lapse of two centuries, is not worthy of credit, and that those who,
after him, related the same thing, have copied from one another,
without due examination.
Whilst rejecting as apocryphal the legend under our consideration, some
writers have at the same time sought to explain its origin.
The Jesuit Papebroch, one of the most industrious editors of the _Acta
Sanctorum_, thinks that the name “_papesse_” was given to John VII.,
because he shewed extreme weakness of character in the exercise of his
functions.
The Cardinal Baronius starts an hypothesis of the same kind, but this
conjecture is somewhat far-fetched.
A chronicle inserted in the collection of Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum
Scriptores_, contains an anecdote that has some analogy with our
subject.
A patriarch of Constantinople had a niece to whom he was much attached.
He disguised her in male attire and made her pass for a man. At his
death he recommended her to his clergy, without divulging the secret of
her sex. She was very learned and virtuous, and was elected Patriarch.
She remained eighteen months on the throne, but the Prince of Benevent,
having become acquainted with the truth, denounced the fraud at
Constantinople, and the _patriarchess_ was immediately expelled.
This anecdote was very generally reported and credited in Italy in the
11th century, for Pope Leo IX., in a letter of 1053, written to the
Patriarch of Constantinople, expresses himself thus:--
“Public report asserts as an undeniable fact, that in defiance of the
canons of the first council of Nice, you Greeks have raised to the
pontifical throne, eunuchs, and even a woman.”
At this period Rome had not yet begun to occupy herself with the legend
of Joan, which was scarcely spread abroad in Germany. If in the East
there had been any idea of the scandal of the female Pope, which was
afterwards so prevalent, the reproach of Leo IX. would undoubtedly have
been turned against himself.
We give another explanation: “The strangest stories have always their
foundation in some truth,” says _Onuphrius Panvinius_, in his notes
upon _Platina_: “I think that this fable of the woman Joan takes
its origin from the immoral life of Pope John XII., who had many
concubines, and amongst others Joan, who exercised such an empire over
him that for some time it might be said it was she who governed. Hence
it is that she was surnamed “_papesse_,” and this saying, taken up by
ignorant writers and amplified by time, has given birth to the story
which has had such wide circulation.
We find in the history of the Bishop of Cremona, Luitprand,[21] that
the love of John XII. for his concubine Joan went so far that he gave
her entire cities, that he despoiled the church of St. Peter of
crosses and of golden chalices in order to lay them at her feet; and we
are told that she died in childbed.
This death is a remarkable circumstance. In it we may trace the source
of the most striking event in the story of Pope Joan.
ABELARD AND ELOISA.
A. D. 1140.
We had already collected many notes with the intention of examining
critically the celebrated history of these two lovers of the 12th
century, when we read an article by Mr. F. W. Rowsell in the _St.
James’s Magazine_ for October 1864, in which he gives a sketch of the
lives of both of them. The writer has succeeded in condensing into half
a dozen very amusing pages a complete _résumé_ of the leading events in
their history; only he has followed the commonly received opinion held
by many English and French historians who have taken up the subject,
and he does not enter into a critical examination of several points at
issue.
Everybody knows how great an attraction the monument erected to the
memory of Eloisa and Abelard is to the crowds who visit the cemetery
of Père la Chaise, recalling to their minds the letters full of love
and passion written by Eloisa, which have elicited so many imitations
both in prose and verse in England and in France.
The history of the two lovers being true as a whole, we are far from
wishing to take away from the sympathy that their constancy and hapless
love so well deserve. Our only object is to separate the true from
the false, and to show that the celebrated letters imputed to Eloisa
were not written by her at all, and that the tomb in Père la Chaise is
altogether a modern construction.
Abelard, born in 1079, died in 1164, and Eloisa survived him upwards of
twenty years, dying in 1184.
The works and correspondence of Abelard were published for the first
time in 1616 by the learned Duchesne, and we therein find three letters
from Eloisa to Abelard and four from Abelard to Eloisa. These are
the letters on which Pope, in England, and Dorat, Mercier, Saurin,
Colardeau, &c., in France, founded their poems.
Out of these seven letters, four only can strictly be termed the
amatory correspondence of the two lovers. The remainder, and those that
have been brought to light and published in later years, are pious
effusions which contain no trace whatever of those passionate emotions
which pervaded the four other letters. We must remind the reader that
the oldest manuscript existing of these epistles is nothing more than
an alleged copy of the originals made one hundred years after the death
of Eloisa. It is preserved in the library of the town of Troyes, and
belongs to the latter half of the 13th century.
A modern French historian, M. Henri Martin, having written some pages
in a melodramatic style on these letters of Eloisa, a critic, M. de
Larroque,[22] pointed out to him the error into which he had fallen,
they having evidently been composed some years after the death of the
heroine.
The learned Orelli published in 4ᵗᵒ at Zurich, in 1841, what may be
termed the memoirs of Abelard, entitled, _Historia Calamitatum_: also
the seven letters of the two lovers.
In the preface to this work, Orelli declares, that on many grounds
he believes that these letters, so different from such as might have
been expected from Eloisa, were never written by her. The grounds,
which Orelli omits to state, are supplied by M. Lalanne in “_La_
_Correspondance Littéraire_” of the 5th December 1856.
In order to arrive at a clear perception of the improbabilities and
contradictions contained in these epistles, all the bearings of the
case should be kept well in mind.
In the _Historia Calamitatum_, Abelard opens his heart to a friend who
is in affliction and whom he endeavours to console by drawing a counter
picture of his own misery. The writer relates his life from his birth;
his struggles and his theological triumphs; his passion for Eloisa, the
vengeance of Fulbert, her uncle, the canon of Paris; his wandering life
since he assumed the cowl in the abbey of St. Denis; the foundation of
the convent of the Paraclete, where he received Eloisa and the nuns
of the convent of Argenteuil; and lastly his nomination as Abbé of
the monastery of St. Gildas, where the monks more than once conspired
against his life.
This is about the only document we possess regarding the life
of Abelard, for it is remarkable that the contemporary writers
are singularly concise in all that concerns him. Otho, bishop of
Freisingen, who died in 1158, is the only one who makes even an
allusion to the vengeance of Fulbert; and he expresses himself so
vaguely that his meaning would be incomprehensible were we not able to
explain it by the help of the _Historia Calamitatum_.
According to these memoirs, Abelard was thirty-seven or thirty-eight
years of age when he became enamoured of Eloisa, who was then sixteen
or seventeen years old. He introduced himself into the household
of the Canon Fulbert, was appointed professor to the young girl,
and soon became domesticated in the family. Eloisa, becoming soon
after pregnant, fled to Brittany, where she gave birth to a son. She
afterwards returned to Paris, and after frequent negotiations between
Fulbert and Abelard, the lovers were at length married, but the
marriage was kept secret.
The rest is known. Abelard, fearfully mutilated, became a monk in the
abbey of St. Denis, and at his bidding, to which she was ever entirely
submissive, Eloisa took the veil in the convent of Argenteuil.
These events occupied about the space of two years, and bring us to
1118 or 1119.
In a council held in Paris ten years later (1129) a decree was passed
expelling Eloisa and the other nuns from the convent of Argenteuil,
which the Abbé Suger had claimed as being a dependance of the _Abbaye
de St. Denis_.[23]
This expulsion coming to the ears of Abelard, he offered the nuns an
asylum in the Paraclete, which he had lately founded, and which he soon
after made over to them as a gift.
Pope Innocent II. confirmed this gift in 1131. Abelard speaks further,
in his _Historia Calamitatum_, of events befalling a year later,
and of his return to the abbey of St. Gildas. We see therefore that
this memoir, written with much care and attention, cannot have been
published before 1133, and perhaps even long after that. Abelard was
then in his fifty-fourth year and Eloisa in her thirty-second or
thirty-third. About fourteen years had elapsed since both had embraced
the monastic life: in the meanwhile they had met and had spent more or
less time together in the Paraclete between 1129 and 1132.
Let us now enquire if the subject matter contained in these seven
letters, all of which were written after the latter date (a fact that
should be carefully noted) agrees with that which has preceded.
The amorous correspondence of the lovers is confined to four letters.
The first is written by Eloisa. She says, that if she writes to Abelard
at all, it is that she has by accident seen the _Historia Calamitatum_;
and in order to convince him that she has read it, she touches briefly
on each circumstance recorded in it, every one of which must have been
only too familiar to them both.
Does the reader think this a natural or a probable style of
commencement? Does it not denote something artificial in the
composition? Farther on she complains that Abelard has forsaken her:
“her to whom the name of mistress was dearer than that of wife, however
sacred this latter tie might be.”[24]
And finally she adds: “Only tell me if you can, why, since we have
taken the monastic vows, which you alone desired, you have so neglected
and forgotten me that I have neither been blessed by your presence nor
consoled by a single letter in your absence. Answer me, I beseech you,
if you can, or I may myself be tempted to tell you what I think, and
what all the world suspects.”[25]
This letter, full of passionate reproach, contains contradictions
and improbabilities perceptible to all who have read that which has
preceded.
Let us first call attention to the style, which is hardly to be
explained. The passionate expressions of Eloisa would have been quite
natural in the first years that followed her separation from Abelard,
but fourteen years had elapsed--fourteen years of monastic life to both
one and the other.
She appeals to a man of fifty-four years of age, cut off for the
space of fourteen years from all intercourse with her, worn out by
his theological contests, his wandering life, and the persecutions of
which he had been the victim; and who prays only, according to his own
letters, “for eternal rest in the world to come.” But nothing checks
the flow of her passion, which she pours out with a vehemence the more
remarkable as proceeding from a woman of whom Abelard had not long
since written, in his _Historia Calamitatum_: “All are alike struck by
her piety in the convent, her wisdom, and her incomparable gentleness
and patience under the trials of life. She is seldom to be seen, but
lives in the solitude of her cell, the better to apply herself to
prayer and holy meditation.”
But the continuation seems even more incomprehensible.
Admitting, which is somewhat difficult, that Eloisa had not seen
Abelard since his severe affliction until his reception of her in the
Paraclete in 1129, on her expulsion from Argenteuil, is it at all
certain that they did meet then, and that moreover the frequency of
their interviews gave rise to scandalous reports which obliged them
again to separate? How then can Eloisa complain that since their
entrance upon a religious life (that is to say since 1119) she has
“neither rejoiced in his presence, nor been consoled by his letters?”
And she wrote this in 1133 or 1134! It is incredible that these lines
should have been penned by her.
The second letter of Eloisa is not less ardent than the first. She
mourns in eloquent language over the cold tone of sadness pervading
the answer sent to her by Abelard. She reverts at some length to the
cruel cause of their separation, and deplores her misfortune in such
unequivocal terms, that we think it better to give her words in their
original latin. “_Difficillimum est a desideriis maximarum voluptatum
avellere animum. ... In tantum vero illæ quæs pariter exercuimus
amantium voluptates dulces mihi fuerunt ut nec displicere mihi nunc,
nec a memoria labi possint._
“_Quocumque loco me vertam, semper se oculis meis cum suis ingerunt
desideriis. Nec etiam dormienti suis illusionibus parcunt. Inter
ipsa missarum solemnio, obscæna earum voluptatum fustasmata ita sibi
penitus miserrimam captivant animam ut turpitudinibus illis magis
quam orationi vacem. Quæ cum ingemiscere debeam de commissis, suspiro
potius de amissis; nec solum quæ egimus, sed loca pariter et tempora
in quibus hæc egimus ita tecum nostro infixa sunt animo, ut in ipsis
omnia tecum agam, nec dormiens etiam ab his quiescam. Nonnunquam et
ipso motu corporis, animi mei cogitationes deprehenduntur, nec a verbis
temperant improvisis ... castam me prædicant qui non deprehenderunt
hypocritam._”[26]...
These expressions, scarcely equalled by the delirium of Sappho, succeed
at length in rekindling the expiring passion of Abelard. He replies by
quotations from Virgil, from Lucanus, and by passages from the Song
of Solomon. To convince her that their sorrows are not unmerited, he
reminds her on his side of their past pleasures, and among others,
of a sacrilegious interview held in the refectory of the convent of
Argenteuil, where he had visited her in secret.
He then, and more than once, enlarges in praise of eunuchs, and ends by
enclosing a prayer he has composed for her and for himself.
This closes the amorous correspondence, for in the next letter Eloisa
declares her resolution, to which she remains firm, of putting a
restraint on the ardour of her feelings, although she cannot at the
same time refrain from quoting some equivocal lines from Ovid’s _Art of
Love_.
We must here once more ask whether, circumstanced as these two lovers
were, and taking into consideration the piety and resignation apparent
in all the writings of Abelard, he being at the time fifty-four years
of age, and Eloisa thirty-three--and after fourteen years’ separation,
it is credible or possible that the letters we have quoted, letters in
which all modesty is laid aside, should have been written by Eloisa?
Allowing that she had preserved Abelard’s correspondence, is it easy to
suppose that Abelard, continually moving from place to place, should
have preserved hers to the day of his death, so that their letters
might eventually be brought together?--letters, too, breathing an
ardour so compromising to the reputation of both?
Is it likely that Eloisa should have kept copies of her own letters,
the perusal of which, it must be confessed would not have tended to the
edification of the nuns?
Remember also that all these events occurred in the first half of the
12th century, in an age when it was very unusual to make collections of
any correspondence of an amorous nature.
We can then only arrive at the same conclusion as Messieurs Lalanne,
Orelli, Ch. Barthélemy, and others, viz. that the correspondence which
has given such renown to the names of Abelard and Eloisa as lovers, is
in all probability apocryphal.
M. Ludovic Lalanne has another supposition, which is curious, and which
appears to us not to be impossible:
“These letters,” says he, “are evidently very laboured. The
circumstances follow each other with great regularity, and the
vehement emotions that are traceable throughout, do not in any wise
interfere with the methodical march of the whole. The length of the
letters, and the learned quotations in them from the Bible, from the
fathers of the church, and from pagan authors, all seem to indicate
that they were composed with a purpose and with art, and were by no
means the production of a hasty pen. Eloisa, we must remember, was a
woman of letters, and a reputation for learning was of great value in
her eyes. Did she, who survived her lover upwards of twenty years, wish
to bequeath to posterity the memory of their misfortunes, by herself
arranging and digesting at a later period, so as to form a literary
composition, the letters that at divers times she had written and
received? Or has perhaps a more eloquent and experienced pen undertaken
the task? These are questions difficult to resolve. Anyhow, the oldest
manuscript of this correspondence with which we are acquainted, is
upwards of a hundred years posterior to the death of Eloisa. It is,
as we have already said, the manuscript of the library of the town of
Troyes.”
Let us now proceed to examine the authority for the so-called tomb of
these lovers in the cemetery of Père la Chaise.
Two learned archæologists will enlighten us on the subject. Monsieur
Lenoir,[27] in his _Musée des Monuments français_, and Monsieur de
Guilhermy, in an article of the _Annales Archéologiques de Didron_ for
1846.
During the French Revolution of 1792, the convent of the Paraclete,
founded by Abelard, was sold. In order to protect the remains of
the lovers from desecration, which was too common in those days,
some worthy inhabitants of Nogent-sur-Seine, took possession of the
coffins and deposited them in the church of that town. Seven years
later M. Lenoir obtained the permission of the minister to transfer
these remains to Paris, and it occurred to him at the same time,
that it would be expedient to enclose them in a tomb of the period
in which the lovers had lived. He was told that in the chapel of the
infirmary of Saint Marcel-les-Chalons, Peter the Venerable had erected
a monument to Abelard. Several denied this fact; but be that as it may,
Monsieur Lenoir obtained possession of part of this monument, which
had been purchased by a physician of the town in order to save it from
destruction. M. Lenoir then constructed a monument with the fragments
of a chapel of the abbey of St. Denis, and, as he tells us, placed the
sarcophagus, which was of the style of architecture in vogue in the
12th century, in a room of the museum entrusted to his care.
The following information given by M. de Guilhermy[28] will show us how
far M. Lenoir succeeded in his architectural device, and how far the
sarcophagus contains the actual remains of Abelard and Eloisa:
“How many illusions,” says M. de Guilhermy, “would vanish into thin air
if the pilgrims who came to visit the shrine of these celebrated lovers
in the cemetery of Père la Chaise only knew, that in the construction
of the sepulchral chapel there is not one single stone from the abbey
of the Paraclete. The pillars, the capitals, the rose-works, which
decorate the facings of the tomb belonged to the abbey of St. Denis. It
does not require a very practised eye to discover that the sculptures
are not in harmony, and were never intended to form a whole. It was the
former director of the _Musée des Monuments Français_, who conceived
the idea of putting together some fragments placed at his disposal,
and with these to erect a monument worthy of receiving the bones of
the two illustrious lovers of the 12th century.
“A wooden case sealed with the republican seal of the municipality of
Nogent-sur-Seine, carried to Paris in 1799 the remains which were taken
out of the grave in the Paraclete; but before depositing them in their
new asylum, it was thought necessary to satisfy the amateurs of relics
of this nature. The republicans opened the box, and all that was left
of the bodies after a period of six hundred years was stolen out of
it.” M. de Guilhermy says that: “Actually a tooth of Eloisa was offered
for sale at the time. At any rate it was in the following manner that
the tomb of Abelard was completed. A bas-relief which represented the
funeral procession of Louis, the eldest son of Louis IX. of France,
was taken from St. Denis, and it was decided that for the future this
piece of sculpture should do duty for the mausoleum of Abelard. Two
medallions, the work of a second-rate artist of the 16th century,
represented Abelard with curled mustachios, and Eloisa under the form
of a half-naked woman.”
“But this is not all. On the sarcophagus are two recumbent figures. One
is draped in priestly robes and was purloined from one of the numerous
cloisters demolished in Paris; the other is the statue of some noble
lady in the costume and style befitting the 14th century, which once
reclined on a tomb in the chapel of St. Jean de Beauvais in Paris.”
It is as well to recall such details as these in order to expose
errors which, unless refuted, would from their long standing end by
being accepted as truths. But after reading all the circumstances
narrated above, can it be believed that Monsieur Guizot, who is so
well acquainted with the real facts, or who at any rate ought to be
acquainted with them, should, in order to gratify the public taste for
sentiment, write as follows in the preface to a translation of the
letters of Abelard and Eloisa:[29]
“_Vingt-et-un ans après la mort d’Abailard, c’est-à-dire en 1163, agée
de 63 ans, Héloïse descendit dans le même tombeau. Ils y reposent
encore l’un et l’autre, après six cent soixante-quinze ans, et tous
les jours de fraiches couronnes, déposées par des mains inconnues,
attestent pour les deux morts la sympathie sans_ _cesse renaissante
des générations qui se succèdent!_”
It would be difficult to find a more inflated style with which to
decorate an historical error.
WILLIAM TELL.
A. D. 1307.
Formerly an historical fact needed only the authority of tradition to
be generally received and duly established; but in the present day the
critic is not so easily satisfied, and insists upon proof as a basis
for his belief.
In the field of history we meet with many contested points, but it
is rare to find an error persistently maintained during five hundred
years, in spite of the refutation of innumerable authors.
This is the case with the tale of William Tell, which is nothing more
nor less than a northern saga that has been adopted and repeated from
generation to generation.
The revolution which took place in Switzerland in 1307 gave rise to the
legend of the Swiss hero, and, from that time to the present, writers
have continually endeavoured to expose its unsound basis, but the
public, equally pertinacious, have insisted on believing in its truth.
The study of historical and popular legends is the study of a peculiar
phase of the human mind, and is one of the aspects under which the
history of a people should be considered.
All epochs of ignorance or superstition have been remarkable for a
strong belief in the marvellous. The object of belief may vary, but the
disposition to believe is the same.
In order to place the history of William Tell as clearly as possible
before the reader, let us in the first place turn to the writings of
the old Swiss chroniclers. Conrad Justinger, who died in 1426, is one
of the most ancient. He was chancellor of the city of Bern, and the
composition of a chronicle of this canton was committed to him. It does
not extend beyond the year 1421.
Melchior Russ, registrar at Lucerne in 1476, copies word for word
in his chronicle the narrative of Conrad Justinger concerning the
political state of the Waldstätten, their disputes with the Hapsburg
dynasty, and the insurrection of the country.