Even upon a well-ordered seigneury the number of the poor, disabled,
and generally miserable is great. Despite the contempt displayed by the
great for the lowly, the Feudal Age is not lacking in pretty abundant
charity or rather in almsgiving. The haughtiest cavalier feels it
his duty to scatter copper obols when he goes among the poor, though
doubtless he tells his squire to fling the coins merely to "satisfy
this hungry rabble." Among the virtues of Conon and Adela is the fact
that they throw the money with their own gentle hands. This somehow
adds to the donative's value.
The present season is prosperous at St. Aliquis. Furthermore, there has
just been such an open house at the castle that one would expect even
the most luckless to be satiated for a while. Nevertheless, the very
day after the guests have departed Adela is informed that there are
more than thirty people before the drawbridge, chanting their "Alms!
For the sake of Christ, alms!" The baroness, suppressing a sigh, quits
her maids, to whom she is just assigning their weaving, and goes to the
bailey. With her attends lay-brother Gensenius, an assistant to Father
Grégoire, who acts as castle almoner. The crowd contains many familiar
faces. Yonder old man on one leg, the blind woman led by a little girl,
the lad with a withered arm, the woman disfigured by goiter, the widow
whose husband was slain in a brawl, leaving her with eight children,
the harmless idiot--all these Adela immediately recognizes. But the
excitement of the fêtes has attracted others whom she and Brother
Gensenius scan closely. This melancholy fellow on crutches possibly
can run very fast if he sees that the provost's men are after him.
His companion, who seems covered with sores and who claims to be on
a pilgrimage to a healing shrine, is clearly a scamp and malingerer.
Right before the baroness a strange woman falls down foaming at the
mouth, as if she had epilepsy. Gensenius shakes his crafty head. "She
is the same impostor," he whispers, "who tried her trick with a bit of
soap yesterday in the village."
So the sheep gradually are separated from the goats. Some of the
charlatans are chased away. Some of those who receive loaves of bread
and broken meat are perhaps no more deserving than the rejected. But
dare one really be too critical? After all, the reason why great folk
give to beggars is to cancel sins. If the beggars are undeserving, that
hardly diminishes the credit with the saints for Conon and Adela. It
would be calamitous if there were suddenly to be no poor, worthy or
unworthy, for how then, by parting with some of their abundance, could
the rich buy peace for their souls? Fortunately, however, there is no
such danger. Our Lord has directly said, "The poor ye have always with
you," a most comforting word of Scripture. Poverty, then, is a blessed
institution even for the fortunate in this world; it enables them to
procure entrance to heaven by acts of charity. As for persons who are
needy, of course, if they bear their lot with Christian resignation
they accumulate a blessed stock of indulgence which will cut short
their durance in purgatory.
[Sidenote: Physical Severity of Mediaeval Life]
The morning dole is a regular feature at St. Aliquis, as at every
other castle and monastery. The amount of food given away is really
very great. But there is next to no attempt on the part of the average
seigneury really to remedy this mendicancy--to devise honest work
within the capacities of the blind or the lame; to give systematic
relief to the widow; to put the idiot lad in some decent institution.
Every premium is placed upon the idlers, the impostors, and the
low-browed rogues who prefer anything to honest toil. In the times
of real famine, even, the temptation to cease prematurely struggling
against hard times and to lapse into beggardom is very dangerous.
Despite, therefore, much genuine kindness on the part of many donors,
charity in the Feudal Age is allowed more than ordinarily to cover a
multitude of sins--alike those of the givers and the receivers. Upon
the St. Aliquis barony there is an astonishing number of unabashed
drones and parasites.
These miserable folk, however, have some excuse. Conditions of life in
the Feudal Age, even for the cavaliers, are very severe. Men and women
begin the duties of life young, mature young, grow old young. Henry II
of Anjou and England was only forty-seven when they began to call him
"old." Philip Augustus was only fifteen when he was capable of assuming
the actual duties of a responsible monarch. Many a baron is gray headed
at forty. When he is fifty his sons may often be intriguing to supplant
their superannuated father. If this is true of the nobility, what of
the toiling peasantry? We have seen how Georges and Jeanne are aged
before their time.
Grinding toil by weakening the body, of course, leaves it exposed to
many ordinary diseases. But certainly conditions in castle and village
open the doors to extraordinary plagues as well. The age is happily
ignorant of sanitary precautions which more sophisticated mortals will
consider a matter of course. The peasants "almost live on the manure
heap." The clergy (though not themselves so uncleanly) seldom preach the
virtues of bathing; indeed, their discourses on "despising the body"
apparently discourage the practice. It is hard to keep meat any length
of time unless it is salted, and the vast amounts of salt meat consumed
everywhere are direct promoters of scurvy and gangrene. We have seen
that nearly all the clothing worn close to the body is woolen. This
retains filth, is hard to wash, and irritates the skin, another cause
for frequent dermal diseases--scrofula, the itch, and things even worse.
[Illustration: A LEPER
Holding in his hand the bones with which these unfortunates were
compelled to signal their approach from a distance. From a window in
the cathedral of Bourges (thirteenth century).]
[Sidenote: Fearful Plagues and Mortality]
Leprosy is a terrible scourge. Its nature is misunderstood. Often
severe but curable cases of eczema are confounded therewith, and
harmless victims are condemned to a death in life--perpetual banishment
to filthy cabins in the woods. Cholera and smallpox every now and
then break out in a neighborhood, and they are almost always fatal.
Nothing really can be done to check them except to pray to the saints.
Such diseases are (say the best informed) communicated "in the air";
consequently any ordinary isolation is useless. On the whole, they
ravage the villages more than they do the castles, though hardly
because the castle folk are able to take more effective physic. Yet
often enough a baron and his entire family may be swept away. Very
seldom is it suggested that pure water, cleanliness, and rational
schemes of isolation can accomplish much to defeat the apparent desire
of heaven to devastate an entire duchy.
Other diseases are fearfully common. The sufferers from nervous
complaints make up small armies. The general terrors and wars of the
times, the brooding fears of the devil, hell, and the eternal torment,
the spectacle of the fearful punishments, and, on the other hand, the
sheer ennui of life in many castles and in certain ill-ruled convents,
drive men and women out of their wits. Such sufferers are lucky if they
are treated with kindness and are not, as being "possessed of devils,"
clapped in a dungeon.
Finally, it should be said that lucky is the mother who does not have
one-third to one-half of all her offspring die in the act of birth.
Every entrance of a babe into the world is a dice throwing with death,
even if the mid-wife is clever. Once born, the children are likely to
be so injured in the initiatory process that they will be physically
imperfect or dangerously weakened. This is true even in the royal
families; how much more true in the peasant huts! It is not surprising
that the average man of the Feudal Ages can give and sustain hard
blows. Only the strongest have been able to survive the ordeals of
birth and childhood.
To fight these dangers, one must invoke both human and divine aid.
Good Christians usually feel that the healing saints avail more than
do physicians or wise women. If you have indigestion, invoke St.
Christopher; if dropsy, St. Eutropius; if fever, St. Petronila; for
the pest, St. Roch; for insanity, St. Mathurin; for kidney complaint,
St. René; for cramps, St. Crampan--and so with many other ills.
Nevertheless, one need not trust solely to prayers. Only great people,
however, employ regular physicians (_mires_). Villeins commonly have
in a "good woman," much better than a sorcerer. The breath of an ass
drives poison from a body. The touch of a dead man's tooth cures
toothache. If you have a nosebleed, seize the nose with two straws
shaped like a cross. If the itch troubles you, roll yourself naked in a
field of oats. Georges, the peasant, will tell you that such remedies
seldom fail.
A local professor of the healing art is Maître Denis, the executioner.
Since he knows so well how to mutilate bodies, he ought to be able to
understand the converse process of curing them. He has wide reputation
as a healer of broken bones, and he often sells his patients a panacea
for multifarious ills--"the fat of a man just hung."
There is at least this to be said for the peasants: the science of
_their_ healers will agree almost as much with that of later physicians
as does that of the contemporary "physicians" themselves. The Church
has not given any too great encouragement to medicine. The mighty St.
Ambrose has said that the proper healing is by prayers and vigils. Only
clerics of the inferior orders are allowed to study medical science,
and the dissection of dead bodies is decidedly discountenanced.[82]
At the castle the ordinary functionary to abate bodily ills is Maître
Louis, the baron's barber. When not scraping chins, he was very likely
giving the castle folk their monthly bleedings, without which it is
very hard to keep one's health. The bleedings take place, if possible,
in the great hall near the fire, and are undergone regularly by both
sexes. When the St. Aliquis forces are called to war, Maître Louis goes
with them as barber-surgeon, and he really has considerable skill in
setting fractures and cauterizing and salving wounds, as well as with a
few powerful drugs--mostly purgatives--which probably help those of his
patients who have the strongest constitutions to recover.
[Sidenote: Professional Physicians]
When one of the baron's own family is seriously sick, it is usual to
send to Pontdebois for a professional physician. About two years ago
Conon himself fell into a fever. They brought to him Maître Payen, who
claimed to have learned his art as _mire_ by travel among the schools
of medicine--at Salerno in Sicily, at Montpellier in the Languedoc
country, and even at Cordova among the Infidels, although the baron
swore angrily (after he was gone) that he had never been nearer any of
these places than Paris.
[Illustration: A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY DOCTOR
Restored by Viollet-Le-Duc, from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque
nationale.]
Maître Payen was sprucely dressed half as a priest, half as a rich
burgher. He wore elegant furs. He talked very learnedly of "febrifuges"
and "humors," and kept repeating, "Thus says Avincenna, the prince of
Spanish physicians," or, "Thus says Albucasis, the infallible follower
of Avincenna." If Conon had suffered from some easily discoverable
malady, probably Maître Payen could have suggested a fairly efficient
means of cure. He was not without shrewdness, and in his chest was
a whole arsenal of herbs and drugs. He had also efficient salves,
although he had never heard the word "antiseptic." But the baron had
picked up one of those maladies which baffled easy diagnosis. Maître
Payen, therefore, fussed about, clearly betraying his bewilderment,
then struck a professional attitude and announced oracularly, "The
obstruction to health is in the liver."
"Nay," groaned the baron, "it is in the head that I feel so wretched."
"That is foolish," retorted the _mire_, crushingly: "Beware of
that word 'obstruction,' because you do not understand what it
signifies."[83]
He next muttered certain cabalistic words; said that the baron should
be glad that his liver was affected, because that was the seat of
honor, and that upon recovery his honor would be enlarged. The spleen
was the seat of laughter, while the lungs fanned the heart. Payen then
talked of remedies. Perhaps the urine of a dog would be best, or the
blood of a hegoat; but these were only villein remedies. Messire, the
patient, was a great noble and needed noble remedies, suitable for his
rank. He would therefore (since the liver was affected) give him the
dried and pulverized liver of a toad. And so he left his medicines,
took a gold piece, and departed.
That night Conon was delirious, but Adela, who, like every mistress of
a castle, had perforce learned much of nursing, applied cold cloths to
his body, while Father Grégoire prayed to the saints. The next morning,
because of the cloths, the saints, or toad's liver, the fever abated.
Perhaps it had merely run its natural course. After the baron recovered
he would curse terribly at mention of Maître Payen. He would be ready
enough to cry "amen!" to the saying of the monk Guy of Provins, "they
(the physicians) kill numbers of the sick, and exhaust themselves to
find maladies for everybody. Woe to him who falls into their power! I
prefer a capon to all their mixtures!" The monk concedes, indeed, that
certain physicians are useful, but that it is because of the confidence
which they inspire rather than thanks to their medicines that they
effect cures.
[Sidenote: Healing Relics and Processions]
When next Conon falls sick, he vows that he will trust simply to Maître
Louis or even to Maître Denis, although he may consent to send for
a Lazarist monk, a member of the great monastic order which makes a
specialty of healing the sick. For although these truly noble monks
(who combine worldly wisdom with an equal amount of piety) treat
especially leprosy, they are gradually turning their attention to
diseases in general. If he cannot get a Lazarist, he will be likely to
hire in an astrologer to discover a remedy by consulting the stars; or
Father Grégoire may organize a "healing procession" of all the monks,
clerks, and pious laymen whom he can muster. With solemnity they will
carry the whole stock of saints' relics in the neighborhood to the
sick seigneur, and lay them devoutly upon his abdomen. This remedy was
tried in Paris some time ago to cure Prince Louis, the king's heir,
and he recovered promptly. Similar assistance is available for a great
seigneur like Conon.
Not always, indeed, will even the saints' relics avail. When the time
had come for the good Lady Odelina, Conon's mother, they postponed
extreme unction to the final moment, because after that ceremony the
sick person has really no right to get well. The hair falls out and
the natural heat is diminished. The moment breath quitted the noble
dame's body, the servants ran furiously through the castle, emptying
every vessel of water lest the departing soul should be drowned
therein. The dead body was also watched carefully until burial, lest
the devil should replace it in its coffin with a black cat, and
likewise lest a dog or cat should run over the coffin and change the
corpse into a vampire. Conon and Adela are not convinced of these
notions, but do not dispute them with the servitors.
[Illustration: A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY BURIAL SCENE
From an English manuscript (Schultz).]
Next the body was carefully embalmed. The heart was removed, to be
buried at a nunnery whereof Lady Odelina had been the patroness. A
waxen death mask was made of the face, and the body was laid out on a
handsome bed with black hangings. A temporary altar was set up in the
apartment that masses might be said there, and one or two of Conon's
vassals or squires remained on guard night and day, fully armed, while
round the bed blazed two or three scores of tall candles.
[Sidenote: Funeral Customs]
The interment took place in the abbey church, in the transept where
rested so many of the St. Aliquis stock. They laid upon the Lady
Odelina's breast a silver cross engraved with the words of absolution;
and in the heavy stone casket also were buried four small earthen pots,
each of which had contained some of the incense burned during the
funeral ceremony. Finally, when the rites were over, Conon employed a
cunning sculptor to make a life-size marble effigy of his mother, to
rest upon the slab covering her tomb--an effigy which, by the dignity
and genuine peace of form and face, was long to express how truly noble
had been his gracious mother.
Common folk cannot have marble caskets and effigies, but even poor
peasants are graced with decidedly elaborate funerals. When a person of
the least consequence in the village dies, a crier goes down all the
lanes, ringing a bell and calling out the name of the deceased, adding,
"Pray God for the dead." Peasants of quality are likely to be laid away
in plaster coffins, although the poorest class of villeins are wrapped
only in rags and tossed into shallow pits.
Still worse is the fate of those who die excommunicated by the Church
or of suicides. These unfortunates cannot even be buried in holy
ground. Their bodies are often exposed, to be torn by the dogs and
crows. Sometimes, however, a hardened sinner repents sufficiently on
his deathbed to be restored to the graces of religion. But in this case
his body is frequently burned, all laden with iron or brazen fetters.
The idea is thus to mortify the body, even after the breath of life has
departed, and so to abate those fires in purgatory assuredly awaiting
for all save great saints, who can pass straight to heaven, or the
numerous reprobates whose guilt requires not temporary, but eternal
torment.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] As a result of this attitude, such a distinguished and genuinely
learned scholar as Albert the Great is said to have confounded tendons
and nerves.
[83] A mediæval medical treatise deliberately advises the use of
this argument to silence patients when the physicians cannot make a
diagnosis, yet must say something.