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diff --git a/old/61001-0.txt b/old/61001-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b4a6c53..0000000 --- a/old/61001-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3746 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's Flowers from Mediæval History, by Minerva Delight Kellogg - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Flowers from Mediæval History - -Author: Minerva Delight Kellogg - -Release Date: December 22, 2019 [EBook #61001] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS FROM MEDIÆVAL HISTORY *** - - - - -Produced by Paul Marshall, Turgut Dincer and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - - - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes: - - Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_ - in the original text. - Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals. - Illustrations and footnotes have been moved so they do not break up - paragraphs. - Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations - in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered. - - - - -_Note_ - - -_The friendly eyes that read these pages, knowing the pathetic fails -relating to their publication, will not be content without a word to -tell to other readers the story that will cause one and all to look on -the little book in the same sympathetic mood._ - -_The trips among the scenes of the storied past, here recorded, were -taken not so much in search of health as in search of diversion from -the sad employment of watching the inexorable approach of mortal -disease. The writing was undertaken to occupy a vigorous mind, -conscious that its tenement would not long endure._ - -_Alas! the task was not done before its purpose had been fully -completed, and to others was left the duty of reading the final proofs. -Such imperfections as may be found should be charged to this account, -and all the excellences are to be credited to the brave soul that -fought her fight so silently that only a very few closest friends knew -of the unequal battle._ - - _C. S. G._ - -[Illustration: _The Abbatical Church of Saint Ouen is Perhaps the Most -Perfect Example of the Gothic in its Full Maturity_] - - - - - FLOWERS FROM MEDIÆVAL HISTORY - - BY - MINNIE D. KELLOGG - - _I never can feel - sure of any truth but from - a clear perception - of its beauty. - Keats_ - - ILLUSTRATED - - PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY - PUBLISHERS·SAN FRANCISCO - - COPYRIGHT, 1910 - BY PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY - - - - -_Contents_ - - - _Page_ - _Advertisement_ vii - _By Way of Introduction_ xi - _Flowers of History from the Romantic Thirteenth Century_ 3 - _Mystics as Builders_ 15 - _The Golden Madonna of Rheims_ 26 - _The Little Old Abbé of Saint Denis and the Imagiers_ 38 - _The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres_ 50 - _Caen: An Eleventh Century Tableau_ 73 - _The Grandniece of the Grand Inquisitor_ 87 - _Stray Leaves from Old, Old Books_ 98 - _The Romantic Twentieth Century: A Deduction_ 118 - _A Word Regarding Bibliography_ 139 - _Index_ 143 - - - - -_Illustrations_ - - - _Facing Page_ - _The Abbatical Church of Saint Ouen_ Title - _As Art, Early Painting is Often Taken too Seriously; - but as Literature, it is Charming_ xiv - _The Crucifix in the Town Hall of Rouen_ 4 - _The Virgin Greets the Angel of Death_ 8 - _Sainte Chapelle_ 10 - _Interior of Sainte Chapelle_ 12 - _Saint Martin Dividing His Coat, from an Old Antiphone_ 20 - _From the Certosa of Pavia_ 22 - _Tomb of Dante, Ravenna_ 24 - _A Recent Tribute to Clovis and Saint Remi, on the Interior - Frieze of the Pantheon, Paris_ 26 - _The Flying Buttress_ 32 - _The Sculptured Saint Upon a Gothic Cathedral_ 34 - _In the Sixteenth Century the French Academy Changed the - Name of the Imagiers’ Guild to the Sculptors’_ 42 - _A Thirteenth Century Window_ 44 - _The Old-Time House of Prayer, which Still Dominates the - City of Chartres_ 52 - _A Pillar at Chartres_ 54 - _A View Through the Portail of Chartres_ 56 - _A Detail of the Portail Septentrionale_ 60 - _South Portal of Chartres_ 64 - _A Page from the Sculptured “Bible of the Laity,” Chartres_ 68 - _Altar-piece at Chartres_ 70 - _William the Conqueror’s Old Fortress_ 74 - _Dinan_ 84 - _Old Moats Do Make Such Charming Gardens_ 86 - _A Peep Into the Cranium of a Bible Reader in - Lope de Vega’s Time_ 88 - _The Literal, Limited God of a Fanatic and Father Adam - Stock-taking in Eden_ 92 - _A Tribute to the Scribes of the Dark Ages_ 100 - _The Baptistry Doors_ 102 - _A Page from the Bible of Jean Sans Peur_ 110 - _Head of Justice, from Fiore’s Group_ 130 - _An Ideal of the Gracious Republic of Venice, - Paul Veronese_ 134 - _A Mediæval Expression of Justice Attended by Archangels, - by Fiore_ 136 - - - - -_Advertisement_ - - -_These accounts all relate to places and objects that the uncommercial -traveler may casually run upon at some turn of his way. Subjects -mentioned in Baedeker have been considered here reflectively rather -than descriptively. Although I do not propose to analyze the soil in -which these flowers of history have sprung up, nor to speak of the rank -weeds growing by their sides, I have tried not to blight these blossoms -with falsehood. Certainly one-half of the truth is as true as the other -and it may be infinitely pleasanter. As far as they go, these little -historiettes are based upon evidence and authority._ - - _I want to teach you so much history that your - sympathy may grow continually wider and you may be - able to realize past generations of men just as you - do the present, sorrowing for them when they failed, - triumphing with them when they prevailed; for I find - this one conviction never changing with me but always - increasingy that one cannot live a life manfully - without a wide world of sympathy and love to exercise - it in._ - —_Burne-Jones to His Son._ - -_Suggested itineraries for cathedral trips in Normandy, giving -monuments of the first order only, places readily reached by rail_: - -_First. Land at Bologne sur Mer, Amiens, Laon, Rheims, Paris, Saint -Denis, Chartres, Caen, Bayeux, Mt. San Michele, embark from Cherbourg._ - -_Second. Land from England at Dieppe, or from America at Havre, proceed -to Rouen, which possesses the most perfect example of later Gothic -in the great abbatical Church of Saint Ouen; an excellent example of -flamboyant Gothic in Saint Maclou; and a large, irregular but imposing -Gothic cathedral on the order of Rheims; thence to Mt. San Michele, -most unique of mediæval monuments; thence to Caen and Bayeux near by -it, Chartres and Paris. Amiens and Rheims being very similar, and on -the order of Chartres and Notre Dame of Paris, are not included in this -itinerary. The traveler to whom time is money will be greatly tried -by the connections made and lost by the trains in Normandy that stop -at small places. Both these itineraries respect the idiosyncrasies of -French railroads._ - -_The motorist, rejoicing in the excellent Norman roads, can combine -these itineraries very easily—taking in the cathedrals of Le Mans, -Bourg, Beauvais and Coutances. I would especially call his attention -to the small but interesting Early Norman church at Dols, and to the -walled town of San Malo on the sea, with picturesque little Dinan, -fashionable Dinard, and a dirty little fishing village near by._ - - - - -_By Way of Introduction_ - - -_Modern invention has actually reflected upon ancient history: the -railroad, the steam derrick and the photograph have changed our -conceptions of the past. Written history is now accepted as its -author’s opinion, while tangible records stand forth as facts._ - -_This attitude brings the Middle Ages particularly near to us, for -though its people wrote comparatively little, they were wonderful -builders: their art was more literally expressive than the classic; -then, too, of course, it is better preserved._ - -_While the Greeks and Romans were our schoolmasters, the Europeans of -the Middle Ages are our ancestors. Their experience foreshadows our -own; for however far removed from us in thought and action they may -have been, they were akin to us in feeling._ - -_Though the rude pioneers of Christianity were often intensely cruel, -as you follow their history, you may meet with some gentle deed -springing from the good seed, even when sown in stony places, with -some action in its sweetness and humility entirely beyond the pagan -world. In their childish story one may trace the early workings of the -Christian ideal. It did not control behavior, nor did it always direct -it wisely; morality, being judicial and scientific, implies a certain -maturity of mind. Religion is simple; it is unlogical, sentimental and -impulsive. Whatever this indefinable instinct may be, it has manifested -itself as a spiritualizing force in morality and an initiative force in -art._ - -_Religion has in it a craving for a loveliness beyond all literal -perception of the senses; a philosophic mind projects this ideal in -contemplation; an artistic mind, in symbol; for, as Michael Angelo -explains, “Rash is the thought and vain that maketh beauty from the -senses grow.”_ - -_The Greeks did develop an art from the motif of physical beauty, -however, but their statues, executed before art became mature enough to -produce that beauty, have no message, while one often catches something -high and holy from a very early Christian image. It may radiate from -a pretty smile on the face of a crude Madonna, or a graceful upturned -head, in a figure entirely destitute of anatomy, which looks as though -the simple craftsman had called upon a higher power than knowledge._ - -_Spiritual beauty being the ideal in Christian art, the image, however -rude, which suggests it, makes its appeal in the charmed language of -that loving religion._ - -_Mediæval archives have been ransacked by Protestants for the errors -of Catholicism; by political economists, who even penetrate to the -Dark Ages in search of the chilly lessons of the dismal science, for -wisdom; and between them what a conception we have! But it is not the -whole story, for Chaucer assures us the Moyen Age was a fairly livable -period, peopled by beings like ourselves; moreover, it was an artistic -age which has left us not only a wonderful architecture but two supreme -poets._ - -_Perhaps the fairest chroniclers of such a period are its own artists, -great and small, for history has grown too democratic to confine -herself to kings, however worthy. She does not find the crude carver -voiceless who, in default of skill, surrounds his Madonna with gold -and loads her with rude jewels; indeed, she often finds her sweetest -flowers growing between the lines of an unskilful brush or chisel._ - -_Although as painting, mediæval efforts are often taken too seriously, -as literature they are charming, for they speak of the good and the -beautiful as their Age conceived it. While the written stories of -the time were shallow and coarse beyond our endurance, its painters -were giving us their accounts of this life and the next (particularly -the next). First come bright, pretty colors prettily placed, pretty -thoughts of happy angels. Then gold backgrounds give way to skies, and -shadows creep onto the canvas. Then they begin to tell stories; so -eager they are that they cram four or five pictures into one, dotting -the little scenes, by way of parenthesis, into the backgrounds._ - -_These pictures give the other half of the truth, the tenderer side -of the old life and theology. What sympathetic Bible scholars some of -the artists became! And, in general, the greatest were the tenderest. -Albrecht Dürer’s Evangelists are interesting character studies for all -time. He conceives of Saint Mark as a plain, simple enthusiast; of -Saint Paul, as a broad-minded, thoughtful man whom he even imagines to -be bald. He does not try to make either of them exactly handsome but -the way Mark looks up to Paul is most winning. A little later Andrea -del Sarto paints a splendid account of the warring doctors of the -Church, which shows clearly he saw beyond them: but this takes us into -the Renaissance which has been defined as a marriage of the Grecian and -the Gothic._ - -[Illustration: _As Art, Early Painting is Often Taken too Seriously; -but as Literature, it is Charming._] - -_A strict analysis has come into art and it is creeping into life,—our -race childhood is drawing to a close but not without leaving us many -things that are sweet to remember._ - -_We tell our children some of the very same stories that the wandering -story-tellers used to relate to good knights and their fair ladies in -the old baronial halls,—Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, or Puss in -Boots,—only the knights and their ladies believed them. There is a -pathos in mediæval story; it is a tragedy of misdirected effort (as -perhaps all history is), only the mediæval tragedy strikes home. Its -actors were people of our own blood and of our own Church—our own -people only under delusions from which we have emancipated ourselves. -To understand their story we must take them as children and listen with -them for the imaginary voices that lead them on._ - -_A veritable allegory of the Age of Faith was presented on the great -stage of history in 1212, when two enormous armies of little boys and -girls started from France and Germany singing, to march to the Holy -Land; if any of these children turned back, none of them seem to have -found their old homes._ - -_As far as is known to history, one child alone returned as an aged -pilgrim, to tell the tale,—how the bones of the children strewed the -mountainside; how they had been embarked on unseaworthy vessels to be -sold into slavery; how few, how very few, ever reached their goal; how -few, how very few, ever remained pure and holy._ - -_Connected with this tragedy was a horrible pope and a horrible doge, -but now they seem but foils to the purity of the children, it was all -so long ago. And that the mystic beauty of that little legion may live -lyrically in our life, the Twentieth Century has set their pathetic -march to music in stately oratorio; for pure aspiration is the melody -of melodies, the veritable flower of history._ - -_A certain childish disinterestedness was the tender grace of the Age -of Faith,—“the tender grace of a day that is dead.” It must pass from a -broader age; taking all factors duly into account even drives it from -serious history its proportion is so inconsiderable._ - -_The life of Saint Francis, who espoused My Lady Poverty, is one of -the sweetest examples of mediæval disinterestedness. Viewed literally, -the accounts picture a crazy man preaching to birds and fishes, making -a bargain with a wolf and injudiciously mortifying his flesh till -he became blind and useless. Viewed by the light of their influence -his teachings were revolutionary,—they brought new-found energy and -sympathy into the Church; yet, at best, they were only the teachings of -Christ, without the Savior’s beautiful sanity. Viewed by the results he -brought about, Saint Francis must have been one of the profoundest of -men, and yet his wisdom, if he had any, was only that of the heart._ - -_Sabatier has written a life of Francis, at once scholarly, judicious -and vivid, but as the Franciscan Father remarked, he wrote the life of -Mr. Francis. If you would learn of Saint Francis of blessed memory, you -must study by yourself with loving diligence a childish old book which -tells of the miracles wrought through the tail of Saint Francis—“The -Little Flowers of Saint Francis.” The fruits of history others may put -before us, but the passing fragrance of the flowers we must perceive -for ourselves._ - -_I here submit for your interpretation certain incidents that seem to -me the outgrowth of the fine feeling of the impulsive Moyen Age._ - - - - - FLOWERS FROM MEDIÆVAL HISTORY - - - - - _Flowers of History From the Romantic Thirteenth Century_ - - -I have borrowed my title from a Thirteenth Century chronicle, of -disputed authorship, purporting to be a history of the world, but from -447 A. D. on it is engrossed with the story of England. From this -insular partiality of its author I should be inclined to award the work -to the English claimant, for what is a flower of history but a phase of -the human story which especially charms the writer. - -To me the Gothic cathedrals are the flowers of Thirteenth Century -history, which era saw every one of the greatest of them building. -Their cornerstones may have been laid earlier, and the finishing -touches came much later, but they owe their character to that one -wonderful century which stands apart through the ages, thus telling its -beads. - -The written history of the Thirteenth Century is cruel reading, but -an age, like a man, has two soul sides, and the better side is always -the harder to fathom. The Thirteenth Century opened for France, the -native land of the Gothic, with an abominable pope, a selfish king and, -nearer at hand, the evil of various tyrannical seigneurs. The great -social movement which endowed the French towns with their magnificent -cathedrals was apart from those powers and hardly affected by their war -or peace. - -These great edifices were built by the secular clergy and the -townspeople for municipal, as well as religious, purposes. Therein -they held councils for deliverance from their feudal lords, lay and -ecclesiastic, for in the Thirteenth Century the Third Estate became a -political power. - -The cathedrals express the patriotism, generosity and civic pride of -the freemen of the old towns; they realize the dream of the socialist -for the good and the beautiful held in common; the love of the poet -for beauty for its own sweet self; and the inspiration of the artist, -working at the white heat of a rising art, as surely as the reverence -of the age of faith. - -[Illustration: _The Crucifix, the Eternal Warning, Built into the Very -Walls of the Old Courtroom in the Town Hall of Rouen._] - -In the Low Countries they built city halls at an early date, but the -French towns did not need them, for there the cathedrals lent pomp and -circumstance to all municipal assemblages. The first States General was -held in Notre Dame of Paris. - -The early Church had endeared itself to the people in many ways. -It entertained the traveler, and it was well that it did, for the -public houses were of a very low order; it instructed the children; -it ministered to the sick, and, if it was a crazy physician, it was a -gentle nurse. The modern hospital, the fairest monument of humanity, -is directly descended from the old Hotels-Dieu, where monks and nuns -tended the sick. In the cathedral sat the Bishops’ Courts which, the -people felt, were more just than the seigneurs. From these old Bishops’ -Courts the beautiful French custom has descended of hanging a crucifix -back of the judge’s seat in the courts of common law where the symbol, -recalling a politic judge washing his hands of the blood of a just man, -seems more than a human warning. - -Within the consecrated walls of the church was that ever-blessed -privilege of the temple—Christian, Pagan, or Jewish—sanctuary, the -right of the hunted. Of course it was abused, mercy expects to be; -therein it is more divine than human; but in a lawless day sanctuary -was an unconscious protest against lynching. We do read of accidents -arising from it; a Christian Church at Seez was burned down in -an attempt to dislodge a band of thieves, but this embarrassing -circumstance reflects on the management of those who burned it rather -than upon the church. - -A complaint comes down to us from the Thirteenth Century of the -would-be popular clergy who allowed their parishioners to dance in -their churches and even assisted at these dances and at shows _peu -convenable_ given by jugglers and clowns, they themselves playing at -chess, all of which goes to show that we must regard these immense -churches as meeting houses in the literal sense of the term and allow -for the coarseness of the age in considering its amusements. Among -other buffooneries, at Laon particularly, which seems to have been very -“low church,” we read of the annual _fête des innocents_, in which -the choir boys dressed up as priests and went through various antics -in the church, which was given up to them for the night, the chapter -giving them a supper after. At Laon again there is public complaint of -a change having been made in the hour of mass and vespers on account -of a miracle play that was given in the church. Lovers of the drama may -look leniently upon this arrangement, whereas I suppose the stricter -churchmen, when the ecclesiastical supremacy came to be questioned, -even in the bishop’s own church, both at Rheims and Laon, said, “I told -you so.” By such concessions the clergy induced the citizens to go in -with them in building[1] such churches that succeeding generations have -called them mad. - -Though the evolution of the Gothic is one of the most interesting -chapters in the history of architecture, the history of the builders -themselves, if we could only have it, might be still more fascinating. -Indeed, - - “Who builds a church to God and not to fame, - Will never mark the marble with his name.” - -Hence we do not know who designed some of the noblest monuments of -Gothic architecture, but we do catch charming psychological glimpses -as we watch the mystical and the practical unconsciously working -together for the beautiful in these old cathedrals, which make us -wonder how such spiritual designs arose and how the artists who -conceived them were able to carry them out. How could an age when kings -could hardly read and write, when artists drew like children, evolve -such works of art? How could an age so ignorant of physics and the -abstract principles of mechanics erect such buildings? - -Some hazy legends, fairy tales even, with their grain of truth (that -truth which one troweth but cannot prove), and a few scant records, -scattered among the archives of such old churches as have escaped the -accidents of war and of peace, are really all that is left us with -which to picture a beautiful phase of thought and feeling which lured a -childish people onward toward art, organization and nationality. - -From the old archives of Chartres, which was built so slowly, from -the old records of Saint Denis, which was built so quickly, between -the lines of the naïve old letters of tactful old bishops who coaxed -nobles and workmen alike, as much as they coerced them, thereby raising -fabulous sums paid in labor or in gold with which to build such temples -that succeeding generations have thought them inspired, we may pick -up a few fragments of the untold story of these exquisitely poetic -Builders who taught architecture to speak a universal language. - -[Illustration: _The Middle Ages Dealt Much in Allegory. The Virgin -Greets the Angel of Death.—A Sermon in Marble._] - -Saint Denis, which immediately antedated the great Gothic churches -of Northern France, is a stately mansion with a steeple at its side, -but the Gothic cathedrals are Christian temples every inch; their -design itself is consecrate. Their lines and harmonies however varied, -however bizarre, always resolve at last into some ideal of reverence, -while their solemn beauty speaks a various language. From crypt to -steeple the Gothic church is a Christian metaphor. Its ground plan is -the Cross, while the huge cathedral with all its worshipers is but a -standard bearer for loftier crosses borne upon its towers and spires. - -From the bulwarks of their massive foundations, laid in the Dark Ages, -these old churches deliberately grew more ornate, carrying with them -countless generations of architects growing steadily in pride and skill -until it only required a burst of popular enthusiasm to bring forth -the artistic revolution of the Thirteenth Century. Again (but not in -wrath) the old churches were demolished simply because they were no -longer the noblest possible treasure houses for their precious relics. -Then it was that the gentle, mystical, French monarch, who maintained -his court so simply, purchased “The Crown of Thorns” from the mercenary -Venetians, into whose hands it had fallen through a chattel mortgage -given by those who had acquired it as a spoil of war. - -Never were the rites of the church so descriptive, so picturesque, so -splendid, as in the Thirteenth Century. Barefooted and in penitential -garb, but followed by a band of light, a great procession of worshipers, -each carrying a candle, the king and his brother met the supreme relic -and bore it tenderly onward to the Royal Chapel in Paris and all the -cities, towns and hamlets through which they passed were reverently -illuminated. - -Then Saint Louis entreated the great architects of his realm, whose -genius was already proven, to strive to design a reliquary even worthy -of the Crown of Thorns, and in five years the beautiful Sainte Chapelle -arose: like other poetry this lovely chapel was born of a passionate -yearning. - -[Illustration: _Sainte Chapelle, which Sprang from the Crown of -Thorns._] - -If the cathedrals are epics of architecture, the Sainte Chapelle is a -sonnet, a masterpiece of single-minded expression, the purity of whose -design established a standard. No cathedral could be finished on its -original plan; it was necessarily too long in building; but the model -which was to harmonize the labors of successive builders may be sought -in the little Sainte Chapelle of Paris which sprang from the Crown of -Thorns. - -As every great work of art mirrors a human heart, reflecting that of -which its author took no note as clearly as that which stirred his -conscious being, so the Sainte Chapelle reflects Saint Louis and Saint -Louis reflects the Age of Faith. He was its poet who wrote in deeds. - -It is not strange that Louis IX was canonized for he was in perfect -accord with the ideals of his age, asceticism, chivalry, humility and -regality; and too, he was a great builder. - -Saint Louis built the Sainte Chapelle to hold that which did not -physically exist; but as with the pen of a recording angel, on this -tablet of stone he wrote a message from the better self of his age to -all humanity. - -Though history repeats, the history of the Gothic is as unique as that -architecture itself; when otherwise men were trammeled body and soul -its builders were free to create, to vary or to destroy. - -In the nineteenth century, when travel became general (“he who runs -may read”), certain gentle readers like Corroyer, Hugo, Rodin, Ruskin, -and most accurate of all, Viollet-le-Duc, interpreted this marvelous -architecture of the Moyen Age to the multitude. - -“They builded better than they knew; they wrought in sad sincerity,” -vaguely exclaimed the philosopher. - -“They built as well as they knew; they built in glad sincerity,” -observed the architect. - -Rodin reminds us that it is a mistake to imagine that the religious -conceptions of that day were able to bring forth architectural -masterpieces any more than that the religious conceptions of today are -responsible for the defects in modern structures. - -The Gothic cathedrals are epics of labor. They grew up under the hands -of many designers and builders, who were learning as they worked. -Democracy echoes through these noble buildings into which were wrought -the hope, the promise and the enthusiasm of a rising people. - -[Illustration: _Interior of Saint Chapelle._ - -“_Much more than the ogive, the grotto, the cavern, the window, is the -essential of Gothic architecture._”—_August Rodin._] - -To the inartistic eighteenth century, whose mission was to fight -tyranny, political and religious, these ornate structures seemed the -meaningless labor of a downtrodden people. I doubt if logicians like -Voltaire and Gibbon realized the elevating joy of passionate giving -that came to some of the poorest donors. Think of a guild of pastry -cooks presenting a magnificent window to the Church, their Mother! No -less a building than the Cathedral of Chartres! - -Never were the lovely things of the Age of Faith more beloved than in -the present Age of Doubt. We are trying to restore the noblest of the -old cathedrals, stone for stone, and to lure back the sweetest prayers -and truest penance confided to their walls to spiritualize their -resurrection. - -Never were the maiden efforts of Christian art more tenderly approached -than in the technical twentieth century, when they are studied alike by -Catholic, Protestant and Jew. The old theology has been very severely -picked over, but underneath its mouldy leaves, like trailing arbutus -in the spring, the “Little Flowers of St. Francis” peep up. The -nineteenth century concerned itself with the errors of the Mediæval -Church, but the twentieth especially reads the gentler side related by -the artists, and sometimes we catch hallowed messages from the pure in -heart who have almost seen God. - - - - -_Mystics as Builders_ - - -We order the temples still standing destroyed that in their exact place -may be raised the sign of the Christian religion. Decree of Valentinian -III. - -In the tribunal of history the Christian iconoclasts have been dealt -with somewhat in the manner of defendants in damage suits. If a cow -is killed by a railroad, is it not naturally assumed to have been a -Durham? If a statue was destroyed by a fanatic why not put in a claim -for a Phidias? As a matter of fact, by the time the early Christians -came into power the art of the day of Pericles had been copied for over -seven hundred years. Of art, what worse could be said! - -Grecian art neither rose nor fell in a generation nor was it childless; -original, though minor schools, Hellenic to the core, sprang up in -the Grecian colonies and to the end the art and artists of Rome were -Greeks. But during the later Roman Empire the degenerate Grecian -artist commissioned by the degenerate Roman patron was simply cumbering -the earth. Oh, yes, in those luxurious days they patronized art as -rich men should, as rich men do. The houses of Herculaneum and Pompeii -teemed with articles of virtu. It was not statues the world of art -needed, it was ideals. - -In art, it is the individual point of view that counts even if it be -only that of the destroyer. Since art reflects life and life means -change, the iconoclast has his place. A race, or more often the meeting -of two races, may develop a school of art; it reaches its perfection -in the work of a few genii of its golden age; to them it is given to -embody the highest and best that was in the myriad of artists who have -taught them and their teachers. Spellbound by its own perfection, -this art can move no farther. The multitude seek to preserve it, for -its value has been interpreted to them in quotations of the exchange. -Artists are satisfied to copy it, and thereby artists they gradually -cease to be. The destroyer comes,—fire, fanatic, whirlwind, victor or -worm—the bulk and body of that art perishes, but the ideal, being a -fruit of the spirit, lives. The final ruling of Grecian architecture -is still proclaimed from the Parthenon, while headless and armless -the lone “Winged Victory” might immortalize the action of Grecian -sculpture, the poetry of Grecian thought. - -Since architecture is the most national of the arts, its movements -are the easiest to trace. Sometimes we actually detect the designer -following in the footsteps of the iconoclast. Indeed, the most -successful patron architecture has known, the Catholic Church, -commenced as a destroyer. - -In the south of France ecclesiastical architecture remained essentially -classic until the Renaissance. This was largely due to one great sixth -century bishop, Patiens de Lyons, who repaired the old temples and -rebuilt anew on their lines so successfully that the people proudly -said they could not tell the new from the old; but in the north of -Gaul, where Martin of Tours and his followers had made a clean sweep of -the pagan temples and their old influence, architectural and spiritual, -an absolutely new style of church building developed. It is there that -to this day we turn for the purest Gothic. - -Of this Martin we have some little history, hazy though it be. He was -a rude barbarian of the Roman legion, under the Emperor Julian, who -embraced Christianity and brought the glad tidings to Tours. With a -soldier’s idea of conquest he demolished the temples of false gods, -like other superstitious converts; but he contended that to make the -victory complete, at least an altar to the true God should mark the -very spot; and he is credited with six religious foundations, one -having been a church for the laity in the town of Tours. The present -age might canonize Martin for a deed overlooked by his most ardent, -early eulogists. He and Saint Ambrose protested against the “new -heresy” of two Spanish bishops who put a gnostic to death for his -heretical opinions. - -Hagiology, however, abounds in records of Saint Martin, for he became -the best beloved saint of old Gaul. - -It is natural that those who read the Roman Catholic breviary literally -should doubt it somewhat. They fail to realize that the history of a -saint lies entirely between the lines of the account. The sacred lesson -taught by this life reëchoes in his antiphones, responses, versicles -and lessons, until he stands before his followers as a type of certain -virtues. Thus Saint Sebastian stands for Christian courage; though -his body is pierced with arrows and his hands are tied, he is always -represented looking bravely up to Heaven: torture is immaterial to him: -he is sustained by faith. Saint Gregory, gentlest of pastors, greatest -of popes, is represented with the emblem of the Holy Ghost, the dove, -perched upon his shoulder; Saint Jerome, who translated the Scriptures, -with the Book in his hand; he generally has an angel near-by him. - -Two little pictures stand out in Saint Martin’s iconography. In one, -Saint Martin cuts his cloak in half with his sword to divide it with a -beggar and beholds the Savior abundantly clad in half of it; and in the -other, Saint Martin evokes the spectre of a pretended martyr worshiped -in Tours, who comes to life and admits that he was hanged for crime, -wherefore Saint Martin demolishes his shrine. - -To the early Church the relic was everything. Of course it should be -pure and holy. In it there was inspiration. Above the grave of some -dear saint or, perhaps, only to his memory, a shrine would arise, and -from these shrines, like flowers from seed, churches grew. A crypt -might be made to hold some hallowed dust, where services might be -held. This was reminiscent of the Roman catacombs where the first -Christians, believing literally in the resurrection of the body, had -laid their dead, and where, unseen by the unsympathetic world, they -had met for holy communion. The crypts of the early Church were the -mortal resting-places of friendly immortals at the great court above -who, in their robes of light, might plead acceptably for those who -would so reverently approach the heavenly throne through spirits purer -than their own. Of course, these pleaders must be very pure to turn -their shrines to altars. What spiritual value had a pretty, paltry tomb -honoring an unholy spirit? - -Roman civilization was materialistic, but not so this new religion -of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, if things holy could pervade and hallow a -building, why should not things unholy defile it? - -We may trace this idea carried out so literally, so picturesquely, so -almost logically in the legends of Martin of Tours, that we actually -sympathize with the destructive old bishop. Blindly defending the -dream that was in him, he actually stands first in that long line of -ecclesiastical builders who, in the fulness of time, jointly brought -forth Gothic architecture. - -[Illustration: _Saint Martin Dividing His Coat, from an Old -Antiphone._] - -When Saint Martin put his rude followers to work building houses for -their new faith he must have established a certain amount of unity and -order among them. Could there have been a better way to attach his -crude converts to their Church than to induce them to work upon it? - -While Saint Martin was building at Tours, the Dark Ages were setting -in, when men of action became marauders, preying upon others; men of -thought became monks, praying for themselves; humanity went backwards, -and history ceased from very shame. But through it all there were a few -perplexed old bishops who, whatever their failings may have been, tried -to do something for their fellows. However, in that lawless day, they -had to defend rather than expand Christianity, and even protect its -churches, for pagans, too, might be honest iconoclasts! - -The best thing the Dark Ages did for civilization was to learn the -builders’ trade and teach it to a great many people. It was a general -service, for to make a people industrious is, sooner or later, to make -them skilful and law-abiding. - -It is curious that Saint Martin who, even while he was a bishop, lodged -in a hut covered with boughs, should head the great line of builders -who jointly and severally developed French Gothic. In standing for the -integrity of the relic, which was literally the seed of early Christian -art, Saint Martin gave a new and a higher impetus to life, and with -it, very indirectly, to art. Seventy years after Martin’s death, to -his blessed memory Saint Perpetuas built “the most beautiful church in -existence,” at least so Gregory of Tours affirms. We will not inquire -on what lines, for this was at the beginning of the Dark Ages, when -nothing beautiful was made. - -A supreme recognition of the bold old iconoclast comes to us from -devotees of the classic; from certain artists and connoisseurs of the -Renaissance. This unexpected tribute to iconoclasm is published upon -a monument far removed from old Gaul in time and place, in ideal and -execution. - -[Illustration: _From the Certosa of Pavia. One of the Most Elaborate -Monuments of Catholicism._] - -In a monastery dowered with the gold of two reigning dynasties of -tyrants, dowered by the genius of two reigning dynasties of painters -and sculptors, amid surroundings perhaps the richest in the world, -where fifty monks might dream away their lives in silence, in that -lordly and exclusive playhouse for the soul of the Renaissance, wherein -the exuberance of the Gothic takes on the maturity of the Renaissance -in an elaboration which for once does not cloy,—in the Certosa di Pavia -we find a tribute to crude, old Saint Martin, the iconoclast. - -On a mural of one of the side chapels of this Certosa behold him -represented in the garb of a fifteenth century monk, with his sanctity -emphasized by a large, glittering nimbus, to which the aerial -perspective of the otherwise maturely realistic painting is deliberately -sacrificed, calmly superintending a gilded youth of the Renaissance -while he smashes a fine Grecian statue! How did this rude act find -endorsement in a temple of art? How did the coarsest of the saints -win a place in the heart of the Renaissance? Was it because in him -they saw a reflection of the subtlest honesty of Art, that god of the -Renaissance? Was it because, above all else, Saint Martin especially -stood for the integrity of the ideal? - -Though this little scene on the chapel wall may have been simply -historic in its import, nothing is plainer than that the picture is -intended to honor an uncompromising bishop of the early Church. - -Through the confusion that disintegrated empire, Saint Martin -was a rude standard-bearer of two ideals broad enough to rebuild -nations—Sincerity and Brotherhood. “First he wrought and after that -he taught”—and first the spirit of his teaching was put into rude -pictures, because in Gaul so few people could read and still fewer -could condense an idea into forceful words. - -It was long, long after an angel had appeared and carried Saint -Martin’s soul in the form of a child straight to God, as a gentle old -writer attests, that a modern geologist voiced the fundamental idea of -the best beloved saint of old Gaul, “An honest god is the noblest work -of man.” - -[Illustration: _The Last Resting Place of the Great Poet of -Mediævalism—Tomb of Dante, Ravenna._] - -But the past, as well as the present, has its peculiar eloquence -wherewith to honor the dead. Over one of the oldest Christian altars -spared to us by time, in solemn, enduring mosaic, big and simple, -stands Saint Martin leading a line of saints to Christ. And this great -hieratic on the wall of an old church of old Ravenna describes, as -no language of the present may, an early builder of the great mystic -Church which “rests upon the brawny trunks of heroes ... whose spans -and arches are the joined hands of comrades ... and whose heights and -spaces are inscribed by the numberless musings of all the dreamers of -the world.” - - - - -_The Golden Madonna of Rheims_ - - -Late in the fifth century, while the confusion of the Dark Ages -reigned supreme, the Christian bishop of the Remi was at work on the -discouraging task of rebuilding his church after pagan depredations at -Rheims, when the great joy was vouchsafed to him of baptizing Clovis, -the ruler of the largest Teutonic State of the age. - -[Illustration: _A Recent Tribute to Clovis and Saint Remi on the -Interior Frieze of the Pantheon, Paris._] - -Saint Remi recommended Clovis to adore that which he had burned and to -burn that which he had adored, that the work of judicious destruction -might continue. Clovis sent offerings to all the sanctuaries, -particularly to that of the old soldier Saint Martin. Three thousand -Franks were baptized; Clovis exchanged the three toads on his shield -for the fleur-de-lis, and France became Christian _toute de suite_. -Then Saint Remi dreamt of great things yet to come: of a king and a -people governed by the Church of Christ, temporally and spiritually. -And he interpreted this dream to the people by a charming symbol: he -explained how the Holy Ghost, the Heavenly Dove, had brought from -above some spiritual oil with which to anoint Clovis at his baptism. -But to make the idea clear to these many men of childish minds and -many _patois_, he showed them a little ampulla filled with oil, which, -he explained, “the Dove” had brought to him from Heaven to grace the -baptism of their chief. And they decided to keep the oil that was left -in the ampulla for great occasions, like coronations. This wonderful -ointment united the Crown and the Church as long as it lasted. During -the Revolution a sansculotte shattered the old vessel. Orthodoxy -claimed to have caught one drop and encased it in a beautiful new -vase; it was used again, but its efficacy was no more. And not long -thereafter the French people decided to do without coronations, or -monasteries, but they still love Clovis and Saint Remi. - -Civilization is much indebted to the early bishops and a goodly number -of them have been canonized. The monastic clergy were the snobs of the -Church, securely selfish in the magnificent fastnesses they erected for -themselves in the skies; condescending comfortably to pray for those -that fed them (though who knows but they even shirked that obligation), -while the secular clergy were working out, amid inspiration and error, -the foundations of a Christian civilization. The idea of the early -bishops that the Church ought to rule the world was a natural and an -honest mistake. The later bishops were quite a different class. The -stout little church of Saint Remi near Rheims pleads still for its -brave old bishop, though as a building it is eclipsed by the great -cathedral of the city. - -The dynasty of Clovis passed away and the next reigning house came -in with Pepin. He had good reason to approve of the Church as an -institution, for it had early played into his hand. Had not the Abbé -of Saint Denis journeyed to Rome to secure the papal confirmation of -his crown? And had not Pope Stephen, while enjoying the protection of -that same abbey, anointed Charlemagne, his little son? On this was -based the succession. With his own good sword Charlemagne defended -it and brought a semblance of order to the land of the Gaul and -the Frank; and, genius that he was, he anticipated, in his interest -in architecture, the genius of his great people. But it was rather -Charlemagne’s attitude toward church building and letters that told, in -the long run, than any literal achievement in them during this time. -However, from the reign of his youngest son, Louis the Pious, we may -trace the steady, consistent growth of an original order of building -which culminated in the unparalleled Gothic of Northern France. - -By that time the nobility had built so many sanctuaries in their -domains that they had to be interdicted from establishing useless -private foundations and, in a more democratic spirit, sixteen or -seventeen churches, all edifices of dignity, were begun. Then Bishop -Ebbon saw a golden opportunity to build a magnificent cathedral on the -long-hallowed soil of Rheims. There the Druid had raised his altar, -there the Roman his temple, which may have absorbed the old Druid’s -stones into its walls as it had his old gods into its adaptive bosom, -to fall, in its turn, a mightier pile, from which the Christian built -again and again as he grew in skill. Indeed, beyond their generation -the people of Rheims were experienced builders. In addition to all -the stone quarried by varied worshipers of the long past at Rheims, -Louis the Pious put at Ebbon’s service the materials of the city wall -and sent him his favorite architect—Rumald. And it was found that the -new cathedral protected the city better than the old walls. _La paix -religieuse_ turned away many an invader. One golden cup from the altar -bought off the Norsemen (not that it turned their hearts); they swooped -down upon Chartres instead. - -The old chroniclers assure us that this early Cathedral of Rheims was -the finest in the realm. It must have beggared description, for what -manner of building it was none of them seem to say. But they tell of -its wonderful altar of Our Lady, covered with gold and studded with -gems, upon which stood a glorious virgin made of solid gold. That -impressed them. Was this altar built with the loot of war? Was it -built in remorse, or, worse, in mercenary superstition? Or was it -lavished like the woman’s precious ointment upon our Savior? This much -it certainly was,—a united tribute of the material to the immaterial, -coming from many men of many minds. - -It was about this time that the Virgin became so peculiarly near and -dear to the Catholic world. They loaded her with jewels and appealed to -her as one of themselves, human, though divinely so. They painted her -on the inside of their jewel boxes that she might turn the heart of the -thief; they appealed to her in embarrassing human situations and loved -her as a helpful, pitying woman who brought religion home to them. - -In due time this golden Virgin of Rheims, so imposing, so splendid to -her rude worshipers, gently made way for a line of tenderer virgins who -were gradually infusing sweetness and skill into those who sought to -spiritualize wood and stone into a suggestion of the mother of Christ. -When the old ninth century church at Rheims was burned it is supposed -that the barbarians’ gold was minted to rebuild the cathedral. Or shall -we say that, purified by fire, the golden Virgin arose again and again -from her ashes to rebuild her shrine in maturer beauty? - -After many fires, in 1212 the present Cathedral of Rheims was commenced -upon the old, old crypt; before the middle of the century the main -body of the church was complete, and once again the Cathedral of -Rheims was the finest in the realm! In 1903 a vote was taken for the -noblest Gothic monument, and the returns, as always before, were, “the -Cathedral of Rheims.” - -Through the Dark Ages the people of Rheims had not built in vain. -Effort after effort was destroyed, it is true, but like the golden -virgin it was minted to rebuild anew. - -[Illustration: _Did the Idea of that Beautiful Structural Device, the -Flying Buttress, Come, Like an Angel Vision, to Some Baffled Architect -in Answer to Work and Prayer?_] - -Lacking the mathematical knowledge, which is the mainstay of the -modern architect, these early builders must have learned empirically, -that is, in the school of defeat—but, too, there are triumphs there. -Did the idea of the beautiful flying buttress (which is simply a -constructive device to strengthen walls pierced by enormous windows) -come suddenly to some baffled old architect, as from the lips of an -angel, in answer to work and prayer? These old builders of Rheims -leave us no written word, but there is a great Florentine architect -who is a little more communicative; he leaves a discreet hint or two -of his method of reasoning and also of securing contracts. Regarding -the construction of the projected dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria -del Fiore, which the public regarded as impracticable, Brunelleschi -writes: “Yet, remembering that this is a temple consecrated to God -and the Virgin, I confidently trust that for a work executed in their -honor, they will not fail to infuse knowledge where it is wanting and -will bestow strength, wisdom and genius on him who shall be the author -of such a project. But how can I help you, seeing that the work is -not mine? I tell you plainly that, if it belonged to me, my courage -and power would, beyond all doubt, suffice to discover means whereby -the work might be effected without so many difficulties, but as yet I -have not reflected on the matter to any extent.” And when he got the -contract and reflected, he turned to the “parent past”—he went to Rome, -where the vaulting of the Parthenon taught him to vault that lovelier -Florentine dome which “clasps the ancient to the modern world.” - -The builders of the Gothic were in some ways more original than the -builders of the Renaissance; they evolved their own bracing; thus -gradually at Rheims, the “Athens of the Middle Ages,” a great cathedral -grew up that ranks with the Parthenon. - -The Greek had the subtlest of languages in which to speak of the -good and the beautiful, while where the greatest Gothic churches -were designed there was only a corrupt dead language and a partially -developed living one; but the subtle poets of Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, -Rouen, Bourges and Laon built strongly into their cathedrals the -sweetest things they had to say. When the Parthenon was constructed -Athens was so wealthy that it was one of the glories of Pericles that -he was able to spend so much so well upon the greatest capital in the -world. Rheims was simply, as the Middle Ages went, a rich see, and -the Middle Ages were wretchedly poor, yet her cathedral is the more -elaborate building of the two. To the end of time it is a monument -of civic and religious enthusiasm; and, as we seek the human story, -so elusively suggested through the marvelous pile, we realize at -least how great a thing it is for each worker to give, in perfect -self-effacement, of his best. The decorations of the mighty temple are -so exquisitely subservient to the great whole that the handiwork of -the gifted _imagier_, with that of his weaker brother, the one serving -as a foil to the other, holds together like their prayers in the noble -harmony of the great church. Gothic sculpture is for all sorts and -conditions of men, but least of all for artists. It speaks its simple -lesson distinctly. It is not sculpture for sculpture’s sake, but rather -for decoration and lyric expression. Its emaciated saint betokens -sacrifice; literally and figuratively he fills his place in the long, -narrow niche, annihilating himself for the great church as a Catholic -priest should. - -[Illustration: _The Sculptured Saint Upon a Gothic Cathedral Fills His -Place in the Long, Narrow Niche, Annihilating Himself for the Great -Church, as a Devotee Should._] - - -Would you know how the Gothic affects a sculptor? - -Says August Rodin: “Life is made up of strength and grace; the Gothic -gives us this; its influence has entered into my blood and grown into -my being.” - -Nowadays, when all “the world travels,” schools of art do not grow -up in little communities; intellectual boundaries are in no way -geographic, and the moral effect of one man on another is hidden from -view. But on the walls of the old mediæval churches a simpler people, -as their work improved, show their direct obligations to one another. - -The Gothic cathedrals which served as Bibles for the laity (who, as -a rule, could not read print) are now the most veracious chronicles -of the period that we possess. Their statements cannot be gainsaid, -however variously they may be understood. If some of the last judgments -sculptured on their walls, with half of the figures marching toward -heaven and the other half (very similar in appearance) moving serenely -toward hell, are rather too didactic for this age of doubt, between -the lines of these great stone volumes a gentle reader finds countless -beautiful stories, much more convincingly told, of artists and artisans -working away with smiles on their faces, carving Bible stories under -the direction of the clergy; devising figures to personify the virtues -and vices; inserting little angels here and there to fill out the -design, while the best artist is rewarded with the sweet honor of -carving the Madonna. - -The barbarian’s gold pays interest yet; the spirit of the bequest is -not changed;—a united tribute of the material to the spiritual coming -from many men of many minds. The old golden Madonna is patroness still -of the five thousand statues of the Cathedral of Rheims, whose mute -lips speak so various a language. They tell of a day that is dead and -of a day that is eternal; they speak of substance and of spirit; of -error and of intuition; of things human and of things divine. Indeed, - - “Of every work of art the silent part is best, - Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed.” - - - - -_The Little Old Abbé of Saint Denis and the Imagiers_ - - -Early in the twelfth century, within the hospitable walls of the old -Abbey of Saint Denis, a prince and a charity child grew up together; -there a love, almost romantic, developed between them. When the prince -became king and embarked upon a crusade he left the reins of government -in the hands of his old comrade, who in the meantime had become the -Abbé of Saint Denis and was, incidentally, one of the cleverest of -politicians. Suger paid the royal debts (democratic good pay seems -to have been an ideal with him), and called the realm to order so -successfully that statesmen came from afar to study his very novel -methods, for the crusades had set the people traveling. On his return -the king graciously greeted his regent as “father of his country.” -Suger, not to be outdone, instituted a somewhat legendary liturgy to -be celebrated annually at Saint Denis commemorating the merits of -Louis the Lusty (or Louis the Fat, as we call him). - -Was this liturgy so different from the campaign songs we sing now? It -was really more called for, since enthusiasm over the royal person -is one of the legitimate tools of monarchy, and Louis VI is an early -monarch who deserves credit for abetting the gradual advance of France -from a feudality to a veritable kingdom. - -Suger, individually, did not stand too greatly in awe of royalty, for -he peremptorily ordered Louis VII to come back from the “Holy Wars” to -attend to his mundane duties, and be it credited to that monarch that -he graciously obeyed the old friend of his father. - -Suger is the most interesting personality that comes down to us from -France of the twelfth century. Though a few characteristic anecdotes -are told of him, we know him most intimately as the builder of Saint -Denis and the far-seeing friend of the arts and crafts. It was said -that he was a good goldsmith, and his sympathy with skilled labor lends -color to the statement; but however hazy our other impressions of -Suger may be, we know how he loved the old Abbey of Saint Denis—“_sa -mère et sa nourrice_.” As a churchman he loved the blessed spot to -which the angels had escorted brave old Saint Denis, when, after his -martyrdom, he picked up his head and walked along with them unto the -place “where he now resteth by his election and the puveance of God. -And there was heard so grete and swete a melody of angels that many -that heard it byleuyd in oure lorde.” He loved the old building that -Dagobert, the Robin Hood of French monarchs, had built so royally, -almost five hundred years before his day, for the poor and lowly, and -for which the pleasant Saint Eloi, patron of goldsmiths, singing as -he worked, had made the wondrously beautiful old reliquary; and as a -man of literary feeling, he loved the old Abbey as his Alma Mater. -But the diocese had grown, and on festal days so pressing were the -crowds who would touch the holy relics of Saint Denis that good people -were continually being trodden underfoot by eager and other worldly -worshipers. So Suger decided to enlarge the church. He did not touch -the dear old choir of Saint Denis: that was consecrated to God and, -too, it was tenderly hallowed to man by many human associations; but he -decided to add to it a great nave. - -Of course at first the crowds vigorously abetted him, humbly harnessing -themselves together like beasts of burden to draw the stone from the -quarry. The trumpet sounded; banners were unfurled, and the procession -marched; except for the murmur of those who confessed their sins to -God, silence reigned. When the concourse arrived at the holy site, the -multitude burst forth into a song of praise. Their sins once disposed -of, the ardor of the multitude may have flagged, for we read of the -busy little Abbé leaving the cares of state to go himself to the -forests in search of the big timber others had not the enthusiasm to -find. - -That the very earth might pay its tribute to the blessed martyr, Suger -studded the new golden screen in front of the tomb of Saint Denis with -gems from “every land of the world,” and then the little old Abbé -conceived of a still higher tribute: he gathered skill from “every -country in the world” (his world was small, it is true); he gave to -these skilled craftsmen the honor of working on “the Church, his -Mother”; besides, they taught in the layman’s school of architecture, -which he established in the yard of the old abbey. - -To the amazement of the world, in that day of serfdom, Suger -voluntarily paid his workmen and paid them by the week; and with the -force and intensity that was in him, he advanced architecture as much -in the ten years he was rebuilding Saint Denis as others had done in a -hundred. The influence of his school of architecture still lives. It -was one of our earliest instances of systematic training for the laity, -and those who would trace the Italian Renaissance to French and classic -sources, attach especial importance to the _imagiers_ of Saint Denis. - -An immense number of statues, varying greatly in excellence, were made -during the Middle Ages to decorate the churches. In our meagre records -of the period, we even come across instances of peasants traveling far -and spending their all to secure an especially beautiful Madonna, and -we are assured of miraculous rewards, spiritual and temporal, coming to -them from it. Actually, through the enthusiasm and liberality of these -rude people, miracles of art have wrought their magical effect upon the -imagination of generations and generations of men. These _imagiers_ -became so numerous that they formed a powerful guild in which a race of -sculptors was born and bred. While Sculpture was merely the hand-maiden -and scribe of Architecture, her craftsmen were called _imagiers_. But -the _imagiers_ became so expert that in the seventeenth century the -French Academy changed the name of their order to the “Sculptor’s -Guild.” - -[Illustration: _In the Sixteenth Century the French Academy Changed the -Name of the Imagiers’ Guild to the Sculptors’._] - -That the _imagier_ loved the cathedral which he was dowering with -what talent he possessed is most likely; for, added to the simple -conscientiousness, alike in all ages, of the worker who loves his craft -and respects himself, was the intensity of the Age of Faith. - -Gothic art may have been lived more generally even than Grecian, for -it was the only intellectual outlet of its age. Much of its symbolism -is now a dead language. We guess at the meaning of the gargoyles and -grotesques, and draw liberal interpretations from the lips of the -smiling angels who spoke more familiarly to a childish people; but when -we count the decorative kings and bishops ranged in rows upon the grand -façades, their supremacy over the souls, bodies and estates of men, of -which we know so well, seems the myth of myths. However, we can read -some of the old carvings, which had nothing in particular to say at the -time they were made, like a book. Hybrid designs on pillars, capitals -and cornices speak of the chivalrous meeting of the east and the west -on the broad field of art. They bring up pictures of the rude crusaders -overpowered by their first view of oriental elaboration, and we smile -to see how it set them imitating, or, better still, adapting, and how -the arts of war may bring about the arts of peace; for, in the fulness -of time, those who strive, achieve, if not for themselves and their -cause, for others and perhaps for a better cause. - -Another art made great strides during the rebuilding of Saint -Denis,—the glass-maker’s. We read about Vitrearii as far back as -Charlemagne’s time. The windows they made were glass mosaics, held -together with lead instead of stucco, forming little gem-like pictures -above the holy altars, which told sacred stories beautifully, for in -this way many scenes could be connected on one window; besides, color, -like music, takes the emotions captive. One must examine a statue to -realize it, but, in the phrase of the studio, color “sings.” A childish -old chronicler relates that the retainers of Godfrey of Bouillon were -obliged almost to tear him away from the churches, so absorbed was -he in gazing on the windows. Was it through beautiful windows that -the mystic aspiration of the mute minor poets of the cloister was -finally reflected upon the man of action who took the first step, all -unconsciously, toward the deliverance of his age from its dark, narrow -bondage? - -[Illustration: _A Continuous Story, Related on a Thirteenth Century -Window._] - -As a soldier, Godfrey de Bouillon had answered the call of the pilgrims -who demanded protection; as a soldier, he had kept the peace (when -there was any to keep). He was the one early crusader of whom we have -record, who seems to have had the slightest idea of the fitness of -things; indeed, in feeling, he was as truly a poet as a soldier. “So, -day after day, in silence and in peace, with equal measure and just -sale, did the Duke and the people pass through the realms of Hungary,” -writes an astonished old chronicler, for Godfrey de Bouillon had paid -the way of his army to the Holy City—an unheard of idea in warfare! How -quixotic he must have seemed! - -Language has changed since those windows spoke to Godfrey of Bouillon. -But when a general stops on his line of march for higher council and -then steers so true through the darkest day toward a faint, far-distant -light, must he not have seen through the glass darkly? - -It was but a few years after this “parfit gentil” knight passed away -before he was as dear a hero of romance as King Arthur had become after -many centuries, so little was there in his life for men to forget, so -much that was sweet to dream upon. I suppose his story must have been -related many times in beautiful glass, though as the panes grew larger -and finer they told their stories less personally; but gallant knights -on windows far and near are still reflecting an ideal that came to the -First Baron of Jerusalem through the old church’s windows. Might it not -be said of these old church builders, who builds from the heart feeds -three: himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me? - -To make windows like those of Saint Denis, an orderly, organized -factory was necessary, and organization was the crying need of that -age. Another astonished old chronicler repeats, that in those days of -serfdom Suger paid his glass-workers. But the men learned their rights -more readily than the chroniclers. Thereafter we constantly run upon -the records of powerful workmen’s unions or guilds. In fact, we read of -them later on the glass itself. These splendid church windows were, of -course, very costly, and then, as now, they were usually presented to -the churches. We find the guilds are the proud donors of many of them; -two fine old church windows come down to us proudly representing some -_imagiers_ and glass-makers at their work, those guilds having thus -elected to “with the angels stand.” - -Complaints of the luxury of the church also come down. Saint Bernard -declares “their stones were gilded with the money of the needy and -wretched to charm the eyes of the rich” (but had the poor no eyes?). -Being against the government by temperament, Saint Bernard especially -abominated the royal Abbey of Saint Denis. He complained of the -“unclean apes and befowled tigers” upon which Suger’s _imagiers_ -developed their skill, and it is written (how the writer arrived at the -scene he does not explain) that as Suger’s confessor, Bernard commanded -him to divest his mind of mundane cares and to dream only of the -heavenly Jerusalem. - -But the world weighed on Suger as long as he remained in it: his -dream was of two splendid powers, England and France, separated, -but living in peace! Suger was not in favor of crusades. He was the -one ecclesiastic who would subject the clergy as well as the laity -to royal authority, rendering unto Cæsar that which was Cæsar’s. -Though a priest, in his political methods Suger was a broad, true and -practical patriot, and if, unlike Saint Bernard, he was not adapted for -canonization, he was a hero to his private secretary and to his king; -and he still is a hero to the modern student of architecture, or of -economics. - -Into the very walls of his big and simple old church the “little old -Abbé” built his big and simple sermon. It read: “Let us have good, -honest, beautiful work, doing honor alike to God and man. Let us train -our craftsmen, pay them and respect them.” - -Though Saint Denis may lack the mystical beauty of the best Gothic, so -noble and satisfactory is its design that the nineteenth century could -do no better than to restore it. - -Though Suger’s economics were very simple, the twentieth century has -found no better platform: “Pay your workmen voluntarily, and summon -all, from the king down, into their respective fields of labor; only -when they all respond, we shall have a lovelier church than the old -Abbey of Saint Denis.” - - - - -_The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres_ - - -The Episcopal Church recognizes three distinct divisions: the High -Church, or mystical element that, words failing, would speak by -symbols; the Low Church, that would say what it means and mean what it -says; and the Broad Church, that would set aside details and seek in -religion a general harmony. - -Though they are not so formally defined, these same divisions, being -based on human temperaments, exist in other sects so literally that the -same symbols have met with the identical adoption and objection. About -205, Tertullian ridiculed the use of candles on the altars of the early -church, and Lactance took up the subject some hundred years later. -Thereafter Saint Jerome laid these still troublesome candles at the -door of the laity, especially of the women. However, the symbol and the -women conquered. - -In this desultory search of ours for hints of the social history of -the old French cathedral builders, we meet with the high and low -church elements which seem, though this idea may be fanciful, to have -influenced the appearance even of their respective churches. There is -the grandly simple and direct architecture, the Cathedral of Laon, -which inclined to Low Church, allowing its votaries considerable -latitude, and the symbolically ornate cathedral at Chartres, which -from remote ages has been a noted shrine of mysticism. Its site was -holy ground to the early Christian and perhaps to the Druids before -him. Tradition has it that even to them on this hallowed spot came a -prophecy of the Messiah. (If it did, it probably came from some Jewish -source in the days of the Romans.) - -There is a charming story, more than legend, if less than history, -of “Notre Dame Sous Terre” of Chartres. While most of the early -Christians, in a spirit of hatred, were destroying false gods and their -shrines, some pioneers of Christianity found in a grotto at Chartres -a figure which had been worshiped by the Druids, resembling their own -Madonna, whereby, to these gentle priests, she seemed doubly hallowed. -Accepting her grotto as already consecrate, they located their high -altar there, upon it reinstated the old Madonna of the Druids, and in -a humble spirit, along with their simple converts, they bowed down -before her, for upon them had descended that sovereign reverence which -appreciates another man’s god. - -From the time this old druidic figure was raised upon a Christian altar -to this day, first honors have been accorded to her shrine. Before her -or her representative have bowed, weary and footsore, every one of the -French kings, from Clovis to Louis XV, as well as innumerable other -pilgrims, rich or poor, gathered from every land of Christendom by the -democracy of the church. - -Even the revolutionists recognized this “First Lady of Chartres,” for -while they lumped other relics together in general destruction they -paid Notre Dame Sous Terre the back-handed compliment of a special -bonfire at the cathedral door. - -[Illustration: _The Old-Time House of Prayer, which Still Dominates the -City of Chartres._] - -The sansculottes have passed away without individual record, but a -charmingly carved representative of the old Notre Dame Sous Terre still -occupies the most venerated shrine of Chartres; while its old-time -spirit of church hospitality yet pervades the noble cathedral that has -developed above her grotto, her clergy still smile kindly upon the -pilgrim and the stranger, even though his interest in their church be -solely artistic. They seem to say: “Take from our old cathedral what -you may, surely her beauty is pure and holy.” - -True religious art can but lead to some phase of piety, as August -Rodin declares that all true art must. It may be but a chance title; -however, the latest book on French Gothic speaks of “Chartres, the -House of Prayer”; but certainly the feeling which has been lavished on -this spot, the passionate generosity of devotees through long ages, has -brought forth one of the most sacredly beautiful churches in the world. - -Now let us investigate literally the claims of Notre Dame Sous Terre. -Recent excavations prove that the present Cathedral of Chartres is -built over a grotto, where the Druids probably held their services. In -excavating under and around the choir of the cathedral, vestiges of -ancient altars and idols were unearthed which prove conclusively that -the symbols of the heathen were not cleared away violently. The policy -of Rome tended toward religious tolerance; the gods of the Romans -often mixed peaceably in the temples with the gods of the people Rome -conquered, hence the cult of the Virgin might have existed along with -that of the pagan gods. - -In the early days of Christianity the Virgin was not given the -prominence she acquired after the eighth century; this figure known -as the druidic Madonna may even have represented some sweet, motherly -goddess of another name. Symbols are elastic, therein lies their -supreme value; they may be all things to all men. Words always have -brought division to the church; symbols, unity. The wisest and kindest -of the early bishops had the most grace in translating the old symbols -of their converts into the picturesque language of their new church. -For instance, Gregory the Great changed the pagan memorial custom -of putting food on graves on a certain fête-day to bringing flowers -for the graves and praying for the dead on All Souls Day. The early -Christian missionaries at Chartres may have believed this figure to be -a Madonna or they may have translated it into one. Indeed, it is not -the genuineness of the figure itself that is the point of this story; -it is the attitude of the Chartrians toward it. - -[Illustration: _Saint Martin, Saint Jerome and Saint Gregory, as They -Stand Forth on a Pillar at Chartres._] - -From the character of the Gallo-Romaine substructure of the Chapel of -Saint Lubin in the crypt of Chartres, the list of the early bishops of -that diocese and the general history of the evangelization of Gaul, -it is inferred that ever since the beginning of the fourth century -a bishop’s church has stood on the site of the present cathedral. -Mingled with all the superstition of its age there was a certain -tolerant broad-church element maintained at Chartres from the first. -Perhaps that made the church so peculiarly dear to the people of -France, for though the French kings were crowned at Rheims and buried -at Saint Denis, Chartres seems the most intimately associated with -their lives. It is written that after his conversion Clovis stopped -there for further instruction, and Gibbon observes his measures were -sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome and Christianity. The -Carlovingian kings were very partial to Chartres. Charles the Bald, who -comes down to us familiarly as a church builder through an old picture -in which he holds a cast of a cathedral in his hand, conferred the most -precious of relics upon Chartres—the _Sancta Camisia_ of the Virgin! -Robert the Pious contributed a sapphire. Within her mystic walls -sensible Louis the Fat pardoned his enemies; there Philippe le Bel, -Charles le Bel and Philippe de Valois gave thanks for their victories, -childishly presenting their armor and their beloved war-horses to this -Church, their Mother. Saint Louis marched barefooted about twenty-one -miles to endow Chartres with her beautiful _Portail Septentrionale_. -And when Henry IV changed his religion, let us believe with the really -good intention of bringing about a little peace on earth to Frenchmen, -he elected to be consecrated at Chartres, “by reason of the peculiar -devotion of his ancestors, the Dukes of Vendome, to the old cathedral, -the most ancient in Christendom.” There were reasons why he could not -conveniently have been crowned at Rheims like other French kings, -that city being hostile to him. But Henry IV always had a clever and -sufficient answer. - -To return to the material story of the old bishops’ church near the -well of Saint Lubin, our first dated record takes us back into a feudal -war. In 743, Hanald duc d’Aquitaine, fighting the Comte de Chartres, -burned the town cathedral; but when he realized what he had done he -retired to a monastery to do penance all the rest of his days. Was it -in superstition? Was it in true repentance? Did he burn the church by -accident? That might have been. The simple piety of the Dark Ages that -would build “The House of God” for all time rendered the churches the -strongest of buildings, and defensive armies often resorted to them; -then, too, there were spiritual objections to attacking a church. This -factor was sometimes over-estimated. - -[Illustration: _A View Through the Portail of Chartres, which Louis IX -Walked Barefooted Twenty-one Miles to Present, in a Lowly Spirit, to -the Church._] - -The Cathedral of Chartres was rebuilt, only to be burned down one -hundred and fifteen years after by the Normans. During this siege the -non-combatants of the town confidently took refuge in the cathedral -with their bishop instead of buying off the pirates with gold from -the Holy Altar as the people of Rheims had done (they are all gone -now and God knows which did best). Unexpectedly, neither church nor -bishop impressed the Normans, who overturned the city walls, burned -the buildings, massacred the bishop, and every one else who came in -their way; but after the Normans left, the Chartrians had the cold -comfort of gathering their dead and laying them away beside the Well of -Saint Lubin and “through the merits of those there reposing a crowd of -miracles were wrought.” About this period the disease we now know as -erysipelas came to be highly respected. In France it was called _le mal -des ardents_; in England, the “sacred fire”; for, one thousand years -ago processions like those that now visit Lourdes were pressing on to -Chartres to drink of the holy spring. The world moves, but somewhat in -a groove. At this Lourdes of the Dark Ages the afflicted were tended by -nuns, but we find a certain telltale regulation:—after nine days (ample -time for blood poisoning to develop unmistakably) the sick must go -home, “cured or not.” - -Was medical practice then so much worse than ours during the Rebellion, -when old rags of the nation were collected and all sorts and conditions -of women scraped them into lint full of germs for the wounded soldiers? -But if the church was a crazy physician, she was a gentle nurse. She -established a chivalry toward the sick that no Cervantes would laugh -away. It lives in medical ethics, and the quixotic obligation of -the doctor to leave no stone unturned for his patient has been the -foundation of medical science. Some of the old Hotels-Dieu of blessed -name and memory have developed into up-to-date hospitals and medical -schools, like Charing Cross Hospital, London, which still enjoys its -mediæval benefice, while modern hospitals, in general, are moral -descendants of the old ideal. - -Again the old Church of Chartres was rebuilt, again to stand for a -little over a century. This building had the satisfaction (may we not -use the figure, for the mediæval church was very human) of seeing the -Normans, under Rollo, defeated by an army marching under its blessed -standard, the _Sancta Camisia_ of the Virgin borne aloft as a banner. -But later, Rollo married the daughter of Charles the Simple, settled -down in Normandy, presented his castle to the see of the Bishop of -Chartres and adopted the Christian religion. A double victory for -the church! Many of the first Norman converts were baptized a dozen -times, for the sake of excitement or for the white garment given them -at the ceremony. Thereafter the funeral of Rollo was rendered doubly -memorable by the slaughter of one hundred captives and rich gifts to -the monasteries. - -In spite of the _Sancta Camisia_, in spite of all the remains of all -of the martyrs that had been aggregating in the _martyrium_ under the -church for seven hundred years, in 962 Richard of Normandy burned the -cathedral with the town. But the relics had not been powerless, for -this was the last pagan outbreak. The church had the holy triumph -of Christianizing her adversaries, and the _martyrium_, between the -excellence of its building material, the water of the spring of Saint -Lubin near by, and “the merits of those there reposing,” remained -intact and was found in the excavations of 1901; but the spring is -gone; it was probably diverted by the foundations of the present -cathedral. - -Though a paralyzing conviction had come upon the people, Bishop Vulpard -immediately started to rebuild. It had somehow been very generally -decided that the world would come to an end in the year 1000, so near -at hand. - -How did this private information regarding the future affect the -multitude? They probably took it riotously,—at least, such has been -the experience in times of plague and horror, when it seemed that the -race was about to be wiped out. Indeed, it is only for others that the -saner, better life is led—best of all, unconsciously led. - -[Illustration: _A Detail of the Portail Septentrionale._] - -We do know that at that time church building flagged. Ah, be it -credited to these old builders, they worked for others rather than -themselves! Nevertheless, the latter part of the tenth century is the -day of vast and massive crypts of which Chartres is one of the noblest -examples. Let us hope that brave old Vulpard lived to see it under way. - -History has very little to say of the delusion regarding the year 1000, -except that it shows that the church gained ground therefrom. Many -persons thought it well to present their goods to the churches since -they could not use them much longer themselves. Scarce as records are, -we have one instance of the church helping the world out of one of the -dilemmas arising from this misunderstanding. We do know positively that -the valuables of the Church of Saint Benignus of Dijon were all sold to -relieve the famine of the year 1001. Probably the ground had not been -sown the previous autumn. - -However often it has fallen from grace, in the main the Christian -Church has won its way by service. However often its services have been -mistaken, it has maintained the ideal that the Christian should serve -the world. - -Instead of the world’s coming to an end according to their schedule, to -the astonishment of the Chartrians, lightning singled out their holy -church and burned it to the ground. Some of the more or less logically -inclined suggested that some of the pilgrims might have been guilty of -indiscretions within its consecrated walls and thus have brought down -this celestial disaster. - -The church had a particularly charming bishop at that time who arose to -the astonishing occasion and called for help from the whole religious -world regardless of nationality. He might be known as the successful -correspondent of history. We still have some of his letters. The -one to Cnut, King of England and Denmark, is certainly a flower of -history, showing, as it does, the sympathy of a great king with a great -scholar (as the times went) and a great movement. Fulbert writes, in -acknowledgment of Cnut’s donation to his building fund: “When we saw -the offering which you deigned to send us, we admired at once your -astonishing wisdom and religious spirit; your wisdom, in that you, a -prince, divided from us by language and by sea, are zealously concerned -not only with the things around you but also with things that touch us; -in your religious spirit, in that you, of whom we have heard speak as -a pagan king, show yourself a very Christian and generous benefactor -of churches and servants of God. We render lively thanks to the King -of kings through whose mercy your gifts have descended upon us, and -we beseech Him to make your reign happy and prosperous, to deliver -your soul from all sin.” The result of Fulbert’s appeals proves that -Christianity had established a brotherhood on earth. Though much of -Fulbert’s structure was burned within ten years the church inherits -both spiritually and materially from him; his crypt is left and it -gives lines to the splendid church we know. Saint Thierry rebuilt the -upper church, and it grew in beauty under Saint Ivo, who succeeded in -getting the ear of Mathilda of England. Not that Saint Ivo was a snob, -for in his time we may see among the records timely rebukes to royalty -and dignified acknowledgment of the services of individual workmen -upon the mighty edifice. After all, there is nothing sweeter than the -“widow’s mite.” A great deal is said by social historians about the tax -upon the communities for these splendid churches, but they overlook the -joy of public giving, which also moulds and unites a people. - -And now this wonderful old church, which echoes from tower to crypt -with the human story, commences to speak picturesquely of the wild Holy -Wars. The heavy Dark Ages developed its crypt. The body of the church -passed through many metamorphoses in the time intervening until a -period of the greatest religious enthusiasm crowned the cathedral with -its marvelous towers. - -[Illustration: _A Thirteenth Century Statement of the Liability of -Pride to Have a Fall Solemnly Proclaimed on the South Portal of -Chartres._] - -In all history is there a movement more extraordinary, more -far-reaching, more curious than the crusades? They are about -as surprising to a reader today as they were to the Emperor of -Constantinople when the first disorderly army appeared at his gates. -The monk, Guibert, who, at least, seemed to have more grasp of the -subject than any other contemporary writer, ingeniously suggested that -“God invented the crusades as a new way for his laity to atone for -their sins and merit salvation.” Certainly they thus atoned for the -great sin of inertia. No army, I suppose, was ever more confident, more -surprised or more disappointed than that of the crusaders. However, -this much is to be said in favor of Guibert’s hypothesis. From that -time forth the laity took their place in the march of civilization. -They arose and left the Dark Ages behind. New views were forced upon -them at the point of the sword,—most needed of all, new civic ideals. - -Separation and longing and the sweet sorrow of parting awoke the spirit -of poetry, the craving for beauty; and all this new thought and feeling -was soon to blossom forth in the one art, whose _metier_ the people had -already learned,—architecture. - -Through a long admixture of races, by the twelfth century (hardly -before it) there had arisen in Gaul genuine Frenchmen, who from the -beginning were most artistic artisans and most enthusiastic partisans. -They spent more on their crusades and on their churches than their -neighbors, and they were to reap the rewards of extravagance, always -more imposing than those of economy. Money poured into the church -alike from those who went to the Holy Land, and from those who thus -excused themselves from going. Incidentally the Holy Wars diverted a -disorderly element of nobles and serfs from France to Palestine. During -the period of the crusades the Cathedral of Chartres suffered from -two fires just sixty years apart; thus in rebuilding, the overflowing -religious excitement of the era came to be lavished upon the very -stones of the cathedral. - -In 1134 a great fire in the town of Chartres damaged the cathedral -so far as to make it necessary to restore the façade. In spite of -their own losses the Chartrians decided that their church should be -finer than ever. She should have two connected towers, instead of one -separated from the building as before. And the design they here evolved -has become standard. - -To effect these grand restorations the workmen formed themselves into -permanent guilds. One especially which devoted itself to working on -the cathedral was honorably known as the “_Logeurs du Bon Dieu_.” And -the nobles who had watched the workmen growing in grace and in skill, -raising themselves as they raised the temple, were finally seized -with a strange and humble enthusiasm which can only be convincingly -described by eye-witnesses. - -“In this same year” (1144), writes Robert Du Mont, “at Chartre men -began to harness themselves to carts laden with stones, wood and other -things, and drag them to the site of the church, the towers of which -were then a-building.” - -Says Abbé Haimon: “Who has ever seen or heard in all the ages of the -past that kings, princes and lords, mighty in their generation, swollen -with riches and honor, that men and women, I say, of noble birth, have -bowed their haughty necks to the yoke and harnessed themselves to carts -like beasts of burden, and drawn them laden with wine, corn, oil, stone -or wood and other things needful for the maintenance of life or the -construction of the church, even to the doors of the asylum of Christ.” - -“Mighty are the works of the Lord,” exclaims Hugh of Rouen (ready to -use the example). “At Chartres men have begun, in all humility, to drag -carts and vehicles of all sorts to aid the building of the cathedral, -and their humility has been rewarded by miracles. The fame of these -events has been heard everywhere and at last roused this Normandy of -ours. Our countrymen, therefore, after receiving our blessing, have -set out for that place and then fulfilled their vows. They return with -the resolution to imitate these Chartrians, and a great number of the -faithful of our diocese and the dioceses of our province have begun to -work at the Cathedral, their Mother.” - -But since it is the spirit that makes the action fine, the services -of these builders were accepted only under the triple condition of -confession, penitence and reconciliation with their enemies; they -delivered their offerings in tears, while disciplining themselves with -blows. - -George Eliot speaks of a common feeling of good-will among a mass of -men affecting her like music; to such music the incomparable tower of -Chartres was built, and a later age sees tears transformed to pearls -when another great fire destroyed the old part of the cathedral, and -they had, in rebuilding, to live up to their splendid new façade. - -[Illustration: _A Page from the Sculptured “Bible of the Laity,” -Chartres._] - -The cardinal assembled the people of Chartres around the smoking -ruins of their dear old church and persuaded them to forget their -personal losses and to think only of rebuilding the House of God; -and the people, united by the strongest of bonds, a common disaster, -arose again to work for the common good, and again Christians from -far and near sent in their donations. The old chroniclers say that -the very Holy Virgin multiplied her miracles. One of them we still -have before us. It was then and there that an architect, whose name is -forgotten but whose genius is immortal, perfected the cathedral type of -thirteenth century Gothic. All designers of Gothic churches still do -him homage; all lovers of Gothic architecture still sing his praise. - -And the old church at Chartres grew on, gently developing her people -on many lines. She watched her _imagiers_ grow into sculptors, her -glass-workers into painters, the more or less serfs of the soil develop -into workmen, then guildsmen and free burghers of the town; of this -they themselves have written upon her very walls. About half of the -windows of the cathedral we find were presented by the guilds; the -other half by kings, princes and seigneurs, lay and ecclesiastic. The -glass of Chartres, by the way, is considered the finest in the world. - -The eighteenth century was a bad day for churches in France; the -general contempt in the air for the past led them to destroy the -“barbarians’ art,” which was good, to make way for their own, which -happened to be bad. The Cathedral of Chartres, as ever so truly in -touch with the times, suffered from the artists in the early part of -the century, while in 1793 the revolutionists invaded it. They buried -the relics and appraised the barbarians’ statues at 100 francs. Then -the next idea was to knock down the cathedral, which they found was not -so easy; so they concluded to transform it into a Temple of Reason, -wherein they behaved most unreasonably. Somebody started to destroy the -immense group of the Assumption on the grand altar. It represents the -Virgin on an embankment of clouds with her arms extended and her figure -coming toward the congregation. Her “pied-à-terre” of clouds (excuse -the hibernicism) is upheld by angels and every face and attitude in the -group is full of aspiration and action. Although as sculpture, this -group is not of the first order, as allegory, it is perfect. A bright -idea occurred to an architect present; he put the Phrygian cap upon the -head of the Virgin and a lance in her hand, and the old symbol became -the new; with her arms open to the world and her eyes turned a little -above it, the Virgin of Chartres became a beautiful emblem of liberty. -I wonder if she impressed any of the wild congregation before her; not -long thereafter Napoleon observed that “Chartres was no place for an -atheist.” - -[Illustration: _Altar-piece at Chartres. The Virgin who once Wore a -Liberty Cap_] - -In about six months the church managed to reinstate itself in its old -stronghold, though the Revolutionary Commission of public works (or -rather the commission for the destruction of public works) had had the -impertinence to strip the lead from the cathedral roof to make its -ammunition. - -But the old church was built to weather all storms, and so was the -French nation. The revolutionists besieged the Louvre and turned it -into a public art gallery. The republic has quietly advanced much -farther in its right of eminent domain and taken under its enlightened -protection all the great monuments of architecture in all fair France. -Nothing is more charming than the enthusiasm throughout the land, -extending even to the simplest people, over these “national monuments.” -As the building of them long ago formed a bond of union with the -communes, so the love of them now forms a bond of union with the -nation. Fostered in their shadows, French genius was able to bring -forth at need architects capable of restoring them almost to their -pristine beauty, a beauty which, growing out of mystic relics, seems -fraught with a relic’s power through love and awe to lead men on. May -its magic transform these Roman Catholic cathedrals of the Age of Faith -into Holy Catholic churches of the Age of Doubt! - -In the nineteenth century James Russell Lowell wrote a poem containing -some lovely lines on the Cathedral of Chartres, but if a twentieth -century poet approach the theme he will treat it in a more Catholic -spirit, for the messages of these venerable fanes must grow broader and -gentler as time goes on. A greater poet than Lowell said: “I never can -feel sure of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty.” From -this idea he framed his invocation to beauty, which applies alike to a -Grecian urn and to the Cathedral of Chartres: - - “Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe - Than ours, a friend[2] to man, to whom thou say’st, - ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all - Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” - - - - -_Caen: An Eleventh Century Tableau_ - - -Two hours from Cherbourg, as the motor flies, lies the old town of -Caen, founded by William the Conqueror. - -A curious peace reigns in this old fortress, with the drawbridge down, -and the moat a bower of trees and flowers: the peace of consummated -action; the returns are all in, and you may receive them according to -your humor, for the burning questions of other days have faded into -dreamy generalities. - -Were all those wild centuries of struggle and warfare vain? Or is the -old Greek battle-cry, “Now let us go forward, whether we shall give -glory to other men, or other men to us,” the normal note of primitive -manhood? Were Rollo the Norseman and William the Norman, following the -war-gods fiercer than they, commissioned by fate to lead great armies -across the great waters, and, sailing under sealed orders, to found two -great nations and one great language? Or are all things vanity? - -Perhaps, after receiving the children’s children of his loyal subjects, -who may have crossed a certain wide ocean unknown to him to attend -the great Court of History that William the Norman holds at Caen, the -Shades of the Conqueror growing more familiar might conduct the musing -cortége into the beautiful abbey near-by, which he built in expiation -of the love-match he made in defiance of the church. - -I wonder here if the old king might not laughingly recall the story of -his first meeting with Lanfranc. - -[Illustration: _William the Conqueror’s Old Fortress; the Chains are -said to be the Originals._] - -Like other forceful men, William married upon his own responsibility. -Accordingly, the Pope not only excommunicated him, but laid various -bans upon his realm. Such bans were once marvelously inconvenient, -to say the least. William fought the church valiantly for six years. -It may have been then that he got his measure of the uses and abuses -of that institution, which, in the long run, proved most valuable to -England. Among others, Lanfranc, Prior of Bec, became a target for -William’s displeasure and was ordered to leave his monastery. Lanfranc -started forth forlornly enough on a lame horse. Thus caparisoned, -he met the furious Duke William. Lanfranc had but one weapon at his -command—tact. He approached the great duke, saying, “I am obeying your -command as quickly as I can. I will obey faster if you will give me a -better horse.” William was blessed with humor. He impressed Lanfranc -into his service then and there, and made him his friend forever: the -Conqueror could make good friends. Then he sent Lanfranc to make his -peace with the Holy See. Understanding William’s passion for building, -Lanfranc, the peacemaker, arranged that William and Mathilda should -each build an abbey in expiation of their marriage. And William and -Mathilda performed their contract so royally that France has lately -restored their abbeys, line for line, as national monuments.[3] Thus -a tableau of Caen, as the Conqueror saw it, actually lies before -twentieth century eyes. - -Ah, put yourself in his place! I never knew a traveler to leave this -old town without becoming attached to its founder. The strong, orderly, -noble and logical Norman buildings express the old Conqueror at his -best; at Caen one prefers his older, gentler, more unique title of -William, the builder, for, indeed, many have conquered in England, but -William I built up his conquest. - -In this interesting old Norman church, with its suspicion of the -pointed arch (probably the earliest instance) pointing toward the -unparalleled Gothic that developed in Normandy, one feels like -congratulating the old Conqueror, both as lover and architect, and -reinstating his old claim to romance, even though modern research has -discovered that he was not a very gentle knight. - -William I was no saint; but why should he have been one? Professional -saints were only too common in his day: he was but a strong, direct man -in a most superstitious, childish and indirect age. Is not the position -of one who can stand alone through his age heroic enough? - -What a curious world the old Conqueror lived in! A world of -professional marauders and their soldiers, of professional saints -and their serfs; with a confusion of fighting barons, lay and -ecclesiastic, some or the most interesting bishops being no mean -warriors; and worst of all, a lot of begging friars producing little -but corruption. To the day of his death, the Conqueror makes no apology -for his wars in Normandy. There he was simply holding his own. The -behavior of the wild and worldly barons was not all he had to contend -with; there were also the visions and the notions of the unworldly -clergy, who, with intent, more or less good, more or less self-seeking, -interfered absolutely with good government, and William’s tact and -breadth with them, considered at a time when it is easy to be wise, -nearly one thousand years after the event, is astonishing. It fell to -his lot to deal with that peculiarly well-intentioned pope, Gregory -VII, who, by his ability to conceive and carry out his well-intentioned -policy, worked such incalculable evil. Spain is struggling with his -Shades today. - -What a problem the mystics of the eleventh century, with their -tremendous following and their curious allegorical interpretations of -everything great or small in heaven or on earth, must have been to -a statesman! Listen to this eleventh century letter of thanks from -Saint Ivo to Gerard of Ham, for “an instrument of the whiteness of -snow for combing the hair.” This comb is agreeable to him in and of -itself, like other objects of beauty; but above all, it pleases him -because of the elevation of ideas, which it so beautifully symbolizes: -he is quite sure that thy prudence (_ta prudence_) has wished hereby -to give a suggestion to his vigilance to seek constantly by all sorts -of exhortations to reform the disorderly manners of his people, whom -he compares to a disarranged head of hair. And yet Saint Ivo was in -his day a strictly practical person, not to be fooled as Savonarola -was four hundred years later by the ordeal of fire. Saint Ivo forbids -a husband to condemn his wife even when the man he has accused could -be burned by hot irons; and when the martial old bishop of Le Mans, -who is accused of having treacherously surrendered that town, offers -to walk on hot irons to prove his innocence, Saint Ivo writes him that -ordeals are uncanonical and that he must not submit to them. But then -no reader of his correspondence can fail to see that Saint Ivo was very -timid. How he did dread the Channel! He entreats the holiest men of his -acquaintance to pray unceasingly for him while he is on the water. - -But let us turn to the Conqueror’s own review of his life, as he -discussed it on his death-bed. Two of his clergy took it down. Thus, -as he would speak to his sons, he speaks to history. Here we have his -perplexities at first hand. That we may put ourselves in his place -as literally as possible, let us repair with the document to the -beautiful Abbey aux Dames, so tenderly connected with the Conqueror’s -queen. There, it is said, she made her thank-offering for her lord’s -safe deliverance, alike from the perils of war and the perils of -the Channel. This abbey was consecrated the year of the Conquest, -eleven years before the Abbey aux Hommes (ladies first). Many of the -Conqueror’s followers supplied their own ships, but Mathilda herself -fitted out the Conqueror’s,—the regal _Mora_—so splendidly stocked with -wine. Her good ship bore him safely to England and victory, and brought -him back, as ever, true to his queen. To this abbey they dedicated -their daughter Cicely, when she was a child, and she became a great and -powerful abbess. Here we may picture her praying, as a woman in the -intense Age of Faith could pray, for the souls of her parents. - -Eight hundred and twenty-five years after its original construction we -found another high-bred cloistered Lady of the Trinity in passionate -prayer at the tomb of Mathilda. Was this pretty young nun a legitimate -part of the restoration? Though the cloisters of France were supposed -to have been abolished, this one had been passed by, for the Conqueror -holds Caen, and some iron hand of the past seems to have retained this -spiritual young girl in prayer at the tomb of his queen. A strange -sight it was, one of the curious tragedies of conservatism; but like -many every-day tragedies imperceptible to its actors. - -To the eye all seemed beauty. From a fine old garden we stepped into -a majestic aisle of a great abbey. As we walked down in its dim -half-light, a curtain was drawn displaying a brass grill impassable in -the eyes of the church. Impassable it had been, in fact, for nearly -eight hundred and fifty years, but now to climb over it would be a -minor athletic feat. It separated the chapel of the foundress and the -nuns of the order of the Trinity from the whole outside world. The -entire central space of this chapel was occupied by Queen Mathilda’s -enormous cream-colored sarcophagus (restored). One might read the -inscription in eleventh-century characters, fresh from a modern chisel. -The chapel walls were lined with dark, carved wooden stalls, freshly -oiled, and new-born sunbeams peered decorously through rich-colored -glass on two kneeling nuns clad in the old-time flowing ivory-colored -robes of the Ladies of the Trinity. - -One was a fleshy, middle-aged woman, mechanically counting her beads, -the other was young and beautiful. She was looking up, and, though -she was as motionless as the tomb beside her, her attitude expressed -action as sculpture may. What was she thinking of? Is the life of -today any less inscrutable than that of one thousand years ago? Here, -in the charity of the church, let us consider the Conqueror’s apology -(_apologia_); we are translating the word too literally, but the spirit -of the document is humble and explanatory and, withal, very winning. - -In this _apologia_ William considers that he has done his duty to the -church, and history endorses him; in general, when he was at variance -with it he was in the right. But of his expedition to England—every -move of which is justified upon the Bayeux Tapistry—he repents, -although, fortunately, not fanatically enough to try and undo the deed. -He only makes what reparation he can to certain victims. Though on his -death-bed he liberated Harold’s son and nephew, he seems to overlook -a curious persecution, cruel in intent but easily repaired, that, in -the confidence and fury of his power, he had directed against the -soul of the defeated king. The Conqueror carried Harold’s body from -the battlefield (he wrapt it in the purple, it is true), but he had -insisted upon burying it in unhallowed ground, although for it Harold’s -mother had offered the weight in gold,—both parties firmly believing -that to lie in unconsecrated ground would militate against the repose -of the spirit. Though he tried to undo many a deed, the Conqueror -ignores entirely his arrogant revenge upon a soul. Facing death matures -our sense of value. - -Though but one century removed from a forebear whose God was Odin, -whose Valhalla was a place where heroes cut each other to pieces daily -in fair fight, but where the blest are perpetually restored to life -at meal-time that they may eat of the wild boar and fight again and -forever,[4] at least the Conqueror came to shudder at his massacres at -Hastings and York, to truly repent and to die humbly commending his -soul to Mary. - -The spirit of the nineteenth century was iconoclastic; it demolished -alike old heroes, old superstitions and old faiths. But the twentieth -century would call them back, not as realities, but as heroes, -superstitions and faiths, treating them philosophically, as great -moving forces, or poetically, as starting points for new ideals. The -hard, rational doubt which emancipated thought in the nineteenth -century develops into the sympathetic doubt of the twentieth. The -nineteenth century laughed at barbaric old heroes, while the twentieth -century smiles at them. Who wants to live in a world without heroes? -All men are not equal; but by reverent appreciation the small man may -become brother to the genius. - -Every place, every document connected with the Conqueror bears his -strong individuality. Read of him where you may, between the lines -of the Domesday Book (that conscientious effort to tax all that the -traffic will bear), or in the broken lays of the troubadours, or by -the light or the density of contemporary chroniclers, Norman or Saxon, -you find before you a man great in himself and a forerunner of greater -things: a great builder, building better than he knew; a great ruler, -ruling farther than he knew—a true hero of the strenuous life. - -Following the chance records from which the Conqueror’s biography is -put together, one is amazed by the integrity of his political instinct. -William the Norman is an instance for the poet who said, “The world is -what a few great men have made it.” The Conqueror seems such a typical -Englishman, alike in his love of the forests and the “high deer,” of -which the old Saxon chronicler complains, and in his appreciation of -justice and stability, for which the same chronicler gives thanks -on the spot. The Conqueror’s appeal is a very wide one. Even the -economists, who hold that the world is what demand and supply have made -it, write with an enthusiasm peculiarly their own of the Domesday Book -and its wisely self-seeking, avaricious author. - -[Illustration: _Dinan—the Fortifications have been Turned into -Playgrounds._] - -It cannot be argued that the Conqueror was a popular king, but -sinners, like saints, may be proven by their influence after death—the -Conqueror’s was strong and manly. His spirit entered widely into -mediæval legend. He is the Arthur, the ideal ruler, whom Malory -commends for manly purity, justice and probity; also for “open -manslaughter.” We may take Malory’s word for it, it was better than -the savage treachery known even four hundred years later, when -that old _raconteur_ was mixing probabilities, improbabilities and -impossibilities so picturesquely, and we have our old hero back. -Although we must alter Malory’s ideal, we can add to it as well as -subtract from it. We have the splendid barbarian who brought order -out of chaos both in England and Normandy, who loved and trusted his -wife, who loved nature and had an instinct for art, whose intelligent -attitude toward religion and learning left the Dark Ages behind, and -whose loyal leadership opened the romantic days of chivalry. - -Near Caen is a lovelier town, “Dinan, where the Conqueror slept.” Here -history’s scroll seems to loosen, displaying an enchanting pastoral of -the ages; there lies the simple, old hamlet by the river, just as it -might have looked when William the Norman and Harold, son of Goodwin, -camped there together, a little less than one thousand years ago. Then, -back of the river on the bluff, later a securely walled town appeared, -but now the old fortifications have turned into charming parks and -playgrounds, girding the loveliest of French villages; and on a summer -day in fair France one can feel sure that though much of life is at -cross-purposes, all is not vanity: old moats may make the loveliest of -gardens; old warriors, the gentlest of heroes. - -[Illustration: _Old Moats do make such Charming Gardens._] - - - - -_The Grandniece of the Grand Inquisitor_ - - - I have a fair daughter formed like a - golden flower.—_Sappho._ - -The Spanish Inquisitor is one character of the past who has been -spared the mockish attentions of writers of historical romance. But -he, too, has suffered from the _on dit_ of history, history as she is -taught. However, he had his day. Once as the impersonation of “correct -sentiment,” he dealt his decrees from a palace and had the double -honor of representing Church as well as State. As times grew gentler, -the Inquisition was directed against books rather than men. Now, -certainly, something may be accorded to those who dispose of polemic -literature, even though they be as innocent as earthworms of their -ultimate use to humanity; therefore, let us try to look upon the Grand -Inquisitor, Miguel de Carpio, as a Spanish gentleman of an exceedingly -old school—as a man perhaps much less bloodthirsty than some of the -good and perfect knights, though abominably technical regarding certain -points. As theatre-goers we are in the gentleman’s debt, for it was he -who educated his nephew, Lope de Vega de Carpio, who in his turn was a -positive factor in the development of the modern drama. - -Lope Felix de Vega de Carpio was of a mental mixture that has more than -passed away; it has been relegated to the incomprehensible,—at once a -graceful poet and a soldier, a past master of euphuism and a coarse -dramatist; an officer of the Church; “a servant of the Inquisition” or -a “familiar of the holy office,” as he fluently termed it (an honorary -escort of the victim to the stake); finally, chaplain of the monastic -order into which he retired; and, unquestionably, the most voluminous -of writers. - -[Illustration: _A Peep Into the Cranium of a Bible Reader in Lope de -Vega’s Time._] - -But his most poetic gift to the world was his love-child, Sister -Marcela de Felix of the Convent of the Ladies of the Trinity at Alcala. -Of all his children, legitimate or illegitimate, this daughter, by the -lady who inspired the best of his sonnets, was to him dearest. He takes -little Marcela to live with him as soon as ever his wife dies, and -dedicates a drama to the little girl; so does another poet. She seems -to be her father’s comrade, for when she is only eleven years old he -uses her to get back some letters that he has written to one of his -various mistresses; but when a relative of the husband of this mistress -makes improper overtures to Little Marcela, Lope de Vega rises like a -man “in spite of his age and holy orders,” and chastises the villain. - -At sixteen, to the little maid comes a craving for an exalted purity, a -reaction of her beautiful soul from its coarse, immoral surroundings. -Being a woman, her ideal also calls for a lover, but he must be pure -and more beautiful than any one she has ever known, and he must love -her as she will him, “better than life.” It is the Age of Faith. Her -bridegroom awaits; she leaves her father to join him. - -Of course, there are braver, fuller, happier lives than a nun’s, and -there always have been. But during the Age of Faith, in a religious -house, there was always a haven of rest for the idealist, while now it -sometimes seems he has not where to lay his head. - -It was not in the Middle Ages that the king said, “If poets will be -poets, why, let them starve.” Then, on the contrary, the public fed a -vagabond population of vagabond singers who sang a certain grace into -the Romance languages; for the devotees of various abstractions there -was the refuge of holy orders. After taking up the religious life, if -they had force enough to arrange the conditions around them to fit -their desires, they might safely follow their various bents, for good -or ill, undisturbed by care for the future, their bodies being insured -against want, their souls against punishment. In Spain, particularly, -really great men and successful ones continued to take holy orders even -up to the eighteenth century. - -In his prime, Calderon exchanged the position of superintendent of the -royal theatre for royal chaplain, but after a few qualms on the point -he continued to write plays on much the same order as before, only -they were performed by priests. Since Calderon was really orthodox the -arrangement seems natural enough; as a playwright he had baffled with -the public till he was fifty-one years old; in the church at least he -was relieved from the dictates of public tastes. There it was that he -probably wrote his beautiful “Magic Magician.” - -I am not a Ruskinite. I would not, if I conveniently could, domesticate -the thirteenth century in the nineteenth; but I do believe in a -sympathetic attitude toward history, as toward present life, and for -the same reasons I would not turn the light of the twentieth century -in upon the gloom of the sixteenth, with the idea of getting a clear -picture. I for one do not feel that a convent was the saddest place -for Sister Marcela. That power which decrees the fall of nations had -its hand upon Spain. Wars, the Americas, the religious houses and the -Inquisition, had fed on the flower of the nation too long. The times -were out of joint. It seemed beautiful to little Marcela to lose such -a world and gain a soul. Being a poet, the heroic side of the church -appealed to her; in her intensity she joined the barefooted order of -the Trinity. How did her father part from her? He was a poet, too—did -he give her up with holy joy and homely sorrow? - -In his way, Lope de Vega was a really religious man, for he lived -in close touch with his God—the literal, limited, jealous god of a -fanatic, it is true. Would you see its exact image, as shown on the -Market Place? Then read “The Marriage of the Soul to Divine Love,” a -broadly realistic drama, in which Lope de Vega supposes the bridegroom -to be the Savior. It was acted on the great Square of Valencia on the -occasion of the marriage of Philip III, the dramatist himself being the -clown in the cast. - -But, too, this vulgar “familiar of the holy office” can be tender. -Listen to these lines, dedicated to his little dead son:— - - “Holy angels and blest, - Through these palms as ye sweep, - Hold their branches at rest, - For my babe is asleep. - - “And ye Bethlehem palm trees, - As stormy winds rush - In tempest and fury, - Your angry noise hush;— - Move gently, move gently, - Restrain your wild sweep; - Hold your branches at rest,— - My babe is asleep. - - “My babe all divine, - With earth’s sorrows oppressed, - Seeks in slumber an instant - His grieving to rest; - He slumbers,—he slumbers,— - Oh hush, then, and keep - Your branches all still,— - My babe is asleep! - - “Cold blasts wheel about him,— - A rigorous storm,— - And ye see how, in vain, - I would shelter his form;— - Holy angels and blest, - As above me ye sweep, - Hold these branches at rest,— - My babe is asleep!” - -[Illustration: _The Literal, Limited God of a Fanatic and Father Adam -Stock-taking in Eden._] - -What did he whisper to this living child as she parted from him? “Heard -melodies are sweet; but those unheard are sweeter.” - -When, in the confident phrase of her father, Marcela de Carpio -“espoused the eldest son of God,” her mystic nuptials called forth the -truest “song-feast” ever held. The herald of old might bid the poets -appear and compete for a monarch’s pleasure. Order a tournament of -song, indeed! Mahomet was profound enough to go to the mountain. When -the beautiful love-child of Lope de Vega and Micaela de Luzan took the -veil, the ceremony was graced by all the dignity and circumstance which -the Church could lavish in outward expression of the passion and fervor -of the forceful old days of her power. - -All the poets of the day, great and small, seemed to have been summoned -to this marriage feast, and all the poets of the day, great and small, -vainly tried to transcribe the living poem their eyes beheld when that -fair bride of Christ passed before them in a transport of ecstasy. - -At that time many great ladies were taking the veil with equal pomp -and state, but no such tribute was paid them. What an absolutely -inexplicable power is personality! Marcela de Carpio never published a -line, and at this time had probably never written one. How did these -minor poets recognize this fair daughter of Sappho? Was she “formed -like a golden flower”? What a wonderful people are poets! But listen, -for Sister Marcela’s bridal song is with us yet, she pipes so clear and -sweet: - - I. - “Let them say to my lover - That here I lie! - The thing of his pleasure, - His slave am I. - - II. - “Say that I seek him - Only for love, - And welcome are tortures - My passion to prove. - - III. - “Love giving gifts - Is suspicious and cold; - I have all, my Beloved, - When Thee I hold. - - IV. - “Hope and devotion - The good may gain, - I am but worthy - Of passion and pain. - - V. - “So noble a Lord - None serves in vain— - For the pay of my love - Is my love’s sweet pain. - - VI. - “I love thee, to love thee, - No more I desire; - By faith is nourished - My love’s strong fire. - - VII. - “I kiss Thy hands - When I feel their blows; - In place of caresses - Thou givest me woes. - - VIII. - “But in Thy chastening - Is joy and peace; - O Master and Love, - Let not Thy blows cease! - - IX. - “Thy beauty, Beloved, - With scorn is rife! - But I know that Thou lovest me - Better than life. - - X. - “And because Thou lovest me, - Lover of mine, - Death can but make me - Utterly Thine. - - XI. - “I die with longing - Thy face to see; - Ah, sweet is the anguish - Of Death to me!” - -Marcela de Carpio retired from the world in 1621. It was not till 1870 -that the ladies of the Convent of the Trinity at Alcala called the -attention of the director of the Spanish Academy to a manuscript so -dear to that sisterhood,—the love-songs of a nun, the poems of Sister -Marcela de Felix. Such a delay in publication would be disastrous to a -worldling of the pen, but oblivion cannot bury a soul. Besides, Sister -Marcela was dreaming of heaven, not of print; her thought incidentally -overflows and she inherited her father’s facility with the pen. - -Thus, from the depths of the old cloister swells a love-song so clear -and sweet, so humanly divine that it almost reconciles the ages. The -times were out of joint in Spain, but I am glad that this mystical -daughter of Sappho was not ordained, like poor little Charlotte Corday, -another idealist, with the blood of a great poet in her veins, to try -to set them right. I am glad that the doors of the convent were open to -this spiritual young dreamer of beautiful dreams, who sings the “Swan -Song of the Age of Faith.” You say the convent doors are open yet; -yes, but in another way—perhaps a better way. Women enter to dedicate -a broken life to all that is good. The peace is there, but the rapture -is no more. We “cannot sing the old songs now nor dream those dreams -again.” - -No woman is fairer to muse upon than Marcela de Carpio. We get out -of life what we put into it. From the repose of the cloister Sister -Marcela contributes a dream. She is the poetess of the passionate -reverence of the Age of Faith. In her verse “the tender grace of a -day that is dead” is immortal. We must never for a moment overlook a -Spanish lady’s pedigree. Senorita Marcela de Carpio was the grandniece -of a Grand Inquisitor of Spain. - - - - -_Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books_ - - -A bibliophile is expected to enter with an apology,—he is generally -called a bibliomaniac, but let your foreboded homage check your tongue; -remember, if you prefer your mother’s Bible to the one left by the -tract society, or the one left by the tract society to your mother’s -(bibliophiles are liable to any preference), you are open to the -infection and the mania is incurable. - -But do not books become ours by what we, individually, get from them? -What does it matter whether it lies in the cover or the text or between -the lines? “Piece out our imperfection with your thought,” implores -the greatest poet. Though it is dwelt upon with some truth that -bibliophiles do not read their books (must we therefore infer that -other people have the contents of their libraries at their tongue’s -ends), they have their own attitude toward them—an attitude which has -proved of the profoundest service to letters. - -The professional critic enters the library in state, receiving and -dismissing new books with sovereign assurance: so uniformly has he -erred that the dictum has gone forth that no age can pass on its -writers. - -The gentle reader enters the library modestly; although he may read the -new books that perish, he does not neglect the new books that live, as -any one who makes a study of editions will discover; he buys the good -works of his own day. The publisher of the first edition of Shakespeare -remarked that purchase “best commends a book,” on the strength of which -idea he collected the stray plays of the Bard of the Avon. The preface -which he wrote for his edition stands forth as the modest advertisement -of history; but absurdly condescending as it is, it shows that he -foresaw a good, immediate sale; also that he foresaw no farther. - -The bibliophile enters the library abstractedly, there to muse -upon volumes true and tried; and through the ages his reverent, -disinterested spirit has builded better than it knew. Indeed, it -alone tided books across the Dark Ages; for even when they could not -read, some there were who had wit enough to appreciate letters in the -abstract. Contrast their attitude with that of the executive Caliph -Omar, who burned a great library at Alexandria in 635, declaring that -if the books were orthodox (Mohammedan orthodoxy, of course) they were -unnecessary; if heterodox, pernicious. That is what it means to have -mere practical people around among books. - -I can conceive of no human relic more touching than a Bible copied -with conscientious care during this unsympathetic era. Hence the Book -of Kells,[5] which is destitute of one touch of the native artist, -however immature, is often spoken of as the most beautiful book in the -world. It is supposed to have been executed about the eighth century, -since its illuminators had advanced from the mere red capitals adorned -with twisted dragons to pictures relating to the text. The symbols -of the apostles, especially the bird-like lion of Saint Mark, appear -repeatedly on the margins; also, there is a representation of Saint -Matthew with hands growing from his shoulders, holding up to the world -two copies of “The Book.” Among its illustrations are the Arrest of -Jesus, the Agony of the Garden, and, most interesting of all, four -angels and a Virgin and Child appear on the old pages, for, crude as -these figures are, they may be reckoned among the direct ancestors of -those beautiful Holy Families born on Italian and Flemish canvases -eight or nine hundred years later, whose sweet faces still sway the -world. - -[Illustration: _A Tribute to the Scribes of the Dark Ages, from One of -Their Intellectual Descendants, a Painter of the Moyen Age_] - -Christian art began as illustration on the pages of holy books, and -as illustration it expanded onto wood and canvas, bronze and marble. -The peculiar grace of pictorial art crept into it incidentally, by -accident of genius. That famous Giotto of the Louvre showing “Saint -Francis receiving the Stigmata” is simply a direct explanation of -the subject, far more beautiful in idea than in execution. There are -the figures of Jesus and of Saint Francis; Christ is flying toward -“the most Christ-like of men,” and gilt lines from every wound in our -Savior piercing Saint Francis in the same parts of the body bind that -sympathetic saint to his Redeemer, while unknown to the holy brother a -halo appears back of his head. - -This idea of illustration made beautiful that it might be worthy of the -subject which it treated, that arose in the old scriptoriums, reached -its perfection on Ghiberti’s doors to the Baptistry at Florence. -Michael Angelo called them the Gates of Paradise. Illuminated books -of a later date display equally noble, artistic connections. I have -seen little Madonnas in Books of Hours in the British Museum that seem -like imperfect copies of Raphael, whereas they precede him by nearly a -century. - -Mediæval story is full of the visits of angels to despairing -illuminators and scribes who found themselves unable to execute books -worthy in their material beauty to convey the word of God. Our Lady -herself sometimes came down to console them. Did forecasts of the -beautiful pictures yet to come sometimes appear to the humble dreamers -of the cloister as they worked away on the margins of holy books? -Not literally, of course, for taste was too crude to conceive of a -developed art. But may not some old artist have conceived in his cell -of a pictured Madonna, so beautiful that pilgrims came from afar to do -her honor, so sweet that she could uplift them from sin? And perhaps -the soul of that humble old scribe finds its paradise in the better -part of some inscrutable genius whose Madonnas perpetually uplift the -world, for the soul of a saint is active forever. - -[Illustration: _It is Said There is No Better Test of a Bible Student -Than to Ask Him to Read the Stories which Ghiberti Tells so Distinctly -on the Baptistry Doors._] - -But from the vantage-ground of the Old Book of Kells it is as pretty to -look backward as to look forward, so sweetly does it recall a certain -monastery on the Island of Iona which casts its ray in history like a -good deed in a naughty world. This old book speaks eloquently of the -lonely Irish cloisters where, in perhaps the darkest hour of written -history, the seeds of occidental civilization were laid away until a -more favorable season dawned in which to sow them broadcast. - -About a hundred years after the blessed Saint Patrick converted -Ireland, in which time many had fallen from grace, Saint Columba -appeared on the scene, made a second conversion of that region and -founded the old Scotch Kirk (very indirectly). When Saint Columba -appealed to the canny Scots and the thrifty northern Irishmen for a -situation for his monastery, they hospitably turned over to his use -the rocky Island of Iona. Though agriculturally it was not much, -through long ages it had borne the fruits of the spirit until even -its stones did duty as amulets. In its bosom slept the Scottish -kings, King Macbeth being the last of the royal line to lie there. -Iona was hallowed ground to the Druid, and is, to this day, a haven -of superstition. There Saint Columba, the scribe, located his -lonely monastery wherein books were made, wondrous in their day -and generation, and there or at some Columbian monastery in the -neighborhood, perhaps at Kells, the Book of Kells was executed. - -One of its big pages, which is covered by a great cross wherein -eight circles are incorporated in a network of infinitely involved -interlacements, especially illustrates one phase of early art—its -reverent patience. Study that cross as you may you will find no false -line, no irregular interlacement, for all this was done in the olden -time when the ways of holy men were made so clear unto them. That none -might disturb the holy calm of the silent scribes as they multiplied -the precious “Word” Saint Jerome had taken down from the direct -dictation of the angels, a code of signs was in use in the scriptoriums -of the monasteries. The sign of the cross indicated a missal, the sign -of the crown, King David’s psalms, while a contemptuous scratching of -the ear, in the manner of a dog, was an order for a mere pagan volume; -for then “the world was very wicked,” as the good monks droned; or at -least very rude, cruel, lazy and barbarous, as history affirms, and -gentle spirits were only too prone to recoil from it. - -The early Christians in general were filled with contempt for this -life and proud certainty of reward in the next: those whose practice -was no higher than their theory withdrew from the world to secure to -themselves particularly high seats in heaven. The composite story of -their lives emphasizes the barrenness of the scoffer, the futility of -the contemptuous. But the story of the scribe, though he may have seen -through the glass just as darkly as the anchorite did, is the living -story of Christian brotherhood. - -One of the first of these scribes, old Cassiodorus of Ravenna, writes: -“All who sing form but a single voice, and we may mingle our notes -with those of the angels, though we may not hear them.” I am sure that -was the sentiment which finally turned this old statesman from the -world, even though he did not retire till after the death of Theodoric, -his patron. Perhaps the career of a statesman prepared him to be a -statesman of the world of letters; at any rate, when he repaired to -the cloister he gathered together, according to his lights, the best -books of his world, and especially enjoined upon the monks the noble -duty of multiplying them. - -All this was some hundred years before Saint Columba’s time, but angel -voices carry, and I do believe in their highest moments the ignorant, -undeveloped scribes of the old Irish monasteries vaguely echoed ideals -like those of Cassiodorus. - -These scribes came to feel a certain ownership in the great Bibles on -which they worked. At the end of each section of the old Book of Durrow -its scribe smuggled in his petition that all who take the book in hand -might pray for him. I have known a merry old scribe to insert a jingle -in very bad Latin at the end of a chapter, indicating that after so -much good work he should be rewarded with a drink. The jolly old monk -has always appealed to me most unreasonably. - -Within the century of the making of the old Book of Kells in Ireland, -stirring old Charlemagne brought a semblance of order to the land of -the Gaul and the Frank and, “that requests should not be made to God -in bad language,” he regulated copists and reproductions by law; he -ordered holy books elaborately adorned, and collected, to the best -of his ability, artists for that purpose, thereby leaving his mark -on the books of his time and of some generations following, which -are technically known as Carlovingians. Indeed, as a bibliophile -Charlemagne shows the most charming side of his character. In his -enthusiasm he went to work and learned to read, but he never could -succeed in learning to write. - -As might be expected, Carlovingians are mechanically decorated. They -show Byzantine importation rather than the loving development of an -early and original art. We still have a couple of pages of the Amiens -copy of a work written by the Abbot of Fulda during Charlemagne’s -reign. One page is covered by a lone figure, without ground or -background, of Louis the Pious with text printed all over it. (Not -that in the Dark Ages anybody read between the lines; that they failed -to do so was their greatest difficulty.) Then other Carlovingians are -examples of the dyers’ art, being written in gold on purple vellum, -like the “Golden Gospels” which one thousand one hundred years later -proved such an excellent speculation on Wall street. But that is -unquestionably “another story.” - -There is a certain book in the Bodleian not quite so old which I -should value more highly. With considerably more evidence than usual -in such cases, it is identified as the book of mass of Queen Margaret -of Scotland. I wonder if the lovely Saxon princess had it with her -when she fled to Scotland after the Norman Conquest to implore the -protection of Malcomb Canmore who made her his Queen? But, better -still, his people afterwards made her their patron saint, realizing -that she had done more to refine them than any other early ruler. -Tradition tells how the King, though he could not read, loved to handle -the Queen’s precious books—perhaps he gave this little volume adorned -with gold and jewels to the lady of his reverent love. - -The thirteenth century has great attractions for a bibliophile. Never -were the embellishments on books more liberal and amusing. Nowadays -illuminators consider the fitness of things, but in the thirteenth -century they just designed. I know of a most charming psalter of the -late thirteenth century with the capitals filled with the spirited -knights and the margins with all-colored dragons whose attenuated tails -form circles, sometimes not more than an eighth of an inch in diameter, -that separate tiny butting goats or strutting cocks, or Darwinian -monkeys or other irrelevant matter from the text. - -Did these dragons creep in from the Norse mythologies, I wonder, or -were they just creatures of adaptive anatomy for decorative purposes? -The early illuminators did not turn to nature; simple people never do. -This illustrator’s mind certainly wandered; whether it started with -the psalms I cannot determine, but he displays two tiny gilded stops -one-eighth of an inch by two inches that the seriously inclined might -take as sermons. One represents a jester, with cap and bells and wand, -and little other raiment, successfully charging a fully armed knight; -and the other, Venus, attended by a blue dragon, pursuing a cross -between a man and a devil. - -The fourteenth and fifteenth century illuminators and illustrators -begin to think; indeed, they are among the best historians we find of -that period: modern illustration is fast returning to their methods. - -At the commencement of the fourteenth century, miniatures of the noble -owners of elaborate volumes began to be inserted in their books. Thus -a consecutive history of two hundred years of French portraiture is -safely folded away in the Bibliotheque Nationale, where we may watch -the stiff early miniatures gradually develop into charming little -_genre_ pictures. Though the consideration of atmosphere was passed -over at that time, many of them are models of composition. - -Some of these little illustrations show the conceptions as well as -the manners of the age. In one of these old Bibles is a picture of -six seigneurs (two famous bibliophiles among them), in full regalia -(no grave clothes for them), cordially received by Saint Peter at the -Gothic Gates of Paradise in the courteous days of the old regime. There -is that magnificent jeweled Bible of Jean Sans Peur, Duc de Bourgoyne, -decorated with his armorial bearings, which was given to him by some -monks of his domain when he deigned to honor them with a visit; it -contains a charming little picture of the presentation scene. - -[Illustration: _A Page from the Bible of Jean Sans Peur._] - -Those were royal days for bibliophiles; but a change was to come -over the spirit of their dreams. Printing was invented and the -democracy of letters set in,—jeweled bindings made way for calf, and -collectors are diverted from painting to presses. Bibliophiles develop -individual tastes and such a plebeian variety of them; it is akin to -free speech—one doting on prayer-books, another on cook-books; one on -pamphlets, another on palimpsests; one on school-books, another on -Virgils; one on curiosities of literature, execrably illustrated books -of travel in impossible lands and comedies of error generally; another -on distant glimpses of dawning light, until within the order arises the -confusion of Babel, one no longer understanding the language of another. - -But there is an early Episcopal prayer-book in the British Museum -before which all the brotherhood right gallantly might bow. It was Lady -Jane Grey’s companion in distress; she is said to have taken it with -her to the scaffold, where she certainly carried its lessons. In it she -wrote her last message to her father: “The Lord comfort Your Grace in -this world wherein all creatures are only to be comforted.” Her story -is almost too harrowing to recall. This studious young girl, just -seventeen, is offered the English crown. Her common sense tells her to -decline it. “His Grace,” always harsh, even for his day and generation, -forces her to accept. In consequence, after a ten days’ reign, she is -imprisoned in the Tower. While she is held there “His Grace” makes -another false move; as a result of his idiocy Lady Jane and her young -husband are condemned to death. - -Could we believe this gentle message on hearsay? We should probably -argue, the age was so narrow, the girl was so young, the expression -is too condensed, too mature. The rational doubt would blur one of -the loveliest pictures in Time’s gallery of fair women. A martyr -without the spur, or the blemish of fanaticism! A Queen of ten days -but a Defender of the Faith forever. The crown jewels pale before this -illuminated prayer-book of Her Most Christian Majesty. This dear little -Protestant called forth the one tender letter extant from the highly -practical Diana of Poitiers. “I have just been hearing the account of -the poor young Queen Jane, and I could not keep myself from weeping at -the sweet, resigned words she spoke to them on the scaffold; surely -never was such a sweet and accomplished princess.” - -Indeed, the best thing in the world of books, as well as in the -world of men, “is something out of it,” and it is the appreciation -of this “something,” manifest to sympathetic souls, which makes us -bibliophiles. If unknown to history a tender touch of hands long dead -lurks in an old edition, is it not beyond price? - -Although there are priceless books like this little prayer-book of -Queen Jane, every good bibliophile is a bit of a speculator; to bet on -an author is as loyal an excitement as to bet on a racer; and to feel -a beloved volume appreciating upon one’s shelves is like watching the -development of a promising child. - -Robert Browning, who was brought up in the fold, his father being a -collector, writes: - - Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss - I’ the air, and catch again, and twirl about - By the crumpled vellum covers,—pure crude fact - Secreted from man’s life when hearts beat hard, - And brains, high blooded, ticked two centuries since? - Examine it yourselves! I found this book, - Gave a _lira_ for it, eightpence English just. - _Opening lines of_ - “_The Ring and the Book_.” - -That eightpence has the regular bibliomaniacal ring. Next to giving -fifty prices for a book, the genuine collector delights in paying an -improperly low one—a _tour de force_ either of wit or of purse. - -Just think of getting material for the longest poem of the century for -eightpence! and material so unique! with the inspiration of the old -tome thrown in! - -But now, when books are so cheap they are almost free, when exact -reproductions of wonderful editions might flood the market at any day, -when venders of old books have become too expert for book hunters, we -are assured that bibliophiles, grasping the tangible in the hope of -realizing the intangible, are the absurdities of a rational age. - -Remember our record in the past and trust us a little in the present. -In blind reverence we saved books and inaugurated Christian art. -Historians suddenly began to demand documents and they grow more and -more insistent on that point. Well, we can come to their aid and -they can come to ours; many a pretty bargain has been struck in the -exchange. Along with its old books and letters we have especially -preserved the gentler, though none too gentle, side of the past. - -We can introduce you to men of other days in their libraries: a very -good place to study them sympathetically. - -Among other charming facts, we can assure you that even during the -confusion of a period of infinite intrigue complicated by religious -wars and the Fronde, Richelieu and Mazarin found time to play at -bibliomania, and perhaps we can persuade you that of all their games -it was the most profitable. The executive Mazarin got hold of an -invaluable expert, Naudé, who brought him bargains by the yard. -What fun they must have had out of it,—Naudé literally taking a -measuring-stick with him when he went “book-hunting,” and “the stalls -where he had passed were like the towns through which Attila or the -Tartars had swept!” But the result was different. Deserving books -were sumptuously decked out in red and olive morocco with gold-tooled -cardinal hats thereon, and took their rightful place in Mazarin’s -palace, that Earthly Paradise of the bibliophile graced by beautiful -books and gentle readers, for Mazarin’s library was cordially free, the -first really free library in France. - -It is true that Saint Louis, always open to a beautiful idea, hearing -of a sultan who had had copies made of the manuscripts of his realm -for the benefit of the savants, endeavored to follow the example of -the Moslem. Accordingly he made a beautiful collection of copies which -were kept in the royal chapel—hardly a convenient place for the reading -public; but then there was no reading public. - -However humble a Christian, however gentle a knight Saint Louis may -have been, he was destitute of one instinct of the democrat. After his -death his collection was broken up, but his idea descended to Charles -the Wise, who practically started the Royal Library which, joined to -the Mazarin, developed into the present Bibliotheque Nationale. - -As the oldest branch of the Public Library, the Bibliotheque -Nationale occupies the ancestral home, the Palais Mazarin at Paris, -where Mazarin’s motto, “Time and I,” rings forth in the majesty of -accomplishment. - -As “Ever since the days of Captain Kidd, the Yankees think there’s -money hid,” so ever since the disappearance of Molière’s library the -bibliophiles think there’s treasure hid. Only one book which belonged -to that prince of bibliophiles has turned up so far, a little Elzevir -of 1651, in which he obligingly wrote his name and the price, 1 -_livre_, 10 _sous_. But think of his two hundred and forty odd comedies -which he handled so deftly both in the letter and in the spirit, -“taking his property wherever he found it!” What pearls of price if one -could only trace them! - -We know this collection was broken up; it cannot be that every single -book has perished. One is almost justified in counting such chickens -before they are hatched. Molière was not only one of the greatest but -one of the most lovable of authors—that quality we collectors value so -highly! Why a book of his would be like a relic of a saint (there is a -bit of mediævalism in every good bibliophile); a saint, a bibliophile -of other days, an actor, a gentle reader and a genius! What might not -any one of them bring? Ah, there is still a golden fleece for the quest -of the Romantic Modern. - -Romance will always deal in talismans. We bibliophiles make ours a -thing of the mind, which we lay away between the lines of some gentle -old volume, hoping that some day, somewhere in the vague realm of -Books, it may work its pleasant magic upon some unknown comrade. - - - - -_The Romantic Twentieth Century: A Deduction_ - - -The simple story-tellers of old, singing away before History was born, -long, long before she became contradictory and disrespectful, chose the -past as a setting for certain beatitudes—love, beauty, valor, fidelity -and justice. Theirs was not the harsh justice of the common law, for -there was no common law, but true, or, as the world terms it, poetic -justice. They strengthened the warp of their story with the noblest -deeds done, or almost done, around them, for human beings so often -fall just short of great things; this it is the gentle and honorable -duty of story to remedy, for “What we would be, that we are for one -transcendent moment.” - -When they only recorded the prowess of the victor, History and Romance -were one and at peace, and the glorious days of which together they -sung were known as the Golden Age. - -Then History began to feel the heroism of the vanquished. To give them -their meed she conceived the idea of recording impartially the good and -evil around her, whereat childish Romance turned from her in disgust. - -But each claimed the Golden Age: Romance declaring that golden tales -that live and grow were hers for all time; History declaring that the -fact that a great poet imagined an event to have happened counted for -more in the human record than any other given occurrence. And History -and Romance quarreled on until it seemed as though the Golden Age would -be lost to both of them. - -Then Romance, always enterprising to the point of flightiness, -suggested that, as the Golden Age had no chronology, it might safely be -recast in the future, in which period she, at least, was quite as much -at home as in the past. - -Politic Old Dame History smiled at the idea of her dealing in futures, -but she did make herself responsible for the statement that the real -present is infinitely more romantic than the real past. Then waxing -bold she declared that, with some trifling digression, she had all -along been leading men toward a purer justice more mixed with love. Of -this sweeping assertion she calmly cast the burden of proof upon “my -most persuasive witness, my dear old friend, Romance.” And Romance, -who always begs the question, replies with a smile, “Let me tell some -stories. No, I will not commence with the Greeks, they are hardly my -people. Great poets may find other themes, but as for me, my humble -fancy must rest upon a woman and she should be pure, sweet and gentle -and brave men should bow before her. - -“The Grecian woman was in no way a free agent. To assert herself at -all, she was obliged to be either deceitful or defiant; both attitudes -are so unbeautiful! I commence with the days of chivalry, for though -women were not free then, it was supposed that they ought to be, which -is enough for me.” - -“To me,” says History, “the love stories of the days of chivalry, -told as fact or as old romance, are one of the saddest issues of its -universal tyranny—a tyranny of parent over child, of man over woman, -of lord over serf, of king over lord, of emperor over king, of pope -over emperor—a tyranny of crazy conventions and mistaken ideals over -all, with mortifications of spirit a thousand times harsher than those -of the flesh, which made life hideous even to its ideals. - -“Analyze the great love story of that era and you find rather a tragedy -of tyranny. It runs thus: About the close of the Dark Ages the parents -of Pierre Abelard decided, for the future repose of their souls, -to repress all their natural desires and shift all mundane duties. -Accordingly they retired to separate convents, leaving their son free -to follow his natural bent. Argument being his ruling passion, he -wandered through France challenging the local theologians in debate, -always drawing a following, always making powerful enemies, and, -doubtless, very much enjoying the life. At Laon he tackled the great -Anselm, and finding him a man ‘of mean genius and great fluency of -words without sense,’ Abelard conceived the idea of reading the Bible -for himself. Then he made his way to Paris to break a lance with -the great Canon Fulbert, where he met the Canon’s niece, Heloise. -A love story ensued, like other love stories in many ways, except -that Heloise, against all self-interest, physical, social, spiritual, -refused to marry her lover, entreat as he might; she would do anything -else for him, except state her true reason—but yet a woman. We have it -finally in her correspondence, ‘What an injury shall I do the Church if -I rob it of such a man!’ - -“Is it a sacrifice on the altar of the Church on her part, or is it a -woman’s sacrifice for the interests of the man she loves better than -herself? Had her mother made a like renunciation? No mother appears in -the story of this adopted niece of an ecclesiastic. Here is Heloise’s -position. In her time the only opening for a clever man was the Church -with its conditions; a loving woman should not hamper an ambitious -man; she should remember she cannot be to him what he is to her, which -is a law of life known to woman, that we find holds true here. Having -first given her all to the Church, she enters a convent at Abelard’s -suggestion. But in the twelfth century, or any other, the hope of youth -dies hard. Heloise does not take the black veil. She cannot burn her -ships. - -“Thereafter this truly fair woman of Romance figures as a stern -disciplinarian reporting the weaker sisters. But she is severe upon -herself as well, and confesses having unlawfully opened a letter in -which she was sure there was news of her Abelard; though, when in after -years Abelard wished to correspond with her, she begged him not. This -is the tragedy of Heloise. - -“Abelard also entered a convent, but there, as elsewhere, he had a -wonderful faculty for carrying his point, and probably led, on the -whole, a very congenial life. However, he once overstepped himself, and -was summoned to appear before the Council of Soissons and commanded to -burn his own book with his own hands. He ungallantly admitted that this -was the saddest moment of his life. Here is Abelard’s tragedy. He felt -that all was lost. But it was Abelard that the world needed, not his -book. - -“Brave as Socrates, Abelard returned to the Abbey of Saint Denis, there -to raise the first historic doubt. He did not think Saint Denis was the -Areopagite of the Scriptures, nor did he believe the saint was ever in -Paris. The horrified Abbot accordingly gave Abelard over to the civil -authorities ‘for reflections upon the kingdom and the crown.’ - -“Driven from Paris, he retired to a cloistered order at Troyes, where -he built a church and had the pleasure of dedicating it to the Holy -Ghost (there being a law against dedicating a temple to the Paraclete). -Arguing to the last, Abelard passed away, and while his body was -mouldering in the ground, his soul went arguing on in his intellectual -descendants, the mediæval schoolmen who, in their poor way, managed -to awaken the mind of Europe, if only to lead it by labyrinths into a -cul-de-sac. - -“I wonder if Heloise was able to follow her true love’s valiant career -without earthly pride? Or by some strange austere resolve did she deny -herself that gentle pleasure? For Heloise belongs to the species, -omnipotent woman, who carries out her decisions by hook or by crook -for the benefit of self and others, never hampered by a doubt of the -ultimate excellence of her arrangements. - -“Did she do well not to rob the Church of Abelard? Perhaps she builded -better than she knew, or she may have made a sad mistake, but God -knows, she did her best. That was eight hundred years ago, but her -story is tragic today. As to Abelard’s, it is really very interesting. - -“And,” continues History, “the favorite romance of this sadly -submissive age was ‘The Patient Griselda.’ It was an old, old tale -when Boccaccio told it, but, thank fortune, it is dead at last, for we -cannot now conceive of the excellence of the heroine. - -“A marquis, whose only love is the chase, is forced by his subjects -to marry. He compromises on a little country girl, and requires her -to promise ‘to study to please him and not to be uneasy at anything -whatever he may do or say.’ (A man’s requirements, only this marquis -wasn’t a gentleman.) To test her patience, he amuses himself by taking -her children from her, one by one, and leading her to suppose that they -have been killed, because his people objected to the descendants of -a peasant. Griselda blesses her children as she delivers them to his -servitor, saying: - -“‘Take them; do what my lord and thine has commanded; but, prithee, -leave them not to be devoured by fowls or wild beasts unless that be -his will.’ - -“Then the marquis tells her he must annul their marriage. - -“She replies, ‘For what I have been I hold myself indebted to -Providence and you. I consider it a favor lent me,’ and she -acquiescingly returns to the house of her father, who has prudently -saved her old garments, never supposing the marquis would ‘keep her -long as wife.’ In good time the marquis summons her to prepare his home -for a new wife. She affectionately complies. The new wife proves to be -herself, the marquis being quite persuaded that her patience ‘proceeds -from no want of understanding in her.’ Her children are restored. She -weeps for joy, and they all live happily ever after.” - -Romance replies, “The chivalry in your instances is confined to -the women, which is always pathetic. As to the actual Griselda of -Aquitaine, whose name and story grew into the heart of an age, she -lived just before the days of chivalry. Indeed, Shades of women like -Griselda and Heloise may have inspired the chivalrous attitude toward -women. - -“One should read Griselda’s story in Chaucer, not in shallow-hearted -Boccaccio, even though it was the purest and most popular of his tales. -Chaucer would make you feel her kinship with women now, who make -sacrifices for love less open and rude but not so different from hers. - -“Listen, History,” continues Romance, “to Chaucer’s tale: You have -commended bloodier deeds than Griselda’s. The marquis says to Griselda, -when he demands the child, ‘In great lordship there is great servitude. -I may not do as every ploughman may,’ and Griselda, like a mother, -whose son is demanded as a sacrifice on the altar of her country, first -consecrates him to God. She is as tender to her child as she is loyal -to her husband, but I will say no more; no one but Chaucer should touch -that scene. - -“I have always suspected that the real marquis in question intended to -kill the child for exactly the reasons he stated, and the gentleness of -the mother, who could not possibly protect the child, saved it. Life -was held very loosely then. You see, History, I tell more truth than -I am supposed to and you tell less, my idea being to appear fanciful, -yours, to appear truthful. We are all poor sinners. However,” continues -Romance, “a sweeter day was dawning. Out of the effort of the soldier -to protect the pilgrim grew the Holy Wars, wherein the ideal that the -strong should serve the weak was born, and I nursed it into chivalry.” - -“And a hideous and lawless state of things you brought forth,” remarked -History; for Romance and History, like other old friends that have -separated and come together again, cannot collate long in accord. - -“In some cases I taught men not to need the law’s control,” retorted -Romance. “To make men gentle one must teach them gently, so I sent -my troubadours through the land as trusty messengers of chivalry and -bid them sing the new ideal into the very heart of the realm. And in -song they contended as lustily for the point of honor as ever knight -contended with his lance. - -“To these simple troubadours that love which is not physical, which -begs to serve, not to be served, and poetry, itself, were one, and -known by one term alone,—Love. But disputes arose regarding this term -for an ideal new under the sun,—disinterested love in its highest and -its fullest. Therefore, where the shades of classic refinement lingered -latest, in fair Provence, I instituted tribunals before which my -troubadours might plead their subtle causes in song, and styled them -Courts of Love. My judges were the gentlest of ladies and poets bowed -before them, saying: - - ‘For all my words here and every part - I speak them all under correction - Of you that feeling have in love’s art, - And put it all in your discretion.’” - -History interrupts: “Among my humoresques, I happen to have a literal -account of one of those old Courts of Love. It was convened by the -Countess of Champagne; she had fifteen more women on the bench with -her, all decked out in green and gold. Monkey-fashion, those scented -ladies (_precieuses ridicules_) of old had the proceedings of their toy -court solemnly recorded. André, their scribe, adds that the perfumes -on the fair judges kept him sneezing continually while he was taking -testimony. At that time chivalry had most absurdly exalted ‘my ladye,’ -also the ‘beautiful unseen,’ styled the ‘beautiful unknown,’ and see -the things men were expected to do!” - -“Yes, and what is more, they did them,” retorted Romance, “and at the -bidding of woman without other coercion, and the spirit of her law -still rules.” - -“I am confining myself to documentary evidence,” says History tartly. -“This Chief Justice of Love, Maria of Champagne, was the daughter of -that Queen Eleanor of France, who would go on the Second Crusade. -Had she only behaved herself in the East, she might have figured as -the first New Woman. However, that was not to be. Formal action was -brought before the Court of the Chief Justice of Love in the Province -of Beauty by plaintiff, a servitor of love, against defendant, a Fair -Lady—likewise a married one. Plaintiff had agreed to walk twice a week -past defendant’s door, for which service defendant agreed to throw -him a bunch of violets. As the weather was cold and the road muddy, -plaintiff tired of the job and claimed in legal phraseology, as he did -not always get his violets, that breach of contract should release him -from further obligation. - -“Defendant pleads ecstasy of love and anguish of mind. She said that -because of Danger (Court term for husband) she could not always perform -her contract, since she frequently had to profess that she was asleep, -although she was awake; that it was highly ungallant in defendant to -complain of snow and mire. Love should render him invulnerable. She -also added that the man had the best of it, for he might repeat his -hours and orisons while he was walking up and down before her door; -also, he had the privilege of kissing her latch as he passed, whereas -(feminine economy) she was obliged to purchase thread to tie up his -violets. - -[Illustration: _Head of Justice, from Fiore’s Group. This Old Venetian -Figure of Justice Still Presides Over the Gallery of Early Painters at -Venice. Technically she is in advance of the Madonnas of Her Period._] - -“Judgment in favor of the lady. - -“Among the celebrated cases recorded in this court are two every-day -disagreements between man and woman. A gentleman complains of the -refusal of a lady to dance with him, which rendered him ridiculous. The -court commanded the lady to dance with him. - -“Action was brought by a wife against her husband for restraining her -from wearing a hat of the newest fashion. - -“Judgment for the lady. - -“I will close,” continues History, “by citing a few of the thirty-one -rulings of this Court of Maria of Champagne: - - “1. Love and economy do not agree. - “2. Without good reason no one can be forbidden to love. - “3. Love is not stationary. If it does not diminish, - it will increase. - “4. It is not loving to kiss and tell. - “5. No man can love two women at the same time. - “6. A woman should persist in her choice till all hope be abandoned; - like persistence cannot be demanded from man.” - -“Maria de Champagne was a profound jurist, but I doubt if she was a -truly romantic woman,” replies Romance. “Were I not too chivalrous to -expose to your commonplace laughter the gentlest yearning of a rude -age, their uncertain groping for a vague ideal too noble for their -actual conception, I could a sweeter tale unfold of Courts of Love of -old. - -“But if you will laugh at ideals of romantic love, laugh kindly with me -over its merriest comedy, written by the saddest and most chivalrous -lover of them all. - -“Take down your files, Dame History, and find, if you can, another -servitor of love as chivalrous to his lady as Molière was to his wife, -a woman belonging to other men; Molière’s patience, like Griselda’s, -‘proceeded from no lack of understanding.’” - -“You have wandered far from the romance of the days of chivalry for -your chivalrous instance,” sneers History. - -“I was following up the seed that chivalry sowed, the idea of the -self-effacement of the strong in favor of the weak. But let us turn -from the dramatist to the comedy, and by a short consideration of ‘_Les -Precieuses Ridicules_,’ I may be able to make your point for you, ‘that -the actual present is as romantic as the romance of the past.’ - -“At the beginning of this play, Georgebus, a provincial gentleman, has -made arrangements with two satisfactory persons to marry respectively -his daughter and niece. The girls are brought to Paris, where the -candidates for their hands and hearts appear and come to the point at -once. It seems the girls have been reading the romances of Mlle. de -Scudéry, who has given them the idea that a lover should fall in love -at sight, seek out his lady, woo her, and after gallantly surmounting -many obstacles, win her. Georgebus perceives that the men depart in -displeasure and investigates. He has observed that the girls are aping -the manners of the ladies of the Court, which in Molière’s time were -very affected. Georgebus’ daughter states her platform. It is rather -romantic, but there are lovers nowadays that might fill the bill. She -closes by saying, ‘But to plunge headlong into a proposal of marriage, -to make love and marriage settlements go hand in hand, is to begin -the romance at the wrong end. Once more, father, there is nothing -more shopkeeper-like than such proceedings.’ Georgebus is unable ‘to -make out the meaning of her jargon,’ while his niece adds that those -gentlemen ‘have never seen the map of the Country of Tenderness.’ She -is also dissatisfied with their dress. - -“Certainly, Molière did know what young girls crave, which Georgebus -was unable to understand. - -“In the meantime the disconcerted lovers have dressed their valets up -and bidden them address the ladies in the most exaggerated fashion. -The young girls are completely taken in, as girls often are by pseudo -noblemen. The comedy runs high. Finally the masters appear, strip their -valets of their finery, whip them and send them home. - -“The bottom falls out of everything. Georgebus cries, ‘Hide yourselves, -you idiots, hide yourselves forever,’ and after the girls’ exit, adds, -‘The cause of all the trouble lies in romances, verses, songs, sonnets -and lays.’ - -“But in the long run, romances, verses and songs have won. Twentieth -century sentiment goes with the girls though they were fooled once in -the days of their youth. Nowadays, my courts sit in secret session. The -novel is their organ, but, History, your crude Courts of Love died out -six hundred years ago.” - -[Illustration: _An Ideal of the Gracious Republic of Venice, Attended -by Justice and Peace, Expressed by Paul Veronese, Sixteenth Century._] - -“Never have I called you into my councils that I have not been -belittled,” observes History. “My romance is democracy not courtship -and it commenced with the inspiration of the Greeks. My first votary -taught that ‘it is clear not in one thing alone, but wherever you -test it, what a good thing is equality among men.’ He adds, ‘A tyrant -disturbs ancient laws, violates women, kills men without trial. But a -people ruling: first, the very name of it is so beautiful—_Isonomiê_; -and secondly, a people does none of these things.’ - -“And this beautiful ‘equality among men’ I have followed in its ideal, -in its fruition and alas, sometimes, in its debasement throughout the -ages. I watched its short and glorious days in Greece, its orderly -development in Rome, its splendid resurrection in Venice, which led the -line of free cities of the Middle Ages that handed it down. I watched -the American and the French Republics rise in the eighteenth century, -the French to totter, but to rise again, the American to live to fight -another chivalrous war for human rights; and, the justice of republics -proven, the twentieth century built one in a day. Then the distant -continent, that drained the bravest blood of Portugal in the sixteenth -century, wiped out its debt with the ‘fruits of the spirit,’ the -romantic spirit of the twentieth century. - -“Herodotus placed his faith in the people long ago, probably on -more evidence than he reported in support of what to him seemed -self-evident. Were he to come back to his native town now he would find -his beautiful city of Halicarnassus replaced by a mean Turkish village, -but through it are ringing the words ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ -and the Father of History might be less surprised than men of today by -the revolution that has suddenly established a constitution in Turkey. -Indeed, nowhere has the very name of equality proved more beautiful. -Since July 25, 1908, the lion and the lamb have actually lain down -together on the once bloody fields of the Turk. Over a little Turkish -shop two inscriptions appeared, side by side, above the three beautiful -words: ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ and ‘The -beginning is from God; so victory is sure.’ - -[Illustration: _A Mediæval Expression of Justice, Attended by -Archangels, by Fiore. Michael, the Angel of Good Counsel and Patron -of All Souls, in Her Honor, has Added a Pair of Scales to His Usual -Emblems. Gabriel, With His Lily and Scroll, the Angel Who Announces -Things High and Holy, is Pointing Directly to Her._] - -“And if the great traveler of old were to push on westward across -Europe, westward across the Atlantic, he might bequeath his visions -to earth, and bidding us hope on, go back well pleased to the Courts -of the Dead, his simple thesis proved—‘A people does none of these -things.’” - -Romance aside, “In her self-satisfaction she has forgotten all about -the Golden Age. It never was hers. It is mine, and I will recast it -safely in the future. There will I hold Courts of Love to define -all new ideals, my pleaders shall be poets and their words shall be -spoken under correction of those that have feeling in the art of this -broader love, and my good knights shall swear ‘To defy power that seems -omnipotent, to love and bear, to hope till Hope creates from its own -wreck the thing it contemplates.’” - -Thus does the romantic twentieth century realize the fruition of the -ideals of democrats of the past. - - - - -_A Word Regarding Bibliography_ - - -The original documents[6] consulted for this book have been the works -of art of which it treats. In the case of old books, I have also -availed myself of facsimiles, which have this advantage over originals, -they may be freely handled. Most interesting among them are THE BOOK OF -KELLS, notes from copy of plates, with remarks by Westwood and Digby -Watts; and ILLUMINATED BOOKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES, by Humphrey Jones. The -authorities on Gothic architecture, which I have accepted as final, -are Viollet-le-Duc and Corroyer. I have drawn much of my material from -modern technical periodicals, most useful of which have been LES ARTS, -REVUE ARCHEOLOGIQUE, REVUE DES QUESTIONS HISTORIQUES and the AMERICAN -HISTORICAL REVIEW. Though I have had recourse to general historians who -treat of the Middle Ages,—Duruy, Gibbon, Guizot, Kitchin, Saint Martin, -etc.; to guide books of accepted accuracy,—Baedeker, Guerber, Guides -Joanne, and Dent’s Mediæval Town Series; to encyclopedias, English and -French,—to the appended list of authorities I acknowledge especial -indebtedness. Even when I have not borrowed statements from them I have -been influenced by them in my interpretations of the Middle Ages: - - Blades, Wm., Books in Chains. - Boulting, Wm., Torquato Tasso and His Times. - Bruun, J. A., An Inquiry into the Arts of the Middle Ages. - Bryce, James, Holy Roman Empire. - Chéreul, Dictionnaire des Institutions Françaises. - Clerval, A., Guide Chartrain (Docteur es-Lettres, Lauréat - de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres - et Membre de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires). - Cutts, Edward Lewes, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages. - Dill, Samuel, Roman Society in the Last Century of the - Western Empire. - Fletcher (Prof. Bannister and Bannister F. Fletcher), - History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. - Gray, Geo. Zabriskie, The Children’s Crusade. - Gould, Sabine Baring-, Myths of the Middle Ages. - Hawkins, John Sidney, History of the Origin and Establishment of - Gothic Architecture. - Hay, John, Castilian Days. - Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris. - Ivo, Letters of Ivo (reprint of original documents). - Jusserand, J. J., La Vie Nomade. - Lacroix, Paul, Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages. - Lang, Andrew, Books and Bookmen. - Lecoy-de-la Manche, Richard Albert: France under St. Louis and - Philip le Hardi; Les Manuscripts et la Miniature; - Le Troisième Siècle Artistique; Suger. - Mabillon (edited by), Life of Bishop Arnold of Le Mans. - Maitland, Samuel Roffey, The Dark Ages. - Mandan, Books in Manuscript. - Matthews, Story of Architecture. - Merlet, Eugene, Bulletin Monumental, Number 67, of 1903. - Norton, Chas. Eliot, Church Building in the Middle Ages. - Reber, Dr. Franz von, History of Mediæval Art. - Reinach, Salomon, Apollo. - Rennert, Hugo Albert, Life of Lope de Vega. - Rowbotham, J. F., Troubadours and Courts of Love. - Stetson, F. M., William the Conqueror. - Ticknor, Geo., History of Spanish Literature. - Trumble, Alfred, Sword and Scimitar. - Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Painters (Blashfield’s edition). - Wiseman, Preface to Cardinal Wiseman’s novel, Fabiola. - - - - -_Index_ - - - Abbey aux Dames, 79. - Abbey aux Hommes, 79. - Abelard, 121. - Ambrose, 18. - Amiens, viii. - Amiens Copy, 107. - Angelo, xii, 102. - - Bayeux, viii. - Beauvais, viii. - Bernard, Saint, 47. - Bibliotheque Nationale, 116. - Bologne sur Mer, viii. - Bouillon, Godfrey de, 45. - Bourg, viii. - Browning, 113. - Brunelleschi, 33. - - Caen, viii, 73. - Calderon, 90. - Carpio (see de Vega), 88. - Cassiodorus, 105. - Charlemagne, 106. - Charles le Bel, 56. - Charles the Bald, 55. - Charles the Wise, 116. - Chartres, viii, 51. - Chaucer, xiii, 126. - Cherbourg, viii. - Cicely, 79. - Clovis, 26, 27, 28, 52, 55. - Cnut, 62. - Coutances, viii. - Corday, 97. - Court of Love, 129. - Crusade of Children, xv. - - Denis, Abbey de Saint, 38. - Denis, Saint, 40. - Dieppe, viii. - Dinan, ix, 85. - Dinard, ix. - Dols, ix. - Dürer, xiv. - Durrow, 106. - - Ebbon, 29, 30. - Eleanor, Queen, 129. - Eloi, Saint, 40. - - Francis, xvi. - Fulbert, 62, 121. - Fulda, Abbot of, 107. - - Georgebus, 133. - Ghiberti, 102. - Gibbon, 55. - Glass, 44, 69. - Gothic, 9, 12, 43. - Gothic, viii, 76. - Gothic, 69. - Gregory, 19, 22. - Grey, Lady Jane, 111. - Griselda, 125. - Guibert, 64. - - Haimon, Abbé, 67. - Halicarnassus, 136. - Harold, 82. - Heloise, 121. - Henry of Navarre, 56. - Herodotus, 136. - Hildebrand, 77. - Hugh of Rouen, 67. - - _Imagier_, 34, 43, 47, 69. - Iona, 103. - Ivo, Saint, 63, 77. - - Jerome, Saint, 50, 104. - - Keats, 72. - Kells, Book of, 100. - - Lactance, 50. - Laon, viii, 6, 121. - Lanfranc, 74. - Le Mans, viii, 78. - Louis VI, 39. - Louis VII, 39. - Louis the Pious, 29, 30, 107. - Louis, Saint, 10, 56, 115. - Love, Court of, 129. - Lowell, 72. - Lubin, Well of Saint, 58. - - Maclou, Saint, viii. - Madonna, 31, 51, 54, 70. - Maria of Champagne, 129. - Margaret, Saint, 108. - Marlo, San, ix. - Martin, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26. - Mathilda, 63, 79. - Mazarin, 115, 116. - Michele, Mt. San, viii. - Molière, 116, 132. - - Napoleon, 71. - Naudé, 115. - Norsemen, 30, 57, 59. - - Ouen, Saint, viii, frontispiece. - - Paris, viii, 5, 116. - Parthenon, 17. - Patiens de Lyons, 17. - Pavia, Certosa di, 23. - Philippe le Bel, 56. - Portugal, 136. - Provence, 128. - - Ravenna, 24. - Remi, Saint, 26. - Revolution, 52. - Rheims, viii, 7, 30. - Richard of Normandy, 60. - Richelieu, 115. - Rodin, 12, 53. - Rollo, 59, 73. - Rouen, viii. - Rumald, 30. - Ruskin, 12. - - Saint Denis, viii. - Sebastian, Saint, 19. - Suger, 39, 46, 47, 48. - - Tertullian, 50. - Thierry, Saint, 63. - - Valencia, 92. - Vega, Lope de, 88. - Vega, Micaela de, 93. - Viollet-le-Duc, 12. - - William I, 74, 81, 82. - - - - -FOOTNOTES: - - -[1] The Spaniards of Seville formally determined to build a cathedral -upon so magnificent a scale that coming ages might proclaim them mad to -have undertaken it. - -[2] As our train passed Chartres an exceedingly coarse conversation -between drummers broke into a pæan to the beauty of the cathedral. - -[3] I do not make myself responsible for the statement that these -restorations are photographically exact, but at least on the old lines -it has been possible to erect perfect examples of Norman architecture. - -[4] The gentler element in Norse mythology enters into it long after -the eleventh century and is probably a reflection from Christianity. - -[5] Property of Trinity College, Dublin. - -[6] A ‘document’ is an instrument on which is recorded, by means of -letters, figures, or marks, matter which may be evidentially used.—F. -WHARTON, _Law of Evidence_. - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flowers from Mediæval History, by -Minerva Delight Kellogg - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWERS FROM MEDIÆVAL HISTORY *** - -***** This file should be named 61001-0.txt or 61001-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/0/61001/ - -Produced by Paul Marshall, Turgut Dincer and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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