ORPHEUS.
What sorrow-laden song shall e'er be found
To match the burden of my matchless woe?
How shall I make the fount of tears abound,
To weep apace with grief's unmeasured flow?
Salt tears I'll waste upon the barren ground,
So long as life delays me here below;
And since my fate hath wrought me wrong so sore,
I swear I'll never love a woman more!
Henceforth I'll pluck the buds of opening spring,
The bloom of youth when life is loveliest,
Ere years have spoiled the beauty which they bring:
This love, I swear, is sweetest, softest, best!
Of female charms let no one speak or sing;
Since she is slain who ruled within my breast.
He who would seek my converse, let him see
That ne'er he talk of woman's love to me!
How pitiful is he who changes mind
For woman! for her love laments or grieves!
Who suffers her in chains his will to bind,
Or trusts her words lighter than withered leaves,
Her loving looks more treacherous than the wind!
A thousand times she veers; to nothing cleaves:
Follows who flies; from him who follows, flees;
And comes and goes like waves on stormy seas!
High Jove confirms the truth of what I said,
Who, caught and bound in love's delightful snare,
Enjoys in heaven his own bright Ganymed:
Phoebus on earth had Hyacinth the fair:
Hercules, conqueror of the world, was led
Captive to Hylas by this love so rare.—
Advice for husbands! Seek divorce, and fly
Far, far away from female company!
[_Enter a_ MAENAD _leading a train of_ BACCHANTES.
A MAENAD.
Ho! Sisters! Up! Alive!
See him who doth our sex deride!
360 Hunt him to death, the slave!
Thou snatch the thyrsus! Thou this oak-tree rive!
Cast down this doeskin and that hide!
We'll wreak our fury on the knave!
Yea, he shall feel our wrath, the knave!
He shall yield up his hide
Riven as woodmen fir-trees rive!
No power his life can save;
Since women he hath dared deride!
Ho! To him, sisters! Ho! Alive!
[ORPHEUS _is chased off the scene and slain: the_ MAENADS
_then return._
A MAENAD.
Ho! Bacchus! Ho! I yield thee thanks for this!
Through all the woodland we the wretch have borne:
So that each root is slaked with blood of his:
Yea, limb from limb his body have we torn
Through the wild forest with a fearful bliss:
His gore hath bathed the earth by ash and thorn!—
Go then! thy blame on lawful wedlock fling!
Ho! Bacchus! take the victim that we bring!
CHORUS OF MAENADS.
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
With ivy coronals, bunch and berry,
Crown we our heads to worship thee!
Thou hast bidden us to make merry
Day and night with jollity!
Drink then! Bacchus is here! Drink free,
And hand ye the drinking-cup to me!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
See, I have emptied my horn already:
Stretch hither your beaker to me, I pray:
Are the hills and the lawns where we roam unsteady?
Or is it my brain that reels away?
361 Let every one run to and fro through the hay,
As ye see me run! Ho! after me!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
Methinks I am dropping in swoon or slumber:
Am I drunken or sober, yes or no?
What are these weights my feet encumber?
You too are tipsy, well I know!
Let every one do as ye see me do,
Let every one drink and quaff like me!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
Cry Bacchus! Cry Bacchus! Be blithe and merry,
Tossing wine down your throats away!
Let sleep then come and our gladness bury:
Drink you, and you, and you, while ye may!
Dancing is over for me to-day.
Let every one cry aloud Evohé!
Bacchus! we all must follow thee!
Bacchus! Bacchus! Ohé! Ohé!
Though an English translation can do little toward rendering the facile
graces of Poliziano's style, that 'roseate fluency' for which it has
been praised by his Italian admirers, the main qualities of the 'Orfeo'
as a composition may be traced in this rough copy. Of dramatic power,
of that mastery over the deeper springs of human nature which
distinguished the first effort of the English muse in Marlowe's plays,
there is but little. A certain adaptation of the language to the
characters, as in the rudeness of Thyrsis when contrasted with the
rustic elegance of Aristæus, a touch of simple feeling in Eurydice's
lyrical outcry of farewell, a discrimination between the tender
sympathy of Proserpine and Pluto's stern relenting, a spirited
presentation of the Bacchanalian _furore_ in the Mænads, an attempt to
model the Satyr Mnesillus as apart from human nature and yet
362sympathetic to its anguish, these points constitute the chief
dramatic features of the melodrama. Orpheus himself is a purely lyrical
personage. Of character, he can scarcely be said to have anything
marked; and his part rises to its height precisely in that passage
where the lyrist has to be displayed. Before the gates of Hades and the
throne of Proserpine he sings, and his singing is the right outpouring
of a poet's soul; each octave resumes the theme of the last stanza with
a swell of utterance, a crescendo of intonation that recalls the
passionate and unpremeditated descant of a bird upon the boughs alone.
To this true quality of music is added the persuasiveness of pleading.
That the violin melody of his incomparable song is lost, must be
reckoned a great misfortune. We have good reason to believe that the
part of Orpheus was taken by Messer Baccio Ugolini, singing to the
viol. Here too it may be mentioned that a _tondo_ in monochrome,
painted by Signorelli among the arabesques at Orvieto, shows Orpheus at
the throne of Plato, habited as a poet with the laurel crown and
playing on a violin of antique form. It would be interesting to know
whether a rumour of the Mantuan pageant had reached the ears of the
Cortonese painter.
If the whole of the 'Orfeo' had been conceived and executed with the
same artistic feeling as the chief act, it would have been a really
fine poem independently of its historical interest. But we have only to
turn the page and read the lament uttered for the loss of Eurydice, in
order to perceive Poliziano's incapacity for dealing with his hero in a
situation of greater difficulty. The pathos which might have made us
sympathise with Orpheus in his misery, the passion, approaching to
madness, which might have justified his misogyny, are absent. It is
difficult not to feel that in this climax of his anguish he was a poor
creature, and that 363the Mænads served him right. Nothing illustrates
the defect of real dramatic imagination better than this failure to
dignify the catastrophe. Gifted with a fine lyrical inspiration,
Poliziano seems to have already felt the Bacchic chorus which forms so
brilliant a termination to his play, and to have forgotten his duty to
the unfortunate Orpheus, whose sorrow for Eurydice is stultified and
made unmeaning by the prosaic expression of a base resolve. It may
indeed be said in general that the 'Orfeo' is a good poem only where
the situation is not so much dramatic as lyrical, and that its finest
passage—the scene in Hades—was fortunately for its author one in which
the dramatic motive had to be lyrically expressed. In this respect, as
in many others, the 'Orfeo' combines the faults and merits of the
Italian attempts at melo-tragedy. To break a butterfly upon the wheel
is, however, no fit function of criticism: and probably no one would
have smiled more than the author of this improvisation, at the thought
of its being gravely dissected just four hundred years after the
occasion it was meant to serve had long been given over to oblivion.
_NOTE_
Poliziano's 'Orfeo' was dedicated to Messer Carlo Canale, the husband
of that famous Vannozza who bore Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia to
Alexander VI. As first published in 1494, and as republished from time
to time up to the year 1776, it carried the title of 'La Favola di
Orfeo,' and was not divided into acts. Frequent stage-directions
sufficed, as in the case of Florentine 'Sacre Rappresentazioni,' for
the indication of the scenes. In this earliest redaction of the 'Orfeo'
the chorus of the Dryads, the part of Mnesillus, the lyrical speeches
of Proserpine and Pluto, and the first lyric of the Mænads are either
omitted or represented by passages in _ottava rima_. In the year 1776
the Padre Ireneo Affò 364printed at Venice a new version of 'Orfeo,
Tragedia di Messer Angelo Poliziano,' collated by him from two MSS.
This play is divided into five acts, severally entitled 'Pastoricus,'
'Nymphas Habet,' 'Heroïcus,' 'Necromanticus,' and 'Bacchanalis.' The
stage-directions are given partly in Latin, partly in Italian; and
instead of the 'Announcement of the Feast' by Mercury, a prologue
consisting of two octave stanzas is appended. A Latin Sapphic ode in
praise of the Cardinal Gonzaga, which was interpolated in the first
version, is omitted, and certain changes are made in the last soliloquy
of Orpheus. There is little doubt, I think, that the second version,
first given to the press by the Padre Affò, was Poliziano's own
recension of his earlier composition. I have therefore followed it in
the main, except that I have not thought it necessary to observe the
somewhat pedantic division into acts, and have preferred to use the
original 'Announcement of the Feast,' which proves the integral
connection between this ancient secular play and the Florentine Mystery
or 'Sacra Rappresentazione.' The last soliloquy of Orpheus, again, has
been freely translated by me from both versions for reasons which will
be obvious to students of the original. I have yet to make a remark
upon one detail of my translation. In line 390 (part of the first lyric
of the Mænads) the Italian gives us:—
Spezzata come il fabbro il cribro spezza.
This means literally: 'Riven as a blacksmith rives a sieve or boulter.'
Now sieves are made in Tuscany of a plate of iron, pierced with holes;
and the image would therefore be familiar to an Italian. I have,
however, preferred to translate thus:—
Riven as woodmen fir-trees rive,
instead of giving:—
Riven as blacksmiths boulters rive,
because I thought that the second and faithful version would be
unintelligible as well as unpoetical for English readers.
365
EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH
ON THE PAPAL COURT AT AVIGNON
Fountain of woe! Harbour of endless ire!
Thou school of errors, haunt of heresies!
Once Rome, now Babylon, the world's disease,
That maddenest men with fears and fell desire!
O forge of fraud! O prison dark and dire,
Where dies the good, where evil breeds increase!
Thou living Hell! Wonders will never cease
If Christ rise not to purge thy sins with fire.
Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
Against thy founders thou dost raise thy horn,
Thou shameless harlot! And whence flows this pride?
Even from foul and loathed adultery,
The wage of lewdness. Constantine, return!
Not so: the felon world its fate must bide.
TO STEFANO COLONNA
WRITTEN FROM VAUCLUSE
Glorius Colonna, thou on whose high head
Rest all our hopes and the great Latin name,
Whom from the narrow path of truth and fame
The wrath of Jove turned not with stormful dread:
Here are no palace-courts, no stage to tread;
But pines and oaks the shadowy valleys fill
Between the green fields and the neighbouring hill,
Where musing oft I climb by fancy led.
These lift from earth to heaven our soaring soul,
While the sweet nightingale, that in thick bowers
Through darkness pours her wail of tuneful woe,
Doth bend our charmed breast to love's control;
But thou alone hast marred this bliss of ours,
Since from our side, dear lord, thou needs must go.
366
IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XI
ON LEAVING AVIGNON
Backward at every weary step and slow
These limbs I turn which with great pain I bear;
Then take I comfort from the fragrant air
That breathes from thee, and sighing onward go.
But when I think how joy is turned to woe,
Remembering my short life and whence I fare,
I stay my feet for anguish and despair,
And cast my tearful eyes on earth below.
At times amid the storm of misery
This doubt assails me: how frail limbs and poor
Can severed from their spirit hope to live.
Then answers Love: Hast thou no memory
How I to lovers this great guerdon give,
Free from all human bondage to endure?
IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XII
THOUGHTS IN ABSENCE
The wrinkled sire with hair like winter snow
Leaves the beloved spot where he hath passed his years,
Leaves wife and children, dumb with bitter tears,
To see their father's tottering steps and slow.
Dragging his aged limbs with weary woe,
In these last days of life he nothing fears,
But with stout heart his fainting spirit cheers,
And spent and wayworn forward still doth go;
Then comes to Rome, following his heart's desire,
To gaze upon the portraiture of Him
Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to see:
Thus I, alas! my seeking spirit tire,
Lady, to find in other features dim
The longed for, loved, true lineaments of thee.
367
IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. LII
OH THAT I HAD WINGS LIKE A DOVE!
I am so tired beneath the ancient load
Of my misdeeds and custom's tyranny,
That much I fear to fail upon the road
And yield my soul unto mine enemy.
'Tis true a friend from whom all splendour flowed,
To save me came with matchless courtesy:
Then flew far up from sight to heaven's abode,
So that I strive in vain his face to see.
Yet still his voice reverberates here below:
Oh ye who labour, lo! the path is here;
Come unto me if none your going stay!
What grace, what love, what fate surpassing fear
Shall give me wings like dove's wings soft as snow,
That I may rest and raise me from the clay?
IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXIV
The eyes whereof I sang my fervid song,
The arms, the hands, the feet, the face benign,
Which severed me from what was rightly mine,
And made me sole and strange amid the throng,
The crispèd curls of pure gold beautiful,
And those angelic smiles which once did shine
Imparadising earth with joy divine,
Are now a little dust—dumb, deaf, and dull.
And yet I live! wherefore I weep and wail,
Left alone without the light I loved so long,
Storm-tossed upon a bark that hath no sail.
Then let me here give o'er my amorous song;
The fountains of old inspiration fail,
And nought but woe my dolorous chords prolong.
368
IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXXIV
In thought I raised me to the place where she
Whom still on earth I seek and find not, shines;
There 'mid the souls whom the third sphere confines,
More fair I found her and less proud to me.
She took my hand and said: Here shalt thou be
With me ensphered, unless desires mislead;
Lo! I am she who made thy bosom bleed,
Whose day ere eve was ended utterly:
My bliss no mortal heart can understand;
Thee only do I lack, and that which thou
So loved, now left on earth, my beauteous veil.
Ah! wherefore did she cease and loose my hand?
For at the sound of that celestial tale
I all but stayed in paradise till now.
IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. LXXIV
The flower of angels and the spirits blest,
Burghers of heaven, on that first day when she
Who is my lady died, around her pressed
Fulfilled with wonder and with piety.
What light is this? What beauty manifest?
Marvelling they cried: for such supremacy
Of splendour in this age to our high rest
Hath never soared from earth's obscurity.
She, glad to have exchanged her spirit's place,
Consorts with those whose virtues most exceed;
At times the while she backward turns her face
To see me follow—seems to wait and plead:
Therefore toward heaven my will and soul I raise,
Because I hear her praying me to speed.
VOLUME III.
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO
Students of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translations from the early
Italian poets (_Dante and his Circle_. Ellis & White, 1874) will not
fail to have noticed the striking figure made among those jejune
imitators of Provençal mannerism by two rhymesters, Cecco Angiolieri
and Folgore da San Gemignano. Both belong to the school of Siena, and
both detach themselves from the metaphysical fashion of their epoch by
clearness of intention and directness of style. The sonnets of both are
remarkable for what in the critical jargon of to-day might be termed
realism. Cecco is even savage and brutal. He anticipates Villon from
afar, and is happily described by Mr. Rossetti as the prodigal, or
'scamp' of the Dantesque circle. The case is different with Folgore.
There is no poet who breathes a fresher air of gentleness. He writes in
images, dealing but little with ideas. Every line presents a picture,
and each picture has the charm of a miniature fancifully drawn and
brightly coloured on a missal-margin. Cecco and Folgore alike have
abandoned the 2 mediæval mysticism which sounds unreal on almost all
Italian lips but Dante's. True Italians, they are content to live for
life's sake, and to take the world as it presents itself to natural
senses. But Cecco is perverse and impious. His love has nothing
delicate; his hatred is a morbid passion. At his worst or best (for his
best writing is his worst feeling) we find him all but rabid. If
Caligula, for instance, had written poetry, he might have piqued
himself upon the following sonnet; only we must do Cecco the justice of
remembering that his rage is more than half ironical and humorous:—
An I were fire, I would burn up the world;
An I were wind, with tempest I'd it break;
An I were sea, I'd drown it in a lake;
An I were God, to hell I'd have it hurled;
An I were Pope, I'd see disaster whirled
O'er Christendom, deep joy thereof to take;
An I were Emperor, I'd quickly make
All heads of all folk from their necks be twirled;
An I were death, I'd to my father go;
An I were life, forthwith from him I'd fly;
And with my mother I'd deal even so;
An I were Cecco, as I am but I,
Young girls and pretty for myself I'd hold,
But let my neighbours take the plain and old.
Of all this there is no trace in Folgore. The worst a moralist could
say of him is that he sought out for himself a life of pure enjoyment.
The famous Sonnets on the Months give particular directions for pastime
in a round of pleasure suited to each season. The Sonnets on the Days
are conceived in a like hedonistic spirit. But these series are
specially addressed to members of the Glad Brigades and Spending
Companies, which were common in the great mercantile cities of mediæval
Italy. Their tone is doubtless due to the occasion of their
composition, as compliments to Messer Nicholò di Nisi and Messer Guerra
Cavicciuoli.
3 The mention of these names reminds me that a word need be said about
the date of Folgore. Mr. Rossetti does not dispute the commonly
assigned date of 1260, and takes for granted that the Messer Nicolò of
the Sonnets on the Months was the Sienese gentleman referred to by
Dante in a certain passage of the 'Inferno':[48]—
And to the Poet said I: 'Now was ever
So vain a people as the Sienese?
Not for a certainty the French by far.'
Whereat the other leper, who had heard me,
Replied unto my speech: 'Taking out Stricca,
Who knew the art of moderate expenses,
And Nicolò, who the luxurious use
Of cloves discovered earliest of all
Within that garden where such seed takes root.
And taking out the band, among whom squandered
Caccia d' Ascian his vineyards and vast woods,
And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered.'
Now Folgore refers in his political sonnets to events of the years 1314
and 1315; and the correct reading of a line in his last sonnet on the
Months gives the name of Nicholò di Nisi to the leader of Folgore's
'blithe and lordly Fellowship.' The first of these facts leads us to
the conclusion that Folgore flourished in the first quarter of the
fourteenth, instead of in the third quarter of the thirteenth century.
The second prevents our identifying Nicholò di Nisi with the Niccolò
de' Salimbeni, who is thought to have been the founder of the
Fellowship of the Carnation. Furthermore, documents have recently been
brought to light which mention at San Gemignano, in the years 1305 and
1306, a certain Folgore. There is no sufficient reason to identify this
Folgore with the poet; but the name, to say the least, is so peculiar
that its occurrence in the records of so small a town as San Gemignano
gives some confirmation to the hypothesis of the 4 poet's later date.
Taking these several considerations together, I think we must abandon
the old view that Folgore was one of the earliest Tuscan poets, a view
which is, moreover, contradicted by his style. Those critics, at any
rate, who still believe him to have been a predecessor of Dante's, are
forced to reject as spurious the political sonnets referring to Monte
Catini and the plunder of Lucca by Uguccione della Faggiuola. Yet these
sonnets rest on the same manuscript authority as the Months and Days,
and are distinguished by the same qualities.[49]
[48] _Inferno_, xxix. 121.—_Longfellow_.
[49] The above points are fully discussed by Signor Giulio Navone, in
his recent edition of _Le Rime di Folgore da San Gemignano e di Cene
da la Chitarra d' Arezzo_. Bologna: Romagnoli, 1880. I may further
mention that in the sonnet on the Pisans, translated on p. 18, which
belongs to the political series, Folgore uses his own name.
Whatever may be the date of Folgore, whether we assign his period to
the middle of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth
century, there is no doubt but that he presents us with a very lively
picture of Italian manners, drawn from the point of view of the high
bourgeoisie. It is on this account that I have thought it worth while
to translate five of his Sonnets on Knighthood, which form the fragment
that remains to us from a series of seventeen. Few poems better
illustrate the temper of Italian aristocracy when the civil wars of two
centuries had forced the nobles to enroll themselves among the
burghers, and when what little chivalry had taken root in Italy was
fast decaying in a gorgeous over-bloom of luxury. The institutions of
feudal knighthood had lost their sterner meaning for our poet. He uses
them for the suggestion of delicate allegories fancifully painted.
Their mysterious significance is turned to gaiety, their piety to
amorous delight, their grimness to refined enjoyment. Still these
changes are effected with perfect good taste and in perfect good faith.
Something of the perfume of true 5 chivalry still lingered in a society
which was fast becoming mercantile and diplomatic. And this perfume is
exhaled by the petals of Folgore's song-blossom. He has no conception
that to readers of Mort Arthur, or to Founders of the Garter, to Sir
Miles Stapleton, Sir Richard Fitz-Simon, or Sir James Audley, his ideal
knight would have seemed but little better than a scented civet-cat.
Such knights as his were all that Italy possessed, and the poet-painter
was justly proud of them, since they served for finished pictures of
the beautiful in life.
The Italians were not a feudal race. During the successive reigns of
Lombard, Frankish, and German masters, they had passively accepted,
stubbornly resisted feudalism, remaining true to the conviction that
they themselves were Roman. In Roman memories they sought the
traditions which give consistency to national consciousness. And when
the Italian communes triumphed finally over Empire, counts, bishops,
and rural aristocracy; then Roman law was speedily substituted for the
'asinine code' of the barbarians, and Roman civility gave its tone to
social customs in the place of Teutonic chivalry. Yet just as the
Italians borrowed, modified, and misconceived Gothic architecture, so
they took a feudal tincture from the nations of the North with whom
they came in contact. Their noble families, those especially who
followed the Imperial party, sought the honour of knighthood; and even
the free cities arrogated to themselves the right of conferring this
distinction by diploma on their burghers. The chivalry thus formed in
Italy was a decorative institution. It might be compared to the
ornamental frontispiece which masks the structural poverty of such
Gothic buildings as the Cathedral of Orvieto.
On the descent of the German Emperor into Lombardy, the great vassals
who acknowledged him, made knighthood, 6 among titles of more solid
import, the price of their allegiance.[50] Thus the chronicle of the
Cortusi for the year 1354 tells us that when Charles IV. 'was advancing
through the March, and had crossed the Oglio, and was at the borders of
Cremona, in his camp upon the snow, he, sitting upon his horse, did
knight the doughty and noble man, Francesco da Carrara, who had
constantly attended him with a great train, and smiting him upon the
neck with his palm, said: "Be thou a good knight, and loyal to the
Empire." Thereupon the noble German peers dismounted, and forthwith
buckled on Francesco's spurs. To them the Lord Francesco gave chargers
and horses of the best he had.' Immediately afterwards Francesco dubbed
several of his own retainers knights. And this was the customary
fashion of these Lombard lords. For we read how in the year 1328 Can
Grande della Scala, after the capture of Padua, 'returned to Verona,
and for the further celebration of his victory upon the last day of
October held a court, and made thirty-eight knights with his own hand
of the divers districts of Lombardy.' And in 1294 Azzo d'Este 'was
knighted by Gerardo da Camino, who then was Lord of Treviso, upon the
piazza of Ferrara, before the gate of the Bishop's palace. And on the
same day at the same hour the said Lord Marquis Azzo made fifty-two
knights with his own hand, namely, the Lord Francesco, his brother, and
others of Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Florence, Padua, and Lombardy; and
on this occasion was a great court held in Ferrara.' Another chronicle,
referring to the same event, says that the whole expenses of the
ceremony, including the rich dresses of the new knights, were at the
charge of the Marquis. It was customary, when a noble house had risen
to great wealth and 7 had abundance of fighting men, to increase its
prestige and spread abroad its glory by a wholesale creation of
knights. Thus the Chronicle of Rimini records a high court held by
Pandolfo Malatesta in the May of 1324, when he and his two sons, with
two of his near relatives and certain strangers from Florence, Bologna,
and Perugia, received this honour. At Siena, in like manner, in the
year 1284, 'thirteen of the house of Salimbeni were knighted with great
pomp.'
[50] The passages used in the text are chiefly drawn from Muratori's
fifty-third Dissertation.
It was not on the battlefield that the Italians sought this honour.
They regarded knighthood as a part of their signorial parade. Therefore
Republics, in whom perhaps, according to strict feudal notions, there
was no fount of honour, presumed to appoint procurators for the special
purpose of making knights. Florence, Siena, and Arezzo, after this
fashion gave the golden spurs to men who were enrolled in the arts of
trade or commerce. The usage was severely criticised by Germans who
visited Italy in the Imperial train. Otto Frisingensis, writing the
deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, speaks with bitterness thereof: 'To the
end that they may not lack means of subduing their neighbours, they
think it no shame to gird as knights young men of low birth, or even
handicraftsmen in despised mechanic arts, the which folk other nations
banish like the plague from honourable and liberal pursuits.' Such
knights, amid the chivalry of Europe, were not held in much esteem; nor
is it easy to see what the cities, which had formally excluded nobles
from their government, thought to gain by aping institutions which had
their true value only in a feudal society. We must suppose that the
Italians were not firmly set enough in their own type to resist an
enthusiasm which inflamed all Christendom. At the same time they were
too Italian to comprehend the spirit of the thing they borrowed. The
knights thus made already contained within themselves the germ of those
Condottieri 8who reduced the service of arms to a commercial
speculation. But they lent splendour to the Commonwealth, as may be
seen in the grave line of mounted warriors, steel-clad, with open
visors, who guard the commune of Siena in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco.
Giovanni Villani, in a passage of his Chronicle which deals with the
fair state of Florence just before the outbreak of the Black and White
parties, says the city at that epoch numbered 'three hundred Cavalieri
di Corredo, with many clubs of knights and squires, who morning and
evening went to meat with many men of the court, and gave away on high
festivals many robes of vair.' It is clear that these citizen knights
were leaders of society, and did their duty to the commonwealth by
adding to its joyous cheer. Upon the battlefields of the civil wars,
moreover, they sustained at their expense the charges of the cavalry.
Siena was a city much given to parade and devoted to the Imperial
cause, in which the institution of chivalry flourished. Not only did
the burghers take knighthood from their procurators, but the more
influential sought it by a special dispensation from the Emperor. Thus
we hear how Nino Tolomei obtained a Cæsarean diploma of knighthood for
his son Giovanni, and published it with great pomp to the people in his
palace. This Giovanni, when he afterwards entered religion, took the
name of Bernard, and founded the Order of Monte Oliveto.
Owing to the special conditions of Italian chivalry, it followed that
the new knight, having won his spurs by no feat of arms upon the
battlefield, was bounden to display peculiar magnificence in the
ceremonies of his investiture. His honour was held to be less the
reward of courage than of liberality. And this feeling is strongly
expressed in a curious passage of Matteo Villani's Chronicle. 'When the
Emperor Charles had received the crown in Rome, as we have said, he
9turned towards Siena, and on the 19th day of April arrived at that
city; and before he entered the same, there met him people of the
commonwealth with great festivity upon the hour of vespers; in the
which reception eight burghers, given to display but miserly, to the
end they might avoid the charges due to knighthood, did cause
themselves then and there to be made knights by him. And no sooner had
he passed the gates than many ran to meet him without order in their
going or provision for the ceremony, and he, being aware of the vain
and light impulse of that folk, enjoined upon the Patriarch to knight
them in his name. The Patriarch could not withstay from knighting as
many as offered themselves; and seeing the thing so cheap, very many
took the honour, who before that hour had never thought of being
knighted, nor had made provision of what is required from him who
seeketh knighthood, but with light impulse did cause themselves to be
borne upon the arms of those who were around the Patriarch; and when
they were in the path before him, these raised such an one on high, and
took his customary cap off, and after he had had the cheek-blow which
is used in knighting, put a gold-fringed cap upon his head, and drew
him from the press, and so he was a knight. And after this wise were
made four-and-thirty on that evening, of the noble and lesser folk. And
when the Emperor had been attended to his lodging, night fell, and all
returned home; and the new knights without preparation or expense
celebrated their reception into chivalry with their families forthwith.
He who reflects with a mind not subject to base avarice upon the coming
of a new-crowned Emperor into so famous a city, and bethinks him how so
many noble and rich burghers were promoted to the honour of knighthood
in their native land, men too by nature fond of pomp, without having
made any solemn festival in common or in private to the fame of
chivalry, 10may judge this people little worthy of the distinction they
received.'
This passage is interesting partly as an instance of Florentine spite
against Siena, partly as showing that in Italy great munificence was
expected from the carpet-knights who had not won their spurs with toil,
and partly as proving how the German Emperors, on their parade
expeditions through Italy, debased the institutions they were bound to
hold in respect. Enfeebled by the extirpation of the last great German
house which really reigned in Italy, the Empire was now no better than
a cause of corruption and demoralisation to Italian society. The
conduct of a man like Charles disgusted even the most fervent
Ghibellines; and we find Fazio degli Uberti flinging scorn upon his
avarice and baseness in such lines as these:—
Sappi ch' i' son Italia che ti parlo,
Di Lusimburgo _ignominioso Carlo_ ...
Veggendo te aver tese tue arti
_A tór danari e gir con essi a casa_ ...
Tu dunque, Giove, perche 'l Santo uccello
Da questo Carlo quarto
Imperador non togli e dalle mani
_Degli altri, lurchi moderni Germani_
_Che d' aquila un allocco n' hanno fatto_?
From a passage in a Sienese chronicle we learn what ceremonies of
bravery were usual in that city when the new knights understood their
duty. It was the year 1326. Messer Francesco Bandinelli was about to be
knighted on the morning of Christmas Day. The friends of his house sent
peacocks and pheasants by the dozen, and huge pies of marchpane, and
game in quantities. Wine, meat, and bread were distributed to the
Franciscan and other convents, and a fair and noble court was opened to
all comers. Messer Sozzo, father of the novice, went, attended by his
guests, to 11hear high mass in the cathedral; and there upon the marble
pulpit, which the Pisans carved, the ceremony was completed. Tommaso di
Nello bore his sword and cap and spurs before him upon horseback.
Messer Sozzo girded the sword upon the loins of Messer Francesco, his
son aforesaid. Messer Pietro Ridolfi, of Rome, who was the first vicar
that came to Siena, and the Duke of Calabria buckled on his right spur.
The Captain of the People buckled on his left. The Count Simone da
Battifolle then undid his sword and placed it in the hands of Messer
Giovanni di Messer Bartolo de' Fibenzi da Rodi, who handed it to Messer
Sozzo, the which sword had previously been girded by the father on his
son. After this follows a list of the illustrious guests, and an
inventory of the presents made to them by Messer Francesco. We find
among these 'a robe of silken cloth and gold, skirt, and fur, and cap
lined with vair, with a silken cord.' The description of the many
costly dresses is minute; but I find no mention of armour. The singers
received golden florins, and the players upon instruments 'good store
of money.' A certain Salamone was presented with the clothes which the
novice doffed before he took the ceremonial bath. The whole catalogue
concludes with Messer Francesco's furniture and outfit. This, besides a
large wardrobe of rich clothes and furs, contains armour and the
trappings for charger and palfrey. The _Corte Bandita_, or open house
held upon this occasion, lasted for eight days, and the charges on the
Bandinelli estates must have been considerable.
Knights so made were called in Italy _Cavalieri Addobbati_, or _di
Corredo_, probably because the expense of costly furniture was borne by
them—_addobbo_ having become a name for decorative trappings, and
_Corredo_ for equipment. The latter is still in use for a bride's
trousseau. The former has the same Teutonic root as our verb 'to dub.'
But the Italians 12recognised three other kinds of knights, the
_Cavalieri Bagati_, _Cavalieri di Scudo_, and _Cavalieri d'Arme_. Of
the four sorts Sacchetti writes in one of his novels:—'Knights of the
Bath are made with the greatest ceremonies, and it behoves them to be
bathed and washed of all impurity. Knights of Equipment are those who
take the order with a mantle of dark green and the gilded garland.
Knights of the Shield are such as are made knights by commonwealths or
princes, or go to investiture armed, and with the casque upon their
head. Knights of Arms are those who in the opening of a battle, or upon
a foughten field, are dubbed knights.' These distinctions, however,
though concordant with feudal chivalry, were not scrupulously
maintained in Italy. Messer Francesco Bandinelli, for example, was
certainly a _Cavaliere di Corredo_. Yet he took the bath, as we have
seen. Of a truth, the Italians selected those picturesque elements of
chivalry which lent themselves to pageant and parade. The sterner
intention of the institution, and the symbolic meaning of its various
ceremonies, were neglected by them.
In the foregoing passages, which serve as a lengthy preamble to
Folgore's five sonnets, I have endeavoured to draw illustrations from
the history of Siena, because Folgore represents Sienese society at the
height of mediæval culture. In the first of the series he describes the
preparation made by the aspirant after knighthood. The noble youth is
so bent on doing honour to the order of chivalry, that he raises money
by mortgage to furnish forth the banquets and the presents due upon the
occasion of his institution. He has made provision also of equipment
for himself and all his train. It will be noticed that Folgore dwells
only on the fair and joyous aspect of the ceremony. The religious
enthusiasm of knighthood has disappeared, and already, in the first
decade of the fourteenth century, we find the spirit 13of Jehan de
Saintrè prevalent in Italy. The word _donzello_, derived from the Latin
_domicellus_, I have translated _squire_, because the donzel was a
youth of gentle birth awaiting knighthood.
This morn a young squire shall be made a knight;
hereof he fain would be right worthy found,
And therefore pledgeth lands and castles round
To furnish all that fits a man of might.
Meat, bread and wine he gives to many a wight;
Capons and pheasants on his board abound,
Where serving men and pages march around;
Choice chambers, torches, and wax candle light.
Barbed steeds, a multitude, are in his thought,
Mailed men at arms and noble company,
Spears, pennants, housing cloths, bells richly wrought.
Musicians following with great barony
And jesters through the land his state have brought,
With dames and damsels whereso rideth he.
The subject having thus been introduced, Folgore treats the ceremonies
of investiture by an allegorical method, which is quite consistent with
his own preference of images to ideas. Each of the four following
sonnets presents a picture to the mind, admirably fitted for artistic
handling. We may imagine them to ourselves wrought in arras for a
sumptuous chamber. The first treats of the bath, in which, as we have
seen already from Sacchetti's note, the aspirant after knighthood puts
aside all vice, and consecrates himself anew. Prodezza, or Prowess,
must behold him nude from head to foot, in order to assure herself that
the neophyte bears no blemish; and this inspection is an allegory of
internal wholeness.
Lo Prowess, who despoileth him straightway,
And saith: 'Friend, now beseems it thee to strip;
For I will see men naked, thigh and hip,
And thou my will must know and eke obey;
14 And leave what was thy wont until this day,
And for new toil, new sweat, thy strength equip;
This do, and thou shalt join my fellowship,
If of fair deeds thou tire not nor cry nay.'
And when she sees his comely body bare,
Forthwith within her arms she him doth take,
And saith: 'These limbs thou yieldest to my prayer;
I do accept thee, and this gift thee make,
So that thy deeds may shine for ever fair;
My lips shall never more thy praise forsake.'
After courage, the next virtue of the knightly character is gentleness
or modesty, called by the Italians humility. It is this quality which
makes a strong man pleasing to the world, and wins him favour.
Folgore's sonnet enables us to understand the motto of the great
Borromeo family—_Humilitas_, in Gothic letters underneath the coronet
upon their princely palace fronts.
Humility to him doth gently go,
And saith: 'I would in no wise weary thee;
Yet must I cleanse and wash thee thoroughly,
And I will make thee whiter than the snow.
Hear what I tell thee in few words, for so
Fain am I of thy heart to hold the key;
Now must thou sail henceforward after me;
And I will guide thee as myself do go.
But one thing would I have thee straightway leave;
Well knowest thou mine enemy is pride;
Let her no more unto thy spirit cleave:
So leal a friend with thee will I abide
That favour from all folk thou shalt receive;
This grace hath he who keepeth on my side.'
The novice has now bathed, approved himself to the searching eyes of
Prowess, and been accepted by Humility. After the bath, it was
customary for him to spend a night in vigil; and this among the Teutons
should have taken place in church, alone before the altar. But the
Italian poet, after his custom, 15gives a suave turn to the severe
discipline. His donzel passes the night in bed, attended by Discretion,
or the virtue of reflection. She provides fair entertainment for the
hours of vigil, and leaves him at the morning with good counsel. It is
not for nothing that he seeks knighthood, and it behoves him to be
careful of his goings. The last three lines of the sonnet are the
gravest of the series, showing that something of true chivalrous
feeling survived even among the Cavalieri di Corredo of Tuscany.
Then did Discretion to the squire draw near,
And drieth him with a fair cloth and clean,
And straightway putteth him the sheets between,
Silk, linen, counterpane, and minevere.
Think now of this! Until the day was clear,
With songs and music and delight the queen,
And with new knights, fair fellows well-beseen,
To make him perfect, gave him goodly cheer.
Then saith she: 'Rise forthwith, for now 'tis due,
Thou shouldst be born into the world again;
Keep well the order thou dost take in view.'
Unfathomable thoughts with him remain
Of that great bond he may no more eschew,
Nor can he say, 'I'll hide me from this chain.'
The vigil is over. The mind of the novice is prepared for his new
duties. The morning of his reception into chivalry has arrived. It is
therefore fitting that grave thoughts should be abandoned; and seeing
that not only prowess, humility, and discretion are the virtues of a
knight, but that he should also be blithe and debonair, Gladness comes
to raise him from his bed and equip him for the ceremony of
institution.
Comes Blithesomeness with mirth and merriment,
All decked in flowers she seemeth a rose-tree;
Of linen, silk, cloth, fur, now beareth she
16 the new knight a rich habiliment;
Head-gear and cap and garland flower-besprent,
So brave they were May-bloom he seemed to be;
With such a rout, so many and such glee,
That the floor shook. Then to her work she went;
And stood him on his feet in hose and shoon;
And purse and gilded girdle 'neath the fur
That drapes his goodly limbs, she buckles on;
Then bids the singers and sweet music stir,
And showeth him to ladies for a boon
And all who in that following went with her.
At this point the poem is abruptly broken. The manuscript from which
these sonnets are taken states they are a fragment. Had the remaining
twelve been preserved to us, we should probably have possessed a series
of pictures in which the procession to church would have been
portrayed, the investiture with the sword, the accolade, the buckling
on of the spurs, and the concluding sports and banquets. It is very
much to be regretted that so interesting, so beautiful, and so unique a
monument of Italian chivalry survives thus mutilated. But students of
art have to arm themselves continually with patience, repressing the
sad thoughts engendered in them by the spectacle of time's unconscious
injuries.
It is certain that Folgore would have written at least one sonnet on
the quality of courtesy, which in that age, as we have learned from
Matteo Villani, identified itself in the Italian mind with liberality.
This identification marks a certain degradation of the chivalrous
ideal, which is characteristic of Italian manners. One of Folgore's
miscellaneous sonnets shows how sorely he felt the disappearance of
this quality from the midst of a society bent daily more and more upon
material aims. It reminds us of the lamentable outcries uttered by the
later poets of the fourteenth century, Sacchetti, Boccaccio, Uberti,
and others of less fame, over the decline of their age.
17 Courtesy! Courtesy! Courtesy! I call:
But from no quarter comes there a reply.
And whoso needs her, ill must us befall.
Greed with his hook hath ta'en men one and all,
And murdered every grace that dumb doth lie:
Whence, if I grieve, I know the reason why;
From you, great men, to God I make my call:
For you my mother Courtesy have cast
So low beneath your feet she there must bleed;
Your gold remains, but you're not made to last:
Of Eve and Adam we are all the seed:
Able to give and spend, you hold wealth fast:
Ill is the nature that rears such a breed!
Folgore was not only a poet of occasion and compliment, but a political
writer, who fully entertained the bitter feeling of the Guelphs against
their Ghibelline opponents.
Two of his sonnets addressed to the Guelphs have been translated by Mr.
Rossetti. In order to complete the list I have made free versions of
two others in which he criticised the weakness of his own friends. The
first is addressed, in the insolent impiety of rage, to God:—
I praise thee not, O God, nor give thee glory,
Nor yield thee any thanks, nor bow the knee,
Nor pay thee service; for this irketh me
More than the souls to stand in purgatory;
Since thou hast made us Guelphs a jest and story
Unto the Ghibellines for all to see:
And if Uguccion claimed tax of thee,
Thou'dst pay it without interrogatory.
Ah, well I wot they know thee! and have stolen
St. Martin from thee, Altopascio,
St. Michael, and the treasure thou hast lost;
And thou that rotten rabble so hast swollen
That pride now counts for tribute; even so
Thou'st made their heart stone-hard to thine own cost.
18About the meaning of some lines in this sonnet I am not clear. But
the feeling and the general drift of it are manifest. The second is a
satire on the feebleness and effeminacy of the Pisans.
Ye are more silky-sleek than ermines are,
Ye Pisan counts, knights, damozels, and squires,
Who think by combing out your hair like wires
To drive the men of Florence from their car.
Ye make the Ghibellines free near and far,
Here, there, in cities, castles, huts, and byres,
Seeing how gallant in your brave attires,
How bold you look, true paladins of war.
Stout-hearted are ye as a hare in chase,
To meet the sails of Genoa on the sea;
And men of Lucca never saw your face.
Dogs with a bone for courtesy are ye:
Could Folgore but gain a special grace,
He'd have you banded 'gainst all men that be.
Among the sonnets not translated by Mr. Rossetti two by Folgore remain,
which may be classified with the not least considerable contributions
to Italian gnomic poetry in an age when literature easily assumed a
didactic tone. The first has for its subject the importance of
discernment and discrimination. It is written on the wisdom of what the
ancient Greeks called Καιρός, or the right occasion in all human
conduct.
Dear friend, not every herb puts forth a flower;
Nor every flower that blossoms fruit doth bear;
Nor hath each spoken word a virtue rare;
Nor every stone in earth its healing power:
This thing is good when mellow, that when sour;
One seems to grieve, within doth rest from care;
Not every torch is brave that flaunts in air;
There is what dead doth seem, yet flame doth shower.
Wherefore it ill behoveth a wise man
His truss of every grass that grows to bind,
Or pile his back with every stone he can,
19 Or counsel from each word to seek to find,
Or take his walks abroad with Dick and Dan:
Not without cause I'm moved to speak my mind.
The second condemns those men of light impulse who, as Dante put it,
discoursing on the same theme, 'subject reason to inclination.'[51]
What time desire hath o'er the soul such sway
That reason finds nor place nor puissance here,
Men oft do laugh at what should claim a tear,
And over grievous dole are seeming gay.
He sure would travel far from sense astray
Who should take frigid ice for fire; and near
Unto this plight are those who make glad cheer
For what should rather cause their soul dismay.
But more at heart might he feel heavy pain
Who made his reason subject to mere will,
And followed wandering impulse without rein;
Seeing no lordship is so rich as still
One's upright self unswerving to sustain,
To follow worth, to flee things vain and ill.
The sonnets translated by me in this essay, taken together with those
already published by Mr. Rossetti, put the English reader in possession
of all that passes for the work of Folgore da San Gemignano.
[51] The line in Dante runs:
'Che la ragion sommettono al talento.'
In Folgore's sonnet we read:
'Chi sommette rason a volontade.'
On the supposition that Folgore wrote in the second decade of the
fourteenth century, it is not impossible that he may have had knowledge
of this line from the fifth canto of the _Inferno_.
Since these words were written, England has lost the poet-painter, to
complete whose work upon the sonnet-writer of 20mediæval Siena I
attempted the translations in this essay. One who has trodden the same
path as Rossetti, at however a noticeable interval, and has attempted
to present in English verse the works of great Italian singers, doing
inadequately for Michelangelo and Campanella what he did supremely well
for Dante, may here perhaps be allowed to lay the tribute of reverent
recognition at his tomb.
21
THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS
What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so
truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep the
feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I stood one
Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence. A priest was thundering
from the pulpit against French scepticism, and exalting the miracle of
the Incarnation. Through the whole dim church blazed altar candles.
Crowds of men and women knelt or sat about the transepts, murmuring
their prayers of preparation for the festival. At the door were pedlars
selling little books, in which were printed the offices for
Christmas-tide, with stories of S. Felix and S. Catherine, whose
devotion to the infant Christ had wrought them weal, and promises of
the remission of four purgatorial centuries to those who zealously
observed the service of the Church at this most holy time. I knew that
the people of Florence were preparing for Christmas in their own way.
But it was not our way. It happened that outside the church the climate
seemed as wintry as our own—snowstorms and ice, and wind and chilling
fog, suggesting Northern cold. But as the palaces of Florence lacked
our comfortable firesides, and the greetings of friends lacked our
hearty handshakes and loud good wishes, so there seemed to be a want of
the home feeling in those Christmas services and customs. Again I asked
myself, 'What do we mean by Christmas?'
22The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome: by Siena, still and
brown, uplifted, mid her russet hills and wilderness of rolling plain;
by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a dead and unknown people;
through the chestnut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's rock,
Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the Ciminian
heights, from which one looks across the broad lake of Bolsena and the
Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like that of a day in late September,
shone upon the landscape, and I thought—Can this be Christmas? Are they
bringing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the towns in
far-off England? Is it clear and frosty there, with the tramp of heels
upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy with a round red sun and
cries of warning at the corners of the streets?
I reached Rome on Christmas Eve, in time to hear midnight services in
the Sistine Chapel and S. John Lateran, to breathe the dust of decayed
shrines, to wonder at doting cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to
resent the open-mouthed bad taste of my countrymen who made a mockery
of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep, nine
train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in the
dress devised by Michelangelo, some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded
railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of
wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal drone
proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at intervals
these words, and these only,—'Sæcula sæculorum, amen.' Such was the
celebrated Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and very
strange did Michelangelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his Prophets,
appear upon the roof and wall above this motley and unmeaning crowd.
Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie, and repaired,
with groups of Englishmen similarly attired, and of Englishwomen in
black crape—the regulation costume —to 23S. Peter's. It was a glorious
and cloudless morning; sunbeams streamed in columns from the southern
windows, falling on the vast space full of soldiers and a mingled mass
of every kind of people. Up the nave stood double files of the
Pontifical guard. Monks and nuns mixed with the Swiss cuirassiers and
halberds. Contadini crowded round the sacred images, and especially
round the toe of S. Peter. I saw many mothers lift their swaddled
babies up to kiss it. Valets of cardinals, with the invariable red
umbrellas, hung about side chapels and sacristies. Purple-mantled
monsignori, like emperor butterflies, floated down the aisles from
sunlight into shadow. Movement, colour, and the stir of expectation,
made the church alive. We showed our dress-clothes to the guard, were
admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked up toward the dome.
There under its broad canopy stood the altar, glittering with gold and
candles. The choir was carpeted and hung with scarlet. Two magnificent
thrones rose ready for the Pope: guards of honour, soldiers, attachés,
and the élite of the residents and visitors in Rome, were scattered in
groups picturesquely varied by ecclesiastics of all orders and degrees.
At ten a stirring took place near the great west door. It opened, and
we saw the procession of the Pope and his cardinals. Before him marched
the singers and the blowers of the silver trumpets, making the most
liquid melody. Then came his Cap of Maintenance, and three tiaras; then
a company of mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet; and last,
aloft beneath a canopy, upon the shoulders of men, and flanked by the
mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to and fro like a Lama,
or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew most silverly, and still the
people knelt; and as he came, we knelt and had his blessing. Then he
took his state and received homage. After this the choir began to sing
a mass of Palestrina's, and the 24deacons robed the Pope. Marvellous
putting on and taking off of robes and tiaras and mitres ensued, during
which there was much bowing and praying and burning of incense. At
last, when he had reached the highest stage of sacrificial sanctity, he
proceeded to the altar, waited on by cardinals and bishops. Having
censed it carefully, he took a higher throne and divested himself of
part of his robes. Then the mass went on in earnest, till the moment of
consecration, when it paused, the Pope descended from his throne,
passed down the choir, and reached the altar. Every one knelt; the
shrill bell tinkled; the silver trumpets blew; the air became sick and
heavy with incense, so that sun and candle light swooned in an
atmosphere of odorous cloud-wreaths. The whole church trembled, hearing
the strange subtle music vibrate in the dome, and seeing the Pope with
his own hands lift Christ's body from the altar and present it to the
people. An old parish priest, pilgrim from some valley of the
Apennines, who knelt beside me, cried and quivered with excess of
adoration. The great tombs around, the sculptured saints and angels,
the dome, the volumes of light and incense and unfamiliar melody, the
hierarchy ministrant, the white and central figure of the Pope, the
multitude—made up an overpowering scene. What followed was
comparatively tedious. My mind again went back to England, and I
thought of Christmas services beginning in all village churches and all
cathedrals throughout the land—their old familiar hymn, their anthem of
Handel, their trite and sleepy sermons. How different the two feasts
are—Christmas in Rome, Christmas in England—Italy and the North—the
spirit of Latin and the spirit of Teutonic Christianity.
What, then, constitutes the essence of our Christmas as different from
that of more Southern nations? In their origin they are the same. The
stable of Bethlehem, the 25star-led kings, the shepherds, and the
angels—all the beautiful story, in fact, which S. Luke alone of the
Evangelists has preserved for us—are what the whole Christian world
owes to the religious feeling of the Hebrews. The first and second
chapters of S. Luke are most important in the history of Christian
mythology and art. They are far from containing the whole of what we
mean by Christmas; but the religious poetry which gathers round that
season must be sought upon their pages. Angels, ever since the Exodus,
played a first part in the visions of the Hebrew prophets and in the
lives of their heroes. We know not what reminiscences of old Egyptian
genii, what strange shadows of the winged beasts of Persia, flitted
through their dreams. In the desert, or under the boundless sky of
Babylon, these shapes became no less distinct than the precise outlines
of Oriental scenery. They incarnated the vivid thoughts and intense
longings of the prophets, who gradually came to give them human forms
and titles. We hear of them by name, as servants and attendants upon
God, as guardians of nations, and patrons of great men. To the Hebrew
mind the whole unseen world was full of spirits, active, strong, and
swift of flight, of various aspect, and with power of speech. It is
hard to imagine what the first Jewish disciples and the early Greek and
Roman converts thought of these great beings. To us, the hierarchies of
Dionysius, the services of the Church, the poetry of Dante and Milton,
and the forms of art, have made them quite familiar. Northern nations
have appropriated the Angels, and invested them with attributes alien
to their Oriental origin. They fly through our pine-forests, and the
gloom of cloud or storm; they ride upon our clanging bells, and gather
in swift squadrons among the arches of Gothic cathedrals; we see them
making light in the cavernous depth of woods, where sun or moon beams
rarely pierce, and ministering 26to the wounded or the weary; they bear
aloft the censers of the mass; they sing in the anthems of choristers,
and live in strains of poetry and music; our churches bear their names;
we call our children by their titles; we love them as our guardians,
and the whole unseen world is made a home to us by their imagined
presence. All these things are the growth of time and the work of races
whose myth-making imagination is more artistic than that of the
Hebrews. Yet this rich legacy of romance is bound up in the second
chapter of S. Luke; and it is to him we must give thanks when at
Christmas-tide we read of the shepherds and the angels in English words
more beautiful than his own Greek.
The angels in the stable of Bethlehem, the kings who came from the far
East, and the adoring shepherds, are the gift of Hebrew legend and of
the Greek physician Luke to Christmas. How these strange and splendid
incidents affect modern fancy remains for us to examine; at present we
must ask, What did the Romans give to Christmas? The customs of the
Christian religion, like everything that belongs to the modern world,
have nothing pure and simple in their nature. They are the growth of
long ages, and of widely different systems, parts of which have been
fused into one living whole. In this respect they resemble our
language, our blood, our literature, and our modes of thought and
feeling. We find Christianity in one sense wholly original; in another
sense composed of old materials; in both senses universal and
cosmopolitan. The Roman element in Christmas is a remarkable instance
of this acquisitive power of Christianity. The celebration of the
festival takes place at the same time as that of the Pagan Saturnalia;
and from the old customs of that holiday, Christmas absorbed much that
was consistent with the spirit of the new religion. During the
Saturnalia the world enjoyed, in thought at least, a perfect freedom.
Men who had gone to bed as 27slaves, rose their own masters. From the
_ergastula_ and dismal sunless cages they went forth to ramble in the
streets and fields. Liberty of speech was given them, and they might
satirise those vices of their lords to which, on other days, they had
to minister. Rome on this day, by a strange negation of logic, which we
might almost call a prompting of blind conscience, negatived the
philosophic dictum that barbarians were by law of nature slaves, and
acknowledged the higher principle of equality. The Saturnalia stood out
from the whole year as a protest in favour of universal brotherhood,
and the right that all men share alike to enjoy life after their own
fashion, within the bounds that nature has assigned them. We do not
know how far the Stoic school, which was so strong in Rome, and had so
many points of contact with the Christians, may have connected its own
theories of equality with this old custom of the Saturnalia. But it is
possible that the fellowship of human beings, and the temporary
abandonment of class prerogatives, became a part of Christmas through
the habit of the Saturnalia. We are perhaps practising a Roman virtue
to this day when at Christmas-time our hand is liberal, and we think it
wrong that the poorest wretch should fail to feel the pleasure of the
day.
Of course Christianity inspired the freedom of the Saturnalia with a
higher meaning. The mystery of the Incarnation, or the deification of
human nature, put an end to slavery through all the year, as well as on
this single day. What had been a kind of aimless licence became the
most ennobling principle by which men are exalted to a state of
self-respect and mutual reverence. Still in the Saturnalia was found,
ready-made, an easy symbol of unselfish enjoyment. It is, however,
dangerous to push speculations of this kind to the very verge of
possibility.
The early Roman Christians probably kept Christmas with 28no special
ceremonies. Christ was as yet too close to them. He had not become the
glorious creature of their fancy, but was partly an historic being,
partly confused in their imagination with reminiscences of Pagan
deities. As the Good Shepherd, and as Orpheus, we find him painted in
the Catacombs; and those who thought of him as God, loved to dwell upon
his risen greatness more than on the idyll of his birth. To them his
entry upon earth seemed less a subject of rejoicing than his opening of
the heavens; they suffered, and looked forward to a future happiness;
they would not seem to make this world permanent by sharing its
gladness with the Heathens. Theirs, in truth, was a religion of hope
and patience, not of triumphant recollection or of present joyfulness.
The Northern converts of the early Church added more to the peculiar
character of our Christmas. Who can tell what Pagan rites were half
sanctified by their association with that season, or how much of our
cheerfulness belonged to Heathen orgies and the banquets of grim
warlike gods? Certainly nothing strikes one more in reading
Scandinavian poetry, than the strange mixture of Pagan and Christian
sentiments which it presents. For though the missionaries of the Church
did all they could to wean away the minds of men from their old
superstitions; yet, wiser than their modern followers, they saw that
some things might remain untouched, and that even the great outlines of
the Christian faith might be adapted to the habits of the people whom
they studied to convert. Thus, on the one hand, they destroyed the old
temples one by one, and called the idols by the name of devils, and
strove to obliterate the songs which sang great deeds of bloody gods
and heroes; while, on the other, they taught the Northern sea-kings
that Jesus was a Prince surrounded by twelve dukes, who conquered all
the world. 29Besides, they left the days of the week to their old
patrons. It is certain that the imagination of the people preserved
more of heathendom than even such missionaries could approve; mixing up
the deeds of the Christian saints with old heroic legends; seeing
Balder's beauty in Christ and the strength of Thor in Samson;
attributing magic to S. John; swearing, as of old, bloody oaths in
God's name, over the gilded boar's-head; burning the yule-log, and
cutting sacred boughs to grace their new-built churches.
The songs of choirs and sound of holy bells, and superstitious
reverence for the mass, began to tell upon the people; and soon the
echo of their old religion only swelled upon the ear at intervals,
attaching itself to times of more than usual sanctity. Christmas was
one of these times, and the old faith threw around its celebration a
fantastic light. Many customs of the genial Pagan life remained; they
seemed harmless when the sense of joy was Christian. The Druid's
mistletoe graced the church porches of England and of France, and no
blood lingered on its berries. Christmas thus became a time of
extraordinary mystery. The people loved it as connecting their old life
with the new religion, perhaps unconsciously, though every one might
feel that Christmas was no common Christian feast. On its eve strange
wonders happened: the thorn that sprang at Glastonbury from the sacred
crown which Joseph brought with him from Palestine, when Avalon was
still an island, blossomed on that day. The Cornish miners seemed to
hear the sound of singing men arise from submerged churches by the
shore, and others said that bells, beneath the ground where villages
had been, chimed yearly on that eve. No evil thing had power, as
Marcellus in 'Hamlet' tells us, and the bird of dawning crowed the
whole night through. One might multiply folklore about the sanctity of
Christmas, but enough has been said 30to show that round it lingered
long the legendary spirit of old Paganism. It is not to Jews, or
Greeks, or Romans only that we owe our ancient Christmas fancies, but
also to those half-heathen ancestors who lovingly looked back to Odin's
days, and held the old while they embraced the new.
Let us imagine Christmas Day in a mediæval town of Northern England.
The cathedral is only partly finished. Its nave and transepts are the
work of Norman architects, but the choir has been destroyed in order to
be rebuilt by more graceful designers and more skilful hands. The old
city is full of craftsmen, assembled to complete the church. Some have
come as a religious duty, to work off their tale of sins by bodily
labour. Some are animated by a love of art—simple men, who might have
rivalled with the Greeks in ages of more cultivation. Others, again,
are well-known carvers, brought for hire from distant towns and
countries beyond the sea. But to-day, and for some days past, the sound
of hammer and chisel has been silent in the choir. Monks have bustled
about the nave, dressing it up with holly-boughs and bushes of yew, and
preparing a stage for the sacred play they are going to exhibit on the
feast day. Christmas is not like Corpus Christi, and now the
market-place stands inches deep in snow, so that the Miracles must be
enacted beneath a roof instead of in the open air. And what place so
appropriate as the cathedral, where poor people may have warmth and
shelter while they see the show? Besides, the gloomy old church, with
its windows darkened by the falling snow, lends itself to candlelight
effects that will enhance the splendour of the scene. Everything is
ready. The incense of morning mass yet lingers round the altar. The
voice of the friar who told the people from the pulpit the story of
Christ's birth, has hardly ceased to echo. Time has just been given for
a mid-day dinner, and for the shepherds and 31 farm lads to troop in
from the country-side. The monks are ready at the wooden stage to draw
its curtain, and all the nave is full of eager faces. There you may see
the smith and carpenter, the butcher's wife, the country priest, and
the grey cowled friar. Scores of workmen, whose home the cathedral for
the time is made, are also here, and you may know the artists by their
thoughtful foreheads and keen eyes. That young monk carved Madonna and
her Son above the southern porch. Beside him stands the master mason,
whose strong arms have hewn gigantic images of prophets and apostles
for the pinnacles outside the choir; and the little man with cunning
eyes between the two is he who cuts such quaint hobgoblins for the
gargoyles. He has a vein of satire in him, and his humour overflows
into the stone. Many and many a grim beast and hideous head has he
hidden among vine-leaves and trellis-work upon the porches. Those who
know him well are loth to anger him, for fear their sons and sons' sons
should laugh at them for ever caricatured in solid stone.
Hark! there sounds the bell. The curtain is drawn, and the candles
blaze brightly round the wooden stage. What is this first scene? We
have God in Heaven, dressed like a Pope with triple crown, and attended
by his court of angels. They sing and toss up censers till he lifts his
hand and speaks. In a long Latin speech he unfolds the order of
creation and his will concerning man. At the end of it up leaps an ugly
buffoon, in goatskin, with rams' horns upon his head. Some children
begin to cry; but the older people laugh, for this is the Devil, the
clown and comic character, who talks their common tongue, and has no
reverence before the very throne of Heaven. He asks leave to plague
men, and receives it; then, with many a curious caper, he goes down to
Hell, beneath the stage. The angels sing and toss their censers as
before, and the first scene closes to a sound of 32 organs. The next is
more conventional, in spite of some grotesque incidents. It represents
the Fall; the monks hurry over it quickly, as a tedious but necessary
prelude to the birth of Christ. That is the true Christmas part of the
ceremony, and it is understood that the best actors and most beautiful
dresses are to be reserved for it. The builders of the choir in
particular are interested in the coming scenes, since one of their
number has been chosen, for his handsome face and tenor voice, to sing
the angel's part. He is a young fellow of nineteen, but his beard is
not yet grown, and long hair hangs down upon his shoulders. A chorister
of the cathedral, his younger brother, will act the Virgin Mary. At
last the curtain is drawn.
We see a cottage-room, dimly lighted by a lamp, and Mary spinning near
her bedside. She sings a country air, and goes on working, till a
rustling noise is heard, more light is thrown upon the stage, and a
glorious creature, in white raiment, with broad golden wings, appears.
He bears a lily, and cries,—'Ave Maria, Gratia Plena!' She does not
answer, but stands confused, with down-dropped eyes and timid mien.
Gabriel rises from the ground and comforts her, and sings aloud his
message of glad tidings. Then Mary gathers courage, and, kneeling in
her turn, thanks God; and when the angel and his radiance disappears,
she sings the song of the Magnificat clearly and simply, in the
darkened room. Very soft and silver sounds this hymn through the great
church. The women kneel, and children are hushed as by a lullaby. But
some of the hinds and 'prentice lads begin to think it rather dull.
They are not sorry when the next scene opens with a sheepfold and a
little camp-fire. Unmistakable bleatings issue from the fold, and five
or six common fellows are sitting round the blazing wood. One might
fancy they had stepped straight from the church floor to the stage, so
natural 33 do they look. Besides, they call themselves by common
names—Colin, and Tom Lie-a-bed, and nimble Dick. Many a round laugh
wakes echoes in the church when these shepherds stand up, and hold
debate about a stolen sheep. Tom Lie-a-bed has nothing to remark but
that he is very sleepy, and does not want to go in search of it
to-night; Colin cuts jokes, and throws out shrewd suspicions that Dick
knows something of the matter; but Dick is sly, and keeps them off the
scent, although a few of his asides reveal to the audience that he is
the real thief. While they are thus talking, silence falls upon the
shepherds. Soft music from the church organ breathes, and they appear
to fall asleep.
The stage is now quite dark, and for a few moments the aisles echo only
to the dying melody. When, behold, a ray of light is seen, and
splendour grows around the stage from hidden candles, and in the glory
Gabriel appears upon a higher platform made to look like clouds. The
shepherds wake in confusion, striving to shelter their eyes from this
unwonted brilliancy. But Gabriel waves his lily, spreads his great gold
wings, and bids good cheer with clarion voice. The shepherds fall to
worship, and suddenly round Gabriel there gathers a choir of angels,
and a song of 'Gloria in Excelsis' to the sound of a deep organ is
heard far off. From distant aisles it swells, and seems to come from
heaven. Through a long resonant fugue the glory flies, and as it ceases
with complex conclusion, the lights die out, the angels disappear, and
Gabriel fades into the darkness. Still the shepherds kneel, rustically
chanting a carol half in Latin, half in English, which begins 'In dulci
Jubilo.' The people know it well, and when the chorus rises with 'Ubi
sunt gaudia?' its wild melody is caught by voices up and down the nave.
This scene makes deep impression upon many hearts; for the beauty of
Gabriel is rare, and few who see him in his angel's dress 34 would know
him for the lad who daily carves his lilies and broad water-flags about
the pillars of the choir. To that simple audience he interprets Heaven,
and little children will see him in their dreams. Dark winter nights
and awful forests will be trodden by his feet, made musical by his
melodious voice, and parted by the rustling of his wings. The youth
himself may return to-morrow to the workman's blouse and chisel, but
his memory lives in many minds and may form a part of Christmas for the
fancy of men as yet unborn.
The next drawing of the curtain shows us the stable of Bethlehem
crowned by its star. There kneels Mary, and Joseph leans upon his
staff. The ox and ass are close at hand, and Jesus lies in jewelled
robes on straw within the manger. To right and left bow the shepherds,
worshipping in dumb show, while voices from behind chant a solemn hymn.
In the midst of the melody is heard a flourish of trumpets, and heralds
step upon the stage, followed by the three crowned kings. They have
come from the far East, led by the star. The song ceases, while drums
and fifes and trumpets play a stately march. The kings pass by, and do
obeisance one by one. Each gives some costly gift; each doffs his crown
and leaves it at the Saviour's feet. Then they retire to a distance and
worship in silence like the shepherds. Again the angel's song is heard,
and while it dies away the curtain closes, and the lights are put out.
The play is over, and evening has come. The people must go from the
warm church into the frozen snow, and crunch their homeward way beneath
the moon. But in their minds they carry a sense of light and music and
unearthly loveliness. Not a scene of this day's pageant will be lost.
It grows within them and creates the poetry of Christmas. Nor must we
forget the sculptors who listen to the play. We spoke of them minutely,
because these mysteries sank deep into their 35 souls and found a way
into their carvings on the cathedral walls. The monk who made Madonna
by the southern porch, will remember Gabriel, and place him bending low
in lordly salutation by her side. The painted glass of the
chapter-house will glow with fiery choirs of angels learned by heart
that night. And who does not know the mocking devils and quaint satyrs
that the humorous sculptor will carve among his fruits and flowers?
Some of the misereres of the stalls still bear portraits of the
shepherd thief, and of the ox and ass who blinked so blindly when the
kings, by torchlight, brought their dazzling gifts. Truly these old
miracle-plays, and the carved work of cunning hands that they inspired,
are worth to us more than all the delicate creations of Italian
pencils. Our homely Northern churches still retain, for the child who
reads their bosses and their sculptured fronts, more Christmas poetry
than we can find in Fra Angelico's devoutness or the liveliness of
Giotto. Not that Southern artists have done nothing for our Christmas.
Cimabue's gigantic angels at Assisi, and the radiant seraphs of Raphael
or of Signorelli, were seen by Milton in his Italian journey. He gazed
in Romish churches on graceful Nativities, into which Angelico and
Credi threw their simple souls. How much they tinged his fancy we
cannot say. But what we know of heavenly hierarchies we later men have
learned from Milton; and what he saw he spoke, and what he spoke in
sounding verse lives for us now and sways our reason, and controls our
fancy, and makes fine art of high theology.
Thus have I attempted rudely to recall a scene of mediæval Christmas.
To understand the domestic habits of that age is not so easy, though
one can fancy how the barons in their halls held Christmas, with the
boar's head and the jester and the great yule-log. On the daïs sat lord
and lady, waited on by knight and squire and page; but down the long 36
hall feasted yeomen and hinds and men-at-arms. Little remains to us of
those days, and we have outworn their jollity. It is really from the
Elizabethan poets that our sense of old-fashioned festivity arises.
They lived at the end of one age and the beginning of another. Though
born to inaugurate the new era, they belonged by right of association
and sympathy to the period that was fleeting fast away. This enabled
them to represent the poetry of past and present. Old customs and old
states of feeling, when they are about to perish, pass into the realm
of art. For art is like a flower, which consummates the plant and ends
its growth, while it translates its nature into loveliness. Thus Dante
and Lorenzetti and Orcagna enshrined mediæval theology in works of
imperishable beauty, and Shakspere and his fellows made immortal the
life and manners that were decaying in their own time. Men do not
reflect upon their mode of living till they are passing from one state
to another, and the consciousness of art implies a beginning of new
things. Let one who wishes to appreciate the ideal of an English
Christmas read Shakspere's song, 'When icicles hang by the wall;' and
if he knows some old grey grange, far from the high-road, among
pastures, with a river flowing near, and cawing rooks in elm-trees by
the garden-wall, let him place Dick and Joan and Marian there.
We have heard so much of pensioners, and barons of beef, and yule-logs,
and bay, and rosemary, and holly boughs cut upon the hillside, and
crab-apples bobbing in the wassail bowl, and masques and mummers, and
dancers on the rushes, that we need not here describe a Christmas Eve
in olden times. Indeed, this last half of the nineteenth century is
weary of the worn-out theme. But one characteristic of the age of
Elizabeth may be mentioned: that is its love of music. Fugued melodies,
sung by voices without instruments, were 37 much in vogue. We call them
madrigals, and their half-merry, half-melancholy music yet recalls the
time when England had her gift of art, when she needed not to borrow of
Marenzio and Palestrina, when her Wilbyes and her Morlands and her
Dowlands won the praise of Shakspere and the court. We hear the echo of
those songs; and in some towns at Christmas or the New Year old
madrigals still sound in praise of Oriana and of Phyllis and the
country life. What are called 'waits' are but a poor travesty of those
well-sung Elizabethan carols. We turn in our beds half pitying, half
angered by harsh voices that quaver senseless ditties in the fog, or by
tuneless fiddles playing popular airs without propriety or interest.
It is a strange mixture of picturesquely blended elements which the
Elizabethan age presents. We see it afar off like the meeting of a
hundred streams that grow into a river. We are sailing on the flood
long after it has shrunk into a single tide, and the banks are dull and
tame, and the all-absorbing ocean is before us. Yet sometimes we hear a
murmur of the distant fountains, and Christmas is a day on which for
some the many waters of the age of great Elizabeth sound clearest.
The age which followed was not poetical. The Puritans restrained
festivity and art, and hated music. Yet from this period stands out the
hymn of Milton, written when he was a youth, but bearing promise of his
later muse. At one time, as we read it, we seem to be looking on a
picture by some old Italian artist. But no picture can give Milton's
music or make the 'base of heaven's deep organ blow.' Here he touches
new associations, and reveals the realm of poetry which it remains for
later times to traverse. Milton felt the true sentiment of Northern
Christmas when he opened his poem with the 'winter wild,' in defiance
of historical probability 38 and what the French call local colouring.
Nothing shows how wholly we people of the North have appropriated
Christmas, and made it a creature of our own imagination, more than
this dwelling on winds and snows and bitter frosts, so alien from the
fragrant nights of Palestine. But Milton's hymn is like a symphony,
embracing many thoughts and periods of varying melody. The music of the
seraphim brings to his mind the age of gold, and that suggests the
judgment and the redemption of the world. Satan's kingdom fails, the
false gods go forth, Apollo leaves his rocky throne, and all the dim
Phoenician and Egyptian deities, with those that classic fancy fabled,
troop away like ghosts into the darkness. What a swell of stormy sound
is in those lines! It recalls the very voice of Pan, which went abroad
upon the waters when Christ died, and all the utterances of God on
earth, feigned in Delphian shrines, or truly spoken on the sacred
hills, were mute for ever.
After Milton came the age which, of all others, is the prosiest in our
history. We cannot find much novelty of interest added to Christmas at
this time. But there is one piece of poetry that somehow or another
seems to belong to the reign of Anne and of the Georges—the poetry of
bells. Great civic corporations reigned in those days; churchwardens
tyrannised and were rich; and many a goodly chime of bells they hung in
our old church-steeples. Let us go into the square room of the belfry,
where the clock ticks all day, and the long ropes hang dangling down,
with fur upon their hemp for ringers' hands above the socket set for
ringers' feet. There we may read long lists of gilded names, recording
mountainous bob-majors, rung a century ago, with special praise to him
who pulled the tenor-bell, year after year, until he died, and left it
to his son. The art of bell-ringing is profound, and requires a long
apprenticeship. Even now, in some old cities, 39 the ringers form a
guild and mystery. Suppose it to be Christmas Eve in the year 1772. It
is now a quarter before twelve, and the sexton has unlocked the
church-gates and set the belfry door ajar. Candles are lighted in the
room above, and jugs of beer stand ready for the ringers. Up they
bustle one by one, and listen to the tickings of the clock that tells
the passing minutes. At last it gives a click; and now they throw off
coat and waistcoat, strap their girdles tighter round the waist, and
each holds his rope in readiness. Twelve o'clock strikes, and forth
across the silent city go the clamorous chimes. The steeple rocks and
reels, and far away the night is startled. Damp turbulent west winds,
rushing from the distant sea, and swirling up the inland valleys, catch
the sound, and toss it to and fro, and bear it by gusts and snatches to
watchers far away, upon bleak moorlands and the brows of woody hills.
Is there not something dim and strange in the thought of these eight
men meeting, in the heart of a great city, in the narrow belfry-room,
to stir a mighty sound that shall announce to listening ears miles,
miles away, the birth of a new day, and tell to dancers, mourners,
students, sleepers, and perhaps to dying men, that Christ is born?
Let this association suffice for the time. And of our own Christmas so
much has been said and sung by better voices, that we may leave it to
the feelings and the memories of those who read the fireside tales of
Dickens, and are happy in their homes. The many elements which I have
endeavoured to recall, mix all of them in the Christmas of the present,
partly, no doubt, under the form of vague and obscure sentiment; partly
as time-honoured reminiscences, partly as a portion of our own life.
But there is one phase of poetry which we enjoy more fully than any
previous age. That is music. Music is of all the arts the youngest, and
of all can free herself 40 most readily from symbols. A fine piece of
music moves before us like a living passion, which needs no form or
colour, no interpreting associations, to convey its strong but
indistinct significance. Each man there finds his soul revealed to him,
and enabled to assume a cast of feeling in obedience to the changeful
sound. In this manner all our Christmas thoughts and emotions have been
gathered up for us by Handel in his drama of the 'Messiah.' To
Englishmen it is almost as well known and necessary as the Bible. But
only one who has heard its pastoral episode performed year after year
from childhood in the hushed cathedral, where pendent lamps or sconces
make the gloom of aisle and choir and airy column half intelligible,
can invest this music with long associations of accumulated awe. To his
mind it brings a scene at midnight of hills clear in the starlight of
the East, with white flocks scattered on the down. The breath of winds
that come and go, the bleating of the sheep, with now and then a
tinkling bell, and now and then the voice of an awakened shepherd, is
all that breaks the deep repose. Overhead shimmer the bright stars, and
low to west lies the moon, not pale and sickly (he dreams) as in our
North, but golden, full, and bathing distant towers and tall aë;rial
palms with floods of light. Such is a child's vision, begotten by the
music of the symphony; and when he wakes from trance at its low silver
close, the dark cathedral seems glowing with a thousand angel faces,
and all the air is tremulous with angel wings. Then follow the solitary
treble voice and the swift chorus.
41
SIENA
After leaving the valley of the Arno at Empoli, the railway enters a
country which rises into earthy hills of no great height, and spreads
out at intervals into broad tracts of cultivated lowland. Geologically
speaking, this portion of Tuscany consists of loam and sandy deposits,
forming the basin between two mountain-ranges—the Apennines and the
chalk hills of the western coast of Central Italy. Seen from the
eminence of some old Tuscan turret, this champaign country has a stern
and arid aspect. The earth is grey and dusty, the forms of hill and
valley are austere and monotonous; even the vegetation seems to
sympathise with the uninteresting soil from which it springs. A few
spare olives cast their shadows on the lower slopes; here and there a
copse of oakwood and acacia marks the course of some small rivulet;
rye-fields, grey beneath the wind, clothe the hillsides with scanty
verdure. Every knoll is crowned with a village—brown roofs and white
house-fronts clustered together on the edge of cliffs, and rising into
the campanile or antique tower, which tells so many stories of bygone
wars and decayed civilisations.
Beneath these villages stand groups of stone pines clearly visible upon
the naked country, cypresses like spires beside the square white walls
of convent or of villa, patches of dark foliage, showing where the ilex
and the laurel and the myrtle hide thick tangles of rose-trees and
jessamines in ancient gardens. Nothing can exceed the barren aspect of
this 42 country in midwinter: it resembles an exaggerated Sussex,
without verdure to relieve the rolling lines of down, and hill, and
valley; beautiful yet, by reason of its frequent villages and lucid air
and infinitely subtle curves of mountain-ridges. But when spring comes,
a light and beauty break upon this gloomy soil; the whole is covered
with a delicate green veil of rising crops and fresh foliage, and the
immense distances which may be seen from every height are blue with
cloud-shadows, or rosy in the light of sunset.
Of all the towns of Lower Tuscany, none is more celebrated than Siena.
It stands in the very centre of the district which I have attempted to
describe, crowning one of its most considerable heights, and commanding
one of its most extensive plains. As a city it is a typical
representative of those numerous Italian towns, whose origin is buried
in remote antiquity, which have formed the seat of three civilisations,
and which still maintain a vigorous vitality upon their ancient soil.
Its site is Etruscan, its name is Roman, but the town itself owes all
its interest and beauty to the artists and the statesmen and the
warriors of the middle ages. A single glance at Siena from one of the
slopes on the northern side, will show how truly mediæval is its
character. A city wall follows the outline of the hill, from which the
towers of the cathedral and the palace, with other cupolas and
red-brick campanili, spring; while cypresses and olive-gardens stretch
downwards to the plain. There is not a single Palladian façade or
Renaissance portico to interrupt the unity of the effect. Over all, in
the distance, rises Monte Amiata melting imperceptibly into sky and
plain.
The three most striking objects of interest in Siena maintain the
character of mediæval individuality by which the town is marked. They
are the public palace, the cathedral, and the house of S. Catherine.
The civil life, the arts, and 43 the religious tendencies of Italy
during the ascendency of mediæval ideas, are strongly set before us
here. High above every other building in the town soars the straight
brick tower of the Palazzo Pubblico, the house of the republic, the
hearth of civil life within the State. It guards an irregular Gothic
building in which the old government of Siena used to be assembled, but
which has now for a long time been converted into prisons, courts of
law, and showrooms. Let us enter one chamber of the Palazzo—the Sala
della Pace, where Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the greatest, perhaps, of
Sienese painters, represented the evils of lawlessness and tyranny, and
the benefits of peace and justice, in three noble allegories. They were
executed early in the fourteenth century, in the age of allegories and
symbolism, when poets and painters strove to personify in human shape
all thoughts and sentiments. The first great fresco represents
Peace—the peace of the Republic of Siena. Ambrogio has painted the
twenty-four councillors who formed the Government, standing beneath the
thrones of Concord, Justice, and Wisdom. From these controlling powers
they stretch in a long double line to a seated figure, gigantic in
size, and robed with the ensigns of baronial sovereignty. This figure
is the State and Majesty of Siena.[52] Around him sit Peace, Fortitude,
and Prudence, 44 Temperance, Magnanimity, and Justice, inalienable
assessors of a powerful and righteous lord. Faith, Hope, and Charity,
the Christian virtues, float like angels in the air above. Armed
horsemen guard his throne, and captives show that he has laid his enemy
beneath his feet. Thus the mediæval artist expressed, by painting, his
theory of government. The rulers of the State are subordinate to the
State itself; they stand between the State and the great animating
principles of wisdom, justice, and concord, incarnating the one, and
receiving inspiration from the others. The pagan qualities of prudence,
magnanimity, and courage give stability and greatness to good
government, while the spirit of Christianity must harmonise and rule
the whole. Arms, too, are needful to maintain by force what right and
law demand, and victory in a just quarrel proclaims the power and
vigour of the commonwealth. On another wall Ambrogio has depicted the
prosperous city of Siena, girt by battlements and moat, with tower and
barbican and drawbridge, to insure its peace. Through the gates stream
country-people, bringing the produce of their farms into the town. The
streets are crowded with men and women intent on business or pleasure;
craftsmen at their trade, merchants with laden mules, a hawking party,
hunters scouring the plain, girls dancing, and children playing in the
open square. A school-master watching his class, together with the
sculptured figures of Geometry, Astronomy, and Philosophy, remind us
that education and science flourish under the dominion of well-balanced
laws. The third fresco exhibits the reverse of this fair spectacle.
Here Tyranny presides over a scene of anarchy and wrong. He is a
hideous monster, compounded of all the bestial attributes which
indicate force, treason, lechery, and fear. Avarice and Fraud and
Cruelty and War and Fury sit around him. At his feet lies Justice, and
45 above are the effigies of Nero, Caracalla, and like monsters of
ill-regulated power. Not far from the castle of Tyranny we see the same
town as in the other fresco; but its streets are filled with scenes of
quarrel, theft, and bloodshed. Nor are these allegories merely
fanciful. In the middle ages the same city might more than once during
one lifetime present in the vivid colours of reality the two contrasted
pictures.[53]
[52] It is probable that the firm Ghibelline sympathies of the Sienese
people for the Empire were allegorised in this figure; so that the
fresco represented by form and colour what Dante had expressed in his
treatise 'De Monarchiâ.' Among the virtues who attend him, Peace
distinguishes herself by rare and very remarkable beauty. She is
dressed in white and crowned with olive; the folds of her drapery,
clinging to the delicately modelled limbs beneath, irresistibly
suggest a classic statue. So again does the monumental pose of her
dignified, reclining, and yet languid figure. It seems not
unreasonable to believe that Lorenzetti copied Peace from the antique
Venus which belonged to the Sienese, and which in a fit of
superstitious malice they subsequently destroyed and buried in
Florentine soil.
[53] Siena, of all Italian cities, was most subject to revolutions.
Comines describes it as a city which 'se gouverne plus follement que
ville d'Italie.' Varchi calls it 'un guazzabuglio ed una confusione di
repubbliche piuttosto che bene ordinata e instituta repubblica.' See
my 'Age of the Despots' (_Renaissance in Italy_, Part I.), pp. 141,
554, for some account of the Sienese constitution, and of the feuds
and reconciliations of the burghers.
Quitting the Palazzo, and threading narrow streets, paved with brick
and overshadowed with huge empty palaces, we reach the highest of the
three hills on which Siena stands, and see before us the Duomo. This
church is the most purely Gothic of all Italian cathedrals designed by
national architects. Together with that of Orvieto, it stands to show
what the unassisted genius of the Italians could produce, when under
the empire of mediæval Christianity and before the advent of the
neopagan spirit. It is built wholly of marble, and overlaid, inside and
out, with florid ornaments of exquisite beauty. There are no flying
buttresses, no pinnacles, no deep and fretted doorways, such as form
the charm of French and English architecture; but instead of this, the
lines of parti-coloured marbles, the scrolls and wreaths of foliage,
the mosaics and the frescoes which meet the eye in every direction,
satisfy our sense of variety, producing most agreeable combinations of
blending hues and harmoniously connected forms. The chief fault which
offends against our Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal
lines, both in the 46 construction of the façade, and also in the
internal decoration. This single fact sufficiently proves that the
Italians had never seized the true idea of Gothic or aspiring
architecture. But, allowing for this original defect, we feel that the
Cathedral of Siena combines solemnity and splendour to a degree almost
unrivalled. Its dome is another point in which the instinct of Italian
architects has led them to adhere to the genius of their ancestral art
rather than to follow the principles of Gothic design. The dome is
Etruscan and Roman, native to the soil, and only by a kind of violence
adapted to the character of pointed architecture. Yet the builders of
Siena have shown what a glorious element of beauty might have been
added to our Northern cathedrals, had the idea of infinity which our
ancestors expressed by long continuous lines, by complexities of
interwoven aisles, and by multitudinous aspiring pinnacles, been
carried out into vast spaces of aë;rial cupolas, completing and
embracing and covering the whole like heaven. The Duomo, as it now
stands, forms only part of a vast design. On entering we are amazed to
hear that this church, which looks so large, from the beauty of its
proportions, the intricacy of its ornaments, and the interlacing of its
columns, is but the transept of the intended building lengthened a
little, and surmounted by a cupola and campanile.[54] Yet such is the
fact. Soon after its commencement a plague swept over Italy, nearly
depopulated Siena, and reduced the town to penury for want of men. The
cathedral, which, had it been accomplished, would have surpassed all
Gothic churches south of the Alps, remained a ruin. A fragment of the
nave still stands, enabling us to judge of its extent. The eastern wall
47 joins what was to have been the transept, measuring the mighty space
which would have been enclosed by marble vaults and columns delicately
wrought. The sculpture on the eastern door shows with what magnificence
the Sienese designed to ornament this portion of their temple; while
the southern façade rears itself aloft above the town, like those high
arches which testify to the past splendour of Glastonbury Abbey; but
the sun streams through the broken windows, and the walls are
encumbered with hovels and stables and the refuse of surrounding
streets.
[54] The present church was begun about 1229. In 1321 the burghers
fancied it was too small for the fame and splendour of their city. So
they decreed a new _ecclesia pulcra, magna, et magnifica_, for which
the older but as yet unfinished building was to be the transept.
One most remarkable feature of the internal decoration is a line of
heads of the Popes carried all round the church above the lower arches.
Larger than life, white solemn faces they lean, each from his separate
niche, crowned with the triple tiara, and labelled with the name he
bore. Their accumulated majesty brings the whole past history of the
Church into the presence of its living members. A bishop walking up the
nave of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among the waxen images of
ancestors renowned in council or in war. Of course these portraits are
imaginary for the most part; but the artists have contrived to vary
their features and expression with great skill.
Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the cathedral. It is
inlaid with a kind of _tarsia_ work in stone, setting forth a variety
of pictures in simple but eminently effective mosaic. Some of these
compositions are as old as the cathedral; others are the work of
Beccafumi and his scholars. They represent, in the liberal spirit of
mediæval Christianity, the history of the Church before the
Incarnation. Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls meet us at the doorway:
in the body of the church we find the mighty deeds of the old Jewish
heroes—of Moses and Samson and Joshua and Judith. Independently of the
artistic beauty of the designs, of the skill 48 with which men and
horses are drawn in the most difficult attitudes, of the dignity of
some single figures, and of the vigour and simplicity of the larger
compositions, a special interest attaches to this pavement in
connection with the twelfth canto of the 'Purgatorio.' Dante cannot
have trodden these stones and meditated upon their sculptured
histories. Yet when we read how he journeyed through the plain of
Purgatory with eyes intent upon its storied floor, how 'morti i morti,
e i vivi parean vivi,' how he saw 'Nimrod at the foot of his great
work, confounded, gazing at the people who were proud with him,' we are
irresistibly led to think of the Divine comedy. The strong and simple
outlines of the pavement correspond to the few words of the poet.
Bending over these pictures and trying to learn their lesson, with the
thought of Dante in our mind, the tones of an organ, singularly sweet
and mellow, fall upon our ears, and we remember how he heard _Te Deum_
sung within the gateway of repentance.
Continuing our walk, we descend the hill on which the Duomo stands, and
reach a valley lying between the ancient city of Siena and a western
eminence crowned by the church of San Domenico. In this depression
there has existed from old time a kind of suburb or separate district
of the poorer people known by the name of the Contrada d' Oca. To the
Sienese it has especial interest, for here is the birthplace of S.
Catherine, the very house in which she lived, her father's workshop,
and the chapel which has been erected in commemoration of her saintly
life. Over the doorway is written in letters of gold 'Sponsa Christi
Katherinæ domus.' Inside they show the room she occupied, and the stone
on which she placed her head to sleep; they keep her veil and staff and
lantern and enamelled vinaigrette, the bag in which her alms were
placed, the sackcloth that she wore beneath her dress, the crucifix
from which she took the wounds of Christ. It is impossible 49 to
conceive, even after the lapse of several centuries, that any of these
relics are fictitious. Every particular of her life was remembered and
recorded with scrupulous attention by devoted followers. Her fame was
universal throughout Italy before her death; and the house from which
she went forth to preach and heal the sick and comfort plague-stricken
wretches whom kith and kin had left alone to die, was known and well
beloved by all her citizens. From the moment of her death it became,
and has continued to be, the object of superstitious veneration to
thousands. From the little loggia which runs along one portion of its
exterior may be seen the campanile and the dome of the cathedral; on
the other side rises the huge brick church of San Domenico, in which
she spent the long ecstatic hours that won for her the title of
Christ's spouse. In a chapel attached to the church she watched and
prayed, fasting and wrestling with the fiends of a disordered fancy.
There Christ appeared to her and gave her His own heart, there He
administered to her the sacrament with His own hands, there she assumed
the robe of poverty, and gave her Lord the silver cross and took from
Him the crown of thorns.
To some of us these legends may appear the flimsiest web of fiction: to
others they may seem quite explicable by the laws of semi-morbid
psychology; but to Catherine herself, her biographers, and her
contemporaries, they were not so. The enthusiastic saint and reverent
people believed firmly in these things; and, after the lapse of five
centuries, her votaries still kiss the floor and steps on which she
trod, still say, 'This was the wall on which she leant when Christ
appeared; this was the corner where she clothed Him, naked and
shivering like a beggar-boy; here He sustained her with angels' food.'
S. Catherine was one of twenty-five children born in 50 wedlock to
Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa, citizens of Siena. Her father exercised the
trade of dyer and fuller. In the year of her birth, 1347, Siena reached
the climax of its power and splendour. It was then that the plague of
Boccaccio began to rage, which swept off 80,000 citizens, and
interrupted the building of the great Duomo. In the midst of so large a
family, and during these troubled times, Catherine grew almost
unnoticed; but it was not long before she manifested her peculiar
disposition. At six years old she already saw visions and longed for a
monastic life: about the same time she used to collect her childish
companions together and preach to them. As she grew, her wishes became
stronger; she refused the proposals which her parents made that she
should marry, and so vexed them by her obstinacy that they imposed on
her the most servile duties in their household. These she patiently
fulfilled, pursuing at the same time her own vocation with unwearied
ardour. She scarcely slept at all, and ate no food but vegetables and a
little bread, scourged herself, wore sackcloth, and became emaciated,
weak, and half delirious. At length the firmness of her character and
the force of her hallucinations won the day. Her parents consented to
her assuming the Dominican robe, and at the age of thirteen she entered
the monastic life. From this moment till her death we see in her the
ecstatic, the philanthropist, and the politician combined to a
remarkable degree. For three whole years she never left her cell except
to go to church, maintaining an almost unbroken silence. Yet when she
returned to the world, convinced at last of having won by prayer and
pain the favour of her Lord, it was to preach to infuriated mobs, to
toil among men dying of the plague, to execute diplomatic negotiations,
to harangue the republic of Florence, to correspond with queens, and to
interpose between kings and popes. In the midst of this varied and 51
distracting career she continued to see visions and to fast and scourge
herself. The domestic virtues and the personal wants and wishes of a
woman were annihilated in her: she lived for the Church, for the poor,
and for Christ, whom she imagined to be constantly supporting her. At
length she died, worn out by inward conflicts, by the tension of
religious ecstasy, by want of food and sleep, and by the excitement of
political life. To follow her in her public career is not my purpose.
It is well known how, by the power of her eloquence and the ardour of
her piety, she succeeded as a mediator between Florence and her native
city, and between Florence and the Pope; that she travelled to Avignon,
and there induced Gregory XI. to put an end to the Babylonian captivity
of the Church by returning to Rome; that she narrowly escaped political
martyrdom during one of her embassies from Gregory to the Florentine
republic; that she preached a crusade against the Turks; that her last
days were clouded with sorrow for the schism which then rent the
Papacy; and that she aided by her dying words to keep Pope Urban on the
Papal throne. When we consider her private and spiritual life more
narrowly, it may well move our amazement to think that the intricate
politics of Central Italy, the counsels of licentious princes and
ambitious Popes, were in any measure guided and controlled by such a
woman. Alone, and aided by nothing but a reputation for sanctity, she
dared to tell the greatest men in Europe of their faults; she wrote in
words of well-assured command, and they, demoralised, worldly,
sceptical, or indifferent as they might be, were yet so bound by
superstition that they could not treat with scorn the voice of an
enthusiastic girl.
Absolute disinterestedness, the belief in her own spiritual mission,
natural genius, and that vast power which then belonged to all
energetic members of the monastic orders, 52 enabled her to play this
part. She had no advantages to begin with. The daughter of a tradesman
overwhelmed with an almost fabulously numerous progeny, Catherine grew
up uneducated. When her genius had attained maturity, she could not
even read or write. Her biographer asserts that she learned to do so by
a miracle. Anyhow, writing became a most potent instrument in her
hands; and we possess several volumes of her epistles, as well as a
treatise of mystical theology. To conquer self-love as the root of all
evil, and to live wholly for others, was the cardinal axiom of her
morality. She pressed this principle to its most rigorous conclusions
in practice; never resting day or night from some kind of service, and
winning by her unselfish love the enthusiastic admiration of the
people. In the same spirit of exalted self-annihilation, she longed for
martyrdom, and courted death. There was not the smallest personal tie
or afterthought of interest to restrain her in the course of action
which she had marked out. Her personal influence seems to have been
immense. When she began her career of public peacemaker and preacher in
Siena, Raymond, her biographer, says that whole families devoted to
_vendetta_ were reconciled, and that civil strifes were quelled by her
letters and addresses. He had seen more than a thousand people flock to
hear her speak; the confessionals crowded with penitents, smitten by
the force of her appeals; and multitudes, unable to catch the words
which fell from her lips, sustained and animated by the light of
holiness which beamed from her inspired countenance.[55] She was not
beautiful, but her face so shone with love, and her eloquence was so
pathetic in its tenderness, that none could hear or look on her without
emotion. Her writings contain 53 abundant proofs of this peculiar
suavity. They are too sweet and unctuous in style to suit our modern
taste. When dwelling on the mystic love of Christ she cries, 'O blood!
O fire! O ineffable love!' When interceding before the Pope, she prays
for 'Pace, pace, pace, babbo mio dolce; pace, e non più guerra.' Yet
clear and simple thoughts, profound convictions, and stern moral
teaching underlie her ecstatic exclamations. One prayer which she
wrote, and which the people of Siena still use, expresses the
prevailing spirit of her creed: 'O Spirito Santo, o Deità eterna Cristo
Amore! vieni nel mio cuore; per la tua potenza trailo a Te, mio Dio, e
concedemi carità con timore. Liberami, o Amore ineffabile, da ogni mal
pensiero; riscaldami ed infiammami del tuo dolcissimo amore, sicchè
ogni pena mi sembri leggiera. Santo mio Padre e dolce mio Signore, ora
aiutami in ogni mio ministero. Cristo amore. Cristo amore.' The
reiteration of the word 'love' is most significant. It was the key-note
of her whole theology, the mainspring of her life. In no merely
figurative sense did she regard herself as the spouse of Christ, but
dwelt upon the bliss, beyond all mortal happiness, which she enjoyed in
supersensual communion with her Lord. It is easy to understand how such
ideas might be, and have been, corrupted, when impressed on natures no
less susceptible, but weaker and less gifted than S. Catherine's.
[55] The part played in Italy by preachers of repentance and peace is
among the most characteristic features of Italian history. On this
subject see the Appendix to my 'Age of the Despots,' _Renaissance in
Italy_, Part I.
One incident related by Catherine in a letter to Raymond, her confessor
and biographer, exhibits the peculiar character of her influence in the
most striking light. Nicola Tuldo, a citizen of Perugia, had been
condemned to death for treason in the flower of his age. So terribly
did the man rebel against his sentence, that he cursed God, and refused
the consolations of religion. Priests visited him in vain; his heart
was shut and sealed by the despair of leaving life in all 54 the vigour
of its prime. Then Catherine came and spoke to him: 'whence,' she says,
'he received such comfort that he confessed, and made me promise, by
the love of God, to stand at the block beside him on the day of his
execution.' By a few words, by the tenderness of her manner, and by the
charm which women have, she had already touched the heart no priest
could soften, and no threat of death or judgment terrify into
contrition. Nor was this strange. In our own days we have seen men open
the secrets of their hearts to women, after repelling the advances of
less touching sympathy. Youths, cold and cynical enough among their
brethren, have stood subdued like little children before her who spoke
to them of love and faith and penitence and hope. The world has not
lost its ladies of the race of S. Catherine, beautiful and pure and
holy, who have suffered and sought peace with tears, and who have been
appointed ministers of mercy for the worst and hardest of their
fellow-men. Such saints possess an efficacy even in the imposition of
their hands; many a devotee, like Tuldo, would more willingly greet
death if his S. Catherine were by to smile and lay her hands upon his
head, and cry, 'Go forth, my servant, and fear not!' The chivalrous
admiration for women mixes with religious awe to form the reverence
which these saints inspire. Human and heavenly love, chaste and
ecstatic, constitute the secret of their power. Catherine then subdued
the spirit of Tuldo and led him to the altar, where he received the
communion for the first time in his life. His only remaining fear was
that he might not have strength to face death bravely. Therefore he
prayed Catherine, 'Stay with me, do not leave me; so it shall be well
with me, and I shall die contented;' 'and,' says the saint, 'he laid
his head in the prison on my breast, and I said, "Comfort thee, my
brother, the block shall soon become thy marriage altar, the blood of
Christ 55 shall bathe thy sins away, and I will stand beside thee."'
When the hour came, she went and waited for him by the scaffold,
meditating on Madonna and Catherine the saint of Alexandria. She laid
her own neck on the block, and tried to picture to herself the pains
and ecstasies of martyrdom. In her deep thought, time and place became
annihilated; she forgot the eager crowd, and only prayed for Tuldo's
soul and for herself. At length he came, walking 'like a gentle lamb,'
and Catherine received him with the salutation of 'sweet brother.' She
placed his head upon the block, and laid her hands upon him, and told
him of the Lamb of God. The last words he uttered were the names of
Jesus and of Catherine. Then the axe fell, and Catherine beheld his
soul borne by angels into the regions of eternal love. When she
recovered from her trance, she held his head within her hands; her
dress was saturated with his blood, which she could scarcely bear to
wash away, so deeply did she triumph in the death of him whom she had
saved. The words of S. Catherine herself deserve to be read. The
simplicity, freedom from self-consciousness, and fervent faith in the
reality of all she did and said and saw, which they exhibit, convince
us of her entire sincerity.
The supernatural element in the life of S. Catherine may be explained
partly by the mythologising adoration of the people ready to find a
miracle in every act of her they worshipped—partly by her own
temperament and modes of life, which inclined her to ecstasy and
fostered the faculty of seeing visions—partly by a pious misconception
of the words of Christ and Bible phraseology.
To the first kind belong the wonders which are related of her early
years, the story of the candle which burnt her veil without injuring
her person, and the miracles performed by her body after death. Many
childish incidents were 56 treasured up which, had her life proved
different, would have been forgotten, or have found their proper place
among the catalogue of common things. Thus on one occasion, after
hearing of the hermits of the Thebaïd, she took it into her head to
retire into the wilderness, and chose for her dwelling one of the
caverns in the sandstone rock which abound in Siena near the quarter
where her father lived. We merely see in this event a sign of her
monastic disposition, and a more than usual aptitude for realising the
ideas presented to her mind. But the old biographers relate how one
celestial vision urged the childish hermit to forsake the world, and
another bade her return to the duties of her home.
To the second kind we may refer the frequent communings with Christ and
with the fathers of the Church, together with the other visions to
which she frequently laid claim: nor must we omit the stigmata which
she believed she had received from Christ. Catherine was
constitutionally inclined to hallucinations. At the age of six, before
it was probable that a child should have laid claim to spiritual gifts
which she did not possess, she burst into loud weeping because her
little brother rudely distracted her attention from the brilliant forms
of saints and angels which she traced among the clouds. Almost all
children of a vivid imagination are apt to transfer the objects of
their fancy to the world without them. Goethe walked for hours in his
enchanted gardens as a boy, and Alfieri tells us how he saw a company
of angels in the choristers at Asti. Nor did S. Catherine omit any
means of cultivating this faculty, and of preventing her splendid
visions from fading away, as they almost always do, beneath the
discipline of intellectual education and among the distractions of
daily life. Believing simply in their heavenly origin, and receiving no
secular training whatsoever, she walked surrounded by a spiritual
world, environed, as her legend says, by angels. Her 57 habits were
calculated to foster this disposition: it is related that she took but
little sleep, scarcely more than two hours at night, and that too on
the bare ground; she ate nothing but vegetables and the sacred wafer of
the host, entirely abjuring the use of wine and meat. This diet,
combined with frequent fasts and severe ascetic discipline, depressed
her physical forces, and her nervous system was thrown into a state of
the highest exaltation. Thoughts became things, and ideas were
projected from her vivid fancy upon the empty air around her. It was
therefore no wonder that, after spending long hours in vigils and
meditating always on the thought of Christ, she should have seemed to
take the sacrament from His hands, to pace the chapel in communion with
Him, to meet Him in the form of priest and beggar, to hear Him speaking
to her as a friend. Once when the anguish of sin had plagued her with
disturbing dreams, Christ came and gave her His own heart in exchange
for hers. When lost in admiration before the cross at Pisa, she saw His
five wounds stream with blood—five crimson rays smote her, passed into
her soul, and left their marks upon her hands and feet and side. The
light of Christ's glory shone round about her, she partook of His
martyrdom, and awaking from her trance she cried to Raymond, 'Behold! I
bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus!'
This miracle had happened to S. Francis. It was regarded as the sign of
fellowship with Christ, of worthiness to drink His cup, and to be
baptised with His baptism. We find the same idea at least in the old
Latin hymns:
Fac me plagis vulnerari—
Cruce hac inebriari—
Fac ut portem Christi mortem,
Passionis fac consortem,
Et plagas recolere.
58 These are words from the 'Stabat Mater;' nor did S. Francis and S.
Catherine do more than carry into the vividness of actual hallucination
what had been the poetic rapture of many less ecstatic, but not less
ardent, souls. They desired to be _literally_ 'crucified with Christ;'
they were not satisfied with metaphor or sentiment, and it seemed to
them that their Lord had really vouchsafed to them the yearning of
their heart. We need not here raise the question whether the stigmata
had ever been actually self-inflicted by delirious saint or hermit: it
was not pretended that the wounds of S. Catherine were visible during
her lifetime. After her death the faithful thought that they had seen
them on her corpse, and they actually appeared in the relics of her
hands and feet. The pious fraud, if fraud there must have been, should
be ascribed, not to the saint herself, but to devotees and
relic-mongers.[56] The order of S. Dominic would not be behind that of
S. Francis. If the latter boasted of their stigmata, the former would
be ready to perforate the hand or foot of their dead saint. Thus the
ecstasies of genius or devotion are brought to earth, and rendered
vulgar by mistaken piety and the rivalry of sects. The people put the
most material construction on all tropes and metaphors: above the door
of S. Catherine's chapel at Siena, for example, it is written—