THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE
I. BRIAN THE GOOD AND QUEEN GLAMORGAN
The kings of Alca were descended from Draco, the son of Kraken, and
they wore on their heads a terrible dragon’s crest, as a sacred badge
whose appearance alone inspired the people with veneration, terror, and
love. They were perpetually in conflict either with their own vassals
and subjects or with the princes of the adjoining islands and
continents.
The most ancient of these kings has left but a name. We do not even
know how to pronounce or write it. The first of the Draconides whose
history is known was Brian the Good, renowned for his skill and courage
in war and in the chase.
He was a Christian and loved learning. He also favoured men who had
vowed themselves to the monastic life. In the hall of his palace where,
under the sooty rafters, there hung the heads, pelts, and horns of wild
beasts, he held feasts to which all the harpers of Alca and of the
neighbouring islands were invited, and he himself used to join in
singing the praises of the heroes. He was just and magnanimous, but
inflamed by so ardent a love of glory that he could not restrain
himself from putting to death those who had sung better than himself.
The monks of Yvern having been driven out by the pagans who ravaged
Brittany, King Brian summoned them into his kingdom and built a wooden
monastery for them near his palace. Every day he went with Queen
Glamorgan, his wife, into the monastery chapel and was present at the
religious ceremonies and joined in the hymns.
Now among these monks there was a brother called Oddoul, who, while
still in the flower of his youth, had adorned himself with knowledge
and virtue. The devil entertained a great grudge against him, and
attempted several times to lead him into temptation. He took several
shapes and appeared to him in turn as a war-horse, a young maiden, and
a cup of mead. Then he rattled two dice in a dicebox and said to him:
“Will you play with me for the kingdoms of, the world against one of
the hairs of your head?”
But the man of the Lord, armed with the sign of the Cross, repulsed the
enemy. Perceiving that he could not seduce him, the devil thought of an
artful plan to ruin him. One summer night he approached the queen, who
slept upon her couch, showed her an image of the young monk whom she
saw every day in the wooden monastery, and upon this image he placed a
spell. Forthwith, like a subtle poison, love flowed into Glamorgan’s
veins, and she burned with an ardent desire to do as she listed with
Oddoul. She found unceasing pretexts to have him near her. Several
times she asked him to teach reading and singing to her children.
“I entrust them to you,” said she to him. “And will follow the lessons
you will give them so that I myself may learn also. You will teach both
mother and sons at the same time.”
But the young monk kept making excuses. At times he would say that he
was not a learned enough teacher, and on other occasions that his state
forbade him all intercourse with women. This refusal inflamed
Glamorgan’s passion. One day as she lay pining upon her couch, her
malady having become intolerable, she summoned Oddoul to her chamber.
He came in obedience to her orders, but remained with his eyes cast
down towards the threshold of the door. With impatience and grief she
resented his not looking at her.
“See,” said she to him, “I have no more strength, a shadow is on my
eyes. My body is both burning and freezing.”
And as he kept silence and made no movement, she called him in a voice
of entreaty:
“Come to me, come!”
With outstretched arms to which passion gave more length, she
endeavoured to seize him and draw him towards her.
But he fled away, reproaching her for her wantonness.
Then, incensed with rage and fearing that Oddoul might divulge the
shame into which she had fallen, she determined to ruin him so that he
might not ruin her.
In a voice of lamentation that resounded throughout all the palace she
called for help, as if, in truth, she were in some great danger. Her
servants rushed up and saw the young monk fleeing and the queen pulling
back the sheets upon her couch. They all cried out together. And when
King Brian, attracted by the noise, entered the chamber, Glamorgan,
showing him her dishevelled hair, her eyes flooded with tears, and her
bosom that in the fury of her love she had torn with her nails, said:
“My lord and husband, behold the traces of the insults I have
undergone. Driven by an infamous desire Oddoul has approached me and
attempted to do me violence.”
When he heard these complaints and saw the blood, the king, transported
with fury, ordered his guards to seize the young monk and burn him
alive before the palace under the queen’s eyes.
Being told of the affair, the Abbot of Yvern went to the king and said
to him:
“King Brian, know by this example the difference between a Christian
woman and a pagan. Roman Lucretia was the most virtuous of idolatrous
princesses, yet she had not the strength to defend herself against the
attacks of an effeminate youth, and, ashamed of her weakness, she gave
way to despair, whilst Glamorgan has successfully withstood the
assaults of a criminal filled with rage, and possessed by the most
terrible of demons.” Meanwhile Oddoul, in the prison of the palace, was
waiting for the moment when he should be burned alive. But God did not
suffer an innocent to perish. He sent to him an angel, who, taking the
form of one of the queen’s servants called Gudrune, took him out of his
prison and led him into the very room where the woman whose appearance
he had taken dwelt.
And the angel said to young Oddoul:
“I love thee because thou art daring.”
And young Oddoul, believing that it was Gudrune herself, answered with
downcast looks:
“It is by the grace of the Lord that I have resisted the violence of
the queen and braved the anger of that powerful woman.”
And the angel asked:
“What? Hast thou not done what the queen accuses thee of?”
“In truth no, I have not done it,” answered Oddoul, his hand on his
heart.
“Thou hast not done it?”
“No, I have not done it. The very thought of such an action fills me
with horror.”
“Then,” cried the angel, “what art thou doing here, thou impotent
creature?”[3]
[3] The Penguin chronicler who relates the fact employs the
expression, _Species inductilis_. I have endeavoured to translate it
literally.
And she opened the door to facilitate the young man’s escape. Oddoul
felt himself pushed violently out. Scarcely had he gone down into the
street than a chamber-pot was poured over his head; and he thought:
“Mysterious are thy designs, O Lord, and thy ways past finding out.”
II. DRACO THE GREAT
(_Translation of the Relics of St. Orberosia_)
The direct posterity of Brian the Good was extinguished about the year
900 in the person of Collic of the Short Nose. A cousin of that prince,
Bosco the Magnanimous, succeeded him, and took care, in order to assure
himself of the throne, to put to death all his relations. There issued
from him a long line of powerful kings.
One of them, Draco the Great, attained great renown as a man of war. He
was defeated more frequently than the others. It is by this constancy
in defeat that great captains are recognized. In twenty years he burned
down more than a hundred thousand hamlets, market towns, unwalled
towns, villages, walled towns, cities, and universities. He set fire
impartially to his enemies’ territory and to his own domains. And he
used to explain his conduct by saying:
“War without fire is like tripe without mustard: it is an insipid
thing.”
His justice was rigorous. When the peasants whom he made prisoners were
unable to raise the money for their ransoms he had them hanged from a
tree, and if any unhappy woman came to plead for her destitute husband
he dragged her by the hair at his horse’s tail. He lived like a soldier
without effeminacy. It is satisfactory to relate that his manner of
life was pure. Not only did he not allow his kingdom to decline from
its hereditary glory, but, even in his reverses he valiantly supported
the honour of the Penguin people.
Draco the Great caused the relics of St. Orberosia to be transferred to
Alca.
The body of the blessed saint had been buried in a grotto on the Coast
of Shadows at the end of a scented heath. The first pilgrims who went
to visit it were the boys and girls from the neighbouring villages.
They used to go there in the evening, by preference in couples, as if
their pious desires naturally sought satisfaction in darkness and
solitude. They worshipped the saint with a fervent and discreet worship
whose mystery they seemed jealously to guard, for they did not like to
publish too openly the experiences they felt. But they were heard to
murmur one to another words of love, delight, and rapture with which
they mingled the name of Orberosia. Some would sigh that there they
forgot the world; others would say that they came out of the grotto in
peace and calm; the young girls among them used to recall to each other
the joy with which they had been filled in it.
Such were the marvels that the virgin of Alca performed in the morning
of her glorious eternity; they had the sweetness and indefiniteness of
the dawn. Soon the mystery of the grotto spread like a perfume
throughout the land; it was a ground of joy and edification for pious
souls, and corrupt men endeavoured, though in vain, by falsehood and
calumny, to divert the faithful from the springs of grace that flowed
from the saint’s tomb. The Church took measures so that these graces
should not remain reserved for a few children, but should be diffused
throughout all Penguin Christianity. Monks took up their quarters in
the grotto, they built a monastery, a chapel, and a hostelry on the
coast, and pilgrims began to flock thither.
As if strengthened by a longer sojourn in heaven, the blessed Orberosia
now performed still greater miracles for those who came to lay their
offerings on her tomb. She gave hopes to women who had been hitherto
barren, she sent dreams to reassure jealous old men concerning the
fidelity of the young wives whom they had suspected without cause, and
she protected the country from plagues, murrains, famines, tempests,
and dragons of Cappadocia.
But during the troubles that desolated the kingdom in the time of King
Collic and his successors, the tomb of St. Orberosia was plundered of
its wealth, the monastery burned down, and the monks dispersed. The
road that had been so long trodden by devout pilgrims was overgrown
with furze and heather, and the blue thistles of the sands. For a
hundred years the miraculous tomb had been visited by none save vipers,
weasels, and bats, when, one day the saint appeared to a peasant of the
neighbourhood, Momordic by name.
“I am the virgin Orberosia,” said she to him; “I have chosen thee to
restore my sanctuary. Warn the inhabitants of the country that if they
allow my memory to be blotted out, and leave my tomb without honour and
wealth, a new dragon will come and devastate Penguinia.”
Learned churchmen held an inquiry concerning this apparition, and
pronounced it genuine, and not diabolical but truly heavenly, and in
later years it was remarked that in France, in like circumstances, St.
Foy and St. Catherine had acted in the same way and made use of similar
language.
The monastery was restored and pilgrims flocked to it anew. The virgin
Orberosia worked greater and greater miracles. She cured divers hurtful
maladies, particularly club-foot, dropsy, paralysis, and St. Guy’s
disease. The monks who kept the tomb were enjoying an enviable
opulence, when the saint, appearing to King Draco the Great, ordered
him to recognise her as the heavenly patron of the kingdom and to
transfer her precious remains to the cathedral of Alca.
In consequence, the odoriferous relics of that virgin were carried with
great pomp to the metropolitan church and placed in the middle of the
choir in a shrine made of gold and enamel and ornamented with precious
stones.
The chapter kept a record of the miracles wrought by the blessed
Orberosia.
Draco the Great, who had never ceased to defend and exalt the Christian
faith, died fulfilled with the most pious sentiments and bequeathed his
great possessions to the Church.
III. QUEEN CRUCHA
Terrible disorders followed the death of Draco the Great. That prince’s
successors have often been accused of weakness, and it is true that
none of them followed, even from afar, the example of their valiant
ancestor.
His son, Chum, who was lame, failed to increase the territory of the
Penguins. Bolo, the son of Chum, was assassinated by the palace guards
at the age of nine, just as he was ascending the throne. His brother
Gun succeeded him. He was only seven years old and allowed himself to
be governed by his mother, Queen Crucha.
Crucha was beautiful, learned, and intelligent; but she was unable to
curb her own passions.
These are the terms in which the venerable Talpa expresses himself in
his chronicle regarding that illustrious queen:
“In beauty of face and symmetry of figure Queen Crucha yields neither
to Semiramis of Babylon nor to Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons; nor
to Salome, the daughter of Herodias. But she offers in her person
certain singularities that will appear beautiful or uncomely according
to the contradictory opinions of men and the varying judgments of the
world. She has on her forehead two small horns which she conceals in
the abundant folds of her golden hair; one of her eyes is blue and one
is black; her neck is bent towards the left side; and, like Alexander
of Macedon, she has six fingers on her right hand, and a stain like a
little monkey’s head upon her skin.
“Her gait is majestic and her manner affable. She is magnificent in her
expenses, but she is not always able to rule desire by reason.
“One day, having noticed in the palace stables, a young groom of great
beauty, she immediately fell violently in love with him, and entrusted
to him the command of her armies. What one must praise unreservedly in
this great queen is the abundance of gifts that she makes to the
churches, monasteries, and chapels in her kingdom, and especially to
the holy house of Beargarden, where, by the grace of the Lord, I made
my profession in my fourteenth year. She has founded masses for the
repose of her soul in such great numbers that every priest in the
Penguin Church is, so to speak, transformed into a taper lighted in the
sight of heaven to draw down the divine mercy upon the august Crucha.”
From these lines and from some others with which have enriched my text
the reader can judge of the historical and literary value of the “Gesta
Penguinorum.” Unhappily, that chronicle suddenly comes suddenly to an
end at the third year of Draco the Simple, the successor of Gun the
Weak. Having reached that point of my history, I deplore the loss of an
agreeable and trustworthy guide.
During the two centuries that followed, the Penguins remained plunged
in blood-stained disorder. All the arts perished. In the midst of the
general ignorance, the monks in the shadow of their cloister devoted
themselves to study, and copied the Holy Scriptures with indefatigable
zeal. As parchment was scarce, they scraped the writing off old
manuscripts in order to transcribe upon them the divine word. Thus
throughout the breadth of Penguinia Bibles blossomed forth like roses
on a bush.
A monk of the order of St. Benedict, Ermold the Penguin, had himself
alone defaced four thousand Greek and Latin manuscripts so as to copy
out the Gospel of St. John four thousand times. Thus the masterpieces
of ancient poetry and eloquence were destroyed in great numbers.
Historians are unanimous in recognising that the Penguin convents were
the refuge of learning during the Middle Ages.
Unending wars between the Penguins and the Porpoises filled the close
of this period. It is extremely difficult to know the truth concerning
these wars, not because accounts are wanting, but because there are so
many of them. The Porpoise Chronicles contradict the Penguin Chronicles
at every point. And, moreover, the Penguins contradict each other as
well as the Porpoises. I have discovered two chronicles that are in
agreement, but one has copied from the other. A single fact is certain,
namely, that massacres, rapes, conflagrations, and plunder succeeded
one another without interruption.
Under the unhappy prince Bosco IX. the kingdom was at the verge of
ruin. On the news that the Porpoise fleet, composed of six hundred
great ships, was in sight of Alca, the bishop ordered a solemn
procession. The cathedral chapter, the elected magistrates, the members
of Parliament, and the clerics of the University entered the Cathedral
and, taking up St. Orberosia’s shrine, led it in procession through the
town, followed by the entire people singing hymns. The holy patron of
Penguinia was not invoked in vain. Nevertheless, the Porpoises besieged
the town both by land and sea, took it by assault, and for three days
and three nights killed, plundered, violated, and burned, with all the
indifference that habit produces.
Our astonishment cannot be too great at the fact that, during those
iron ages, the faith was preserved intact among the Penguins. The
splendour of the truth in those times illumined all souls that had not
been corrupted by sophisms. This is the explanation of the unity of
belief. A constant practice of the Church doubtless contributed also to
maintain this happy communion of the faithful—every Penguin who thought
differently from the others was immediately burned at the stake.
IV. LETTERS: JOHANNES TALPA
During the minority of King Gun, Johannes Talpa, in the monastery of
Beargarden, where at the age of fourteen he had made his profession and
from which he never departed for a single day throughout his life,
composed his celebrated Latin chronicle in twelve books called “De
Gestis Penguinorum.”
The monastery of Beargarden lifts its high walls on the summit of an
inaccessible peak. One sees around it only the blue tops of mountains,
divided by the clouds.
When he began to write his “Gesta Penguinorum,” Johannes Talpa was
already old. The good monk has taken care to tell us this in his book:
“My head has long since lost,” he says, “its adornment of fair hair,
and my scalp resembles those convex mirrors of metal which the Penguin
ladies consult with so much care and zeal. My stature, naturally small,
has with years become diminished and bent. My white beard gives warmth
to my breast.”
With a charming simplicity, Talpa informs us of certain circumstances
in his life and some features in his character. “Descended,” he tells
us, “from a noble family, and destined from childhood for the
ecclesiastical state, I was taught grammar and music. I learnt to read
under the guidance of a master who was called Amicus, and who would
have been better named Inimicus. As I did not easily attain to a
knowledge of my letters, he beat me violently with rods so that I can
say that he printed the alphabet in strokes upon my back.”
In another passage Talpa confesses his natural inclination towards
pleasure. These are his expressive words: “In my youth the ardour of my
senses was such that in the shadow of the woods I experienced a
sensation of boiling in a pot rather than of breathing the fresh air. I
fled from women, but in vain, for every object recalled them to me.”
While he was writing his chronicle, a terrible war, at once foreign and
domestic, laid waste the Penguin land. The soldiers of Crucha came to
defend the monastery of Beargarden against the Penguin barbarians and
established themselves strongly within its walls. In order to render it
impregnable they pierced loop-holes through the walls and they took the
lead off the church roof to make balls for their slings. At night they
lighted huge fires in the courts and cloisters and on them they roasted
whole oxen which they spitted upon the ancient pine-trees of the
mountain. Sitting around the flames, amid smoke filled with a mingled
odour of resin and fat, they broached huge casks of wine and beer.
Their songs, their blasphemies, and the noise of their quarrels drowned
the sound of the morning bells.
At last the Porpoises, having crossed the defiles, laid siege to the
monastery. They were warriors from the North, clad in copper armour.
They fastened ladders a hundred and fifty fathoms long to the sides of
the cliffs and sometimes in the darkness and storm these broke beneath
the weight of men and arms, and bunches of the besiegers were hurled
into the ravines and precipices. A prolonged wail would be heard going
down into the darkness, and the assault would begin again. The Penguins
poured streams of burning wax upon their assailants, which made them
blaze like torches. Sixty times the enraged Porpoises attempted to
scale the monastery and sixty times they were repulsed.
For six months they had closely invested the monastery, when, on the
day of the Epiphany, a shepherd of the valley showed them a hidden path
by which they climbed the mountain, penetrated into the vaults of the
abbey, ran through the cloisters, the kitchens, the church, the chapter
halls, the library, the laundry, the cells, the refectories, and the
dormitories, and burned the buildings, killing and violating without
distinction of age or sex. The Penguins, awakened unexpectedly, ran to
arms, but in the darkness and alarm they struck at one another, whilst
the Porpoises with blows of their axes disputed the sacred vessels, the
censers, the candlesticks, dalmatics, reliquaries, golden crosses, and
precious stones.
The air was filled with an acrid odour of burnt flesh. Groans and
death-cries arose in the midst of the flames, and on the edges of the
crumbling roofs monks ran in thousands like ants, and fell into the
valley. Yet Johannes Talpa kept on writing his Chronicle. The soldiers
of Crucha retreated speedily and filled up all the issues from the
monastery with pieces of rock so as to shut up the Porpoises in the
burning buildings. And to crush the enemy beneath the ruin they
employed the trunks of old oaks as battering-rams. The burning timbers
fell in with a noise like thunder and the lofty arches of the naves
crumbled beneath the shock of these giant trees when moved by six
hundred men together. Soon there was left nothing of the rich and
extensive abbey but the cell of Johannes Talpa, which, by a marvellous
chance, hung from the ruin of a smoking gable. The old chronicler still
kept writing.
This admirable intensity of thought may seem excessive in the case of
an annalist who applies himself to relate the events of his own time.
However abstracted and detached we may be from surrounding things, we
nevertheless resent their influence. I have consulted the original
manuscript of Johannes Talpa in the National Library, where it is
preserved (_Monumenta Peng_., _K_. _L_6., 12390 _four_). It is a
parchment manuscript of 628 leaves. The writing is extremely confused,
the letters instead of being in a straight line, stray in all
directions and are mingled together in great disorder, or, more
correctly speaking, in absolute confusion. They are so badly formed
that for the most part it is impossible not merely to say what they
are, but even to distinguish them from the splashes of ink with which
they are plentifully interspersed. Those inestimable pages bear witness
in this way to the troubles amid which they were written. To read them
is difficult. On the other hand, the monk of Beargarden’s style shows
no trace of emotion. The tone of the “Gesta Penguinorum” never departs
from simplicity. The narration is rapid and of a conciseness that
sometimes approaches dryness. The reflections are rare and, as a rule,
judicious.
V. THE ARTS: THE PRIMITIVES OF PENGUIN PAINTING
The Penguin critics vie with one another in affirming that Penguin art
has from its origin been distinguished by a powerful and pleasing
originality, and that we may look elsewhere in vain for the qualities
of grace and reason that characterise its earliest works. But the
Porpoises claim that their artists were undoubtedly the instructors and
masters of the Penguins. It is difficult to form an opinion on the
matter, because the Penguins, before they began to admire their
primitive painters, destroyed all their works.
We cannot be too sorry for this loss. For my own part I feel it
cruelly, for I venerate the Penguin antiquities and I adore the
primitives. They are delightful. I do not say the are all alike, for
that would be untrue, but they have common characters that are found in
all schools—I mean formulas from which they never depart—and there is
besides something finished in their work, for what they know they know
well. Luckily we can form a notion of the Penguin primitives from the
Italian, Flemish, and Dutch primitives, and from the French primitives,
who are superior to all the rest; as M. Gruyer tells us they are more
logical, logic being a peculiarly French quality. Even if this is
denied it must at least be admitted that to France belongs the credit
of having kept primitives when the other nations knew them no longer.
The Exhibition of French Primitives at the Pavilion Marsan in 1904
contained several little panels contemporary with the later Valois
kings and with Henry IV.
I have made many journeys to see the pictures of the brothers Van Eyck,
of Memling, of Roger van der Weyden, of the painter of the death of
Mary, of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and of the old Umbrian masters. It was,
however, neither Bruges, nor Cologne, nor Sienna, nor Perugia, that
completed my initiation; it was in the little town of Arezzo that I
became a conscious adept in primitive painting. That was ten years ago
or even longer. At that period of indigence and simplicity, the
municipal museums, though usually kept shut, were always opened to
foreigners. One evening an old woman with a candle showed me, for half
a lira, the sordid museum of Arezzo, and in it I discovered a painting
by Margaritone, a “St. Francis,” the pious sadness of which moved me to
tears. I was deeply touched, and Margaritone, of Arezzo became from
that day my dearest primitive.
I picture to myself the Penguin primitives in conformity with the works
of that master. It will not therefore be thought superfluous if in this
place I consider his works with some attention, if not in detail, at
least under their more general and, if I dare say so, most
representative aspect.
We possess five or six pictures signed with his hand. His masterpiece,
preserved in the National Gallery of London, represents the Virgin
seated on a throne and holding the infant Jesus in her arms. What
strikes one first when one looks at this figure is the proportion. The
body from the neck to the feet is only twice as long as the head, so
that it appears extremely short and podgy. This work is not less
remarkable for its painting than for its drawing. The great Margaritone
had but a limited number of colours in his possession, and he used them
in all their purity without ever modifying the tones. From this it
follows that his colouring has more vivacity than harmony. The cheeks
of the Virgin and those of the Child are of a bright vermilion which
the old master, from a naïve preference for clear definitions, has
placed on each face in two circumferences as exact as if they had been
traced out by a pair of compasses.
A learned critic of the eighteenth century, the Abbé Lanzi, has treated
Margaritone’s works with profound disdain. “They are,” he says, “merely
crude daubs. In those unfortunate times people could neither draw nor
paint.” Such was the common opinion of the connoisseurs of the days of
powdered wigs. But the great Margaritone and his contemporaries were
soon to be avenged for this cruel contempt. There was born in the
nineteenth century, in the biblical villages and reformed cottages of
pious England, a multitude of little Samuels and little St. Johns, with
hair curling like lambs, who, about 1840, and 1850, became spectacled
professors and founded the cult of the primitives.
That eminent theorist of Pre-Raphaelitism, Sir James Tuckett, does not
shrink from placing the Madonna of the National Gallery on a level with
the masterpieces of Christian art. “By giving to the Virgin’s head,”
says Sir James Tuckett, “a third of the total height of the figure, the
old master attracts the spectator’s attention and keeps it directed
towards the more sublime parts of the human figure, and in particular
the eyes, which we ordinarily describe as the spiritual organs. In this
picture, colouring and design conspire to produce an ideal and mystical
impression. The vermilion of the cheeks does not recall the natural
appearance of the skin; it rather seems as if the old master has
applied the roses of Paradise to the faces of the Mother and the
Child.”
We see, in such a criticism as this, a shining reflection, so to speak,
of the work which it exalts; yet MacSilly, the seraphic aesthete of
Edinburgh, has expressed in a still more moving and penetrating fashion
the impression produced upon his mind by the sight of this primitive
painting. “The Madonna of Margaritone,” says the revered MacSilly,
“attains the transcendent end of art. It inspires its beholders with
feelings of innocence and purity; it makes them like little children.
And so true is this, that at the age of sixty-six, after having had the
joy of contemplating it closely for three hours, I felt myself suddenly
transformed into a little child. While my cab was taking me through
Trafalgar Square I kept laughing and prattling and shaking my
spectacle-case as if it were a rattle. And when the maid in my
boarding-house had served my meal I kept pouring spoonfuls of soup into
my ear with all the artlessness of childhood.”
“It is by such results,” adds MacSilly, “that the excellence of a work
of art is proved.”
Margaritone, according to Vasari, died at the age of seventy-seven,
“regretting that he had lived to see a new form of art arising and the
new artists crowned with fame.”
These lines, which I translate literally, have inspired Sir James
Tuckett with what are perhaps the finest pages in his work. They form
part of his “Breviary for Æsthetes”; all the Pre-Raphaelites know them
by heart. I place them here as the most precious ornament of this book.
You will agree that nothing more sublime has been written since the
days of the Hebrew prophets.
MARGARITONE’S VISION
Margaritone, full of years and labours, went one day to visit the
studio of a young painter who had lately settled in the town. He
noticed in the studio a freshly painted Madonna, which, although severe
and rigid, nevertheless, by a certain exactness in the proportions and
a devilish mingling of light and shade, assumed an appearance of relief
and life. At this sight the artless and sublime worker of Arezzo
perceived with horror what the future of painting would be. With his
brow clasped in his hands he exclaimed:
“What things of shame does not this figure show forth! I discern in it
the end of that Christian art which paints the soul and inspires the
beholder with an ardent desire for heaven. Future painters will not
restrain themselves as does this one to portraying on the side of a
wall or on a wooden panel the cursed matter of which our bodies are
formed; they will celebrate and glorify it. They will clothe their
figures with dangerous appearances of flesh, and these figures will
seem like real persons. Their bodies will be seen; their forms will
appear through their clothing. St. Magdalen will have a bosom. St.
Martha a belly, St. Barbara hips, St. Agnes buttocks; St. Sebastian
will unveil his youthful beauty, and St. George will display beneath
his armour the muscular wealth of a robust virility; apostles,
confessors, doctors, and God the Father himself will appear as ordinary
beings like you and me; the angels will affect an equivocal, ambiguous,
mysterious beauty which will trouble hearts. What desire for heaven
will these representations impart? None; but from them you will learn
to take pleasure in the forms of terrestrial life. Where will painters
stop in their indiscreet inquiries? They will stop nowhere. They will
go so far as to show men and women naked like the idols of the Romans.
There will be a sacred art and a profane art, and the sacred art will
not be less profane than the other.”
“Get ye behind me, demons,” exclaimed the old master. For in prophetic
vision he saw the righteous and the saints assuming the appearance of
melancholy athletes. He saw Apollos playing the lute on a flowery hill,
in the midst of the Muses wearing light tunics. He saw Venuses lying
under shady myrtles and the Danae exposing their charming sides to the
golden rain. He saw pictures of Jesus under the pillars of the temple
amidst patricians, fair ladies, musicians, pages, negroes, dogs, and
parrots. He saw in an inextricable confusion of human limbs, outspread
wings, and flying draperies, crowds of tumultuous Nativities, opulent
Holy Families, emphatic Crucifixions. He saw St. Catherines, St.
Barbaras, St. Agneses humiliating patricians by the sumptuousness of
their velvets, their brocades, and their pearls, and by the splendour
of their breasts. He saw Auroras scattering roses, and a multitude of
naked Dianas and Nymphs surprised on the banks of retired streams. And
the great Margaritone died, strangled by so horrible a presentiment of
the Renaissance and the Bolognese School.
VI. MARBODIUS
We possess a precious monument of the Penguin literature of the
fifteenth century. It is a narrative of a journey to hell undertaken by
the monk Marbodius, of the order of St. Benedict, who professed a
fervent admiration for the poet Virgil. This narrative, written in
fairly good Latin, has been published by M. du Clos des Limes. It is
here translated for the first time. I believe that I am doing a service
to my fellow-countrymen in making them acquainted with these pages,
though doubtless they are far from forming a unique example of this
class of mediaeval Latin literature. Among the fictions that may be
compared with them we may mention “The Voyage of St. Brendan,” “The
Vision of Albericus,” and “St. Patrick’s Purgatory,” imaginary
descriptions, like Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy,” of the supposed
abode of the dead. The narrative of Marbodius is one of the latest
works dealing with this theme, but it is not the least singular.
THE DESCENT OF MARBODIUS INTO HELL
In the fourteen hundred and fifty-third year of the incarnation of the
Son of God, a few days before the enemies of the Cross entered the city
of Helena and the great Constantine, it was given to me, Brother
Marbodius, an unworthy monk, to see and to hear what none had hitherto
seen or heard. I have composed a faithful narrative of those things so
that their memory may not perish with me, for man’s time is short.
On the first day of May in the aforesaid year, at the hour of vespers,
I was seated in the Abbey of Corrigan on a stone in the cloisters and,
as my custom was, I read the verses of the poet whom I love best of
all, Virgil, who has sung of the labours: of the field, of shepherds,
and of heroes. Evening was hanging its purple folds from the arches of
the cloisters and in a voice of emotion I was murmuring the verses
which describe how Dido, the Phœnician queen, wanders with her
ever-bleeding wound beneath the myrtles of hell. At that moment Brother
Hilary happened to pass by, followed by Brother Jacinth, the porter.
Brought up in the barbarous ages before the resurrection of the Muses,
Brother Hilary has not been initiated into the wisdom of the ancients;
nevertheless, the poetry of the Mantuan has, like a subtle torch, shed
some gleams of light into his understanding.
“Brother Marbodius,” he asked me, “do those verses that you utter with
swelling breast and sparkling eyes—do they belong to that great ‘Æneid’
from which morning or evening your glances are never withheld?”
I answered that I was reading in Virgil how the son of Anchises
perceived Dido like a moon behind the foliage.[4]
[4] The text runs
. . . qualem primo qui syrgere mense
Aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam.
Brother Marbodius, by a strange misunderstanding, substitutes an
entirely different image for the one created by the poet.
“Brother Marbodius,” he replied, “I am certain that on all occasions
Virgil gives expression to wise maxims and profound thoughts. But the
songs that he modulates on his Syracusan flute hold such a lofty
meaning and such exalted doctrine that I am continually puzzled by
them.”
“Take care, father,” cried Brother Jacinth, in an agitated voice.
“Virgil was a magician who wrought marvels by the help of demons. It is
thus he pierced through a mountain near Naples and fashioned a bronze
horse that had power to heal all the diseases of horses. He was a
necromancer, and there is still shown, in a certain town in Italy, the
mirror in which he made the dead appear. And yet a woman deceived this
great sorcerer. A Neapolitan courtesan invited him to hoist himself up
to her window in the basket that was used to bring the provisions, and
she left him all night suspended between two storeys.”
Brother Hilary did not appear to hear these observations.
“Virgil is a prophet,” he replied, “and a prophet who leaves far behind
him the sibyls with their sacred verses as well as the daughter of King
Priam, and that great diviner of future things, Plato of Athens. You
will find in the fourth of his Syracusan cantos the birth of our Lord
foretold in a lancune that seems of heaven rather than of earth.[5] In
the time of my early studies, when I read for the first time JAM REDIT
ET VIRGO, I felt myself bathed in an infinite delight, but I
immediately experienced intense grief at the thought that, for ever
deprived of the presence of God, the author of this prophetic verse,
the noblest that has come from human lips, was pining among the heathen
in eternal darkness. This cruel thought did not leave me. It pursued me
even in my studies, my prayers, my meditations, and my ascetic labours.
Thinkin that Virgil was deprived of the sight of God and that possibly
he might even be suffering the fate of the reprobate in hell, I could
neither enjoy peace nor rest, and I went so far as to exclaim several
times a day with my arms outstretched to heaven:
[5] Three centuries before the epoch in which our Marbodius lived the
words—
Maro, vates gentilium
Da Christo testimonium.
Were sung in the churches on Christmas Day.
“‘Reveal to me, O Lord, the lot thou hast assigned to him who sang on
earth as the angels sing in heaven!’
“After some years my anguish ceased when I read in an old book that the
great apostle St. Paul, who called the Gentiles into the Church of
Christ, went to Naples and sanctified with his tears the tomb of the
prince of poets.[6] This was some ground for believing that Virgil,
like the Emperor Trajan, was admitted to Paradise because even in error
he had a presentiment of the truth. We are not compelled to believe it,
but I can easily persuade myself that it is true.”
[6] Ad maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum
Piae rorem lacrymæ.
Quem te, intuit, reddidissem,
Si te vivum invenissem
Poetarum maxime!
Having thus spoken, old Hilary wished me the peace of a holy night and
went away with Brother Jacinth.
I resumed the delightful study of my poet. Book in hand, I meditated
upon the way in which those whom Love destroys with its cruel malady
wander through the secret paths in the depth of the myrtle forest, and,
as I meditated, the quivering reflections of the stars came and mingled
with those of the leafless eglantines in the waters of the cloister
fountain. Suddenly the lights and the perfumes and the stillness of the
sky were overwhelmed, a fierce Northwind charged with storm and
darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and carried me like a
wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and mountains, and through
the midst of thunder-clouds, during a long night composed of a whole
series of nights and days. And when, after this prolonged and cruel
rage, the hurricane was at last stilled, I found myself far from my
native land at the bottom of a valley bordered by cypress trees. Then a
woman of wild beauty, trailing long garments behind her, approached me.
She placed her left hand on my shoulder, and, pointing her right arm to
an oak with thick foliage:
“Look!” said she to me.
Immediately I recognised the Sibyl who guards the sacred wood of
Avernus, and I discerned the fair Proserpine’s beautiful golden twig
amongst the tufted boughs of the tree to which her finger pointed.
“O prophetic Virgin,” I exclaimed, “thou hast comprehended my desire
and thou hast satisfied it in this way. Thou hast revealed to me the
tree that bears the shining twig without which none can enter alive
into the dwelling-place of the dead. And in truth, eagerly did I long
to converse with the shade of Virgil.”
Having said this, I snatched the golden branch from its ancient trunk
and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the
miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like
dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon
took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on
the shores of the dead, and was greeted by the mute baying of the
threefold Cerberus. I pretended to throw the shade of a stone at him,
and the vain monster fled into his cave. There, amidst the rushes,
wandered the souls of those children whose eyes had but opened and shut
to the kindly light of day, and there in a gloomy cavern Minos judges
men. I penetrated into the myrtle wood in which the victims of love
wander languishing, Phaedra, Procris, the sad Eriphyle, Evadne,
Pasiphaë Laodamia, and Cenis, and the Phœnician Dido. Then I went
through the dusty plains reserved for famous warriors. Beyond them open
two ways. That to the left leads to Tartarus, the abode of the wicked.
I took that to the right, which leads to Elysium and to the dwellings
of Dis. Having hung the sacred branch at the goddess’s door, I reached
pleasant fields flooded with purple light. The shades of philosophers
and poets hold grave converse there. The Graces and the Muses formed
sprightly choirs upon the grass. Old Homer sang, accompanying himself
upon his rustic lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone
upon his lips. I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the
games of the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an
ancient laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy
Euripides, and the masculine Sappho. I passed and recognised, as they
sat on the bank of a fresh rivulet, the poet Horace, Varius, Gallus,
and Lycoris. A little apart, leaning against the trunk of a dark
holm-oak, Virgil was gazing pensively at the grove. Of lofty stature,
though spare, he still preserved that swarthy complexion, that rustic
air, that negligent bearing, and unpolished appearance which during his
lifetime concealed his genius. I saluted him piously and remained for a
long time without speech.
At last when my halting voice could proceed out of my throat:
“O thou, so dear to the Ausonian Muses, thou honour of the Latin name,
Virgil,” cried I, “it is through thee I have known what beauty is, it
is through thee I have known what the tables of the gods and the beds
of the goddesses are like. Suffer the praises of the humblest of thy
adorers.”
“Arise, stranger,” answered the divine poet. “I perceive that thou art
a living being among the shades, and that thy body treads down the
grass in this eternal evening. Thou art not the first man who has
descended before his death into these dwellings, although all
intercourse between us and the living is difficult. But cease from
praise; I do not like eulogies and the confused sounds of glory have
always offended my ears. That is why I fled from Rome, where I was
known to the idle and curious, and laboured in the solitude of my
beloved Parthenope. And then I am not so convinced that the men of thy
generation understand my verses that should be gratified by thy
praises. Who art thou?”
“I am called Marbodius of the Kingdom of Alca. I made my profession in
the Abbey of Corrigan. I read thy poems by day and I read them by
night. It is thee whom I have come to see in Hell; I was impatient to
know what thy fate was. On earth the learned often dispute about it.
Some hold it probable that, having lived under the power of demons,
thou art now burning in inextinguishable flames; others, more cautious,
pronounce no opinion, believing that all which is said concerning the
dead is uncertain and full of lies; several, though not in truth the
ablest, maintain that, because thou didst elevate the tone of the
Sicilian Muses and foretell that a new progeny would descend from
heaven, thou wert admitted, like the Emperor Trajan, to enjoy eternal
blessedness in the Christian heaven.”
“Thou seest that such is not the case,” answered the shade, smiling.
“I meet thee in truth, O Virgil, among the heroes and sages in those
Elysian Fields which thou thyself hast described. Thus, contrary to
what several on earth believe, no one has come to seek thee on the part
of Him who reigns on high?”
After a rather long silence:
“I will conceal nought from thee. He sent for me; one of his
messengers, a simple man, came to say that I was expected, and that,
although I had not been initiated into their mysteries, in
consideration of my prophetic verses, a place had been reserved for me
among those of the new sect. But I refused to accept that invitation; I
had no desire to change my place. I did so not because I share the
admiration of the Greeks for the Elysian fields, or because I taste
here those joys which caused Proserpine to lose the remembrance of her
mother. I never believed much myself in what I say about these things
in the ‘Æneid.’ I was instructed by philosophers and men of science and
I had a correct foreboding of the truth. Life in hell is extremely
attenuated; we feel neither pleasure nor pain; we are as if we were
not. The dead have no existence here except such as the living lend
them. Nevertheless I prefer to remain here.”
“But what reason didst thou give, O Virgil, for so strange a refusal?”
“I gave excellent ones. I said to the messenger of the god that I did
not deserve the honour he brought me, and that a meaning had been given
to my verses which they did not bear. In truth I have not in my fourth
Eclogue betrayed the faith of my ancestors. Some ignorant Jews alone
have interpreted in favour of a barbarian god a verse which celebrates
the return of the golden age predicted by the Sibylline oracles. I
excused myself then on the ground that I could not occupy a place which
was destined for me in error and to which I recognised that I had no
right. Then I alleged my disposition and my tastes, which do not accord
with the customs of the new heavens.
“‘I am not unsociable,’ said I to this man. ‘I have shown in life a
complaisant and easy disposition, although the extreme simplicity of my
habits caused me to be suspected of avarice. I kept nothing for myself
alone. My library was open to all and I have conformed my conduct to
that fine saying of Euripides, “all ought to be common among friends.”
Those praises that seemed obtrusive when I myself received them became
agreeable to me when addressed to Varius or to Macer. But at bottom I
am rustic and uncultivated. I take pleasure in the society of animals;
I was so zealous in observing them and took so much care of them that I
was regarded, not altogether wrongly, as a good veterinary surgeon. I
am told that the people of thy sect claim an immortal soul for
themselves, but refuse one to the animals. That is a piece of nonsense
that makes me doubt their judgment. Perhaps I love the flocks and the
shepherds a little too much. That would not seem right amongst you.
There is a maxim to which I endeavour to conform my actions, “Nothing
too much.” More even than my feeble health my philosophy teaches me to
use things with measure. I am sober; a lettuce and some olives with a
drop of Falernian wine form all my meals. I have, indeed, to some
extent gone with strange women, but I have not delayed over long in
taverns to watch the young Syrians dance to the sound of the
_crotalum_.[7] But if I have restrained my desires it was for my own
satisfaction and for the sake of good discipline. To fear pleasure and
to fly from joy appears to me the worst insult that one can offer to
nature. I am assured that during their lives certain of the elect of
thy god abstained from food and avoided women through love of
asceticism, and voluntarily exposed themselves to useless sufferings. I
should be afraid of meeting those, criminals whose frenzy horrifies me.
A poet must not be asked to attach himself too strictly to any
scientific or moral doctrine. Moreover, I am a Roman, and the Romans,
unlike the Greeks, are unable to pursue profound speculations in a
subtle manner. If they adopt a philosophy it is above all in order to
derive some practical advantages from it. Siro, who enjoyed great
renown among us, taught me the system of Epicurus and thus freed me
from vain terrors and turned me aside from the cruelties to which
religion persuades ignorant men. I have embraced the views of
Pythagoras concerning the souls of men and animals, both of which are
of divine essence; this invites us to look upon ourselves without pride
and without shame. I have learnt from the Alexandrines how the earth,
at first soft and without form, hardened in proportion as Nereus
withdrew himself from it to dig his humid dwellings; I have learned how
things were formed insensibly; in what manner the rains, falling from
the burdened clouds, nourished the silent forests, and by what progress
a few animals at last began to wander over the nameless mountains. I
could not accustom myself to your cosmogony either, for it seems to me
fitter for a camel-driver on the Syrian sands than for a disciple of
Aristarchus of Samos. And what would become of me in the abode of your
beatitude if I did not find there my friends, my ancestors, my masters,
and my gods, and if it is not given to me to see Rhea’s noble son, or
Venus, mother of Æneas, with her winning smile, or Pan, or the young
Dryads, or the Sylvans, or old Silenus, with his face stained by Ægle’s
purple mulberries.’ These are the reasons which I begged that simple
man to plead before the successor of Jupiter.”
[7] This phrase seems to indicate that, if one is to believe
Macrobius, the “Copa” is by Virgil.
“And since then, O great shade, thou hast received no other messages?”
“I have received none.”
“To console themselves for thy absence, O Virgil, they have three
poets, Commodianus, Prudentius, and Fortunatus, who were all three born
in those dark plays when neither prosody nor grammar were known. But
tell me, O Mantuan, hast thou never received other intelligence of the
God whose company thou didst so deliberately refuse?”
“Never that I remember.”
“Hast thou not told me that I am not the first who descended alive into
these abodes and presented himself before thee?”
“Thou dost remind me of it. A century and a half ago, or so it seems to
me (it is difficult to reckon days and years amid the shades), my
profound peace was intruded upon by a strange visitor. As I was
wandering beneath the gloomy foliage that borders the Styx, I saw
rising before me a human form more opaque and darker than that of the
inhabitants of these shores. I recognised a living person. He was of
high stature, thin, with an aquiline nose, sharp chin, and hollow
cheeks. His dark eyes shot forth fire; a red hood girt with a crown of
laurels bound his lean brows. His bones pierced through the tight brown
cloak that descended to his heels. He saluted me with deference,
tempered by a sort of fierce pride, and addressed me in a speech more
obscure and incorrect than that of those Gauls with whom the divine
Julius filled both his legions and the Curia. At last I understood that
he had been born near Fiesole, in an ancient Etruscan colony that Sulla
had founded on the banks of the Arno, and which had prospered; that he
had obtained municipal honours, but that he had thrown himself
vehemently into the sanguinary quarrels which arose between the senate,
the knights, and the people, that he had been defeated and banished,
and now he wandered in exile throughout the world. He described Italy
to me as distracted by more wars and discords than in the time of my
youth, and as sighing anew for a second Augustus. I pitied his
misfortune, remembering what I myself had formerly endured.
“An audacious spirit unceasingly disquieted him, and his mind harboured
great thoughts, but alas! his rudeness and ignorance displayed the
triumph of barbarism. He knew neither poetry, nor science, nor even the
tongue of the Greeks, and he was ignorant, too, of the ancient
traditions concerning the origin of the world and the nature of the
gods. He bravely repeated fables which in my time would have brought
smiles to the little children who were not yet old enough to pay for
admission at the baths. The vulgar easily believe in monsters. The
Etruscans especially peopled hell with demons, hideous as a sick man’s
dreams. That they have not abandoned their childish imaginings after so
many centuries is explained by the continuation and progress of
ignorance and misery, but that one of their magistrates whose mind is
raised above the common level should share these popular illusions and
should be frightened by the hideous demons that the inhabitants of that
country painted on the walls of their tombs in the time of Porsena—that
is something which might sadden even a sage. My Etruscan visitor
repeated verses to me which he had composed in a new dialect, called by
him the vulgar tongue, the sense of which I could not understand. My
ears were more surprised than charmed as I heard him repeat the same
sound three or four times at regular intervals in his efforts to mark
the rhythm. That artifice did not seem ingenious to me; but it is not
for the dead to judge of novelties.
“But I do not reproach this colonist of Sulla, born in an unhappy time,
for making inharmonious verses or for being, if it be possible, as bad
a poet as Bavius or Maevius. I have grievances against him which touch
me more closely. The thing is monstrous and scarcely credible, but when
this man returned to earth he disseminated the most odious lies about
me. He affirmed in several passages of his barbarous poems that I had
served him as a guide in the modern Tartarus, a place I know nothing
of. He insolently proclaimed that I had spoken of the gods of Rome as
false and lying gods, and that I held as the true God the present
successor of Jupiter. Friend, when thou art restored to the kindly
light of day and beholdest again thy native land, contradict those
abominable falsehoods. Say to thy people that the singer of the pious
Æneas has never worshipped the god of the Jews. I am assured that his
power is declining and that his approaching fall is manifested by
undoubted indications. This news would give me some pleasure if one
could rejoice in these abodes where we feel neither fears nor desires.”
He spoke, and with a gesture of farewell he went away. I beheld his.
shade gliding over the asphodels without bending their stalks. I saw
that it became fainter and vaguer as it receded farther from me, and it
vanished before it reached the wood of evergreen laurels. Then I
understood the meaning of the words, “The dead have no life, but that
which the living lend them,” and I walked slowly through the pale
meadow to the gate of horn.
I affirm that all in this writing is true.[8]
[8] There is in Marbodius’s narrative a passage very worthy of notice,
viz., that in which the monk of Corrigan describes Dante Alighieri
such as we picture him to ourselves to-day. The miniatures in a very
old manuscript of the “Divine Comedy,” the “Codex Venetianus,”
represent the poet as a little fat man clad in a short tunic, the
skirts of which fall above his knees. As for Virgil, he still wears
the philosophical beard, in the wood-engravings of the sixteenth
century.
One would not have thought either that Marbodius, or even Virgil,
could have known the Etruscan tombs of Chiusi and Corneto, where,
in fact, there are horrible and burlesque devils closely resembling
those of Orcagna. Nevertheless, the authenticity of the “Descent of
Marbodius into Hell” is indisputable. M. du Clos des Lunes has
firmly established it. To doubt it would be to doubt palaeography
itself.
VII. SIGNS IN THE MOON
At that time, whilst Penguinia was still plunged in ignorance and
barbarism, Giles Bird-catcher, a Franciscan monk, known by his writings
under the name Ægidius Aucupis, devoted himself with indefatigable zeal
to the study of letters and the sciences. He gave his nights to
mathematics and music, which he called the two adorable sisters, the
harmonious daughters of Number and Imagination. He was versed in
medicine and astrology. He was suspected of practising magic, and it
seemed true that he wrought metamorphoses and discovered hidden things.
The monks of his convent, finding in his cell Greek books which they
could not read, imagined them to be conjuring-books, and denounced
their too learned brother as a wizard. Ægidius Aucupis fled, and
reached the island of Ireland, where he lived for thirty studious
years. He went from monastery to monastery, searching for and copying
the Greek and Latin manuscripts which they contained. He also studied
physics and alchemy. He acquired a universal knowledge and discovered
notable secrets concerning animals, plants, and stones. He was found
one day in the company of a very beautiful woman who sang to her own
accompaniment on the lute, and who was afterwards discovered to be a
machine which he had himself constructed.
He often crossed the Irish Sea to go into the land of Wales and to
visit the libraries of the monasteries there. During one of these
crossings, as he remained during the night on the bridge of the ship,
he saw beneath the waters two sturgeons swimming side by side. He had
very good hearing and he knew the language of fishes. Now he heard one
of the sturgeons say to the other:
“The man in the moon, whom we have often seen carrying fagots on his
shoulders, has fallen into the sea.”
And the other sturgeon said in its turn:
“And in the silver disc there will be seen the image of two lovers
kissing each other on the mouth.”
Some years later, having returned to his native country, Ægidius
Aucupis found that ancient learning had been restored. Manners had
softened. Men no longer pursued the nymphs of the fountains, of the
woods, and of the mountains with their insults. They placed images of
the Muses and of the modest Graces in their gardens, and they rendered
her former honours to the Goddess with ambrosial lips, the joy of men
and gods. They were becoming reconciled to nature. They trampled vain
terrors beneath their feet and raised their eyes to heaven without
fearing, as they formerly did, to read signs of anger and threats of
damnation in the skies.
At this spectacle Ægidius Aucupis remembered what the two sturgeons of
the sea of Erin had foretold.