ABBOT AND MONK.
The donjon cells of the manor of Plouernel consisted of three vaulted
stories, the only daylight into which penetrated through three narrow
slits opening upon the gigantic ditch, out of which rose the donjon
itself. Within, apart from a massive door studded with iron, these cells
consisted of stone only--they were roofed with stone, floored with
stone, and the walls were of stone, ten feet thick. The cell, whither
the Bishop of Nantes and the monk Jeronimo were taken, was at the very
bottom of this subterraneous structure. A narrow loophole barely
filtered through a pale ray of light into that semi-Stygian darkness.
The walls sweated a greenish moisture. In the center of the dungeon
stood a stone bed, intended for torture or death. Chains and heavy iron
rings fastened to the headpiece, to the sides and the feet of the long
stone slab, that rose three feet above the floor, announced the purpose
of that funereal couch, on which were now seated the monk and the Bishop
of Nantes. The latter, a prey at first to agonizing despair, had by
degrees recovered his composure. His face, now almost serene with a
melancholic good nature, contrasted with the somber severity of his
companion. "I am now resigned to death," the prelate was saying to
Jeronimo, "yet I confess, I feel my heart fail me at the thought of
leaving my wife and children without protection in days as dark as these
are."
"There you have one of the consequences of the marriage of priests," the
monk answered. "How justly did Gregory VII. reason when he forced the
councils to interdict marriage to the clergy!"
After a moment's silence the Bishop of Nantes resumed with a melancholy
smile: "Stoics, like the philosophers of antiquity, let's consider at
this very moment of imminent torture and death the dogmas that bear upon
our present situation."
"Let's commence with the great question of the spiritual and temporal
dominion of the church."
"It is a grand subject. I listen."
"In our days, for every twenty abbots or bishops who are sovereign in
their abbeys or bishoprics, are there not a hundred dukes, counts,
marquises or seigneurs, sovereign masters in their dukedoms, counties or
seigniories?"
"Sad to say, 'tis so!"
"Did not a large portion of the estates, that proceeded from the gifts
of Charles Martel, return to the hands of the clergy at the time of the
terror the people were seized with at the thought of the end of the
world,--a terror ably fomented by the church down to the year 1000, and
prolonged to 1033 by dint of able maneuvers?"
"That's true, too. The terrified seigneurs abandoned to the church a
large part of their goods, thinking the day of judgment was at hand.
Since then, however, the same seigneurs, or their descendants, retook
their rich donations from the clergy. The hatred that the Count Neroweg
pursues me with has no other cause than the recovery of the lands that
his grandfather bequeathed to my predecessor, at the time when those
brutes expected to see the end of the world. The Count wages war against
me to re-enter upon domains that once belonged to his family. The lance
is rising against the holy water sprinkler."
"It has been so in all the other provinces. One of the causes of the
wars of the seigneurs against the bishops and abbots has, for the last
fifty years, been the recovery of the goods given to the Church on the
occasion of the end of the world. In these impious strifes the seigneurs
have almost always come out on top. The church was vanquished."
"It is a sad fact."
"In order to recover its omnipotence, the Church must again become
richer than the seigneurs. She must, above all, rid herself forever of
those brigands who dare reach out a sacrilegious hand towards the goods
of the Church, and assault the priests of our Lord, the ministers of
God."
"Alack, Jeronimo, it is a far way from the wish to the fact! The sword
gets the best of the bishop's crook!"
"The distance is simply the journey from here to Jerusalem. That's all!"
The bishop regarded the monk with amazement, repeating without
understanding the words: "The journey from here to Jerusalem!"
"I am a legate of Pope Urban II." proceeded Jeronimo. "As such, I am
initiated in the policies of Rome. The French Pope Gerbert, and, after
him, Gregory VII., conceived a great idea--to submit the peoples of
Europe to the papal will. In order, however, to habituate them to a
passive obedience, an ostensible purpose had to be held out. Gerbert
conceived the thought of the deliverance of the tomb of Christ, which
had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, the masters of Syria and
Jerusalem. This pregnant thought, conceived in the head of Gerbert and
hatched out by Gregory VII., was the subject of long cogitations on the
part of their successors. The Popes recommended to the faithful the
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to which they attached special indulgences and
privileges. The people of Germany, of Spain, of Gaul, of England,
gradually began to hear Jerusalem, the Holy City, talked about. The
pilgrimages multiplied. Long though the voyage was, it did not seem
impossible; moreover, it insured indulgences for all crimes, and, above
all, it was a pleasure trip for the mendicants, the vagabonds, the
runaway serfs from the domains of their masters. The pilgrims found good
lodgings in the abbeys; they picked up some little money in the cities,
and obtained free passage on the Genoese or Venetian vessels as far as
Constantinople, where they then departed for Jerusalem, traversing Syria
and lodging over night from convent to convent. Arrived at the Holy
City, they paid their devotions."
"And all that without any interference on the part of the Saracens. We
must admit it among ourselves, Jeronimo, those miscreants showed
themselves quite tolerant! The churches rose in peace beside the
mosques; the Christians lived in tranquility, and the pilgrims were
never incommoded."
"And it remained so," continued Jeronimo, "until the Saracens,
exasperated by the anathemas hurled at the sectarians of Mahomet by the
Catholic priests of Jerusalem, brought their hammer down upon the holy
Temple of Solomon and demolished it--a demolition, however, that we
avenged upon Jews by massacring them in the several countries of Europe.
But after all, we cared little about the destruction of the Temple, or
the safety of the Sepulchre. Our end was attained. The people had
learned to know the road to Jerusalem. The sandals of the pilgrims had
smoothed the road to the Holy Land to the Catholic peoples. The number
of pilgrims increased from year to year. Often seigneurs, certain to
obtain by means of that pious voyage the absolution of their crimes,
joined the pilgrim vagabonds and beggars. That perpetual flux and reflux
of peoples of all stations drew ever more the eyes of Europe to the
Orient. The marvels narrated by the pilgrims upon the return from their
long voyage, the relics that they brought back, the respect with which
the Church surrounded them,--everything affected more and more the
spirit of credulity and the vulgar imagination of the masses. Gregory
VII. foresaw these results. He considered it opportune to preach the
Holy War. The Church raised her voice: 'Shame and sorrow upon the
Catholic world! The Sepulchre of the Saviour of man is in the power of
the Saracens! Kings and seigneurs, march at the head of your peoples to
the deliverance of the Sepulchre of Christ and the extermination of the
infidels.' To that premature appeal Europe remained indifferent. The
hour of the Crusades had not yet sounded. Since then, however, the idea
has made progress, and to-day we are certain to find the minds disposed
to second the Pope in his projects. Accordingly, Urban II. has not
hesitated to leave Rome and come to preach the Crusade in Gaul, the
Catholic country _par excellence!_"
"What say you? The Pope himself is coming to preach the Crusade! Can
that be true, oh, my God!"
"His Holiness is bound for Auvergne, and he sends his emissaries into
the other provinces."
"And who are the men invested with the confidence of the Pope, and
charged with leading such an undertaking to a successful end?"
"One of them, Peter the Hermit, vulgarly called 'Cuckoo Peter,' is a
monk who has twice accomplished the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He is an
ardent man, gifted with a savage eloquence that exercises upon the
multitudes a powerful effect. Another emissary is Walter the Pennyless,
a knight of adventure, bold Gascon, charged to seduce with the
cheerfulness of his words and the exaggeration of his descriptions all
those who might remain indifferent to the savage eloquence of Peter the
Hermit."
"But what arguments will these emissaries advance in order to rouse the
masses to these insensate migrations?"
"I shall answer that question presently. But let me remind you of the
principal motives of the church to drive the people to the Crusades; to
habituate Catholic Europe to rise at the voice of the Pope for the
extermination of heretics; to switch off to Palestine a large number of
the seigneurs who are contending with the Church for the goods of the
earth and the dominion of the people,--to get rid of one's enemies."
"The idea is good, profound, politic. I can well see the object that the
Pope has in view."
"Let me, furthermore, call your attention to a fact that renders
necessary a large migration of the common people to the Holy Land. In
Gaul, despite the private wars of the seigneurs and the sufferings of
this century, the population of the serfs has multiplied to an
extraordinary degree during the last fifty years."
"That is so. The serf population, decimated by the famines that reigned
from 1000 to 1034, immediately began to recover with the years of plenty
that followed upon those of dearth."
"Aided, above all, by the action of the Church when, desirous of
repeopling her domains, stripped of its agricultural serfs, she caused
the 'Armistice of God' to be proclaimed, interdicting the seigneurs and
the bishops from levying war during three days of each week under
penalty of excommunication."
"That plebeian increase brought on the formidable revolts of the serfs
of Normandy and Brittany, when doggerels were sung containing strophes
of unheard-of audacity, as you may judge from this one:
Why allow we ourselves to be oppressed?
Are we not human like the seigneurs?
Have we not, as they, body and limbs?
Is not our heart as large as theirs?
Are we not one hundred serfs to a single knight?
Let's then be up striking with our pitchforks and our scythes!
For lack of arms, take the stones the roads are strewn with!
'Death to the friars!'
"And that's the truth, Jeronimo! Those songs of revolt gave the signal
to terrible insurrections in Normandy and Brittany. But two or three
millions of the rebels had their eyes put out, their feet and hands
chopped off, and the revolt was stamped out. Those wicked people must be
exterminated."
"In order to conjure away the return of similar uprisings, it is
necessary to lead abroad the plebeian increase. The plebs grows
threatening by reason of its numbers and the force that numbers carry
with them. In order to weaken it, it will be enough to make it depart on
the Crusade across Europe."
"Explain to me how the Crusades are expected to bring about the results
that you consider needful, and that the exhortations of the papal
emissaries are to invoke."
"Is it not evident that, for every thousand serfs who will leave Gaul to
fight in Palestine, barely a hundred will arrive as far as Jerusalem?
Those wretches, departing penniless, in rags, without provisions,
carrying wife and children in their train, ravaging the regions they
traverse--Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Bulgaria, the countries of the
Danube--because, in the course of so long a voyage, such multitudes
cannot live without pillage along the route, three-fourths of them will
have been exterminated by the inhabitants of the countries that they
must cross, or will die of hunger and fatigue before being able to reach
Jerusalem. The small number of them that will arrive before the Holy
City will be still further decimated by the Saracens. It is safe to say
that hardly any of those who leave will return. Thus we shall be rid of
this vile and dangerous populace that dares rise against its masters,
especially against the Church."
"It remains to be seen, Jeronimo, whether this plebs mass will be
senseless enough to venture upon so distant and perilous a journey."
The monk answered: "Is not the lot of the villeins and the serfs on the
lay or ecclesiastical seigniories the most wretched? And, of all the
yokes, is not that of the glebe the heaviest, which forbids them to
cross the boundaries of their own seigniory. When the Church will say to
those myriads of people, chained down to the glebe: 'Go! You are free!
March off to fight the Saracens in Palestine, the country of miracles,
where you will gather an immense booty! Take no heed of provisions for
the journey, God will provide! Above all, you will accomplish your
eternal salvation!' the serfs will depart in mass, drawn by the desire
to be free, the thirst for booty, the spirit of adventure, and by the
pious ardor to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the defilement of the
infidels!"
"Jeronimo," rejoined the Bishop of Nantes, "the craving after freedom,
the spirit of adventure, the hope of booty, may, perhaps, drive those
wretches to Palestine. But desire to avenge the tomb of the Saviour from
the pretended defilement of the infidels, is, meseems, too feeble a
motive. We shall fail there."
"When this holy cause, thrice holy and eloquently preached by the
Church, is furthermore backed by the thirst for freedom, the hope of
booty, the certainty of gaining Paradise, and curiosity regarding the
future, that, though unknown, could not be worse than the present, the
attraction of the populace for Palestine will become irresistible."
"I grant it. But will the seigneurs consent to have their lands thus
depopulated by allowing the serfs to depart for the Crusades?"
"As much as ourselves do the seigneurs dread the revolt of the serfs. In
that we two have a common interest. Moreover, that plebs overflow, which
it is the part of wisdom to empty out abroad, constitutes, at the
highest, only one-third of the serfs. Only that third will depart."
"And who guarantees that many more will not yield to the attraction,
that you consider irresistible, and will not go along?"
"This plebs mass has become craven through the habit of slavery that
weighs it down since the Frankish conquest. Only a part of the village
and country populations is sufficiently disposed to revolt. It is those
very ones who are most impatient of the yoke, the most intelligent, the
most venturesome, the most daring, and, consequently, the most
dangerous, who will be the first to start for Palestine. Thus shall we
be rid of those inciters of rebellion."
"That reasoning is correct."
"Thus only one-third of the rustic plebs will emigrate. Those who remain
behind will suffice to cultivate the land. Being fewer to the task,
their toil will increase. The ox that is heavily burdened, the ass that
is heavily laden, does not kick. The danger of a new revolt will have
been conjured off. The Church will resume her preponderance over both
the plebs and the seigneurs."
"I admire, Jeronimo, the powerful combinations of the politics of the
papacy. But one of the most important results of this policy would be to
deliver us from a large number of those accursed seigneurs, always at
war against us. Oh, they will not, like the serfs, be driven by the
desire to escape a fearful lot, or of enjoying freedom. They, I fear,
will remain at home."
"A large number of them are as anxious as their serfs to change their
condition. After all, what is the life of these seigneurs? Is it not
that of chiefs of brigands? Always at war; always on the watch, fearing
to be attacked or surprised by their neighbors; unable but rarely to
leave their seigniories except armed to the teeth; often not daring even
to go on the hunt in their own domains; forced to entrench themselves in
their lairs; these ferocious men are tired of such monotonous life. They
will follow the stream."
"I have, indeed, often been struck by the expression of mortal tiredness
reflected upon the faces of the seigneurs."
"This will be the language of the friars to these men steeped in crime,
brutified almost as much as their own serfs, and all of them nursing at
the bottom of their hearts a more or less profound fear of the devil:
'You are smothering in your castles of stone; you here wrangle over the
meager spoils of some traveler, or over the barren lands of the
Occident--lands peopled with wretches resembling animals rather than
human beings. Leave the ungrateful soil and somber sky of the Occident!
Go to Palestine, go to the Orient, the land of azure and of sunshine,
fertile, splendid, radiant, studded with magnificent cities, palaces of
marble, gilded cupolas, delicious gardens! There you will find the
treasures for centuries accumulated by the Saracens, treasures so
prodigious that they suffice to pave with gold, rubies, pearls and
diamonds the whole road from Gaul to Jerusalem! God delivers into your
hands that teeming soil, its palaces, its beautiful women, its
treasures. Depart on the Holy War!' A large number of seigneurs will
bite with all the snap of their heavy jaws at that bait glittering with
all the fires of the sun of the Orient."
"You are right, Jeronimo," observed the Bishop of Nantes. "But do you
not fear that the seigniorial station, thus stripped, shrunk and ruined,
will leave the place open for the royalty, to-day without power, and
that that royalty will not endeavor to share with us the dominion of the
people, and will not even strive to dominate the Church?"
"We need not fear the rivalry of the Kings. Even their private interests
are to us a safe guarantee of their submission to the will of the Pope,
the representative of God on earth, the dispenser of eternal rewards or
punishments."
"Oh, Jeronimo, your words have opened a new horizon before me. I see now
the future of the Catholic Church in all her formidable majesty. I now
cleave to life, and would wish to assist at that magnificent spectacle."
"This topic has a close bearing upon our present position of prisoners
of Neroweg VI, and you must inspire yourself with it, Simon, to the end
that you may regulate your conduct accordingly."
"Tell me what I am to do, Jeronimo. I can take no more precious a guide
than you in all matters concerning our holy religion."
"Neroweg relies upon your torture to extort from you the possession of
the domains of your diocese, which he has long coveted. Accede to all
that he may demand. Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless will not
be long in arriving in this region to preach the Crusade. Neroweg will
depart for Jerusalem, and will not be able to profit from the
concessions you will have granted."
"But say he insists upon putting me to the torture to glut his thirst
for revenge upon me! I shudder at the prospect."
The conversation between the Bishop of Nantes and the monk was here
interrupted by a rumbling and weird noise, that seemed to proceed from
the interior of the thick wall. The two prelates trembled with affright,
and looked at each other. Then, drawing near the wall in the direction
from which the noise came, they applied their ears with bated breath.
But the noise slowly receded, and a few minutes later died away
completely.