills her is the fear of everlasting fire.
Then, continues Honorius, we read of a boy brought up by one of the
Fathers in a hermitage; but as he grew to youth he was tickled with lust.
The Father commanded him to go alone into the desert and pass forty days
in fasting and prayer. When some twenty days had passed, there appeared a
naked woman foul and stinking, who thrust herself upon him, and he, unable
to endure her stench, began to repel her. At which she asked: “Why do you
shudder at the sight of me for whom you burned? I am the image of lust,
which appears sweet to men’s hearts. If you had not obeyed the Father, you
would have been overthrown by me as others have been.” So he thanked God
for snatching him from the spirit of fornication. Many other examples lead
us to the path of life.
Honorius closes with the story of the “Three Fools,” observed by a certain
Father: the first an Ethiopian who was unable to move a faggot of wood,
which he would continually unbind and make still heavier by adding further
sticks; the second, a man pouring water into a vase which had no bottom;
and, thirdly, the two men who came bearing before them crosswise a beam of
wood; as they neared the city gate neither would let the other precede him
even a little, and so both remained without. The Ethiopian who adds to his
insupportable faggot is he who continually increases his weight of sin,
adding new sins to old ones unrepented of; he who pours water into the
vase with no bottom is he who by his uncleanness loses the merit of his
good acts; and the two who bear the beam crosswise are those bound by the
yoke of Pride.[56]
Such are good examples of the queer stories to which preachers resorted.
One notices that whatever be the source from which Honorius draws, his
interest is always in the allegory found in the narratives. Another very
apt example of his manner is his treatment of the story of the Good
Samaritan, so often depicted on Gothic church windows. For us this parable
carries an exhaustless wealth of direct application in human life; it was
regarded very differently by Honorius and the glass painters, whose
windows are a pictorial transcription of the first half of his
sermon.[57]
“Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly”--this
is the text; and Honorius proceeds:
“Adam was the unhappy man who through the counsel of the wicked
departed from his native land of Paradise and dragged all his
descendants into this exile. He thus stood in the way of sinners,
because he remained stable in sin. He sat ‘in the seat of the
scornful,’ because by evil example he taught others to sin. But Christ
arose, the blessed man who walketh in the counsel of the Father from
the hall of heaven into prison after the lost servant. He did not walk
in the counsel of the ungodly when the devil showed Him all the
kingdoms of the world; He did not stand in the way of sinners, because
He committed no sin; He did not sit in the seat of the scornful, since
neither by word nor deed did He teach evil. Thus as that unhappy man
drew all his carnal children into death, this blessed man brought all
His sons to life. As He himself sets forth in the Gospel: ‘A certain
man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and robbers attacked and
wounded him, stripped him and went away. And by chance there came that
way a certain priest, who seeing him half-dead, crossed to the other
side. Likewise a Levite passed by when he had seen him. But a
Samaritan coming that same way, had compassion on the poor wretch,
bound up his wounds and poured in oil and wine, and setting him on his
own beast, brought him to an inn. The next day he gave the innkeeper
two pence and asked that he care for him, and if more was needed He
promised to repay the innkeeper on His return.’
“Surely man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho when our first parent
from the joys of Paradise entered death’s eclipse. For Jericho, which
means moon, designates the eclipse of our mortality. Whereby man fell
among thieves, since a swarm of demons at once surrounded the exile.
Wherefore also they despoiled him, since they stripped him of the
riches of Paradise and the garment of immortality. They gave him
wounds, for sins flowed in upon him. They left him half-dead, because
dead in soul. The priest passed down the same way, as the Order of
Patriarchs proceeded along the path of mortality. The priest left him
wounded, having no power to aid the human race while himself sore
wounded with sins. The Levite went that way, inasmuch as the Order of
Prophets also had to tread the path of death. He too passed by the
wounded man, because he could bear no human aid to the lost while
himself groaning under the wounds of sin. The wretch half-dead was
healed by the Samaritan, for the man set apart through Christ is made
whole.
“Samaria was the chief city of the Israelitish kingdom whose chiefs
were led away to idolatry in Nineveh, and Gentiles were placed in her.
The Jews abhorred their fellowship, making them a byword of
malediction. So when reviling the Lord, they called Him a Samaritan.
The Lord was the true Samaritan, being called guardian (_custos_)
since the human race is guarded by Him. He went down this way when
from heaven He came into this world. He saw the wounded traveller,
inasmuch as He saw man held in misery and sin. He was moved with
compassion for him, since for man He undergoes all pains. Approaching,
He bound his wounds when, proclaiming eternal life, He taught man to
cease from sin. He bound his wounds together with the two parts of the
bandage when He quelled sins through two fears--the servile fear which
forbids through penalties, and the filial fear which exhorts the holy
to good works. He drew tight the lower part of the bandage when He
struck men’s hearts with fear of hell. Their worm, He said, does not
die, and their fire is not quenched. He drew tight the upper part when
He taught the fear which belongs to the study of good. ‘The children
of the kingdom,’ said He, ‘shall be cast into outer darkness, where
there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ He poured in wine and oil
when He taught repentance and pardon. He poured in wine when He said,
‘Repent ye’; He added oil when He said, ‘for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand.’ He set him upon His beast when He bore our sins in His body
on the Cross. He led him to the inn when He joined him to the supernal
Church. The inn, in which living beings are assembled at night, is the
present Church, where the just are harboured amid the darkness of this
life until the Day of Eternity blows and the shadows of mortality give
way.
“The next day He tendered the two pence. The first day was of death,
the next of life. The day of death began with Adam, when all die. The
day of life took its beginning from Christ, in whom all shall be made
alive. Before Christ’s resurrection all men were travelling to death;
since His resurrection all the faithful have been rising to life. He
tendered the two pence the next day--when after His resurrection He
taught that the two Testaments were fulfilled by the two precepts of
love. He gave the pence to the innkeeper when He committed the
doctrine of the law of life to the Order of Doctors. He directed him
to tend the sick man when He commanded that the human race should be
saved from sin. The stench drove the sick man from the inn, because
this world’s tribulation drives the righteous to seek the things
celestial. Two pence are given to the innkeeper when the Doctors are
raised on high by Scriptural knowledge and temporal honour. If they
should require more, He repays them on His return; for if they
exemplify good preaching with good works, when the true Samaritan
returns to judgment and leads him, aforetime wounded but now healed,
from the inn to the celestial mansion, He will repay the zealous
stewards with eternal rewards.”[58]
Here Honorius proceeds to expound the allegory contained in the healing of
the dumb man and the ten lepers, and closes his sermon with two
narratives, one of a poor idiot who sang the _Gloria_ without ceasing, and
was seen in glory after death; the other of a lay nun (_conversa_) around
whose last hours were shed sweet odours and a miraculous light, while
those present heard the chant of heavenly voices.
The parables of Christ present types which we may apply in life according
to circumstances. In the concrete instance of the parable we find the
universal, and we deem Christ meant it so. Thus we also view the parables
as symbols, which they were. Honorius, with the vast company of mediaeval
and patristic expounders, ordinarily directs the symbolism of the parables
in a special mode, whereby--like the stories of the Old Testament--they
become figurative of Christ and the needy soul of man, or figurative of
the Christian dispensation with its historical antecedents and its Day of
Judgment at the end.
The like may be said of Honorius’s allegorical interpretation of Greek
legends. These ancient stories have the perennial youth of human charm and
meaning ever new. They had been good old stories to the Greeks, and then
acquired further intendment as later men discerned a broader symbolism in
them. Even in classic times, Homer’s stories had been turned to
allegories, philosophers and critics sometimes finding in them a spiritual
significance not unlike that which the same tales may bear for us. But
with this difference: the later Greeks usually were trying to explain away
the somewhat untrammelled ways of the Homeric pantheon, and therefore
maintained that Homer’s stories were composed as allegories, the wise and
mystic poet choosing thus to veil his meaning. To-day we find the clarity
of daybreak in Homer’s tales, and if we make symbols of them we know the
symbolism is not his but ours. Honorius chooses to think that allegory had
always lain in the old story; he will not deem it the invention of himself
or other Christian writers. Here his attitude is not unlike that of the
apologetic Greek critics. But his interpretations are apt to differ from
theirs as well as from our own. For his symbolism tends to abandon the
broadly human, and to become, like the mediaeval Biblical interpretations,
figurative of the tenets of the Christian Faith.
There is an interesting example of this in the sermon for Septuagesima
Sunday, which was written on a somewhat blind text from the twenty-eighth
chapter of Job. Honorius proceeds expounding it through a number of
strained allegories, which he doubtless drew from Gregory’s _Moralia_; for
that great pope was the recognized expositor of Job, and the Book of Job
was simply Gregory through all the Middle Ages. Perhaps Honorius felt that
this sermon was rather soporific. At all events he stops in the middle to
give a piece of advice to the supposed preacher: “Often put something of
this kind in your sermon; for so you will relieve the tedium.” And he
continues thus:
“Brethren, on this holy day there is much to say which I must pass
over in silence, lest disgusted you should wish to leave the church
before the end. For some of you have come far and must go a long way
to reach your houses. Or perhaps, some have guests at home, or crying
babies; or others are not swift and have to go elsewhere, while to
some a bodily infirmity brings uneasiness lest they expose themselves.
So I omit much for everybody’s sake, but still would say a few words.
“Because to-day, beloved, we have laid aside the song of gladness and
taken up the song of sadness, I would briefly tell you something from
the books of the pagans, to show how you should reject the melody of
this world’s pleasures in order that hereafter with the angels you may
make sweet harmonies in heaven. For one should pick up a gem found in
dung and set it as a kingly ornament; thus if we find anything useful
in pagan books we should turn it to the building up of the Church,
which is Christ’s spouse. The wise of this world write that there were
three Syrens in an island of the sea, who used to chant the sweetest
song in divers tones. One sang, another piped, the third played upon a
lyre. They had the faces of women, the talons and wings of birds. They
stopped all passing ships with the sweetness of their song; they rent
the sailors heavy with sleep; they sank the ships in the brine. When a
certain duke, Ulysses, had to sail by their island, he ordered his
comrades to bind him to the mast and stuff their ears with wax. Thus
he escaped the peril unharmed, and plunged the Syrens in the waves.
These, beloved, are mysteries, although written by the enemies of
Christ. By the sea is to be understood this age which rolls beneath
the unceasing blasts of tribulations. The island is earth’s joy, which
is intercepted by crowding pains, as the shore is beat upon by
crowding waves. The three Syrens who with sweet caressing song
overturn the navigators in sleep, are three delights which soften
men’s hearts for vice and lead them into the sleep of death. She who
sings with human voice is Avarice, and to her hearers thus she tunes
her song: ‘Thou shouldst get together much, so as to be able to spread
wide thy fame, and also visit the Lord’s sepulchre and other places,
restore churches, aid the poor and thy relatives as well.’ With such
baneful song she charms the miser’s heart, until the sleep of death
oppresses him. Then she tears his flesh, the wave devours the ship,
and the wretch by fierce pains is waked from his riches and plunged in
eternal flame. She who plays upon the pipe is Vainglory (_Jactantia_),
and thus she pipes her lay for hers: ‘Thou art in thy youth, and
noble; make thyself appear glorious. Spare no enemies, but kill them
all when able. Then people will call thee a good knight.’ Again will
she chant: ‘Thou shouldst win Jerusalem, and give great alms. Then
thou wilt be famous, and wilt be called good by all.’ To the lay
brethren (_conversis_) she sings: ‘Thou must fast and pray always,
singing with loud voice. Then wilt thou hear thyself lauded as a saint
by all.’ Such song with vain heart she makes resound till the
whirlpool of death devours the wretch emptied of worth.
“She who sings to a lyre is Wantonness (_Luxuria_), and she chants
melodies like these to her parasites: ‘Thou art in thy youth; now is
the time to sport with the girls--old age will do to reform in. Here
is one with a fine figure; this one is rich; from this one you would
gain much. There is plenty of time to save your soul.’ In such way she
melts the hearts of the wanton till Cocytus’s waves engulf them
suddenly tripped by death.
“They have the faces of women, because nothing so estranges man from
God as the love of women. They have wings of birds, because the desire
of worldlings is always unstable, their appetites now craving one
thing, and again their lust flying to another object. They have also
the talons of birds, because they tear their victims as they snatch
them away to the torments of hell. Ulysses is called Wise. Unharmed he
steers his course by the island, because the truly wise Christian
swims over the sea of this world, in the ship of the Church. By the
fear of God he binds himself to the mast of the ship, that is, to the
cross of Christ; with wax, that is with the incarnation of Christ, he
seals the ears of his comrades, that they may turn their hearts from
lusts and vices and yearn only for heavenly things. The Syrens are
submerged, because he is protected from their lusts by the strength
of the Spirit. Unharmed the voyagers avoid the peril, inasmuch as
through victory they reach the joys of the saints.”[59]
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RATIONALE OF THE VISIBLE WORLD: HUGO OF ST. VICTOR
Just as the Middle Ages followed the allegorical interpretation of
Scripture elaborated by the Church Fathers, so they also accepted, and
even made more precise, the patristic inculcation of the efficacy of such
most potent symbols as the water of baptism and the bread and wine
transubstantiated in the Eucharist.[60] Passing onward from these mighty
bases of conviction, the mediaeval genius made fertile use of allegory in
the polemics of Church and State, and exalted the symbolical principle
into an ultimate explanation of the visible universe.
Notable was the career of allegory in politics. Throughout the long
struggle of the Papacy with the Empire and other secular monarchies,
arguments drawn from allegory never ceased to carry weight. A very
shibboleth was the witness of the “two swords” (Luke xxii. 38), both of
which, the temporal as well as spiritual, the Church held to have been
entrusted to her keeping for the ordering of earthly affairs, to the end
that men’s souls should be saved. Still more fluid was the argumentative
nostrum of mankind conceived as an Organism, or animate body (_unum
corpus, corpus mysticum_). This metaphor was found in more than one of the
Latin classics; but patristic and mediaeval writers took it from the works
of Paul.[61] The likeness of the human body to the body politic or
ecclesiastic was carried out in every imaginable detail, and used acutely
or absurdly by politicians and schoolmen from the eleventh century
onward.[62]
We turn to the symbolical explanation of the universe. In the first half
of the twelfth century, a profoundly meditative soul, Hugo of St. Victor
by name, attempted a systematic exposition of the symbolical or
sacramental plan inhering in God’s scheme of creation. Of the man, as with
so many monks and schoolmen whose names and works survive, little is known
beyond the presentation of his personality afforded by his writings. He
taught in the monastic school of St. Victor, a community that had a story,
with which may be connected the scanty facts of the short and happy
pilgrimage to God, which made Hugo’s life on earth.[63]
When William of Champeaux, according to Abaelard’s account, was routed
from his logical positions in the cathedral school of Paris,[64] he
withdrew from the school and from the city to the quiet of a secluded spot
on the left bank of the Seine, not far distant from Notre-Dame. Here was
an ancient chapel dedicated to Saint-Victor, and here William, with some
companions, organized themselves into a monastic community according to
the rule of the canons of St. Augustine. This was in 1108. If for a time
William laid aside his studies and lecturing, he soon resumed them at the
solicitations of his scholars, joined to those of his friend Hildebert,
Bishop of Le Mans.[65] And so the famous school of Saint-Victor began.
William remained there only four years, being made Bishop of Chalons in
1112, and thereafter figuring prominently in Church councils, frequent in
France at this epoch.
Under William’s disciple and successor, Gilduin, the community flourished
and increased. King Louis VI., whose confessor was Gilduin himself,
endowed it liberally, and other donors were not lacking. Saint-Victor
became rich, and its fame for learning and holiness spread far and
wide.[66] Abbot Gilduin lived to see more than forty houses of monks or
regular canons[67] flourishing as dependencies of Saint-Victor. He died in
1155, some years after the death of the young man whose scholarship and
genius was the pride of the Victorine community.
Notwithstanding a statement in an old manuscript, that Hugo was born near
Ypres in Flanders, the ancient tradition of Saint-Victor, confirmed by the
records of the cathedral of Halberstadt, shows him to have been a son of
the Count of Blankemberg, and born at Hartingam in Saxony.[68] His uncle
Reinhard was Bishop of Halberstadt, where his great-uncle, named Hugo like
himself, was archdeacon. Reinhard had been a pupil of William of Champeaux
at Saint-Victor, and after becoming bishop continued to cherish a profound
esteem for him. The young Hugo renounced his inheritance and entered a
monastery not far from Halberstadt; but soon, in view of the disturbed
affairs of Saxony, his uncle Reinhard urged him to go and pursue his
studies at Saint-Victor. The young man persuaded his great-uncle Hugo to
accompany him. By circuitous routes, visiting various places of pious
interest on the way, the two reached Saint-Victor, where they were
received with all honour by the abbot Gilduin. This was not far from the
year 1115, and Hugo was about twenty at the time. He was already an
accomplished scholar, and doubtless it is to his previous studies that he
refers when he speaks as follows in his book of elementary instruction,
called the _Didascalicon_:
“I dare say that I never despised anything pertaining to learning, and
learned much that might strike others as light and vain. I practised
memorizing the names of everything I saw or heard of, thinking that I
could not properly study the nature of things unless I knew their
names. Daily I examined my notes of topics, that I might hold in my
memory every proposition, with the questions, objections, and
solutions. I would inform myself as to controversies and consider the
proper order of the argument on either side, carefully distinguishing
what pertained to the office of rhetoric, oratory, and sophistry. I
set problems of numbers; I drew figures on the pavement with charcoal,
and with the figure before me I demonstrated the different qualities
of the obtuse, the acute and the right angle, and also of the square.
Often I watched out the nocturnal horoscope through winter nights.
Often I strung my harp (_Saepe ad numerum protensum in ligno magadam
ducere solebam_) that I might perceive the different sounds and
likewise delight my mind with the sweet notes. All these were boyish
occupations (_puerilia_) but not useless. Nor does it burden my
stomach to know them now.”[69]
Not long after Hugo’s arrival at Saint-Victor he began to teach at the
monastery school, and upon the death of its director, in 1133, succeeded
to the office, which he held until his death in 1141.[70] Colourless and
grey are the outer facts of a monk’s life, counting but little. The soul
of a Hugo of Saint-Victor did not soil itself with any interest in the
pleasures of the world: “He is not solitary with whom is God, nor is the
power of joy extinguished because his appetite is kept from things abject
and vile. He rather does himself an injustice who admits to the society of
his joy what is disgraceful or unworthy of his love.”[71]
Hugo belonged to the aristocracy of contemplative piety, with its scorn of
whatever lies without the pale of the soul’s companionship with God. In
his independent way he followed Augustine, and Augustine’s Platonism,
which was so largely the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus and Porphyry. He also
followed the real Plato speaking in the _Timaeus_, with which he was
acquainted. Plato would have nothing to do with allegorical interpretation
as a defence of Homer’s gods; but he could himself make very pretty
allegories, and his theory of ideas as at once types and creative
intelligences lent itself to Christian systems of symbolism. In this way
he was a spiritual ancestor of Hugo, who found in God the type-ideas of
all things that He created. Moreover, if not Plato, at least his spiritual
children--Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Plotinus--recognized that the
highest truths must be known in modes transcending reason and its
syllogisms, although these were the necessary avenues of approach. Hugo
likewise regarded rational knowledge as but the path by which the soul
ascends to the plateau of contemplation. The general aspects of his
philosophy will be considered in a later chapter. Here he is to be viewed
as a mediaeval symbolist, upon whom pressed a sense of the symbolism of
all visible things. An examination of his great _De sacramentis
Christianae fidei_ will disclose that with Hugo the material creation in
its deepest verity is a symbol; that Scripture, besides its literal
meaning, is allegory from Genesis to Revelation; that the means of
salvation provided by the Church are sacramental, and thus essentially
symbolical, consisting of perfected and potent symbols which have been
shadowed forth in the unperfected sacramental character of all God’s works
from the beginning.[72]
Hugo’s little Preface (_praefatiuncula_) mentions certain requests made to
him to write a book on the Sacraments. In undertaking it, he proposes to
present in better form many things dictated from time to time rather
negligently. Whatever he has taken from his previous writings he has
revised as seemed best. Should there appear any inconsistency between what
he may have said elsewhere and the language of the present work, he begs
the reader to regard the present as the better form of statement. His
method will be to treat his matter in the order of time; and to this end
his work is divided into two Books. The first discusses the subject from
the Beginning of the World until the Incarnation of the Word; the second
continues it from the Incarnation to the final Consummation of all things.
He explains that as he has elsewhere spoken at length upon the primary or
historical meaning of Holy Writ,[73] he will devote himself here rather to
its secondary or allegorical significance.
Hugo further explains the subject of his treatise in a Prologue:
“The work of man’s restoration is the subject-matter (_materia_) of
all the Scriptures. There are two works, the work of foundation and
the work of restoration, which include everything whatsoever. The
former is the creation of the world with all its elements; the latter
is the incarnation of the Word with all its sacraments, those which
went before from the beginning and those which follow even to the end
of the world. For the incarnate Word is our King, who came into this
world to fight the devil. And all the saints who were before His
coming, were as soldiers going before His face; and those who have
come and will come after, until the end of the world, are as soldiers
who follow their king. He is the King in the centre of His army,
advancing girt by His troops. And although in such a multitude divers
shapes of arms appear in the sacraments and observances of those who
precede and come after, yet all are soldiers under one king and follow
one banner; they pursue one enemy and with one victory are crowned. In
all of this may be observed the work of restoration.
“Scripture gives first a brief account of the work of creation. For it
could not aptly show how man was restored unless it had previously
explained how he had fallen; nor could it show how he had fallen,
without first showing how God had made him, for which in turn it was
necessary to set forth the creation of the whole world, because the
world was made for man. The spirit was created for God’s sake; the
body for the spirit’s sake, and the world for the body’s sake, so that
the spirit might be subject to God, the body to the spirit, and the
world to the body. In this order, therefore, Holy Scripture describes
first the creation of the world which was made for man; then it tells
how man was made and set in the way of righteousness and discipline;
after that, how man fell; and finally how he was restored
(_reparatus_).”
In these first little chapters of his Prologue, Hugo has grouped his
topics suggestively. The world was made for man, and therefore the account
of its creation is needed in order to understand man. Moreover, that man’s
body exists for his spirit’s sake, at once suggests that a significance
beyond the literal meaning is likely to dwell in that account of the
material creation which enables us to understand man. The soul needs
instruction and guidance; and God in creating the world for man surely had
in view his most important interests, which were not those of his mortal
body, but those of his soul. So the creation of the world subserves man’s
spiritual interests, and the divine account of it carries spiritual
instruction. The allegorical significance of the world’s creation, which
answers to man’s spiritual needs, is as veritable and real as the facts of
the world’s material foundation, which answers to the needs of his body.
Thus symbolism is rooted in the character and purpose of the material
creation; it lies in the God-implanted nature of things; therefore the
allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures corresponds to their deepest
meaning and the revealed plan of God.
These principles underlie Hugo’s exposition of the Christian sacraments,
whose unperfected prototypes existed in the work of the Creation. No fact
of sacred history, no single righteous pre-Christian observance, was
unaffiliated with them. An adequate understanding of their nature involves
a full knowledge not only of Christian doctrine, but of all other
knowledge profitable to men--as Hugo clearly indicates in the remaining
portion of his Prologue:
“Whence it appears how much divine Scripture in subtle profundity
surpasses all other writings, not only in its matter but in the way of
treating it. In other writings the words alone carry meaning: in
Scripture not only the words, but the things may mean something.
Wherefore just as a knowledge of the words is needed in order to know
what things are signified, so a knowledge of the things is needed in
order to determine _their_ mystical signification of other things
which have been or ought to be done. The knowledge of words falls
under two heads: expression, and the substance of their meaning.
Grammar relates only to expression, dialectic only to meaning, while
rhetoric relates to both. A knowledge of things requires a knowledge
of their form and of their nature. Form consists in external
configuration, nature in internal quality. Form is treated as number,
to which arithmetic applies; or as proportion, to which music applies;
or as dimension, to which geometry applies; or as motion, to which
pertains astronomy. But physics (_physica_) looks to the inner nature
of things.
“It follows that all the natural arts serve divine science, and the
lower knowledge rightly ordered leads to the higher. History, _i.e._
the historical meaning, is that in which words signify things, and its
servants, as already said, are the three sciences, grammar, dialectic,
and rhetoric. When, however, things signify facts mystically, we have
allegory; and when things mystically signify what ought to be done, we
have tropology. These two are served by arithmetic, music, geometry,
astronomy, and physics. Above and beyond all is that divine something
to which divine Scripture leads, either in allegory or tropology. Of
this the one part (which is in allegory) is right faith, and the other
(which is in tropology) is good conduct: in these consist knowledge of
truth and love of virtue, and this is the true restoration of
man.”[74]
Hugo has now stated his position. The rationale of the world’s creation
lies in the nature of man. The Seven Liberal Arts, and incidentally all
human knowledge, in handmaidenly manner, promote an understanding of man
as well as of the saving teaching contained in Scripture. This was the
common mediaeval view; but Hugo proves it through application of the
principles of symbolism and allegorical interpretation. By these
instruments he orders the arts and sciences according to their value in
his Christian system, and makes all human knowledge subserve the
intellectual economy of the soul’s progress to God.
An exposition of the Work of the Six Days opens the body of Hugo’s
treatise. God created all things from nothing, and at once. His creation
was at first unformed; not absolutely formless, but in the form of
confusion, out of which in the six days He wrought the form of ordered
disposition. The first creation included the matter of corporeal things
and (in the angelic nature) the essence of things invisible; for the
rational creature may be said to be unformed until it take form through
turning unto its Creator, whereby it gains beauty and blessedness from Him
through the conversion which is of love. Thus the matter of every
corporeal thing which God afterwards made, existed from the time of His
first creation, and likewise the image of everything invisible. For
although new souls are still created every day, their image existed
previously in the angelic spirits.
Then God made light, the unformed material of which He had created in the
beginning.
“And at the very moment when light was visibly and corporeally
separated from darkness, the good angels were invisibly set apart from
the wicked angels who were falling in the darkness of sin. The good
were illumined and converted to the light of righteousness, that they
might be light and not darkness. Thus we ought to perceive a
consonance in the works of God, the visible work conforming to the
issue of the invisible in such wise that the Wisdom which worked in
both may in the former instruct by an example and in the latter
execute judgment.”
The severance of light from darkness is the material example of how God
executes judgment in dividing the good from the evil. In this visible work
of God a “sacrament” is discernible, since every soul, so long as it is in
sin, is in darkness and confusion. All the visible works of God offer
spiritual lessons (_spiritualia praeferunt documenta_). They have
sacramental qualities, and yet are not perfected and completed sacraments,
as will hereafter appear from Hugo’s definition.
Following the order of creation, Hugo now speaks of the firmament which
God set in the midst of the waters to divide them:
“He who believes that this was made for his sake will not look for the
reason of it outside of himself. For it all was made in the image of
the world within him; the earth which is below, is the sensual nature
of man, and the heaven above is the purity of his intelligence
quickening to immortal life.”
The rational and unseen are a world as well as the material and visible.
The sacramental quality of the material world lies in its correspondence
to the unseen world. When Hugo speaks of the “sacramenta” in the creation
of light and the waters divided by the firmament, he means that in
addition to their material nature as light and water, they are essentially
symbols. Their symbolism is as veritably part of their nature as the
symbolical character of the Eucharist is part of the nature of the
consecrated bread and wine. The sacraments are among the deepest verities
of the Christian Faith. And the same representative verity that exists in
them, exists, in less perfected mode, throughout God’s entire creation. So
the argument carries out the principles of the sacraments and the
principles of symbolism to a full explanation of the world; and Hugo’s
work upon the Sacraments presents his theory of the universe.
“Many other mysteries,” says Hugo, closing the first “Part” of his
first Book, “could be pointed out in the work of the creation. But we
briefly speak of these matters as a suitable approach to the subject
set before us. For our purpose is to treat of the sacrament of man’s
redemption. The work of creation was completed in six days, the work
of restoration in six ages. The latter work we define as the
Incarnation of the Word and what in and through the flesh the Word
performed, with all His sacraments, both those which from the
beginning prefigured the Incarnation and those which follow to declare
and preach it till the end.”
It is unnecessary to follow Hugo through the discussion, upon which he now
enters, of the will, knowledge, and power of the Trinity, or through his
consideration of the knowledge which man may have of God. In Part V. of
the first Book, he considers the creation of angels, their qualities and
nature, and the reasons why a part of them fell. With Part VI. the
creation of man is reached, which Hugo shows to have been causally prior,
though later in time, to the creation of the world which God made for man.
From love God created rational creatures, the angels purely spiritual, and
man a spirit clothed with earth.[75] Hugo considers the corporeal as well
as the spiritual nature and qualities of man, and his condition before the
Fall. The seventh Part is devoted to the Fall itself, and discusses its
character and sinfulness.
At length, in the eighth Part, Hugo reaches the true subject of his
treatise, the restoration of man. Man’s first sin of pride was followed by
a triple punishment, consisting in a penalty, and two entailed defects,
the penalty being bodily mortality, the defects carnal concupiscence and
mental ignorance.
“Regarding his reparation three matters are to be considered, the
time, the place, the remedy. The time is the present life, from the
beginning to the end of the world. The place is this world.[76] The
remedy is threefold, and consists in faith, the sacraments, and good
works. Long is the time, that man may not be taken unprepared. Hard is
the place, that the transgressor may be castigated. Efficacious is the
remedy, that the sick one may be healed.”
Hugo then sets forth the situation, the case in court as it were, to which
God, the devil, and man, are the three parties. In this trial
“... the devil is convicted of an injury to God in that he seduced
God’s servant by fraud and holds him by violence. Man also is
convicted of an injury to God in that he despised His command and
wickedly gave himself to evil servitude. Likewise the devil is
convicted of an injury toward man, in first deceiving him and then
bringing evil upon him. The devil holds man unjustly, though man is
justly held.”
Since the devil’s case against man was unjust, man might defeat his
lordship; but he needed an advocate (_patronus_), which could be only God.
God, angry at man’s sin, did not wish to undertake man’s cause. He must be
placated; and man had no equivalent to offer for the injury he had done
Him; for he had deserted God when rational and innocent, and could deliver
himself back to God only as an irrational and sinful creature. Therefore,
in order that man might have wherewithal to placate God, God through
mercy gave man a man whom man might give in place of him who had sinned.
God became man for man and as man gave himself for man. Thus He who had
been man’s Creator became also his Redeemer. God might have redeemed man
in some other way, but took the way of human nature as best suited to
man’s weakness.
After our first parent had been exiled from Paradise for his sin, the
devil possessed him violently. But God’s providence tempered justice with
mercy, and from the penalty itself prepared a remedy.
“He set for man as a sign the sacraments of his salvation, in order
that whoever would apprehend them with right faith and firm hope,
might, though under the yoke, have some fellowship with freedom. He
set His edict informing and instructing man, so that whoever should
elect to expect a saviour, should prove his vow of election in
observance of the sacraments. The devil also set his sacraments, that
he might know and possess his own more surely. The human race was at
once divided into opposite parties, some accepting the devil’s
sacraments and some the sacraments of Christ.... Hence it is clear,
that from the beginning there were Christians in fact, if not in
name.”
Hugo proceeds to show that the time of the institution of the sacraments
began when our first parent, expelled from Paradise, was subjected to the
exile of this mortal life, with all his posterity until the end.
“As soon as man had fallen from his first state of incorruption, he
began to be sick, in body through his mortality, in mind through his
iniquity. Forthwith God prepared the medicine of his reparation
through His sacraments. In divers times and places God presented these
for man’s healing, as reason and the cause demanded, some of them
before the Law, some under the Law and some under grace. Though
different in form they had the one effect and accomplished the one
health. If any one inquires the period of their appointment he may
know that as long as there is disease so long is the time of the
medicine. The present life, from the beginning to the end of the
world, is the time of sickness and the time of the remedy. When a
sacrament has fulfilled its time it ceases, and others take its place,
to bring about that same health. These in turn have been succeeded at
last by others, which are not to be superseded.”
Having followed Hugo’s plan thus far, one sees why it is only at the
commencement of the ninth Part of his first Book that he reaches the
definition and discussion of those final and enduring sacraments which
followed the Incarnation. He has hitherto been developing his theme, and
now takes up its very essence. Laying out the matter scholastically, he
says “there are four things to consider: first, what is a sacrament;
second, why they were instituted; third, what may be the material of each
sacrament, in which it is made and sanctified; and fourth, how many
sacraments there are. This is the definition, cause, material, and
classification.”
Proceeding to the definition, he says that the doctors have briefly
described a sacrament as the token of the sacred substance (_sacrae rei
signum_).
“For as there is body and soul in man, and in Scripture the letter and
the sense, so in every sacrament there is the visible external which
may be handled and the invisible within, which is believed and taught.
The material external is the sacrament, and the invisible and
spiritual is the sacrament’s substance (_res_) or _virtus_. The
external is handled and sanctified; that is the _signum_ of the
spiritual grace, which is the sacrament’s _res_ and is invisibly
apprehended.”
Having thus explained the old definition, Hugo objects to it on the ground
that not every _signum rei sacrae_ is a sacrament; the letters of the
sacred text and the pictures of holy things are _signa rei sacrae_, and
yet are not sacraments. He therefore offers the following definition as
adequate:
“The sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly,
representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, and
containing from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual
grace.”[77]
This, he maintains, is a perfect definition, since all sacraments possess
these three qualities, and whatever lacks them cannot properly be called a
sacrament. As an example he instances the baptismal water:
“There is the visible element of water, which is the sacrament; and
these three are found in one: representation from similitude,
significance from appointment, virtue from sanctification. The
similitude is from creation, the appointment from dispensation, the
sanctification from benediction. The first is imparted to it through
the Creator, the second is added through the Saviour, the third is
given through the administrator.”[78]
Passing to the second consideration, Hugo finds that the sacraments were
instituted with threefold purpose, for man’s humiliation, instruction, and
discipline or exercise. The man contemning them cannot be saved. Yet God
has saved many without them, as Jeremiah was sanctified in the womb, and
John the Baptist, and those who were righteous under the natural law. “For
those who under the natural law possessed the substance (_res_) of the
sacrament in right faith and charity, did not to their damnation lack the
sacrament.” And Hugo warns whoever might take a narrower view, to beware
lest in honouring God’s sacraments, His power and goodness be made of no
avail. “Dost thou tell me that he who has not the sacraments of God cannot
be saved? I tell thee that he who has the virtue of the sacraments of God
cannot perish. Which is greater, the sacrament or the virtue of the
sacrament--water or faith? If thou wouldst speak truly, answer, ‘faith.’”
One notes that the twelfth century had its broad-mindedness, as well as
the twentieth.
While passing on discursively to consider the classification of the
sacraments, Hugo considers many matters,[79] and then opens his treatment
of the sacraments of the natural law with a recapitulation:
“The sacraments from the beginning were instituted for the restoration
and healing of man, some under the natural law, some under the
written law, and others under grace. Those which are later in time
will be found more worthy means of spiritual grace. For all those
sacraments of the former time, under the natural or the written law,
were signs and figures of those now appointed under grace. The
spiritual effect of the former in their time was wrought through the
virtue and sanctification drawn from the latter. If any one therefore
would deny that those prior sacraments were effectual for
sanctification, he does not seem to me to judge aright.”[80]
The sacraments of the natural law were as the _umbra veritatis_; those of
the written law as the _imago vel figura veritatis_; but those under grace
are the _corpus veritatis_.[81] The written law, though given fully only
through Moses, began with Abraham, upon whom circumcision was enjoined as
a sacrament and sign of separation from the heathen peoples. In obedience
to its precepts lies the merit, in its promises lies the reward, while its
sacraments aid men to fulfil its precepts and obtain its reward. Hugo
discusses the sacraments of circumcision and burnt-offerings which were
necessary for the remission of sins; then those which exercised the
faithful people in devotion--the peace-offering is an example; and again
those which aided the people to cultivate piety, as the tabernacle and its
utensils.
Hugo’s second Book, which makes the second half of his work, is devoted to
the “time of grace” inaugurated by the Incarnation. It treats in detail
the Christian sacraments and other topics of the Faith, down to the Last
Judgment, when the wicked are cast into hell, and the blessed enter upon
eternal life, where God will be seen eternally, praised without weariness,
and loved without satiety. This blessed lot flows from the grace of the
salvation brought by Christ, and is dependent on the sacraments, the
enduring means of grace. On their part, the sacraments, whatever more they
are, are symbols, in essence and function connected with the symbolical
nature of God’s creation, with the prefigurative significance of the
fortunes of God’s chosen people until the coming of Christ, with the
import and symbolism of Christ’s life and teachings, and with the
symbolism inherent in the organization and building up of Christ’s holy
Church. Symbolism and allegory are made part of the constitution of the
world and man; they connect man’s body and environment with his spirit,
and link the life of this world with the life to come. Hugo has thus
grounded and established symbolism in the purposes of God, in the
universal scheme of things, and in the nature and destinies of man.[82]
CHAPTER XXIX
CATHEDRAL AND MASS; HYMN AND IMAGINATIVE POEM
I. GUILELMUS DURANDUS AND VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS.
II. THE HYMNS OF ADAM OF ST. VICTOR AND THE _Anticlaudianus_ of ALANUS
OF LILLE.
Under sanction of Scriptural interpretation and the sacraments, allegory
and symbolism became accepted principles of spiritual verity, sources of
political argument, and modes of transcendental truth. They penetrated the
Liturgy, charging every sentence and ceremonial act with saving
significance and power; and as plastic influences they imparted form and
matter to religious art and poetry, where they had indeed been potent from
the beginning.
I
In the early Church the office of the Mass, the ordination of priests, and
the dedication of churches were not charged with the elaborate symbolism
carried by these ceremonies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,[83]
when the Liturgy, or speaking more specifically, the Mass, had become
symbolical from the _introit_ to the last benediction; and Gothic
sculpture and glass painting, which were its visible illustration, had
been impressed with corresponding allegory. Mediaeval liturgic lore is
summed up by Guilelmus Durandus in his _Rationale divinorum officiorum_,
which was composed in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and
contains much that is mirrored in the art of the French cathedrals. It is
impossible to review the elaborate symbolical significance of the Mass as
set forth in the authoritative work of one who was a bishop, theologian,
jurist, and papal regent.[84] But a little of it may be given.
The office of the Mass, says Durandus, is devised with great forethought,
so as to contain the major part of what was accomplished by and in Christ
from the time when He descended from heaven to the time when He ascended
into heaven. In the sacrifice of the Mass all the sacrifices of the
Ancient Law are represented and superseded. It may be celebrated at the
third hour, because then, according to Mark, Christ ascended the cross,
and at that hour also the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles in
tongues of fire; or at the sixth hour, when, according to Matthew, Christ
was crucified; or at the ninth hour, when on the cross He gave up His
spirit.
The first part of the Mass begins with the _introit_. Its antiphonal
chanting signifies the aspirations and deeds, the prayers and praises of
the patriarchs and prophets who were looking for the coming of the Son of
God. The chorus of chanting clergy represents this yearning multitude of
saints of the Ancient Law. The bishop, clad in his sacred vestments,[85]
at the end of the procession, emerging from the sacristy and advancing to
the altar, represents Christ, the expected of the nations, emerging from
the Virgin’s womb and entering the world, even as the Spouse from His
secret chamber. The seven lights borne before him on the chief festivals
are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit descending upon the head of Christ.
The two acolytes preceding him signify the Law and the Prophets, shown in
Moses and Elias who appeared with Christ on Mount Tabor. The four who bear
the canopy are the four evangelists, declaring the Gospel. The bishop
takes his seat and lays aside his mitre. He is silent, as was Christ
during His early years. The Book of the Gospels lies closed before him.
Around him in the company of clergy are represented the Magi and others.
The services proceed, every word and act filled with symbolic import. The
reading of the Epistle is reached--that is the preaching of John the
Baptist, who preaches only to the Jews; so the reader turns to the north,
the region of the Ancient Law. The reading ended, he bows before the
bishop, as the Baptist humbled himself before Christ.
After the Epistle comes the Gradual or _responsorium_, which relates to
penitence and the works of the active life. The Baptist is still the main
figure, until the solemn moment when the Gospel is read, which signifies
the beginning of Christ’s preaching. The Creed follows the Gospel, as
faith follows the preaching of the truth. Its twelve parts refer to the
calling of the twelve apostles. Then the bishop begins his sermon; that is
to say, after the calling of the Twelve, the Word of God is preached to
the people, and it henceforth behoves the Church to hold fast to the Creed
which has just been recited.[86]
The authoritative allegorizing of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
extended the symbolism of the Mass to the edifice in which it was
celebrated; as the _Rationale_ sets forth in its opening chapter entitled
“De ecclesia et eius partibus.” There it is shown that the corporeal
church is the edifice, while the Church, spiritually taken, signifies the
faithful people drawn together from all sorts of men as the edifice is
constructed of all sorts of stones. The various names ecclesia, synagogue,
basilica, and tabernacle are explained; and then why the Church is called
the Body of Christ, and also Virgin, also Spouse, Mother, Daughter, Widow,
and indeed Meretrix, as it shuts its bosom against no one seeking it. The
form of the church conforms to that of Solomon’s temple, in the anterior
part of which the people heard and prayed, while the clergy prayed and
preached, gave thanks and ministered, in the sanctuary or sacred place.
Solomon’s temple in turn was modelled on the Tabernacle of the Exodus,
which, because it was constructed on a journey, is the type of the world
which passes away and the lust thereof. It was made with the four colours
of the arch of heaven, as the world consists of the four elements. Since
God is in the world, He is in the tabernacle (which also means the Church
militant) and in the midst of the faithful congregation. The anterior part
of the tabernacle, where the people sacrificed, is also the _Vita activa_,
in which the laity labour in neighbourly love; and the portion where the
Levites ministered is the _Vita contemplativa_.
The church should be erected in the following manner: the place of its
foundation should be made ready--well-founded is the house of the Lord
upon a rock--and the bishop or licensed priest should sprinkle it with
holy water to dispel the demons, and should lay the first stone, on which
should be carved a cross. The head of the church, that is the chancel,
should be set toward the rising sun at the time of the equinox. Now if the
Jews were commanded to build walls for Jerusalem, how much more ought we
to build the walls of our churches? The material church signifies the Holy
Church built of living stones in heaven, with Christ the corner-stone,
upon which are set the foundations of Apostles and Prophets. The walls
above are the Jews and Gentiles, who believing come to Christ from the
four quarters of the world. The faithful people predestined to life are
the stones thereof.
The mortar in which the stones are set is made of lime, sand, and water.
Lime is fervent love, which takes to itself the sand, that is, earthly
toil; then water, which is the Spirit, unites the lime and sand. As the
stones of the wall would have no stability without the mortar, so men
cannot be set in the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem without love, which
the Holy Spirit brings. The stones of the wall are hewn and squared, which
means sanctified and made clean. Some stones are borne, but do not
themselves bear any burden, and these are the feeble in the Church. Other
stones are borne, yet also bear; while still others bear, but are not
borne, save by Christ alone, the one foundation; and the last are the
perfect.
The Jews were subject to hostile attack while building the walls of
Jerusalem,[87] so that with one hand they set stones, while they fought
with the other. Likewise are we surrounded by hostile vices as we build
the walls of the Church; but we oppose them with the shield of faith and
the breastplate of righteousness, and the sword of the Word of God in our
hands.
The church edifice is disposed like the human body. The chancel, where the
altar is, represents the head, and the cross (transept) the arms and
hands. The western portion (nave and aisles) is the rest of the body. But
indeed Richard of St. Victor deems that the three parts of the edifice
represent in order of sanctity, first the virgins, then the continent, and
lastly married people.
Again, the Church is built with four walls; that is, by the teaching of
the four evangelists it rises broad and high into the altitude of the
virtues. Its length is the long-suffering with which it endures adversity;
its breadth is love, with which it embraces its friends in God, and loves
its enemies for His sake; its height is the hope of future reward. Again,
in God’s temple the foundation is faith, which is as to what is not seen;
the roof is charity, which covers a multitude of sins. The door is
obedience--keep the commandments if thou wilt enter into life.[88] The
pavement is humility. The four walls are the four virtues, righteousness,
(_justitia_), fortitude, prudence, and temperance. The windows are glad
hospitality and free-handed pity.
Some churches are cruciform, to teach us that we are crucified to the
world, or should follow the Crucified. Some are circular, which signifies
that the Church is spread through the circle of the world.
The apse signifies the faithful laity; the crypts, the hermits. The nave
signifies Christ, through whom lies the way to the heavenly Jerusalem; the
towers are the preachers and prelates, and the pinnacles represent the
prelates’ minds which soar on high. Also a weather-cock on top of the
church signifies the preachers, who rouse the sleeping from the night of
sin, and turning ever to the wind, resist the rebellious. The iron rod
upholding the cock is the preacher’s sermon; and because this rod is
placed above the cross on the church, it indicates the word of God
finished and confirmed, as Christ said in His passion, “It is finished.”
The lofty dome on which the cross is set, signifies how perfect and
inviolate should be the preaching and observance of the Catholic Faith.
The glass windows of the church are the divine Scriptures, which repel the
wind and rain, but admit the light of the true sun, to wit God, into the
church, that is, into the hearts of the faithful. The windows also signify
the five senses of the body.[89]
The door of the church (again) is Christ--“I am the Door”; the doors are
also the Apostles. The pillars are the bishops and doctors; their bases
are the apostolic bishops; their capitals are the minds of the doctors and
bishops. The pavement is the foundation of faith, and also signifies the
“poor in spirit,” also the common crowd by whose labours the church is
upheld. The rafters are the princes and preachers in the world, who defend
the church by deed and word. The seats in a church are the contemplative
in whom God rests without offence. The panels in the ceiling are also
preachers who adorn and strengthen.
The chancel, the head of the church, by being lower than the rest,
indicates how great should be the humility of the clergy. The screens by
which the altar is separated from the choir signify the separation of
heavenly beings from things of earth. The choir stalls indicate the body’s
need of recreation. The pulpit is the life of the perfect. The horologe
signifies the diligence with which the priests should say the canonical
hours. The tiles of the roof are the knights who protect the church from
pagans. The spiral stairways concealed within the walls are the secret
knowledge had only by those who ascend to the heavenly places. The
sacristy, where the holy utensils are kept and the priest puts on his
vestments, signifies the womb of the most holy Virgin, in which Christ put
on His sacred garb of flesh. From thence the priest emerges before the
public, as Christ went forth from the Virgin’s womb into the world. The
lamp signifies Christ, who is the light of the world; or the lamps
signify the Apostles and other doctors, whose doctrine lights the church.
Moses also made seven lights, which are the seven gifts of the Holy
Spirit.
Durandus next devotes a whole chapter to the symbolism of the altar, and
another to the significance and function of ornaments, pictures, and
sculpture. The latter opens with the words: “The pictures and ornaments in
a church are the texts and scriptures (_lectiones et scripturae_) of the
laity.” This chapter is long; it explains how Christ and the angels, also
saints, Apostles and others, should be represented, and describes the
proper kinds of church ornament and utensils. Much of the detail is
symbolical.
Thus Durandus devised or brought together meanings to fit each bit of the
church edifice, its materials and furnishings. In the work of a
contemporary are stored the allegorical meanings of the subjects of Gothic
sculpture and painted glass. The thirteenth century had a weakness for the
word “Speculum,” and the idea it carried of a mirror or compendium of all
human knowledge. The chief of mediaeval encyclopaedists was Vincent of
Beauvais, a _protégé_ of the saintly King Louis IX. An analysis of his
huge _Speculum majus_ is given elsewhere.[90] It was made up of the Mirror
of Nature, the Mirror of human Knowledge and Ethics, and the Mirror of
History. The compiler and his assistants laboured during the best period
of Gothic art, and from their work, industry may draw an exhaustive
commentary upon the series of topics presented by the sculpture and glass
of a cathedral.[91]
The Mirror of Nature appears carved in the sculpture of Chartres or
Bourges. In rendering the work of the Six Days, the Creator is shown
(under the form of Christ)[92] contemplating His work, or resting from
His toil; here and there a lion, sheep, or goat, suggests the animal
creation, and a few trees the vegetable world. This is the necessary
symbolism of the sculptor’s art. But Gothic animals and plants sometimes
have other definite symbolic meanings, as in the instance of the
well-known signs of the four Evangelists, the man, the lion, the ox, the
eagle. The allegorical interpretations of Scripture were an exhaustless
source of symbolism for Gothic sculptors; another was the _Physiologus_
and its progeny of Bestiaries, with their symbolic explanations of the
legendary attributes of animals. Intentional symbolism, however, did not
inhere in all this carving, much of which is sheer fancy and decoration.
Such was the character of the splendid Gothic flora, of the birds and
beasts that move in it, and of the grotesque monsters. They were not out
of place, since the Gothic cathedral was itself a Speculum or Summa, and
should include the whole of God’s creation, not omitting even the devils
who beset men’s souls.
Vincent may have drawn from Hugo of St Victor the current doctrine that
the arts have part in the work of man’s restoration; a doctrine abundantly
justifying the presence of the sciences and crafts (composing the Mirror
of Knowledge) in the sculpture and painting of the cathedral. There the
Seven Liberal Arts are rendered, through allegorical figures; and the
months of the year are symbolized in the Zodiac and the labours of the
field which make up man’s annual toil. Philosophy is shown and Fortune’s
wheel; the Virtues and Vices are represented in personifications, and even
their conflict, the Psychomachia, may be shown.
At last the Mirror of History is reached. This will teach in concrete
examples what has been learned from the figures of the abstract Virtues
and Vices. Its chief source is the Bible. Those Old Testament incidents
were selected which for centuries had been interpreted as prefigurements
of the life of Christ; and each was presented as a pendant to the Gospel
scene which it typified. These make the chief subjects of the coloured
glass of Chartres and Bourges and other cathedrals where the windows are
preserved. Here may be seen the Passion of Christ, surrounded by scenes
from the Old Testament typifying it; likewise His Resurrection and its
ancient types; and other significant incidents in the life of the Saviour
and His virgin mother.[93] The latter is typified by the burning bush, by
the fleece of Gideon, by the rod of Aaron, even as in the hymns of Adam of
Saint-Victor.[94] Besides these incidents, leading personages of the Old
Testament are presented as prefigurative of Christ, as in the great series
of statues of Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, on the north
portal of Chartres; while the four greater and twelve minor prophets are
shown as types of the four Evangelists and the twelve Apostles. Christ
himself is depicted on a window at St. Denis, between the allegorical
figures of the Ancient Law and the Gospel,--figures which are allied to
those of the uncrowned and blinded Synagogue and the triumphant Church, so
frequently seen together upon cathedrals. Everywhere the tendency to
symbolize is strong. Parts of the Crucifixion scene are rendered
symbolically, and many of the parables. That of the Good Samaritan
constantly appears upon the windows, and is always designed so as to
convey the allegorical teaching drawn from it in Honorius’s sermon.[95]
Obviously this Mirror of History was chiefly sacred history. Pagan
antiquity was scantily suggested by the Sibyls, who stand for the dumb
pagan prophecy of Christ. Scenes from the history of Christian nations
were more frequent; but they always told of some victory for Christ, like
the baptism of Clovis, or the crusading deeds of Charlemagne, Roland or
Godfrey of Bouillon. God’s drama closed with the Last Judgment, the
damnation of the damned and the beatitude of the elect. The Last
Judgments, usually over-arching the tympanums above cathedral doors, are
known to all--as at Rheims, at Chartres, at Bourges. They are full of
symbolism, and full of “historic” reality as well. The treatment becomes
entirely allegorical when the sculptor enters Paradise with the redeemed,
and portrays in lovely personifications the beatitudes of the blessed, as
on the north portal of Chartres.
Those bands of nameless men who carved the statues and designed the
coloured glass which were to make Gothic cathedrals speak, faithfully
presented the teachings of the Church. They rendered the sacred drama of
mankind’s creation, fall, redemption, and final judgment unto hell or
heaven: they rendered it in all its dogmatic symbolism, and with a plastic
adequacy showing how completely they thought and felt in the allegorical
medium in which they worked. They also created matchless ideals of
symbolism in art. The statuary of the portals and façades of Rheims and
Chartres are in their way comparable to the sculptures of the pediment of
the Parthenon. But unlike those masterpieces of antique idealism, these
Christian masterpieces do not seek to set forth mortal man in his natural
strength and beauty and completeness. Rather they seek to show the working
of the human spirit held within the power and grace of God. Theirs is not
the strength and beauty of the flesh, or the excellence of the
unconquerable mind of man; but in them man’s mind and spirit are palpably
the devout creatures of God’s omnipotence, obedient to His will, sustained
and redeemed by His power and grace. Attitude, form, feature, alike
designed to express the sacred beauty of the soul, are not invested with
physical excellence for its own sake; but every physical quality of these
statues is a symbol of some holy and beautiful quality of spirit. These
statues attain a symbolic, and not a natural, ideal in art. Yet many of
them possess the physical beauty of form and feature, inasmuch as such may
be the proper envelope for the chaste and eager soul.[96]
On the other hand, in the filling out of the illustrative detail of life
on earth, of handicraft and art, the sculptor showed how he could carve
these actualities, and present earth’s beauty in the cathedral’s wealth of
vine and flower and leaf. The level commonplace of humanity is deftly
rendered, the daily doings of the forge and field and market-place, the
tugging labourer, the merchant with his stuffs, the scholar with his
scrolls. He knew life well, this artist, and had an eye for every catching
scene, also for Nature’s subtle beauties. Sometimes a certain passing show
was represented because a window was given by some drapers’ guild,
desirous of seeing its craft shown in a place of honour; and the artist
loved his scenes from busy life, as he loved his ornament from Nature.
Such scenes (which rarely held specific allegory) were not unconnected
with the rest of the drama of creation and redemption mirrored in the
cathedral, nor was the exquisitely cut leaf and rose without its
suggestion of the grace incarnate in the Virgin and her Son. Daily life
and natural ornament had at least an illustrative pertinency to the whole,
of which they were unobtrusive and lovely elements; and since that whole
was primarily a visible symbol of the unseen and divine power, these
humble elements had part in its unutterable mystery, and were likewise
symbols.
Finally, have not these nameless artists--even as Dante and our English
Bunyan--presented by their art a synthesis of life’s realities? Their feet
were on the earth; with sympathy and knowledge their hands worked in the
media of things seen and handled, and fashioned the little human matters
which are bounded by the cradle and the grave. Such were the materials
from which Dante formed his _Commedia_, and Bunyan drew the Progress of
his Pilgrim soul to God. Yet as with Bunyan and Dante, so with these
artists in stone and coloured light, the mortal and the tangible were but
the elements through which the poem or story, or the carved or painted
picture, was made the realizing symbol of the unseen and eternal Spirit.
II
Beneath the Abbey Church of Saint-Victor there was a crypt consecrated to
the Mother of God. Here a certain monk was wont to retire and compose
hymns in her honour. One day his lips uttered the lines:
“Salve, mater pietatis,
Et totius Trinitatis
Nobile triclinium;
Verbi tamen incarnati
Speciale majestati
Praeparans hospitium!”
Whereupon a flood of light filled the crypt, and the Virgin, appearing to
him, inclined her head.
The monk’s name was Adam,[97] and he is deemed the best of Latin
hymn-writers. Breton born, he entered Saint-Victor in his youth, about the
year 1130. He was favoured with the instruction of Hugo till the master’s
death in 1141. Adam must have been of nearly the same age as Richard of
Saint-Victor, that other pupil of Hugo who makes the third member of the
great Victorine trio. Their works have been the monastery’s fairest fame.
Hugo was a Saxon; Adam a Breton; Richard was Scotch. So Saint-Victor drew
her brilliant sons from many lands. Richard, whose writings worthily
supplemented those of his master Hugo,[98] died in 1173; his friend Adam
outlived him, and died an old man as the twelfth century was closing. He
was buried in the cloister, and over him was placed an elegiac epitaph
upon human vanity and sin, in part his own composition.
Adam’s hymns were Sequences[99] intended for church use. Their author was
learned in Christian doctrine, skilled in the Liturgy, and saturated with
the spirit of devotional symbolism. His symbolism, which his gift of verse
made into imagery, was that of the mediaeval church and its understanding
of the Liturgy; he also shows the special influence of Hugo. Adam’s hymns,
with their powerful Latin rhymes, cannot be reproduced in English; but a
translation may give the contents of their symbolism. The hymn for Easter,
beginning “Zyma vetus expurgetur,”[100] is an epitome of the symbolic
prefiguration of Christ in the Old Testament. Each familiar allegorical
interpretation flashes in a phrase. Literally translated, or rather
maltreated, it is as follows:
“Let the old leaven be purged away that a new resurrection may be
celebrated purely. This is the day of our hope; wonderful is the power
of this day by the testimony of the law.
“This day despoiled Egypt, and liberated the Hebrews from the fiery
furnace; for them in wretched straits the work of servitude was mud
and brick and straw.[101]
“Now as praise of divine virtue, of triumph, of salvation, let the
voice break free! This is the day which the Lord made, the day ending
our grief, the day bringing salvation.
“The Law is the shadow of things to come, Christ the goal of promises,
who completes all. Christ’s blood blunts the sword the guardians
removed.[102]
“The Boy, type of our laughter, in whose stead the ram was slain,
seals life’s joy.[103] Joseph issues from the pit;[104] Christ returns
above after death’s punishment.
“This serpent devours the serpents of Pharaoh secure from the
serpent’s spite.[105] Whom the fire wounded, them the brazen serpent’s
presence freed.[106]
“The hook and ring of Christ pierce the dragon’s jaw;[107] the sucking
child puts his hand into the cockatrice’s den, and the old tenant of
the world flees affrighted.[108]
“The mockers of Elisha ascending the house of God, feel the
bald-head’s wrath;[109] David, feigning madness, the goat cast forth,
and the sparrow escape.[110]
“With a jaw-bone Samson slays a thousand and spurns the marriage of
his tribe. Samson bursts the bars of Gaza, and, carrying its gates,
scales the mountain’s crest.[111]
“So the strong Lion of Judah, shattering the gates of dreadful death,
rises the third day; at His father’s roaring voice, He carries aloft
His spoils to the bosom of the supernal mother.[112]
“After three days the whale gives back from his belly’s narrow house
Jonas the fugitive, type of the true Jonas. The grape of Cyprus[113]
blooms again, opens and grows apace. The synagogue’s flower withers,
while flourishes the Church.[114]
“Death and life fought together: truly Christ arose, and with Him many
witnesses of glory. A new morn, a glad morn shall wipe away the tears
of evening: life overcame destruction; it is a time of joy.
“Jesu victor, Jesu life, Jesu life’s beaten way, thou whose death
quelled death, bid us to the paschal board in trust. O Bread of life,
O living Wave, O true and fruitful Vine, do thou feed us, do thou
cleanse us, that thy grace may save us from the second death. Amen.”
From the time of that old third-century hymn ascribed to Clement of
Alexandria,[115] hymns to Christ had been filled with symbolism, the
symbolism of loving personification of His attributes, as well as with the
more formal symbolism of His Old Testament prefigurements. Adam’s
symbolism is of both kinds. It has feeling even when dogmatic,[116] and
throbs with devotion as its theme approaches the Gospel Christ. Prevailing
modes of thought and feeling may prescribe topics for verse which a
succeeding age will find curiously unpoetic. Yet if the later time have a
sympathetic understanding for the past, it will recognize how fervid and
how songful was that bygone verse--the verse of Adam’s hymns, for
instance. In one for Christmas Day, beginning:
“Potestate, non natura,
Fit Creator creatura,”[117]
a stanza touches on the reason why the Creator thus became creature. It
would be impossible to render its feeling in English, and much
circumlocution would be needed to express even its literal meaning in any
language but mediaeval Latin. This stanza has twelve lines:
“Causam quaeris, modum rei:
Causa prius omnes rei,
Modus justum velle Dei,
Sed conditum gratia.”
“Thou askest cause and _modus_ of the fact: the _causa rei_ was before
all, the _modus_ was God’s righteous willing, but seasoned with
grace.”
These lines are scholastic. In the next four, the feeling begins to rise,
yet the phrases repel rather than attract us:
“O quam dulce condimentum
Nobis mutans in pigmentum,
Cum aceto fel cruentum
Degustante Messya!”
“Oh! how sweet the condiment changing for us into juice, as the
Messiah tastes the bloody gall and vinegar.”
The feeling touches its climax with the four concluding lines, in which
the parable of the Good Samaritan is invested with the special allegorical
significance set forth in the sermon of Honorius:[118]
“O salubre sacramentum,
Quod nos ponit in jumentum
Plagis nostris dans unguentum
Ille de Samaria.”
“O health-giving sacrament which sets us on a beast, giving ointment
for our stripes,--he of Samaria.”[119]
Two stanzas from another of Adam’s Christmas hymns will show how
curiously intricate could be his symbolism. Having spoken of the ineffable
wonder of the Incarnation, he proceeds:
“Frondem, florem, nucem sicca
Virga profert, et pudica
Virgo Dei Filium.
Fert coelestem vellus rorem,
Creatura creatorem,
Creaturae pretium.
“Frondis, floris, nucis, roris
Pietati Salvatoris
Congruunt mysteria.
Frons est Christus protegendo,
Flos dulcore, nux pascendo,
Ros coelesti gratia.”[120]
“A dry rod puts forth leafage, flower, nut,[121] and a chaste Virgin
brings forth the Son of God. A fleece bears heavenly dew,[122] a
creature the Creator, the creature’s price.
“The mysteries of leafage, flower, nut, dew are suited to the
Saviour’s tender love (_pietas_). The foliage by its protecting is
Christ, the flower is Christ by its sweetness, the nut as it yields
food, the dew by its celestial grace.”
One observes that here the symbolism first touches Christ’s birth, the dry
rod and the fleece representing the Virgin. Then the leafage, flower, nut
and dew typify His qualities. The remaining stanzas of this hymn carry out
in further detail the symbolism of the nut.
Besides the hymns devoted to the Saviour, the greater part of Adam’s hymns
are symbolical throughout. Those written for the dedication of churches
are among the most interesting. One beginning “Quam dilecta
tabernacula”[123] sketches the Old Testament facts which prefigure
Christ’s holy Church. The keynote is in the lines:
“Quam decora fundamenta
Per concinna sacramenta
Umbra praecurrentia!”
“How seemly the foundations through the appropriate sacraments, the
forerunning shadow.”
The shadow is the Old Testament, and these three lines sum up the teaching
of Hugo as to the sacramental nature of the Old Testament narratives.
Throughout this hymn Adam follows Hugo closely.[124] In another dedicatory
hymn[125] Adam gives the prefigurative meaning of the parts of Solomon’s
temple. There is likewise much symbolism in the grand hymns addressed to
the Virgin. One for the festival of the Assumption[126] gives the figures
of the Virgin in the Old Testament--the throne of Solomon, the fleece of
Gideon, the burning bush. Then with more feeling the metaphorical epithets
pour forth, voicing the heart’s gratitude to the Virgin’s saving aid to
man. A still more splendid example of like symbolism and ardent metaphor
is the great hymn beginning:
“Salve mater Salvatoris,
Vas electum, vas honoris,”
which won the Virgin’s greeting for the poet.[127]
The lives of Honorius, of Hugo, of Adam, from whose works we have been
drawing illustrations of mediaeval symbolism, vie with each other in
obscurity; and properly enough since they were monks, for whom
self-effacement is becoming. This personal obscurity culminates with one
last example to be drawn from monastic sources. The man himself was an
impressive figure in his time; a sight of him was not to be forgotten: he
was called _magnus_ and _doctor universalis_. Nevertheless it has been
questioned whether he lived in the twelfth or the thirteenth century, and
whether one man or two bore the name of Alanus de Insulis.
There was in fact but one, and he belongs to the twelfth century, dying
almost a centenarian, in the year 1202. The cognomen _de Insulis_ has also
been an enigma. From it he has been dubbed a Sicilian, and then a Scot,
born on the island of Mona. But the name in reality refers to the chief
town of Flanders, which is called Lisle; and Alanus doubtless was a
Fleming.
He became a learned man, and lectured at Paris. That he was possessed with
no small opinion of his talents would appear from the legend told of him
as well as of St. Augustine. He had announced that on a certain day in a
single lecture he would set forth the complete doctrine of the mystery of
the most Holy Trinity. The afternoon before the day appointed, he walked
by the river, thinking how he should arrange his subject so as to include
it all. He chanced upon a child who was dipping up the river water with a
snail shell and dropping it into a little trench. Smiling, he asked what
should be the object of this; and the child told him that he was putting
the whole river into his trench. As the great scholar was explaining that
this could not be done, he suddenly felt himself chidden and taught--how
much less might he perform what he had set for the next morning. He stood
speechless at his presumption, and burst into tears. The next day
ascending the platform he said to the crowd of auditors, “Let it suffice
you to have seen Alanus”;[128] and with that he left them all astonished,
and himself hastily set out for Citeaux. On arrival he asked to be
admitted as a _conversus_, and was given charge of the monastery’s sheep.
Patient and unknown, he long plied this humble vocation. But at length it
chanced that the abbot took him to a council at Rome, in the capacity of
hostler. And there he beat down the arrogance of a heretic with such
arguments that the latter cried out that he was disputing either with the
devil or Alanus, and would say no more.
Such is one story. By another he is made to seek the monastery of
Clairvaux, and there become a monk under St. Bernard. It is also written
that he became an abbot, and then a bishop, but afterwards resigned his
bishopric. However all this may have been, he died and was buried, and was
subjected to many epitaphs. On what purports to be an old copy of his tomb
at Citeaux, he is shown with St. Bernard, and called Alanus Magnus. The
title _Doctor universalis_ has always clung to his memory, which will not
altogether fade. For if Adam of Saint-Victor was the greatest of Latin
mediaeval hymn-writers, Alanus has good claim to be called the greatest of
mediaeval Latin poets in the field of didactic and narrative poetry.[129]
The many works ascribed to Alanus include an allegorical Commentary on
Canticles, a treatise on the art of preaching, a book of _sententiae_,
another of _theologicae regulae_, sundry sermons, and a lengthy work
“contra haereticos”; also a large dictionary of Biblical allegorical
interpretations, entitled _Liber in distinctionibus dictionum
theologicalium_.[130] All these are prose. He composed besides his _Liber
de planctu naturae_,[131] and his _Anticlaudianus_, a learned and
profound, and likewise highly imaginative allegorical poem upon man.[132]
Its Preface in prose casts a curious light upon the author’s enigmatical
personality, which combined the wonted or conventional humility of a monk
with the towering self-consciousness of a man of genius.
“The lightning scorns to spend its force on twigs, but breaks the
proud tops of exalted trees. The wind’s imperious rage passes over the
reed and drives the assaults of its wild blasts against the highest
summits. Wherefore let not envy’s flame strike the pinched humility of
my work, nor detraction’s breath overwhelm the driven poverty of my
little book, where misery’s wreck demands a port of pity, far more
than felicity provokes the sting of spite.”
More sentences of turgid deprecation follow, and the author begs the
reader not to approach his book with disgust and irritation, but with
pleasant anticipations of novelty (not all a monk speaks here!).
“For although the book may not bloom with the purple vestment of
flowering speech, nor shine with the constellated light of the
flashing period, still in the tenuity of the fragile reed the honey’s
sweetness may be found, and parched thirst can be tempered with the
scant water of a rill. In this book let nothing be made vulgar
(_plebescat_) with ribaldry, nor let anything be open to biting
reproof, as if it smacked of the coarseness of the moderns [to whom
does he refer?]; but let the flower of my talent be presented, and the
dignity of diligence; for pigmy humility, thus raised upon a height,
may overtop the giant. Let not those dare to tire of this work, who
are squalling in the cradles of elementary instruction, sucking milk
from nurses’ paps; nor let those seek to cry it down, who are pledged
to the service of the higher learning; nor those presume to discredit
it, who strike heaven from the top-notch of philosophy. For in this
work, the sweetness of the literal meaning will tickle the puerile
ear; moral teaching will instruct the more proficient understanding;
and the finer subtilty of allegory will sharpen the finished
intellect. Wherefore let all those be kept from ingress who, abandoned
to the mirrors of the senses, are not charioteered by reason, and,
pursuing the sense-image, have no appetite for reason’s truth,--lest
indeed what is holy be defiled by dogs, and the pearl be trampled by
the feet of swine. But such as will not suffer the things of reason to
rest with the base images, and dare to lift their view to forms
divine, may thread the narrow passes of my book, while they weigh with
discretion’s scales what is suited to the common ear, and what should
be buried in silence.”
This Preface of strained sentence and laboured metaphor, of forced
humility and overweening self-consciousness, hardly augurs well for the
poem of which it is the prelude. But prefaces are authors’ pitfalls, and,
moreover, many writers have floundered in one medium of speech while in
another they have moved with ease. From the ungainly prose of the
_Persones Tale_, no one would expect the ease and force of Chaucer’s
verse. And the reader of Alanus’s Preface need not be discouraged from
entering upon his poem. Its subject is man; its philosophic or religious
purpose is to expound the functions of God, of Nature, of Fortune, of
Virtue and Vice, in making man and shaping his career. The poem is an
allegory, original in its general scheme of composition, but in many of
its parts following earlier allegorical writings.
The opening lines tell of Nature’s solicitude to bestow her gifts so that
the finished work may present a fair harmony: as a patient workman she
forges, trims and files, and fashions with reason’s chisel. But when she
seeks to invest her work with qualities beyond her giving, she is obliged
to call on the Celestial Council of her Sisters. Responding, pilgrim-like
the Crown of Heaven’s soldiery comes from on high, brightens the earth
with its light, and clothes the ground with blessed footprints.
Leading this galaxy, Concord advances, foster-child of Peace; then Plenty
comes, and Favour, and Youth with favour anointed, and Laughter, banisher
of mental mists; then Shame and Modesty, and Reason the measure of good,
and Honesty, Reason’s happy comrade; then Dignity (_decus_) and Prudence
balancing her scales, and Piety and true Faith, and Virtue. Last of all
Nobility (_nobilitas_), in grace not quite the others’ equal.[133]
In the midst of a great wood blessed with fountains and multitudinous
bird-song, a cloud-kissing mountain rose with level top. Nature’s palace
was erected here, gemmed and golden; and within was a great hall hung upon
bronze columns. Here the painter’s art had rendered the ways of men, and
inscriptions made plain the pictured story. “O new wonders of painting,”
exclaims the poet; “what cannot be, comes into being; and painting, the
ape of truth, deluding with novel art, turns shadows to realities, and
transforms particular falsehood into (general) truth.”[134] There might be
seen the power of logic pressing its arguments and conquering sophistry.
There Aristotle was preparing his arms, and, more divinely, Plato mused on
heaven’s secrets. There Seneca moralized, and Ptolemy explained the stars
in their times and courses. There spoke the word of Tully, while Virgil’s
muse painted many lies, and put truth’s garb on falsehood. There was also
shown the might of Alcides and Ulysses’ wisdom, Turnus’s valour prodigal
of life, and Hippolytus’s shame, undone by Venus’s reins.[135] Such and
many other tropes of things and dreams of truth, this royal art set
forth.
Here, standing in the midst of her Council, Nature, with bowed head, spoke
her solemn words: “Painfully I remake what my hand’s solicitude has
wrought. But the hand’s penitence does not wipe out the flaws. The
shortcomings of our works must be repaired by some perfect model, some man
divine, not smelling of the earth and earthly, but whose mind shall hold
to heaven while his body walks the earth. Let him be the mirror in which
we may see what our faith, our potency, and virtue ought to be. As it is,
our shame is over all the earth.”
When the Council had approved these words, Prudence arose in all her
beauty.[136] She discoursed upon man’s dual nature, spirit and body.
Nature and her helpers may be the artificers of his mortal body, but the
soul demands its heavenly Artificer, and laughs at our rude arts. God’s
wisdom alone can create the soul, as Prudence shows by an exposition of
its qualities.
Now Reason raised his reverend form, holding his triple glass in which
appear the causes and effects and qualities of things. He humbly
disclaimed the power to instruct Minerva,[137] and applauded the plan by
which a new Lucifer should sojourn in the world. May he unite all the
gifts which they can bestow, and be their champion against the Vices. Now
let their suppliant vows be sped to Him who alone can create the divine
mind. A legate should be despatched above, bearing their request. For this
office none is so fit as Prudence, to whom the secrets of Heaven are
known, and whose energy and wisdom will surmount the difficulties of the
way.
Prudence at first refuses; but Concordia rises, the inspirer of chaste
loves, she who knit the souls of David and Jonathan, Pirithous and
Theseus, Nisus and Euryalus, Orestes and Pylades. Persuasively she speaks,
and points out all the ills the world had suffered by disobedience to her
behests. Prudence is won over to the task, and now wills only as her
sisters will. She thinks upon the means and way. Wisdom orders a chariot
to be made, in which the sea, the stars, the heavens may be traversed. Its
artificers are her seven daughters, wise and fair, who unite the skill and
knowledge of all those wise ancients who had excelled in any Art. First
Grammar (her functions and great writers being told) forms the pole which
goes before the axle-tree (_temo praeambulus axis_). Then Logic makes the
axle-tree; and Rhetoric adorns the pole with gems and the axle with
flowers. Arithmetic constructs one wheel of the chariot, and Music the
second, Geometry the third, and the fourth wheel is made by
Astronomy.[138]
Now Reason, at Nature’s nod, yokes to the chariot the five horses, to wit,
the Senses disciplined and controlled, Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and
Touch. He himself mounts as charioteer, and bids Prudence follow. Amid the
farewells and plaudits of all, the chariot soars aloft. As it speeds
along, Prudence investigates atmospheric phenomena, and then the spirits
of evil who wander through the air. They passed on through the upper
ether, reached the citadel and fount of light, where the Sun holds sway;
next was reached the region where Venus and the star of Mercury sing
together and Lucifer exults, the herald of the day. Then to their rapid
flight appeared Mars’ flaming palace, seething with fire and wrath. Onward
they passed to the glad light and unhurtful flames of Jupiter, and then to
Saturn’s sphere. At length they ascended the stellar region where the Pole
stars contend in brightness, where are seen Hercules and Orion, Leda’s
twins, the fiery Crab, the Lion, and the rest of the Zodiac’s
constellations.[139]
Here at heaven’s entrance the chariot halted. Those five horses of the
Senses, charioteered by Reason, could ascend no farther. But a damsel was
seen, seated upon the summit of the Pole. She scrutinizes the hidden Cause
and End of all things, holding scales in her right hand and in her left a
sceptre. On her vestments a subtile point traces God’s secrets, and the
formless is figured in form. Reverently Phronesis, that is Prudence,
saluted this Queen of the Pole, and set forth the purpose of her journey,
telling of Nature’s desire and her limitations. In reply Theology, for it
is she,[140] offered herself as a companion, and bade Prudence leave her
chariot, but keep the second courser (Hearing) to bear her on. Prudence
now surmounted the starry citadels, and marvelled at heaven’s nodes, where
the four ways begin and the crystalline waters flow, shot with agreeing
fires; for here, in universal harmony transcending Nature’s laws and
Reason’s power, Concord unites those elements which war below. Onward
leads the way among those joys celestial which know no tears, where there
is peace without hate, and light above all brightness. Here dwell the
angel bands, the Thunderer’s princes, regulators of the world; here glow
the seraphim, and cherubim drain draughts from the mind of God; and here
are the Thrones whereon God balances His weighed decrees, and with His
band of Powers conquers the tyrants.[141] Here also rest the saints, freed
from earth’s dross and passion, clothed in virgin white or martyr’s
purple, or wearing the Doctor’s laurel. Joyful alike are they, yet diverse
in merit, shining with unequal splendour.[142] Here finally, in honour
surpassing all, is the Virgin Mother, clad in the garb of our
salvation--Star of the Sea, Way of Life, Port of Salvation, Limit of
Piety, Mother of Pity, Garden closed, Sealed Font, Fruitful Olive, Sweet
Paradise, Rose without Thorn, Guiltless Grace, Way of the Wanderer, Light
of the Blind, Rest of the Tired--untold, unnumbered, and unspeakable are
her praises.[143]
Phronesis cannot bear the sight. Queen Theology calls to her sister Faith
to aid the fainting one. Faith comes and holds her Mirror before the eyes
of Phronesis; and in this glass her eyes can endure the shaded glory of
the overpowering vision. She staggers on, her trembling steps supported
by Faith and Theology. In the glass she sees the eternal and divine, the
enduring, moveless, sure; species unborn, celestial ideas, the forms of
men and principles of things, causes of causes and the course of fate, the
Thunderer’s mind; why God condemns some, predestines others, prepares that
one for life and from this one withdraws His rewards; why poverty presses
upon some and want is filled only with tears; why riches pour on others,
why one is wise, another lacking, and why the worthies of the past have
been endowed each with his several gifts.[144]
Marvelling at all these sights, Prudence, supported by the sisters,
reached at last the palace of the King, and fell prostrate before God
himself. He bade her rise, and speak. Humbly she set forth Nature’s plight
and the evil upon earth, and presented her petition. God accedes
benignantly. He will not destroy the earth again, but will send a human
spirit endowed with heavenly gifts, a pilgrim to the earth, a medicine for
the world. Prudence worships. God summons Mind, and orders him to fashion
the type-form, the idea of the human mind. Mind searches among existing
beings for the traces of this new _idea_ or type.[145] His difficult
search succeeds at last, and in the Mirror which he constructs, every
grace takes its abode: Joseph’s form, the intelligence of Judith, the
patience of righteous Job, the modesty of Moses, Jacob’s simplicity,
Abraham’s faith, Tobias’s piety. He presents this pattern-type to God, who
sets an accordant soul therein, and then entrusts the new-made being to
Phronesis, while Mind anoints it with an unguent against the attacks of
the Vices. Phronesis, with her prize, turned to the way by which she had
ascended, regained her chariot and Reason her charioteer. Together they
sped back to the congratulations of Nature and her Council.
For this perfect soul Nature now forms a beautiful body. Concord unites
the two, and a new man is formed, perfect and free from flaw. Chastity and
guardian Modesty endow him with their gifts; Reason adds his, and Honesty.
These Logic follows, with her gift of skill in argument; Rhetoric brings
her stores, then Arithmetic, next Music, next Geometry, next
Astronomy;[146] while Theology and Piety are not behind with theirs; and
to these Faith joins her gifts of fidelity and truth. Last of all comes
Nobility, Fortune’s daughter. But because she has nothing of her own to
give, and must receive all from her mother, she betakes herself to
Fortune’s house of splendid mutability. What will Fortune give? The two
return to Nature’s palace, and Fortune’s magnificence is proffered by her
daughter; but Reason, standing by, will allow only a measured
acceptance.[147]
The report of this richly endowed creature reached Alecto. Raging she
summoned her pests, the chiefs of Tartarus, doers of ill, masters of every
sin--Injury, Fraud, Perjury, Theft, Rapine, Fury and Anger, Hate, Discord,
Strife, Disease and Melancholy, Lust, Wantonness and Need, Fear and Old
Age. She roused them with a harangue: their rule is threatened by this
upstart Creature, whom Parent Nature has prepared for war; but what can
his untried imbecility do against them in arms?
All clamour assent, and in a tumult of rage make ready for the strife. The
hostile ranks approach. The first attack is made by Folly (_Stultitia_)
and her comrades, Sloth, Gaming, Idle Jesting, Ease and Sleep. But
faithful Virtues protect the constant youth against these foes. Next
Discord leads its mutinous band, but only to defeat. Onslaughts follow
from Poverty, next from Ill-Repute, from Old Age and Disease. Then
Grieving advances, and is overthrown by Laughter. More deadly still are
the attacks of Venus and Lust; then Excess and Wantonness take up the
fray; and at the end Impiety and Fraud and Avarice. But still the man
conquers with the aid of his Virtues ever true.
The fight is over. The Virtues triumph and receive their Kingdoms; Vice
succumbs; Love reigns instead of Discord; the man is blessed; and the
earth, adorned with flowers in a new spring of youth, brings forth
abundance. The Poet sums up his poem’s teaching: From God must everything
begin and in Him end. But our genius may not stand inert; ours is the
strife as well, according to our strength and faculty. Let the mind attach
itself to the things which are and do not pass, even as Plato sings, from
things of sense reaching on ever to the grades Angelic and Olympus’s
steeps. Then it shall behold the universal praise of God and the true
ascription of all good to Him. He in himself is perfect, Part and likewise
Whole, and everywhere uncircumscribed. Nothing has power in itself, but
all would fall to nothing, did He close the flux of hidden power.
Alanus, a good Christian Doctor, is also an eclectic in his thought. A
consistent system is hardly to be drawn from his poem. It suggests Christ.
But its hero is not the God-man of the Incarnation. Its figures are
semi-pagan. The virtue Faith, for example, is the Fides, the Good Faith,
of the antique Roman, though it is the Christian virtue Faith as well. In
language the poem is antique; its verse has vigorous flow; its imagery
lacks neither beauty nor sublimity. It is in fact a poem, a creation,
having a scheme and unity of its own, although the author borrows
continually. Martianus Capella is there and Dionysius the Areopagite;
there also is the _Psychomachia_ of Prudentius and its progeny of symbolic
battles between the Virtues and the Vices.[148] Yet Alanus has achieved;
for he has woven his material into a real poem and has reared his own
lofty allegory. His work is another grand example of mediaeval symbolism.
Thus we see the ceaseless sweep of allegory through men’s minds. They felt
and thought and dreamed in allegories; and also spent their dry ingenuity
on allegorical constructions. It was reserved for one supreme poet to
create, out of this atmosphere, a supreme poem which is as complete an
allegory as the _Anticlaudianus_. But the _Divina Commedia_ has also the
power of its human realities of actually experienced pain and joy, and
hate and love. Compared with it, the _Anticlaudianus_ betrays the
vapourings of monk and doctor, imaginative indeed, but thin. The author’s
feet were not planted on the earth of human life.
But the Middle Ages did not demand that allegory should have its feet
planted on the earth, so long as its head nodded high among the clouds--or
its sentiments wandered sweetly in fancy’s gardens. In one of these dwelt
that lovely Rose, whose _Roman_ once had vogue. In structure the _Roman de
la rose_ is an allegory from the beginning of the first part by De Lorris
to the very end of that encyclopaedic sequel added by De Meun. The story
is well known.[149] One may recall the fact that in De Lorris’s poem and
De Meun’s sequel every quality and circumstance of Love’s sentiment and
fortunes are figured in allegorical personifications--all the lover’s
hopes and fears and the wavering chances of his quest.
In this respect the poem is the courtly and romantic counterpart of such a
philosophical or religious allegory as the _Anticlaudianus_.
Personifications of the arts and sciences, the vices and virtues, current
since the time of Prudentius’s _Psychomachia_ and Capella’s _Nuptials of
Philology_, were all in the _Anticlaudianus_, while in the _Roman de la
rose_ figure their secular and romantic kin: in De Lorris’s part, Love,
Fair-Welcome, Danger, Reason, Franchise, Pity, Courtesy, Shame, Fear,
Idleness, Jealousy, Wicked-Tongue; then, with De Meun, others besides:
Richesse, False-Seeming, Hypocrisy, Nature, and Genius.[150] The figures
of the _Roman de la rose_ have diverse antecedents scattered through the
entire store of knowledge and classic literature possessed by the Middle
Ages; perhaps their immediate source of inspiration was the scheme of
courtly love which the mediaeval imagination elaborated and revelled
in.[151] The poem of De Lorris was a veritable romantic allegory. De Meun,
in his sequel, rather plays with the allegorical form, which he continues;
it has become a frame for his stores of learning, his knowledge of the
world, his views of life, his wit and satire, and his great literary and
poetic gifts. Yet it ends in a regular _Psychomachia_, in which Love’s
barons are hard beset by all the foes of Love’s delight, though Love has
its will at last.
BOOK VI
LATINITY AND LAW
CHAPTER XXX
THE SPELL OF THE CLASSICS
I. CLASSICAL READING.
II. GRAMMAR.
III. THE EFFECT UPON THE MEDIAEVAL MAN; HILDEBERT OF LAVARDIN.
I
During all the mediaeval centuries, men approached the Classics expecting
to learn from them. The usual attitude toward the classical heritage was
that of docile pupils looking for instruction. One may recall the
antecedent reasons of this, which have already been stated at length. In
Italy, letters survived as the most impressive legacy from an
overshadowing past. In the north, save where they lingered on from the
antique time, they came in the train of Latin Christianity, and were
offered to men under the same imposing conditions of a higher civilization
authoritatively instructing ruder peoples. Moreover, between the ancient
times which produced the classic literature and the Carolingian period
there intervened centuries of degeneracy and transition, when the Classics
were used pedagogically to teach grammar and rhetoric. Then grammars were
composed or revised, and other handbooks of elementary instruction. The
Classics still were loved; but how shall men love beyond their own
natures? Gifted Jerome, great Augustine, loved them with an ardour
bringing its own misgivings. Other lovers, like Ausonius and Apollinaris
Sidonius, were pedantic imitators.
Both north and south of the Alps another and obviously enduring cause
fostered the habit of regarding the Classics as storehouses of knowledge:
the fact that they were such for all the mediaeval centuries. They
included not only poetry and eloquence, but also history, philosophy,
natural knowledge, law and polity. The knowledge contained in them
exceeded what the men of western Europe otherwise possessed. As century
after century passed, mediaeval men learned more for themselves, and also
drew more largely on the classic store. Yet it remained unexhausted. The
twelfth and thirteenth centuries constitute the great mediaeval epoch. Men
were then opening their eyes a little to observe the natural world, and
were thinking a little for themselves. Nevertheless the chief increase in
knowledge issued from the gradual discovery and mastering of the works of
Aristotle. These centuries, like their predecessors, make clear that men
who inherit from a greater past a universal literature containing the best
they can conceive and more knowledge than they can otherwise attain, will
be likely to regard every part of this literature as in some way a source
of knowledge, physical or metaphysical, historical or ethical. And the
Classics merited such regard; for where they did not instruct in science,
they imparted knowledge of life, and norms and instances of conduct, from
which men still may draw guidance. We have outlearned the physics, and
perhaps the metaphysics of the Greeks; their knowledge of nature, in
comparison with ours, was but as a genial beginning; their polities and
their formal ethics we have tried and tested; but we have not risen above
the power and inspiration of the story of Greece and Rome, and the
exemplifications of life in the Greek and Latin Classics. It has not
ceased to be true that he who best loves the Classics, and most deeply
feels and glories in their unique excellence as literature, is he who
still draws life from them, and discipline and knowledge. Their true
lovers, like the true lovers of all noble literature, are always in a
state of pupilage to the poems and the histories they love.
Obviously then no final word lies in the statement that through the Middle
Ages men turned to the Classics for instruction. They did indeed turn to
them for all kinds of knowledge, and for discipline. Often they looked for
instruction from Ovid or Virgil in a way to make us smile. Often they
were like schoolboys, dully conning words which they did not feel and so
did not understand. But in the tenth century, and in the twelfth, some men
admired and loved the Latin Classics, and drew from them, as we may,
lessons which are learned only by those who love aright.
It would be hard to say what the men of the Middle Ages did not thus gain.
The pagan classical literature was one of humanity in its full range of
interests. This was true of the Greek; and from the Greek, the universal
human passed to the Latin, which the Middle Ages were to know. In both
literatures, man was a denizen of earth. The laws of mortality and fate
were held before his eyes; and the action of the higher powers bore upon
mortal happiness, rather than upon any life to come. When reflecting upon
the use and influence of the Classics through the Middle Ages, it is
always to be kept in mind that the antique literature was the literature
of this life and of this world; that it was universal in its humanity, and
still in the Middle Ages might touch every human love and human interest
not directly connected with the hopes and terrors of the Judgment Day.
So whenever educated mediaeval men were drawn by the ambitions or moved by
the finer joys of human life, it lay in their path to seek instruction or
satisfaction from some antique source. If a man wished the common
education of a clerk, he drew it from antique text-books and their
commentaries. Grammar and rhetoric meant Latin grammar and Latin rhetoric;
dialectic also was Latin and antique. Likewise the quadrivium of
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, could be studied only in
Latin. These ordinary branches of education having been mastered, if then
the man’s tastes or ambitions turned to the interests of earth (and who
except the saintly recluse was not so drawn?) he would still look to the
antique. A civilian or an ecclesiastic would need some knowledge of law,
which for the most part was Roman, even when disguised as Canon law.[152]
Did a man incline toward philosophy, and the scrutiny of life’s deeper
problems, again the source was the antique; and when he lifted his mind to
theology, he would still find himself reasoning in categories of antique
dialectic. Finally, and this was a broad field of humane inclination, if a
clerkly educated man loved poetry, eloquence, and history, for their own
sakes, he also would turn to the antique.
There is scarcely need to revert again to the use of the Classics in the
earlier Middle Ages. We have seen that in Italy they never ceased to form
the conscious background to all intellectual life; and that in the north,
letters came a handmaid in the train of Latin Christianity--a handmaid
that was apt to assert her own value, and also charm the minds of men.
From the first, it was the orthodox view that Latin letters should provide
the education enabling men to understand the Christian religion
adequately. This is the object set forth in Charlemagne’s Capitularies
upon education.[153] Three hundred years later Honorius of Autun says in
his sermonizing way:
“Not only, beloved, do the sacred writings lead us to eternal life,
but profane letters also teach us; for edifying matter may be drawn
from them. In view of sacred examples no one should be scandalized at
this. For the children of Israel spoiled the Egyptians; they took gold
and silver, gems and precious vestments, which they afterwards turned
into God’s treasury to build the tabernacle.”[154]
Honorius used Augustine’s reference to the Egyptians, and followed this
Augustinian view, always recognized as orthodox in the Middle Ages. It was
narrower than the practice among those who followed letters. Gerbert at
the close of the tenth century loved to teach and read the pagan writers,
and drew from them training and discipline.[155] In the next century, the
German monk Froumund of Tegernsee, with Bernward and Godehard, bishops of
Hildesheim, are instances of German love of antique letters.[156] Yet
lofty souls might choose to limit their reading of the Classics, at least
in theory, to the needs of their Latinity. Such a one was Hugo of
St.-Victor, scholar, theologian, man of genius;[157] he professed to care
more for the Christian ardours of the soul than for learning even as a
means of righteousness, and chose to take the side of those who would
read the classic authors only so far as the needs of education demanded:
“There are two kinds of writings, first those which are termed the
_artes_ proper, secondly, those which are the supplements
(_appendentia_) of the _artes_. _Artes_ comprise the works grouped
under (_supponuntur_) philosophy, those which contain some fixed and
determined matter of philosophy, as grammar, dialectic and the like.
_Appendentia artium_ are those [writings] which touch philosophy less
nearly and are occupied with some subject apart from it; and yet
sometimes offer flotsam and jetsam from the _artes_, or simply as
narratives smooth the road to philosophy. All the songs of poets are
such--tragedies, comedies, satires, heroics, and lyrics too, and
iambics, besides certain didactic works (_didascalica_); tales
likewise, and histories; also the writings of those nowadays called
philosophers, who extend a brief matter with lengthy circumlocution,
and thus darken a simple meaning.
“Note then well the distinction I have drawn for thee: distinct and
different (_duo_) are the _artes_ and their _appenditia_, ... and
often from the latter the student will gain much labour and little
fruit. The _artes_, without their _appenditia_, may make the reader
perfect; but the latter, without the _artes_, can bring no whit of
perfection. Wherefore one should first of all devote himself to the
_artes_, which are so fundamental, and to the aforesaid seven above
all, which are the means and instruments (_instrumenta_) of all
philosophy. Then let the rest be read, if one has leisure, since
sometimes the playful mingled with the serious especially delights us,
and we are apt to remember a moral found in a tale.”[158]
Temperament affected Hugo’s view. He was of the spiritual aristocracy, who
may be somewhat disdainful of the common means by which men get their
education and round out their natures. The mechanical monotony of pedagogy
grated on him and evoked the ironical sketch of a school-room, which he
put in his dialogue on the Vanity of the World. The little Discipulus,
directed by his Magister, is surveying human things.
“Turn again, and look,” says the latter, “and what do you see?”
“I see the schools of learners. There is a great crowd, and of all
ages, boys and youths, men young and old. They study various things.
Some practise their rude tongue at the alphabet and at words new to
them. Others listen to the inflection of words, their composition and
derivation; then by reciting and repeating them they try to commit
them to memory. Others furrow the waxen tablets with a stylus. Others,
guiding the calamus with learned hand, draw figures of different
shapes and colours on parchments. Still others with sharper zeal seem
to dispute on graver matters and try to trip each other with twistings
and impossibilities (_gryphis_?). I see some also making calculations,
and some producing various sounds upon a cord stretched on a frame.
Others, again, explain and demonstrate geometric figures; and yet
others with various instruments show the positions and courses of the
stars and the movement of the heavens. Others, finally, consider the
nature of plants, the constitution of men, and the properties and
powers of things.”
The Disciple is captivated with this many-coloured show of learning; but
the Master declares it to be mostly foolishness, distracting the student
from understanding his own nature, his Creator, and his future lot.[159]
These are examples, which might be multiplied indefinitely, of the pious
mediaeval view that the _artes_, with a very little reading of the
_auctores_, were proper for the educated Christian, whose need was to
understand Scripture. Sometimes, stung, at least rhetorically, by fear of
the lust and idolatry of the antique, mediaeval souls cry out against its
lures, even as Jerome’s Christianly protesting nature dreamed that famous
dream of exclusion from heaven as a “Ciceronian.” Alcuin, who led the
educational movement under Charlemagne, gently chides one whose fondness
for Virgil made him forget his friend--“would that the Gospels rather than
the _Aeneid_ filled thy breast.”[160] Three hundred years later, St. Peter
Damiani, himself a virtuoso in letters and a sometime teacher of rhetoric,
arraigns the monks for teaching grammar rather than things spiritual.[161]
Damiani speaks with the harshness of one who fears what he loves. In
France, about the same time, our worthy sermon-writer, Honorius of Autun,
liked the profanities well enough, and drew from them apt moral tales,
which preachers might introduce to rouse drowsy congregations. Yet he
directs his pulpit-thunder at the _cives Babyloniae_, the _superbi_, who
after their several tastes finger profane literature to their peril:
“Those delighting in quibbling learn Aristotle: the lovers of war have
Maro, and the lustful idlers their Naso. Lucan and Statius incite
discords, while Horace and Terence equip the pert and wanton
(_petulantes_)--but since the names of these are blotted from the book of
life, I shall not commemorate them with my lips.”[162]
This with the excellent Honorius was pious rhetoric. Yet the love and fear
of antique letters caused anxiety in many a mediaeval soul, deflected by
them from its narrow path to the heavenly Jerusalem. Indeed the love of
letters and of knowledge was to play its part, and might take one side or
the other, according to the motive of their pursuit, in the great
mediaeval _psychomachia_ between the cravings of mortal life and the
militant insistencies of the soul’s salvation. This conflict, not confined
to mediaeval monks, has its universal aspects. It echoes in the sigh of
Michelangelo over the
“affectuosa fantasia,
Che l’ arte si fece idolo e monarca,”
--which had so long drawn his heart from Eternity.[163]
Commonly, however, this conflict did not greatly disturb scholars who felt
in some degree the classic spell so manifold of delight in themes
delightful, of pleasure somehow drawn from clear statement and convincing
sequence of thought, of even deeper happiness springing from the stirring
of those faculties through which man rejoices in knowledge. To be sure,
readers of the Classics, who drew joy from them or satisfaction, or humane
instruction, were comparatively few in the mediaeval centuries, as they
are to-day. And undoubtedly in the Middle Ages the Classics usually were
read in unenlightened schoolboy fashion. Yet making these reservations, we
may be sure that letters yielded up their joys to the chosen few in every
mediaeval century. “Amor litterarum ab ipso fere initio pueritiae mihi est
innatus,” wrote Lupus in the ninth.[164] Gerbert might have said the
same, and many of the men who taught at Chartres in the generations
following. So likewise might have said John of Salisbury. In studying the
Classics he certainly looked to them for instruction. But he also loved
them, and found companionship and solace in them, as he says, and as
Cicero before him had said of letters.
We may ask ourselves what sort of pleasure do _we_ get from reading the
Classics? not necessarily a light distracting of the mind, but rather a
deeper gratification: thought is aroused and satisfied, and our nature is
appeased by the admirable presentation of things admirable. At the same
time we may be conscious of discipline and benefit. There is good reason
to suppose that a like pleasure, or satisfaction, with discipline and
instruction, came to this exceedingly clever John from reading Terence,
Virgil and Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Persius and Statius, Cicero,
Seneca and Quintilian--for he read them all.[165] John is affected,
impressed, and trained by his classic reading; he has absorbed his
authors; he quotes from them as spontaneously and aptly as he quotes from
Scripture. A quotation from the one or the other may give final point to
an argument, and have its own eloquent suggestions. Sometimes the tone of
one of his own letters--which usually are excellent in form and
language--may agree with that of the pithy antique quotation garnishing
it. A mediaeval writer was not likely to say just what we should when
expressing ourselves on the same matter. Yet John makes quite clear to us
how he cared for antique letters, in the Prologue to his _Polycraticus_,
his chief work on philosophy and life; and we may take his word as to the
satisfaction which he drew from them, since his own writings prove his
assiduity in their cult. This prologue is somewhat _cherché_, and imbued
with a preciosity of sentiment putting one in mind of Cicero’s oration
_Pro Archia poeta_.
“Most delightful in many ways, but in this especially, is the fruit of
letters, that banishing the reserve of intervening place and time,
they bring friends into each other’s presence, and do not suffer
noteworthy things to be obliterated by dust. For the arts would have
perished, laws would have vanished, the offices of faith and religion
would have fallen away, and even the correct use of language would
have failed, had not the divine pity, as a remedy for human infirmity,
provided letters for the use of mortals. Ancient examples, which
incite to virtue, would have corrected and served no one, had not the
pious solicitude of writers transmitted them to posterity.... Who
would know the Alexanders and the Caesars, or admire Stoics and
Peripatetics, had not the monuments of writers signalized them?
Triumphal arches promote the glory of illustrious men from the carved
inscription of their deeds. Thereby the observer recognizes the
Liberator of his Country, the Establisher of Peace. The light of fame
endures for no one save through his own or another’s writing. How many
and how great kings thinkest thou there have been, of whom there is
neither speech nor cogitation? Vainly have men stormed the heights of
glory, if their fame does not shine in the light of letters. Other
favour or distinction is as fabled Echo, or the plaudits of the Play,
ceasing the moment it has begun.
“Besides all this, solace in grief, recreation in labour, cheerfulness
in poverty, modesty amid riches and delights, faithfully are bestowed
by letters. For the soul is redeemed from its vices, and even in
adversity refreshed with sweet and wondrous cheer, when the mind is
intended upon reading or writing what is profitable. Thou shalt find
in human life no more pleasing or more useful employment; unless
perchance when, with heart dilated through prayer and divine love, the
mind perceives and arranges within itself, as with the hand of
meditation, the great things of God. Believe one who has tried it,
that all the sweets of the world, compared with these exercises, are
wormwood.”[166]
Hereupon, still addressing himself to his friend and patron, Thomas à
Becket, John suggests that these recreations are peculiarly beneficial to
men in their circumstances, burdened with affairs; and he puts his
principles in practice, by launching forth upon his lengthy work of
learned and philosophic disquisition.
To supplement this outline of John’s appreciation of the Classics, it will
be interesting to look into the literary interpretation of a classical
poem, from the pen of one of his contemporaries. So little is known of the
author, Bernard Silvestris, that he usually has been confused with his
more famous fellow, Bernard of Chartres. We may refer to both of them
again.[167] Here our business is solely with the _Commentum Bernardi
Silvestris super sex libros Aeneidos Virgilii_.[168] The writer draws from
the _Saturnalia_ of the fifth-century grammarian, Macrobius; but his
allegorical interpretation of the _Aeneid_ seems to be his own. He finds
in the _Aeneid_ a twofold consideration, in that its author meant to teach
philosophic truth, and at the same time was not inattentive to the poetic
plot.
“Since then Virgil in this poem is both philosopher and poet, we shall
first expound the purpose and method of the poet.... His aim is to
unfold the calamities of Aeneas and other Trojans, and the labours of
the exiles. Herein disregarding the truth of history as told by Dares
the Phrygian,[169] and seeking to win the favour of Augustus, he
adorns the facts with figments. For Virgil, greatest of Latin poets,
wrote in imitation of Homer, greatest of Greek poets. As Homer in the
_Iliad_ narrates the fall of Troy and in the _Odyssey_ the exile of
Ulysses; so Virgil in the second Book briefly relates the overthrow of
Troy, and in the rest the labours of Aeneas. Consider the twin order
of narration, the natural and the artistic (_artificialem_). The
natural is when the narrative proceeds according to the sequence of
events, telling first what happened first. Lucan and Statius keep to
this order. The artistic is when we begin in the middle of the story,
and thence revert to the commencement. Terence writes thus, and Virgil
in this work. It would have been the natural order to have described
first the destruction of Troy, and then brought the Trojans to Crete,
from Crete to Sicily, and from Sicily to Libya. But he first brings
them to Dido, and introduces Aeneas relating the overthrow of Troy and
the other things that he has suffered.[170]
“Up to this point we show how he proceeds: next let us observe why he
does it so. With poets there is the reason of usefulness, as with a
satirist; the reason of pleasure, as with a writer of comedies; and
again these two combined, as with the historical poet. As Horace says:
‘Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae,
Aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae.’
“This kind of a historical poem is shown by its figurative and
polished diction and in the various mischances and deeds narrated. If
any one will study to imitate it he will gain skill in writing. The
narrative also contains instances and arguments for following the
right and avoiding what is evil. Hence a twofold profit to the reader:
skill in writing, gained through imitation, and prudence in conduct,
drawn from example and precept. For instance, in the labours of Aeneas
we have an example of endurance; and one of piety, in his affection
for Anchises and Ascanius. From the reverence which he shows the gods,
from the oracles which he supplicates, from the sacrifices which he
offers, from the vows and prayers which he pours forth, we feel drawn
to religion: while through Dido’s unbridled love, we are recalled from
desire for the forbidden.”
The above is excellent, but not particularly original. It shows, however,
that Bernard could appreciate the _Aeneid_ in this way. His allegorical
interpretation is of a piece with current mediaeval methods. Yet to take a
poem allegorically was not distinctively mediaeval; for Homer and other
poets had been thus expounded from the days of Plato, who did not himself
approve. With Bernard, each Book of the _Aeneid_ represents one of the
ages of man, the first Book betokening infancy, the second boyhood, and so
forth. Allegorical etymologies are applied to the names of the personages;
and in general the whole natural course and setting of the poem is taken
allegorically. “The sea is the human body moved and tossed by drunkenness
and lusts, which are represented by waves.” Aeneas, to wit, the human soul
joined to its body, comes to Carthage, the mundane city where Dido reigns,
which is lust; this allegory is unfolded in detail. So the interpretation
ambles on, not more and not less jejune than such ingenuities usually are.
* * * * *
Classical studies reached their zenith in the twelfth century. For in
every way that century surpassed its predecessors; and in classical
studies it excelled the thirteenth, which devoted to them a smaller
portion of its intellectual energies. The twelfth century, to be sure, was
prodigiously interested in dialectic and theology. Yet these had not quite
engulfed the humanities; nor had any newly awakened interest in physical
or experimental science distracted the eyes of men from the charms of the
ancient written page. The change took place in the thirteenth century.
Its best intellectual efforts, north of the Alps at least, were directed
to the study and theological appropriation of the Aristotelian
encyclopaedia of metaphysics and universal knowledge.[171] The effect of
Aristotle was totally unliterary. And the minds of men, absorbed in
mastering this giant mass of knowledge and argument, ceased to regard
literary form and the humane aspects of Latin literature.
Until the thirteenth century, dialectic and theology were not completely
severed from _belles lettres_. The Platonic-Augustinian theology of the
twelfth century had been idealizing and imaginative, not to say poetical.
Such an interesting exponent of it as Hugo of St. Victor appears as a
literary personage, despite his stinted advocacy of classical study. One
notes that for his time the chief single source of physical knowledge was
the Latin version of the _Timaeus_, certainly not a prosaic composition.
Thus, for the twelfth century, an effective cause of the continuance of
the study of letters lay herein: whatever branch of natural knowledge
might allure the student, he could not draw it bodily from a serious but
unliterary repository, like the _Physics_ or _De animalibus_ of Aristotle,
which were not yet available; he must follow his bent through the writings
of various Latin poets as well as prose-writers. In fine, the sources of
profane knowledge open to the twelfth century were literary in their
nature, and might form part of the literature which would be read by a
student of grammar or rhetoric.
One sees this in John of Salisbury. There may have been a few men who knew
more than he did of some particular topic. But his range and readiness of
knowledge were unique. And it is evident from his writings that his
knowledge (except in logic) had no special or scientific source, but was
derived from a promiscuous reading of Latin literature. As a result, he is
himself a literary man. One may say much the same of his younger
contemporary, Alanus de Insulis.[172] He too has gathered knowledge from
literary sources, and he himself is one of the best Latin poets of the
Middle Ages. Another extremely poetic philosopher was Bernard Silvestris,
the interpreter of Virgil. His _De mundi unitate_ is a Pantheistic
exposition of the Universe; it is also a poem; and incidentally it affords
another illustration of the general fact, that before the works of
Aristotle were made known and expounded in the thirteenth century, all
kinds of natural and quasi-philosophic knowledge were drawn from a variety
of writings, some of them poor enough from any point of view, but none of
them distinctly scientific and unliterary, like the works of Aristotle.
Formal logic or dialectic, as cultivated by Abaelard for example, appears
as an exception. It had been specialized and more scientifically treated
than any branch of substantial knowledge; for indeed it was based on the
logical treatises of Aristotle, most of which were in use before
Abaelard’s death, and all of which were known to Thierry of Chartres and
John of Salisbury.[173]
The contrast between the cathedral school of Chartres and the University
of Paris illustrates the change from the twelfth to the thirteenth
century. The former has been spoken of in a previous chapter, where its
story was brought down to the times of its great teachers, Bernard and
Thierry, of whom we shall have to speak in connection with the teaching of
grammar and the reading of classical authors. The school flourished
exceedingly until the middle of the twelfth century.[174] By that time the
schools of Paris had received an enormous impetus from the popularity of
Abaelard, and scholars had begun to push thither from all quarters. But it
was not till the latter part of the century that the University, with its
organization of Masters and Faculties, began visibly to emerge out of the
antecedent cathedral school.[175] Chartres was a home of letters; and
there Latin literature was read enthusiastically. But in Paris Abaelard
was pre-eminently a dialectician; and after he died, through those decades
when the University was coming into existence, the tide of study set
irresistibly toward theology and metaphysics. Students and masters of the
Faculty of Arts outnumbered all the other Faculties; nevertheless,
counting not by tumultuous numbers, but by intellectual strength, the
great matter was Theology, and the majority of the Masters in the Arts
were students in the divine science. The Arts were regarded as a
preparatory discipline. So through its great period, which roughly
coincides with the thirteenth century, the University of Paris was for all
Europe the supreme seat of Dialectic, Metaphysics, and Theology, and yet
no kindly nurse of _belles lettres_.
The tendencies of Oxford were not quite the same as those of Paris, yet
Latin literature as such does not seem to have been cultivated there for
its own fair sake. This apparently was unaffected by the fact that a
movement for “close” or exact scholarship existed at the English
university. Grosseteste, its first great chancellor, teacher and inspirer,
unquestionably introduced, or encouraged, the study of Greek; and his
famous pupil, Roger Bacon, was a serious Greek scholar, and wrote a
grammar of that tongue. But neither Grosseteste nor Bacon appears to have
been moved by any literary interest in Greek literature; both one and the
other urged the importance of Greek, and of Hebrew too and Arabic, in
order to reach a surer knowledge of Scripture and Aristotle. They sought
to open the veritable founts of theology and natural knowledge, an
intelligent aim indeed, but quite unliterary. In spirit both these men
belong to the thirteenth century, not to the twelfth.[176]
In Italy, one does not find that the passage from the twelfth to the
thirteenth century displays the decline in classical studies which is
apparent north of the Alps. The reasons seem obvious. The passion for
metaphysical theology did not invade this land of practical
ecclesiasticism and urban living, where pagan antiquity, dumb, broken, and
defaced, yet everywhere surviving, was the medium of life and thought and
temperamental inclination in the thirteenth as well as in the twelfth
century. Nor was Italy as yet becoming scientific, or greatly interested
in physical hypothesis; although medicine was cultivated in various
centres, Salerno, for example, and Bologna. But for the twelfth, and for
the thirteenth century as well, Italy’s great intellectual achievement was
in the two closely neighbouring sciences of canon and civil law. These
made the University of Bologna as pre-eminent in law as Paris was in
theology. There had been schools of grammar and rhetoric at Bologna and
Ravenna, before the lecturing of Irnerius on the _Pandects_ drew to the
first-named town the concourse of mature and seemly students who were
gradually to organize themselves into a university.[177] Thus at Bologna
law flourished and grew great, springing upward from an antecedent base of
grammatical if not literary studies. The study of the law never cut itself
away from this foundation. For the exigencies of legal business demanded
training in the scrivener’s and notarial arts of inditing epistles and
drawing documents, for which the _ars dictaminis_, to wit, the art of
composition was of primary utility. This _ars_, teaching as it did both
the general rules of composition and the more specific forms of legal or
other formal documents, pertained to law as well as grammar. Of the latter
study it was perhaps in Italy the main element, or, rather, end. But even
without this hybrid link of the _dictamen_, grammar was needed for the
interpretation of the _Pandects_; and indeed some of the glosses of
Irnerius and other early glossators are grammatical rather than legal
explanations of the text. We should bear in mind that this august body of
jurisprudential law existed not in the inflated statutory Latin of
Justinian’s time, but in the sonorous and correct language of the earlier
empire, when the great Jurists lived, as well as Quintilian. Accordingly a
close study of the _Pandects_ required, as well as yielded, a knowledge of
classical Latinity. Thus law tended to foster, rather than repress,
grammar and rhetoric; and had no unfavourable effect on classical studies.
And even as such studies “flourished” in Italy in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, they did not cease to “flourish,” there in the thirteenth, in
the same general though rather dull and uncreative way. For it will
hereafter appear that the productions of the Latin poets and rhetoricians
of Italy were below the literary level of those composed north of the
Loire in France, or in England.
II
From the days of the Roman Empire, the study of grammar was, and never
ceased to be, the basis of the conscious and rational knowledge of the
Latin tongue. The Roman boys studied it at Rome; the Latin-speaking
provincials studied it, and all people of education who remained in the
lands of western Europe which once had formed part of the Empire; its
study was renewed under Charlemagne; he and Alcuin and all the scholars of
the ninth century were deeply interested in what to them represented
tangible Latinity, and in fact was to be a chief means by which their
mediaeval civilization should maintain its continuity with its source. For
grammar was most instrumental in preserving mediaeval Latin from violent
deflections, which would have left the ancient literature as the
literature of a forgotten tongue. Had mediaeval Latin failed to keep
itself veritable Latin; had it instead suffered transmutation into local
Romance dialects, the Latin classics, and all that hung from them, might
have become as unknown to the Middle Ages as the Greek, and even have been
lost forever. It was the study of Latin grammar, with classic texts to
illustrate its rules, that kept Latin Latin, and preserved standards of
universal usage throughout western Europe, by which one language was read
and spoken everywhere by educated people. From century to century this
language suffered modification, and varied according to the knowledge and
training of those who used it; yet its changes were never such as to
destroy its identity as a language, or prevent the Latin writer of one age
or country from understanding whatever in any land or century had been
written in that perennial tongue.
Therefore fortunately, as the Carolingian scholars studied Latin grammar,
so likewise did those of all succeeding mediaeval generations, thereby
holding themselves to at least a homogeneity, though not an unvarying
uniformity, of usage. Evidently, however, the method of grammatical
instruction had to vary with the needs of the learners and the teachers’
skill. The Romans prattled Latin on their mothers’ knees; and so, with
gradually widening deflections, did the Latinized provincials. Neither
Roman nor Provincial prattled Ciceronian periods, or used quite the
vocabulary of Virgil; yet it was Latin that they talked. Thenceforward
there was to be a difference between the people who lived in countries
where Romance dialects had emerged from the spoken Latin and prevailed,
and those people who spoke a Teuton speech. Although always drawing away,
the natal speech of Romance peoples was so like Latin, that in learning it
they seemed rather to correct their vulgar tongue than to acquire a new
language. So it was in the Christian parts of Spain, in Gaul, and, above
all, in Italy, where the vulgar dialects were tardiest in taking
distinctive form. Nevertheless, as the Romance dialects, for instance in
the country north of the Loire, developed into the various forms of what
is called Old French, young people at school would have to learn Latin as
a quasi-foreign tongue. Across the Rhine in Germany boys ordinarily had to
learn it at school, as a strange language, just as they must to-day; and
every effort was devoted to this end.[178] It was not likely that the
grammars composed for Roman boys, or at least for boys who spoke Latin
from their infancy, would altogether meet the needs of German, or even
French, youth. Yet only gradually and slowly in the Middle Ages were
grammars put together to make good the insufficiencies of Donatus and
Priscian.
The former was the teacher of St. Jerome. He composed a short work, in the
form of questions and answers, explaining the eight parts of speech, but
giving no rules of gender, or forms of declension and conjugation, needed
for the instruction of those who, unlike the Roman youth, could not speak
the language. This little book went by the name of the _Ars minor_. The
same grammarian composed a more extensive work, the third book of which
was called the _Barbarismus_, after its opening chapter. It defined the
figures of speech (_figurae_, _locutiones_), and was much used through the
mediaeval period.
The _Ars minor_ explained in simple fashion the elements of speech. But
the _Institutiones grammaticae_ of Priscian, a contemporary of
Cassiodorus, offered a mine of knowledge. Of its eighteen books the first
sixteen were devoted to the parts of speech and their forms, considered
under the variations of gender, declension, and conjugation. The remaining
two treated of _constructio_ or syntax. As early as the tenth century
Priscian was separated into these two parts, which came to be known as
_Priscianus major_ and _minor_. The Priscian manuscripts, whose name is
legion, usually present the former. Diffuse in language, confused in
arrangement, and overladen perhaps with its thousands of examples, it was
berated for its labyrinthine qualities even in the Middle Ages; yet its
sixteen books remained the chief source of etymological knowledge.
_Priscianus minor_ was less widely used.
The grammarians of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries followed
Donatus and Priscian, making extracts from their works, or abridgements,
and now and then introducing examples of deviation from the ancient usage.
The last came usually from the Vulgate text of Scripture, which sometimes
departed from the idioms or even word-forms approved by the old
authorities.[179] The _Ars minor_ of Donatus became enveloped in
commentaries; but Priscian was so formidable that in these early centuries
he was merely _glossed_, that is, annotated in brief marginal fashion.
It would be tedious to dwell upon mediaeval grammatical studies. But the
tendencies characterizing them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may
be indicated briefly. The substance of the _Priscianus major_ was followed
by mediaeval grammarians. That is to say, while admitting certain
novelties,[180] they adhered to its rules and examples relating to the
forms of words, their declension and conjugation. But the _Priscianus
minor_, although used, was departed from. In the first place its treatment
of its subject (syntax) was confused and inadequate. There was, however, a
broader reason for seeking rules elsewhere. Mediaeval Latin, in its
progress as a living or quasi-living language, departed from the classical
norms far more in syntax and composition than in word-forms. The latter
continued much the same as in antiquity. But the popular and so to speak
Romance tendencies of mediaeval Latin brought radical changes of
word-order and style, which worked back necessarily upon the rules of
syntax. These had been but hazily stated by the old writers, and the task
of constructing an adequate Latin syntax remained undone. It was a task of
vital importance for the preservation of the Latin tongue. Word-forms
alone will not preserve the continuity of a language; it is essential that
their use in speech and writing should be kept congruous through
appropriate principles of syntax. Such were intelligently formulated by
mediaeval grammarians. The result was not exactly what it would have been
had the task been carried out in the fourth century: yet it has endured in
spite of the attacks, pseudo-attacks indeed, of the _cinquecento_; and the
mediaeval treatment of Latin syntax is the basis of the modern treatment.
One may add that syntax or _constructio_ was taken broadly as embracing
not only the agreements of number and gender, and the governing[181] of
cases, but also the order of words in a sentence, which had changed so
utterly between the time of Cicero and Thomas Aquinas.
These general statements find illustration in the famous _Doctrinale_ of
Alexander de Villa-Dei, whose author was born in Normandy in the latter
half of the twelfth century. He studied at Paris, and in course of time
was summoned by the Bishop of Dol to instruct his _nepotes_ in grammar.
While acting as their tutor, he appears to have helped their memory by
setting his rules in rhyme; and the bishop asked him to write a _Summa_ of
grammar in some such fashion. Complying, he composed the _Doctrinale_ in
the year 1199, putting his work into leonine or rhyming hexameter, to make
it easier to memorize. Rarely has a school-book met with such success. It
soon came into use in Paris and elsewhere, and for some three hundred
years was the common manual of grammatical teaching throughout western
Europe. It was then attacked and apparently driven from the field by the
so-called Humanists, who, however, failed to offer anything better in its
place, and plagiarized from the work which they professed to
execrate.[182]
The etymological portions of the _Doctrinale_ follow the teachings of the
_Priscianus major_; the part devoted to syntax, or _constructio_, shows
traces of the influence of the _Priscianus minor_. But Alexander’s
treatment of syntax is more systematic and elaborate than Priscian’s; and
he did not hesitate to defer to the Vulgate and other Christian Latin
writings. Thus he made his work conform to contemporary usage, which its
purpose was to set forth. He did the same in the section on Prosody, in
which he says that the ancient metricians distinguished a number of feet
no longer used, and he will confine himself to six--the dactyl, spondee,
trochee, anapaest, iambus, and tribrach.[183] In contradiction to
classical usage he condemns elision;[184] and in his chapter on accent he
throws over the ancient rules:
“Accentus normas legitur posuisse vetustas;
Non tamen has credo servandas tempore nostro.”[185]
Alexander was not really an innovator. He followed previous grammarians
in condemning elision, and in what he says of quantity and accent. In his
syntax he endeavoured to set forth rules conforming to the best Latin
usage of his time, like other mediaeval grammarians before him. He was
indeed vehement in his advocacy of recent and Christian authors as
standards of writing, and he inveighed against the scholars of Orleans,
who read the Classics, and would have us sacrifice to the gods and observe
the indecent festivals of Faunus and Jove.[186] But others defended the
Orleans school, and perhaps still regarded the Classics as the best
arbiters of grammar and eloquence. There exist thirteenth-century grammars
which follow Priscian more closely than Alexander does.[187] Yet his work
represents the dominant tendencies of his time.
Twelfth and thirteenth century grammarians recommended to their pupils a
variety of reading, in which mediaeval and early Christian compositions
held as large a place as Virgil and Ovid. The _Doctrinale_ advocates no
work more emphatically than Petrus Riga’s _Aurora_, a versified paraphrase
of Scripture. Its author was a chorister in Rheims, and died in 1209.[188]
The works of scholastic philosophers were not cited as frequently as the
compositions of verse-writers; yet mediaeval grammarians were influenced
by the language of philosophy, and drew from its training principles which
they applied to their own science. Grammar could not help becoming
dialectical when the intellectual world was turning to logic and
metaphysics. Commencing in the twelfth century, overmasteringly in the
thirteenth, logic penetrated grammar and compelled an application of its
principles. Often grammarians might better have looked to linguistic usage
than to dialectic; yet if grammar was to become a rational science, it had
to systematize itself through principles of logic, and make use of
dialectic in its endeavour to state a reason for its rules. Those who
applied logic to grammar at least endeavoured to distinguish between the
two, not always fruitfully. But a real difference could not fail to
assert itself inasmuch as logic was in truth of universal application,
while mediaeval grammar never ceased to be the grammar of the Latin
language. Nevertheless its terminology was largely drawn from logic.[189]
So dialectic brought both good and ill, proving itself helpful in the
regulation of syntax, but banefully affecting grammarians with the
conviction that language was the creature of reason, and must conform to
principles of logic. One likewise notes with curious interest, that, from
their dialectic training apparently, grammarians first found as many
_species_ of grammar as languages,[190] and then forsook this idea for the
view that, in order to be a science, grammar must be universal, or, as
they phrased it, one, and must possess principles not applicable specially
to Greek or Latin, but to _congruous construction in the abstract_; “de
constructione congrua secundum quod abstrahit ab omni lingua speciali,”
are the words of the English thirteenth-century philosopher and
grammarian, Robert Kilwardby.[191] A like idea affected Roger Bacon, who
composed a Greek grammar,[192] which appears to have been intended as the
first part of a work upon the grammars of the learned languages other than
Latin. It was adapted to afford a grounding in the elements of Greek: yet
it touches matters in a way showing that the writer had thought deeply on
the affinities of languages and the common principles of grammar. Of this
the following passage is evidence:
“Therefore, because I wish to treat of the properties of Greek
grammar, it should be known that there are differences in the Greek
language, to be hereafter noted in giving the names of these dialects
(_idiomata_). And I call them _idiomata_ and not _linguas_, because
they are not different languages, but different properties which are
peculiarities (_idiomata_) of the same language.[193] Wishing to set
forth Greek grammar, for the use of the Latins, it is necessary to
compare it with Latin grammar, because I commonly speak Latin myself,
seeing that the crowd does not know Greek; also because grammar is of
one and the same substance in all languages, although varying in its
non-essentials (_accidentaliter_), also because Latin grammar in a
certain special way is derived from Greek, as Priscian says, and other
grammarians.”[194]
The dialecticizing of grammar took place in the north, under influences
radiating from Paris, the chief dialectic centre. These did not deeply
affect grammatical studies in Italy, or in the Midi of France, which in
some respects exhibited like intellectual tendencies. Grammar was
zealously studied in Italy, but it did not there become either speculative
or dialectical. To be sure northern manuals were used, especially the
_Doctrinale_; but the study remained practical, an art rather than a
science, and its chief element, or end, was the _ars dictaminis_ or
_dictandi_. The grammatical treatises of Italians were treatises upon this
art of epistolary composition and the proper ways of drawing documents.
These works were studied also in the North, where the _ars dictaminis_ was
by no means neglected.[195]
Latin grammar, although over-dialecticized in the North, and in Italy made
very practical, remained of necessity the foundation of classical studies,
and of mediaeval literary effort, in prose and verse. As the basis of
liberal studies, it had no truer home than the cathedral school of
Chartres.[196] Contemporary writers picture the manner in which this study
was there made to perform its most liberal office, under favourable
mediaeval conditions, in the first half of the twelfth century. The time
antedates the _Doctrinale_, and one notes at once that the Chartrian
masters used the ancient grammatical authorities. This is shown by the
_Eptateuchon_ of Thierry, who was headmaster (_scholasticus_) and then
Chancellor there for a number of years between 1120 and 1150. As its name
implies, the work was a manual, or rather an encyclopaedia, of the Seven
Arts. Thierry compiled it from the writings of the “chief doctors on the
arts.” He transcribed the _Ars minor_ of Donatus and then portions of his
larger work. Having commended this author for his conciseness and
subtilty, Thierry next copied out the whole of Priscian. As text-books for
the second branch of the Trivium, he gives Cicero’s _De inventione
rhetorica libri 2_, _Rhetoricorum ad Herennium libri 4_, _De partitione
oratoria dialogus_, and concludes with the rhetorical writings of
Martianus Capella and J. Severianus.[197]
So much for the books. Now for the method of teaching as described by John
of Salisbury. He gives the practice of Bernard of Chartres, Thierry’s
elder brother, who was scholasticus and Chancellor before him, in the
first quarter of the twelfth century. John has been advocating the study
of grammar as the _fundamentum atque radix_ of those exercises by which
virtue and philosophy are reached; and he is advising a generous reading
of the Classics by the student, and their constant use by the professor,
to illustrate his teaching.
“This method was followed by Bernard of Chartres, _exundissimus
modernis temporibus fons litterarum in Gallia_. By citations from the
authors he showed what was simple and regular; he brought into relief
the grammatical figures, the rhetorical colours, the artifices of
sophistry, and pointed out how the text in hand bore upon other
studies; not that he sought to teach everything in a single session,
for he kept in mind the capacity of his audience. He inculcated
correctness and propriety of diction, and a fitting use of congruous
figures. Realizing that practise strengthens memory and sharpens
faculty, he urged his pupils to imitate what they had heard, inciting
some by admonitions, others by whipping and penalties. Each pupil
recited the next day something from what he had heard on the
preceding. The evening exercise, called the _declinatio_, was filled
with such an abundance of grammar that any one, of fair intelligence,
by attending it for a year, would have at his fingers’ ends the art of
writing and speaking, and would know the meaning of all words in
common use. But since no day and no school ought to be vacant of
religion, Bernard would select for study a subject edifying to faith
and morals. The closing part of this _declinatio_, or rather
philosophical recitation, was stamped with piety: the souls of the
dead were commended, a penitential Psalm was recited, and the Lord’s
Prayer.
“For those boys who had to write exercises in prose or verse, he
selected the poets and orators, and showed how they should be imitated
in the linking of words and the elegant ending of passages. If any one
sewed another’s cloth into his garment, he was reproved for the theft,
but usually was not punished. Yet Bernard gently pointed out to
awkward borrowers that whoever imitated the ancients (_majores_)
should himself become worthy of imitation by posterity. He impressed
upon his pupils the virtue of economy, and the values of things and
words: he explained where a meagreness and tenuity of diction was
fitting, and where copiousness or even excess should be allowed, and
the advantage of due measure everywhere. He admonished them to go
through the histories and poems with diligence, and daily to fix
passages in their memory. He advised them, in reading, to avoid the
superfluous, and confine themselves to the works of distinguished
authors. For, he said (quoting from Quintilian) that to follow out
what every contemptible person has said, is irksome and vainglorious,
and destructive of the capacity which should remain free for better
things. To the same effect he cited Augustine, and remarked that the
ancients thought it a virtue in a grammarian to be ignorant of
something. But since in school exercises nothing is more useful than
to practise what should be accomplished by the art, his scholars wrote
daily in prose and verse, and proved themselves in discussions.”[198]
This passage indicates with what generous use of the _auctores_ Bernard
expounded grammar and explained the orators and poets; how he assigned
portions of their works for memorizing, and with what care he corrected
his pupils’ prose and metrical compositions, criticizing their knowledge
and their taste. He was a man mindful of his Christian piety toward the
dead and living, but caring greatly for the Classics, and loving study.
“The old man of Chartres (_senex Carnotensis_),” says John of Salisbury,
meaning Bernard, “named wisdom’s keys in a few lines, and though I am not
taken with the sweetness of the metre, I approve the sense:
‘Mens humilis, studium quaerendi, vita quieta,
Scrutinium tacitum, paupertas, terra aliena....’”[199]
Bernard, Thierry, and other masters and scholars of their school, as the
advocates of classical education, detested the men called by John of
Salisbury _Cornificiani_, who were for shortening the academic course, as
one would say to-day, so that the student might finish it up in two or
three years, and proceed to the business of life. A good many in the
twelfth century adopted this notion, and turned from the pagan classics,
not as impious, but as a waste of time. Some of the good scholars of
Chartres lost heart, among them William of Conches and a certain Richard,
both teachers of John of Salisbury. They had followed Bernard’s methods;
“but when the time came that so many men, to the great prejudice of truth,
preferred to seem, rather than be, philosophers and professors of the
arts, engaging to impart the whole of philosophy in less than three years,
or even two, then my masters vanquished by the clamour of the ignorant
crowd, stopped. Since then, less time has been given to grammar. So it has
come about that those who profess to teach all the arts, both liberal and
mechanical, are ignorant of the first of them, without which vainly will
one try to get the rest.”[200]
Upon these people who seemed charlatans, and yet may have represented
tendencies of the coming time, Thierry, Gilbert de la Porrèe,[201] and
John of Salisbury poured their sarcasms. The controversy may have
clarified Bernard’s consciousness of the value of classical studies and
deepened his sense of obligation to the ancients, until it drew from him
perhaps the finest of mediaeval utterances touching the matter: “Bernard
of Chartres used to say that we were like dwarfs seated on the shoulders
of giants. If we see more and further than they, it is not due to our own
clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high and upborne
by their gigantic bigness.”[202]
Echoes of this same controversy--have they ever quite died away?--are
heard in letters of the scholarly Peter of Blois, who was educated at
Paris in the middle of the twelfth century, became a secretary of Henry
Plantagenet and spent the greater part of his life in England, dying about
the year 1200. He writes to a friend:
“You greatly commend your nephew, saying that never have you found a
man of subtler vein: because, forsooth, skimming over grammar, and
skipping the reading of the classical authors, he has flown to the
trickeries of the logicians, where not in the books themselves but
from abstracts and note-books, he has learned dialectic. Knowledge of
letters cannot rest on such, and the subtilty you praise may be
pernicious. For Seneca says, nothing is more odious than subtilty when
it is only subtilty. Some people, without the elements of education,
would discuss point and line and superficies, fate, chance and
free-will, physics and matter and the void, the causes of things and
the secrets of nature and the sources of the Nile! Our tender years
used to be spent in rules of grammar, analogies, barbarisms,
solecisms, tropes, with Donatus, Priscian, and Bede, who would not
have devoted pains to these matters had they supposed that a solid
basis of knowledge could be got without them. Quintilian, Caesar,
Cicero, urge youths to study grammar. Why condemn the writings of the
ancients? it is written that _in antiquis est scientia_. You rise from
the darkness of ignorance to the light of science only by their
diligent study. Jerome glories in having read Origen; Horace boasts of
reading Homer over and over. It was much to my profit, when as a
little chap I was studying how to make verses, that, as my master bade
me, I took my matter not from fables but from truthful histories. And
I profited from the letters of Hildebert of Le Mans, with their
elegance of style and sweet urbanity; for as a boy I was made to learn
some of them by heart. Besides other books, well known in the schools,
I gained from keeping company with Trogus Pompeius, Josephus,
Suetonius, Hegesippus, Quintus Curtius, Tacitus and Livy, all of whom
throw into their histories much that makes for moral edification and
the advance of liberal science. And I read other books, which had
nothing to do with history--very many of them. From all of them we
may pluck sweet flowers, and cultivate ourselves from their urbane
suavity of speech.”[203]
In another letter Peter writes to his bishop of Bath, as touching the
accusation of some “hidden detractor,” that he, Peter, is but a useless
compiler, who fills letters and sermons with the plunder of the ancients
and Holy Writ:
“Let him cease, or he will hear what he does not like; for I am full
of cracks, and can hold in nothing, as Terence says. Let him try his
hand at compiling, as he calls it.--But what of it! Though dogs may
bark and pigs may grunt, I shall always pattern on the writings of the
ancients; with them shall be my occupation; nor ever, while I am able,
shall the sun find me idle.”[204]
It is evident how broadly Peter of Blois, or John of Salisbury, or the
Chartrians, were read in the Latin Classics. Peter mentions even Tacitus,
a writer not thought to have been much read in the Middle Ages. We have
been looking at the matter rather in regard to poetry and
eloquence--_belles lettres_. But one may also note the same broad reading
(among the few who read at all) on the part of those who sought for the
ethical wisdom of the ancients. This is apparent (perhaps more apparent
than real) with Abaelard, who is ready with a store of antique ethical
citations.[205] It is also borne witness to by the treatise _Moralis
philosophia de honesto et utili_, placed among the works of Hildebert of
Le Mans,[206] but probably from the pen of William of Conches, grammaticus
post Bernardum Carnotensem opulentissimus, as John of Salisbury calls
him.[207] In some manuscripts it is entitled _Summa moralium
philosophorum_, quite appropriately. One might hardly compare it for
organic inclusiveness with the Christian _Summa_ of Thomas Aquinas; but it
may very well be likened to the more compact Sentences of the Lombard[208]
which were so solidly put together about the same time. The Lombard drew
his Sentences from the writings of the Church Fathers; William’s work
consists of moral extracts, mainly from Cicero, Seneca, Sallust, Terence,
Horace, Lucan, and Boëthius. The first part, _De honesto_, reviews
Prudentia, Justitia, Fortitudo, and under these a number of particular
virtues in correspondence with which the extracts are arranged. The _De
utili_ considers the adventitious goods of circumstance and fortune.
The extracts forming the substance of this work were intelligently
selected and smoothly joined; and the treatise was much used by those who
studied the antique philosophy of life. It was drawn upon, for instance,
by that truculent and well-born Welshman, Giraldus Cambrensis, in his _De
instructione principum_, which the author wrote partly to show how evilly
Henry Plantagenet performed the functions of a king. This irrepressible
claimant of St. David’s See had been long a prickly thorn for Henry’s
side.[209] But he was a scholar, and quotes from the whole range of the
Latin Classics.
III
When a man is not a mere transcriber, but puts something of himself into
the product of his pen, his work will reflect his personality, and may
disclose the various factors of his spiritual constitution. To discover
from the writings of mediaeval scholars the effect of their classical
studies upon their characters is of greater interest than to trace from
their citations the authors read by them. Such a compilation as the _Summa
moralium_ which has just been noticed, while plainly disclosing the latter
information, tells nothing of the personality of him who strung the
extracts together. Yet he had read writings which could hardly have failed
to influence him. Cicero and Seneca do not leave their reader unchanged,
especially if he be seeking ethical instruction. And there was a work
known to this particular compiler which moved men in the Middle Ages. Deep
must have been the effect of that book so widely read and pondered on and
loved, the _De consolatione_ of Boëthius with its intimate consolings, its
ways of reasoning and looking upon life, its setting of the intellectual
above the physical, its insistence that mind rather than body makes the
man. Imagine it brought home to a vigorous struggling personality--imagine
Alfred reading and translating it, and adding to it from the teachings of
his own experience.[210] The study of such a book might form the turning
of a mediaeval life; at least could not fail to temper the convulsions of
a soul storm-driven amid unreconcilable spiritual conflicts.
One may look back even to the time of Alfred or Charlemagne and note
suggestions coming from classical reading. For instance, the antique
civilization being essentially urban, words denoting qualities of
disciplined and polished men had sprung from city life, as contrasted with
rustic rudeness. Thus the word _urbanitas_ passed over into mediaeval use
when the quality itself hardly existed outside of the transmitted Latin
literature. For an Anglo-Saxon or a Frank to use and even partly
comprehend its significance meant his introduction to a new idea. Alcuin
writes to Charlemagne that he knows how it rejoices the latter to meet
with zeal for learning and church discipline, and how pleasing to him is
anything which is seasoned with a touch of wit--_urbanitatis sale
conditum_.[211] And again, in more curious phrase, he compliments a
certain worthy upon his metrical exposition of the creed, “wherein I have
found gold-spouting whirlpools (_aurivomos gurgites_) of spiritual
meanings abounding with gems of scholastic wit (_scholasticae
urbanitatis_).”[212] Though doubtless this “scholastic wit” was flat
enough, it was something for these men to get the notion of what was witty
and entertaining through a word so vocalized with city life as
_urbanitas_, a word that we have seen used quite knowingly by the more
sophisticated scholar, Peter of Blois.
Again, it is matter of common observation that a feeling for nature’s
loveliness depends somewhat on the growth of towns. But mediaeval men
constantly had the idea suggested to them by the classic poetry of
city-dwelling poets. Here are some lines by Alcuin or one of his friends,
expressing sentiments which never came to them from the woods with which
they were disagreeably familiar:
“O mea cella, mihi habitatio, dulcis, amata,
Semper in aeternum, o mea cella, vale.
Undique te cingit ramis resonantibus arbos,
Silvula florigeris semper onusta comis.”[213]
These are little hints of the effect of the antique literature upon men
who still were somewhat rough-hewn. Advancing a century and a half, the
influence of classic study is seen, as it were, “in the round” in
Gerbert.[214] It is likewise clear and full in John of Salisbury, of whom
we have spoken, and shall speak again.[215] For an admirable example,
however, of the subtle working of the antique literature upon character
and temperament, we may look to that scholar-prelate whose letters the
youthful Peter of Blois studied with profit, Hildebert of Lavardin, Bishop
of Le Mans, and Archbishop of Tours. He shows the effect of the antique
not so strikingly in the knowledge which he possessed or the particular
opinions which he entertained, as in the balance and temperance of his
views, and incidentally in his fine facility of scholarship.
Hildebert was born at Lavardin, a village near the mouth of the Loire,
about the year 1055. He belonged to an unimportant but gentle family.
Dubious tradition has it that one of his teachers was Berengar of Tours,
and that he passed some time in the monastery of Cluny, of whose great
abbot, Hugh, he wrote a life. It is more probable that he studied at Le
Mans. But whatever appears to have been the character of his early
environment, Hildebert belongs essentially to the secular clergy, and
never was a monk. While comparatively young, he was made head of the
cathedral school of Le Mans, and then archdeacon. In the year 1096, the
old bishop of Le Mans died, and Hildebert, then about forty years of age,
was somewhat quickly chosen his successor, by the clergy and people of the
town, in spite of the protests of certain of the canons of the cathedral.
The none too happy scholar-bishop found himself at once a powerless but
not negligible element of a violently complicated feudal situation. There
was the noble Helias, Count of Maine, who was holding his domain against
Robert de Bellesme, the latter slackly supported by William Rufus of
England, who claimed the overlordship of the land. Helias reluctantly
acquiesced in Hildebert’s election. Not so Rufus, who never ceased to hate
and persecute the man that had obtained the see which had been in the gift
of his father, William the Conqueror. It happened soon after that Count
Helias was taken prisoner by his opponent, and was delivered over to Rufus
at Rouen. But Fulk of Anjou now thrust himself into this feudal _mêlée_,
appeared at Le Mans, entered, and was acknowledged as its lord. He left a
garrison, and departed before the Red King reached the town. The latter
began its siege, but soon made terms with Fulk, by which Le Mans was to be
given to Rufus, Helias was to be set free, and many other matters were
left quite unsettled.
Now Rufus entered the town (1098), where Hildebert nervously received him;
Helias, set free by the King, offered to become his feudal retainer; Rufus
would have none of him; so Helias defied the King, and was permitted to go
his way by that strange man, who held his knightly honour sacred, but
otherwise might commit any atrocity prompted by rage or greed. It was well
for Helias that trouble with the French King now drew Rufus to the north.
The next year, 1099, Rufus in England heard that the Count had renewed the
war, and captured Le Mans, except the citadel. He hurried across the
channel, rushed through the land, entered Le Mans, and passed on through
it, chasing Helias. But the war languished, and Rufus returned to Le Mans,
or to what was left of it. Hildebert had cause to tremble. He had met the
King on the latter’s hurried arrival from England for the war. Rufus had
spoken him fair. But now, at Le Mans, he was accused before the monarch of
complicity in the revolt. Quickly flared the King’s anger against the man
whom he never had ceased to detest. He ordered him to pull down the towers
of his cathedral, which rose threatening and massive over the city’s ruins
and the citadel of the King. What could the defenceless bishop do to avert
disgrace and the desolation of his beloved church? Words were left him,
but they did not prove effectual. Rufus commanded him to choose between
immediate compliance and going to England, there to submit himself to the
judgment of the English bishops. He accepted the latter alternative, and
followed the King, leaving his diocese ruined and his people dispersed. In
England, Rufus dangled him along between fear and hope, till at last the
disheartened prelate returned to the Continent, having ambiguously
consented to pull down those towers. But instead, he set to work to repair
the devastation of his diocese. The reiterated mandate of the King was not
long in following him, and this time coupled with an accusation of
treason. Hildebert’s state was desperate. His clergy were forbidden to
obey him, his palace was sacked, his own property destroyed. Such were
William’s methods of persuasion. Then the King proposed that the bishop
should purge himself by the ordeal of hot iron. Hildebert, the bishop, the
theologian, the scholar, was almost on the verge of taking up the
challenge, when a letter from Yves, the saintly Bishop of Chartres,
dissuaded him. At this moment, with ruin for his portion, and no escape,
an arrow ended the Red King’s life in the New Forest. It was the year of
grace 1100.
Now, what a change! Henry Beauclerc was from the first his friend, as
William Rufus to the last had been his enemy. Hitherto Hildebert has
appeared weakly endeavouring to elude destruction, and perhaps with no
unshaken loyalty in his bosom toward any cause except his dire
necessities. Henceforth, sailing a calmer sea, he repays Henry’s favour
with adherence and admiration. He has no support to offer Anselm of
Canterbury, still struggling with the English monarchy over investitures;
nor has he one word of censure for the clever cold-eyed scholar King who
kept his brother, Robert of Normandy, a prisoner for twenty-eight years
till he died.
Hildebert had still thirty years of life before him; nor were they all to
be untroubled. Shortly after the Red King’s death, he made a voyage to
Rome, to obtain the papal benediction. To judge from his poems, he was
deeply impressed with the ruins of the ancient city. Returning he devoted
himself to the affairs of his diocese and to rebuilding the cathedral and
other churches of Le Mans. In 1125, in spite of his unwillingness, for he
was seventy years old, he was enthroned Archbishop of Tours, where he was
to be worried by disputes with Louis le Gros of France over investitures.
But he acquitted himself with vigour, especially through his letters. A
famous one relates to this struggle of his closing years:
“In adversity it is a comfort to hope for happier times. Long has this
hope flattered me; and as the harvest in the fields cheers the
countryman, the expectation of a fair season has comforted my soul.
But now I no longer hope for the clearing of the cloudy weather, nor
see where the storm-driven ship, on whose deck I sit, may gain the
harbour of rest.
“Friends are silent; silent are the priests of Jesus Christ. And those
also are silent through whose prayers I thought the king would be
reconciled with me. I thought indeed, but in their silence the king
has added to the pain of my wounds. Yet it was theirs to resist the
injury to the canonical institutes of the Church. Theirs was it, if
the matter had demanded it, to raise a wall before the house of
Israel. Yet with the most serene king there is call for exhortation
rather than threat, for advice rather than command, for instruction
rather than the rod. By these he should have been drawn to agree, by
these reverently taught not to sheath his arrows in an aged priest,
nor make void the canonical laws, nor persecute the ashes of a church
already buried, ashes in which I eat the bread of grief, in which I
drink the cup of mourning, from which to be snatched away and escape
is to pass from death to life.
“Yet amid these dire straits, anger has never triumphed over me, that
I should raise a hue and cry against the anointed of the Lord, or
wrest peace from him with the strong hand and by the arm of the
Church. Suspect is the peace to which high potentates are brought not
by love, but by force. Easily is it broken, and sometimes the final
state is worse than the first. There is another way by which, Christ
leading, I can better reach it. I will cast my thought upon the Lord,
and He will give me the desire of my heart. The Lord remembered
Joseph, forgotten by Pharaoh’s chief butler when prosperity had
returned to him; He remembered David abandoned by his own son. Perhaps
He will remember even me, and bring the tossing ship to rest on the
desired shore. He it is who looks upon the petition of the meek, and
does not spurn their prayers. He it is in whose hand the hearts of
kings are wax. If I shall have found grace in His eyes, I shall easily
obtain the grace of the king or advantageously lose it. For to offend
man for the sake of God is to win God’s grace.”[216]
Hildebert was a classical scholar, and in his time unmatched as a writer
of Latin prose and verse. Many of his elegiac poems survive, some of them
so antique in sentiment and so correct in metre as to have been taken for
products of the pagan period. One of the best is an elegy on Rome
obviously inspired by his visit to that city of ruins:
“Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina.”
Its closing lines are interesting:
“Hic superûm formas superi mirantur et ipsi,
Et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares.
Non potuit natura deos hoc ore creare
Quo miranda deûm signa creavit homo.
Vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur
Artificum studio quam deitate sua.
Urbs felix, si vel dominis urbs illa careret,
Vel dominis esset turpe carere fide!”
Such phrases, such frank admiration for the idols of pagan Rome, are
startling from the pen of a contemporary of St. Bernard. The spell of the
antique lay on Hildebert, as on others of his time. “The gods themselves
marvel at their own images, and desire to equal their sculptured forms.
Nature was unable to make gods with such visages as man has created in
these wondrous images of the gods. There is a look (_vultus_) about these
deities, and they are worshipped for the skill of the sculptor rather than
for their divinity.”[217] Hildebert was not only a bishop, he was a
Christian; but the sense and feeling of ancient Rome had entered into him.
Besides the poem just quoted, he wrote another, either in Rome or after
his return, Christian in thought but most antique in sympathy and turn of
phrase.
“Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placerent,
Militia, populo, moenibus alta fui;
* * * * *
ruit alta senatus
Gloria, procumbunt templa, theatra jacent.”
The antique feeling of these lines is hardly balanced by the expressed
sentiment: “plus Caesare Petrus!”[218] And again we hear the echo of the
antique in
“Nil artes, nil pura fides, nil gloria linguae,
Nil fons ingenii, nil probitas sine re.”[219]
Hildebert has also a poem “On his Exile,” perhaps written while in England
with the Red King. Quite in antique style it sings the loss of friends and
fields, gardens and granaries, which the writer possessed while _prospera
fata_ smiled. Then
“Jurares superos intra mea vota teneri!”
--a very antique sentiment. But the Christian faith of the despoiled and
exiled bishop reasserts itself as the poem closes.[220] Did Hildebert also
write the still more palpably “antique” elegiacs on Hermaphrodite, and
other questionable subjects?[221] That is hard to say. He may or may not
have been the author of a somewhat scurrilous squib against a woman who
seems to have sent him verses:
“Femina perfida, femina sordida, digna catenis.
“O miserabilis, insatiabilis, insatiata,
Desine scribere, desine mittere, carmina blandia,
Carmina turpia, carmina mollia, vix memoranda,
Nec tibi mittere, nec tibi scribere, disposui me.
“Mens tua vitrea, plumbea, saxea, ferrea, nequam,
Fingere, fallere, prodere, perdere, rem putat aequam.”[222]
With all his classical leanings, the major part of Hildebert was
Christian. His theological writings which survive, his zeal against
certain riotous heretics, and in general his letters, leave no doubt of
this. It is from the Christian point of view that he gives his sincerest
counsels; it is from that that he balances the advantages of an active or
contemplative life, the claims of the Christian _vita activa_ and _vita
contemplativa_. Yet his classic tastes gave temperance to his Christian
views, and often drew him to sheer scholarly pleasures and to an antique
consideration of the incidents of life.
How sweetly the elements were mixed in him appears in a famous letter
written to William of Champeaux, that Goliath of realism whom Abaelard
discomfited in the Paris schools. The unhappy William retreated a little
way across the Seine, and laid the foundations of the abbey of St. Victor
in the years between 1108 and 1113. He sought to abandon his studies and
his lectures, and surrender himself to the austere salvation of his soul,
and yet scarcely with such irrevocable purpose as would rebuff the
temperate advice of Hildebert’s letter proffered with tactful
understanding.
“Over thy change of life my soul is glad and exults, that at length it
has come to thee to determine to philosophize. For thou hadst not the
true odour of a philosopher so long as thou didst not cull beauty of
conduct from thy philosophic knowledge. Now, as honey from the
honeycomb, thou hast drawn from that a worthy rule of living. This is
to gather all of thee within virtue’s boundaries, no longer
huckstering with nature for thy life, but attending less to what the
flesh is able for, than to what the spirit wills. This is truly to
philosophize; to live thus is already to enter the fellowship of those
above. Easily shalt thou come to them if thou dost advance
disburdened. The mind is a burden to itself until it ceases to hope
and fear. Because Diogenes looked for no favour, he feared the power
of no one. What the cynic infidel abhorred, the Christian doctor far
more amply must abhor, since his profession is so much more fruitful
through faith. For such are stumbling-blocks of conduct, impeding
those who move toward virtue.
“But the report comes that you have been persuaded to abstain from
lecturing. Hear me as to this. It is virtue to furnish the material of
virtue. Thy new way of life calls for no partial sacrifice, but a
holocaust. Offer thyself altogether to the Lord, since so He
sacrificed Himself for thee. Gold shines more when scattered than when
locked up. Knowledge also when distributed takes increase, and unless
given forth, scorning the miserly possessor, it slips away. Therefore
do not close the streams of thy learning.”[223]
Eventually William followed this, or other like advice. One sees
Hildebert’s sympathetic point of view; he entirely approves of William’s
renunciation of the world--a good bishop of the twelfth century might also
have wished to renounce its troublous honours! Yes, William has at last
turned to the true and most disburdened way of living. But this
abandonment of worldly ends entails no abandonment of Christian knowledge
or surrender of the cause of Christian learning. Nay, let William resume,
and herein give himself to God’s will without reserve.
So the letter presents a temperate and noble view of the matter, a view as
sound in the twentieth century as in the twelfth. And a like broad
consideration Hildebert brings to a more particular discussion of the two
modes of Christian living, the _vita activa_ and the _vita contemplativa_,
Leah and Rachel, Martha and Mary. He amply distinguishes these two ways of
serving God from any mode of life with selfish aims. It happened that a
devout monk and friend of Hildebert was made abbot of the monastery of St.
Vincent, in the neighbourhood of Le Mans. The administrative duties of an
abbot might be as pressing as a bishop’s, and this good man deplored his
withdrawal from a life of more complete contemplation. So Hildebert wrote
him a long discursive letter, of which our extracts will give the thread
of argument:
“You bewail the peace of contemplation which is snatched away, and the
imposed burden of active responsibilities. You were sitting with Mary
at the feet of the Lord Jesus, when lo, you were ordered to serve with
Martha. You confess that those dishes which Mary receives, sitting and
listening, are more savoury than those which zealous Martha prepares.
In these, indeed, is the bread of men, in those the bread of angels.”
And Hildebert descants upon the raptures of the _vita contemplativa_, of
which his friend is now bereft.
“The contemplative and the active life, my dearest brother, you
sometimes find in the same person, and sometimes apart. As the
examples of Scripture show us. Jacob was joined to both Leah and
Rachel; Christ teaches in the fields, anon He prays on the mountains;
Moses is in the tents of the people, and again speaks with God upon
the heights. So Peter, so Paul. Again, action alone is found, as in
Leah and Martha, while contemplation gleams in Mary and Rachel.
Martha, as I think, represents the clergy of our time, with whom the
press of business closes the shrine of contemplation, and dries up the
sacrifice of tears.
“No one can speak with the Lord while he has to prattle with the whole
world. Such a prattler am I, and such a priest, who when I spend the
livelong day caring for the herds, have not a moment for the care of
souls. Affairs, the enemies of my spirit, come upon me; they claim me
for their own, they thieve the private hour of prayer, they defraud
the services of the sanctuary, they irritate me with their stings by
day and infest my sleep; and what I can scarcely speak of without
tears, the creeping furtive memory of disputes follows me miserable to
the altar’s sacraments,--all such are even as the vultures which
Abraham drove away from the carcases (Gen. xv. 11).
“Nay more, what untold loss of virtue is entailed by these occupations
of the captive mind! While under their power we do not even serve with
Martha. She ministered, but to Christ; she bustled about, but for
Christ. We truly, who like Martha bustle about, and, like Martha,
minister, neither bustle about for Christ nor minister to Him. For if
in such bustling ministry thou seekest to win thine own desire, art
taken with the gossip of the mob, or with pandering to carnal
pleasures, thou art neither the Martha whom thou dost counterfeit nor
the Mary for whom thou dost sigh.
“In that case, dearest brother, you would have just cause for grief
and tears. But if you do the part of Martha simply, you do well; if,
like Jacob, you hasten to and fro between Leah and Rachel, you do
better; if with Mary you sit and listen, you do best. For action is
good, whose pressing instancy, though it kill contemplation, draws
back the brother wandering from Christ. Yet it is better, sometimes
seated, to lay aside administrative cares, and amid the irksome nights
of Leah, draw fresh life from Rachel’s loved embrace. From this
intermixture the course to the celestials becomes more inclusive, for
thereby the same soul now strives for the blessedness of men and anon
participates in that of the angels. But of the zeal single for Mary,
why should I speak? Is not the Saviour’s word enough, ‘Mary hath
chosen the best part, which shall not be taken from her.’”
And in closing, Hildebert shows his friend the abbot that for him the true
course is to follow Jacob interchanging Leah and Rachel; and then in the
watches of his pastoral duties the celestial vision shall be also
his.[224]
Could any one adjust more fairly this contest, so insistent throughout the
annals of mediaeval piety, between active duties and heavenly
contemplation? The only solution for abbot and bishop was to join Leah
with Rachel. And how clearly Hildebert sees the pervasive peril of the
active life, that the prelate be drawn to serve his pleasures and not
Christ. Many souls of prelates had that cast into hell!
In theory Hildebert is clear as day, and altogether Christian, so far as
we have followed the counsels of these letters. But in fact the quiet life
had for him a temptation, to which he yielded himself more generously than
to any of the grosser lures of his high prelacy. This temptation, so
alluring and insidious, so fairly masked under the proffer of learning
leading to fuller Christian knowledge, was of course the all too beloved
pagan literature, and the all too humanly convincing plausibilities of
pagan philosophy. Hildebert’s writings evince that kind of classical
scholarship which springs only from great study and great love. His soul
does not appear to have been riven by a consciousness of sin in this
behoof. Sometimes he passes so gently from Christian to pagan ethics, as
to lead one to suspect that he did not deeply feel the inconsistency
between them. Or again, he seems satisfied with the moral reasonings of
paganism, and sets them forth without a qualm. For there was the antique
pagan side of our good bishop; and how pagan thoughts and views of life
had become a part of Hildebert’s nature, appears in a most interesting
letter written to King Henry, consoling him upon the loss of his son and
the noble company so gaily sailing from Normandy in that ill-starred
_White Ship_ in the year 1120.
Hildebert begins reminding the King how much more it is for a monarch to
rule himself than others. Hitherto he has triumphed over fortune, if
fortune be anything; now she has wounded him with her sharpest dart. Yet
that cannot penetrate the well-guarded mind. It is wisdom not to vaunt
oneself in prosperity, nor be overwhelmed with grief in adversity.
Hildebert then reasons on the excellence of man’s nature and will; he
speaks of the effect of Adam’s sin in loss of grace and entailment of
misery on the human race. He quotes from the Old Testament and from
Virgil. Then he proceeds more specifically with his fortifying arguments.
Their sum is, let the breast of man abound in weapons of defence and
contemn the thrusts of fortune; there is nothing over which the triumphant
soul may not triumph.
“Unhappy he who lacks this armament; and most unhappy he who besides
does not know it. Here Democritus found matter for laughter,
Demosthenes (_sic_) matter for tears. Far be it from thee that the
chance cast of things should affect thee so, and the loss of wisdom
follow the loss of offspring. Thou hast suffered on dry land more
grievous shipwreck than thy son in the brine, if fortune’s storm has
wrested wisdom from the wise.”
After a while Hildebert passes on to consider what is man, and wherein
consists his welfare:
“To any one carefully considering what man is, nothing will seem more
probable than that he is a divine animal, distinguished by a certain
share of divinity (_numinis_). By bone and flesh he smacks of the
earth. By reason his affinity to God is shown. Moses, inspired,
certifies that by this prerogative man was created in the image of
God. Whence it also follows for man, that he should through reason
recognize and love his true good. Now reason teaches that what
pertains to virtue is the true good, and that it is within us. The
things we temporally possess are good only by opinion (_opinione_,
_i.e._ not _ratione_), and these are about us. What is about us is not
within our _jus_ but another’s (_alterius juris sunt_). Chance directs
them; they neither come nor stand under our arbitrament. For us they
are at the lender’s will (_precaria_), like a slave belonging to
another.[225] Through such, true felicity is neither had nor lost.
Indeed no one is happy, no one is wretched by reason of what is
another’s. It is his own that makes a man’s good or ill, and whatever
is not within him is not his own.”
Then Hildebert speaks of dignities, of wife and child, of the fruits of
the earth and riches--_bona vaga_, _bona sunt pennata haec omnia_. Men
quarrel and struggle about all these things--_ecce vides quanta mundus
laboret insania_.[226]
No one need point out how much more natural this reasoning would have been
from the lips of Seneca than from those of an archiepiscopal contemporary
of St. Bernard. One may, however, comment on the patent fact that this
reflection of the antique in Hildebert’s ethical consolation reflects a
manner of reasoning rather than an emotional mood, and in this it is an
instance of the general fact that mediaeval methods of reasoning
consciously or unconsciously followed the antique; while the emotion, the
love and yearning, of mediaeval religion was more largely the gift of
Christianity.
CHAPTER XXXI
EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN PROSE
Classical antiquity lay far back of the mediaeval period, while in the
nearer background pressed the centuries of transition, the time of the
Church Fathers. The patristic material and a crude knowledge of the
antique passed over to the early Middle Ages. Mediaeval progress was to
consist, very largely, in the mastery and appropriation of the one and the
other.
The varied illustration of these propositions has filled a large portion
of this work. In this and the next chapter we are concerned with
literature, properly speaking; and with the effect of the Classics, the
pure literary antique, upon mediaeval literary productions. The latter are
to be viewed as literature; not considering their substance, but their
form, their composition, style, and temperamental shading, qualities which
show the faculties and temper of their authors. We are to discover, if we
can, wherein the qualities of mediaeval literature reflect the Latin
Classics, or in any way betray their influence.
It is an affair of dull diligence to learn what Classics were read by the
various mediaeval writers; and likewise is it a dull affair to note in
mediaeval writings the direct borrowing from the Classics of fact,
opinion, sentiment, or phrase. Such borrowing was incessant, resorted to
as of course wherever opportunity offered and the knowledge was at hand.
It would not commonly occur to a mediaeval writer to state in his own way
what he could take from an ancient author, save in so far as change of
medium--from prose to verse, or from Latin to the vernacular--compelled
him. So the church builders in Rome never thought of hewing new blocks of
stone, or making new columns, when some ancient palace or temple afforded
a quarry. The details of such spoliations offer little interest in
comparison with the effect of antique architecture upon later styles. So
we should like to discover the effect of the ancient compositions upon the
mediaeval, and observe how far the faculties and mental processes of
classic authors, incorporate in their writings, were transmitted to
mediaeval men, to become incorporate in theirs.
Unless you are Virgil or Cicero, you cannot write like Virgil or Cicero.
Writing, real writing, that is to say, creative self-expressive
composition, is the personal product and closely mirrored reflex of the
writer’s temperament and mentality. It gives forth indirectly the
influences which have blended in him, education and environment, his past
and present. His personality makes his style, his untransmittable style.
Yet a group of men affected by the same past, and living at the same time
and place, or under like spiritual influences, may show a like faculty and
taste. Having more in common with one another than with men of other time,
their mental processes, and therefore their ways of writing, will present
more common qualities. Around and above them, as well as through their
natal and acquired faculties, sweeps the genius of the language, itself
the age-long product of a like-minded race. In harmony with it, not in
opposition and repugnancy, each writer must, if he will write that
language, shape his more personal diction.
Obviously the personal elements in classic writings were no more capable
of transmission than the personal qualities of the writers. Likewise, the
genius of the Latin language, though one might think it fixed in approved
compositions, changed with the spiritual fortune of the Roman people, and
constantly transmitted an altered self and novel tenets of construction to
control the linguistic usages of succeeding men. None but himself could
have written Cicero’s letters. No man of Juvenal’s time could have written
the _Aeneid_, nor any man of the time of Diocletian the histories of
Tacitus. There were, however, common elements in these compositions, all
of them possessing certain qualities which are associated with classical
writing. These may be difficult to formulate, but they become clear enough
in contrast with the qualities of mediaeval Latin literature. The
mediaeval man did not feel and reason like a contemporary of Virgil or
Cicero; he had not the same training in _Greek_ literature; he did not
have the same definitude of conception, did not care so much that a
composition should have limit and the unity springing from adherence to a
single topic; he did not, in fine, stand on the same level of attainment
and faculty and taste with men of the Augustan time. He had his own
heights and depths, his own temperament and predilections, his own
capacities. Reading the Classics had not transformed him into Cicero or
Seneca, or set his feet in the Roman Forum. His feet wandered in the ways
of the Middle Ages, and whatever he wrote in prose or verse, in Latin or
in his own vernacular, was himself and of himself, and but indirectly due
to the antecedent influences which had been transmuted even in entering
his nature and becoming part of his temper and faculty.
Any consideration of the knowledge and appreciation of the Classics in the
Middle Ages would be followed naturally by a consideration of their effect
upon mediaeval composition; which in turn forms part of any discussion of
the literary qualities of mediaeval Latin literature. But inasmuch as
mediaeval form and diction tend to remove further and further from
classical standards, the whole discussion may seem a _lucus a non lucendo_
for all the light it throws upon the effect of the Classics on mediaeval
literature. Our best plan will be to note the beginnings of mediaeval
Latinity in that post-Augustan and largely patristic diction which had
been enriched and reinvigorated with many phrases from daily speech; and
then to follow the living if sluggish river as it moves on, receiving
increment along its course, its currents mottled with the silt of
mediaeval Italy, France, Germany. We shall suppose this flood to divide in
rivers of Latin prose and verse; and we may follow them, and see where
they overflow their channels, carrying antique flotsam into the ample
marshes of vernacular poetry.
There has always been a difference in diction between speech and
literature. At Rome, Cicero and Caesar, and of course the poets, did not,
in writing, use quite the language of the people. All the words of daily
speech were not taken into the literary or classical vocabulary, which had
often quite other words of its own. Moreover the writers, in forming their
prose and verse and constructing their compositions, were affected deeply
by their study of Greek literature.[227] If Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, and
their friends spoke differently from the Roman shopkeepers, there was a
still greater difference between their writings and the parlance of the
town.
No one need be told that it was the spoken, and not the classical Latin,
which in Italy, Spain, Provence, and Northern France developed into
Italian, Spanish, Provençal, and French. On the other hand, the descent of
written mediaeval Latin from the classical diction or the popular speech,
or both, is not so clear, or at least not so simple. It cannot be said
that mediaeval Latin came straight from the classical; and manifestly it
cannot have sprung from the popular spoken Latin, like the Romance
tongues, without other influence or admixture; because then, instead of
remaining Latin, it would have become Romance; which it did not. Evidently
mediaeval Latin, the literary and to some extent the spoken medium of
educated men in the Middle Ages, must have carried classic strains, or
have kept itself Latin by the study of Latin grammar and a conscious
adherence to a veritable, if not classical, Latin diction. The mediaeval
reading of the Classics, and the earnest and constant study of Latin
grammar spoken of in the previous chapter, were the chief means by which
mediaeval Latin maintained its Latinity. Nevertheless, while it kept the
word forms and inflections of classical Latin, with most of the classical
vocabulary, it also took up an indefinite supplement of words from the
spoken Latin of the late imperial or patristic period.
In order to understand the genesis and qualities of mediaeval Latin, one
must bear in mind (as with most things mediaeval) that its immediate
antecedents lie in the transitional fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries,
and not in the classical period.[228] Those centuries went far toward
declassicizing Latin prose, by departing from the balanced structure of
the classic sentences and introducing words from the spoken tongue. The
style became less correct, freer, and better suited to the expression of
the novel thoughts and interests coming with Christianity. The change is
seen in the works of the men to whom it was largely due, Tertullian,
Jerome, and other great patristic writers.[229] Such men knew the Classics
well, and regarded them as literary models, and yet wrote differently. For
a new spirit was upon them and new necessities of expression, and they
lived when, even outside of Christian circles, the classic forms of style
were loosening with the falling away of the strenuous intellectual temper,
the poise, the self-reliance and the self-control distinguishing the
classical epoch.
The stylistic genius of Augustine and Jerome was not the genius of the
formative beginnings of the Romance tongues, with, for instance, its
inability to rely on the close logic of the case ending, and its need to
help the meaning by the more explicit preposition. Yet the spirit of these
two great men was turning that way. They were not classic writers, but
students of the Classics, who assisted their own genius by the study of
what no longer was themselves. So in the following centuries the most
careful Latin writers are students of the Classics, and do not study
Jerome and Augustine for style. Yet their writings carry out the
tendencies beginning (or rather not beginning) with these two.
It was not in diction alone that the Fathers were the forerunners of
mediaeval writers. _Classic_ Latin authors, both from themselves and
through their study of Greek literature, had the sense and faculty of
form. Their works maintain a clear sequence of thought, along with strict
pertinency to the main topic, or adherence to the central current of the
narrative, avoiding digression and refraining from excessive
amplification. The classic writer did not lose himself in his subject, or
wander with it wherever it might lead him. But in patristic writings the
subject is apt to dominate the man, draw him after its own necessities, or
by its casual suggestions cause him to digress. The Fathers in their
polemic or expository works became prolix and circumstantial, intent, like
a lawyer with a brief, on proving every point and leaving no loophole to
the adversary. In their works literary unity and strict sequence of
argument may be cast to the winds. Above all, as it seems to us, and as it
would have seemed to Caesar or Cicero or Tacitus, allegorical
interpretation carries them at its own errant and fantastic will into
footless mazes.
Yet whoever will understand and appreciate the writings of the Fathers and
of the mediaeval generations after them, should beware of inelastic
notions. The question of unity hangs on what the writer deems the
veritable topic of his work, and that may be the universal course of the
providence of God, which was the subject of Augustine’s _Civitas Dei_.
Indeed, the infinite relationship of any Christian topic was like enough
to break through academic limits of literary unity. Likewise, the proper
sequence of thought depends on what constitutes the true connection
between one matter and another; it must follow what with the writer are
the veritable relationships of his topics. If the visible facts of a man’s
environment and the narratives of history are to him primarily neither
actual facts nor literal narratives, but symbols and allegories of
spiritual things, then the true sequence of thought for him is from symbol
to symbol and from allegory to allegory. He is justified in ignoring the
apparent connection of visible facts and the logic of the literal story,
and in surrendering himself to that sequence of thought which follows what
is for him the veritable significance of the matter.
Yet here we must apply another standard besides that of the writer’s
conception of his subject’s significance. He should be wise, and not
foolish. Other men and later ages will judge him according to their own
best wisdom. And with respect to the writings of the Fathers viewed as
literature, the modern critic cannot fail to see them entering upon that
course of prolixity which in mediaeval writings will develop into the
endless; looking forward, he will see their errant habits resolving into
the mediaeval lack of determined topic, and their symbolically driven
sequences of thought turning into the most ridiculous topical transitions,
as the less cogent faculties of later men permit themselves to be
_suggested_ anywhither.
The Fathers developed their distinguishing qualities of style and language
under the demands of the topics absorbing them, and the influence of modes
of feeling coming with Christianity. They were compelling an established
language to express novel matter. In the centuries after them, further
changes were to come through the linguistic tendencies moulding the
evolution of the Romance tongues, through the counter influence of the
study of grammar and rhetoric, and also through the ignorance and
intellectual limitations of the writers. But as with the Latin of the
Fathers, so with the Latin of the Middle Ages, the change of style and
language was intimately and spiritually dependent upon the minds and
temperaments of the writers and the qualities of the subjects for which
they were seeking an expression. A profound influence in the evolution of
mediaeval Latin was the continual endeavour of the mediaeval genius to
express the thoughts and feelings through which it was becoming itself.
With impressive adequacy and power the Christian writers of the Middle
Ages moulded their inherited and acquired Latin tongue to utter the varied
matters which moved their minds and lifted up their hearts. We marvel to
see a language which once had told the stately tale of Rome here lowered
to fantastic incident and dull stupidity, then with almost gospel
simplicity telling the moving story of some saintly life; again sonorously
uttering thoughts to lift men from the earth and denunciations crushing
them to hell; quivering with hope and fear and love, and chanting the last
verities of the human soul.
As to the evolution of various styles of written Latin from the close of
the patristic period on through the following centuries, one may premise
the remark that there would commonly be two opposite influences upon the
writer; that of the genius of his native tongue, and that of his education
in Latinity. If he lived in a land where Teutonic speech had never given
way to the spoken Latin of the Empire, his native tongue would be so
different from the Latin which he learned at school, that while it might
impede, it could hardly draw to its own genius the learned language. But
in Romance countries there was no such absolute difference between the
vernacular and the Latin, and the analytic genius of the growing Romance
dialects did not fail to affect the latter. Accordingly in France, for
example, the spoken Latin dialect, or one may say the genius that was
forming the old French dialects to what they were to be, tends to break up
the ancient periods, to introduce the auxiliary verb in the place of
elaborate inflections, and rely on prepositions instead of case endings,
which were disappearing and whose force was ceasing to be felt. One result
was to simplify the order of words in a sentence; for it was not possible
to move a noun with its accompanying preposition wherever it had been
feasible to place a noun whose relation to the rest of the sentence was
felt from its case ending. Gregory of Tours is the famous example of these
tendencies, with his _Historia francorum_, an ideal forerunner of
Froissart. He became Bishop of Tours in the year 573. In his writings he
followed the instincts of the inchoate Romance tongues. He acknowledges
and perhaps overstates his ignorance of Latin grammar and the rules of
composition. Such ignorance was destined to become still blanker; and
ignorance in itself was a disintegrating influence upon written Latin, and
also gave freer play to the gathering tendencies of Romance speech.
Evidently, had all these influences worked unchecked, they would have
obliterated Latinity from mediaeval Latin. Grammatical and rhetorical
education countered them effectively, and the mighty genius of the ancient
language endured in the extant masterpieces. Nevertheless the spirit of
classical Latinity was never again to be a spontaneous creative power.
The most that men thenceforth could do was to study, and endeavour to
imitate, the forms in which it had embodied its living self.
In brief, some of the chief influences upon the writing of Latin in the
Middle Ages were: the classical genius dead, leaving only its works for
imitation; the school education in Latin grammar and rhetoric; endeavour
to follow classic models and write correctly; inability to do so from lack
of capacity and knowledge; conscious disregard of classicism; the spirit
of the Teutonic tongues clogging Latinity, and that of the Romance tongues
deflecting it from classical constructions; and finally, the plastic
faculties of advancing Christian mediaeval civilization educing power from
confusion, and creating modes of language suited to express the thoughts
and feelings of mediaeval men.
The life, that is to say the living development, of mediaeval Latin prose,
was to lie in the capacity of successive generations of educated men to
maintain a sufficient grammatical correctness, while at the same time
writing Latin, not classically, but in accordance with the necessities and
spirit of their times. There resulted an enormous literature which was not
dead, nor altogether living, and lacked throughout the spontaneity of
writings in a mother tongue; for Latin was not the speech of hearth and
home, nor everywhere the tongue of the market-place and camp. But it was
the language of mediaeval education and acquired culture; it was the
language also of the universal church, and, above all other tongues,
expressed the thoughts by which men were saved or damned. More profoundly
than any vernacular mediaeval literature, the Latin literature of the
Middle Ages expresses the mediaeval mind. It thundered with the authority
that held the keys of heaven; it was resonant with feeling, and through
long centuries gave voice to emotions, shattering, terror-stricken,
convulsively loving. When, say with the close of the eleventh century, the
mediaeval peoples had absorbed with power the teachings of patristic
Christianity, and had undergone some centuries of Latin schooling, and
when under these two chief influences certain distinctive and homogeneous
ways of thinking, feeling, and looking upon life, had been reached; when,
in fine, the Middle Ages had become themselves and had evolved a genius
that could create,--then and from that time appears the adaptability and
power of mediaeval Latin to serve the ends of intellectual effort and the
expression of emotion.
To estimate the literary qualities of classical Latin is a simpler task
than to judge the Latinity and style of the Latin literature of the Middle
Ages. Classic Latin prose has a common likeness. In general one feels that
what Cicero and Caesar would have rejected, Tacitus and Quintilian would
not have admitted. The syntax of these writers shows still greater
uniformity. No such common likeness, or avoidance of stylistic aberration
and grammatical solecism, obtains in mediaeval prose or verse. The one and
the other include many kinds of Latin, and vary from century to century,
diversified in idiom and deflected from linguistic uniformity by
influences of race and native speech, of ignorance and knowledge. He who
would appreciate mediaeval Latin will be diffident of academic standards,
and mistrust his classical predilections lest he see aberration and
barbarism where he might discover the evolution of new constructions and
novel styles; lest he bestow encomium upon clever imitations of classical
models, and withhold it from more living creations of the mediaeval
spirit. He will realize that to appreciate mediaeval Latin literature, he
must shelve his Virgil and his Cicero.[230]
The following pages do not offer themselves even as a slight sketch of
mediaeval Latin literature. Their purpose is to indicate the stages of
development of the prose and the phases of evolution of the verse; and to
illustrate the way in which antique themes and antique knowledge passed
into vernacular poetry. Classical standards will supply us less with a
point of view than with a point of departure. Nothing more need be said
of the Latin of the Church Fathers and Gregory of Tours. But one must
refer to the Carolingian period, in order to appreciate the Latin styles
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The revival of education and classical scholarship under the strong rule
and fostering care of the greatest of mediaeval monarchs has not always
been rightly judged. The vision of that prodigious personality ruling,
christianizing, striving to civilize masses of barbarians and barbarized
descendants of Romans and provincials; at the same time with eager
interest endeavouring to revive the culture of the past, and press it into
the service of the Christian faith; the striking success of his
endeavours, men of learning coming from Ireland, England, Spain, and
Italy, creating a peripatetic centre of knowledge at the imperial court,
and establishing schools in many a monastery and episcopal residence--all
this has never failed to arouse enthusiasm for the great achievement, and
has veiled the creative deadness of it all, a deadness which in some
provinces of intellectual endeavour was quite veritably moribund, while in
others it betokened the necessary preparation for creative epochs to
come.[231]
Carolingian scholarship was directed to the mastery of Latin. Grammar was
taught, and the rules of composition. Then the scholars were bidden, or
bade themselves, do likewise. So they wrote verse or prose according to
their school lessons. They might write correctly; but they had no style of
their own. This was hopelessly true as to their metrical verses;[232] it
was only somewhat less tangibly true of their prose. The “classic” of the
period, in the eyes of modern classical scholars and also in the opinion
of the mediaeval centuries, is Einhard’s _Life of Charlemagne_. Numberless
encomiums have been passed on it, and justly too. It was an excellent
imitation of Suetonius’s _Life of Augustus_; and the writer had made a
careful study of Caesar and Livy.[233] There is no need to quote from a
writing so accessible and well known. Yet one remark may be added to what
others have said: if Einhard’s composition was an excellent copy of
classical Latin it was nothing else; it has no stylistic
individuality.[234]
Turning from this famous biography, we will illustrate our point by
quoting from the letters of him who stands as the type of the Carolingian
revival, the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin. All praise to this noble educational
coadjutor of Charlemagne; his learning was conscientious; his work was
important, his character was lovable. His affectionate nature speaks in a
letter to his former brethren at York, where his home had been before he
entered Charlemagne’s service. Here is a sentence:
“O omnium dilectissimi patres et fratres, memores mei estote; ego
vester ero, sive in vita, sive in morte. Et forte miserebitur mei
Deus, ut cujus infantiam aluistis, ejus senectutem sepeliatis.”[235]
It were invidious to find fault with this Latin, in which the homesick man
expresses his hope of sepulture in his old home. Note also the balance of
the following, written to a sick friend:
“Gratias agamus Deo Jesu, vulneranti et medenti, flagellanti et
consolanti. Dolor corporis salus est animae, et infirmitas temporalis,
sanitas perpetua. Libenter accipiamus, patienter feramus voluntatem
Salvatoris nostri.”[236]
This too is excellent, in language as in sentiment. So is another, and
last, sentence from our author, in a letter congratulating Charlemagne on
his final subjugation of the Huns, through which the survivors were
brought to a knowledge of the truth:
“Qualis erit tibi gloria, O beatissime rex, in die aeternae
retributionis, quando hi omnes qui per tuam sollicitudinem ab
adolatriae cultura ad cognoscendum verum Deum conversi sunt, te ante
tribunal Domini nostri Jesu Christi in beata sorte stantem
sequentur!”[237]
Again, the only trouble is stylelessness. In fine, an absence of quality
characterizes Carolingian prose, of which a last example may be taken from
the Spaniard Theodulphus, Bishop of Orleans, “an accomplished Latin poet,”
and an educator yielding in importance to Alcuin alone. The sentence is
from an official admonition to the clergy, warning them to attach more
value to salvation than to lucre:
“Admonendi sunt qui negotiis ac mercationibus rerum invigilant, ut non
plus terrenam quam viam cupiant sempiternam. Nam qui plus de rebus
terrenis quam de animae suae salute cogitat, valde a via veritatis
aberrat.”[238]
Evidently there was a good knowledge of Latin among these Carolingians,
who laboured for the revival of education and the preservation of the
Classics. The nadir of classical learning falls in the succeeding period
of break-up, confusion, and dawning re-adjustment. In the century or two
following the year 850, the writers were too unskilled in Latin and often
too cumbered by it, to manifest in their writings that unhampered and
distinctive reflex of a personality which we term style. A rare exception
would appear in such a potent scholar as Gerbert, who mastered whatever he
learned, and made it part of his own faculties and temperament. His
letters, consequently, have an individual style, however good or bad we
may be disposed to deem it.[239]
Accordingly, until after the millennial year Latin prose shows little
beyond a clumsy heaviness resulting from the writer’s insufficient mastery
of his medium; and there are many instances of barbarism and corruption of
the tongue without any compensating positive qualities. A dreadful example
is afforded by the _Chronicon_ of Benedictus, a monk of St. Andrews in
Monte Soracte, who lived in the latter part of the tenth century. He
relates, as history, the fable of Charlemagne’s journey to the Holy Land;
and his own eyes may have witnessed the atrocious times of John XII., of
whom he speaks as follows:
“Inter haec non multum tempus Agapitus papa decessit (an. 956).
Octabianus in sede sanctissima susceptus est, et vocatus est Johannes
duodecimi pape. Factus est tam lubricus sui corporis, et tam audaces,
quantum nunc in gentilis populo solebat fieri. Habebat consuetudinem
sepius venandi non quasi apostolicus sed quasi homo ferus. Erat enim
cogitio ejus vanum; diligebat collectio feminarum, odibiles
aecclesiarum, amabilis juvenis ferocitantes. Tanta denique libidine
sui corporis exarsit, quanta nunc (non?) possumus enarrare.”[240]
No need to draw further from this writing, which is characterized
throughout by crass ignorance of grammar and all else pertaining to Latin.
It has no individual qualities; it has no style. Leaving this example of
illiteracy, let us turn to a man of more knowledge, Odo, one of the
greatest of the abbots of Cluny, who died in the year 943. He left lengthy
writings, one of them a bulky epitome of the famous _Moralia_ of Gregory
the Great.[241] More original were his three dull books of _Collationes_,
or moral comments upon the Scriptures. They open with a heavy note which
their author might have drawn from the dark temperament of that great pope
whom he so deeply admired; but the language has a leaden quality which is
not Gregory’s, but Odo’s.
“Auctor igitur et judex hominum Deus, licet ab illa felicitate
paradisi genus nostrum juste repulerit, suae tamen bonitatis memor, ne
totus reus homo quod meretur incurrat, hujus peregrinationis molestias
multis beneficiis demulcet.”
And, again, a little further on:
“Omnis vero ejusdem Scripturae intentio est, ut nos ab hujus vitae
pravitatibus compescat. Nam idcirco terribilibus suis sententiis cor
nostrum, quasi quibusdam stimulis pungit, ut homo terrore pulsatus
expavescat, et divina judicia quae aut voluptate carnis aut terrena
sollicitudine discissus oblivisci facile solet, ad memoriam
reducat.”[242]
One feels the dull heaviness of this. Odo, like many of his
contemporaries, knew enough of Latin grammar, and had read some of the
Classics. But he had not mastered what he knew, and his knowledge was not
converted into power. The tenth century was still painfully learning the
lessons of its Christian and classical heritage. A similar lack of
personal facility may be observed in Ruotger’s biography of Bruno, the
worthy brother of the great emperor Otto I., and Archbishop of Cologne.
Bruno died in 965, and Ruotger, who had been his companion, wrote his Life
without delay. It has not the didactic ponderousness of Odo’s writing, but
its language is clumsy. The following passage is of interest as showing
Bruno’s education and the kind of learned man it made him.
“Deinde ubi prima grammaticae artis rudimenta percepit, sicut ab ipso
in Dei omnipotentis gloriam hoc saepius ruminante didicimus,
Prudentium poetam tradente magistro legere coepit. Qui sicut est et
fide intentioneque catholicus, et eloquentia veritateque praecipuus,
et metrorum librorumque varietate elegantissimus, tanta mox dulcedine
palato cordis ejus complacuit, ut jam non tantum exteriorum verborum
scientiam, verum intimi medullam sensus, et nectar ut ita dicam
liquidissimum, majori quam dici possit aviditate hauriret. Postea
nullum penitus erat studiorum liberalium genus in omni Graeca vel
Latina eloquentia, quod ingenii sui vivacitatem aufugeret. Nec vero,
ut solet, aut divitiarum affluentia, aut turbarum circumstrepentium
assiduitas, aut ullum aliunde subrepens fastidium ab hoc nobili otio
animum ejus unquam avertit.... Saepe inter Graecorum et Latinorum
doctissimos de philosophiae sublimitate aut de cujuslibet in illa
florentis disciplinae subtilitate disputantes doctus interpres medius
ipse consedit, et disputantibus ad plausum omnium, quo nihil minus
amaverat, satisfecit.”[243]
The gradual improvement in the writing of Latin in the Middle Ages, and
the evolution of distinctive mediaeval styles, did not result from a
larger acquaintance with the Classics, or a better knowledge of grammar
and school rhetoric. The range of classical reading might extend, or from
time to time contract, and Donatus and Priscian were used in the ninth
century as well as in the twelfth. It is true that the study of grammar
became more intelligent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and its
teachers deferred less absolutely to the old rules and illustrations. They
recognized Christian standards of diction: first of all the Vulgate; next,
early Christian poets like Prudentius; and then gradually the mediaeval
versifiers who wrote and won approval in the twelfth century. Thus grammar
sought to follow current usage.[244] This endeavour culminated at the
close of the twelfth century in the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander of Villa
Dei.[245] Before this, much of the best mediaeval Latin prose and verse
had been written, and the period most devoted to the Classics had come and
was already waning. That period was this same twelfth century. During its
earlier half, Latinity gained doubtless from such improvement in the
courses of the Trivium as took place at Chartres, for example, an
improvement connected with the intellectual growth of the time. But the
increase in the knowledge of Latin was mainly such as a mature man may
realize within himself, if he has kept up his Latin reading, however
little he seem to have added to his knowledge since leaving his Alma
Mater.
So the development of mediaeval Latin prose (and also verse) advanced with
the maturing of mediaeval civilization. That which was at the same time a
living factor in this growth and a result of it, was the more organic
appropriation of the classical and Christian heritages of culture and
religion. As intellectual faculties strengthened, and men drew power from
the past, they gained facility in moulding their Latin to their purposes.
Writings begin to reflect the personalities of the writers; the diction
ceases to be that of clumsy or clever school compositions, and presents an
evolution of tangible mediaeval styles. Henceforth, although a man be an
eager student of the Classics, like John of Salisbury for example, and try
to imitate their excellences, he will still write mediaeval Latin, and
with a personal style if he be a strong personality. The classical models
no longer trammel, but assist him to be more effectively himself on a
higher plane.
If mediaeval civilization is to be regarded as that which the peoples of
western Europe attained under the two universal influences of Christianity
and antique culture, then nothing more mediaeval will be seen than
mediaeval Latin. To make it, the antique Latin had been modified and
reinspired and loosed by the Christian energies of the Fathers; and had
then passed on to peoples who never had been, or no longer were, antique.
They barbarized the language down to the rudeness of their faculties. As
they themselves advanced, they brought up Latin with them, as it were,
from the depths of the ninth and tenth centuries, but a Latin which in the
crude natures of these men had been stripped of classical quality; a Latin
barbarous and naked, and ready to be clothed upon with novel qualities
which should make it a new creature. Throughout all this process, while
Latin was sinking and re-emerging, it was worked upon and inspired by the
spirit of the uses to which it was predominantly applied, which were those
of the Roman Catholic Church and of the intimacies of the Christian soul,
pressing to expression in the learned tongue which they were transforming.
In considering the Latin writings of the Middle Ages one should bear in
mind the differences between Italy and the North with respect to the
ancient language. These were important through the earlier Middle Ages,
when modes of diction sufficiently characteristic to be called styles,
were forming. The men of Latin-sodden Italy might have a fluent Latin when
those of the North still had theirs to learn. Thus there were Italians in
the eleventh century who wrote quite a distinctive Latin prose.[246]
Among them were St. Peter Damiani, and St. Anselm of Aosta, Bec, and
Canterbury.
The former died full of virtue in the year 1072. We have elsewhere
observed his character and followed his career.[247] He was, to his great
anxiety, a classical scholar, who had earned large sums as a teacher of
rhetoric before natural inclination and fears for his soul drove him to an
ascetic life. He was a master of the Latin which he used. His style is
intense, eloquent, personal to himself as well as suited to his matter,
and reflects his ardent character and keen perceptions. The following is a
rhetorical yet beautiful description of a “last leaf,” taken from one of
his compositions in praise of the hermit way of salvation.
“Videamus in arbore folium sub ipsis pruinis hiemalibus lapsabundum,
et consumpto autumnalis clementiae virore, jamjam pene casurum, ita ut
vix ramusculo, cui dependet, inhaereat, sed apertissima levis ruinae
signa praetendat: inhorrescunt flabra, venti furentes hic inde
concutiunt, brumalis horror crassi aeris rigore densatur: atque, ut
magis stupeas, defluentibus reliquis undique foliis terra sternitur,
et depositis comis arbor suo decore nudatur; cum illud solum nullo
manente permaneat, et velut cohaeredum superstes in fraternae
possessionis jura succedat. Quid autem intelligendum in hujus rei
consideratione relinquitur, nisi quia nec arboris folium potest
cadere, nisi divinum praesumat imperium?”[248]
Anselm’s diction, in spite of its frequent cloister rhetoric, has a simple
and modern word-order. An account has already been given of his life and
of his thoughts, so beautifully sky-blue, unpurpled with the crimson of
human passion, which made the words of Augustine more veritably
incandescent.[249] The great African was the strongest individual
influence upon Anselm’s thought and language. But the latter’s style has
departed further from the classical sentence, and of itself indicates that
the writer belongs neither to the patristic period nor to the Carolingian
time, busied with its rearrangement of patristic thought. The following is
from his _Proslogion_ upon the existence of God. Through this discourse,
Deity and the Soul are addressed in the second person after the manner of
Augustine’s _Confessions_.
“Excita nunc, anima mea, et erige totum intellectum tuum, et cogita
quantum potes quale et quantum sit illud bonum (_i.e._ Deus). Si enim
singula bona delectabilia sunt, cogita intente quam delectabile sit
illud bonum quod continet jucunditatem omnium bonorum; et non qualem
in rebus creatis sumus experti, sed tanto differentem quanto differt
Creator a creatura. Si enim bona est vita creata, quam bona est vita
creatrix! Si jucunda est salus facta, quam jucunda est salus quae
fecit omnem salutem! Si amabilis est sapientia in cognitione rerum
conditarum, quam amabilis est sapientia quae omnia condidit ex nihilo!
Denique, si multae et magnae delectationes sunt in rebus
delectabilibus, qualis et quanta delectatio est in illo qui fecit ipsa
delectabilia!”[250]
In a more emotional passage Anselm arouses in his soul the terror of the
Judgment. It is from a “Meditatio”:
“Taedet animam meam vitae meae; vivere erubesco, mori pertimesco. Quid
ergo restat tibi, o peccator, nisi ut in tota vita tua plores totam
vitam tuam, ut ipsa tota se ploret totam? Sed est in hoc quoque anima
mea miserabiliter mirabilis et mirabiliter miserabilis, quia non
tantum dolet quantum se noscit; sed sic secura torpet, velut quid
patiatur ignoret. O anima sterilis, quid agis? quid torpes, anima
peccatrix? Dies judicii venit, juxta est dies Domini magnus, juxta et
velox nimis, _dies irae dies illa_, dies tribulationis et angustiae,
dies calamitatis et miseriae, dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies
nebulae et turbinis, dies tubae et clangoris. O vox diei Domini amara!
Quid dormitas, anima tepida et digna evomi?”[251]
Damiani wrote in the middle of the eleventh century, Anselm in the latter
part. The northern lands could as yet show no such characteristic
styles,[252] although the classically educated German, Lambert of
Hersfeld, wrote as correctly and perspicuously as either. His _Annals_
have won admiration for their clear and correct Latinity, modelled upon
the styles of Sallust and Livy. He died in 1077, the year of Canossa, his
_Annals_ covering the conflict between Henry IV. and Hildebrand up to that
event. The narrative moves with spirit, as one may see by reading his
description of King Henry and his consort struggling through Alpine ice
and snow to reach that castle never to be forgotten, and gain absolution
from the Pope before the ban should have completed Henry’s ruin.[253]
For the North, the best period of mediaeval Latin, prose as well as
verse, opens with the twelfth century. It was indeed the great literary
period of the Middle Ages. For the vernacular literatures flourished as
well as the Latin. Provençal literature began as the eleventh century
closed, and was stifled in the thirteenth by the Albigensian Crusade. So
the twelfth was its great period. Likewise with the Old French literature:
except the _Roland_ which is earlier, the chief _chansons de geste_ belong
to the twelfth century; also the romances of antiquity, to be spoken of
hereafter; also the romances of the Round Table, and a great mass of
_chansons_ and _fabliaux_. The Old German--or rather, _Mittel
Hochdeutsch_--literature touches its height as the century closes and the
next begins, in the works of Heinrich von Veldeke, Gottfried von
Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Walther von der Vogelweide.
The best Latin writers of the century lived, or sojourned, or were
educated, for the most part in the France north of the Loire. Not that all
of them were natives of that territory; for some were German born, some
saw the light in England, and the birthplace of many is unknown. Yet they
seem to belong to France. Nearly all were ecclesiastics, secular or
regular. Many of them were notables in theology, like Hugo of St. Victor,
Abaelard, Alanus de Insulis (Lille); many were poets as well, like Alanus
and Hildebert and John of Salisbury too; one was a thunderer on the earth,
and a most deft politician, Bernard of Clairvaux. Some again are known
only as poets, sacred or profane, like Adam of St. Victor, and Walter of
Chatillon--but of these hereafter. The best Latin prose writing of this,
or any other, mediaeval period, had its definite purpose, metaphysical,
theological, or pietistic; and the writers have been or will be spoken of
in connection with their specific fields of intellectual achievement or
religious fervour. Here, without discussing the men or their works, some
favourable examples of their writing will be given.
In the last passage quoted from Anselm, the reader must have felt the
working of cloister rhetoric, and have noticed the antitheses and rhymes,
to which mediaeval Latin lent itself so readily. Yet it is a slight affair
compared with the confounding sonorousness, the flaring pictures, and
terrifying climaxes of St. Bernard when preaching upon the same topic--the
Judgment Day. In one of his famous sermons on Canticles, the saint has
been suggesting to his audience, the monks of Clara Vallis, that although
the _Father_ might ignore faults, not so the _Dominus_ and _Creator_: “et
qui parcit filio, non parcet figmento, non parcet servo nequam.” Listen to
the carrying out and pointing of this thought:
“Pensa cujus sit formidinis et horroris tuum atque omnium contempsisse
factorem, offendisse Dominum majestatis. Majestatis est timeri, Domini
est timeri, et maxime hujus majestatis, hujusque Domini. Nam si reum
regiae majestatis, quamvis humanae, humanis legibus plecti capite
sancitum sit, quis finis contemnentium divinam omnipotentiam erit?
Tangit montes, et fumigant; et tam tremendam majestatem audet irritare
vilis pulvisculus, uno levi flatu mox dispergendus, et minime
recolligendus? Ille, ille timendus est, qui postquam acciderit corpus,
potestatem habet mittere et in gehennam. Paveo gehennam, paveo judicis
vultum, ipsis quoque tremendum angelicis potestatibus. Contremisco ab
ira potentis, a facie furoris ejus, a fragore ruentis mundi, a
conflagratione elementorum, a tempestate valida, a voce archangeli, et
a verbo aspero. [Feel the climax of this sentence, which tells the end
of the sinner.] Contremisco a dentibus bestiae infernalis, a ventre
inferi, a rugientibus praeparatis ad escam. Horreo vermem rodentem, et
ignem torrentem, fumum, et vaporem, et sulphur, et spiritum
procellarum; horreo tenebras exteriores. Quis dabit capiti meo aquam,
et oculis meis fontem lacrymarum ut praeveniam fletibus fletum, et
stridorem dentium, et manuum pedumque dura vincula, et pondus
catenarum prementium, stringentium, urentium, nec consumentium? Heu
me, mater mea! utquid me genuisti filium doloris, filium amaritudinis,
indignationis et plorationis aeternae? Cur exceptus genibus, cur
lactatus uberibus, natus in combustionem, et cibus ignis?”[254]
As one recovers from the sound and power of this high-wrought passage, he
notices how readily it might be turned into the form of a Latin hymn; and
also how very modern is its sequence of words. Bernard’s Latin could
whisper intimate love, as well as thunder terror. He says, preaching on
the _medicina_, the healing power, of Jesu’s name:
“Hoc tibi electuarium habes, o anima mea, reconditum in vasculo
vocabuli hujus quod est Jesus, salutiferum, certe, quodque nulli
unquam pesti tuae inveniatur inefficax.”[255]
With the music of this prose one may compare the sweet personal plaint of
the following:
“Felices quos abscondit in tabernaculo suo in umbra alarum suarum
sperantes, donec transeat iniquitas. Caeterum ego infelix, pauper et
nudus, homo natus ad laborem, implumis avicula pene omni tempore
nidulo exsulans, vento exposita et turbini, turbatus sum et motus sum
sicut ebrius, et omnis conscientia mea devorata est.”[256]
Extracts can give no idea of Bernard’s literary powers, any more than a
small volume could tell the story of that life which, so to speak, was
_magna pars_ of all contemporary history. But since he was one of the best
of Latin letter-writers, one should not omit an example of his varied
epistolary style, which can be known in its compass only from a large
reading of his letters. The following is a short letter, written to win
back to the cloister a delicately nurtured youth whose parents had lured
him out into the world.
“Doleo super te, fili mi Gaufride, doleo super te. Et merito. Quis
enim non doleat florem juventutis tuae, quem laetantibus angelis Deo
illibatum obtuleras in odorem suavitatis, nunc a daemonibus
conculcari, vitiorum spurcitiis, et saeculi sordibus inquinari?
Quomodo qui vocatus eras a Deo, revocantem diabolum sequeris, et quem
Christus trahere coeperat post se, repente pedem ab ipso introitu
gloriae retraxisti? In te experior nunc veritatem sermonis Domini,
quem dixit: Inimici hominis, domestici ejus (Matt. x. 36). Amici tui
et proximi tui adversum te appropinquaverunt, et steterunt.
Revocaverunt te in fauces leonis, et in portis mortis iterum
collocaverunt te. Collocaverunt te in obscuris, sicut mortuos saeculi:
et jam parum est ut descendas in ventrem inferi; jam te deglutire
festinat, ac rugientibus praeparatis ad escam tradere devorandum.
“Revertere, quaeso, revertere, priusquam te absorbeat profundum, et
urgeat super te puteus os suum; priusquam demergaris, unde ulterius
non emergas; priusquam ligatis manibus et pedibus projiciaris in
tenebras exteriores, ubi est fletus et stridor dentium; priusquam
detrudaris in locum tenebrosum, et opertum mortis caligine. Erubescis
forte redire, quia ad horam cessisti. Erubesce fugam, et non post
fugam reverti in proelium, et rursum pugnare. Necdum finis pugnae,
necdum ab invicem dimicantes acies discesserunt: adhuc victoria prae
manibus est. Si vis, nolumus vincere sine te, nec tuam tibi invidemus
gloriae portionem. Laeti occuremus tibi, laetis te recipiemus
amplexibus, dicemusque: Epulari et gaudere oportet, quia hic filius
noster mortuus fuerat, et revixit; perierat, et inventus est” (Luc.
xv. 32).[257]
The argument of this letter is, from the standpoint of Bernard’s time, as
resistless as the style. Did it win back the little monk? Many wonderful
examples of loving expression could be drawn from Bernard’s letters;[258]
but instead an instance may be given of his none too subtle way of
uttering his hate: “Arnaldus de Brixia, cujus conversatio mel et doctrina
venenum, cui caput columbae, cauda scorpionis est, quem Brixia evomuit,
Roma exhorruit, Francia repulit, Germania abominatur, Italia non vult
recipere, fertur esse vobiscum.”[259] And then he proceeds to warn his
correspondent of the danger of intercourse with this arch-enemy of the
Church.
Considering that Latin was a tongue which youths learned at school rather
than at their mothers’ knees, such writing as Bernard’s is a triumphant
recasting of an ancient language. One notices in him, as generally with
mediaeval religious writers, the influence of the Vulgate, which was
mainly in the language of St. Jerome--of Jerome when not writing as a
literary virtuoso, but as a scholar occupied with rendering the meaning,
and willing to accept such linguistic innovations as served his
purpose.[260] But beyond this influence, one sees how masterful is
Bernard’s diction, quite freed from observance of classical principles,
quite of the writer and his time, adapting itself with ease and power to
the topic and character of the composition, and always expressive of the
personality of the mighty saint.
Hildebert of Le Mans was a few years older than St. Bernard. As an example
of his prose a letter may be cited, of which the translation has been
given. It was written in 1128, when he was Archbishop of Tours, in protest
against the encroachments of the royal power of the French king, Louis the
Fat, upon the rights of the Archiepiscopacy of Tours in the matter of
ecclesiastical appointments within that diocese:
“In adversis nonnullum solatium est, tempora sperare laetiora. Diutius
spes haec mihi blandita est, et velut agricolam messis in herba, sic
animum meum prosperitatis expectatio confortavit. Caeterum jam nihil
est quo serenitatem nimbosi temporis exspectem, nihil est quo navis,
in cujus puppi sedeo, crebris agitata turbinibus, portum quietis
attingat.
“Silent amici, silent sacerdotes Jesu Christi. Denique silent et illi
quorum suffragio credidi regem mecum in gratiam rediturum. Credidi
quidem, sed super dolorem vulnerum meorum rex, illis silentibus,
adjecit. Eorum tamen erat gravamini ecclesiae canonicis obviare
institutis. Eorum erat, si res postulasset, opponere murum pro domo
Israel. Verum apud serenissimum regem opus est exhortatione potius
quam increpatione, consilio quam praecepto, doctrina quam virga. His
ille conveniendus fuit, his reverenter instruendus, ne sagittas suas
in sene compleret sacerdote, ne sanctiones canonicas evacuaret, ne
persequeretur cineres Ecclesiae jam sepultae, cineres in quibus ego
panem doloris manduco, in quibus bibo calicem luctus, de quibus eripi
et evadere, de morte ad vitam transire est.
“Inter has tamen angustias, nunquam de me sic ira triumphavit, ut
aliquem super Christo Domini clamorem deponere vellem, seu pacem
ipsius in manu forti et brachio Ecclesiae adipisci. Suspecta est pax
ad quam, non amore sed vi, sublimes veniunt potestates. Ea facile
rescindetur, et fiunt aliquando novissima pejora prioribus. Alia est
via qua compendiosius ad eam Christo perducente pertingam. Jactabo
cogitatum meum in Domino, et ipse dabit mihi petitionem cordis mei.
Recordatus est Dominus Joseph, cujus pincerna Pharaonis oblitus, dum
prospera succederent, interveniendi pro eo curam abjecit.... Fortassis
recordabitur et mei, atque in desiderato littore navem sistet
fluctuantem. Ipse enim est qui respicit in orationem humilium, et non
spernit preces eorum. Ipse est in cujus manu corda regum cerea sunt.
Si invenero gratiam in oculis ejus, gratiam regis vel facile
consequar, vel utiliter amittam. Siquidem offendere hominem proper
Deum lucrari est gratiam Dei.”[261]
John of Salisbury (1110-1180), much younger than Hildebert and a little
younger than Bernard, seems to have been the best scholar of his time.
With the Classics he is as one in the company of friends; he cites them as
readily as Scripture; their _sententiae_ have become part of his views of
life. John was an eager humanist, who followed his studies to whatever
town and to the feet of whatsoever teacher they might lead him. So he
listened to Abaelard and many others. His writing is always lively and
often forcible, especially when vituperating the set who despised classic
reading. His most vivacious work, the _Metalogicus_, was directed against
their unnamed prophet, whom he dubs “Cornificus.”[262] Its opening passage
is of interest as John’s exordium, and because a somewhat consciously
intending stylist like our John is likely to exhibit his utmost virtuosity
in the opening sentences of an important work:
“Adversus insigne donum naturae parentis et gratiae, calumniam veterem
et majorum nostrorum judicio condemnatam excitat improbus litigator,
et conquirens undique imperitiae suae solatia, sibi proficere sperat
ad gloriam, si multos similes sui, id est si eos viderit imperitos;
habet enim hoc proprium arrogantiae tumor, ut se commetiatur aliis,
bona sua, si qua sunt, efferens, deprimens aliena; defectumque
proximi, suum putet esse profectum. Omnibus autem recte sapientibus
indubium est quod natura, clementissima parens omnium, et
dispositissima moderatrix, inter caetera quae genuit animantia,
hominem privilegio rationis extulit, et usu eloquii insignivit: id
agens sedulitate officiosa, et lege dispositissima, ut homo qui
gravedine faeculentioris naturae et molis corporeae tarditate
premebatur et trahebatur ad ima, his quasi subvectus alis, ad alta
ascendat, et ad obtinendum verae beatitudinis bravium, omnia alia
felici compendio antecebat. Dum itaque naturam fecundat gratia, ratio
rebus perspiciendis et examinandis invigilat; naturae sinus excutit,
metitur fructus et efficaciam singulorum: et innatus omnibus amor
boni, naturali urgente se appetitu, hoc, aut solum, aut prae caeteris
sequitur, quod percipiendae beatitudini maxime videtur esse
accommodum.”[263]
One perceives the effect of classical studies; yet the passage is good
twelfth-century Latin, quite different from the compositions of the
Carolingian epoch, those, for example, from the pen of Alcuin, who had
studied the Classics like John, but unlike him had no personal style. One
gains similar impressions from the diction of the _Polycraticus_, a
lengthy, discursive work in which John surprises us with his classical
equipment. Although containing many quoted passages, it is not made of
extracts strung together; but reflects the sentiments or tells the
opinions of ancient philosophers in the writer’s own way. The following
shows John’s knowledge of early Greek philosophers, and is a fair example
of his ordinary style:
“Alterum vero philosophorum genus est, quod Ionicum dicitur et a
Graecis ulterioribus traxit originem. Horum princeps fuit Thales
Milesius, unus illorum septem, qui dicti sunt sapientes. Iste cum
rerum naturam scrutatus, inter caeteros emicuisset, maxime admirabilis
exstitit, quod astrologiae numeris comprehensis, solis et lunae
defectus praedicebat. Huic successit Anaximander ejus auditor, qui
Anaximenem discipulum reliquit et successorem. Diogenes quoque ejusdem
auditor exstitit, et Anaxagoras, qui omnium rerum quas videmus,
effectorem divinum animum docuit. Ei successit auditor ejus Archelaüs,
cujus discipulus Socrates fuisse perhibetur, magister Platonis, qui,
teste Apuleio, prius Aristoteles dictus est, sed deinde a latitudine
pectoris Plato, et in tantam eminentiam philosophiae, et vigore
ingenii, et studii exercitio, et omnium morum venustate, eloquii
quoque suavitate et copia subvectus est, ut quasi in throno sapientiae
residens, praecepta quadam auctoritate visus est, tam antecessoribus
quam successoribus philosophis, imperare. Et primus quidem Socrates
universam philosophiam ad corrigendos componendosque mores flexisse
memoratur, cum ante illum omnes physicis, id est rebus naturalibus
perscrutandis, maximam operam dederint.”[264]
These extracts from the writings of saints and scholars may be
supplemented by two extracts from compositions of another class. The
mediaeval chronicle has not a good reputation. Its credulity and
uncritical spirit varied with the time and man. Little can be said in
favour of its general form, which usually is stupidly chronological, or
annalistic. The example of classical historical composition was lost on
mediaeval annalists. Yet their work is not always dull; and, by the
twelfth century, their diction had become as mediaeval as that of the
theologian rhetoricians, although it rarely crystallizes to personal style
by reason of the insignificance of the writers. A well-known work of this
kind is the _Gesta Dei per Francos_, by Guibert of Nogent, who wrote his
account of the First Crusade a few years after its turmoil had passed by.
The following passage tells of proceedings upon the conclusion of Urban’s
great crusading oration at the Council of Clermont in 1099:
“Peroraverat vir excellentissimus, et omnes qui se ituros voverant,
beati Petri potestate absolvit, eadem, ipsa apostolica auctoritate
firmavit, et signum satis conveniens hujus tam honestae professionis
instituit, et veluti cingulum militiae, vel potius militaturis Deo
passionis Dominicae stigma tradens, crucis figuram, ex cujuslibet
materiae panni, tunicis, byrris et palliis iturorum, assui mandavit.
Quod si quis, post hujus signi acceptionem, aut post evidentis voti
pollicitationem ab ista benevolentia, prava poenitudine, aut aliquorum
suorum affectione resileret, ut exlex perpetuo haberetur omnino
praecepit, nisi resipisceret; idemque quod omiserat foede repeteret.
Praeterea omnes illos atroci damnavit anathemate, qui eorum uxoribus,
filiis, aut possessionibus, qui hoc Dei iter aggrederentur, per
integrum triennii tempus, molestiam auderent inferre. Ad extremum,
cuidam viro omnimodis laudibus efferendo, Podiensis urbis episcopo,
cujus nomen doleo quia neque usquam reperi, nec audivi, curam super
eadem expeditione regenda contulit, et vices suas ipsi, super
Christiani populi quocunque venirent institutione, commisit. Unde et
manus ei, more apostolorum, data pariter benedictione, imposuit. Quod
ille quam sagaciter sit exsecutus, docet mirabilis operis tanti
exitus.”[265]
This Frenchman Guibert is almost vivacious. A certain younger contemporary
of his, of English birth, could construct his narrative quite as well.
Ordericus Vitalis (d. 1142) is said to have been born at Wroxeter, though
he spent most of his life as monk of St. Evroult in Normandy. There he
wrote his _Historia Ecclesiastica_ of Normandy and England. His account of
the loss of the _White Ship_ in 1120 tells the story:
“Thomas, filius Stephani, regem adiit, eique marcum auri offerens,
ait: ‘Stephanus, Airardi filius, genitor meus fuit, et ipse in omni
vita sua patri tuo in mari servivit. Nam illum, in sua puppe vectum,
in Angliam conduxit, quando contra Haraldum pugnaturus, in Angliam
perrexit. Hujusmodi autem officio usque ad mortem famulando ei
placuit, et ab eo multis honoratus exeniis, inter contribules suos
magnifice floruit. Hoc feudum, domine rex, a te requiro, et vas quod
Candida-Navis appellatur, merito ad regalem famulatum optime
instructum habeo.’ Cui rex ait: ‘Gratum habeo quod petis. Mihi quidem
aptam navim elegi, quam non mutabo; sed filios meos, Guillelmum et
Richardum, quos sicut me diligo, cum multa regni mei nobilitate, nunc
tibi commendo.’
“His auditis, nautae gavisi sunt, filioque regis adulantes, vinum ab
eo ad bibendum postulaverunt. At ille tres vini modios ipsis dari
praecepit. Quibus acceptis, biberunt, sociisque abundanter
propinaverunt, nimiumque potantes inebriati sunt. Jussu regis multi
barones cum filiis suis puppim ascenderunt, et fere trecenti, ut
opinor, in infausta nave fuerunt. Duo siquidem monachi Tironis, et
Stephanus comes cum duobus militibus, Guillelmus quoque de Rolmara, et
Rabellus Camerarius, Eduardus de Salesburia, et alii plures inde
exierunt, quia nimiam multitudinem lascivae et pompaticae juventutis
inesse conspicati sunt. Periti enim remiges quinquaginta ibi erant, et
feroces epibatae, qui jam in navi sedes nacti turgebant, et suimet
prae ebrietate immemores, vix aliquem reverenter agnoscebant. Heu!
quamplures illorum mentes pia devotione erga Deum habebant vacuas
‘Qui maris immodicas moderatur et aeris iras.’
Unde sacerdotes, qui ad benedicendos illos illuc accesserant, aliosque
ministros qui aquam benedictam deferebant, cum dedecore et cachinnis
subsannantes abigerunt; sed paulo post derisionis suae ultionem
receperunt.
“Soli homines, cum thesauro regis et vasis merum ferentibus, Thomae
carinam implebant, ipsumque ut regiam classem, quae jam aequora
sulcabat, summopere prosequeretur, commonebant. Ipse vero, quia
ebrietate desipiebat, in virtute sua, satellitumque suorum confidebat,
et audacter, quia omnes qui jam praecesserant praeiret, spondebat.
Tandem navigandi signum dedit. Porro schippae remos haud segniter
arripuerunt, et alia laeti, quia quid eis ante oculos penderet
nesciebant, armamenta coaptaverunt, navemque cum impetu magno per
pontum currere fecerunt. Cumque remiges ebrii totis navigarent
conatibus, et infelix gubernio male intenderet cursui dirigendo per
pelagus, ingenti saxo quod quotidie fluctu recedente detegitur et
rursus accessu maris cooperitur, sinistrum latus Candidae-Navis
vehementer illisum est, confractisque duabus tabulis, ex insperato,
navis, proh dolor! subversa est. Omnes igitur in tanto discrimine
simul exclamaverunt; sed aqua mox implente ora, pariter perierunt.
Duo soli virgae qua velum pendebat manus injecerunt, et magna noctis
parte pendentes, auxilium quodlibet praestolati sunt. Unus erat
Rothomagensis carnifex, nomine Beroldus, et alter generosus puer,
nomine Goisfredus, Gisleberti de Aquila filius.
“Tunc luna in signo Tauri nona decima fuit, et fere ix horis radiis
suis mundum illustravit, et navigantibus mare lucidum reddidit. Thomas
nauclerus post primam submersionem vires resumpsit, suique memor,
super undas caput extulit, et videns capita eorum qui ligno utcunque
inhaerebant, interrogavit: ‘Filius regis quid devenit?’ Cumque
naufragi respondissent illum cum omnibus collegis suis deperisse:
‘Miserum,’ inquit, ‘est amodo meum vivere.’ Hoc dicto, male desperans,
maluit illic occumbere, quam furore irati regis pro pernicie prolis
oppetere, seu longas in vinculis poenas luere.”[266]
Our examples thus far belong to the twelfth century. As touching its
successor, it will be interesting to observe the qualities of two opposite
kinds of writing, the one springing from the intellectual activities, and
the other from the religious awakening, of the time. In the thirteenth
century, scientific and scholastic writing was of representative
importance, and deeply affected the development of Latin prose. Very
different in style were the Latin stories and _vitae_ of the blessed
Francis of Assisi and other saints, composed in Italy.
Roger Bacon, of whom there will be much to say, composed most of his
extant works about the year 1267.[267] His language is often rough and
involved, from his impetuosity and eagerness to utter what was in him. But
it is always vigorous. He took pains to say just what he meant, and what
was worth saying; and frequently rewrote his sentences. His writings show
little rhetoric; yet they are stamped with a Baconian style, which has a
cumulative force. The word-order is modern with scarcely a trace of the
antique. Perhaps we may say that he wrote Latin like an Englishman of
vehement temper and great intellect. He is powerful in continuous
exposition; yet instances of his general, and very striking statements,
will illustrate his diction at its best. In the following sentence he
recognizes the progressiveness of knowledge, a rare idea in the Middle
Ages:
“Nam semper posteriores addiderunt ad opera priorum, et multa
correxerunt, et plura mutaverunt, sicut maxime per Aristotelem patet,
qui omnes sententias praecedentium discussit.”[268]
Again, he animadverts upon the duty of thirteenth-century Christians to
supply the defects of the old philosophers:
“Quapropter antiquorum defectus deberemus nos posteriores supplere,
quia introivimus in labores eorum, per quos, nisi simus asini,
possumus ad meliora excitari; quia miserrimum est semper uti inventis
et nunquam inveniendis.”[269]
Speaking of language, he says:
“Impossibile est quod proprietas unius linguae servetur in alia.”[270]
(“The idioms of one language cannot be preserved in a translation.”)
And again: “Omnes philosophi fuerunt post patriarchas et prophetas ...
et legerunt libros prophetarum et patriarcharum qui sunt in sacro
textu.”[271] (“The philosophers of Greece came after the prophets of
the Old Testament and read their works contained in the sacred text.”)
In the first of these sentences Bacon shows his linguistic insight; in the
second he reflects an uncritical view entertained since the time of the
Church Fathers; in both, he writes with an order of words requiring no
change in an English translation.
In his time, Bacon had but a sorry fame, and his works no influence. The
writings of his younger contemporary Thomas Aquinas exerted greater
influence than those of any man after Augustine. They represent the
culmination of scholasticism. He was Italian born, and his language,
however difficult the matter, is lucidity itself. It is never rhetorical;
but measured, temperate, and balanced; properly proceeding from the mind
which weighed every proposition in the scales of universal consideration.
Sometimes it gains a certain fervour from the clarity and import of the
statement which it so lucidly conveys. In article eighth, of the first
Questio, of Pars Prima of the _Summa theologiae_, Thomas thus decides that
Theology is a rational (_argumentativa_) science:
“Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut aliae scientiae non argumentantur ad
sua principia probanda, sed ex principiis argumentantur ad ostendendum
alia in ipsis scientiis; ita haec doctrina non argumentatur ad sua
principia probanda, quae sunt articuli fidei; sed ex eis procedit ad
aliquid aliud ostendendum; sicut Apostolus I ad Cor. xv., ex
resurrectione Christi argumentatur ad resurrectionem communem
probandam.
“Sed tamen considerandum est in scientiis philosophicis, quod
inferiores scientiae nec probant sua principia, nec contra negantem
principia disputant, sed hoc relinquunt superiori scientiae: suprema
vero inter eas, scilicet metaphysica, disputat contra negantem sua
principia, si adversarius aliquid concedit: si autem nihil concedit,
non potest cum eo disputare, potest tamen solvere rationes ipsius.
Unde sacra scriptura (_i.e._ Theology), cum non habeat superiorem,
disputat cum negante sua principia: argumentando quidem, si
adversarius aliquid concedat eorum quae per divinam revelationem
habentur; sicut per auctoritates sacrae doctrinae disputamus contra
hereticos, et per unum articulum contra negantes alium. Si vero
adversarius nihil credat eorum quae divinitus revelantur, non remanet
amplius via ad probandum articulos fidei per rationes, sed ad
solvendum rationes, si quas inducit, contra fidem. Cum enim fides
infallibili veritati innitatur, impossibile autem sit de vero
demonstrari contrarium, manifestum est probationes quae contra fidem
inducuntur, non esse demonstrationes, sed solubilia argumenta.”[272]
Of a different intellectual temperament was John of Fidanza, known as St.
Bonaventura.[273] He also was born and passed his youth in Italy. This
sainted General of the Franciscan Order was a few years older than the
great Dominican, who was his friend. Both doctors died in the year 1274.
Bonaventura’s powers of constructive reasoning were excellent. His diction
is clear and beautiful, and eloquent with a spiritual fervour whenever the
matter is such as to evoke it. His account of how he came to write his
famous little _Itinerarium mentis in Deum_ is full of temperament.
“Cum igitur exemplo beatissimi patris Francisci hanc pacem anhelo
spiritu quaererem, ego peccator, qui loco ipsius patris beatissimi
post eius transitum septimus in generali fratrum ministerio per omnia
indignus succedo; contigit, ut nutu divino circa Beati ipsius
transitum, anno trigesimo tertio ad montem Alvernae tanquam ad locum
quietum amore quaerendi pacem spiritus declinarem, ibique existens,
dum mente tractarem aliquas mentales ascensiones in Deum, inter alia
occurrit illud miraculum, quod in praedicto loco contigit ipsi beato
Francisco, de visione scilicet Seraph alati ad instar Crucifixi. In
cuius consideratione statim visum est mihi, quod visio illa
praetenderet ipsius patris suspensionem in contemplando et viam, per
quam pervenitur ad eam.”[274]
And Bonaventura at the end of his _Itinerarium_ speaks of the perfect
passing of Francis into God through the very mystic climax of
contemplation, concluding thus:
“Si autem quaeras, quomodo haec fiant, interroga gratiam, non
doctrinam; desiderium, non intellectum; gemitum orationis, non studium
lectionis; sponsum, non magistrum; Deum, non hominem; caliginem, non
claritatem; non lucem, sed ignem totaliter inflammantem et in Deum
excessivis unctionibus et ardentissimis affectionibus
transferentem.”[275]
Bonaventura’s fervent diction will serve to carry us over from the more
unmitigated intellectuality of Bacon and Thomas to the simpler matter of
those personal and pious narratives from which may be drawn concluding
illustrations of mediaeval Latin prose. Some of the authors will show the
skill which comes from training; others are quite innocent of grammar, and
their Latin has made a happy surrender to the genius of their vernacular
speech, which was the _lingua vulgaris_ of northern Italy.
One of the earliest biographers of St. Francis of Assisi was Thomas of
Celano, a skilled Latinist, who was enraptured with the loveliness of
Francis’s life. His diction is limpid and rhythmical. A well-known passage
in his _Vita prima_ (for he wrote two Lives) tells of Francis’s joyous
assurance of the great work which God would accomplish through the simple
band who formed the beginnings of the Order. This assurance crystallized
in a vision of multitudes hurrying to join. Francis speaks to the
brethren:
“Confortamini, charissimi, et gaudete in Domino, nec, quia pauci
videmini, efficiamini tristes. Ne vos deterreat mea, vel vestra
simplicitas, quoniam sicut mihi a Domino in veritate ostensum est, in
maximam multitudinem faciet vos crescere Deus, et usque ad fines orbis
multipliciter dilatabit. Vidi multitudinem magnam hominum ad nos
venientium, et in habitu sanctae conversationis beataeque religionis
regula nobiscum volentium conversari; et ecce adhuc sonitus eorum est
in auribus meis, euntium, et redeuntium secundum obedientiae sanctae
mandatum: vidique vias ipsorum multitudine plenas ex omni fere natione
in his partibus convenire. Veniunt Francigenae, festinant Hispani,
Teuthonici, et Anglici currunt, et aliarum diversarum linguarum
accelerat maxima multitudo.
“Quod cum audissent fratres, repleti sunt gaudio Salvatoris sive
propter gratiam, quam dominus Deus contulerat sancto suo, sive quia
proximorum lucrum sitiebant ardenter, quos desiderabant ut salvi
essent, in idipsum quotidie augmentari.”[276]
We feel the flow and rhythm, and note the agreeable balancing of clauses.
Francis died in 1226. The _Vita prima_ by Celano was approved by Gregory
IX. in 1229. Already other matter touching the saint was gathering in
anecdote and narrative. Much of it was brought together in the so-called
_Speculum perfectionis_, which has been confidently but very questionably
ascribed to Francis’s personal disciple, Brother Leo. Brother Leo, or
whoever may have been the narrator or compiler, was no scholar; his Latin
is naively incorrect, and has also the simplicity of Gospel narrative.
Indeed this Latin is as effectively “vulgarized” as the Greek of Matthew’s
Gospel. An interesting passage tells with what loving wisdom Francis
interpreted a text of Scripture:
“Manente ipso apud Senas venit ad eum quidam doctor sacrae theologiae
de ordine Praedicatorum, vir utique humilis et spiritualis valde. Quum
ipse cum beato Francisco de verbis Domini simul aliquamdiu
contulissent interrogavit eum magister de illo verbo Ezechielis: _Si
non annuntiaveris impio impietatem suam animam ejus de manu tua
requiram_. Dixit enim: ‘Multos, bone pater, ego cognosco in peccato
mortali quibus non annuntio impietatem eorum, numquid de manu mea
ipsorum animae requirentur?’
“Cui beatus Franciscus humiliter dixit se esse idiotam et ideo magis
expedire sibi doceri ab eo quam super scripturae sententiam
respondere. Tunc ille humilis magister adjecit: ‘Frater, licet ab
aliquibus sapientibus hujus verbi expositionem audiverim, tamen
libenter super hoc vestrum perciperem intellectum.’ Dixit ergo beatus
Franciscus: ‘Si verbum debeat generaliter intelligi, ego taliter
accipio ipsum quod servus Dei sic debet vita et sanctitate in seipso
ardere vel fulgere ut luce exempli et lingua sanctae conversationis
omnes impios reprehendat. Sic, inquam, splendor ejus et odor famae
ipsius annuntiabit omnibus iniquitates eorum.’
“Plurimum itaque doctor ille aedificatus recedens dixit sociis beati
Francisci: ‘Fratres mei, theologia hujus viri puritate et
contemplatione subnixa est aquila volans, nostra vero scientia ventre
graditur super terram.’”[277]
Another passage has Francis breaking out in song from the joy of his love
of Christ:
“Ebrius amore et compassione Christi beatus Franciscus quandoque talia
faciebat, nam dulcissima melodia spiritus intra se ipsum ebulliens
frequenter exterius gallice dabat sonum et vena divini susurrii quam
auris ejus suscipiebat furtive gallicum erumpebat in jubilum.
“Lignum quandoque colligebat de terra ipsumque sinistro brachio
superponens aliud lignum per modum arcus in manu dextera trahebat
super illud, quasi super viellam vel aliud instrumentum atque gestus
ad hoc idoneos faciens gallice cantabat de Domino Jesu Christo.
Terminabatur denique tota haec tripudiatio in lacrymas et in
compassionem passionis Christi hic jubilus solvebatur.
“In his trahebat continue suspiria et ingeminatis gemitibus eorum quae
tenebat in manibus oblitus suspendebatur ad caelum.”[278]
This Latin is as childlike as the Old Italian of the _Fioretti_ of St.
Francis; it has a like word-order, and one might almost add, a like
vocabulary. The simple, ignorant writer seems as if held by a direct and
personal inspiration from the familiar life of the sweet saint. His
language reflects that inspiration, and mirrors his own childlike
character. Hence he has a style, direct, effective, moving to tears and
joy, like his impression of the blessed Francis.
A not dissimilar kind of childlike Latin could attain to a remarkable
symmetry and balance. The _Legenda aurea_ is before us, written by the
Dominican Jacobus à Voragine, by race a Genoese, and living toward the
close of the thirteenth century. This book was the most popular compend of
saints’ lives in use in the later Middle Ages. Its stories are told with
fascinating _naïveté_. We cite the opening sentences from its chapter on
the Annunciation, just to show the harmony and balance of its periods. The
passage is exceptional and almost formal in these qualities:
“Annunciatio dominica dicitur, quia in tali die ab angelo adventus
filii Dei in carnem fuit annuntiatus, congruum enim fuit, ut
incarnationem praecederet angelica annuntiatio, triplici ratione.
Primo ratione ordinis connotandi, ut scilicet ordo reparationis
responderet ordini praevaricationis. Unde sicut dyabolus tentavit
mulierem, ut eam pertraheret ad dubitationem et per dubitationem ad
consensum et per consensum ad lapsum, sic angelus nuntiavit virgini,
ut nuntiando excitaret ad fidem et per fidem ad consensum et per
consensum ad concipiendum Dei filium. Secundo ratione ministerii
angelici, quia enim angelus est Dei minister et servus et beata virgo
electa erat, ut esset Dei mater, et congruum est ministrum dominae
famulari, conveniens fuit, ut beatae virgini annuntiatio per angelum
fieret. Tertio ratione lapsus angelici reparandi. Quia enim incarnatio
non tantum faciebat ad reparationem humani lapsus, sed etiam ad
reparationem ruinae angelicae, ideo angeli non debuerunt excludi. Unde
sicut sexus mulieris non excluditur a cognitione mysterii
incarnationis et resurrectionis, sic etiam nec angelicus nuntius. Imo
Deus utrumque angelo mediante nuntiat mulieri, scilicet incarnationem
virgini Mariae et resurrectionem Magdelenae.”[279]
These extracts bring us far into the thirteenth century. Two hundred years
later, mediaeval Latin prose, if one may say so, sang its swan song in
that little book which is a last, sweet, and composite echo of all
mellifluous mediaeval piety. Yet perhaps this _De imitatione Christi_ of
Thomas à Kempis can scarcely be classed as prose, so full is it of
assonances and rhythms fit for chanting.
CHAPTER XXXII
EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN VERSE
I. METRICAL VERSE.
II. SUBSTITUTION OF ACCENT FOR QUANTITY.
III. SEQUENCE-HYMN AND STUDENT-SONG.
IV. PASSAGE OF THEMES INTO THE VERNACULAR.
In mediaeval Latin poetry the endeavour to preserve a classical style and
the irresistible tendency to evolve new forms are more palpably
distinguishable than in the prose. For there is a visible parting of the
ways between the retention of the antique metres and their fruitful
abandonment in verses built of accentual rhyme. Moreover, this formal
divergence corresponds to a substantial difference, inasmuch as there was
usually a larger survival of antique feeling and allusion in the mediaeval
metrical attempts than in the rhyming poems.
As in the prose, so in the poetry, the lines of development may be
followed from the Carolingian time. But a difference will be found between
Italy and the North; for in Italy the course was quicker, but a less
organic evolution resulted in verse less excellent and less distinctly
mediaeval. By the end of the eleventh century Latin poetry in Italy,
rhyming or metrical, seems to have drawn itself along as far as it was
destined to progress; but in the North a richer growth culminates a
century later. Indeed the most originative line of evolution of mediaeval
Latin verse would seem to have been confined to the North, in the main if
not exclusively.
The following pages offer no history of mediaeval Latin poetry, even as
the previous chapter made no attempt to sketch the history of the prose.
Their object is to point out the general lines along which the
verse-forms were developed, or were perhaps retarded. Three may be
distinguished. The first is marked by the retention of quantity and the
endeavour to preserve the ancient measures. In the second, accent and
rhyme gradually take the place of metre within the old verse-forms. The
third is that of the Sequence, wherein the accentual rhyming hymn springs
from the chanted prose, which had superseded the chanting of the final _a_
of the Alleluia.[280]
I
The lover of classical Greek and Latin poetry knows the beautiful fitness
of the ancient measures for the thought and feeling which they enframed.
If his eyes chance to fall on some twelfth-century Latin hymn, he will be
struck by its different quality. He will quickly perceive that classic
forms would have been unsuited to the Christian and romantic sentiment of
the mediaeval period,[281] and will realize that some vehicle besides
metrical verse would have been needed for this thoroughly declassicized
feeling, even had metrical quantity remained a vital element of language,
instead of passing away some centuries before. Metre was but resuscitation
and convention in the time of Charlemagne. Yet it kept its sway with
scholars, and could not lack votaries so long as classical poetry made
part of the _Ars grammatica_ or was read for delectation. Metrical
composition did not cease throughout the Middle Ages. But it was not the
true mediaeval style, and became obviously academic as accentual verse was
perfected and made fit to carry spiritual emotion. Nevertheless the
simpler metres were cultivated successfully by the best scholars of the
twelfth century.
Most of the Latin poetry of the Carolingian period was metrical, if we are
to judge from the mass that remains. Reminiscence of the antique enveloped
educated men, with whom the mediaeval spirit had not reached distinctness
of thought and feeling. So the poetry resembled the contemporary sculpture
and painting, in which the antique was still unsuperseded by any new
style. Following the antique metres, using antique phrase and commonplace,
often copying antique sentiment, this poetry was as dull as might be
expected from men who were amused by calling each other Homer, Virgil,
Horace, or David. Usually the poets were ecclesiastics, and interested in
theology;[282] but many of the pieces are conventionally profane in topic,
and as humanistic as the Latin poetry of Petrarch.[283] Moreover, just as
Petrarch’s Latin poetry was still-born, while his Italian sonnets live, so
the Carolingian poetry, when it forgets itself and falls away from metre
to accentual verse, gains some degree of life. At this early period the
Romance tongues were not a fit poetic vehicle, and consequently living
thoughts, which with Dante and Petrarch found voice in Italian, in the
ninth century began to stammer in Latin verses that were freed from the
dead rules of quantity, and were already vibrant with a vital feeling for
accent and rhyme.[284]
Through the tenth century metrical composition became rougher, yet
sometimes drew a certain force from its rudeness. A good example is the
famous _Waltarius_, or _Waltharilied_, of Ekkehart of St. Gall, composed
in the year 960 as a school exercise.[285] The theme was a German story
found in vernacular poetry. Ekkehart’s hexameters have a strong Teuton
flavour, and doubtless some of the vigour of his paraphrase was due to the
German original.
The metrical poems of the eleventh century have been spoken of already,
especially the more interesting ones written in Italy.[286] Most of the
Latin poetry emanating from that classic land was metrical, or so
intended. Frequently it tells the story of wars, or gives the _Gesta_ of
notable lives, making a kind of versified biography. One feels as if verse
was employed as a refuge from the dead annalistic form. This poetry was a
semi-barbarizing of the antique, without new formal or substantial
elements. Italy, one may say, never became essentially and creatively
mediaeval: the pressure of antique survival seems to have barred original
development; Italians took little part in the great mediaeval military
religious movements, the Crusades; no strikingly new architecture arose
with them; their first vernacular poetry was an imitation or a borrowing
from Provence and France; and by far the greater part of their Latin
poetry presents an uncreative barbarizing of the antique metres.
These remarks find illustration in the principal Latin poems composed in
Italy in the twelfth century. Among them one observes differences in
skill, knowledge, and tendency. Some of the writers made use of leonine
hexameters, others avoided the rhyme. But they were all akin in lack of
excellence and originality both in composition and verse-form. There was
the monk Donizo of Canossa, who wrote the _Vita_ of the great Countess
Matilda;[287] there was William of Apulia, Norman in spirit if not in
blood, who wrote of the Norman conquests in Apulia and Sicily;[288] also
the anonymous and barbarous _De bello et excidio urbis Comensis_, in
which is told the destruction of Como by Milan between 1118 and 1127;[289]
then the metrically jingling Pisan chronicle narrating the conquest of the
island of Majorca, and beginning (like the _Aeneid_!) with
“Arma, rates, populum vindictam coelitus octam
Scribimus, ac duros terrae pelagique labores.”[290]
We also note Peter of Ebulo, with his narrative in laudation of the
emperor Henry VI., written about 1194; Henry of Septimella and his elegies
upon the checkered fortunes of divers great men;[291] and lastly the more
famous Godfrey of Viterbo, of probable German blood, and notary or scribe
to three successive emperors, with his cantafable _Pantheon_ or _Memoria
saecularum_.[292] Godfrey’s poetry is rhymed after a manner of his own.
In the North, or more specifically speaking in the land of France north of
the Loire, the twelfth century brought better metrical poetry than in
Italy. Yet it had something of the deadness of imitation, since the _vis
vivida_ of song had passed over into rhyming verse. Still from the
academic point of view, metre was the proper vehicle of poetry; as one
sees, for instance, in the _Ars versificatoria_ of Matthew of
Vendome,[293] written toward the close of the twelfth century. “Versus est
metrica descriptio,” says he, and then elaborates his, for the most part
borrowed, definition: “Verse is metrical description proceeding concisely
and line by line through the comely marriage of words to flowers of
thought, and containing nothing trivial or irrelevant.” A neat conception
this of poetry; and the same writer denounces leonine rhyming as unseemly,
but praises the favourite metre of the Middle Ages, the elegiac; for he
regards the hexameter and pentameter as together forming the perfect
verse. It was in this metre that Hildebert wrote his almost classic elegy
over the ruins of Rome. A few lines have been quoted from it;[294] but the
whole poem, which is not long, is of interest as one of the very best
examples of a mediaeval Latin elegy:
“Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina;
Quam magni fueris integra fracta doces.
Longa tuos fastus aetas destruxit, et arces
Caesaris et superum templa palude jacent.
Ille labor, labor ille ruit quem dirus Araxes
Et stantem tremuit et cecidisse dolet;
Quem gladii regum, quem provida cura senatus,
Quem superi rerum constituere caput;
Quem magis optavit cum crimine solus habere
Caesar, quam socius et pius esse socer,
Qui, crescens studiis tribus, hostes, crimen, amicos
Vi domuit, secuit legibus, emit ope;
In quem, dum fieret, vigilavit cura priorum:
Juvit opus pietas hospitis, unda, locus.
Materiem, fabros, expensas axis uterque
Misit, se muris obtulit ipse locus.
Expendere duces thesauros, fata favorem,
Artifices studium, totus et orbis opes.
Urbs cecidit de qua si quicquam dicere dignum
Moliar, hoc potero dicere: Roma fuit.
Non tamen annorum series, non flamma, nec ensis
Ad plenum potuit hoc abolere decus.
Cura hominum potuit tantam componere Romam
Quantam non potuit solvere cura deum.
Confer opes marmorque novum superumque favorem,
Artificum vigilent in nova facta manus,
Non tamen aut fieri par stanti machina muro,
Aut restaurari sola ruina potest.
Tantum restat adhuc, tantum ruit, ut neque pars stans
Aequari possit, diruta nec refici.
Hic superum formas superi mirantur et ipsi,
Et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares.
Non potuit natura deos hoc ore creare
Quo miranda deum signa creavit homo.
Vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur
Artificum studio quam deitate sua.
Urbs felix, si vel dominis urbs illa careret,
Vel dominis esset turpe carere fide.”[295]
The elegiac metre was used by Abaelard in his didactic poem to his son
Astralabius,[296] and by John of Salisbury in his _Entheticus_. The
hexameter also was a favourite measure, used, for instance, by Alanus of
Lille in the _Anticlaudianus_, perhaps the noblest of mediaeval narrative
or allegorical poems in Latin.[297] Another excellent composition in
hexameter was the _Alexandreis_ of Walter, born, like Alanus, apparently
at Lille, but commonly called of Chatillon. As poets and as classical
scholars, these two men were worthy contemporaries. Walter’s poem follows,
or rather enlarges upon the _Life of Alexander_ by Quintus Curtius.[298]
He is said to have written it on the challenge of Matthew of Vendome, him
of the _Ars versificatoria_. The _Ligurinus_ of a certain Cistercian
Gunther is still another good example of a long narrative poem in
hexameters. It sets forth the career of Frederick Barbarossa, and was
written shortly after the opening of the thirteenth century. Its author,
like Walter and Alanus, shows himself widely read in the Classics.[299]
The sapphic was a third not infrequently attempted metre, of which the _De
planctu naturae_ of Alanus contains examples. This work was composed in
the form of the _De consolatione philosophiae_ of Boëthius, where lyrics
alternate with prose. The general topic was Nature’s complaint over man’s
disobedience to her laws. The author apostrophizes her in the following
sapphics:
“O Dei proles, genitrixque rerum,
Vinculum mundi, stabilisque nexus,
Gemma terrenis, speculum caducis,
Lucifer orbis.
Pax, amor, virtus, regimen, potestas,
Ordo, lex, finis, via, dux, origo,
Vita, lux, splendor, species, figura
Regula mundi.
Quae tuis mundum moderas habenis,
Cuncta concordi stabilita nodo
Nectis et pacis glutino maritas
Coelica terris.
Quae noys (νοῦς) plures recolens ideas
Singulas rerum species monetans,
Res togas formis, chlamidemque formae
Pollice formas.
Cui favet coelum, famulatur aer,
Quam colit Tellus, veneratur unda,
Cui velut mundi dominae tributum
Singula solvunt.
Quae diem nocti vicibus catenans
Cereum solis tribuis diei,
Lucido lunae speculo soporans
Nubila noctis.
Quae polum stellis variis inauras,
Aetheris nostri solium serenans
Siderum gemmis, varioque coelum
Milite complens.
Quae novis coeli faciem figuris
Protheans mutas aridumque vulgus
Aeris nostri regione donans,
Legeque stringis.
Cujus ad nutum juvenescit orbis,
Silva crispatur folii capillo,
Et tua florum tunicata veste,
Terra superbit.
Quae minas ponti sepelis, et auges,
Syncopans cursum pelagi furori
Ne soli tractum tumulare possit
Aequoris aestus.”[300]
Practically all of our examples have been taken from works composed in the
twelfth century, and in the land comprised under the name of France. The
pre-excellence of this period will likewise appear in accentual rhyming
Latin poetry, which was more spontaneous and living than its loftily
descended relative.
II
The academic vogue of metre in the early Middle Ages did not prevent the
growth of more natural poetry. The Irish had their Gaelic poems; people
of Teutonic speech had their rough verse based on alliteration and the
count of the strong syllables. The Romance tongues emerging from the
common Latin were as yet poetically untried. But in the proper Latin,
which had become as unquantitative and accentual as any of its vulgar
forms, there was a tonic poetry that was no longer unequipped with rhyme.
Three rhythmic elements made up this natural mode of Latin versification:
the succession of accented and unaccented syllables; the number of
syllables in a line; and that regularly recurring sameness of sound which
is called rhyme. The source of the first of these seems obvious. Accent
having driven quantity from speech, came to supersede it in verse, with
the accented syllable taking the place of the long syllable and the
unaccented the place of the short. In the Carolingian period accentual
verse followed the old metrical forms, with this exception: the metrical
principle that one long is equivalent to two shorts was not adopted.
Consequently the number of syllables in the successive lines of an
accentual strophe would remain the same, where in the metrical antecedent
they might have varied. This is also sufficient to account for the second
element, the observance of regularity in the number of syllables. For this
regularity seems to follow upon the acceptance of the principle that in
rhythmic verse an accented syllable is not equal to two unaccented ones.
The query might perhaps be made why this Latin accentual verse did not
take up the principle of regularity in the number of strong syllables in a
line, like Old High German poetry for example, where the number of
unaccented syllables, within reasonable limits, is indifferent. A ready
answer is that these Latin verses were made by people of Latin speech who
had been acquainted with metrical forms of poetry, in which the number of
syllables might vary, but was never indifferent; for the metrical rule was
rigid that one long was equivalent to two short; and to no more and no
less. Hence the short syllables were as fixed in number as the long.[301]
The origin of the third element, rhyme, is in dispute. In some instances
it may have passed into Greek and Latin verses from Syrian hymns.[302] But
on the other hand it had long been an occasional element in Greek and
Latin rhetorical prose. Probably rhyme in Latin accentual verse had no
specific origin. It gradually became the sharpening, defining element of
such verse. Accentual Latin lent itself so naturally to rhyme, that had
not rhyme become a fixed part of this verse, there indeed would have been
a fact to explain.
These, then, were the elements: accent, number of syllables, and rhyme.
Most interesting is the development of verse-forms. Rhythmic Latin poetry
came through the substitution of accent for quantity, and probably had
many prototypes in the old jingles of Roman soldiers and provincials,
which so far as known were accentual, rather than metrical. Christian
accentual poetry retained those simple forms of iambic and trochaic verse
which most readily submitted to the change from metre to accent, or
perhaps one should say, had for centuries offered themselves as natural
forms of accentual verse. Apparently the change from metre to accent
within the old forms gradually took place between the sixth and the tenth
centuries. During this period there was slight advance in the evolution of
new verses; nor was the period creative in other respects, as we have
seen. But thereafter, as the mediaeval centuries advanced from the basis
of a mastered patristic and antique heritage, and began to create, there
followed an admirable evolution of verse-forms: in some instances
apparently issuing from the old metrico-accentual forms, and in others
developing independently by virtue of the faculty of song meeting the need
of singing.
This factor wrought with power--the human need and cognate faculty of
song, a need and faculty stimulated in the Middle Ages by religious
sentiment and emotion. In the fusing of melody and words into an
utterance of song--at last into a strophe--music worked potently, shaping
the composition of the lines, moulding them to rhythm, insisting upon
sonorousness in the words, promoting their assonance and at last
compelling them to rhyme so as to meet the stress, or mark the ending, of
the musical periods. Thus the exigencies of melody helped to evoke the
finished verse, while the words reciprocating through their vocal
capabilities and through the inspiration of their meaning, aided the
evolution of the melodies. In fine, words and melody, each quickened by
the other, and each moulding the other to itself, attained a perfected
strophic unison; and mediaeval musician-poets achieved at last the
finished verses of hymns or Sequences and student-songs.
There were two distinct lines of evolution of accentual Latin verse in the
Middle Ages; and although the faculty of song was a moving energy in both,
it worked in one of them more visibly than in the other. Along the one
line accentual verse developed pursuant to the ancient forms, displacing
quantity with accent, and evolving rhyme. The other line of evolution had
no connection with the antique. It began with phrases of sonorous prose,
replacing inarticulate chant. These, under the influence of music, through
the creative power of song, were by degrees transformed to verse. The
evolution of the Sequence-hymn will be the chief illustration. With the
finished accentual Latin poetry of the twelfth century it may become
impossible to tell which line of rhythmic evolution holds the antecedent
of a given poem. In truth, this final and perfected verse may often have a
double ancestry, descending from the rhythms which had superseded metre,
and being also the child of mediaeval melody. Yet there is no difficulty
in tracing by examples the two lines of evolution.
To illustrate the strain of verse which took its origin in the
displacement of metre by accent and rhyme, we must look back as far as
Fortunatus. He was born about the year 530 in northern Italy, but he
passed his eventful life among Franks and Thuringians. A scholar and also
a poet, he had a fair mastery of metre; yet some of his poems evince the
spirit of the coming mediaeval time both in sentiment and form. He wrote
two famous hymns, one of them in the popular trochaic tetrameter, the
other in the equally simple iambic dimeter. The first, a hymn to the
Cross, begins with the never-to-be-forgotten
“Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis”;
and has such lines as
“Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis
* * * * *
Dulce lignum, dulce clavo dulce pondus sustinens!”
In these the mediaeval feeling for the Cross shows itself, and while the
metre is correct, it is so facile that one may read or sing the lines
accentually. In the other hymn, also to the Cross, assonance and rhyme
foretell the coming transformation of metre to accentual verse. Here are
the first two stanzas:
“Vexilla regis prodeunt,
Fulget crucis mysterium,
Quo carne carnis conditor
Suspensus est patibulo.
Confixa clavis viscera
Tendens manus, vestigia
Redemtionis gratia
Hic immolata est hostia.”
Passing to the Carolingian epoch, some lines from a poem celebrating the
victory of Charlemagne’s son Pippin over the Avars in 796, will illustrate
the popular trochaic tetrameter which had become accentual, and already
tended to rhyme:
“Multa mala iam fecerunt ab antico tempore,
Fana dei destruxerunt atque monasteria,
Vasa aurea sacrata, argentea, fictilia.”[303]
Next we turn to a piece by the persecuted and interesting Gottschalk,
written in the latter part of the ninth century. A young lad has asked for
a poem. But how can he sing, the exiled and imprisoned monk who might
rather weep as the Jews by the waters of Babylon?[304] yet he will sing a
hymn to the Trinity, and bewail his piteous lot before the highest
pitying Godhead. The verses have a lyric unity of mood, and are touching
with their sad refrain. Their rhyme, if not quite pure, is abundant and
catching, and their nearest metrical affinity would be a trochaic dimeter.
“1. Ut quid iubes, pusiole,
quare mandas, filiole,
carmen dulce me cantare,
cum sim longe exul valde
intra mare?
o cur iubes canere?
2. Magis mihi, miserule,
fiere libet, puerule,
plus plorare quam cantare
carmen tale, iubes quale,
amor care,
o cur iubes canere?
3. Mallem scias, pusillule,
ut velles tu, fratercule,
pio corde condolere
mihi atque prona mente
conlugere.
o cur iubes canere?
4. Scis, divine tyruncule,
scis, superne clientule,
hic diu me exulare,
multa die sive nocte
tolerare.
o cur iubes canere?
5. Scis captive plebicule
Israheli cognomine
praeceptum in Babilone
decantare extra longe
fines Iude.
o cur iubes canere?
6. Non potuerunt utique,
nec debuerunt itaque
carmen dulce coram gente
aliene nostri terre
resonare.
o cur iubes canere?
7. Sed quia vis omnimode,
consodalis egregie,
canam patri filioque
simul atque procedente
ex utroque.
hoc cano ultronee.
8. Benedictus es, domine,
pater, nate, paraclite,
deus trine, deus une,
deus summe, deus pie,
deus iuste.
hoc cano spontanee.
9. Exul ego diuscule
hoc in mare sum, domine:
annos nempe duos fere
nosti fore, sed iam iamque
miserere.
hoc rogo humillime.
10. Interim cum pusione
psallam ore, psallam mente,
psallam voce (psallam corde),
psallam die, psallam nocte
carmen dulce
tibi, rex piissime.”[305]
Gottschalk (and for this it is hard to love him) was one of the initiators
of the leonine hexameter, in which a syllable in the middle of the line
rhymes with the last syllable.
“Septeno Augustas decimo praeeunte Kalendas”
is the opening hexameter in his Epistle to his friend Ratramnus.[306] To
what horrid jingle such verses could attain may be seen from some leonine
hexameter-pentameters of two or three hundred years later, on the Fall of
Troy, beginning:
“Viribus, arte, minis, Danaum clara Troja ruinis,
Annis bis quinis fit rogus atque cinis.”[307]
Hector and Troy, and the dire wiles of the Greeks never left the mediaeval
imagination. A poem of the early tenth century, which bade the watchers on
Modena’s walls be vigilant, draws its inspiration from that unfading
memory, and for us illustrates what iambics might become when accent had
replaced quantity. The lines throughout end in a final rhyming _a_.
“O tu, qui servas armis ista moenia,
Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila.
Dum Hector vigil extitit in Troia,
Non eam cepit fraudulenta Graecia.”[308]
And from a scarcely later time, for it also is of the tenth century, rise
those verses to Roma, that old “Roma aurea et eterna,” and forever “caput
mundi,” sung by pilgrim bands as their eyes caught the first gleam of
tower, church, and ruin:
“O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,
Cunctarum urbium excellentissima,
Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea,
Albis et virginum liliis candida:
Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia,
Te benedicimus: salve per secula.”[309]
This verse, which still lifts the heart of whosoever hears or reads it,
may close our examples of mediaeval verses descended from metrical forms.
It will be noticed that all of them are from the early mediaeval
centuries; a circumstance which may be taken as a suggestion of the fact
that by far the greater part of the earlier accentual Latin poetry was
composed in forms in which accent simply had displaced the antique
quantity.
III
We turn to that other genesis of mediaeval Latin verse, arising not out of
antique forms, but rather from the mediaeval need and faculty of song. In
the chief instance selected for illustration, this line of evolution took
its inception in the exigencies and inspiration of the Alleluia chant or
jubilation. During the celebration of the Mass, as the Gradual ended in
its last Alleluia, the choir continued chanting the final syllable of that
word in cadences of musical exultings. The melody or cadence to which this
final _a_ of the Alleluia was chanted, was called the _sequentia_. The
words which came to be substituted for its cadenced reiteration were
called the _prosa_. By the twelfth century the two terms seem to have been
used interchangeably. Thus arose the prose Sequence, so plastic in its
capability of being moulded by melody to verse. Its songful qualities lay
in the sonorousness of the words and in their syllabic correspondence with
the notes of the melody to which they were sung.[310]
In the year 860, Norsemen sacked the cloister of Jumièges in Normandy, and
a fleeing brother carried his precious Antiphonary far away to the safe
retreat of St. Gall. There a young monk named Notker, poring over its
contents, perceived that words had been written in the place of the
repetitions of the final _a_ of the Alleluia. Taking the cue, he set to
work to compose more fitting words to correspond with the notes to which
this final _a_ was sung. So these lines of euphonious and fitting words
appear to have had their beginning in Notker’s scanning of that fugitive
Antiphonary, and his devising labour. Their primary purpose was a musical
one; for they were a device--mnemotechnic, if one will--to facilitate the
chanting of cadences previously vocalized with difficulty through the
singing of one simple vowel sound. Notker showed his work to his master,
Iso, who rejoiced at what his gifted pupil had accomplished, and spurred
him on by pointing out that in his composition one syllable was still
sometimes repeated or drawn out through several successive notes. One
syllable to each note was the principle which Notker now set himself to
realize; and he succeeded.
He composed some fifty Sequences. In his work, as well as in that of
others after him, the device of words began to modify and develop the
melodies themselves. Sometimes Notker adapted his verbal compositions to
those cadences or melodies to which the Alleluia had long been sung;
sometimes he composed both melody and words; or, again, he took a current
melody, sacred or secular, to which the Alleluia never had been sung, and
composed words for it, to be chanted as a Sequence. In these borrowed
melodies, as well as in those composed by Notker, the musical periods were
more developed than in the Alleluia cadences. Thus the musical growth of
the Sequences was promoted by the use of sonorous words, while the
improved melodies in turn drew the words on to a more perfect rhythmic
ordering.
Notker died in 912. His Sequences were prose, yet with a certain
parallelism in their construction; and, even with Notker in his later
years, the words began to take on assonances, chiefly in the vowel sound
of _a_. Thereafter the melodies, seizing upon the words, as it were, by
the principle of their syllabic correspondence to the notation, moulded
them to rhythm of movement and regularity of line; while conversely with
the better ordering of the words for singing, the melodies in turn made
gain and progress, and then again reacted on the words, until after two
centuries there emerged the finished verses of an Adam of St. Victor.
Thus these Sequences have become verse before our eyes, and we realize
that it is the very central current of the evolution of mediaeval Latin
poetry that we have been following. How free and how spontaneous was this
evolution of the Sequence. It was the child of the Christian Middle Ages,
seeing the light in the closing years of the ninth century, but requiring
a long period of growth before it reached the glory of its climacteric. It
was born of musical chanting, and it grew as song, never unsung or
conceived of as severable from its melody. Only as it attained its
perfected strophic forms, it necessarily made use of trochaic and other
rhythms which long before had changed from quantity to accent and so had
passed on into the verse-making habitudes of the Middle Ages.[311] If
there be any Latin composition in virtue of origin and growth absolutely
un-antique, it is the mediaeval Sequence, which in its final forms is so
glorious a representative of the mediaeval Hymn. And we shall also see
that much popular Latin poetry, “Carmina Burana” and student-songs, were
composed in verses and often sung to tunes taken--or parodied--from the
Sequence-hymns of the Liturgy.
There were many ways of chanting Sequences. The musical phrases of the
melodies usually were repeated once, except at the beginning and the
close; and the Sequence would be rendered by a double choir singing
antiphonally. Ordinarily the words responded to the repetition of the
musical phrases with a parallelism of their own. The lines (after the
first) varied in length by pairs, the second and third lines having the
same number of syllables, the fourth and fifth likewise equal to each
other, but differing in length from the second and third; and so on
through the Sequence, until the last line, which commonly stood alone and
differed in length from the preceding pairs. The Sequence called “Nostra
tuba” is a good example. Probably it was composed by Notker, and in his
later years; for it is filled with assonances, and exhibits a regular
parallelism of structure.
“Nostra tuba
Regatur fortissime Dei dextra et preces audiat
Aura placatissima et serena; ita enim nostra
Laus erit accepta, voce si quod canimus, canat pariter et pura
conscientia.
Et, ut haec possimus, omnes divina nobis semper flagitemus adesse
auxilia.
* * * * *
O bone Rex, pie, juste, misericors, qui es via et janua,
Portas regni, quaesumus, nobis reseres, dimittasque facinora
Ut laudemus nomen nunc tuum atque per cuncta saecula.”[312]
Here, after the opening, the first pair has seventeen syllables, and the
next pair twenty-six. The last pair quoted has twenty; and the final line
of seventeen syllables has no fellow. A further rhythmical advance seems
reached by the following Sequence from the abbey of St. Martial at
Limoges. It may have been written in the eleventh century. It is given
here with the first and second line of the couplets opposite to each
other, as strophe and antistrophe; and the lines themselves are divided to
show the assonances (or rhymes) which appear to have corresponded with
pauses in the melody:
“(1) Canat omnis turba
(2a) Fonte renata (2b) Laude jucunda
Spiritusque gratia et mente perspicua
(3a) Jam restituta (3b) Sicque jactura
pars est decima coelestis illa
fuerat quae culpa completur in laude
perdita. divina.
(4a) Ecce praeclara (4b) Enitet ampla
dies dominica per orbis spatia,
(5a) Exsultat in qua (5b) Quia destructa
plebs omnis redempta, mors est perpetua.”[313]
A Sequence of the eleventh century will afford a final illustration of
approach to a regular strophic structure, and of the use of the final
one-syllable rhyme in _a_, throughout the Sequence:
1
“Alleluia,
Turma, proclama leta;
Laude canora,
Facta prome divina,
Jam instituta
Superna disciplina,
2
Christi sacra
Per magnalia
Es quia de morte liberata
Ut destructa
Inferni claustra
Januaque celi patefacta!
3
Jam nunc omnia
Celestia
Terrestria
Virtute gubernat eterna.
In quibus sua
Judicia
Semper equa
Dat auctoritate paterna.”
* * * *[314]
As the eleventh century closed and the great twelfth century dawned, the
forces of mediaeval growth quickened to a mightier vitality, and
distinctively mediaeval creations appeared. Our eyes, of course, are fixed
upon the northern lands, where the Sequence grew from prose to verse, and
where derivative or analogous forms of popular poetry developed also. Up
to this time, throughout mediaeval life and thought, progress had been
somewhat uncrowned with palpable achievement. Yet the first brilliant
creations of a master-workman are the fruit of his apprentice years,
during which his progress has been as real as when his works begin to make
it visible. So it was no sudden birth of power, but rather faculties
ripening through apprentice centuries, which illumine the period opening
about the year 1100. This period would carry no human teaching if its
accomplishment in institutions, in philosophy, in art and poetry, had been
a heaven-blown accident, and not the fruit of antecedent discipline.
The poetic advance represented by the Sequences of Adam of St. Victor may
rouse our admiration for the poet’s genius, but should not blind our eyes
to the continuity of development leading to it. Adam is the final artist
and his work a veritable creation; yet his antecedents made part of his
creative faculty. The elements of his verses and the general idea and form
of the sequence were given him;--all honour to the man’s holy genius which
made these into poems. The elements referred to consisted in accentual
measures and in the two-syllabled Latin rhyme which appears to have been
finally achieved by the close of the eleventh century.[315] In using them
Adam was no borrower, but an artist who perforce worked in the medium of
his art. Trochaic and iambic rhythms then constituted the chief measures
for accentual verse, as they had for centuries, and do still. For,
although accentual rhythms admit dactyls and anapaests, these have not
proved generally serviceable. Likewise the inevitable progress of Latin
verse had developed assonances into rhymes; and indeed into rhymes of two
syllables, for Latin words lend themselves as readily to rhymes of two
syllables as English words to rhymes of one.
There existed also the idea and form of the Sequence, consisting of pairs
of lines which had reached assonance and some degree of rhythm, and varied
in length, pair by pair, following the music of the melodies to which they
were sung. For the Sequence-melody did not keep to the same recurring tune
throughout, but varied from couplet to couplet. In consequence, a Sequence
by Adam of St. Victor may contain a variety of verse-forms. Moreover, a
number of the Sequences of which he may have been the author show
survivals of the old rhythmical irregularities, and of assonance as yet
unsuperseded by pure rhyme.
Before giving examples of Adam’s poems, a tribute should be paid to his
great forerunner in the art of Latin verse. Adam doubtless was familiar
with the hymns[316] of the most brilliant intellectual luminary of the
departing generation, one Peter Abaelard, whom he may have seen in the
flesh. Those once famous love-songs, written for Heloïse, perished (so far
as we know) with the love they sang. Another fate--and perhaps Abaelard
wished it so--was in store for the many hymns which he wrote for his
sisters in Christ, the abbess and her nuns. They still exist,[317] and
display a richness of verse-forms scarcely equalled even by the Sequences
of Adam. In the development of Latin verse, Abaelard is Adam’s immediate
predecessor; his verses being, as it were, just one stage inferior to
Adam’s in sonorousness of line, in certainty of rhythm, and in purity of
rhyme.
The “prose” Sequences were not the direct antecedents of Abaelard’s hymns.
Yet both sprang from the freely devising spirit of melody and song; and
therefore those hymns are of this free-born lineage more truly than they
are descendants of antique forms. To be sure, every possible accentual
rhythm, built as it must be of trochees, iambics, anapaests, or dactyls,
has unavoidably some antique quantitative antecedent; because the antique
measures exhausted the possibilities of syllabic combination. Yet
antecedence is not source, and most of Abaelard’s verses by their form and
spirit proclaim their genesis in the creative exigencies of song as loudly
as they disavow any antique parentage.
For example, there may be some far echo of metrical asclepiads in the
following accentual and rhyme-harnessed twelve-syllable verse:
“Advenit veritas, umbra praeteriit,
Post noctem claritas diei subiit,
Ad ortum rutilant superni luminis
Legis mysteria plena caliginis.”
But the echo if audible is faint, and surely no antique whisper is heard
in
“Est in Rama
Vox audita
Rachel flentis
Super natos
Interfectos
Ejulantis.”
Nor in
“Golias prostratus est,
Resurrexit Dominus,
Ense jugulatus est
Hostis proprio;
Cum suis submersus est
Ille Pharao.”
The variety of Abaelard’s verse seems endless. One or two further examples
may or may not suggest any antecedents in those older forms of accentual
verse which followed the former metres:
“Ornarunt terram germina,
Nunc caelum luminaria.
Sole, luna, stellis depingitur,
Quorum multus usus cognoscitur.”
In this verse the first two lines are accentual iambic dimeters; while the
last two begin each with two trochees, and close apparently with two
dactyls. The last form of line is kept throughout in the following:
“Gaude virgo virginum gloria,
Matrum decus et mater, jubila,
Quae commune sanctorum omnium
Meruisti conferre gaudium.”
Next come some simple five-syllable lines, with a catching rhyme:
“Lignum amaras
Indulcat aquas
Eis immissum.
Omnes agones
Sunt sanctis dulces
Per crucifixum.”
In the following lines of ten syllables a dactyl appears to follow a
trochee twice in each line:
“Tuba Domini, Paule, maxima,
De caelestibus dans tonitrua,
Hostes dissipans, cives aggrega.
Doctor gentium es praecipuus,
Vas in poculum factus omnibus,
Sapientiae plenum haustibus.”
These examples of Abaelard’s rhythms may close with the following
curiously complicated verse:
“Tu quae carnem edomet
Abstinentiam,
Tu quae carnem decoret
Continentiam,
Tu velle quod bonum est his ingeris
Ac ipsum perficere tu tribuis.
Instrumenta
Sunt his tua
Per quos mira peragis,
Et humana
Moves corda
Signis et prodigiis.”
In general, one observes in these verses that Abaelard does not use a pure
two-syllable rhyme. The rhyme is always pure in the last syllable, and in
the penult may either exist as a pure rhyme or simply as an assonance, or
not at all.[318]
Probably Abaelard wrote his hymns in 1130, perhaps the very year when Adam
as a youth entered the convent of St. Victor, lying across the Seine from
Paris. The latter appears to have lived until 1192. Many Sequences have
been improperly ascribed to him, and among the doubtful ones are a number
having affinities with the older types. These may be anterior to Adam; for
the greater part of his unquestionable Sequences are perfected throughout
in their versification. Yet, on the other hand, one would expect some
progression in works composed in the course of a long life devoted to
such composition--a life covering a period when progressive changes were
taking place in the world of thought beyond St. Victor’s walls. We take
three examples of these Sequences. The first contains occasional assonance
in place of rhyme, and uses many rhymes of one syllable. It appears to be
an older composition improperly ascribed to Adam. The second is
unquestionably his, in his most perfect form; the third may or may not be
Adam’s; but is given for its own sake as a lovely lyric.[319]
The first example, probably written not much later than the year 1100, was
designed for the Mass at the dedication of a church. The variety in the
succession of couplets and strophes indicates a corresponding variation in
the melody.
1
“Clara chorus dulce pangat voce nunc alleluia,
Ad aeterni regis laudem qui gubernat omnia!
2
Cui nos universalis sociat Ecclesia,
Scala nitens et pertingens ad poli fastigia;
3
Ad honorem cujus laeta psallamus melodia,
Persolventes hodiernas laudes illi debitas.
4
O felix aula, quam vicissim
Confrequentant agmina coelica,
Divinis verbis alternatim
Jungentia mellea cantica!
5
Domus haec, de qua vetusta sonuit historia
Et moderna protestatur Christum fari pagina:
‘Quoniam elegi eam thronum sine macula,
‘Requies haec erit mea per aeterna saecula.
6
Turris supra montem sita,
Indissolubili bitumine fundata
Vallo perenni munita,
Atque aurea columna
Miris ac variis lapidibus distincta,
Stylo subtili polita!
7
Ave, mater praeelecta,
Ad quam Christus fatur ita
Prophetae facundia:
‘Sponsa mea speciosa,
‘Inter filias formosa,
‘Supra solem splendida!
8
‘Caput tuum ut Carmelus
‘Et ipsius comae tinctae regis uti purpura;
‘Oculi ut columbarum,
‘Genae tuae punicorum ceu malorum fragmina!
9
‘Mel et lac sub lingua tua, favus stillans labia;
‘Collum tuum ut columna, turris et eburnea!’
10
Ergo nobis Sponsae tuae
Famulantibus, o Christe, pietate solita
Clemens adesse dignare
Et in tuo salutari nos ubique visita.
11
Ipsaque mediatrice, summe rex, perpetue,
Voce pura
Flagitamus, da gaudere Paradisi gloria.
Alleluia!”[320]
The second example is Adam’s famous Sequence for St. Stephen’s Day, which
falls on the day after Christmas. It is throughout sustained and perfect
in versification, and in substance a splendid hymn of praise.
1
“Heri mundus exultavit
Et exultans celebravit
Christi natalitia;
Heri chorus angelorum
Prosecutus est coelorum
Regem cum laetitia.
2
Protomartyr et levita,
Clarus fide, clarus vita,
Clarus et miraculis,
Sub hac luce triumphavit
Et triumphans insultavit
Stephanus incredulis.
3
Fremunt ergo tanquam ferae
Quia victi defecere
Lucis adversarii:
Falsos testes statuunt,
Et linguas exacuunt
Viperarum filii.
4
Agonista, nulli cede,
Certa certus de mercede,
Persevera, Stephane;
Insta falsis testibus,
Confuta sermonibus
Synagogam Satanae.
5
Testis tuus est in coelis,
Testis verax et fidelis,
Testis innocentiae.
Nomen habes coronati:
Te tormenta decet pati
Pro corona gloriae.
6
Pro corona non marcenti
Perfer brevis vim tormenti;
Te manet victoria.
Tibi fiet mors natalis,
Tibi poena terminalis
Dat vitae primordia.
7
Plenus Sancto Spiritu,
Penetrat intuitu
Stephanus coelestia.
Videns Dei gloriam,
Crescit ad victoriam,
Suspirat ad praemia.
8
En a dextris Dei stantem,
Jesum pro te dimicantem,
Stephane, considera:
Tibi coelos reserari,
Tibi Christum revelari,
Clama voce libera.
9
Se commendat Salvatori,
Pro quo dulce ducit mori
Sub ipsis lapidibus.
Saulus servat omnium
Vestes lapidantium,
Lapidans in omnibus.
10
Ne peccatum statuatur
His a quibus lapidatur,
Genu ponit, et precatur,
Condolens insaniae.
In Christo sic obdormivit,
Qui Christo sic obedivit,
Et cum Christo semper vivit,
Martyrum primitiae.”
* * * *[321]
The last example, in honour of St. Nicholas’s Day, is a lovely poem by
whomsoever written. Its verses are extremely diversified. It begins with
somewhat formal chanting of the saint’s virtues, in dignified couplets.
Suddenly it changes to a joyful lyric, and sings of a certain sweet
sea-miracle wrought by Nicholas. Then it spiritualizes the conception of
his saintly aid to meet the call of the sin-tossed soul. It closes in
stately manner in harmony with its liturgical function.
1
“Congaudentes exultemus vocali concordia
Ad beati Nicolai festiva solemnia!
2
Qui in cunis adhuc jacens servando jejunia
A papilla coepit summa promereri gaudia.
3
Adolescens amplexatur litterarum studia,
Alienus et immunis ab omni lascivia.
4
Felix confessor, cujus fuit dignitatis vox de coelo nuntia!
Per quam provectus, praesulatus sublimatur ad summa fastigia.
5
Erat in ejus animo pietas eximia,
Et oppressis impendebat multa beneficia.
6
Auro per eum virginum tollitur infamia,
Atque patris earumdem levatur inopia.
7
Quidam nautae navigantes,
Et contra fluctuum saevitiam luctantes,
Navi pene dissoluta,
Jam de vita desperantes,
In tanto positi periculo, clamantes
Voce dicunt omnes una:
8
‘O beate Nicolae,
Nos ad maris portum trahe
De mortis angustia.
Trahe nos ad portum maris,
Tu qui tot auxiliaris,
Pietatis gratia.’
9
Dum clamarent, nec incassum,
‘Ecce’ quidam dicens, ‘assum
Ad vestra praesidia.’
Statim aura datur grata
Et tempestas fit sedata:
Quieverunt maria.
10
Nos, qui sumus in hoc mundo,
Vitiorum in profundo
Jam passi naufragia,
Gloriose Nicolae
Ad salutis portum trahe,
Ubi pax et gloria.
11
Illam nobis unctionem
Impetres ad Dominum,
Prece pia,
Qua sanavit laesionem
Multorum peccaminum
In Maria.
12
Hujus festum celebrantes gaudeant per saecula,
Et coronet eos Christus post vitae curricula!”[322]
The foregoing examples of religious poetry may be supplemented by
illustrations of the parallel evolution of more profane if not more
popular verse. Any priority in time, as between the two, should lie with
the former; though it may be the truer view to find a general synchronism
in the secular and religious phases of lyric growth. But priority of
originality and creativeness certainly belongs to that line of lyric
evolution which sprang from religious sentiments and emotions. For the
vagrant clerkly poet of the Court, the roadside, and the inn, used the
forms of verse fashioned by the religious muse in the cloister and the
school. Thus the development of secular Latin verse presents a derivative
parallel to the essentially primary evolution of the Sequence or the hymn.
It was in Germany that the composition of Sequences was most zealously
cultivated during the century following Notker’s death; and it was in
Germany that the Sequence, in its earlier forms, exerted most palpable
influence upon popular songs.[323] In these so-called Modi (_Modus_ ==
song), as in the Sequence, rhythmical compositions may be seen progressing
in the direction of regular rhythm, rhyme, and strophic form. As in the
Sequences, the tune moulded the words, which in turn influenced the
melody. The following is from the _Modus Ottinc_, a popular song composed
about the year 1000 in honour of a victory of Otto III. over the
Hungarians:
“His incensi bella fremunt, arma poscunt, hostes vocant, signa secuntur,
tubis canunt.
Clamor passim oritur et milibus centum Theutones inmiscentur.
Pauci cedunt, plures cadunt, Francus instat, Parthus fugit; vulgus
exangue undis obstat;
Licus rubens sanguine Danubio cladem Parthicam ostendebat.”
Another example is the _Modus florum_ of approximately the same period, a
song about a king who promised his daughter to whoever could tell such a
lie as to force the king to call him a liar. It opens as follows:
“Mendosam quam cantilenam ago,
puerulis commendatam dabo,
quo modulos per mendaces risum
auditoribus ingentem ferant.
Liberalis et decora
cuidam regi erat nata
quam sub lege hujusmodi
procis opponit quaerendam.”
* * * *[324]
Here the rhyme still is rude and the rhythm irregular. The following
dirge, written thirty or forty years later on the death of the German
emperor, Henry II., shows improvement:
“Lamentemur nostra, Socii, peccata,
amentemur et ploremus! Quare tacemus?
Pro iniquitate corruimus late;
scimus coeli hinc offensum regem immensum.
Heinrico requiem, rex Christe, dona perennem.”[325]
We may pass on into the twelfth century, still following the traces of
that development of popular verse which paralleled the evolution of the
Sequence. We first note some catchy rhymes of a German student setting
out for Paris in quest of learning and intellectual novelty:
“Hospita in Gallia nunc me vocant studia.
Vadam ergo; flens a tergo socios relinquo.
Plangite discipuli, lugubris discidii tempore propinquo.
Vale, dulcis patria, suavis Suevorum Suevia!
Salve dilecta Francia, philosophorum curia!
Suscipe discipulum in te peregrinum,
Quem post dierum circulum remittes Socratinum.”[326]
This Suabian, singing his uncouth Latin rhymes, and footing his way to
Paris, suggests the common, delocalized influences which were developing a
mass of student-songs, “Carmina Burana,” or “Goliardic” poetry. The
authors belonged to that large and broad class of _clerks_ made up of any
and all persons who knew Latin. The songs circulated through western
Europe, and their home was everywhere, if not their origin. Some of them
betray, as more of them do not, the author’s land and race. Frequently of
diabolic cleverness, gibing, amorous, convivial, they show the virtuosity
in rhyme of their many makers. Like the hymns and later Sequences, they
employed of necessity those accentual measures which once had their
quantitative prototypes in antique metres. But, again like the hymns and
Sequences, they neither imitate nor borrow, but make use of trochaic,
iambic, or other rhythms as the natural and unavoidable material of verse.
Their strophes are new strophes, and not imitations of anything in
quantitative poetry. So these songs were free-born, and their development
was as independent of antique influence as the melodies which ever moulded
them to more perfect music. Many and divers were their measures. But as
that great strophe of Adam’s _Heri mundus exultavit_ (the strophe of the
_Stabat Mater_) was of mightiest dominance among the hymns, so for these
student-songs there was also one measure that was chief. This was the
thirteen-syllable trochaic line, with its lilting change of stress after
the seventh syllable, and its pure two-syllable rhyme. It is the line of
the _Confessio poetae_, or _Confessio Goliae_, where nests that one
mediaeval Latin verse which everybody still knows by heart:
“Meum est propositum in taberna mori,
Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,
Tunc cantabunt laetius angelorum chori,
‘Sit Deus propitius huic potatori.’”
It is also the line of the quite charming Phyllis and Flora of the
_Carmina Burana_:
“Erant ambae virgines et ambae reginae,
Phyllis coma libera, Flora compto crine:
Non sunt formae virginum, sed formae divinae,
Et respondent facie luci matutinae.”[327]
Another common measure is the twelve-syllable dactylic line of the famous
_Apocalypsis Goliae Episcopi_:
“Ipsam Pythagorae formam aspicio,
Inscriptam artium schemate vario.
An extra corpus sit haec revelatio,
Utrum in corpore, Deus scit, nescio.
In fronte micuit ars astrologica;
Dentium seriem regit grammatica;
In lingua pulcrius vernat rhetorica,
Concussis aestuat in labiis logica.”
An example of the not infrequent eight-syllable line is afforded by that
tremendous satire against papal Rome, beginning:
“Propter Sion non tacebo,
Sed ruinam Romae flebo,
Quousque justitia
Rursus nobis oriatur,
Et ut lampas accendatur
Justus in ecclesia.”
Here the last line of the verse has but seven syllables, as is the case in
the following verse of four lines:
“Vinum bonum et suave,
Bonis bonum, pravis prave,
Cunctis dulcis sapor, ave,
Mundana laetitia!”
But the eight-syllable lines may be kept throughout, as in the following
lament over life’s lovely, pernicious charm, so touching in its expression
of the mortal heartbreak of mediaeval monasticism:
“Heu! Heu! mundi vita,
Quare me delectas ita?
Cum non possis mecum stare,
Quid me cogis te amare?
* * * *
Vita mundi, res morbosa,
Magis fragilis quam rosa,
Cum sis tota lacrymosa,
Cur es mihi graciosa?”[328]
IV
Our consideration of the different styles of mediaeval Latin prose and the
many novel forms of mediaeval Latin verse has shown how radical was the
departure of the one and the other from Cicero and Virgil. Through such
changes Latin continued to prove itself a living language. Yet its
vitality was doomed to wane before the rivalry of the vernacular tongues.
The _vivida vis_, the capability of growth, had well-nigh passed from
Latin when Petrarch was born. In endeavouring to maintain its supremacy as
a literary vehicle he was to hold a losing brief, nor did he strengthen
his cause by attempting to resuscitate a classic style of prose and metre.
The victory of the vernacular was announced in Dante’s _De vulgari
eloquentia_ and demonstrated beyond dispute in his _Divina Commedia_.
A long and for the most part peaceful and unconscious conflict had led up
to the victory of what might have been deemed the baser side. For Latin
was the sole mediaeval literature that was born in the purple, with its
stately lineage of the patristic and the classical back of it. Latin was
the language of the Roman world and the vehicle of Latin Christianity. It
was the language of the Church and its clergy, and the language of all
educated people. Naturally the entire contents of existing and
progressive Christian and antique culture were contained in the mediaeval
Latin literature, the literature of religion and of law and government, of
education and of all serious knowledge. It was to be the primary
literature of mediaeval thought; from which passed over the chief part of
whatever thought and knowledge the vernacular literatures were to receive.
For scholars who follow, as we have tried to, the intellectual and the
deeper emotional life of the Middle Ages, the Latin literature yields the
incomparably greater part of the material of our study. It has been our
home country, from which we have made casual excursions into the
vernacular literatures.
These existed, however, from the earliest mediaeval periods, beginning, if
one may say so, in oral rather than written documents. We read that
Charlemagne caused a book to be made of Germanic poems, which till then
presumably had been carried in men’s memories. The _Hildebrandslied_ is
supposed to have been one of them.[329] In the Norse lands, the Eddas and
the matter of the Sagas were repeated from generation to generation, long
before they were written down. The habit, if not the art, of writing came
with Christianity and the Latin education accompanying it. Gradually a
written literature in the Teutonic languages was accumulated. Of this
there was the heathen side, well represented in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse;
while in Old High German the _Hildebrandslied_ remains, heathen and
savage. Thereafter, a popular and even national or rather racial poetry
continued, developed, and grew large, notwithstanding the spread of Latin
Christianity through Teutonic lands. Of this the _Niebelungenlied_ and the
_Gudrun_ are great examples. But individual still famous poets, who felt
and thought as Germans, were also composing sturdily in their
vernacular--a lack of education possibly causing them to dictate
(_dictieren_, _dichten_) rather than to write. Of these the greatest were
Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide. With them and after
them, or following upon the _Niebelungenlied_, came a mass of secular
poetry, some of which was popular and national, reflecting Germanic
story, while some of it was courtly, transcribing the courtly poetry which
by the twelfth century flourished in Old French.
Thus bourgeoned the secular branches of German literature. On the other
hand, from the time of Christianity’s introduction, the Germans felt the
need to have the new religion presented to them in their own tongues. The
labour of translation begins with Ulfilas, and is continued with
conscientious renderings of Scripture and Latin educational treatises, and
also with such epic paraphrase as the _Heliand_ and the more elegiac poems
of the Anglo-Saxon Cynewulf.[330] Also, at least in Germany, there comes
into existence a full religious literature, not stoled or mitred, but
popular, non-academic, and non-liturgical; of which quantities remain in
the Middle High German of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.[331]
Obviously the Romance vernacular literatures had a different commencement.
The languages were Latin, simply Latin, in their inception, and never
ceased to be legitimate continuations and developments of the popular or
Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. But as the speech of children, women,
and unlettered people, they were not thought of as literary media. All who
could write understood perfectly the better Latin from which these popular
dialects were slowly differentiating themselves. And as they progressed to
languages, still their life and progress lay among peoples whose ancestral
tongue was the proper Latin, which all educated men and women still
understood and used in the serious business of life.
But sooner or later men will talk and sing and think and compose in the
speech which is closest to them. The Romance tongues became literary
through this human need of natural expression. There always had been songs
in the old Vulgar Latin; and such did not cease as it gradually became
what one may call Romance. Moreover, the clergy might be impelled to use
the popular speech in preaching to the laity, or some unlearned person
might compose religious verses. Almost the oldest monument of Old French
is the hymn in honour of Ste. Eulalie. Then as civilization advanced from
the tenth to the twelfth century, in southern and northern France for
example, and the _langue d’oc_ and the _langue d’oil_ became independent
and developed languages, unlearned men, or men with unlearned audiences,
would unavoidably set themselves to composing poetry in these tongues. In
the North the _chansons de geste_ came into existence; in the South the
knightly Troubadours made love-lyrics. Somehow, these poems were written
down, and there was literature for men’s eyes as well as for men’s ears.
In the twelfth century and the thirteenth, the audiences for Romance
poetry, especially through the regions of southern and northern France,
increased and became diversified. They were made up of all classes, save
the brute serf, and of both sexes. The _chansons de geste_ met the taste
of the feudal barons; the Arthurian Cycle charmed the feudal dames; the
coarse _fabliaux_ pleased the bourgeoisie; and _chansons_ of all kinds
might be found diverting by various people. If the religious side was less
strongly represented, it was because the closeness of the language to the
clerkly and liturgical Latin left no such need of translations as was felt
from the beginning among peoples of Germanic speech. Still the Gospels,
especially the apocryphal, were put into Old French, and _miracles de
Notre Dame_ without number; also legends of the saints, and devout tales
of many kinds.
The accentual verses of the Romance tongues had their source in the
popular accentual Latin verse of the later Roman period. Their development
was not unrelated to the Latin accentual verse which was superseding
metrical composition in the centuries extending, one may say, from the
fifth to the eleventh. Divergences between the Latin and Romance verse
would be caused by the linguistic evolution through which the Romance
tongues were becoming independent languages. Nor was this divergence
uninfluenced by the fact that Romance poetry was popular and usually
concerned with topics of this life, while Latin poetry in the most
striking lines of its evolution was liturgical; and even when secular in
topic tended to become learned, since it was the product of the
academically educated classes. Much of the vernacular (Romance as well as
Germanic) poetry in the Middle Ages was composed by unlearned men who had
at most but a speaking acquaintance with Latin, and knew little of the
antique literature. This was true, generally, of the Troubadours of
Provence, of the authors of the Old French _chansons de geste_, and of
such a courtly poet as Chrétien de Troies; true likewise of the great
German Minnesingers, epic poets rather, Gottfried von Strassburg, Wolfram
von Eschenbach, and Walther von der Vogelweide.
On the other hand, vernacular poetry might be written by highly learned
men, of whom the towering though late example would be Dante Alighieri. An
instance somewhat nearer to us at present is Jean Clopinel or de Meun, the
author of the second part of the _Roman de la rose_. His extraordinary
Voltairean production embodies all the learning of the time; and its
scholar-author was a man of genius, who incorporated his learning and the
fruit thereof very organically in his poem.
But here, at the close of our consideration of the mediaeval appreciation
of the Classics, and the relations between the Classics and mediaeval
Latin literature, we are not occupied with the very loose and general
question of the amount of classical learning to be found in the vernacular
literatures of western Europe. That was a casual matter depending on the
education and learning, or lack thereof, of the author of the given piece.
But it may be profitable to glance at the passing over of antique themes
of story into mediaeval vernacular literature, and the manner of their
refashioning. This is a huge subject, but we shall not go into it deeply,
or pursue the various antique themes through their endless propagations.
Antique stories aroused and pointed the mediaeval imagination; they made
part of the never-absent antique influence which helped to bring the
mediaeval peoples on and evoke in them an articulate power to fashion and
create all kinds of mediaeval things. But with antique story as with other
antique material, the Middle Ages had to turn it over and absorb it, and
also had to become themselves with power, before they could refashion the
antique theme or create along its lines. All this had taken place by the
middle of the twelfth century. As to choice of matter, twelfth-century
refashioners would either select an antique theme suited to their
handling, or extract what appealed to them from some classic story. In the
one case as in the other they might recast, enlarge, or invent as their
faculties permitted.
Mediaeval taste took naturally to the degenerate productions of the late
antique or transition centuries. The Greek novels seem to have been
unknown, except the _Apollonius of Tyre_.[332] But the congenially
preposterous story of Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes was available
in a sixth-century Latin version, and was made much of. Equally popular
was the debasement and intentional distortion of the Tale of Troy in the
work of “Dares” and “Dictys”; other tales were aptly presented in Ovid’s
_Metamorphoses_; and the stories of Hero and Leander, of Pyramus and
Thisbe, of Narcissus, Orpheus, Cadmus, Daedalus, were widely known and
often told in the Middle Ages.
The mediaeval writers made as if they believed these tales. At least they
accepted them as they would have their own audiences accept their
recasting, with little reflection as to whether truth or fable. But was
the work of the refashioners conscious fiction? Scarcely, when it simply
recast the old story in mediaevalizing paraphrase; but when the poet went
on and wove out of ten lines a thousand, he must have known himself
devising.
The mediaeval treatment of classic themes of history and epic poetry shows
how the Middle Ages refashioned and reinspired after their own image
whatever they took from the antique. If it was partly their fault, it was
also their unavoidable misfortune that they received these great themes in
the literary distortions of the transition centuries. Doubtless they
preferred encyclopaedic dulness to epic unity; they loved fantasy rather
than history, and of course delighted in the preposterous, as they found
it in the Latin version of the _Life and Deeds of Alexander_. As for the
Tale of Troy, the real Homer never reached them: and perhaps mediaeval
peoples who were pleased, like Virgil’s Romans, to draw their origins from
Trojan heroes, would have rejected Homer’s story just as “Dares” and
“Dictys,” whoever they were, did.[333] The true mediaeval _rifacimenti_,
to wit, the retellings of these tales in the vernacular, mirror the
mediaeval mind, the mediaeval character, and the whole panorama of
mediaeval life and fantasy.
The chief epic themes drawn from the antique were the Tales of Troy and
Thebes and the story of Aeneas. In verse and prose they were retold in the
vernacular literatures and also in mediaeval Latin.[334] We shall,
however, limit our view to the primary Old French versions, which formed
the basis of compositions in German, Italian, English, as well as French.
They were composed between 1150 and 1170 by Norman-French _trouvères_. The
names of the authors of the _Roman de Thebes_ and the _Eneas_ are unknown;
the _Roman de Troie_ was written by Benoit de St. More.
These poems present a universal substitution of mediaeval manners and
sentiment. For instance, one observes that the epic participation of the
pagan gods is minimized, and in the _Roman de Troie_ even discarded;
necromancy, on the other hand, abounds. A more interesting change is the
transformation of the love episode. That had become an epic adjunct in
Alexandrian Greek literature as early as the third century before Christ.
It existed in the antique sources of all these mediaeval poems.
Nevertheless the romantic narratives of courtly love in the latter are
mediaeval creations.
The _Eneas_ relates the love of Lavinia for the hero, most correctly
reciprocated by him. The account of it fills fourteen hundred lines, and
has no precedent in Virgil’s poem, which in other respects is followed
closely. Lavinia sees Aeneas from her tower, and at once understands a
previous discourse of her mother on the subject of love. She utters love’s
plaints, and then faints because Aeneas does not seem to notice her. After
which she passes a sleepless night. The next morning she tells her mother,
who is furious, since she favours Turnus as a suitor. The girl falls
senseless, but coming to herself when alone, she recalls love’s
stratagems, and attaches a letter to an arrow which is shot so as to fall
at Aeneas’s feet. Aeneas reads the letter, and turns and salutes the fair
one furtively, that his followers may not see. Then he enters his tent and
falls so sick with love that he takes to his bed. The next day Lavinia
watches for him, and thinks him false, till at last, pale and feeble, he
appears, and her heart acquits him; amorous glances now fly back and forth
between them.[335]
To have this jaded jilt grow sick with love is a little too much for us,
and Aeneas is absurd; but the universal human touches us quite otherwise
in the sweet changing heart of Briseida in the _Roman de Troie_. There is
no ground for denying to Benoit of St. More his meed of fame for creating
this charming person and starting her upon her career. Following “Dares,”
Benoit calls her Briseida; but she becomes the Griseis of Boccaccio’s
_Filostrato_; and what good man does not sigh and love her under the name
of Cressid in Chaucer’s poem, though he may deplore her somewhat brazen
heartlessness in Shakespeare’s play.
It is not given to all men, or women, in presence or absence, in life and
death, to love once and forever. One has the stable heart, another’s
fancy is quickly turned. Sometimes, of course, our moral sledge-hammers
should be brought to bear; but a little hopeless smile may be juster, as
we sigh “she (it is more often “he”) couldn’t help it.” Such was Briseida,
the sweet, loving, helpless--coquette? jilt? flirt? these words are all
too belittling to tell her truly. Benoit knew better. He took her
dry-as-dust characterization from “Dares”; he gave it life, and then let
his fair creature do just the things she might, without ceasing to be she.
The abject “Dares” (Benoit may have had a better story under that name) in
his catalogue of characters has this: “Briseidam formosam, alta statura,
candidam, capillo flavo et molli, superciliis junctis, oculis venustis,
corpore aequali, blandam, affabilem, verecundam, animo simplici [O ye
gods!], piam.” He makes no other mention of this tall, graceful girl, with
her lovely eyes and eyebrows meeting above, her modest, pleasant mien, and
simple soul; for simple she was, and therein lies the direst bit of truth
about her. For it is simple and uncomplex to take the colour of new scenes
and faces, and of new proffered love when the old is far away.
Now see what Benoit does with this dust: Briseida is the daughter of
Calchas, a Trojan seer who had passed over to the Greeks, warned by
Apollo. He is in the Grecian host, but his daughter is in Troy. Benoit
says, she was engaging, lovelier and fairer than the _fleur de
lis_--though her eyebrows grew rather too close together. “Beaux yeux” she
had, “de grande manière,” and charming was her talk, and faultless her
breeding as her dress. Much was she loved and much she loved, although her
heart changed; and she was very loving, simple, and kind:
“Molt fu amée et molt ameit,
Mes sis corages li changeit;
Et si esteit molt amorose,
Simple et almosniere et pitose.”[336]
Calchas wants his daughter, and Priam decides to send her. There is truce
between the armies. Troilus, Troy’s glorious young knight, matchless in
beauty, in arms second only to his brother Hector, is beside himself. He
loves Briseida, and she him. What tears and protestations, and what vows!
But the girl must go to her father.
On the morrow the young dame has other cares--to see to the packing of her
lovely dresses and put on the loveliest of them; over all she threw a
mantle inwoven with the flowers of Paradise. The Trojan ladies add their
tears to the damsel’s; for she is ready to die of grief at leaving her
lover. Benoit assures us that she will not weep long; it is not woman’s
way, he continues somewhat mediaevally.
The brilliant cortège is met by one still more distinguished from the
Grecian host. Troilus must turn back, and the lady passes to the escort of
Diomede. She was young; he was impetuous; he looks once, and then greets
her with a torrential declaration of love. He never loved before!! He is
hers, body and soul and high emprize. Briseida speaks him fair:
“At this time it would be wrong for me to say a word of love. You
would deem me light indeed! Why, I hardly know you! and girls so often
are deceived by men. What you have said cannot move a heart grieving,
like mine, to lose my--friend, and others whom I may never see again.
For one of my station to speak to you of love! I have no mind for
that. Yet you seem of such rank and prowess that no girl under heaven
ought to refuse you. It is only that I have no heart to give. If I
had, surely I could hold none dearer than you. But I have neither the
thought nor power, and may God never give it to me!”[337]
One need not tell the flash of joy that then was Diomede’s, nor the many
troubles that were to be his before at last Briseida finds that her heart
has indeed turned to this new lover, always at hand, courting danger for
her sake, and at last wounded almost to death by Troilus’s spear. The end
of the story is assured in her first discreetly halting words.
Enough has been said to show how far Benoit was from _Omers qui fu clers
merveillos_, and what a story in some thirty thousand lines he has made of
the dry data of “Dares” and “Dictys.” His Briseida, with her changing
heart, was to rival steadier-minded but not more lovable women of
mediaeval fiction--Iseult or Guinevere. And although the far-off echo of
Briseid’s name comes from the ancient centuries, none the less she is as
entirely a mediaeval creation as Lancelot’s or Tristram’s queen. Thus the
Middle Ages took the antique narrative, and created for themselves within
the altered lines of the old tale.[338]
The transformation of themes of epic story in vernacular mediaeval
versions is paralleled by mediaeval refashionings of historical subjects
which had been fictionized before the antique period closed. A chief
example is the romance of Alexander the Great. The antique source was the
conqueror’s _Life and Deeds_, written by one who took the name of
Alexander’s physician, Callisthenes. The author was some Egyptian Greek of
the first century after Christ. His work is preposterous from the
beginning to the end, and presents a succession of impossible marvels
performed by the somewhat indistinguishable heroes of the story. Its
qualities were reflected in the Latin versions, which in turn were drawn
upon by the Old French rhyming romancers. The latter mediaevalized and
feudalized the tale. Nor were they halted by any absurdity, or conscious
of the characterlessness of the puppets of the tale.[339]
Further to pursue the fortunes of antique themes in mediaeval literature
would lead us beyond bounds. Yet mention should be made of the handling of
minor narratives, as the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. They were very popular,
and from the twelfth century on, paraphrases or refashionings were made of
many of them. These added to the old tale the interesting mediaeval
element of the moral or didactic allegory. The most prodigious instance of
this moralizing of Ovid was the work of Chrétien Légouais, a French
Franciscan who wrote at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In some
seventy thousand lines he presented the stories of the _Metamorphoses_,
the allegories which he discovered in them, and the moral teaching of the
same.[340]
Equally interesting was the application of allegory to Ovid’s _Ars
amatoria_. The first translators treated this frivolous production as an
authoritative treatise upon the art of winning love. So it was perhaps,
only Ovid was amusing himself by making a parable of his youthful
diversions. Mediaeval imitators changed the habits of the gilded youth of
Rome to suit the society of their time. But they did more, being votaries
of courtly love. Such love in the Middle Ages had its laws which were
prone to deduce their lineage from Ovid’s verses. But its uplifted spirit
revelled in symbolism; and tended to change to spiritual allegory whatever
authority it imagined itself based upon, even though the authority were a
book as dissolute, when seriously considered, as the _Ars amatoria_. It is
strange to think of this poem as the very far off street-walking prototype
of De Lorris’s _Roman de la rose_.
CHAPTER XXXIII
MEDIAEVAL APPROPRIATION OF THE ROMAN LAW
I. THE FONTES JURIS CIVILIS.
II. ROMAN AND BARBARIAN CODIFICATION.
III. THE MEDIAEVAL APPROPRIATION.
IV. CHURCH LAW.
V. POLITICAL THEORIZING.
Classical studies, and the gradual development of mediaeval prose and
verse, discussed in the preceding chapters, illustrate modes of mediaeval
progress. But of all examples of mediaeval intellectual growth through the
appropriation of the antique, none is more completely illuminating than
the mediaeval use of Roman law. As with patristic theology and antique
philosophy, the Roman law was crudely taken and then painfully learned,
till in the end, vitally and broadly mastered, it became even a means and
mode of mediaeval thinking. Its mediaeval appropriation illustrates the
legal capacity of the Middle Ages and their concern with law both as a
practical business and an intellectual interest.
I
Primitive law is practical; it develops through the adjustment of social
exigencies. Gradually, however, in an intelligent community which is
progressing under favouring influences, some definite consciousness of
legal propriety, utility, or justice, makes itself articulate in
statements of general principles of legal right and in a steady endeavour
to adjust legal relationships and adjudicate actual controversies in
accordance. This endeavour to formulate just and useful principles, and
decide novel questions in accordance with them, and enunciate new rules in
harmony with the body of the existing law, is jurisprudence, which thus
works always for concord, co-ordination, and system.
There was a jurisprudential element in the early law of Rome. The Twelve
Tables are trenchant announcements of rules of procedure and substantial
law. They have the form of the general imperative: “Thus let it be; If one
summons [another] to court, let him go; As a man shall have appointed by
his Will, so let it be; When one makes a bond or purchase,[341] as the
tongue shall have pronounced it, so let it be.” These statements of legal
rules are far from primitive; they are elastic, inclusive, and suited to
form the foundation of a large and free legal development. And the
consistency with which the law of debt was carried out to its furthest
cruel conclusion, the permitted division of the body of the defaulting
debtor among several creditors,[342] gave earnest of the logic which was
to shape the Roman law in its humaner periods. Moreover, there is
jurisprudence in the arrangement of the Laws of the Twelve Tables.
Nevertheless the jurisprudential element is still but inchoate.
The Romans were endowed with a genius for law. Under the later Republic
and the Empire, the minds of their jurists were trained and broadened by
Greek philosophy and the study of the laws of Mediterranean peoples; Rome
was becoming the commercial as well as social and political centre of the
world. From this happy combination of causes resulted the most
comprehensive body of law and the noblest jurisprudence ever evolved by a
people. The great jurisconsults of the Empire, working upon the prior
labours of long lines of older praetors and jurists, perfected a body of
law of well-nigh universal applicability, and throughout logically
consistent with general principles of law and equity, recognized as
fundamental. These were in part suggested by Greek philosophy, especially
by Stoicism as adapted to the Roman temperament. They represented the best
ethics, the best justice of the time. As principles of law, however, they
would have hung in the air, had not the practical as well as theorizing
genius of the jurisconsults been equal to the task of embodying them in
legal propositions, and applying the latter to the decision of cases. Thus
was evolved a body of practical rules of law, controlled, co-ordinated,
and, as one may say, universalized through the constant logical employment
of sound principles of legal justice.[343]
The Roman law, broadly taken, was heterogeneous in origin, and complex in
its modes of growth. The great jurisconsults of the Empire recognized its
diversity of source, and distinguished its various characteristics
accordingly. They assumed (and this was a pure assumption) that every
civilized people lived under two kinds of law, the one its own, springing
from some recognized law-making source within the community; the other the
_jus gentium_, or the law inculcated among all peoples by natural reason
or common needs.
The supposed origin of the _jus gentium_ was not simple. Back in the time
of the Republic it had become necessary to recognize a law for the many
strangers in Rome, who were not entitled to the protection of Rome’s _jus
civile_. The edict of the praetor Peregrinus covered their substantial
rights, and sanctioned simple modes of sale and lease which did not
observe the forms prescribed by the _jus civile_. So this edict became the
chief source of the _jus gentium_ so-called, to wit, of those liberal
rules of law which ignored the peculiar formalities of the stricter law of
Rome. Probably foreign laws, that is to say, the commercial customs of the
Mediterranean world, were in fact recognized; and their study led to a
perception of elements common to the laws of many peoples. At all events,
in course of time the _jus gentium_ came to be regarded as consisting of
universal rules of law which all peoples might naturally follow.
The recognition of these simple modes of contracting obligations, and
perhaps the knowledge that certain rules of law obtained among many
peoples, fostered the conception of common or natural justice, which human
reason was supposed to inculcate everywhere. Such a conception could not
fail to spring up in the minds of Roman jurists who were educated in
Stoical philosophy, the ethics of which had much to say of a common human
nature. Indeed the idea _naturalis ratio_ was in the air, and the thought
of common elements of law and justice which _naturalis ratio inter omnes
homines constituit_, lay so close at hand that it were perhaps a mistake
to try to trace it to any single source. Practically the _jus gentium_
became identical with _jus naturale_, which Ulpian imagined as taught by
nature to all animals; the _jus gentium_, however, belonged to men
alone.[344]
Thus rules which were conceived as those of the _jus gentium_ came to
represent the principles of rational law, and impressed themselves upon
the development of the _jus civile_. They informed the whole growth and
application of Roman law with a breadth of legal reason. And conceptions
of a _jus naturale_ and a _jus gentium_ became cognate legal fictions, by
the aid of which praetor and jurisconsult might justify the validity of
informal modes of contract. In their application, judge and jurist learned
how and when to disregard the formal requirements of the older and
stricter Roman law, and found a way to the recognition of what was just
and convenient. These fictions agreed with the supposed nature and demands
of _aequitas_, which is the principle of progressive and discriminating
legal justice. Law itself (_jus_) was identical with _aequitas_ conceived
(after Celsus’s famous phrase) as the _ars boni et aequi_.
The Roman law proper, the _jus civile_, had multifarious sources. First
the _leges_, enacted by the people; then the _plebiscita_, sanctioned by
the Plebs; the _senatus consulta_, passed by the Senate; the
_constitutiones_ and _rescripta[345] principum_, ordained by the Emperor.
Excepting the _rescripta_, these (to cover them with a modern expression)
were statutory. They were laws announced at a specific time to meet some
definite exigency. Under the Empire, the _constitutiones principum_ became
the most important, and then practically the only kind of legal enactment.
Two or three other sources of Roman law remain for mention: first, the
_edicta_ of those judicial magistrates, especially the praetors, who had
the authority to issue them. In his edict the praetor announced what he
held to be the law and how he would apply it. The edict of each successive
praetor was a renewal and expansion or modification of that of his
predecessor. Papinian calls this source of law the “_jus praetorium_,
which the praetors have introduced to aid, supplement, or correct the _jus
civile_ for the sake of public utility.”
Next, the _responsa_ or _auctoritas jurisprudentium_, by which were
intended the judicial decisions and the authority of the legal writings of
the famous jurisconsults. Imperial rescripts recognized these _responsa_
as authoritative for the Roman courts; and some of the emperors embodied
portions of them in formally promulgated collections, thereby giving them
the force of law. Justinian’s _Digest_ is the great example of this method
of codification.[346] One need scarcely add that the authoritative
writings and _responsa_ of the jurisconsults extended and applied the _jus
gentium_, that is to say, the rules and principles of the best-considered
jurisprudence, freed so far as might be from the formal peculiarities of
the _jus civile_ strictly speaking. And the same was true of the
praetorian edict. The Roman law also gave legal effect to _inveterata
consuetudo_, the law which is sanctioned by custom: “for since the laws
bind us because established by the decision of the people, those unwritten
customs which the people have approved are binding.”[347]
Simply naming the sources of Roman law indicates the ways in which it
grew, and the part taken by the jurisconsults in its development as a
universal and elastic system. It was due to their labours that legal
principles were logically carried out through the mass of enactments and
decisions; that is, it was due to their large consideration of the body of
existing law, that each novel decision--each case of first
impression--should be a true legal deduction, and not a solecism; and that
even the new enactments should not create discordant law. And it was due
to their labours that as rules of law were called forth, they were stated
clearly and in terms of well-nigh universal applicability.
The Laws of the Twelve Tables showed the action of legal intelligence and
the result of much experience. They sanctioned a large contractual
freedom, if within strict forms; they stated broadly the right of
testamentary disposition. Many of their provisions, which commonly were
but authoritative recognitions, were expressions of basic legal
principles, the application of which might be extended to meet the needs
of advancing civic life. And through the enlargement of this fundamental
collection of law, or deviating from it in accordance with principles
which it implicitly embodied, the jurists of the Republic and the first
centuries of the Empire formed and developed a body of private and public
law from which the jurisprudence of Europe and America has never even
sought to free itself.
Roman jurisprudence was finally incorporated in Justinian’s _Digest_,
which opens with a statement of the most general principles, even those
which would have hung in the air but for the Roman genius of logical and
practical application to the concrete instance. “Jus est ars boni et
aequi”--it is better to leave these words untranslated, such is the wealth
of significance and connotation which they have acquired. “Justitia est
constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique tribuendi. Juris praecepta
sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere.
Jurisprudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque
injusti scientia.”
The first pregnant phrase is from the older jurist Celsus; the longer
passage is by the later Ulpian, and may be taken as an expansion of the
first. Both the one and the other expressed the most advanced and
philosophic ethics of the ancient world. They are both in the first
chapter of the _Digest_, wherein they become enactments. An extract from
Paulus follows: “_Jus_ has different meanings; that which is always
_aequum ac bonum_ is called _jus_, to wit, the _jus naturale_: _jus_ also
means the _jus civile_, that which is expedient (_utile_) for all or most
in any state. And in our state we have also the praetorian _jus_.” This
passage indicates the course of the development of the Roman law: the
fundamental and ceaselessly growing core of specifically Roman law, the
_jus civile_; its continual equitable application and enlargement, which
was the praetor’s contribution; and the constant application of the
_aequum ac bonum_, observed perhaps in legal rules common to many peoples,
but more surely existing in the high reasoning of jurists instructed in
the best ethics and philosophy of the ancient world, and learned and
practised in the law.
Now notice some of the still general, but distinctly legal, rather than
ethical, rules collected in the _Digest_: The laws cannot provide
specifically for every case that may arise; but when their intent is
plain, he who is adjudicating a cause should proceed _ad similia_, and
thus declare the law in the case.[348] Here is stated the general and
important formative principle, that new cases should be decided
consistently and _eleganter_, which means logically and in accordance with
established rules. Yet legal solecisms will exist, perhaps in a statute or
in some rule of law evoked by a special exigency. Their application is
not to be extended. For them the rule is: “What has been accepted _contra
rationem juris_, is not to be drawn out (_producendum_) to its
consequences,”[349] or again: “What was introduced not by principle, but
at first through error, does not obtain in like cases.”[350]
These are true principles making for the consistent development of a body
of law. Observe the scope and penetration of some other general rules:
“Nuptias non concubitus, sed consensus facit.”[351] This goes to the legal
root of the whole conception of matrimony, and is still the recognized
starting-point of all law upon that subject. Again: “An agreement to
perform what is impossible will not sustain a suit.”[352] This is still
everywhere a fundamental principle of the law of contracts. Again: “No one
can transfer to another a greater right than he would have himself,”[353]
another principle of fundamental validity, but, of course, like all rules
of law subject in its application to the qualifying operation of other
legal rules.
Roman jurisprudence recognized the danger of definition: “Omnis definitio
in jure civili periculosa est.”[354] Yet it could formulate admirable
ones; for example: “Inheritance is succession to the sum total (_universum
jus_) of the rights of the deceased.”[355] This definition excels in the
completeness of its legal view of the matter, and is not injured by the
obvious omission to exclude those personal privileges and rights of the
deceased which terminate upon his death.
Thus we note the sources and constructive principles of the Roman law. We
observe that while certain of the former might be called “statutory,” the
chief means and method of development was the declarative edict of the
praetor and the trained labour of the jurisconsults. In these appears the
consummate genius of Roman jurisprudence, a jurisprudence matchless in its
rational conception of principles of justice which were rooted in a
philosophic consideration of human life; matchless also in its carrying
through of such principles into the body of the law and the decision of
every case.
II
The Roman law was the creation of the genius of Rome and also the product
of the complex civilization of which Rome was the kinetic centre. As the
Roman power crumbled, Teutonic invaders established kingdoms within
territories formerly subject to Rome and to her law--a law, however, which
commonly had been modified to suit the peoples of the provinces. Those
territories retained their population of provincials. The invaders,
Burgundians, Visigoths, and Franks, planting themselves in the different
parts of Gaul, brought their own law, under which they continued to live,
but which they did not force upon the provincial population. On the
contrary, Burgundian and Visigothic kings promulgated codes of Roman law
for the latter. And these represent the forms in which the Roman law first
passed over into modes of acceptance and application no longer fully
Roman, but partly Teutonic and incipiently mediaeval. They exemplify,
moreover, the fact, so many aspects of which have been already noticed, of
transitional and partly barbarized communities drawing from a greater past
according to their simpler needs.
One may say that these codes carried on processes of decline from the full
creative genius of Roman jurisprudence, which had irrevocably set in under
the Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. The decline lay in a
weakening of the intellectual power devoted to the law and its
development. The living growth of the praetorian edict had long since come
to an end; and now a waning jurisprudential intelligence first ceased to
advance the development of law, and then failed to save from desuetude the
achieved jurisprudence of the past. So the jurisprudential and juridical
elements (_jus_) fell away from the law, and the imperial constitutions
(_leges_) remained the sole legal vehicle and means of amendment. The need
of codification was felt, and that preserving and eliminating process was
entered upon.
Roman codification never became a reformulation. The Roman _Codex_ was a
collection of existing constitutions. A certain jurist (“Gregorianus”)
made an orderly and comprehensive collection of such as early as the close
of Diocletian’s reign; it was supplemented by the work of another jurist
(“Hermogenianus”) in the time of Constantine. Each compilation was the
work of a private person, who, without authority to restate, could but
compile the imperial constitutions. The same method was adopted by the
later codifications, which were made and promulgated under imperial
decree. There were two which were to be of supreme importance for the
legal future of western Europe, the Theodosian Code and the legislation of
Justinian. The former was promulgated in 438 by Theodosius II. and
Valentinianus. The emperors formally announce that “in imitation (_ad
similitudinem_) of the Code of Gregorianus and Hermogenianus we have
decreed that all the Constitutions should be collected” which have been
promulgated by Constantine and his successors, including ourselves.[356]
So the Theodosian Code contains many laws of the emperors who decreed
it.[357] It was thus a compilation of imperial constitutions already in
existence, or decreed from year to year while the codification was in
process (429-438). Every constitution is given in the words of its
original announcement, and with the name of the emperor. Evidently this
code was not a revision of the law.
The codification of Justinian began with the promulgation of the _Codex_
in 529. That was intended to be a compilation of the constitutions
contained in the previous codes and still in force, as well as those which
had been decreed since the time of Theodosius. The compilers received
authority to omit, abbreviate, and supplement. The _Codex_ was revised and
promulgated anew in 534. The constitutions which were decreed during the
remainder of Justinian’s long reign were collected after his death and
published as _Novellae_. So far there was nothing radically novel. But,
under Justinian, life and art seemed to have revived in the East; and
Tribonian, with the others who assisted in these labours, had larger views
of legal reform and jurisprudential conservation than the men who worked
for Theodosius. Justinian and his coadjutors had also serious plans for
improving the teaching of the law, in the furtherance of which the famous
little book of _Institutes_ was composed after the model, and to some
extent in the words, of the _Institutes_ of Gaius. It was published in
533.
The great labour, however, which Justinian and his lawyers were as by
Providence inspired to achieve was the encyclopaedic codification of the
jurisprudential law. Part of the emperor’s high-sounding command runs
thus:
“We therefore command you to read and sift out from the books
pertaining to the _jus Romanum_ composed by the ancient learned
jurists (_antiqui prudentes_) to whom the most sacred emperors granted
authority to indite and interpret the laws, so that the material may
all be taken from these writers, and incongruity avoided--for others
have written books which have been neither used nor recognized. When
by the favour of the Deity this material shall have been collected, it
should be reared with toil most beautiful, and consecrated as the own
and most holy temple of justice, and the whole law (_totum jus_)
should be arranged in fifty books under specific titles.”[358]
The language of the ancient jurists was to be preserved even critically,
that is to say, the compilers were directed to emend apparent errors and
restore what seemed “verum et optimum et quasi ab initio scriptum.” It was
not the least of the providential mercies connected with the compilation
of this great body of jurisprudential law, that Justinian and his
commission did not abandon the phrasing of the old jurisconsults, and
restate their opinions in such language as we have a sample of in the
constitution from which the above extract is taken. This jurisprudential
part of Justinian’s Codification was named the _Digest_ or
_Pandects_.[359]
Inasmuch as Justinian’s brief reconquest of western portions of the Roman
Empire did not extend north of the Alps, his codification was not
promulgated in Gaul or Germany. Even in Italy his legislation did not
maintain itself in general dominance, especially in the north where the
Lombard law narrowed its application. Moreover, throughout the peninsula,
the _Pandects_ quickly became as if they were not, and fell into
desuetude, if that can be said of a work which had not come into use. This
body of jurisprudential law was beyond the legal sense of those
monarchically-minded and barbarizing centuries, which knew law only as the
command of a royal lawgiver. The _Codex_ and the _Novellae_ were of this
nature. They, and not the _Digest_, represent the influence upon Italy of
Justinian’s legislation until the renewed interest in jurisprudence
brought the _Pandects_ to the front at the close of the eleventh century.
But _Codex_ and _Novellae_ were too bulky for a period that needed to have
its intellectual labours made easy. From the first, the _Novellae_ were
chiefly known and used in the condensed form given them in the excellent
_Epitome of Julianus_, apparently a Byzantine of the last part of
Justinian’s reign.[360] The cutting down and epitomizing of the _Codex_ is
more obscure; probably it began at once; the incomplete or condensed forms
were those in common use.[361]
It is, however, with the Theodosian Code and certain survivals of the
works of the great jurists that we have immediately to do. For these were
the sources of the codes enacted by Gothic and Burgundian kings for their
Roman or Gallo-Roman subjects. Apparently the earliest of them was
prepared soon after the year 502, at the command of Gondebaud, King of the
Burgundians. This, which later was dubbed the _Papianus_,[362] was the
work of a skilled Roman lawyer, and seems quite as much a text-book as a
code. It set forth the law of the topics important for the Roman
provincials living in the Burgundian kingdom, not merely making extracts
from its sources, but stating their contents and referring to them as
authorities. These sources were substantially the same as those used by
the Visigothic _Breviarium_, which was soon to supersede the _Papianus_
even in Burgundy.
_Breviarium_ was the popular name of the code enacted by the Visigothic
king Alaric II. about the year 506 for his _provinciales_ in the south of
Gaul.[363] It preserved the integrity of its sources, giving the texts in
the same order, and with the same rubrics, as in the original. The
principal source was the Theodosian Code; next in importance the
collections of _Novellae_ of Theodosius and succeeding emperors: a few
texts were taken from the Codes of “Gregorianus” and “Hermogenianus.”
These parts of the _Breviarium_ consisted of _leges_, that is, of
constitutions of the emperors. Two sources of quite a different character
were also drawn upon. One was the _Institutes_ of Gaius, or rather an old
epitome which had been made from it. The other was the _Sententiae_ of
Paulus, the famous “Five Books of Sentences _ad filium_.” This work of
elementary jurisprudence deserved its great repute; yet its use in the
_Breviarium_ may have been due to the special sanction which had been
given it in one of the constitutions of the Theodosian Code, also taken
over into the _Breviarium_: “Pauli quoque sententias semper valere
praecipimus.”[364] The same constitution confirmed the _Institutes_ of
Gaius, among other great jurisconsults. Presumably these two works were
the most commonly known as well as the clearest and best of elementary
jurisprudential compositions.
An interesting feature of the _Breviarium_, and destined to be of great
importance, was the _Interpretatio_ accompanying all its texts, except
those drawn from the epitome of Gaius. This was not the work of Alaric’s
compilers, but probably represents the approved exposition of the _leges_,
with the exposition of the already archaic _Sentences_ of Paulus, current
in the law schools of southern Gaul in the fifth century. The
_Interpretatio_ thus taken into the _Breviarium_ had, like the texts, the
force of royal law, and soon was to surpass them in practice by reason of
its perspicuity and modernity. Many manuscripts contain only the
_Interpretatio_ and omit the texts.
The _Breviarium_ became the source of Roman law, indeed the Roman law _par
excellence_, for the Merovingian and then the Carolingian realm, outside
of Italy. It was soon subjected to the epitomizing process, and its
epitomes exist, dating from the eighth to the tenth century: they reduced
it in bulk, and did away with the practical inconvenience of _lex_ and
_interpretatio_. Further, the _Breviarium_, and even the epitomes, were
glossed with numerous marginal or interlinear notes made by transcribers
or students. These range from definitions of words, sometimes taken from
Isidore’s _Etymologiae_, to brief explanations of difficulties in the
text.[365] In like manner in Italy, the _Codex_ and _Novellae_ of
Justinian were, as has been said, reduced to epitomes, and also equipped
with glosses.
These barbaric codes of Roman law mark the passage of Roman law into
incipiently mediaeval stages. On the other hand, certain Latin codes of
barbarian law present the laws of the Teutons touched with Roman
conceptions, and likewise becoming inchoately mediaeval.
Freedom, the efficient freedom of the individual, belongs to civilization
rather than to barbarism. The actual as well as imaginary perils
surrounding the lives of men who do not dwell in a safe society, entail a
state of close mutual dependence rather than of liberty. Law in a
civilized community has the twofold purpose of preserving the freedom of
the individual and of maintaining peace. With each advance in human
progress, the latter purpose, at least in the field of private civil law,
recedes a little farther, while the importance of private law, as
compared with penal law, constantly increases.
The law of uncivilized peoples lacks the first of these purposes. Its sole
conscious object is to maintain, or at least provide a method of
maintaining peace; it is scarcely aware that in maintaining peace it is
enhancing the freedom of every individual.
The distinct and conscious purpose of early Teutonic law was to promote
peace within the tribe, or among the members of a warband. Thus was law
regarded by the people--as a means of peace. Its communication or
ordainment might be ascribed to a God or a divine King. But in reality its
chief source lay in slowly growing regulative custom.[366] The force of
law, or more technically speaking the legal sanction, lay in the power of
the tribe to uphold its realized purpose as a tribe; for the power to
maintain its solidarity and organization was the final test of its
law-upholding strength.
Primarily the old Teutonic law looked to the tribe and its sub-units, and
scarcely regarded the special claims of an individual, or noticed
mitigating or aggravating elements in his culpability--answerability
rather. It prescribed for his peace and protection as a member of a
family, or as one included within the bands of _Sippe_ (blood
relationship); or as one of a warband or a chief’s close follower, one of
his _comitatus_. On the other hand, the law was stiff, narrow, and
ungeneralized in its recognized rules. The first Latin codifications of
Teutonic law are not to be compared for breadth and elasticity of
statement to the Law of the Twelve Tables. And their substance was more
primitive.[367]
The earliest of these first codifications was the Lex Salica, codified
under Clovis near the year 500. Unquestionably, contact with Roman
institutions suggested the idea, even as the Latin language was the
vehicle, of this code. Otherwise the Lex Salica is un-Christian and
un-Roman, although probably it was put together after Clovis’s baptism. It
was not a comprehensive codification, and omitted much that was common
knowledge at the time; which now makes it somewhat enigmatical. One finds
in it lists of thefts of every sort of object that might be stolen, and of
the various injuries to the person that might be done, and the sum of
money to be paid in each case as atonement or compensation. Such schedules
did not set light store on life and property. On the contrary, they were
earnestly intended as the most available protection of elemental human
rights, and as the best method of peaceful redress. The sums awarded as
Wergeld were large, and were reckoned according to the slain man’s rank.
By committing a homicide, a man might ruin himself and even his blood
relatives (_Sippe_) and of course on failure to atone might incur
servitude or death or outlawry.
The Salic law is scarcely touched by the law of Rome. From this piece of
intact Teutonism the codes of other Teuton peoples shade off into bodies
of law partially Romanized, that is, affected by the provincialized Roman
law current in the locality where the Teutonic tribe found a home. The
codes of the Burgundians and the Visigoths in southern France are examples
of this Teutonic-Romanesque commingling. On the other hand, the Lombard
codes, though later in time, held themselves even harshly Teutonic, as
opposed to any influence from the law of the conquered Italian population,
for whom the Lombards had less regard than Burgundians and Visigoths had
for their subject provincials. Moreover, as the Frankish realm extended
its power over other Gallo-Teuton states, the various Teuton laws modified
each other and tended toward uniformity. Naturally the law of the Franks,
first the Salic and then the partly derivative Ribuarian code, exerted a
dominating influence.[368]
These Teuton peoples regarded law as pertaining to the tribe. There was
little conscious intention on their part of forcing their laws on the
conquered. When the Visigoths established their kingdom in southern France
they had no idea of changing the law of the Gallo-Roman provincials living
within the Visigothic rule; and shortly afterwards, when the Franks
extended their power over the still Roman parts of Gaul, and then over
Alemanni, Burgundians, and Visigoths, they likewise had no thought of
forcing their laws either upon Gallo-Romans or upon the Teuton people
previously dominant within a given territory. This remained true even of
the later Frankish period, when the Carolingians conquered the Lombard
kingdom in upper Italy.
Indeed, to all these Teutons and to the Roman provincials as well, it
seemed as a matter of course that tribal or local laws should be permitted
to endure among the peoples they belonged to. These assumptions and the
conditions of the growing Frankish Empire evoked, as it were, a more acute
mobilization of the principle that to each people belonged its law. For
provincials and Teuton peoples were mingling throughout the Frankish
realm, and the first obvious solution of the legal problems arising was to
hold that provincials and Teutons everywhere should remain amenable and
entitled to their own law, which was assumed to attend them as a personal
appurtenance. Of course this solution became intolerable as tribal blood
and delimitations were obscured, and men moved about through the
territories of one great realm. Archbishop Agobard of Lyons remarks that
one might see five men sitting together, each amenable to a different
law.[369] The escape from this legal confusion was to revert to the idea
of law and custom as applying to every one within a given territory. The
personal principle gradually gave way to this conception in the course of
the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.[370] In the meanwhile during the
Merovingian, and more potently in the Carolingian period, king’s law, as
distinguished from people’s law, had been an influence making for legal
uniformity throughout that wide conglomerate empire which acknowledged the
authority of the Frankish king or emperor. The king’s law might emanate
from the delegated authority, and arise from the practices, of royal
functionaries; it was most formally promulgated in Capitularies, which
with Charlemagne reach such volume and importance. Some of these royal
ordinances related to a town or district only. Others were for the realm,
and the latter not only were instances of law applying universally, but
also tended to promote, or suggest, the harmonizing of laws which they did
not modify directly.
III
The Roman law always existed in the Middle Ages. Provincialized and
changed, it was interwoven in the law and custom of the land of the
_langue d’oc_ and even in the customary law of the lands where the _langue
d’oil_ was spoken. Through the same territory it existed also in the
_Breviarium_ and its epitomes. There was very little of it in England, and
scarcely a trace in the Germany east of the Rhine. In Italy it was applied
when not superseded by the Lombard codes, and was drawn from works based
on the _Codex_ and _Novels_ of Justinian. But the jurisprudential law
contained in Justinian’s _Digest_ was as well forgotten in Italy as in any
land north of the Alps, where the Codification of Justinian had never been
promulgated. The extent to which the classic forms of Roman law were known
or unknown, unforgotten or forgotten, was no accident as of codices or
other writings lost accidentally. It hung upon larger conditions--whether
society had reached that stage of civilized exigency demanding the
application of an advanced commercial law, and whether there were men
capable of understanding and applying it. This need and the capacity to
understand would be closely joined.[371]
The history of the knowledge and understanding of Roman law in the Middle
Ages might be resolved into a consideration of the sources drawn upon, and
the extent and manner of their use, from century to century. In the fifth
century, when the Theodosian Code was promulgated, law was thought of
chiefly as the mandate of a ruler. The Theodosian Code was composed of
_constitutiones principum_. Likewise the _Breviarium_, based upon it, and
other barbarian codes of Roman law, were ordained by kings; and so were
the codes of Teutonic law. For law, men looked directly to the visible
ruler. The _jus_, reasoned out by the wisdom of trained jurists, had lost
authority and interest. To be sure, a hundred years later Justinian’s
Commission put together in the _Digest_ the body of jurisprudential law;
but even in Italy where his codification was promulgated, the _Digest_
fell still-born. Never was an official compilation of less effect upon its
own time, or of such mighty import for times to come.
The _Breviarium_ became _par excellence_ the code of Roman law for the
countries included in the present France. With its accompanying
_Interpretatio_ it was a work indicating intelligence on the part of its
compilers, whose chief care was as to arrangement and explanation. But the
time was not progressive, and a gathering mental decadence was shown by
the manner in which the _Breviarium_ was treated and used, to wit,
epitomized in many epitomes, and practically superseded by them. Here was
double evidence of decay; for the supersession of such a work by such
epitomes indicates a diminishing legal knowledge in the epitomizers, and
also a narrowing of social and commercial needs in the community, for
which the original work contained much that was no longer useful.
There were, of course, epitomes and epitomes. Such a work as the _Epitome
Juliani_, in which a good Byzantine lawyer of Justinian’s time presented
the substance of the _Novellae_, was an excellent compendium, and deserved
the fame it won. Of a lower order were the later manipulations of
Justinian’s _Codex_, by which apparently the _Codex_ was superseded in
Italy. One of these was the _Summa Perusina_ of the ninth or tenth
century, a wretched work, and one of the blindest.[372]
Justinian’s _Codex_ and Julian’s _Epitome_ were equipped with glosses,
some of which are as early as Justinian’s time; but the greater part are
later. The glosses to Justinian’s legislation resemble those of the
_Breviarium_ before referred to. That is to say, as the centuries pass
downward toward the tenth, the glosses answer to cruder needs: they become
largely translations of words, often taken from Isidore’s
_Etymologiae_.[373] Indeed many of them appear to have had merely a
grammatical interest, as if the text was used as an aid in the study of
the Latin language.
The last remark indicates a way in which a very superficial acquaintance
with the Roman law was kept up through the centuries prior to the twelfth:
it was commonly taught in the schools devoted to elementary instruction,
that is to say, to the Seven Liberal Arts. In many instances the
instructors had only such knowledge as they derived from Isidore, that
friend of every man. That is, they had no special knowledge of law, but
imparted various definitions to their pupils, just as they might teach
them the names of diseases and remedies, a list of which (and nothing
more) they would also find in Isidore. It was all just as one might have
expected. Elementary mediaeval education was encyclopaedic in its childish
way; and, in accordance with the methods and traditions of the transition
centuries, all branches of instruction were apt to be turned to grammar
and rhetoric, and made linguistic, so to speak--mere subjects for curious
definition. Thus it happened to law as well as medicine. Yet some of the
teachers may have had a practical acquaintance with legal matters, with an
understanding for legal documents and skill to draw them up.
The assertion also is warranted that at certain centres of learning
substantial legal instruction was given; one may even speak of schools of
law. Scattered information touching all the early mediaeval periods shows
that there was no time when instruction in Roman law could not be obtained
somewhere in western Europe. To refer to France, the Roman law was very
early taught at Narbonne; at Orleans it was taught from the time of Bishop
Theodulphus, Charlemagne’s contemporary, and probably the teaching of it
long continued. One may speak in the same way of Lyons; and in the
eleventh century Angers was famed for the study of law.
Our information is less broken as to an Italy where through the early
Middle Ages more general opportunities offered for elementary education,
and where the Roman law, with Justinian’s Codification as a base, made in
general the law of the land. There is no reason to suppose that it was not
taught. Contemporary allusions bear witness to the existence of a school
of law in Rome in the time of Cassiodorus and afterwards, which is
confirmed by a statement of the jurist Odofredus in the thirteenth
century. At Pavia there was a school of law in the time of Rothari, the
legislating Lombard king; this reached the zenith of its repute in the
eleventh century. Legal studies also flourished at Ravenna, and succumbed
before the rising star of the Bologna school at the beginning of the
twelfth century.[374] In these and doubtless many other cities[375]
students were instructed in legal practices and formulae, and some
substance of the Roman law was taught. Extant legal documents of various
kinds afford, especially for Italy, ample evidence of the continuous
application of the Roman law.[376]
As for the merits and deficiencies of legal instruction in Italy and in
France, an idea may be gained from the various manuals that were prepared
either for use in the schools of law or for the practitioner. Because of
the uncertainty, however, of their age and provenance, it is difficult to
connect them with a definite _foyer_ of instruction.
Until the opening of the twelfth century, or at all events until the last
quarter of the eleventh, the legal literature evinces scarcely any
originality or critical capacity. There are glosses, epitomes, and
collections of extracts, more or less condensed or confused from whatever
text the compiler had before him. Little jurisprudential intelligence
appears in any writings which are known to precede the close of the
eleventh century; none, for instance, in the epitomes of the _Breviarium_
and the glosses relating to that code; none in those works of Italian
origin the material for which was drawn directly or indirectly from the
_Codex_ or _Novels_ of Justinian, for instance the _Summa Perusina_ and
the _Lex Romana canonice compta_, both of which probably belong to the
ninth century. Such compilations were put together for practical use, or
perhaps as aids to teaching.
Thus, so far as inference may be drawn from the extant writings, the legal
teaching in any school during this long period hardly rose above an
uncritical and unenlightened explanation of Roman law somewhat
mediaevalized and deflected from its classic form and substance. There was
also practical instruction in current legal forms and customs. Interest in
the law had not risen above practical needs, nor was capacity shown for
anything above a mechanical handling of the matter. Legal study was on a
level with the other intellectual phenomena of the period.
In an opusculum[377] written shortly after the middle of the eleventh
century, Peter Damiani bears unequivocal, if somewhat hostile, witness to
the study of law at Ravenna; and it is clear that in his time legal
studies were progressing in both France and Italy. It is unsafe to speak
more definitely, because of the difficulty in fixing the time and place of
certain rather famous pieces of legal literature, which show a marked
advance upon the productions to be ascribed with certainty to an earlier
time. The reference is to the _Petri exceptiones_ and the _Brachylogus_.
The critical questions relating to the former are too complex even to
outline here. Both its time and place are in dispute. The ascribed dates
range from the third quarter of the eleventh century to the first quarter
of the twelfth, a matter of importance, since the opening of the twelfth
century is marked by the rise of the Bologna school. As for the place,
some scholars still adhere to the south of France, while others look to
Pavia or Ravenna. On the whole, the weight of argument seems to favour
Italy and a date not far from 1075.[378]
The _Petrus_, as it is familiarly called, is drawn from immediately prior
and still extant compilations. The compiler wished to give a compendious
if not systematic presentation of law as accepted and approved in his
time, that is to say, of Roman law somewhat mediaevalized in tone, and
with certain extraneous elements from the Lombard codes. The ultimate
Roman sources were the Codification of Justinian, and indeed all of it,
_Digest_, _Codex_, and _Novels_, the last in the form to which they had
been brought in Julian’s _Epitome_. The purpose of the compilation is
given in the Prologue,[379] which in substance is as follows:
“Since for many divers reasons, on account of the great and manifold
difficulties in the laws, even the Doctors of the laws cannot without
pains reach a certain opinion, we, taking account of both laws, to
wit, the _jus civile_ and the _jus naturale_, unfold the solution of
controversies under plain and patent heads. Whatever is found in the
laws that is useless, void, or contrary to equity, we trample under
our feet. Whatever has been added and surely held to, we set forth in
its integral meaning so that nothing may appear unjust or provocative
of appeal from thy judgments, Odilo;[380] but all may make for the
vigour of justice and the praise of God.”
The arrangement of topics in the _Petrus_ hardly evinces any clear design.
The substance, however, is well presented. If there be a question to be
solved, it is plainly stated, and the solution arrived at may be
interesting. For example, a case seems to have arisen where the son of one
who died intestate had seized the whole property to the exclusion of the
children of two deceased daughters. The sons of one daughter acquiesced.
The sons of the other _per placitum et guerram_ forced their uncle to give
up their share. Thereupon the supine cousins demanded to share in what had
so been won. The former contestants resisted on the plea that the latter
had borne no aid in the contest and that they had obtained only their own
portion. The decision was that the supine cousins might claim their
heritage from whoever held it, and should receive their share in what the
successful contestants had won; but that the latter could by
counter-actions compel them to pay their share of the necessary expenses
of the prior contest.[381]
Sometimes the _Petrus_ seems to draw a general rule of law from the
apparent instances of its application in Justinian’s Codification. Therein
certain formalities were prescribed in making a testament, in adopting a
son, or emancipating a slave. The _Petrus_ draws from them the general
principle that where the law prescribes formalities, the transaction is
not valid if they are omitted.[382] In fine, unsystematized as is the
arrangement of topics, the work presents an advance in legal intelligence
over mediaeval law-writings earlier than the middle of the eleventh
century.
If the _Petrus_ was adapted for use in practice, the _Brachylogus_, on the
other hand, was plainly a book of elementary instruction, formed on the
model of Justinian’s _Institutes_. But it made use of his entire
codification, the _Novels_, however, only as condensed in Julian’s
_Epitome_. The influence of the _Breviarium_ is also noticeable; which
might lead one to think that the treatise was written in Orleans or the
neighbourhood, since the _Breviarium_ was not in use in Italy, while the
Codification of Justinian was known in France by the end of the eleventh
century. The beginning of the twelfth is the date usually given to the
_Brachylogus_. It does not belong to the Bologna school of glossators, but
rather immediately precedes them, wherever it was composed.[383]
The _Brachylogus_, as a book of Institutes, compares favourably with its
model, from the language of which it departed at will. Both works are
divided into four _libri_; but the _libri_ of the _Brachylogus_ correspond
better to the logical divisions of the law. Again, frequently the author
of the _Brachylogus_ breaks up the chapters of Justinian’s _Institutes_
and gives the subject-matter under more pertinent headings. Sometimes the
statements of the older work are improved by rearrangement. The
definitions of the _Brachylogus_ are pithy and concise, even to a fault.
Often the exposition is well adapted to the purposes of an elementary
text-book,[384] which was meant to be supplemented by oral instruction. On
the whole, the work shows that the author is no longer encumbered by the
mass or by the advanced character of his sources. He restates their
substance intelligently, and thinks for himself. He is no compiler, and
his work has reached the rank of a treatise.
The merits of the _Brachylogus_ as an elementary text-book are surpassed
by those of the so-called _Summa Codicis Irnerii_, a book which may mark
the beginning of the Bologna school of law, and may even be the
composition of its founder. Many arguments are adduced for this
authorship.[385] The book has otherwise been deemed a production of the
last days of the school of law at Rome just before the school was broken
up by some catastrophe as to which there is little information. In that
case the work would belong to the closing years of the eleventh century,
whereas the authorship of Irnerius would bring it to the beginning of the
twelfth. At all events, its lucid jurisprudential reasoning precludes the
likelihood of an earlier origin.
This _Summa_ is an exposition of Roman law, following the arrangement and
titles of Justinian’s _Codex_, but making extensive use of the _Digest_.
It thus contains Roman jurisprudential law, and may be regarded as a
compendious text-book for law students, forming apparently the basis of a
course of lectures which treated the topics more at length.[386] The
author’s command of his material is admirable, and his presentation
masterly. Whether he was Irnerius or some one else, he was a great
teacher. His work may be also called academic, in that his standpoint is
always that of the Justinianean law, although he limits his exposition to
those topics which had living interest for the twelfth century. Private
substantial law forms the chief matter, but procedure is set forth and
penal law touched upon. The author appreciates the historical development
of the Roman law and the character of its various sources--praetorian law,
_constitutiones principum_, and _responsa prudentium_. He also shows
independence, and a regard for legal reasoning and the demands of justice.
While he sets forth the _jus civile_, his exposition and approval follow
the dictates of the _jus naturale_.
“The established laws are to be understood benignly, so as to preserve
their spirit, and prevent their departure from equity; for the Judge
recognizes ordainments as legitimate when they conform to the
principles of justice (_ratio equitatis_).... Interpretation is
sometimes general and imperative, as when the lawgiver declares it:
then it must be applied not only to the matter for which it is
announced, but in all like cases. Sometimes an interpretation is
imperative, but only for the special case, like the interpretation
which is declared by those adjudicating a cause. It is then to be
accepted in that cause, but not in like instances; for not by
precedents, but by the laws are matters to be adjusted. There is
another kind of interpretation which binds no one, that made by
teachers explaining an ambiguous law, for although it may be
admissible because sound, still it compels no one. For every
interpretation should so be made as not to depart from justice, and
that all absurdity may be avoided and no door opened to fraud.”[387]
One must suppose that such concise statements were explained and qualified
in the author’s lectures. But even as they stand, they afford an
exposition of Roman principles of interpretation. Not only under the Roman
Empire, but subsequently in mediaeval times, the Roman lawyer or the
canonist did not pay the deference to adjudicated precedent which is felt
by the English or American judge. The passage in the _Codex_ which
“Irnerius” was expounding commands that the judge, in deciding a case,
shall follow the laws and the reasoning of the great jurists, rather than
the decision of a like controversy.
Since the author of this _Summa_ weighs the justice, the reason, and the
convenience of the laws, and compares them with each other, his book is a
work of jurisprudence. Its qualities may be observed in its discussion of
_possession_ and the rights arising therefrom. The writer has just been
expounding the _usucapio_, an institution of the _jus civile_ strictly
speaking, whereby the law of Rome in certain instances protected and,
after three years, perfected, the title to property which one had in good
faith acquired from a vendor who was not the owner:
“Now we must discuss the _ratio possessionis_. _Usucapio_ in the _jus
civile_ hinges on possession, and ownership by the _jus naturale_ may
take its origin in possession. There are many differences in the ways
of acquiring possession, which must be considered. And since in the
_constitutiones_ and _responsa prudentium_ divers reasons are adduced
regarding possession, my associates have begged that I would expound
this important and obscure subject in which is mingled the _ratio_
both of the civil and the natural law. So I will do my best. First one
must consider what possession is, how it is acquired, maintained, or
lost. Possession (here the author follows Paulus and Labeo in the
_Digest_) is as when one’s feet are set upon a thing, when body
naturally rests on body. To acquire possession is to begin to possess.
Herein one considers both the fact and the right. The fact arises
through ourselves or our representative. It is understood differently
as to movables and as to land; for the movable we take in our hand,
but we take possession of a farm by going upon it with this intent and
laying hold of a sod. The intent to possess is crucial. Thus a ring
put in the hand of a sleeper is not possessed for lack of intent on
his part. You possess naturally when with mind and body (yours or
another’s who represents you) you hold or sit upon with intent to
possess. Corporeal things you properly possess, and acquire possession
of, by your own or your agent’s hand. In the same manner you retain.
Incorporeal things cannot be possessed properly speaking, but the
civil law accords a quasi possession of them.”
Then follows a discussion of the persons through whom another may have
possession, and of the various modes of possessing _longa manu_ without
actual touch:
“It is one thing when the possession begins with you, and another when
it is transferred to you by a prior possessor: for possession begins
in three ways, by occupation, accession, and transfer. You occupy the
thing that belongs to no one. By accession you acquire possession in
two ways. Thus the increment may be possessed, as the fruit of thy
handmaid; or the accession consists in the union with a larger thing
which is yours, as when alluvium is deposited on your land. Again
possession is transferred to you,”
voluntarily or otherwise. He now discusses the various modes in which
possession is acquired by transfer, then the nature of the _justa_ or
_injusta causa_ with which possession may begin, and the effect on the
rights of the possessor, and then some matters more peculiar to the time
of Justinian. After which he passes to the loss of possession, and
concludes with saying that he has endeavoured to go over the whole
subject, and whatever is omitted or insufficiently treated, he begs that
it be laid to the fault of _humanae imbecillitatis_. The discussion reads
like a carefully drawn outline which his lecture should expand.[388]
The knowledge and understanding of the Roman law in the mediaeval
centuries should be viewed in conjunction with the general progress of
intellectual aptitude during the same periods. The growth of legal
knowledge will then show itself as a part of mediaeval development, as one
phase of the flowering of the mediaeval intellect. For the treatment of
Roman law presents stages essentially analogous to those by which the
Middle Ages reached their understanding and appropriation of other
portions of their great inheritance from classical antiquity and the
Christianity of the Fathers. Let us recapitulate: the Roman law, adapted,
or corrupted if one will, epitomized and known chiefly in its later
enacted forms, was never unapplied nor the study of it quite abandoned. It
constituted a great part of the law of Italy and southern France; in these
two regions likewise was its study least neglected. We have observed the
superficial and mainly linguistic nature of the glosses which this early
mediaeval period interlined or wrote on the margins of the source-books
drawn upon, also the rude and barbarous nature of the earlier summaries
and compilations. They were helps to a crude practical knowledge of the
law. Gradually the treatment seems to become more intelligent, a little
nearer the level of the matter excerpted or made use of. Through the
eleventh century it is evident that social conditions were demanding and
also facilitating an increase in legal knowledge; and at that century’s
close a by no means stupid compilation appears, the _Petri exceptiones_,
and perhaps such a fairly intelligent manual for elementary instruction
as the _Brachylogus_. These works indicate that the instruction in the law
was improving. We have also the sparse references to schools of law, at
Rome, at Ravenna, at Orleans. Then we come upon the _Summa Codicis_ called
of Irnerius, of uncertain _provenance_, like the _Petrus_ and
_Brachylogus_. But there is no need to be informed specifically of its
place and date in order to recognize its advance in legal intelligence, in
veritable jurisprudence. The writer was a master of the law, an adept in
its exposition, and his oral teaching must have been of a high order. With
this book we have unquestionably touched the level of the strong
beginnings of the greatest of mediaeval schools of Roman law.
Its seat was Bologna, one of the chief centres of the civic and commercial
life of Lombardy. The Lombards themselves had shown a persistent legal
genius: their own Teutonic codes, enacted in Italy, had maintained
themselves in that land of Roman law and custom. Lombard codification had
almost reached a jurisprudence of its own, at Pavia, the juridical centre
of Lombardy. The provisions of various codes had been compared and put
together in a sort of _Concordia_, as early as the ninth century.[389]
Possibly the rivalry of Lombard law might stimulate those learned in the
law of Rome to sharper efforts to expound it and prove its superiority.
Moreover, all sides of civic life and culture were flourishing in that
region where novel commercial relations were calling for a corresponding
progress in the law, and especially for a better knowledge of the Roman
law which alone afforded provision for their regulation.
As some long course of human development approaches its climax, the
advance apparently becomes so rapid as to give the impression of something
suddenly happening, a sudden leap upward of the human spirit. The velocity
of the movement seems to quicken as the summit is neared. One easily finds
examples, for instance the fifth century before Christ in Greek art, or
the fourth century in Greek philosophy, or again the excellence so quickly
reached apparently by the Middle High German poetry just about the year
1200. But may not the seeming suddenness of the phenomenon be due to lack
of information as to antecedents? and the flare of the final achievement
even darken what went before? Yet, in fact, as a movement nears its
climax, it may become more rapid. For, as the promoting energies and
favouring conditions meet in conjunction, their joint action becomes more
effective. Forces free themselves from cumbrances and draw aid from one
another. Thus when the gradual growth of intellectual faculty effects a
conjunction with circumstances which offer a fair field, and the prizes of
life as a reward, a rapid increase of power may evince itself in novel and
timely productivity.
This may suggest the manner of the apparently sudden rise of the Bologna
school of Roman law, which, be it noted, took place but a little before
the time of Gratian’s achievement in the Canon law, itself contemporaneous
with the appearance of Peter Lombard’s novel _Books of Sentences_.[390]
The preparation, although obscure, existed; and the school after its
commencement passed onward through stages of development, to its best
accomplishment, and then into a condition of stasis, if not decline.
Irnerius apparently was its first master; and of his life little is known.
He was a native of Bologna. His name as _causidicus_ is attached to a
State paper of the year 1113. Thereafter he appears in the service of the
German emperor Henry V. We have no sure trace of him after 1118, though
there is no reason to suppose that he did not live and labour for some
further years. He had taught the Arts at Ravenna and Bologna before
teaching, or perhaps seriously studying, the law. But his career as a
teacher of the law doubtless began before the year 1113, when he is first
met with as a man of affairs. Accounts agree in ascribing to him the
foundation of the school.
Unless the _Summa Codicis_ already mentioned, and a book of _Quaestiones_,
be really his, his glosses upon Justinian’s _Digest_, _Codex_, and
_Novels_, are all we have of him;[391] of the rest we know by report. The
glosses themselves indicate that this jurist had been a grammarian, and
used the learning of his former profession in his exposition of the law.
His interlinear glosses are explanations of words, and would seem to
represent his earlier, more tentative, work when he was himself learning
the meaning of the law. But the marginal glosses are short expositions of
the passages to which they are attached, and perhaps belong to the time of
his fuller command over the legal material. They indicate, besides, a
critical consideration of the text, and even of the original connection
which the passage in the _Digest_ held in the work of the jurisconsult
from which it had been taken. Some of them show an understanding of the
chronological sequence of the sources of the Roman law, _e.g._ that the
law-making power had existed in the people and then passed to the
emperors. These glosses of Irnerius represent a clear advance in
jurisprudence over any previous legal comment subsequent to the
_Interpretatio_ attached to the _Breviarium_. It was also part of his plan
to equip his manuscripts of the _Codex_ with extracts taken from the text
of the _Novels_, and not from the _Epitome of Julian_. He appears also as
a lawyer versed in the practice of the law. For he wrote a book of forms
for notaries and a treatise on procedure, neither of which is extant.[392]
The accomplishment of the Bologna school may be judged more fully from the
works, still extant, of some of its chief representatives in the
generations following Irnerius. A worthy one was Placentinus, a native of
Piacenza. The year of his birth is unknown, but he died in 1192, after a
presumably full span of life, passed chiefly as a student and teacher of
the law. He taught in Mantua and Montpellier, as well as in Bologna. He
was an accomplished jurist and a lover of the classic literature. His work
entitled _De varietate actionum_ was apparently the first attempt to set
forth the Roman law in an arrangement and form that did not follow the
sources.[393] He opens his treatise with an allegory of a noble dame,
hight Jurisprudentia, within the circle of whose sweet and honied
utterances many eager youths were thronging. Placentinus drew near, and
received from her the book which he now gives to others.[394] This little
allegory savours of the _De consolatione_ of Boëthius, or, if one will, of
Capella’s _De nuptiis Philologiae_.
The most admirable surviving work of Placentinus is his Summa of the
_Codex_ of Justinian. His autobiographical _proemium_ shows him not
lacking in self-esteem, and tells why he undertook the work. He had
thought at first to complete the Summa of Rogerius, an older glossator,
but then decided to put that book to sleep, and compose a full Summa of
the _Codex_ himself, from the beginning to the end. This by the favour of
God he has done; it is the work of his own hands, from head to heel, and
all the matter is his own--not borrowed. Next he wrote for beginners a
Summa of the _Institutes_. After which he returned to his own town, and
shortly proceeded thence to Bologna, whither he had been called. “There in
the citadel (_in castello_) for two years I expounded the laws to
students; I brought the other teachers to the threshold of envy; I emptied
their benches of students. The hidden places of the law I laid open, I
reconciled the conflicts of enactments, I unlocked the secrets most
potently.” His success was great, and he was besought to continue his
course of lectures. He complied, and remained two years more, and then
returned to Montpellier, in order to compose a Summa of the _Digest_.[395]
If indeed Placentinus speaks bombastically of his work, its excellence
excuses him. His well-earned reputation as a jurist and scholar long
endured.
_Quaestiones_, _Distinctiones_, _Libri disputationum_, _Summae_ of the
_Codex_ or the _Institutions_, and other legal writings, are extant in
goodly bulk and number from the Bologna school. The names of the men are
almost legion, and many were of great repute in their day both as jurists
and as men of affairs. We may mention Azo and Accursius, of a little
later time. Azo’s name appears in public documents from the year 1190 to
1220--and he may have survived the latter date by some years. His works
were of such compass and excellence as to supersede those of his
predecessors. His glosses still survive, and his _Lectura_ on the _Codex_,
his _Summae_ of the _Codex_ and the _Institutes_, and his _Quaestiones_,
and _Brocarda_, the last a sort of work stating general legal propositions
and those contradicting them. Azo’s glosses were so complete as to
constitute a continuous exposition of the entire legislation of Justinian.
His _Summae_ of the _Codex_ and _Institutes_ drove those of Placentinus
out of use, which we note with a smile.[396]
None of the glossators is better known than Accursius. He comes before us
as a Florentine, and apparently a peasant’s son. He died an old man rich
and famous, about the year 1260. Azo was his teacher. In 1252 he was
Podesta of Bologna, which indicates the respect in which men held him.
Villani, the Florentine historian, describes him as of martial form,
grave, thoughtful, even melancholy in aspect, as if always meditating; a
man of brilliant talents and extraordinary memory, sober and chaste in
life, but delighting in noble vesture. His hearers drank in the laws of
living from his mien and manners no less than from the dissertations of
his mouth.[397] Late in life he retired to his villa, and there in quiet
worked on his great _Glossa_ till he died.
This famous, perhaps all too famous, _Glossa ordinaria_ was a digest and,
as it proved, a final one, of the glosses of his predecessors and
contemporaries. He drew not only from their glosses, but also on their
_Summae_ and other writings. He added a good deal of his own. Great as was
the feat, the somewhat deadened talent of a compiler shows in the result,
which flattened out the individual labours of so many jurists. It came at
once into general use in the courts and outside of them; for it was a
complete commentary on the Justinianean law, so compendious and convenient
that there was no further need of the glosses of earlier men. This book
marked the turning-point of the Bologna school, after which its
productivity lessened. Its work was done: _Codex_, _Novels_, and above
all the _Pandects_ were rescued from oblivion, and fully expounded, so far
as the matter in them was still of interest. When the labours of the
school had been conveniently heaped together in one huge _Glossa_, there
was no vital inducement to do this work again. The school of the
glossators was _functus officio_. Naturally with the lessening of the
call, productivity diminished. Little was left to do save to gloss the
glosses, an epigonic labour which would not attract men of talent.
Moreover, treating the older glosses, instead of the original text, as the
matter to be interpreted was unfavourable to progress in the understanding
of the latter.
Yet, for a little, the breath of life was still to stir in the school of
the glossators. There was a man of fame, a humanist indeed, named Cino,
whose beautiful tomb still draws the lover of things lovely to Pistoia.
Cino was also a jurist, and it came to him to be the teacher of one whose
name is second to none among the legists of the Middle Ages. This was
Bartolus, born probably in the year 1314 at Sassoferrato in the duchy of
Urbino. He was a scholar, learned in geometry and Hebrew, also a man of
affairs. He taught the law at Pisa and Perugia, and in the last-named town
he died in 1357, not yet forty-four years old. Bartolus wrote and compiled
full commentaries on the entire _Corpus juris civilis_; and yet he
produced no work differing in kind from works of his predecessors.
Moreover, between him and the body of the law rose the great mass of gloss
and comment already in existence, through which he did not always
penetrate to the veritable _Corpus_. Yet his labours were inspired with
the energy of a vigorous nature, and he put fresh thoughts into his
commentaries.[398]
The school of glossators presented the full Roman law to Europe. The
careful and critical interpretation of the text of Justinian’s
Codification, of the _Digest_ above all, was their great service. In
performing it, these jurists also had educated themselves and developed
their own intelligence. They had also put together in Summae the results
of their own education in the law. These works facilitated legal study and
sharpened the faculties of students and professors. Books of Quaestiones,
legal disputations, works upon legal process and formulae, served the same
ends.[399] These men were deficient in historical knowledge. Yet they
compared _Digest_, _Codex_, and _Novels_; they tried to re-establish the
purity of the text; they weighed and they expounded. Theirs was an
intellectual effort to master the jurisprudence of Rome: their labours
constituted a renaissance of jurisprudence; and the fact that they were
often men of affairs as well as professors, kept them from ignoring the
practical bearings of the matters which they taught.
The work of the glossators may be compared with that of the theologian
philosophers of the thirteenth century--Alexander of Hales, Albertus
Magnus, Thomas Aquinas--who were winning for the world a new and
comprehensive knowledge of Aristotle. Both jurists and philosophers, in
their different spheres, carried through a more profound study, and
reached a more comprehensive knowledge, of a great store of antique
thought, than previous mediaeval centuries conceived of. Moreover, the
interpretation of the _Corpus juris_ was quite as successful as the
interpretation of Aristotle. It was in fact surer, because freer from the
deflections of religious motive. No consideration of agreement or
disagreement with Scripture troubled the glossators’ interpretation of the
_Digest_, though indeed they may have been interested in finding support
for whatever political views they held upon the claims of emperor and
pope. But this did not disturb them as much as Aristotle’s opinion that
the universe was eternal, worried Albertus and Aquinas.
IV
The Church, from the time of its first recognition by the Roman Empire,
lived under the Roman law;[400] and the constitutions safeguarding its
authority were large and ample before the Empire fell. Constantine, to be
sure, never dreamed of the famous “Donation of Constantine” forged by a
later time, yet his enactments fairly launched the great mediaeval
Catholic Church upon the career which was to bring it more domination than
was granted in this pseudo-charter of its power. A number of Constantine’s
enactments were preserved by the Theodosian Code, in which the powers and
privileges of Church and clergy were portentously set forth.
The Theodosian Code freed the property of the Church from most fiscal
burdens, and the clergy from taxes, from public and military service, and
from many other obligations which sometimes the Code groups under the head
of _sordida munera_. The Church might receive all manner of bequests, and
it inherited the property of such of its clergy as did not leave near
relatives surviving them. Its property generally was inalienable; and the
clergy were accorded many special safeguards. Slaves might be manumitted
in a church. The church edifices were declared asylums of refuge from
pursuers, a privilege which had passed to the churches from the heathen
fanes and the statues of the emperors. Constitution after constitution was
hurled against the Church’s enemies. The Theodosian Code has one chapter
containing sixty-six constitutions directed against heretics, the combined
result of which was to deprive them, if not of life and property, at least
of protected legal existence.
Of enormous import was the sweeping recognition on the Empire’s part of
the validity of episcopal jurisdiction. No bishop might be summoned before
a secular court as a defendant, or compelled to give testimony. Falsely to
accuse one of the clergy rendered the accuser infamous. All matters
pertaining to religion and church discipline might be brought only before
the bishop’s court, which likewise had plenary jurisdiction over
controversies among the clergy. It was also open to the laity for the
settlement of civil disputes. The command not to go to law before the
heathen came down from Paul (1 Cor. vi.), and together with the severed
and persecuted condition of the early Christian communities, may be
regarded as the far source of the episcopal jurisdiction, which thus
divinely sanctioned tended to extend its arbitrament to all manner of
legal controversies.[401] To be sure, under the Christian Roman Empire
the authority of the Church as well as its privileges rested upon imperial
law. Yet the emperors recognized, rather than actually created, the
ecclesiastical authority. And when the Empire was shattered, there stood
the Church erect amid the downfall of the imperial government, and capable
of supporting itself in the new Teutonic kingdoms.
The constitutions of Christian emperors did not from their own force and
validity become Ecclesiastical or Canon law--the law relating to
Christians as such, and especially to the Church and its functions. The
source of that law was God; the Church was its declarative organ.
Acceptance on the Church’s part was requisite before any secular law could
become a law of the Church.
Canon law may be taken to include theology, or may be limited to the law
of the organization and functions of the Church taken in a large sense as
inclusive of the laity in their relations to the religion of Christ.[402]
Obviously part comes from Christ directly, through the Old Testament as
well as New. The other part, and in bulk far greater, emanates from His
foundation, the Church, under the guidance of His Spirit, and may be added
to and modified by the Church from age to age. It is expressed in custom,
universal and established, and it is found in written form in the works of
the Fathers, in the decrees of Councils, in the decretals of the popes,
and in the concordats and conventions with secular sovereignties. From the
beginning, canon law tacitly or expressly adopted the constitutions of the
Christian emperors relating to the Church, as well as the Roman law
generally, under which the Church lived in its civil relations.
The Church arose within the Roman Empire, and who shall say that its
wonderfully efficient and complete organization at the close of the
patristic period was not the final creation of the legal and constructive
genius of Rome, newly inspired by the spirit of Christianity? But the
centre of interest had been transferred from earth to heaven, and human
aims had been recast by the Gospel and the understanding of it reached by
Christian doctors. Evidently since the ideals of the Church were to be
other than those of the Roman Empire, the law which it accepted or evolved
would have ideals different from those of the Roman law. If the great
Roman jurists created a legal formulation and rendering of justice
adequate for the highly developed social and commercial needs of Roman
citizens, the law of the Church, while it might borrow phrases, rules, and
even general principles, from that system, could not fail to put new
meaning in them. For example, the constant will to render each his due,
which was _justitia_ in the Roman law, might involve different
considerations where the soul’s salvation, and not the just allotment of
the goods of this world, was the law’s chief aim. Again, what new meaning
might attach to the _honeste vivere_ and the _alterum non laedere_ of
pagan legal ethics. _Honeste vivere_ might mean to do no sin imperilling
the soul; _alterum non laedere_ would acquire the meaning of doing nothing
to another which might impede his progress toward salvation. Injuries to a
man in his temporalities were less important.
Further, Christianity although conceived as a religion for all mankind,
was founded on a definite code and revelation. The primary statement was
contained in the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. These were
for all men, universal in application and of irrefragable validity and
truth. Here was some correspondence to the conception of the _jus gentium_
as representative of universal principles of justice and expediency, and
therefore as equivalent to the _jus naturale_. There was something of
logical necessity in the transference of this conception to the law of
Christ. Says Gratian at the beginning of his _Decretum_: “It is _jus
naturae_ which is contained in the Law and the Gospel, by which every one
is commanded to do to another as he would be done by, and forbidden to
inflict on him what he does not wish to happen to himself.” Since the Law
and the Gospel represent the final law of life for all men, they are _par
excellence_ the _jus naturae_, as well as _lex divina_. Gratian quotes
from Augustine: “Divinum jus in scripturis divinis habemus, humanum in
legibus regum.”[403] And then adds: “By its authority the _jus naturale_
prevails over custom and constitution. Whatever in customs or writings is
contrary to the _jus naturale_ is to be held vain and invalid.” Again he
says more explicitly: “Since therefore nothing is commanded by natural law
other than what God wills to be, and nothing is forbidden except what God
prohibits, and since nothing may be found in the canonical Scripture
except what is in the divine laws, the laws will rest divinely in nature
(_divine leges natura consistent_). It is evident, that whatever is proved
to be contrary to the divine will or canonical Scripture, is likewise
opposed to natural law. Wherefore whatever should give way before divine
will or Scripture or the divine laws, over that ought the _jus naturale_
to prevail. Therefore whatever ecclesiastical or secular constitutions are
contrary to natural law are to be shut out.”[404]
The canon law is a vast sea. Its growth, its age-long agglomerate
accretion, the systematization of its huge contents, have long been
subjects for controversialists and scholars. Its sources were as
multifarious as those of the Roman law. First the Scriptures and the early
quasi-apostolic and pseudo-apostolic writings; then the traditions of
primitive Christianity and also the writings of the Fathers; likewise
ecclesiastical customs, long accepted and legitimate, and finally the two
great written sources, the decretals or decisions of the popes and the
decrees of councils. From patristic times collections were made of the
last. These collections from a chronological gradually acquired a topical
and more systemic arrangement, which the compilers followed more
completely after the opening of the tenth century. The decisions of the
popes also had been collected, and then were joined to conciliar
compilations and arranged after the same topical plan.
In all of them there was unauthentic matter, accepted as if its
pseudo-authorship or pseudo-source were genuine. But in the stormy times
of the ninth century following the death of Charlemagne, the method of
argument through forged authority was exceptionally creative. It produced
two masterpieces which won universal acceptance. The first was a
collection of false Capitularies ascribed to Charlemagne and Louis the
Pious, and ostensibly the work of a certain Benedictus Levita, deacon of
the Church of Mainz, who worked in the middle of the century. Far more
famous and important was the book of _False Decretals_, put together and
largely written, that is forged, about the same time, probably in the
diocese of Rheims, and appearing as the work of Saint Isidore of Seville.
This contained many forged letters of the early popes and other forged
matter, including the Epistle or “Donation” of Constantine; also genuine
papal letters and conciliar decrees. These false collections were accepted
by councils and popes, and formed part of subsequent compilations.
From the tenth century onward many such compilations were made, all of
them uncritical as to the genuineness of the matter taken, and frequently
ill-arranged and discordant. They were destined to be superseded by the
great work in which appears the better methods and more highly trained
intelligence developing at the Bologna School in the first part of the
twelfth century. Its author was Gratianus, a monk of the monastery of St.
Felix at Bologna. He was a younger contemporary of Irnerius and of Peter
Lombard. Legend made him the latter’s brother, with some propriety; for
the compiler of those epoch-making _Sentences_ represents the same stage
in the appropriation of the patristic theological heritage of the Middle
Ages, that Gratian represents in the handling of the canon law. The
Lombard’s _Sentences_ made a systematic and even harmonizing presentation
of the theology of the Fathers in their own language; and the equally
immortal _Decretum_ of Gratian accomplished a like work for the canon law.
This is the name by which his work is known, but not the name he gave it.
That appears to have been _Concordia discordantium canonum_, which
indicates his methodical presentation of his matter and his endeavour to
reconcile conflicting propositions.
The first part of the _Decretum_ was entitled “De jure naturae et
constitutionis.” It presents the sources of the law, the Church’s
organization and administration, the ordination and ranking of the clergy,
the election and consecration of bishops, the authority of legates and
primates. The second part treats of the procedure of ecclesiastical
courts, also the law regulating the property of the Church, the law of
monks and the contract of marriage. The third part is devoted to the
Sacraments and the Liturgy.
Gratian’s usual method is as follows: He will open with an authoritative
proposition. If he finds it universally accepted, it stands as valid. But
if there are opposing statements, he tries to reconcile them, either
pointing out the difference in date (for the law of the Church may be
progressive), or showing that one of the discordant rules had but local or
otherwise limited application, or that the first proposition is the rule,
while the others make the exceptions. If he still fails to establish
concord, he searches to find which rule had been followed in the Roman
Church, and accepts that as authoritative. A rule being thus made certain,
he proceeds with subdivisions and distinctions, treating them as
deductions from the main rule and adjusting the supporting texts. Or he
will suppose a controversy (_causa_) and discuss its main and secondary
issues. Throughout he accompanies his authoritative matter with his own
commentary--commonly cited as the _Dicta Gratiani_.[405] The _Decretum_
was characterized by sagacity of interpretation and reconcilement, by vast
learning, and clear ordering of the matter. Only it was uncritical as to
the genuineness of its materials; and a number of Gratian’s own statements
were subsequently disapproved in papal decretals. The _Dicta Gratiani_
never received such formal sanction by pope or council as the writings of
Roman jurists received by being taken into Justinian’s _Digest_.
The papal decretals had become the great source of canonical law.
Gratian’s work was soon supplemented by various compilations known as
_Appendices ad Decretum_ or _Decretales extravagantes_, to wit, those
which the _Decretum_ did not contain. These, however, were superseded by
the collection, or rather codification, made at the command of the great
canonist Gregory IX. and completed in the year 1234. This authoritative
work preserved Gratian’s _Decretum_ intact, but suppressed, or abridged
and reordered, the decretals contained in subsequent collections. Arranged
in five books, it forms the second part of the _Corpus juris canonici_. In
1298 Boniface VIII. promulgated a supplementary book known as the _Sextus_
of Boniface. This with a new collection promulgated under the authority of
Clement V. in 1313, called the _Clementinae_, and the _Extravagantes_ of
his successor John XXII. and certain other popes, constitute the last
portions of the _Corpus juris canonici_.[406]
According to the law of the Empire the emperor’s authority extended over
the Church, its doctrine, its discipline, and its property. Such authority
was exercised by the emperors from Constantine to Justinian. But the
Church had always stood upon the principle that it was better to obey God
rather than man. This had been maintained against the power of the pagan
Empire, and was not to be sunned out of existence by imperial favour. It
was still better to obey God rather than the emperor. The Church still
should say who were its members and entitled to participate in the
salvation which it mediated. Ecclesiastical authorities could
excommunicate; that was their engine of coercion. These principles were
incarnate in Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, withstanding and prohibiting
Theodosius from Christian fellowship until he had done penance for the
massacre at Thessalonica. Of necessity they inhered in the Church; they
were of the essence of its strength to fulfil its purpose; they stood for
the duly constituted power of Christian resolution to uphold and advance
the peremptory truth of Christ.
So such principles persisted through the time of the hostile and then the
favouring Roman Empire. And when the Empire in fact crumbled and fell,
what _de facto_ and _de jure_ authority was best fitted to take the place
of the imperial supremacy? The Empire represented a universal secular
dominion; the Church was also universal, and with a universality now
reaching out beyond the Empire’s shrinking boundaries. In the midst of
political fragments otherwise disjoined, the Church endured as the
universal unity. The power of each Teutonic king was great in fact and law
within his realm. Yet he was but a local potency, while the Church existed
through his and other realms. And when the power of one Teutonic line (the
Carolingian) reached something like universal sway, the Church was also
there within and without. It held the learning of the time, and the
culture which large-minded seculars respected; and quite as much as the
empire of Charlemagne, it held the prestige of Rome. Witness the attitude
of Charles Martel and Pippin toward Boniface the great apostle, and the
attitude of Boniface toward the Gregories whose legate he proclaimed
himself, and upon whose central authority he based his claims to be
obeyed. Through the reforms of the Frankish Church, carried out by him
with the support of Charles Martel and Pippin, the ecclesiastical
supremacy of Rome was established. Charlemagne, indeed, from the nature
and necessities of his own transcendent power, possessed in fact the
ecclesiastical authority of the Roman emperors, whom men deemed his
predecessors. But after him the secular power fell again into fragments
scarcely locally efficient, while the Church’s universality of authority
endured.
In the unstable fragmentation of secular rule in the ninth century, the
Isidorean _Decretals_ presented the truth of the situation as it was to
be, although not as it had been in the times of the Church dignitaries
whose names were forged for that collection. And thereafter, as the Church
recovered from its tenth-century disintegration, it advanced to the
pragmatic demonstration of the validity of those false _Decretals_, on
through the tempests of the age of Hildebrand to the final triumph of
Innocent III. at the opening of the thirteenth century. Evidently the
canon law, whatever might be its immediate or remote source, drew its
authority from the sanction of the Roman Catholic Church, which enunciated
it and made it into a body corresponding to the Church’s functions. It was
what the Church promulgated as the law of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and
the kingdom of God on earth. It should be the temporal and legal
counterpart of the Church’s spiritual purposes. Its general tendency and
purpose was the promotion of the Church’s saving aim, which regarded all
things in the light of their relationship to life eternal. Therefore the
Church’s law could not but define and consider all worldly interests, all
personal and property rights and secular authority, with constant regard
to men’s need of salvation. The advancement of that must be the final
appellate standard of legal right.
Such was the event. The entire canon law might be lodged within those
propositions which Hildebrand enunciated and Innocent III. realized. For
the salvation of souls, all authority on earth had been entrusted by
Christ to Peter and his successors. Theirs was the spiritual sword;
secular power, the sword material, was to be exercised under the pope’s
mandate and permission. No king or emperor, no layman whatsoever, was
exempt from the supreme authority of the pope, who also was the absolute
head of the Church, which had become a monarchy. “The Lord entrusted to
Peter not only the universal Church, but the government of the whole
world,” writes Innocent III., whose pontificate almost made this principle
a fact. In private matters no member of the clergy could be brought before
a secular court; and the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts over
the laity threatened to reduce the secular jurisdiction to narrow
functions.[407] The property of the Church might not be taxed or levied on
by any temporal ruler or government; nor could the Church’s functions and
authority be controlled or limited by any secular decree. Universally
throughout every kingdom the Church was a sovereignty, not only in matters
spiritual, but with respect to all the personal and material
relationships that might be connected in any way with the welfare of
souls.[408]
V
The exposition of the _Corpus juris civilis_ in the school of the
glossators was of great moment in the evolution of _mediaeval political
theory_, which in its turn yields one more example of the mediaeval
application of thoughts derived from antique and patristic sources.
Political thinking in the Middle Ages sought its surest foundation in
theology; then it built itself up with concepts drawn from the philosophy
and social theory of the antique world; and lastly it laid hold on
jurisprudence, using the substance and reasoning of the Roman and the
Canon law.
Mediaeval ideas upon government and the relations between the individual
and his earthly sovereign, started from theological premises, of patristic
origin: _e.g._ that the universe and man were made by God, a miraculous
creation, springing from no other cause, and subject to no other
fundamental law, than God’s unsearchable will, which never ceases to
direct the whole creation to the Creator’s ends. A further premise was the
Scriptural revelation of God’s purpose as to man, with all the contents of
that revelation touching the overweening importance of man’s deathless
soul.
Unity--the unity of the creation--springs from these premises, or is one
of them. The principle of this unity is God’s will. Within the universal
whole, mankind also constitutes a unit, a community, specially ordained
and ordered. The Middle Ages, following the example of the patristic time,
were delivered over to allegory, and to an unbridled recognition of the
deductions of allegorical reasoning. Mankind was a community. Mankind was
also an organism, the mystical body whereof the head was Christ. Here was
an allegory potent for foolishness or wisdom. It was used to symbolize
the mystery of the oneness of all mankind in God, and the organic
co-ordination of all sorts and conditions of men with one another in the
divine commonwealth on earth; it was also drawn out into every detail of
banal anthropomorphic comparison. From John of Salisbury to Nicholas
Cusanus, Occam and Dante, no point of fancied analogy between the parts
and members of the body and the various functions of Church and State was
left unexploited.[409]
Mankind then is one community; also an organism. But within the human
organism abides the duality of soul and body; and the Community of Mankind
on earth is constituted of two orders, the spiritual and temporal, Church
and State.[410] There must be either co-ordination between State and
Church, body and soul, or subordination of the temporal and material to
the eternal and spiritual. To evoke an adjustment of what was felt to be
an actually universal opposition, was the chief problem of mediaeval
polity, and forms the warp and woof of conflicting theories. The Church
asserted a full spiritual supremacy even in things temporal, and, to
support the claim, brought sound arguments as well as foolish
allegory--allegory pretending to be horror-stricken at the vision of an
animal with two heads, a bicephalic monstrosity. But does not the Church
comprise all mankind? Did not God found it? Is not Christ its head, and
under Him his vicegerent Peter and all the popes? Then shall not the pope
who commands the greater, which is the spiritual, much more command the
less, the temporal? And all the argumentation of the two swords, delivered
to Peter, comes into play. That there are two swords is but a propriety of
administration. Secular rulers wield the secular sword at the pope’s
command. They are instruments of the Church. Fundamentally the State is
an ecclesiastical institution, and the bounds of secular law are set by
the law spiritual: the canon law overrides the laws of every State. True,
in this division, the State also is ordained of God, but only as
subordinate. And divinely ordained though it be, the origin of the State
lies in sin; for sin alone made government and law needful for man.[411]
On the other hand, the partisans of the State upheld co-ordination as the
true principle.[412] The two swords represent distinct powers, Sacerdotium
and Imperium. The latter as well as the former is from God; and the two
are co-ordinates, although of course the Church which wields the spiritual
sword is the higher. This theory creates no bicephalic monster. God is the
universal head. And even as man is body as well as soul, the human
community is State as well as Church; and the State needs the emperor for
its head, as the Church has the pope. The Roman Dominion, _imperium
mundi_, was legitimate, and by divine appointment has passed over to the
Roman-German emperor. Other views sustaining the scheme of co-ordination
upheld a plurality of states, rather than one universal Imperium. Of
course these opposing views of subordination or co-ordination of State and
Church took on every shade of diversity.
As to both Church and State, mediaeval political theory was predominantly
monarchical. Ideally this flowed from the thought of God as the true
monarch of the universe. Practically it comported with mediaeval social
conditions. Under Innocent III., if not under Gregory VII., the Church had
become a monarchy well-nigh absolute.[413] The pope’s power continued
plenary until the great schism and the age of councils evoked by it. For
the secular state, the common voice likewise favoured monarchy. The unity
of the social organism is best effected by the singleness of its head.
Thomas Aquinas authoritatively reasons thus, and Dante maintains that as
the unifying principle is Will, the will of one man is the best means to
realize it.[414] But monarchy is no absolute right existing for the
ruler’s benefit, rather it is an office to be righteously exercised for
the good of the community. The monarch’s power is limited, and if his
command outrages law or right, it is a nullity; his subjects need not
obey, and the principle applies, that it is better to obey God than man.
Even when, as in the days of the Hohenstaufen, the civil jurists claimed
for the emperor the _plenitudo potestatis_ of a Roman Caesar, the opposite
doctrine held strong, which gave him only a limited power, in its nature
conditioned on its rightful exercise.
Moreover, rights of the community were not unrecognized, and indeed were
supported by elaborate theories as the Middle Ages advanced to their
climacteric. The thought of a contract between ruler and people frequently
appears, and reference to the contract made at Hebron between David and
the people of Israel (2 Sam. v. 3). The civil jurist also looked back to
the principle of the _jus gentium_ giving to every free people the right
to choose a ruler; also to that famous text of the _Digest_, where,
through the _lex regia_, the people were said to have conferred their
powers upon the princeps.[415] With such thoughts of the people’s rights
came theories of representation and of the monarch as the people’s
representative; and Roman corporation law supplied the rules for mediaeval
representative assemblies, lay and clerical.[416]
The old Germanic state was a conglomerate of positive law and specific
custom, having no existence beyond the laws, which were its formative
constituents. Such a conception did not satisfy mediaeval publicists,
imbued with antique views of the State’s further aims and potency. Nor
were all men satisfied with the State’s divinely ordered origin in human
sinfulness. An ultimate ground for its existence was sought, commensurate
with its broadest aims. Such was found, not in positive, but in natural
law--again an antique conception. That a veritable natural law existed,
all men agreed; also that its source lay back of human conventions,
somehow in the nature of God. All admitted its absolute supremacy, binding
alike upon popes and secular monarchs, and rendering void all acts and
positive laws contravening it. It must be the State’s ultimate constituent
ground.
God was the source of natural law. Some argued that it proceeded from His
will, as a command, others that its source was eternal Reason announcing
her necessary and unalterable dictates; again its source was held to lie
more definitely in the Reason that was identical with God the _summa ratio
in Deo existens_, as Aquinas puts it. From that springs the _Lex
naturalis_, ordained to rest on the participation of man, as a rational
creature, in the moral order which he perceives by the light of natural
reason. This _lex naturalis_ (or _jus naturale_) is a true promulgated
law, since God implants it for recognition in the minds of men.[417]
Absolute unconditional supremacy was ascribed to it, and also to the _jus
divinum_, which God revealed supernaturally for a supramundane end. A
cognate supremacy was ascribed to the _jus commune gentium_, which was
composed of rules of the _jus naturale_ adapted to the conditions of
fallen human nature.
Such law was above the State, to which, on the other hand, positive law
was subject. Whenever the ruler was conceived as sovereign or absolute, he
likewise was deemed above positive law, but bound by these higher laws.
They were the source and sanction of the innate and indestructible rights
of the individual, to property and liberty and life as they were
formulated at a later period. It is evident how the recognition of such
rights fell in with the Christian revelation of the absolute value of
every individual in and for himself and his immortal life. On the other
hand, certain rights of the State, or the community, were also
indestructible and inalienable by virtue of the nature of their source in
natural law.[418]
This abstract of political theory has been stated in terms generalized to
vagueness, and with no attempt to follow the details or trace the
historical development. The purpose has been to give the general flavour
of mediaeval thought concerning Church and State, and the Individual as a
member of them both. One observes how the patristic and mediaeval
Christian thought mingles with the antique; and one may assume the
intellectual acumen applied by legist, canonist, and scholastic theologian
to the discussion and formulation of these high arguments. The mediaeval
genius for abstractions is evident, and the mediaeval faculty of linking
them to the affairs of life; clear also is the baneful effect of mediaeval
allegory. Even as men now-a-days are disposed to rest in the apparent
reality of the tangible phenomenon, so the mediaeval man just as commonly
sought for his reality in what the phenomenon might be conceived to
symbolize. Therefore in the higher political controversies, even as in
other interests of the human spirit, argument through allegory was
accepted as legitimate, if not convincing; and a proper sequence of
thought was deemed to lie from one symbolical meaning to another, with
even a deeper validity than from one palpable fact to that which followed
from it.
BOOK VII
ULTIMATE INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES