Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

By Henry Adams

With an introduction by Ralph Adams Cram

Editor's Note

From the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend BarrettWendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this privatelyprinted, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn from itshiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of collectors andamateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike by itsintrinsic nature and the cause it could so admirably serve. 

To say that the book was a revelation is inadequately to express afact; at once all the theology, philosophy, and mysticism, thepolitics, sociology, and economics, the romance, literature, and artof that greatest epoch of Christian civilization became fused in thealembic of an unique insight and precipitated by the dynamic forceof a personal and distinguished style. A judgment that might wellhave been biased by personal inclination received the endorsement ofmany in two continents, more competent to pass judgment, better ableto speak with authority; and so fortified, I had the honour ofsaying to Mr. Adams, in the autumn of 1912, that the AmericanInstitute of Architects asked the distinguished privilege ofarranging for the publication of an edition for general sale, underits own imprimatur. The result is the volume now made available forpublic circulation. 

In justice to Mr. Adams, it should be said that such publication is, in his opinion, unnecessary and uncalled-for, a conclusion in whichneither the American Institute of Architects, the publishers, northe Editor concurs. Furthermore, the form in which the book ispresented is no affair of the author, who, in giving reluctantconsent to publication, expressly stipulated that he should have nopart or parcel in carrying out so mad a venture of faith, --as heestimated the project of giving his book to the public. 

In this, and for once, his judgment is at fault. Mont-Saint-Micheland Chartres is one of the most distinguished contributions toliterature and one of the most valuable adjuncts to the study ofmediaevalism America thus far has produced. The rediscovery of thisgreat epoch of Christian civilization has had issue in many andvaluable works on its religion, its philosophy, its economics, itspolitics, and its art, but in nearly every instance, whichever fieldhas been traversed has been considered almost as an isolatedphenomenon, with insufficient reference to the other aspects of anera that was singularly united and at one with itself. Hugh of SaintVictor and Saint Thomas Aquinas are fully comprehensible only intheir relationship to Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard, and thedevelopment of Catholic dogma and life; feudalism, the crusades, theguilds and communes weave themselves into this same religiousdevelopment and into the vicissitudes of crescent nationalities;Dante, the cathedral builders, the painters, sculptors, and musicmasters, all are closely knit into the warp and woof of philosophy, statecraft, economics, and religious devotion;--indeed, it may besaid that the Middle Ages, more than any other recorded epoch ofhistory, must be considered en bloc, as a period of consistent unityas highly emphasized as was its dynamic force. 

It is unnecessary to say that Mr. Adams deals with the art of theMiddle Ages after this fashion: he is not of those who woulddetermine every element in art from its material antecedents. Herealizes very fully that its essential element, the thing thatdifferentiates it from the art that preceded and that whichfollowed, is its spiritual impulse; the manifestation may have been, and probably was, more or less accidental, but that which makesChartres Cathedral and its glass, the sculptures of Rheims, the DiesIrae, Aucassin and Nicolette, the Song of Roland, the ArthurianLegends, great art and unique, is neither their technical masterynor their fidelity to the enduring laws of all great art, --thoughthese are singular in their perfection, --but rather the peculiarspiritual impulse which informed the time, and by its intensity, itspenetrating power, and its dynamic force wrought a rounded andcomplete civilization and manifested this through a thousand variedchannels. 

Greater, perhaps, even than his grasp of the singular entirety ofmediaeval civilization, is Mr. Adams's power of merging himself in along dead time, of thinking and feeling with the men and womenthereof, and so breathing on the dead bones of antiquity that againthey clothe themselves with flesh and vesture, call back theirsevered souls, and live again, not only to the consciousness of thereader, but before his very eyes. And it is not a thin simulacrum heraises by some doubtful alchemy: it is no phantasm of the past thatshines dimly before us in these magical pages; it is the very timeitself in which we are merged. We forgather with the Abbot and hismonks, and the crusaders and pilgrims in the Shrine of theArchangel: we pay our devoirs to the fair French Queens, --Blanche ofCastile, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mary of Champagne, --fighting theirbattles for them as liege servants: we dispute with Abelard, Thomasof Aquino, Duns the Scotsman: we take our parts in the Court ofLove, or sing the sublime and sounding praises of God with theCanons of Saint Victor: our eyes opened at last, and after many dayswe kneel before Our Lady of Pity, asking her intercession for herlax but loyal devotees. Seven centuries dissolve and vanish away, being as they were not, and the thirteenth century lives less for usthan we live in it and are a part of its gaiety and light-heartedness, its youthful ardour and abounding action, its childlikesimplicity and frankness, its normal and healthy and all-embracingdevotion. 

And it is well for us to have this experience. Apart from thedesirable transformation it effects in preconceived and curiouslyerroneous superstitions as to one of the greatest eras in allhistory, it is vastly heartening and exhilarating. If it gives newand not always flattering standards for the judgment of contemporarymen and things, so does it establish new ideals, new goals forattainment. To live for a day in a world that built ChartresCathedral, even if it makes the living in a world that creates the"Black Country" of England or an Iron City of America less a thingof joy and gladness than before, equally opens up the far prospectof another thirteenth century in the times that are to come andurges to ardent action toward its attainment. 

But apart from this, the deepest value of Mont-Saint-Michel andChartres, its importance as a revelation of the eternal glory ofmediaeval art and the elements that brought it into being is notlightly to be expressed. To every artist, whatever his chosen formof expression, it must appear unique and invaluable, and to nonemore than the architect, who, familiar at last with its beauties, its power, and its teaching force, can only applaud the action ofthe American Institute of Architects in making Mr. Adams an HonoraryMember, as one who has rendered distinguished services to the art, and voice his gratitude that it has brought the book within hisreach and given it publicity before the world. 

Whitehall, Sudbury, Massachusetts, June, 1913. 

CONTENTS

PREFACE

 I. SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL II. LA CHANSON DE ROLAND III. THE MERVEILLE IV. NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE V. TOWERS AND PORTALS VI. THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES VII. ROSES AND APSESVIII. THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS IX. THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS X. THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN XI. THE THREE QUEENS XII. NICOLETTE AND MARIONXIII. LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME XIV. ABELARD XV. THE MYSTICS XVI. SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS

Preface

[December, 1904. ]

Some old Elizabethan play or poem contains the lines:--

 . . . Who reads me, when I am ashes, Is my son in wishes . . . . . . . . . 

The relationship, between reader and writer, of son and father, mayhave existed in Queen Elizabeth's time, but is much too close to betrue for ours. The utmost that any writer could hope of his readersnow is that they should consent to regard themselves as nephews, andeven then he would expect only a more or less civil refusal frommost of them. Indeed, if he had reached a certain age, he would haveobserved that nephews, as a social class, no longer read at all, andthat there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew whoread his uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule, since it needed a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. Finally, the metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who readsme, when I am ashes, is my nephew in wishes. "

The same objections do not apply to the word "niece. " The changerestores the verse, and, to a very great degree, the fact. Nieceshave been known to read in early youth, and in some cases may haveread their uncles. The relationship, too, is convenient and easy, capable of being anything or nothing, at the will of either party, like a Mohammedan or Polynesian or American marriage. No validobjection can be offered to this choice in the verse. Niece let itbe!

The following lines, then, are written for nieces, or for those whoare willing, for those, to be nieces in wish. For convenience oftravel in France, where hotels, in out-of-the-way places, aresometimes wanting in space as well as luxury, the nieces shall countas one only. As many more may come as like, but one niece is enoughfor the uncle to talk to, and one niece is much more likely than twoto listen. One niece is also more likely than two to carry a kodakand take interest in it, since she has nothing else, except heruncle, to interest her, and instances occur when she takes interestneither in the uncle nor in the journey. One cannot assume, even ina niece, too emotional a nature, but one may assume a kodak. 

The party, then, with such variations of detail as may suit itstastes, has sailed from New York, let us say, early in June for anentire summer in France. One pleasant June morning it has landed atCherbourg or Havre and takes the train across Normandy to Pontorson, where, with the evening light, the tourists drive along thechaussee, over the sands or through the tide, till they stop atMadame Poulard's famous hotel within the Gate of the Mount. 

The uncle talks:--

CHAPTER I

SAINT MICHIEL DE LA MER DEL PERIL

The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the towerthat crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devilcrawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perchedon his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heavenand on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardlyroom for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for theBeau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangelstands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conquerorof Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find himhere. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, thepatron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted toChristianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So hestood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watchingacross the tremor of the immense ocean, -immensi tremor oceani, -asLouis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar ofthe Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles, and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common peoplefollowed, and still follow, like ourselves. 

The church stands high on the summit of this granite rock, and onits west front is the platform, to which the tourist ought first toclimb. From the edge of this platform, the eye plunges down, twohundred and thirty-five feet, to the wide sands or the wider ocean, as the tides recede or advance, under an infinite sky, over arestless sea, which even we tourists can understand and feel withoutbooks or guides; but when we turn from the western view, and look atthe church door, thirty or forty yards from the parapet where westand, one needs to be eight centuries old to know what this mass ofencrusted architecture meant to its builders, and even then one muststill learn to feel it. The man who wanders into the twelfth centuryis lost, unless he can grow prematurely young. 

One can do it, as one can play with children. Wordsworth, whosepractical sense equalled his intuitive genius, carefully limited usto "a season of calm weather, " which is certainly best; but grantinga fair frame of mind, one can still "have sight of that immortalsea" which brought us hither from the twelfth century; one can eventravel thither and see the children sporting on the shore. Our senseis partially atrophied from disuse, but it is still alive, at leastin old people, who alone, as a class, have the time to be young. 

One needs only to be old enough in order to be as young as one will. From the top of this Abbey Church one looks across the bay toAvranches, and towards Coutances and the Cotentin, --the Constantinuspagus, --whose shore, facing us, recalls the coast of New England. The relation between the granite of one coast and that of theother may be fanciful, but the relation between the people who liveon each is as hard and practical a fact as the granite itself. Whenone enters the church, one notes first the four great triumphalpiers or columns, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, andon looking into M. Corroyer's architectural study which is the chiefsource of all one's acquaintance with the Mount, one learns thatthese piers were constructed in 1058. Four out of five Americantourists will instantly recall the only date of mediaeval historythey ever knew, the date of the Norman Conquest. Eight years afterthese piers were built, in 1066, Duke William of Normandy raised anarmy of forty thousand men in these parts, and in northern France, whom he took to England, where they mostly stayed. For a hundred andfifty years, until 1204, Normandy and England were united; theNorman peasant went freely to England with his lord, spiritual ortemporal; the Norman woman, a very capable person, followed herhusband or her parents; Normans held nearly all the English fiefs;filled the English Church; crowded the English Court; created theEnglish law; and we know that French was still currently spoken inEngland as late as 1400, or thereabouts, "After the scole ofStratford atte bowe. " The aristocratic Norman names still survive inpart, and if we look up their origin here we shall generally findthem in villages so remote and insignificant that their place canhardly be found on any ordinary map; but the common people had nosurnames, and cannot be traced, although for every noble whose nameor blood survived in England or in Normandy, we must reckon hundredsof peasants. Since the generation which followed William to Englandin 1066, we can reckon twenty-eight or thirty from father to son, and, if you care to figure up the sum, you will find that you hadabout two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors living inthe middle of the eleventh century. The whole population of Englandand northern France may then have numbered five million, but if itwere fifty it would not much affect the certainty that, if you haveany English blood at all, you have also Norman. If we could go backand live again in all our two hundred and fifty million arithmeticalancestors of the eleventh century, we should find ourselves doingmany surprising things, but among the rest we should prettycertainly be ploughing most of the fields of the Cotentin andCalvados; going to mass in every parish church in Normandy;rendering military service to every lord, spiritual or temporal, inall this region; and helping to build the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint-Michel. From the roof of the Cathedral of Coutances overyonder, one may look away over the hills and woods, the farms andfields of Normandy, and so familiar, so homelike are they, one canalmost take oath that in this, or the other, or in all, one knewlife once and has never so fully known it since. 

Never so fully known it since! For we of the eleventh century, hard-headed, close-fisted, grasping, shrewd, as we were, and as Normansare still said to be, stood more fully in the centre of the world'smovement than our English descendants ever did. We were a part, anda great part, of the Church, of France, and of Europe. The Leos andGregories of the tenth and eleventh centuries leaned on us in theirgreat struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966, turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here thehighest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of MonteCassino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, beganthis Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. When William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, PopeAlexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From thatmoment our Norman Dukes cast the Kings of France into the shade. Ouractivity was not limited to northern Europe, or even confined byAnjou and Gascony. When we stop at Coutances, we will drive out toHauteville to see where Tancred came from, whose sons Robert andRoger were conquering Naples and Sicily at the time when the AbbeyChurch was building on the Mount. Normans were everywhere in 1066, and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race. Ifyou want other proof of it, besides our record in war and inpolitics, you have only to look at our art. Religious art is themeasure of human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, cries aloud. If this church on the Mount is not proof enough ofNorman character, we will stop at Coutances for a wider view. Thenwe will go to Caen and Bayeux. From there, it would almost be worthour while to leap at once to Palermo. It was in the year 1131 orthereabouts that Roger began the Cathedral at Cefalu and the ChapelRoyal at Palermo; it was about the year 1174 that his grandsonWilliam began the Cathedral of Monreale. No art--either Greek orByzantine, Italian or Arab--has ever created two religious types sobeautiful, so serious, so impressive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, lookingdown over its forests of orange and lemon, on Palermo and theSicilian seas. 

Down nearly to the end of the twelfth century the Norman was fairlymaster of the world in architecture as in arms, although thethirteenth century belonged to France, and we must look for itsglories on the Seine and Marne and Loire; but for the present we arein the eleventh century, --tenants of the Duke or of the Church or ofsmall feudal lords who take their names from the neighbourhood, --Beaumont, Carteret, Greville, Percy, Pierpont, --who, at the Duke'sbidding, will each call out his tenants, perhaps ten men-at-armswith their attendants, to fight in Brittany, or in the Vexin towardParis, or on the great campaign for the conquest of England which isto come within ten years, --the greatest military effort that hasbeen made in western Europe since Charlemagne and Roland weredefeated at Roncesvalles three hundred years ago. For the moment, weare helping to quarry granite for the Abbey Church, and to haul itto the Mount, or load it on our boat. We never fail to make ourannual pilgrimage to the Mount on the Archangel's Day, October 16. We expect to be called out for a new campaign which Duke Williamthreatens against Brittany, and we hear stories that Harold theSaxon, the powerful Earl of Wessex in England, is a guest, or, assome say, a prisoner or a hostage, at the Duke's Court, and will gowith us on the campaign. The year is 1058. 

All this time we have been standing on the parvis, looking out overthe sea and sands which are as good eleventh-century landscape asthey ever were; or turning at times towards the church door which isthe pons seclorum, the bridge of ages, between us and our ancestors. Now that we have made an attempt, such as it is, to get our mindsinto a condition to cross the bridge without breaking down in theeffort, we enter the church and stand face to face with eleventh-century architecture; a ground-plan which dates from 1020; a centraltower, or its piers, dating from 1058; and a church completed in1135. France can offer few buildings of this importance equally old, with dates so exact. Perhaps the closest parallel to Mont-Saint-Michel is Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, above Orleans, which seems to havebeen a shrine almost as popular as the Mount, at the same time. Chartres was also a famous shrine, but of the Virgin, and the westporch of Chartres, which is to be our peculiar pilgrimage, was ahundred years later than the ground-plan of Mont-Saint-Michel, although Chartres porch is the usual starting-point of northernFrench art. Queen Matilda's Abbaye-aux-Dames, now the Church of theTrinity, at Caen, dates from 1066. Saint Sernin at Toulouse, theporch of the Abbey Church at Moissac, Notre-Dame-du-Port atClermont, the Abbey Church at Vezelay, are all said to be twelfth-century. Even San Marco at Venice was new in 1020. 

Yet in 1020 Norman art was already too ambitious. Certainly ninehundred years leave their traces on granite as well as on othermaterial, but the granite of Abbot Hildebert would have stoodsecurely enough, if the Abbot had not asked too much from it. Perhaps he asked too much from the Archangel, for the thought of theArchangel's superiority was clearly the inspiration of his plan. Theapex of the granite rock rose like a sugar-loaf two hundred andforty feet (73. 6 metres) above mean sea-level. Instead of cuttingthe summit away to give his church a secure rock foundation, whichwould have sacrificed about thirty feet of height, the Abbot tookthe apex of the rock for his level, and on all sides built outfoundations of masonry to support the walls of his church. The apexof the rock is the floor of the croisee, the intersection of naveand transept. On this solid foundation the Abbot rested the chiefweight of the church, which was the central tower, supported by thefour great piers which still stand; but from the croisee in thecentre westward to the parapet of the platform, the Abbot filled thewhole space with masonry, and his successors built out stillfarther, until some two hundred feet of stonework ends now in aperpendicular wall of eighty feet or more. In this space are severalranges of chambers, but the structure might perhaps have provedstrong enough to support the light Romanesque front which was usualin the eleventh century, had not fashions in architecture changed inthe great epoch of building, a hundred and fifty years later, whenAbbot Robert de Torigny thought proper to reconstruct the westfront, and build out two towers on its flanks. The towers were nodoubt beautiful, if one may judge from the towers of Bayeux andCoutances, but their weight broke down the vaulting beneath, and oneof them fell in 1300. In 1618 the whole facade began to give way, and in 1776 not only the facade but also three of the seven spans ofthe nave were pulled down. Of Abbot Hildebert's nave, only fourarches remain. 

Still, the overmastering strength of the eleventh century is stampedon a great scale here, not only in the four spans of the nave, andin the transepts, but chiefly in the triumphal columns of thecroisee. No one is likely to forget what Norman architecture was, who takes the trouble to pass once through this fragment of itsearliest bloom. The dimensions are not great, though greater thansafe construction warranted. Abbot Hildebert's whole church did notexceed two hundred and thirty feet in length in the interior, andthe span of the triumphal arch was only about twenty-three feet, ifthe books can be trusted. The nave of the Abbaye-aux-Dames appearsto have about the same width, and probably neither of them was meantto be vaulted. The roof was of timber, and about sixty-three feethigh at its apex. Compared with the great churches of the thirteenthcentury, this building is modest, but its size is not what mattersto us. Its style is the starting-point of all our future travels. Here is your first eleventh-century church! How does it affect you?

Serious and simple to excess! is it not? Young people rarely enjoyit. They prefer the Gothic, even as you see it here, looking at usfrom the choir, through the great Norman arch. No doubt they areright, since they are young: but men and women who have lived longand are tired, --who want rest, --who have done with aspirations andambition, --whose life has been a broken arch, --feel this repose andself-restraint as they feel nothing else. The quiet strength ofthese curved lines, the solid support of these heavy columns, themoderate proportions, even the modified lights, the absence ofdisplay, of effort, of self-consciousness, satisfy them as no otherart does. They come back to it to rest, after a long circle ofpilgrimage, --the cradle of rest from which their ancestors started. Even here they find the repose none too deep. 

Indeed, when you look longer at it, you begin to doubt whether thereis any repose in it at all, --whether it is not the most unreposefulthought ever put into architectural form. Perched on the extremepoint of this abrupt rock, the Church Militant with its aspirantArchangel stands high above the world, and seems to threaten heavenitself. The idea is the stronger and more restless because theChurch of Saint Michael is surrounded and protected by the world andthe society over which it rises, as Duke William rested on hisbarons and their men. Neither the Saint nor the Duke was troubled bydoubts about his mission. Church and State, Soul and Body, God andMan, are all one at Mont-Saint-Michel, and the business of all is tofight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other. Neither Church nor State is intellectual, or learned, or even strictin dogma. Here we do not feel the Trinity at all; the Virgin butlittle; Christ hardly more; we feel only the Archangel and the Unityof God. We have little logic here, and simple faith, but we haveenergy. We cannot do many things which are done in the centre ofcivilization, at Byzantium, but we can fight, and we can build achurch. No doubt we think first of the church, and next of ourtemporal lord; only in the last instance do we think of our privateaffairs, and our private affairs sometimes suffer for it; but wereckon the affairs of Church and State to be ours, too, and we carrythis idea very far. Our church on the Mount is ambitious, restless, striving for effect; our conquest of England, with which the Duke isinfatuated, is more ambitious still; but all this is a trifle to theoutburst which is coming in the next generation; and Saint Michaelon his Mount expresses it all. 

Taking architecture as an expression of energy, we can some daycompare Mont-Saint-Michel with Beauvais, and draw from thecomparison whatever moral suits our frame of mind; but you shouldfirst note that here, in the eleventh century, the Church, howeversimple-minded or unschooled, was not cheap. Its self-respect isworth noticing, because it was short-lived in its art. Mont-Saint-Michel, throughout, even up to the delicate and intricate stoneworkof its cloisters, is built of granite. The crypts and substructuresare as well constructed as the surfaces most exposed to view. Whenwe get to Chartres, which is largely a twelfth-century work, youwill see that the cathedral there, too, is superbly built, of thehardest and heaviest stone within reach, which has nowhere settledor given way; while, beneath, you will find a crypt that rivals thechurch above. The thirteenth century did not build so. The greatcathedrals after 1200 show economy, and sometimes worse. The worldgrew cheap, as worlds must. 

You may like it all the better for being less serious, less heroic, less militant, and more what the French call bourgeois, just as youmay like the style of Louis XV better than that of Louis XIV, --Madame du Barry better than Madame de Montespan, --for taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse; but since we are now beginningwith the earliest, in order to step down gracefully to the stage, whatever it is, where you prefer to stop, we must try to understanda little of the kind of energy which Norman art expressed, or wouldhave expressed if it had thought in our modes. The only word whichdescribes the Norman style is the French word naif. Littre says thatnaif comes from natif, as vulgar comes from vulgus, as though nativetraits must be simple, and commonness must be vulgar. Both thesederivative meanings were strange to the eleventh century. Naivetewas simply natural and vulgarity was merely coarse. Norman naivetewas not different in kind from the naivete of Burgundy or Gascony orLombardy, but it was slightly different in expression, as you willsee when you travel south. Here at Mont-Saint-Michel we have only amutilated trunk of an eleventh-century church to judge by. We havenot even a facade, and shall have to stop at some Norman village--atThaon or Ouistreham--to find a west front which might suit the Abbeyhere, but wherever we find it we shall find something a little moreserious, more military, and more practical than you will meet inother Romanesque work, farther south. So, too, the central tower orlantern--the most striking feature of Norman churches--has fallenhere at Mont-Saint-Michel, and we shall have to replace it fromCerisy-la-Foret, and Lessay, and Falaise. We shall find much to sayabout the value of the lantern on a Norman church, and the singularpower it expresses. We shall have still more to say of the towerswhich flank the west front of Norman churches, but these are mostlytwelfth-century, and will lead us far beyond Coutances and Bayeux, from fleche to fleche, till we come to the fleche of all fleches, atChartres. 

We shall have a whole chapter of study, too, over the eleventh-century apse, but here at Mont-Saint-Michel, Abbot Hildebert's choirwent the way of his nave and tower. He built out even more boldly tothe east than to the west, and although the choir stood for somefour hundred years, which is a sufficient life for mostarchitecture, the foundations gave way at last, and it fell in 1421, in the midst of the English wars, and remained a ruin until 1450. Then it was rebuilt, a monument of the last days of the Gothic, sothat now, standing at the western door, you can look down thechurch, and see the two limits of mediaeval architecture marriedtogether, --the earliest Norman and the latest French. Through theRomanesque arches of 1058, you look into the exuberant choir oflatest Gothic, finished in 1521. Although the two structures aresome five hundred years apart, they live pleasantly together. TheGothic died gracefully in France. The choir is charming, --far morecharming than the nave, as the beautiful woman is more charming thanthe elderly man. One need not quarrel about styles of beauty, aslong as the man and woman are evidently satisfied and love andadmire each other still, with all the solidity of faith to hold themup; but, at least, one cannot help seeing, as one looks from theolder to the younger style, that whatever the woman's sixteenth-century charm may be, it is not the man's eleventh-century trait ofnaivete;--far from it! The simple, serious, silent dignity andenergy of the eleventh century have gone. Something more complicatedstands in their place; graceful, self-conscious, rhetorical, andbeautiful as perfect rhetoric, with its clearness, light, and line, and the wealth of tracery that verges on the florid. 

The crypt of the same period, beneath, is almost finer still, andeven in seriousness stands up boldly by the side of the Romanesque;but we have no time to run off into the sixteenth century: we havestill to learn the alphabet of art in France. One must live deepinto the eleventh century in order to understand the twelfth, andeven after passing years in the twelfth, we shall find thethirteenth in many ways a world of its own, with a beauty not alwaysinherited, and sometimes not bequeathed. At the Mount we can go nofarther into the eleventh as far as concerns architecture. We shallhave to follow the Romanesque to Caen and so up the Seine to the Ilede France, and across to the Loire and the Rhone, far to the Southwhere its home lay. All the other eleventh-century work has beendestroyed here or built over, except at one point, on the level ofthe splendid crypt we just turned from, called the Gros Piliers, beneath the choir. 

There, according to M. Corroyer, in a corner between greatconstructions of the twelfth century and the vast Merveille of thethirteenth, the old refectory of the eleventh was left as a passagefrom one group of buildings to the other. Below it is the kitchen ofHildebert. Above, on the level of the church, was the dormitory. These eleventh-century abbatial buildings faced north and west, andare close to the present parvis, opposite the last arch of the nave. The lower levels of Hildebert's plan served as supports orbuttresses to the church above, and must therefore be older than thenave; probably older than the triumphal piers of 1058. 

Hildebert planned them in 1020, and died after carrying his plansout so far that they could be completed by Abbot Ralph de Beaumont, who was especially selected by Duke William in 1048, "more for hishigh birth than for his merits. " Ralph de Beaumont died in 1060, andwas succeeded by Abbot Ranulph, an especial favourite of DuchessMatilda, and held in high esteem by Duke William. The list of namesshows how much social importance was attributed to the place. TheAbbot's duties included that of entertainment on a great scale. TheMount was one of the most famous shrines of northern Europe. We arefree to take for granted that all the great people of Normandy sleptat the Mount and, supposing M. Corroyer to be right, that they dinedin this room, between 1050, when the building must have been in use, down to 1122 when the new abbatial quarters were built. 

How far the monastic rules restricted social habits is a matter forantiquaries to settle if they can, and how far those rules wereobserved in the case of great secular princes; but the eleventhcentury was not very strict, and the rule of the Benedictines wasalways mild, until the Cistercians and Saint Bernard stiffened itsdiscipline toward 1120. Even then the Church showed strong leaningstoward secular poetry and popular tastes. The drama belonged to italmost exclusively, and the Mysteries and Miracle plays which wereacted under its patronage often contained nothing of religion exceptthe miracle. The greatest poem of the eleventh century was the"Chanson de Roland, " and of that the Church took a sort ofpossession. At Chartres we shall find Charlemagne and Roland dear tothe Virgin, and at about the same time, as far away as at Assisi inthe Perugian country, Saint Francis himself--the nearest approachthe Western world ever made to an Oriental incarnation of the divineessence--loved the French romans, and typified himself in the"Chanson de Roland. " With Mont-Saint-Michel, the "Chanson de Roland"is almost one. The "Chanson" is in poetry what the Mount is inarchitecture. Without the "Chanson, " one cannot approach the feelingwhich the eleventh century built into the Archangel's church. Probably there was never a day, certainly never a week, duringseveral centuries, when portions of the "Chanson" were not sung, orrecited, at the Mount, and if there was one room where it was mostat home, this one, supposing it to be the old refectory, claims tobe the place. 

CHAPTER II

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND

Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt Comment l'igliese fut fundee Premierement et estoree. Cil qui lor dient de l'estoire Que cil demandent en memoire Ne l'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant En plusors leus e mespernant. Por faire la apertement Entendre a cels qui escient N'unt de clerzie l'a tornee De latin tote et ordenee Pars veirs romieus novelement Molt en segrei por son convent Uns jovencels moine est del Munt Deus en son reigne part li dunt. Guillaume a non de Saint Paier Cen vei escrit en cest quaier. El tens Robeirt de Torignie Fut cil romanz fait e trove. 

Most pilgrims who come to the Mount Enquire much and are quite right, How the church was founded At first, and established. Those who tell them the story That they ask, in memory Have it not well, but fall in error In many places, and misapprehension. In order to make it clearly Intelligible to those who have No knowledge of letters, it has been turned From the Latin, and wholly rendered In Romanesque verses, newly, Much in secret, for his convent, By a youth; a monk he is of the Mount. God in his kingdom grant him part! William is his name, of Saint Pair As is seen written in this book. In the time of Robert of Torigny Was this roman made and invented. 

These verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel, " and if thespelling is corrected, they still read almost as easily as Voltaire;more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; but astourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away thepebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even whenroughness is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because everyone who cares for mediaeval architecture cares for mediaeval French, and ought to care still more for mediaeval English. The language ofthis "Roman" was the literary language of England. William of Saint-Pair was a subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; hisverses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments ofEnglish literature. To this day their ballad measure is bettersuited to English than to French; even the words and idioms are moreEnglish than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find thatthe "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their ownmeaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning isexact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of grossblunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all whenone is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate onemust, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest thatit matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art wasnot precise; still less "precieuse, " like Moliere's famousseventeenth-century prudes. 

The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the littleNorman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of theMount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beingslike rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, asthey like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue betterthan a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhymein creating their literature for the practical reason that theyremembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries intheir heads. 

These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable becausefor once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruledat the Mount from 1154 to 1186. We have got to travel again andagain between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, butfor the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Conquerorand the "Chanson de Roland. " William of Saint-Pair comes in here, out of place, only on account of a pretty description he gave of theannual pilgrimage to the Mount, which is commonly taken to be moreor less like what he saw every year on the Archangel's Day, and whathad existed ever since the Normans became Christian in 912:--

Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent. Les meschines e les vallez Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez. Neis li viellart revunt chantant

De leece funt tuit semblant. Qui plus ne seit si chante outree E Dex aie u Asusee. Cil jugleor la u il vunt Tuit lor vieles traites unt Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant. 

Li tens est beals la joie est grant. Cil palefrei e cil destrier E cil roncin e cil sommier Qui errouent par le chemin Que menouent cil pelerin De totes parz henissant vunt Por la grant joie que il unt. Neis par les bois chantouent tuit Li oiselet grant et petit. 

Li buef les vaches vunt muant Par les forez e repaissant. Cors e boisines e fresteals E fleutes e chalemeals Sonnoent si que les montaignes En retintoent et les pleignes. Que esteit dont les plaiseiz E des forez e des larriz. En cels par a tel sonneiz Com si ce fust cers acolliz. 

Entor le mont el bois follu Cil travetier unt tres tendu Rues unt fait par les chemins. Plentei i out de divers vins Pain e pastez fruit e poissons Oisels obleies veneisons De totes parz aveit a vendre Assez en out qui ad que tendre. 

The day was clear, without much wind. The maidens and the varlets Each of them said verse or song; Even the old people go singing;

All have a look of joy. Who knows no more sings HURRAH, Or GOD HELP, or UP AND ON! The minstrels there where they go Have all brought their viols; Lays and songs playing as they go. 

The weather is fine; the joy is great; The palfreys and the chargers, And the hackneys and the packhorses Which wander along the road That the pilgrims follow, On all sides neighing go, For the great joy they feel. Even in the woods sing all The little birds, big and small. 

The oxen and the cows go lowing Through the forests as they feed. Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes And flutes and pipes of reed Sound so that the mountains Echo to them, and the plains. How was it then with the glades And with the forests and the pastures? In these there was such sound As though it were a stag at bay. 

About the Mount, in the leafy wood, The workmen have tents set up; Streets have made along the roads. Plenty there was of divers wines, Bread and pasties, fruit and fish, Birds, cakes, venison, Everywhere there was for sale. Enough he had who has the means to pay. 

If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar ofFrench will easily help to make a better, for we are not studyinggrammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in suchmatters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the artcould be caught. Better still, you can turn to Chaucer, who wrotehis Canterbury Pilgrimage two hundred years afterwards:--

Whanne that April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote. . . Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken strange strondes. . . And especially, from every shires ende Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende The holy blisful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke. 

The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as farback as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it wastheir chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art ofMont-Saint-Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again:but, just now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so muchas the minstrel who sang to amuse him, --the jugleor or jongleur, --who was at home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as atevery shrine. The jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into thestreet-juggler; the minstrel, or menestrier, became very early aword of abuse, equivalent to blackguard; and from the beginning theprofession seems to have been socially decried, like that of amusic-hall singer or dancer in later times; but in the eleventhcentury, or perhaps earlier still, the jongleur seems to have been apoet, and to have composed the songs he sang. The immense mass ofpoetry known as the "Chansons de Geste" seems to have been composedas well as sung by the unnamed Homers of France, and of all spots inthe many provinces where the French language in its many dialectsprevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should have been the favourite with thejongleur, not only because the swarms of pilgrims assured him foodand an occasional small piece of silver, but also because SaintMichael was the saint militant of all the warriors whose exploits inwar were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste. " William of Saint-Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his "Roman" wasnot a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but the "Chansonde Roland" was a different affair. 

So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals orpredecessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. Wace, whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the"Roman de Rou, " or "Rollo, " is an English classic of the first rank, was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing atMont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famouschronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not asinger. In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prosedid not yet exist; but the elegancies of poetry in the twelfthcentury were as different, in kind, from the grand style of theeleventh, as Virgil was different from Homer. 

William of Saint-Pair introduces us to the pilgrimage and to thejongleur, as they had existed at least two hundred years before histime, and were to exist two hundred years after him. Of all our twohundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors who were going onpilgrimages in the middle of the eleventh century, the two who wouldprobably most interest every one, after eight hundred years havepassed, would be William the Norman and Harold the Saxon. ThroughWilliam of Saint-Pair and Wace and Benoist, and the most charmingliterary monument of all, the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, wecan build up the story of such a pilgrimage which shall be ashistorically exact as the battle of Hastings, and as artisticallytrue as the Abbey Church. 

According to Wace's "Roman de Rou, " when Harold's father, EarlGodwin, died, April 15, 1053, Harold wished to obtain the release ofcertain hostages, a brother and a cousin, whom Godwin had given toEdward the Confessor as security for his good behaviour, and whomEdward had sent to Duke William for safe-keeping. Wace took thestory from other and older sources, and its accuracy is muchdisputed, but the fact that Harold went to Normandy seems to becertain, and you will see at Bayeux the picture of Harold askingpermission of King Edward to make the journey, and departing onhorseback, with his hawk and hounds and followers, to take ship atBosham, near Chichester and Portsmouth. The date alone is doubtful. Common sense seems to suggest that the earliest possible date couldnot be too early to explain the rash youth of the aspirant to athrone who put himself in the power of a rival in the eleventhcentury. When that rival chanced to be William the Bastard, not evenboyhood could excuse the folly; but Mr. Freeman, the chief authorityon this delicate subject, inclined to think that Harold was fortyyears old when he committed his blunder, and that the year was about1064. Between 1054 and 1064 the historian is free to choose whatyear he likes, and the tourist is still freer. To save trouble forthe memory, the year 1058 will serve, since this is the date of thetriumphal arches of the Abbey Church on the Mount. Harold, insailing from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, must have been boundfor Caen or Rouen, but the usual west winds drove him eastward tillhe was thrown ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, between Abbeville andBoulogne, where he fell into the hands of the Count of Ponthieu, from whom he was rescued or ransomed by Duke William of Normandy andtaken to Rouen. According to Wace and the "Roman de Rou":--

Guillaume tint Heraut maint jour Si com il dut a grant enor. A maint riche torneiement Le fist aller mult noblement. Chevals e armes li dona Et en Bretaigne le mena Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre Quant as Bretons se dut combattre. 

William kept Harold many a day, As was his due in great honour. To many a rich tournament Made him go very nobly. Horses and arms gave him And into Brittany led him I know not truly whether three or four times When he had to make war on the Bretons. 

Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wacerather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the firstcrusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least oneraid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, whichtradition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men-at-arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latinlegend:--"Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hic Harold dux trahebateos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis. " They came to Mont-Saint-Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands. 

They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame bysaving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by theNormans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affairof historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came tothe Mount:--"Venerunt ad Montem. " They would never have dared topass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help ofSaint Michael. 

If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined orsupped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait forthem. Where Duke William was, his jongleur--jugleor--was not far, and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who thisfavourite was, --his name, his character, and his song. To him Waceowed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault atHastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advanceagainst the English lines:--

Taillefer qui mult bien chantout Sor un cheval qui tost alout Devant le duc alout chantant De Karlemaigne e de Rollant E d'Oliver e des vassals Qui morurent en Rencevals. Quant il orent chevalchie tant Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant: "Sire, " dist Taillefer, "merci! Io vos ai longuement servi. Tot mon servise me devez. Hui se vos plaist le me rendez. Por tot guerredon vos require E si vos veil forment preier Otreiez mei que io ni faille Le premier colp de la bataille. " Li dus respondi: "Io l'otrei. "

Taillefer who was famed for song, Mounted on a charger strong, Rode on before the Duke, and sang Of Roland and of Charlemagne, Oliver and the vassals all Who fell in fight at Roncesvals. When they had ridden till they saw The English battle close before: "Sire, " said Taillefer, "a grace! I have served you long and well; All reward you owe me still; To-day repay me if you please. For all guerdon I require, And ask of you in formal prayer, Grant to me as mine of right The first blow struck in the fight. " The Duke answered: "I grant. "

Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubteverything. They maintain that the "Chanson de Roland" was not asold as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficientproof of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wacewrote a hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is notmorally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more thanWace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious amonument as Mont-Saint-Michel, is annoying. The "Chanson de Roland"ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art. One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about thestarting-point of American genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest onthe same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itselfrest upon, and to doubt the "Chanson" is to call the very roll ofBattle Abbey in question. The whole fabric of society totters; theBritish peerage turns pale. 

Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is supposedto have written his prose chronicle about 1120 when many of the menwho fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William expresslysaid: "Tune cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri exemplumpugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praeliumconsertum. " Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the fightingtemper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough proof tosatisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilenaRollandi" must have been a Norman "Chanson de Rou, " or "Rollo, " orat best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Normanchanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it isquite immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is oldenough. 

Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in therefectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmesbury. If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainlystarted by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleurhappens to be known on still better authority than that of Williamof Malmesbury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner ofQueen Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle ofHastings which must have been complete within ten years after thebattle was fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led theDuke's battle:--

Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus. 

"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name. " A mime was a singer, butTaillefer was also an actor:--

Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat. 

"A jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled. " The jongleur was notnoble by birth, but was ennobled by his bravery. 

Hortatur Gallos verbis et territat Anglos Alte projiciens ludit et ense suo. 

Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the airand caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, andterrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimer whowrote about 1150, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, addedthe story that Taillefer died in the melee. 

The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singingof the "Chanson, " but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke:--

"Otreiez mei que io ni faille Le premier colp de la bataille. "

Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be ennobled, and offered topay for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead theDuke's battle seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meantbattalion, --the column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io l'otrei!"seems still more fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmedthe story: "Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat"; a stage-player--a juggler--the Duke's singer--whose bravery ennobled him. The Duke granted him--octroya--his patent of nobility on the field. 

All this preamble leads only to unite the "Chanson" with thearchitecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Bretoncampaign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they gotogether, and explain each other. Their common trait is theirmilitary character, peculiar to the eleventh century. The round archis masculine. The "Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its fourthousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned wasAlda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom onestanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward theend. Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to suchheroism as to sustain itself without a heroine. Even Dante attemptedno such feat. 

Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as assembled atsupper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphalpiers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side"a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with theother chief vassals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Tailleferis at his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, butall are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner isover, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins:--

Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre. 

Charles the king, our emperor, the great, Seven years complete has been in Spain, Conquered the land as far as the high seas, Nor is there castle that holds against him, Nor wall or city left to capture. 

The "Chanson" opened with these lines, which had such a direct andpersonal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound likeprophecy. Within ten years William was to stand in England whereCharlemagne stood in Spain. His mind was full of it, and of themeans to attain it; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by theanxiety of the position. Harold had been obliged to take oath thathe would support William's claim to the English throne, but he wasstill undecided, and William knew men too well to feel muchconfidence in an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part ofGanelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaevalsociety. No feudal lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw themall about him. 

He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Haroldshould choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretoldthat his own brother, Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on theplunder of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous asto require a prison for life. When Taillefer reached the battle-scenes, there was no further need of imagination to realize them. They were scenes of yesterday and to-morrow. For that matter, Charlemagne or his successor was still at Aix, and the Moors werestill in Spain. Archbishop Turpin of Rheims had fought with swordand mace in Spain, while Bishop Odo of Bayeux was to marshal his menat Hastings, like a modern general, with a staff, but both wereequally at home on the field of battle. Verse by verse, the song wasa literal mirror of the Mount. The battle of Hastings was to befought on the Archangel's Day. What happened to Roland atRoncesvalles was to happen to Harold at Hastings, and Harold, as hewas dying like Roland, was to see his brother Gyrth die like Oliver. Even Taillefer was to be a part, and a distinguished part, of hischanson. Sooner or later, all were to die in the large and simpleway of the eleventh century. Duke William himself, twenty yearslater, was to meet a violent death at Mantes in the same spirit, andif Bishop Odo did not die in battle, he died, at least, like aneleventh-century hero, on the first crusade. First or last, thewhole company died in fight, or in prison, or on crusade, while themonks shrived them and prayed. 

Then Taillefer certainly sang the great death-scenes. Even to thisday every French school-boy, if he knows no other poetry, knowsthese verses by heart. In the eleventh century they wrung the heartof every man-at-arms in Europe, whose school was the field of battleand the hand-to-hand fight. No modern singer ever enjoys such powerover an audience as Taillefer exercised over these men who wereactors as well as listeners. In the melee at Roncesvalles, overborneby innumerable Saracens, Oliver at last calls for help:--

Munjoie escriet e haltement e cler. Rollant apelet sun ami e sun per; "Sire compainz a mei kar vus justez. A grant dulur ermes hoi deserveret. " Aoi. 

"Montjoie!" he cries, loud and clear, Roland he calls, his friend and peer; "Sir Friend! ride now to help me here! Parted today, great pity were. "

Of course the full value of the verse cannot be regained. One knowsneither how it was sung nor even how it was pronounced. Theassonances are beyond recovering; the "laisse" or leash of verses orassonances with the concluding cry, "Aoi, " has long ago vanishedfrom verse or song. The sense is as simple as the "Ballad of ChevyChase, " but one must imagine the voice and acting. DoubtlessTaillefer acted each motive; when Oliver called loud and clear, Taillefer's voice rose; when Roland spoke "doulcement et suef, " thesinger must have sung gently and soft; and when the two friends, with the singular courtesy of knighthood and dignity of soldiers, bowed to each other in parting and turned to face their deaths, Taillefer may have indicated the movement as he sang. The versesgave room for great acting. Hearing Oliver's cry for help, Rolandrode up, and at sight of the desperate field, lost for a moment hisconsciousness:--

As vus Rollant sur sun cheval pasmet E Olivier ki est a mort nafrez! Tant ad sainiet li oil li sunt trublet Ne luinz ne pres ne poet veeir si cler Que reconuisset nisun hume mortel. Sun cumpaignun cum il l'ad encuntret Sil fiert amunt sur l'elme a or gemmet Tut li detrenchet d'ici que al nasel Mais en la teste ne l'ad mie adeset. A icel colp l'ad Rollanz reguardet Si li demandet dulcement et suef "Sire cumpainz, faites le vus de gred? Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer. Par nule guise ne m'aviez desfiet, " Dist Oliviers: "Or vus oi jo parler Io ne vus vei. Veied vus damnedeus! Ferut vus ai. Kar le me pardunez!" Rollanz respunt: "Jo n'ai nient de mel. Jol vus parduins ici e devant deu. " A icel mot l'uns al altre ad clinet. Par tel amur as les vus desevrez!

There Roland sits unconscious on his horse, And Oliver who wounded is to death, So much has bled, his eyes grow dark to him, Nor far nor near can see so clear As to recognize any mortal man. His friend, when he has encountered him, He strikes upon the helmet of gemmed gold, splits it from the crown to the nose-piece, But to the head he has not reached at all. At this blow Roland looks at him, Asks him gently and softly: "Sir Friend, do you it in earnest? You know 't is Roland who has so loved you. In no way have you sent to me defiance. " Says Oliver: "Indeed I hear you speak, I do not see you. May God see and save you! Strike you I did. I pray you pardon me. " Roland replies: "I have no harm at all. I pardon you here and before God!" At this word, one to the other bends himself. With such affection, there they separate. 

No one should try to render this into English--or, indeed, intomodern French--verse, but any one who will take the trouble to catchthe metre and will remember that each verse in the "leash" ends inthe same sound, --aimer, parler, cler, mortel, damnede, mel, deu, suef, nasel, --however the terminal syllables may be spelled, canfollow the feeling of the poetry as well as though it were Greekhexameter. He will feel the simple force of the words and action, ashe feels Homer. It is the grand style, --the eleventh century:--

Ferut vus ai! Kar le me pardunez!

Not a syllable is lost, and always the strongest syllable is chosen. Even the sentiment is monosyllabic and curt:--

Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer!

Taillefer had, in such a libretto, the means of producing dramaticeffects that the French comedy or the grand opera never approached, and such as made Bayreuth seem thin and feeble. Duke William'sbarons must have clung to his voice and action as though they werein the very melee, striking at the helmets of gemmed gold. They hadall been there, and were to be there again. As the climaxapproached, they saw the scene itself; probably they had seen itevery year, more or less, since they could swing a sword. Tailleferchanted the death of Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin and all theother barons of the rear guard, except Roland, who was left for deadby the Saracens when they fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne'sreturning host. Roland came back to consciousness on feeling aSaracen marauder tugging at his sword Durendal. With a blow of hisivory horn--oliphant--he killed the pagan; then feeling death near, he prepared for it. His first thought was for Durendal, his sword, which he could not leave to infidels. In the singular triplerepetition which gives more of the same solidity and architecturalweight to the verse, he made three attempts to break the sword, witha lament--a plaint--for each. Three times he struck with all hisforce against the rock; each time the sword rebounded withoutbreaking. The third time--

Rollanz ferit en une pierre bise Plus en abat que jo ne vus sai dire. L'espee cruist ne fruisset ne ne briset Cuntre le ciel amunt est resortie. Quant veit li quens que ne la fraindrat mie Mult dulcement la plainst a sei meisme. "E! Durendal cum ies bele e saintisme! En l'oret punt asez i ad reliques. La dent saint Pierre e del sanc seint Basilie E des chevels mun seignur seint Denisie Del vestment i ad seinte Marie. Il nen est dreiz que paien te baillisent. De chrestiens devez estre servie. Ne vus ait hum ki facet cuardie! Mult larges terres de vus averai cunquises Que Carles tient ki la barbe ad flurie. E li emperere en est e ber e riches. "

Roland strikes on a grey stone, More of it cuts off than I can tell you. The sword grinds, but shatters not nor breaks, Upward against the sky it rebounds. When the Count sees that he can never break it, Very gently he mourns it to himself: "Ah, Durendal, how fair you are and sacred! In your golden guard are many relics, The tooth of Saint Peter and blood of Saint Basil, And hair of my seigneur Saint-Denis, Of the garment too of Saint Mary. It is not right that pagans should own you. By Christians you should be served, Nor should man have you who does cowardice. Many wide lands by you I have conquered That Charles holds, who has the white beard, And emperor of them is noble and rich. "

This "laisse" is even more eleventh-century than the other, but itappealed no longer to the warriors; it spoke rather to the monks. Tothe warriors, the sword itself was the religion, and the relics weredetails of ornament or strength. To the priest, the list of relicswas more eloquent than the Regent diamond on the hilt and theKohinoor on the scabbard. Even to us it is interesting if it isunderstood. Roland had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He hadstopped at Rome and won the friendship of Saint Peter, as the toothproved; he had passed through Constantinople and secured the help ofSaint Basil; he had reached Jerusalem and gained the affection ofthe Virgin; he had come home to France and secured the support ofhis "seigneur" Saint Denis; for Roland, like Hugh Capet, was aliege-man of Saint Denis and French to the heart. France, to him, was Saint Denis, and at most the Ile de France, but not Anjou oreven Maine. These were countries he had conquered with Durendal:--

Jo l'en cunquis e Anjou e Bretaigne Si l'en cunquis e Peitou e le Maine Jo l'en cunquis Normendie la franche Si l'en cunquis Provence e Equitaigne. 

He had conquered these for his emperor Charlemagne with the help ofhis immediate spiritual lord or seigneur Saint Denis, but the monksknew that he could never have done these feats without the help ofSaint Peter, Saint Basil, and Saint Mary the Blessed Virgin, whoserelics, in the hilt of his sword, were worth more than any king'sransom. To this day a tunic of the Virgin is the most preciousproperty of the cathedral at Chartres. Either one of Roland's relicswould have made the glory of any shrine in Europe, and every monkknew their enormous value and power better than he knew the value ofRoland's conquests. 

Yet even the religion is martial, as though it were meant for thefighting Archangel and Odo of Bayeux. The relics serve the sword;the sword is not in service of the relics. As the death-sceneapproaches, the song becomes even more military:--

Co sent Rollanz que la mort le tresprent Devers la teste sur le quer li descent. Desuz un pin i est alez curanz Sur l'erbe verte si est culchiez adenz Desuz lui met s'espee e l'olifant Turnat sa teste vers la paiene gent. Pur co l'ad fait que il voelt veirement Que Carles diet et trestute sa gent Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. 

Then Roland feels that death is taking him; Down from the head upon the heart it falls. Beneath a pine he hastens running; On the green grass he throws himself down; Beneath him puts his sword and oliphant, Turns his face toward the pagan army. For this he does it, that he wishes greatly That Charles should say and all his men, The gentle Count has died a conqueror. 

Thus far, not a thought or a word strays from the field of war. Witha childlike intensity, every syllable bends toward the single idea--

Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz. 

Only then the singer allowed the Church to assert some of itsrights:-

Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus Devers Espaigne gist en un pui agut A l'une main si ad sun piz batut. "Deus meie culpe vers les tues vertuz De mes pecchiez des granz e des menuz Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui Tresqu'a cest jur que ci sui consouz. " Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut Angle del ciel i descendent a lui. Aoi. 

Then Roland feels that his last hour has come Facing toward Spain he lies on a steep hill, While with one hand he beats upon his breast: "Mea culpa, God! through force of thy miracles Pardon my sins, the great as well as small, That I have done from the hour I was born Down to this day that I have now attained. " His right glove toward God he lifted up. Angels from heaven descend on him. Aoi. Li quens Rollanz se jut desuz un pin Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist De dulce France des humes de sun lign De Carlemagne sun seignur kil nurrit Ne poet muer men plurt e ne suspirt Mais lui meisme ne voelt metre en ubli Claimet sa culpe si priet deu mercit. "Veire paterne ki unkes ne mentis Seint Lazarun de mort resurrexis E Daniel des liuns guaresis Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis. "

Sun destre guant a deu en puroffrit E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin. Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint L' anme del cunte portent en pareis. 

Count Roland throws himself beneath a pine And toward Spain has turned his face away. Of many things he called the memory back, Of many lands that he, the brave, had conquered, Of gentle France, the men of his lineage, Of Charlemagne his lord, who nurtured him; He cannot help but weep and sigh for these, But for himself will not forget to care; He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace. "O God the Father who has never lied, Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death, And Daniel from the lions saved, Save my soul from all the perils For the sins that in my life I did!"

His right-hand glove to God he proffered; Saint Gabriel from his hand took it; Upon his arm he held his head inclined, Folding his hands he passed to his end. God sent to him his angel cherubim And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril, Together with them came Saint Gabriel. The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise. 

Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye forcolour and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women. Not one man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventhcentury felt in these verses of the "Chanson, " and there is noreason for trying to do so, but there is a certain use in trying foronce to understand not so much the feeling as the meaning. Thenaivete of the poetry is that of the society. God the Father was thefeudal seigneur, who raised Lazarus--his baron or vassal--from thegrave, and freed Daniel, as an evidence of his power and loyalty; aseigneur who never lied, or was false to his word. God the Father, as feudal seigneur, absorbs the Trinity, and, what is moresignificant, absorbs or excludes also the Virgin, who is notmentioned in the prayer. To this seigneur, Roland in dying, proffered (puroffrit) his right-hand gauntlet. Death was an act ofhomage. God sent down his Archangel Gabriel as his representative toaccept the homage and receive the glove. To Duke William and hisbarons nothing could seem more natural and correct. God was notfarther away than Charlemagne. 

Correct as the law may have been, the religion even at that timemust have seemed to the monks to need professional advice. Roland'slife was not exemplary. The "Chanson" had taken pains to show thatthe disaster at Roncesvalles was due to Roland's headstrong follyand temper. In dying, Roland had not once thought of these faults, or repented of his worldly ambitions, or mentioned the name of Alda, his betrothed. He had clung to the memory of his wars and conquests, his lineage, his earthly seigneur Charlemagne, and of "douceFrance. " He had forgotten to give so much as an allusion to Christ. The poet regarded all these matters as the affair of the Church; allthe warrior cared for was courage, loyalty, and prowess. 

The interest of these details lies not in the scholarship or thehistorical truth or even the local colour, so much as in the art. The naivete of the thought is repeated by the simplicity of theverse. Word and thought are equally monosyllabic. Nothing evermatched it. The words bubble like a stream in the woods:--

Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus. 

Try and put them into modern French, and see what will happen:--

Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui. 

The words may remain exactly the same, but the poetry will have goneout of them. Five hundred years later, even the English critics hadso far lost their sense for military poetry that they professed tobe shocked by Milton's monosyllables:--

Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked, Smote him into the midriff with a stone That beat out life. 

Milton's language was indeed more or less archaic and Biblical; itwas a Puritan affectation; but the "Chanson" in the refectoryactually reflected, repeated, echoed, the piers and arches of theAbbey Church just rising above. The verse is built up. The qualitiesof the architecture reproduce themselves in the song: the samedirectness, simplicity, absence of self-consciousness; the sameintensity of purpose; even the same material; the prayer isgranite:--

Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils Pur les pecchiez que en ma viefisi

The action of dying is felt, like the dropping of a keystone intothe vault, and if the Romanesque arches in the church, which arewithin hearing, could speak, they would describe what they are doingin the precise words of the poem:--

Desur sun braz teneit Ie chief enclin Juintes ses mains est alez asa fin. 

Upon their shoulders have their heads inclined, Folded their hands, and sunken to their rest. 

Many thousands of times these verses must have been sung at theMount and echoed in every castle and on every battle-field from theWelsh Marches to the shores of the Dead Sea. No modern opera or playever approached the popularity of the "Chanson. " None has everexpressed with anything like the same completeness the society thatproduced it. Chanted by every minstrel, --known by heart, frombeginning to end, by every man and woman and child, lay orclerical, --translated into every tongue, --more intensely felt, ifpossible, in Italy and Spain than in Normandy and England, --perhapsmost effective, as a work of art, when sung by the Templars in theirgreat castles in the Holy Land, --it is now best felt at Mont-Saint-Michel, and from the first must have been there at home. The proofis the line, evidently inserted for the sake of its local effect, which invoked Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea at the climax ofRoland's death, and one needs no original documents or contemporaryauthorities to prove that, when Taillefer came to this invocation, not only Duke William and his barons, but still more Abbot Ranulfand his monks, broke into a frenzy of sympathy which expressed themasculine and military passions of the Archangel better than itaccorded with the rules of Saint Benedict. 

CHAPTER III

THE MERVEILLE

The nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who movedin it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the eleventh movedfaster and more furiously still. The Norman conquest of England wasan immense effort, and its consequences were far-reaching, but thefirst crusade was altogether the most interesting event in Europeanhistory. Never has the Western world shown anything like the energyand unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for themoment made the East recoil. Barring her family quarrels, Europe wasa unity then, in thought, will, and object. Christianity was theunit. Mont-Saint-Michel and Byzantium were near each other. TheEmperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemagne were figured asallies and friends in the popular legend. The East was the commonenemy, always superior in wealth and numbers, frequently in energy, and sometimes in thought and art. The outburst of the first crusadewas splendid even in a military sense, but it was great beyondcomparison in its reflection in architecture, ornament, poetry, colour, religion, and philosophy. Its men were astonishing, and itswomen were worth all the rest. 

Mont-Saint-Michel, better than any other spot in the world, keepsthe architectural record of that ferment, much as the Siciliantemples keep the record of the similar outburst of Greek energy, art, poetry, and thought, fifteen hundred years before. Of theeleventh century, it is true, nothing but the church remains at theMount, and, if studied further, the century has got to be soughtelsewhere, which is not difficult, since it is preserved in anynumber of churches in every path of tourist travel. Normandy is fullof it; Bayeux and Caen contain little else. At the Mount, theeleventh-century work was antiquated before it was finished. In theyear 1112, Abbot Roger II was obliged to plan and construct a newgroup in such haste that it is said to have been finished in 1122. It extends from what we have supposed to be the old refectory to theparvis, and abuts on the three lost spans of the church, coveringabout one hundred and twenty feet. As usual there were three levels;a crypt or gallery beneath, known as the Aquilon; a cloister orpromenoir above; and on the level of the church a dormitory, nowlost. The group is one of the most interesting in France, anotherpons seclorum, an antechamber to the west portal of Chartres, whichbears the same date (i 110-25). It is the famous period ofTransition, the glory of the twelfth century, the object of ourpilgrimage. 

Art is a fairly large field where no one need jostle his neighbour, and no one need shut himself up in a corner; but, if one insists ontaking a corner of preference, one might offer some excuse forchoosing the Gothic Transition. The quiet, restrained strength ofthe Romanesque married to the graceful curves and vaultingimagination of the Gothic makes a union nearer the ideal than isoften allowed in marriage. The French, in their best days, loved itwith a constancy that has thrown a sort of aureole over theirfickleness since. They never tired of its possibilities. Sometimesthey put the pointed arch within the round, or above it; sometimesthey put the round within the pointed. Sometimes a Roman archcovered a cluster of pointed windows, as though protecting andcaressing its children; sometimes a huge pointed arch covered agreat rose-window spreading across the whole front of an enormouscathedral, with an arcade of Romanesque windows beneath. The Frencharchitects felt no discord, and there was none. Even the pure Gothicwas put side by side with the pure Roman. You will see no laterGothic than the choir of the Abbey Church above (1450-1521), unlessit is the north fleche of Chartres Cathedral (1507-13); and if youwill look down the nave, through the triumphal arches, into thepointed choir four hundred years more modern, you can judge whetherthere is any real discord. For those who feel the art, there isnone; the strength and the grace join hands; the man and woman loveeach other still. 

The difference of sex is not imaginary. In 1058, when the triumphalcolumns were building, and Taillefer sang to William the Bastard andHarold the Saxon, Roland still prayed his "mea culpa" to God theFather and gave not a thought to Alda his betrothed. In the twelfthcentury Saint Bernard recited "Ave Stella Marts" in an ecstasy ofmiracle before the image of the Virgin, and the armies of France inbattle cried, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie. " What the Romancould not express flowered into the Gothic; what the masculine mindcould not idealize in the warrior, it idealized in the woman; noarchitecture that ever grew on earth, except the Gothic, gave thiseffect of flinging its passion against the sky. 

When men no longer felt the passion, they fell back on themselves, or lower. The architect returned to the round arch, and even furtherto the flatness of the Greek colonnade; but this was not the faultof the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. What they had to say theysaid; what they felt they expressed; and if the seventeenth centuryforgot it, the twentieth in turn has forgotten the seventeenth. History is only a catalogue of the forgotten. The eleventh centuryis no worse off than its neighbours. The twelfth is, inarchitecture, rather better off than the nineteenth. These tworooms, the Aquilon and promenoir, which mark the beginning of theTransition, are, on the whole, more modern than Saint-Sulpice, or IlGesu at Rome. In the same situation, for the same purposes, anyarchitect would be proud to repeat them to-day. 

The Aquilon, though a hall or gallery of importance in its day, seems to be classed among crypts. M. Camille Enlart, in his "Manualof French Archaeology" (p. 252) gives a list of Romanesque andTransition crypts, about one hundred and twenty, to serve asexamples for the study. The Aquilon is not one of them, but thecrypt of Saint-Denis and that of Chartres Cathedral would serve toteach any over-curious tourist all that he should want to know aboutsuch matters. 

Photographs such as those of the Monuments Historiques answer allthe just purposes of underground travel. The Aquilon is one's firstlesson in Transition architecture because it is dated (1112); andthe crypt of Saint-Denis serves almost equally well because the AbbeSuger must have begun his plans for it about 1122. Both have thesame arcs doubleaux and arcs-formerets, though in oppositearrangement. Both show the first heavy hint at the broken arch. There are no nervures--no rib-vaulting, --and hardly a suggestion ofthe Gothic as one sees it in the splendid crypt of the Gros Fillersclose at hand, except the elaborately intersecting vaults and theheavy columns; but the promenoir above is an astonishing leap intime and art. The promenoir has the same arrangement and columns asthe Aquilon, but the vaults are beautifully arched and pointed, withribs rising directly from the square capitals and intersecting thecentral spacings, in a spirit which neither you nor I know how todistinguish from the pure Gothic of the thirteenth century, unlessit is that the arches are hardly pointed enough; they seem to theeye almost round. The height appears to be about fourteen feet. 

The promenoir of Abbot Roger II has an interest to pilgrims who aregoing on to the shrine of the Virgin, because the date of thepromenoir seems to be exactly the same as the date which the AbbeBulteau assigns for the western portal of Chartres. Ordinarily adate is no great matter, but when one has to run forward and back, with the agility of an electric tram, between two or three fixedpoints, it is convenient to fix them once for all. The Transition iscomplete here in the promenoir, which was planned as early as 1115. The subject of vaulting is far too ambitious for summer travel; itis none too easy for a graduate of the Beaux Arts; and fewarchitectural fields have been so earnestly discussed and disputed. We must not touch it. The age of the "Chanson de Roland" itself isnot so dangerous a topic. Our vital needs are met, more or lesssufficiently, by taking the promenoir at the Mount, the crypt atSaint-Denis, and the western portal at Chartres, as the trinity ofour Transition, and roughly calling their date the years 1115-20, Tooverload the memory with dates is the vice of every schoolmaster andthe passion of every second-rate scholar. Tourists want as few datesas possible; what they want is poetry. Yet a singular coincidence, with which every classroom is only too familiar, has made of theyears--15 a curiously convenient group, and the year 1115 is asconvenient as any for the beginning of the century of Transition. That was the year when Saint Bernard laid the foundations of hisAbbey of Clairvaux. Perhaps 1115, or at latest 1117, was the yearwhen Abelard sang love-songs to Heloise in Canon Fulbert's house inthe Rue des Chantres, beside the cloister of Notre Dame in Paris. The Abbe Suger, the Abbe Bernard, and the Abbe Abelard are the threeinteresting men of the French Transition. 

The promenoir, then, shall pass for the year 1115, and, as such, isan exceedingly beautiful hall, uniting the splendid calm andseriousness of the Romanesque with the exquisite lines of theGothic. You will hardly see its equal in the twelfth century. AtAngers the great hall of the Bishop's Palace survives to give apoint of comparison, but commonly the halls of that date were notvaulted; they had timber roofs, and have perished. The promenoir isabout sixty feet long, and divided into two aisles, ten feet wide, by a row of columns. If it were used on great occasions as arefectory, eighty or a hundred persons could have been seated attable, and perhaps this may have been about the scale of the Abbey'sneeds, at that time. Whatever effort of fancy was needed to placeDuke William and Harold in the old refectory of 1058, none whateveris required in order to see his successors in the halls of Roger II. With one exception they were not interesting persons. The exceptionwas Henry II of England and Anjou, and his wife Eleanor of Guienne, who was for a while Regent of Normandy. One of their children wasborn at Domfront, just beyond Avranches, and the Abbot was asked tobe godfather. In 1158, just one hundred years after Duke William'svisit, King Henry and his whole suite came to the Abbey, heard mass, and dined in the refectory. "Rex venit ad Montem Sancti Michaelis, audita missa ad magis altare, comedit in Refec-torio cum baronibussuis. " Abbot Robert of Torigny was his host, and very possiblyWilliam of Saint-Pair looked on. Perhaps he recited parts of his"Roman" before the King. One may be quite sure that when QueenEleanor came to the Mount she asked the poet to recite his verses, for Eleanor gave law to poets. 

One might linger over Abbot Robert of Torigny, who was a very greatman in his day, and an especially great architect, but tooambitious. All his work, including the two towers, crumbled and fellfor want of proper support. What would correspond to the cathedralsof Noyon and Soissons and the old clocher and fleche of Chartres islost. We have no choice but to step down into the next century atonce, and into the full and perfect Gothic of the great age when thenew Chartres was building. 

In the year 1203, Philip Augustus expelled the English from Normandyand conquered the province; but, in the course of the war the Dukeof Brittany, who was naturally a party to any war that took placeunder his eyes, happened to burn the town beneath the Abbey, and indoing so, set fire unintentionally to the Abbey itself. Thesacrilege shocked Philip Augustus, and the wish to conciliate sopowerful a vassal as Saint Michel, or his abbot, led the King ofFrance to give a large sum of money for repairing the buildings. TheAbbot Jordan (1191-1212) at once undertook to outdo all hispredecessors, and, with an immense ambition, planned the huge pilewhich covers the whole north face of the Mount, and which has alwaysborne the expressive name of the Merveille. 

The general motive of abbatial building was common to them all. Abbeys were large households. The church was the centre, and atMont-Saint-Michel the summit, for the situation compelled the abbotsthere to pile one building on another instead of arranging them on alevel in squares or parallelograms. The dormitory in any case had tobe near a door of the church, because the Rule required constantservices, day and night. The cloister was also hard-by the churchdoor, and, at the Mount, had to be on the same level in order to bein open air. Naturally the refectory must be immediately beneath oneor the other of these two principal structures, and the hall, orplace of meeting for business with the outside world, or forinternal administration, or for guests of importance, must be nextthe refectory. The kitchen and offices would be placed on the loweststage, if for no other reason, because the magazines were twohundred feet below at the landing-place, and all supplies, includingwater, had to be hauled up an inclined plane by windlass. Toadminister such a society required the most efficient management. Anabbot on this scale was a very great man, indeed, who enjoyed anestablishment of his own, close by, with officers in no smallnumber; for the monks alone numbered sixty, and even these were notenough for the regular church services at seasons of pilgrimage. TheAbbot was obliged to entertain scores and hundreds of guests, andthese, too, of the highest importance, with large suites. Everyounce of food must be brought from the mainland, or fished from thesea. All the tenants and their farms, their rents and contributions, must be looked after. No secular prince had a more serious task ofadministration, and none did it so well. Tenants always preferred anabbot or bishop for landlord. The Abbey was the highestadministrative creation of the Middle Ages, and when one has madeone's pilgrimage to Chartres, one might well devote another summerto visiting what is left of Clairvaux, Citeaux, Cluny, and the otherfamous monasteries, with Viollet-le-Duc to guide, in order tosatisfy one's mind whether, on the whole, such a life may not havehad activity as well as idleness. 

This is a matter of economics, to be settled with the keepers ofmore modern hotels, but the art had to suit the conditions, and whenAbbot Jordan decided to plaster this huge structure against the sideof the Mount, the architect had a relatively simple task to handle. The engineering difficulties alone were very serious; Thearchitectural plan was plain enough. As the Abbot laid hisrequirements before the architect, he seems to have begun by fixingthe scale for a refectory capable of seating two hundred guests attable. Probably no king in Europe fed more persons at his table thanthis. According to M. Corroyer's plan, the length of the newrefectory is one hundred and twenty-three feet (37. 5 metres). A rowof columns down the centre divides it into two aisles, measuringtwelve feet clear, from column to column, across the room. If tableswere set the whole length of the two aisles, forty persons couldhave been easily seated, in four rows, or one hundred and sixtypersons. Without crowding, the same space would give room for fiftyguests, or two hundred in all. 

Once the scale was fixed, the arrangement was easy. Beginning at thelowest possible level, one plain, very solidly built, vaulted roomserved as foundation for another, loftier and more delicatelyvaulted; and this again bore another which stood on the level of thechurch, and opened directly into the north transept. Thisarrangement was then doubled; and the second set of rooms, at thewest end, contained the cellar on the lower level, another greatroom or hall above it, and the cloister at the church door, alsoentering into the north transept. Doorways, passages, and stairsunite them all. The two heavy halls on the lowest level are nowcalled the almonry and the cellar, which is a distinction betweenadministrative arrangements that does not concern us. 

Architecturally the rooms might, to our untrained eyes, be of thesame age with the Aquilon. They are earliest Transition, as far as atourist can see, or at least they belong to the class of cryptswhich has an architecture of its own. The rooms that concern us arethose immediately above: the so-called Salle des Chevaliers at thewest end; and the so-called refectory at the east. Every writergives these rooms different names, and assigns them differentpurposes, but whatever they were meant for, they are, as halls, thefinest in France; the purest in thirteenth-century perfection. 

The Salle des Chevaliers of the Order of Saint Michael created byLouis XI in 1469 was, or shall be for tourist purposes, the greathall that every palace and castle contained, and in which the lifeof the chateau centred. Planned at about the same time with theCathedral of Chartres (1195-1210), and before the Abbey Church ofSaint-Denis, this hall and its neighbour the refectory, studiedtogether with the cathedral and the abbey, are an exceedinglyliberal education for anybody, tourist or engineer or architect, andwould make the fortune of an intelligent historian, if such shouldhappen to exist; but the last thing we ask from them is education orinstruction. We want only their poetry, and shall have to look forit elsewhere. Here is only the shell--the dead art--and silence. Thehall is about ninety feet long, and sixty feet in its greatestwidth. It has three ranges of columns making four vaulted aisleswhich seem to rise about twenty-two feet in height. It is warmed bytwo huge and heavy cheminees or fireplaces in the outside wall, between the windows. It is lighted beautifully, but mostly fromabove through round windows in the arching of the vaults. Thevaulting is a study for wiser men than we can ever be. More thantwenty strong round columns, free or engaged, with Romanesquecapitals, support heavy ribs, or nervures, and while the two centralaisles are eighteen feet wide, the outside aisle, into which thewindows open, measures only ten feet in width, and has consequentlyone of the most sharply pointed vaults we shall ever meet. The wholedesign is as beautiful a bit of early Gothic as exists, but whatwould take most time to study, if time were to spare, would be theinstinct of the Archangel's presence which has animated hisarchitecture. The masculine, military energy of Saint Michael livesstill in every stone. The genius that realized this warlike emotionhas stamped his power everywhere, on every centimetre of his work;in every ray of light; on the mass of every shadow; wherever the eyefalls; still more strongly on all that the eye divines, and in theshadows that are felt like the lights. The architect intended itall. Any one who doubts has only to step through the doorway in thecorner into the refectory. There the architect has undertaken toexpress the thirteenth-century idea of the Archangel; he has leftthe twelfth century behind him. 

The refectory, which has already served for a measure of the Abbot'sscale, is, in feeling, as different as possible from the hall. Sixcharming columns run down the centre, dividing the room into twovaulted aisles, apparently about twenty-seven feet in height. Wherever the hall was heavy and serious, the refectory was madelight and graceful. Hardly a trace of the Romanesque remains. Onlythe slight, round columns are not yet grooved or fluted, and theirround capitals are still slightly severe. Every detail is lightened. The great fireplaces are removed to each end of the room. The mostinteresting change is in the windows. When you reach Chartres, thegreat book of architecture will open on the word "Fenestration, "--Fenestre, --a word as ugly as the thing was beautiful; and then, withpain and sorrow, you will have to toil till you see how thearchitects of 1200 subordinated every other problem to that oflighting their spaces. Without feeling their lights, you can neverfeel their shadows. These two halls at Mont-Saint-Michel areantechambers to the nave of Chartres; their fenestration, inside andout, controls the whole design. The lighting of the refectory issuperb, but one feels its value in art only when it is taken inrelation to the lighting of the hall, and both serve as a simplepreamble to the romance of the Chartres windows. 

The refectory shows what the architect did when, to lighten hiseffects, he wanted to use every possible square centimetre of light. He has made nine windows; six on the north, two on the east, and oneon the south. They are nearly five feet wide, and about twenty feethigh. They flood the room. Probably they were intended for glass, and M. Corroyer's volume contains wood-cuts of a few fragments ofthirteenth-century glass discovered in his various excavations; butone may take for granted that with so much light, colour was theobject intended. The floors would be tiled in colour; the wallswould be hung with colour; probably the vaults were painted incolour; one can see it all in scores of illuminated manuscripts. Thethirteenth century had a passion for colour, and made a colour-worldof its own which we have got to explore. 

The two halls remain almost the only monuments of what must becalled secular architecture of the early and perfect period ofGothic art (1200-10). Churches enough remain, with Chartres at theirhead, but all the great abbeys, palaces and chateaux of that day areruins. Arques, Gaillard, Montargis, Coucy, the old Louvre, Chinon, Angers, as well as Cluny, Clairvaux, Citeaux, Jumieges, Vezelay, Saint-Denis, Poissy, Fontevrault, and a score of other residences, royal or semi-royal, have disappeared wholly, or have lost theirresidential buildings. When Viollet-le-Duc, under the Second Empire, was allowed to restore one great chateau, he chose the latest, Pierrefonds, built by Louis d'Orleans in 1390. Vestiges of SaintLouis's palace remain at the Conciergerie, but the first great royalresidence to be compared with the Merveille is Amboise, dating fromabout 1500, three centuries later. Civilization made almost a cleansweep of art. Only here, at Mont-Saint-Michel, one may still sit atease on the stone benches in; the embrasures of the refectorywindows, looking over the thirteenth-century ocean and watching thearchitect as he worked out the details which were to produce oraccent his contrasts or harmonies, heighten his effects, or hide hisshow of effort, and all by means so true, simpler and apparentlyeasy that one seems almost competent to follow him. One learnsbetter in time. One gets to feel that these things were due in partto an instinct that the architect himself might not have been ableto explain. The instinct vanishes as time creeps on. The halls atRouen or at Blois are more easily understood; the Salle desCaryatides of Pierre Lescot at the Louvre, charming as it is, issimpler still; and one feels entirely at home in the Salle desGlaces which filled the ambition of Louis XIV at Versailles. 

If any lingering doubt remains in regard to the professionalcleverness of the architect and the thoroughness of his study, wehad best return to the great hall, and pass through a low door inits extreme outer angle, up a few steps into a little room somethirteen feet square, beautifully vaulted, lighted, warmed by alarge stone fireplace, and in the corner, a spiral staircase leadingup to another square room above opening directly into the cloister. It is a little library or charter-house. The arrangement is almosttoo clever for gravity, as is the case with more than onearrangement in the Merveille. From the outside one can see that atthis corner the architect had to provide a heavy buttress against adouble strain, and he built up from the rock below a square cornertower as support, into which he worked a spiral staircase leadingfrom the cellar up to the cloisters. Just above the level of thegreat hall he managed to construct this little room, a gem. Theplace was near and far; it was quiet and central; William of Saint-Pair, had he been still alive, might have written his "Roman" there;monks might have illuminated missals there. A few steps upwardbrought them to the cloisters for meditation; a few more broughtthem to the church for prayer. A few steps downward brought them tothe great hall, for business, a few steps more led them into therefectory, for dinner. To contemplate the goodness of God was asimple joy when one had such a room to work in; such a spot as thegreat hall to walk in, when the storms blew; or the cloisters inwhich to meditate, when the sun shone; such a dining-room as therefectory; and such a view from one's windows over the infiniteocean and the guiles of Satan's quicksands. From the battlements ofHeaven, William of Saint-Pair looked down on it with envy. 

Of all parts of the Merveille, in summer, the most charming mustalways have been the cloisters. Only the Abbey of the Mount was richand splendid enough to build a cloister like this, all in granite, carved in forms as light as though it were wood; with columnsarranged in a peculiar triangular order that excited the admirationof Viollet-le-Duc. "One of the most curious and complete cloistersthat we have in France, " he said; although in France there are manybeautiful and curious cloisters. For another reason it has value. The architect meant it to reassert, with all the art and grace hecould command, the mastery of love, of thought and poetry, inreligion, over the masculine, military energy of the great hallbelow. The thirteenth century rarely let slip a chance to insist onthis moral that love is law. Saint Francis was preaching to thebirds in 1215 at Assisi, and the architect built this cloister in1226 at Mont-Saint-Michel. Both sermons were saturated with thefeeling of the time, and both are about equally worth noting, if oneaspires to feel the art. 

A conscientious student has yet to climb down the many steps, on theoutside, and look up at the Merveille from below. Few buildings inFrance are better worth the trouble. The horizontal line at the roofmeasures two hundred and thirty-five feet. The vertical line of thebuttresses measures in round numbers one hundred feet. To make wallsof that height and length stand up at all was no easy matter, asRobert de Torigny had shown; and so the architect buttressed themfrom bottom to top with twelve long buttresses against the thrust ofthe interior arches, and three more, bearing against the interiorwalls. This gives, on the north front, fifteen strong vertical linesin a space of two hundred and thirty-five feet. Between these linesthe windows tell their story; the seven long windows of therefectory on one side; the seven rounded windows of the hall on theother. Even the corner tower with the charter-house becomes assimple as the rest. The sum of this impossible wall, and itsexaggerated vertical lines, is strength and intelligence at rest. 

The whole Mount still kept the grand style; it expressed the unityof Church and State, God and Man, Peace and War, Life and Death, Good and Bad; it solved the whole problem of the universe. Thepriest and the soldier were both at home here, in 1215 as in 1115 orin 1058; the politician was not outside of it; the sinner waswelcome; the poet was made happy in his own spirit, with a sympathy, almost an affection, that suggests a habit of verse in the Abbot aswell as in the architect. God reconciles all. The world is anevident, obvious, sacred harmony. Even the discord of war is adetail on which the Abbey refuses to insist. Not till two centuriesafterwards did the Mount take on the modern expression of war as adiscord in God's providence. Then, in the early years of thefifteenth century, Abbot Pierre le Roy plastered the gate of thechatelet, as you now see it, over the sunny thirteenth-centuryentrance called Belle Chaise, which had treated mere militaryconstruction with a sort of quiet contempt. You will know what achatelet is when you meet another; it frowns in a spirit quite aliento the twelfth century; it jars on the religion of the place; itforebodes wars of religion; dissolution of society; loss of unity;the end of a world. Nothing is sadder than the catastrophe of Gothicart, religion, and hope. 

One looks back on it all as a picture; a symbol of unity; anassertion of God and Man in a bolder, stronger, closer union thanever was expressed by other art; and when the idea is absorbed, accepted, and perhaps partially understood, one may move on. 

CHAPTER IV

NORMANDY AND THE ILE DE FRANCE

From Mont-Saint-Michel, the architectural road leads acrossNormandy, up the Seine to Paris, and not directly through Chartres, which lies a little to the south. In the empire of architecture, Normandy was one kingdom, Brittany another; the Ile de France, withParis, was a third; Touraine and the valley of the Loire were afourth and in the centre, the fighting-ground between them all, laythe counties of Chartres and Dreux. Before going to Chartres oneshould go up the Seine and down the Loire, from Angers to Le Mans, and so enter Chartres from Brittany after a complete circle; but ifwe set out to do our pleasure on that scale, we must start from thePyramid of Cheops. We have set out from Mont-Saint-Michel; we willgo next to Paris. 

The architectural highway lies through Coutances, Bayeux, Caen, Rouen, and Mantes. Every great artistic kingdom solved itsarchitectural problems in its own way, as it did its religious, political, and social problems, and no two solutions were ever quitethe same; but among them the Norman was commonly the most practical, and sometimes the most dignified. We can test this rule by thestandard of the first town we stop at--Coutances. We can test itequally well at Bayeux or Caen, but Coutances comes first afterMont-Saint-Michel let us begin with it, and state the problems withtheir Norman solution, so that it may be ready at hand to comparewith the French solution, before coming to the solution at Chartres. 

The cathedral at Coutances is said to be about the age of theMerveille (1200-50), but the exact dates are unknown, and the workis so Norman as to stand by itself; yet the architect has grappledwith more problems than one need hope to see solved in any singlechurch in the tie de France. Even at Chartres, although the twostone fleches are, by exception, completed, they are not of the sameage, as they are here. Neither at Chartres nor at Paris, nor at Laonor Amiens or Rheims or Bourges, will you see a central tower tocompare with the enormous pile at Coutances. Indeed the architectsof France failed to solve this particular church problem, and we-shall leave it behind us in leaving Normandy, although it is themost effective feature of any possible church. "A clocher of thatperiod (circa 1200), built over the croisee of a cathedral, following lines so happy, should be a monument of the greatestbeauty; unfortunately we possess not a single one in France. Fire, and the hand of man more than time, have destroyed them all, and wefind on our greatest religious edifices no more than bases andfragments of these beautiful constructions. The cathedral ofCoutances alone has preserved its central clocher of the thirteenthcentury, and even there it is not complete; its stone fleche iswanting. As for its style, it belongs to Norman architecture, anddiverges widely from the character of French architecture. " So saysViollet-le-Duc; but although the great churches for the most partnever had central clochers, which, on the scale of Amiens, Bourges, or Beauvais, would have required an impossible mass, the smallerchurches frequently carry them still, and they are, like the dome, the most effective features they can carry. They were made todominate the whole. 

No doubt the fleche is wanting at Coutances, but you can supply itin imagination from the two fleches of the western tower, which areas simple and severe as the spear of a man-at-arms. Supply thefleche, and the meaning of the tower cannot be mistaken; it is asmilitary as the "Chanson de Roland"; it is the man-at-arms himself, mounted and ready for battle, spear in rest. The mere seat of thecentral tower astride of the church, so firm, so fixed, so serious, so defiant, is Norman, like the seat of the Abbey Church on theMount; and at Falaise, where William the Bastard was born, we shallsee a central tower on the church which is William himself, inarmour, on horseback, ready to fight for the Church, and perhaps, inhis bad moods, against it. Such militant churches were capable offorcing Heaven itself; all of them look as though they had fought atHastings or stormed Jerusalem. Wherever the Norman central clocherstands, the Church Militant of the eleventh century survives;--notthe Church of Mary Queen, but of Michael the Archangel;--not theChurch of Christ, but of God the Father--Who never lied!

Taken together with the fleches of the facade, this clocher ofCoutances forms a group such as one very seldom sees. The two towersof the facade are something apart, quite by themselves among theinnumerable church-towers of the Gothic time. We have got a happysummer before us, merely in looking for these church-towers. Thereis no livelier amusement for fine weather than in hunting them asthough they were mushrooms, and no study in architecture nearly sodelightful. No work of man has life like the fleche. One sees it fora greater distance and feels it for a longer time than is possiblewith any other human structure, unless it be the dome. There is moreplay of light on the octagonal faces of the fleche as the sun movesaround them than can be got out of the square or the cone or anyother combination of surfaces. For some reason, the facets of thehexagon or octagon are more pleasing than the rounded surfaces ofthe cone, and Normandy is said to be peculiarly the home of thisparticularly Gothic church ornament; yet clochers and fleches arescattered all over France until one gets to look for them on thehorizon as though every church in every hamlet were an architecturalmonument. Hundreds of them literally are so, --Monuments Historiques, -protected by the Government; but when you undertake to comparethem, or to decide whether they are more beautiful in Normandy thanin the Ile de France, or in Burgundy, or on the Loire or theCharente, you are lost, Even the superiority of the octagon is notevident to every one. Over the little church at Fenioux on theCharente, not very far from La Rochelle, is a conical steeple thatan infidel might adore; and if you have to decide between provinces, you must reckon with the decision of architects and amateurs, whoseem to be agreed that the first of all filches is at Chartres, thesecond at Vendome, not far from Blois in Touraine, and the third atAuxerre in Burgundy. The towers of Coutances are not in the list, nor are those at Bayeux nor those at Caen. France is rich in art. Yet the towers of Coutances are in some ways as interesting, if notas beautiful, as the best. 

The two stone fleches here, with their octagon faces, do notdescend, as in other churches, to their resting-place on a squaretower, with the plan of junction more or less disguised; they throwout nests of smaller fleches, and these cover buttressing cornertowers, with lines that go directly to the ground. Whether theartist consciously intended it or not, the effect is to broaden thefacade and lift it into the air. The facade itself has a distinctlymilitary look, as though a fortress had been altered into a church. A charming arcade at the top has the air of being thrown across inorder to disguise the alteration, and perhaps owes much of its charmto the contrast it makes with the severity of military lines. Eventhe great west window looks like an afterthought; one's instinctasks for a blank wall. Yet, from the ground up to the cross on thespire, one feels the Norman nature throughout, animating the whole, uniting it all, and crowding into it an intelligent variety oforiginal motives that would build a dozen churches of late Gothic. Nothing about it is stereotyped or conventional, --not even theconventionality. 

If you have any doubts about this, you have only to compare thephotograph of Coutances with the photograph of Chartres; and yet, surely, the facade of Chartres is severe enough to satisfy SaintBernard himself. With the later fronts of Rheims and Amiens, thereis no field for comparison; they have next to nothing in common; yetCoutances is said to be of the same date with Rheims, or nearly so, and one can believe it when one enters the interior. The Normans, asthey slowly reveal themselves, disclose most unexpected qualities;one seems to sound subterranean caverns of feeling hidden behindtheir iron nasals. No other cathedral in France or in Europe has aninterior more refined--one is tempted to use even the hard-wornadjective, more tender--or more carefully studied. One test iscrucial here and everywhere. The treatment of the apse and choir isthe architect's severest standard. This is a subject not to betouched lightly; one to which we shall have to come back in a humblespirit, prepared for patient study, at Chartres; but the choir ofCoutances is a cousin to that of Chartres, as the facades arecousins; Coutances like Chartres belongs to Notre Dame and is feltin the same spirit; the church is built for the choir and apse, rather than for the nave and transepts; for the Virgin rather thanfor the public. In one respect Coutances is even more delicate inthe feminine charm of the Virgin's peculiar grace than Chartres, butthis was an afterthought of the fourteenth century. The system ofchapels radiating about the apse was extended down the nave, in anarrangement "so beautiful and so rare, " according to Viollet-le-Duc, that one shall seek far before finding its equal. Among theunexpected revelations of human nature that suddenly astonishhistorians, one of the least reasonable was the passionate outbreakof religious devotion to the ideal of feminine grace, charity, andlove that took place here in Normandy while it was still a part ofthe English kingdom, and flamed up into almost fanatical frenzyamong the most hard-hearted and hard-headed race in Europe. 

So in this church, in the centre of this arrangement of apse andchapels with their quite unusual--perhaps quite singular--grace, thefour huge piers which support the enormous central tower, offer atour de force almost as exceptional as the refinement of thechapels. At Mont-Saint-Michel, among the monks, the union ofstrength and grace was striking, but at Coutances it is exaggerated, like Tristram and Iseult, --a roman of chivalry. The four "enormous"columns of the croisee, carry, as Viollet-le-Duc says, the "enormousoctagonal tower, "--like Saint Christopher supporting the Christ-child, before the image of the Virgin, in her honour. Nothing likethis can be seen at Chartres, or at any of the later palaces whichFrance built for the pleasure of the Queen of Heaven. We areslipping into the thirteenth century again; the temptation isterrible to feeble minds and tourist natures; but a great mass oftwelfth and eleventh-century work remains to be seen and felt. To goback is not so easy as to begin with it; the heavy round arch islike old cognac compared with the champagne of the pointed andfretted spire; one must not quit Coutances without making anexcursion to Lessayon the road to Cherbourg, where is a church ofthe twelfth century, with a square tower and almost untouched Normaninterior, that closely repeats the Abbey Church at Mont-Saint-Michel. "One of the most complete models of Romanesque architectureto be found in Normandy, " says M. De Caumont. The central clocherwill begin a photographic collection of square towers, to replacethat which was lost on the Mount; and a second example is nearBayeux, at a small place called Cerisy-la-Foret, where the churchmatches that on the Mount, according to M. Corroyer; for Cerisy-la-Foret was also an abbey, and the church, built by Richard II, Dukeof Normandy, at the beginning of the eleventh century, was largerthan that on the Mount. It still keeps its central tower. 

All this is intensely Norman, and is going to help very little inFrance; it would be more useful in England; but at Bayeux is agreat: cathedral much more to the purpose, with two superb westerntowers crowned by stone fleches, cousins of those at Coutances, anddistinctly related to the twelfth-century fleche at Chartres. "TheNormans, " says Viollet-le-Duc, "had not that instinct of proportionwhich the architects of the Ile de France, Beauvais, and Soissonspossessed to a high degree; yet the boldness of their constructions, their perfect execution, the elevation of the fleches, had evidentinfluence on the French school properly called, and that influenceis felt in the old spire of Chartres. " The Norman seemed to showdistinction in another respect which the French were less quick toimitate. What they began, they completed. Not one of the greatFrench churches has two stone spires complete, of the same age, while each of the little towns of Coutances, Bayeux, and Caencontains its twin towers and fleches of stone, as solid and perfectnow as they were seven hundred years ago. Still another Normancharacter is worth noting, because this is one part of the influencefelt at Chartres. If you look carefully at the two western towers ofthe Bayeux Cathedral, perhaps you will feel what is said to be thestrength of the way they are built up. They rise from theirfoundation with a quiet confidence of line and support, which passesdirectly up to the weather-cock on the summit of the fleches. At theplane where the square tower is changed into the octagon spire, youwill see the corner turrets and the long intermediate windows whicheffect the change without disguising it. One can hardly call it adevice; it is so simple and evident a piece of construction that itdoes not need to be explained; yet you will have to carry aphotograph of this fleche to Chartres, and from there to Vendome, for there is to be a great battle of fleches about this point ofjunction, and the Norman scheme is a sort of standing reproach tothe French. 

Coutances and Bayeux are interesting, but Caen is a RomanesqueMecca. There William the Conqueror dealt with the same architecturalproblems, and put his solution in his Abbaye-aux-Hommes, which bearsthe name of Saint Stephen. Queen Matilda put her solution into herAbbaye-aux-Femmes, the Church of the Trinity. One ought particularlyto look at the beautiful central clocher of the church at Vaucellesin the suburbs; and one must drive out to Thaon to see its eleventh-century church, with a charming Romanesque blind arcade on theoutside, and a little clocher, "the more interesting to us, "according to Viollet-le-Duc, "because it bears the stamp of thetraditions of defence of the primitive towers which were built overthe porches. " Even "a sort of chemin de ronde" remains around theclocher, perhaps once provided with a parapet of defence. "C'est la, du reste, un charmant edifice. " A tower with stone fleche, whichactually served for defence in a famous recorded instance, is thatof the church at Secqueville, not far off; this beautiful tower, ascharming as anything in Norman art, is known to have served as afortress in 1105, which gives a valuable date. The pretty oldRomanesque front of the little church at Ouistreham, with its portalthat seems to come fresh from Poitiers and Moissac, can be taken in, while driving past; but we must on no account fail to make a seriouspilgrimage to Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, where the church-tower andfleche are not only classed among the best in Normandy, but have anexact date, 1145, and a very close relation with Chartres, as willappear. Finally, if for no other reason, at least for interest inArlette, the tanner's daughter, one must go to Falaise, and look atthe superb clocher of Saint-Gervais, which was finished andconsecrated by 1135. 

Some day, if you like, we can follow this Romanesque style to thesouth, and on even to Italy where it may be supposed to have beenborn; but France had an architectural life fully a thousand yearsold when these twelfth-century churches were built, and was longsince artistically, as she was politically, independent. The Normanswere new in France, but not the Romanesque architecture; they onlytook the forms and stamped on them their own character. It is thestamp we want to distinguish, in order to trace up our lines ofartistic ancestry. The Norman twelfth-century stamp was not easilyeffaced. If we have not seen enough of it at Mont-Saint-Michel, Coutances, Bayeux, and Caen, we can go to Rouen, and drive out toBoscherville, and visit the ruined Abbey of Jumieges. Wherever thereis a church-tower with a tall fleche, as at Boscherville, Secqueville, Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, Caen, and Bayeux, Viollet-le-Duc bids notice how the octagonal steeple is fitted on to the squaretower. Always the passage from the octagon to the square seems to bequite simply made. The Gothic or Romanesque spire had the advantagethat a wooden fleche was as reasonable a covering for it as a stoneone, and the Normans might have indulged in freaks of form veryeasily, if they chose, but they seem never to have thought of it. The nearest approach to the freedom of wooden roofs is not in thelofty fleches, but in the covering of the great square centraltowers, like Falaise or Vaucelles, a huge four-sided roof whichtries to be a fleche, and is as massive as the heavy structure itcovers. 

The last of the Norman towers that Viollet-le-Duc insists upon isthe so-called Clocher de Saint-Romain, the northern tower on thewest front of the Cathedral of Rouen. Unfortunately it has lost itsprimitive octagon fleche if it ever had one, but "the tower remainsentire, and, " according to Viollet-le-Duc, "is certainly one of themost beautiful in this part of France; it offers a mixture of thetwo styles of the Ile de France and of Normandy, in which the formerelement dominates"; it is of the same date as the old tower ofChartres (1140-60), and follows the same interior arrangement; "buthere the petty, confused disposition of the Norman towers, withtheir division into stories of equal height, has been adopted by theFrench master builder, although in submitting to these local customshe has still thrown over his work the grace and finesse, the studyof detail, the sobriety in projections, the perfect harmony betweenthe profiles, sculpture, and the general effect of the whole, whichbelong to the school he came from. He has managed his voids andsolids with especial cleverness, giving the more importance to thevoids, and enlarging the scale of his details, as the tower rose inheight. These details have great beauty; the construction isexecuted in materials of small dimensions with the care that thetwelfth-century architects put into their building; the profilesproject little, and, in spite of their extreme finesse, produce mucheffect; the buttresses are skilfully planted and profiled. Thestaircase, which, on the east side, deranges the arrangement of thebays, is a chef-d'oeuvre of architecture. " This long panegyric, byViollet-le-Duc, on French taste at the expense of Norman temper, ought to be read, book in hand, before the Cathedral of Rouen, withphotographs of Bayeux to compare. Certain it is that the Normans andthe French never talked quite the same language, but it is equallycertain that the Norman language, to the English ear, expresseditself quite as clearly as the French, and sometimes seemed to havemore to express. 

The complaint of the French artist against the Norman is the"mesquin" treatment of dividing his tower into storeys of equalheight. Even in the twelfth century and in religious architecture, artists already struggled over the best solution of thisparticularly American problem of the twentieth century, and whentourists return to New York, they may look at the twenty-storeytowers which decorate the city, to see whether the Norman or theFrench plan has won; but this, at least, will be sure in advance:--the Norman will be the practical scheme which states the facts, andstops; while the French will be the graceful one, which states thebeauties, and more or less fits the facts to suit them. Both stylesare great: both can sometimes be tiresome. 

Here we must take leave of Normandy; a small place, but one which, like Attica or Tuscany, has said a great deal to the world, and evengoes on saying things--not often in the famous genre ennuyeux--tothis day; for Gustave Flaubert's style is singularly like that ofthe Tour Saint-Romain and the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. Going up the Seineone might read a few pages of his letters, or of "Madame de Bovary, "to see how an old art transmutes itself into a new one, withoutchanging its methods. Some critics have thought that at timesFlaubert was mesquin like the Norman tower, but these are, as theFrench say, the defects of his qualities; we can pass over them, andlet our eyes rest on the simplicity of the Norman fleche whichpierces the line of our horizon. 

The last of Norman art is seen at Mantes, where there is a littlechurch of Gassicourt that marks the farthest reach of the style. Inarms as in architecture, Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest;William the Conqueror met his death here in 1087. GeographicallyMantes is in the Ile de France, less than forty miles from Paris. Architecturally, it is Paris itself; while, forty miles to thesouthward, is Chartres, an independent or only feudally dependentcountry. No matter how hurried the architectural tourist may be, theboundary-line of the Ile de France is not to be crossed withoutstopping. If he came down from the north or east, he would haveequally to stop, --either at Beauvais, or at Laon, or Noyon, orSoissons, --because there is an architectural douane to pass, andone's architectural baggage must be opened. Neither Notre Dame deParis nor Notre Dame de Chartres is quite intelligible unless onehas first seen Notre Dame de Mantes, and studied it in the sacredsources of M. Viollet-le-Duc. 

Notre Dame de Mantes is a sister to the Cathedral of Paris, "builtat the same time, perhaps by the same architect, and reproducing itsgeneral dispositions, its mode of structure, and some of itsdetails"; but the Cathedral of Paris has been greatly altered, sothat its original arrangement is quite changed, while the church atMantes remains practically as it was, when both were new, about theyear 1200. As nearly as the dates can be guessed, the cathedral wasfinished, up to its vaulting, in 1170, and was soon afterwardsimitated on a smaller scale at Mantes. The scheme seems to have beenunsatisfactory because of defects in the lighting, for the wholesystem of fenestration had been changed at Paris before 1230, naturally at great cost, since the alterations, according toViollet-le-Duc (articles "Cathedral" and "Rose, " and allusions"Triforium"), left little except the ground-plan unchanged. Tounderstand the Paris design of 1160-70, which was a long advancefrom the older plans, one must come to Mantes; and, reflecting thatthe great triumph of Chartres was its fenestration, which must havebeen designed immediately after 1195, one can understand how, inthis triangle of churches only forty or fifty miles apart, thearchitects, watching each other's experiments, were influenced, almost from day to day, by the failures or successes which they sawThe fenestration which the Paris architect planned in 1160-70, andrepeated at Mantes, 1190-1200, was wholly abandoned, and a newsystem introduced, immediately after the success of Chartres in1210. 

As they now stand, Mantes is the oldest. While conscientiouslytrying to keep as far away as we can from technique, about which weknow nothing and should care if possible still less if onlyignorance would help us to feel what we do not understand, still theconscience is happier if it gains a little conviction, founded onwhat it thinks a fact. Even theologians--even the great theologiansof the thirteenth century--even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself--didnot trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God; and whatSaint Thomas found necessary in philosophy may also be a sure sourceof consolation in the difficulties of art. The church at Mantes is avery early fact in Gothic art; indeed, it is one of the earliest;for our purposes it will serve as the very earliest of pure Gothicchurches, after the Transition, and this we are told to study in itswindows. 

Before one can get near enough fairly to mark the details of thefacade, one sees the great rose window which fills a space nearlytwenty-seven feet in width. Gothic fanatics commonly reckon thegreat rose windows of the thirteenth century as the most beautifulcreation of their art, among the details of ornament; and thisparticular rose is the direct parent of that at Chartres, which isclassic like the Parthenon, while both of them served as models orguides for that at Paris which dates from 1220, those in the northand south transepts at Rheims, about 1230, and so on, from parent tochild, till the rose faded forever. No doubt there were Romanesqueroses before 1200, and we shall see them, but this rose of Mantes isthe first Gothic rose of great dimensions, and that from which theothers grew; in its simplicity, its honesty, its large liberality ofplan, it is also one of the best, if M. Viollet-le-Duc is a trueguide; but you will see a hundred roses, first or last, and canchoose as you would among the flowers. 

More interesting than even the great rose of the portal is theremark that the same rose-motive is carried round the churchthroughout its entire system of fenestration. As one follows it, onthe outside, one sees that all the windows are constructed on thesame rose-scheme; but the most curious arrangement is in the choirinside the church. You look up to each of the windows through a sortof tunnel or telescope: an arch enlarging outwards, the roses at theend resembling "oeil-de-boeufs, " "oculi. " So curious is thisarrangement that Viollet-le-Duc has shown it, under the head"Triforium, " in drawings and sections which any one can study wholikes; its interest to us is that this arrangement in the choir wasprobably the experiment which proved a failure in Notre Dame atParis, and led to the tearing-out the old windows and substitutingthose which still stand. Perhaps the rose did not give enough light, although the church at Mantes seems well lighted, and even at Paristhe rose windows remain in the transepts and in one bay of the nave. 

All this is introduction to the windows of Chartres, but these threechurches open another conundrum as one learns, bit by bit, a few ofthe questions to be asked of the forgotten Middle Ages. The churchtowers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they areevidently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet theyhave no fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has nofleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, arefinished in full preparation for them? This double omission on thepart of the French architect seems exceedingly strange, because hisrival at Chartres finished his fleche just when the architect ofParis and Mantes was finishing his towers (1175-1200). The Frenchmanwas certainly consumed by jealousy at the triumph never attained onanything like the same scale by any architect of the Ile de France;and he was actually engaged at the time on at least two fleches, close to Paris, one at Saint-Denis, another of Saint-Leu-d'Esserent, which proved the active interest he took in the difficultiesconquered at Chartres, and his perfect competence to deal with them. 

Indeed, one is tempted to say that these twin churches, Paris andMantes, are the only French churches of the time (1200) which wereleft without a fleche. As we go from Mantes to Paris, we pass, abouthalf-way, at Poissy, under the towers of a very ancient andinteresting church which has the additional merit of havingwitnessed the baptism of Saint Louis in 1215. Parts of the church atPoissy go back to the seventh and ninth centuries. The square baseof the tower dates back before the time of Hugh Capet, to theCarolingian age, and belongs, like the square tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres at Paris, to the old defensive militaryarchitecture; but it has a later, stone fleche and it has, too, byexception a central octagonal clocher, with a timber fleche whichdates from near 1100. Paris itself has not much to show, but in theimmediate neighbourhood are a score of early churches with charmingfleches, and at Etampes, about thirty-five miles to the south, is anextremely interesting church with an exquisite fleche, which mayclaim an afternoon to visit. That at Saint-Leu-d'Esserent is a stilleasier excursion, for one need only drive over from Chantilly acouple of miles. The fascinating old Abbey Church of Saint-Leu looksdown over the valley of the Oise, and is a sort of antechamber toChartres, as far as concerns architecture. Its fleche, built towards1160, --when that at Chartres was rising, --is unlike any other, andshows how much the French architects valued their lovely Frenchcreation. On its octagonal faces, it carries upright batons, orlances, as a device for relieving the severity of the outlines; adevice both intelligent and amusing, though it was never imitated. Alittle farther from Paris, at Senlis, is another fleche, which showsstill more plainly the effort of the French architects to vary andelaborate the Chartres scheme. As for Laon, which is interestingthroughout, and altogether the most delightful building in the Ilede France, the fleches are gone, but the towers are there, and youwill have to study them, before studying those at Chartres, with allthe intelligence you have to spare. They were the chef-d'oeuvre ofthe mediaeval architect, in his own opinion. 

All this makes the absence of fleches at Paris and Mantes the morestrange. Want of money was certainly not the cause, since theParisians had money enough to pull their whole cathedral to piecesat the very time when fleches were rising in half the towns withinsight of them. Possibly they were too ambitious, and could find nodesign that seemed to satisfy their ambition. They took pride intheir cathedral, and they tried hard to make their shrine of OurLady rival the great shrine at Chartres. Of course, one must studytheir beautiful church, but this can be done at leisure, for, as itstands, it is later than Chartres and more conventional. Saint-Germain-des-Pres leads more directly to Chartres; but perhaps thechurch most useful to know is no longer a church at all, but a partof the Museum of Arts et Metiers, --the desecrated Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a name which shows that it dates from a time when thepresent Porte-Saint-Martin was far out among fields. The choir ofSaint-Martin, which is all that needs noting, is said by M. Enlartto date from about 1150. Hidden in a remnant of old Paris near thePont Notre Dame, where the student life of the Middle Ages was to bemost turbulent and the Latin Quarter most renowned, is the littlechurch of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, towards 1170. On the whole, further search in Paris would not greatly help us. If one is topursue the early centuries, one must go farther afield, for theschools of Normandy and the Ile de France were only two among half adozen which flourished in the various provinces that were to beunited in the kingdom of Saint Louis and his successors. We have noteven looked to the south and east, whence the impulse came. The oldCarolingian school, with its centre at Aix-la-Chapelle, is quitebeyond our horizon. The Rhine had a great Romanesque architecture ofits own. One broad architectural tide swept up the Rhone and filledthe Burgundian provinces as far as the watershed of the Seine. Another lined the Mediterranean, with a centre at Arles. Anotherspread up the western rivers, the Charente and the Loire, reachingto Le Mans and touching Chartres. Two more lay in the centre ofFrance, spreading from Perigord and Clermont in Auvergne. All theseschools had individual character, and all have charm; but we haveset out to go from Mont-Saint-Michel to Chartres in three centuries, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, trying to get, on the way, not technical knowledge; not accurate information; not correct viewseither on history, art, or religion; not anything that can possiblybe useful or instructive; but only a sense of what those centurieshad to say, and a sympathy with their ways of saying it. Let us gostraight to Chartres!

CHAPTER V

TOWERS AND PORTALS

For a first visit to Chartres, choose some pleasant morning when thelights are soft, for one wants to be welcome, and the cathedral hasmoods, at times severe. At best, the Beauce is a country none toogay. 

The first glimpse that is caught, and the first that was meant to becaught, is that of the two spires. With all the education thatNormandy and the Ile de France can give, one is still ignorant. Thespire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentimentalmost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story ata glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man'saspirations were highest. Yet nine persons out of ten--perhapsninety-nine in a hundred--who come within sight of the two spires ofChartres will think it a jest if they are told that the smaller ofthe two, the simpler, the one that impresses them least, is the onewhich they are expected to recognize as the most perfect piece ofarchitecture in the world. Perhaps the French critics might denythat they make any such absolute claim; in that case you can askthem what their exact claim is; it will always be high enough toastonish the tourist. 

Astonished or not, we have got to take this southern spire of theChartres Cathedral as the object of serious study, and before takingit as art, must take it as history. The foundations of this tower--always to be known as the "old tower"--are supposed to have beenlaid in 1091, before the first crusade. The fleche was probably halfa century later (1145-70). The foundations of the new tower, opposite, were laid not before 1110, when also the portal whichstands between them, was begun with the three lancet windows aboveit, but not the rose. For convenience, this old facade--includingthe portal and the two towers, but not the fleches, and the threelancet windows, but not the rose--may be dated as complete about1150. 

Originally the whole portal--the three doors and the three lancets--stood nearly forty feet back, on the line of the interiorfoundation, or rear wall of the towers. This arrangement threw thetowers forward, free on three sides, as at Poitiers, and gave roomfor a parvis, before the portal, --a porch, roofed over, to protectthe pilgrims who always stopped there to pray before entering thechurch. When the church was rebuilt after the great fire of 1194, and the architect was required to enlarge the interior, the oldportal and lancets were moved bodily forward, to be flush with thefront walls of the two towers, as you see the facade to-day; and thefacade itself was heightened, to give room for the rose, and tocover the loftier pignon and vaulting behind. Finally, the woodenroof, above the stone vault, was masked by the Arcade of Kings andits railing, completed in the taste of Philip the Hardy, who reignedfrom 1270 to 1285. 

These changes have, of course, altered the values of all the parts. The portal is injured by being thrown into a glare of light, when itwas intended to stand in shadow, as you will see in the north andsouth porches over the transept portals. The towers are hurt bylosing relief and shadow; but the old fleche is obliged to sufferthe cruellest wrong of all by having its right shoulder hunched upby half of a huge rose and the whole of a row of kings, when it wasbuilt to stand free, and to soar above the whole facade from the topof its second storey. One can easily figure it so and replace thelost parts of the old facade, more or less at haphazard, from thefront of Noyon. 

What an outrage it was you can see by a single glance at the newfleche opposite. The architect of 1500 has flatly refused to submitto such conditions, and has insisted, with very proper self-respect, on starting from the balustrade of the Arcade of Kings as his level. Not even content with that, he has carried up his square toweranother lofty storey before he would consent to touch the heart ofhis problem, the conversion of the square tower into the octagonfleche. In doing this, he has sacrificed once more the old fleche;but his own tower stands free as it should. 

At Vendome, when you go there, you will be in a way to appreciatestill better what happened to the Chartres fleche; for the clocherat Vendome, which is of the same date, --Viollet-le-Duc says earlier, and Enlart, "after 1130, "--stood and still stands free, like anItalian campanile, which gives it a vast advantage. The tower ofSaint-Leu-d'Esserent, also after 1130, stands free, above the secondstorey. Indeed, you will hardly find, in the long list of famousFrench spires, another which has been treated with so much indignityas this, the greatest and most famous of all; and perhaps the mostannoying part of it is that you must be grateful to the architect of1195 for doing no worse. He has, on the contrary, done his best toshow respect for the work of his predecessor, and has done so wellthat, handicapped as it is, the old tower still defies rivalry. Nearly three hundred and fifty feet high, or, to be exact, 106. 5metres from the church floor, it is built up with an amount ofintelligence and refinement that leaves to unprofessional visitorsno chance to think a criticism--much less to express one. Perhaps--when we have seen more--and feel less--who knows?--but certainly notnow!

"The greatest and surely the most beautiful monument of this kindthat we possess in France, " says Viollet-le-Duc; but although anignorant spectator must accept the architect's decision on a pointof relative merit, no one is compelled to accept his reasons, asfinal. "There is no need to dwell, " he continues, "upon the beautyand the grandeur of composition in which the artist has given proofof rare sobriety, where all the effects are obtained, not byornaments, but by the just and skilful proportion of the differentparts. The transition, so hard to adjust, between the square baseand the octagon of the fleche, is managed and carried out with anaddress which has not been surpassed in similar monuments. " Onestumbles a little at the word "adresse. " One never caught one's selfusing the word in Norman churches. Your photographs of Bayeux orBoscherville or Secqueville will show you at a glance whether theterm "adresse" applies to them. Even Vendome would rather be praisedfor "droiture" than for "adresse. "--Whether the word "adresse" meanscleverness, dexterity, adroitness, or simple technical skill, thething itself is something which the French have always admired morethan the Normans ever did. Viollet-le-Duc himself seems to be alittle uncertain whether to lay most stress on the one or the otherquality: "If one tries to appreciate the conception of this tower, "quotes the Abbe Bulteau (11, 84), "one will see that it is as frankas the execution is simple and skilful. Starting from the bottom, one reaches the summit of the fleche without marked break; withoutanything to interrupt the general form of the building. Thisclocher, whose base is broad (pleine), massive, and free fromornament, transforms itself, as it springs, into a sharp spire witheight faces, without its being possible to say where the massiveconstruction ends and the light construction begins. "

Granting, as one must, that this concealment of the transition is abeauty, one would still like to be quite sure that the Chartresscheme is the best. The Norman clochers being thrown out, and thatat Vendome being admittedly simple, the Clocher de Saint-Jean on theChurch of Saint-Germain at Auxerre seems to be thought among thenext in importance, although it is only about one hundred and sixtyfeet in height (forty-nine metres), and therefore hardly in the sameclass with Chartres. Any photograph shows that the Auxerre spire isalso simple; and that at Etampes you have seen already to be of theVendome rather than of the Chartres type. The clocher at Senlis ismore "habile"; it shows an effort to be clever, and offers astandard of comparison; but the mediaeval architects seem to havethought that none of them bore rivalry with Laon for technicalskill. One of these professional experts, named Villard deHonnecourt, who lived between 1200 and 1250, left a notebook whichyou can see in the vitrines of the Bibliotheque Nationale in the RueRichelieu, and which is the source of most that is known about thepractical ideas of mediaeval architects. He came to Chartres, and, standing here before the doors, where we are standing, he made arough drawing, not of the tower, but of the rose, which was thenprobably new, since it must have been planned between 1195 and 1200. Apparently the tower did not impress him strongly, for he made nonote of it; but on the other hand, when he went to Laon, he becamevehement in praise of the cathedral tower there, which must havebeen then quite new: "I have been in many countries, as you can findin this book. In no place have I ever such a tower seen as that ofLaon. --J'ai este en mult de tieres, si cum vus pores trover en cestlivre. En aucun liu onques tel tor ne vi com est cele de Loon. " Thereason for this admiration is the same that Viollet-le-Duc gives foradmiring the tower of Chartres--the "adresse" with which the squareis changed into the octagon. Not only is the tower itself changedinto the fleche without visible junction, under cover of four cornertourelles, of open work, on slender columns, which start as squares;but the tourelles also convert themselves into octagons in the veryact of rising, and end in octagon fleches that carry up--or oncecarried up--the lines of profile to the central fleche that soaredabove them. Clearly this device far surpassed in cleverness thescheme of Chartres, which was comparatively heavy and structural, the weights being adjusted for their intended work, while thetransformation at Laon takes place in the air, and challengesdiscovery in defiance of one's keenest eyesight. "Regard. . . How thetourelles pass from one disposition to another, in rising! Meditateon it!"

The fleche of Laon is gone, but the tower and tourelles are stillthere to show what the architects of the thirteenth century thoughttheir most brilliant achievement. One cannot compare Chartresdirectly with any of its contemporary rivals, but one can at leastcompare the old spire with the new one which stands opposite andrises above it. Perhaps you will like the new best. Built at a timewhich is commonly agreed to have had the highest standard of taste, it does not encourage tourist or artist to insist on setting upstandards of his own against it. Begun in 1507, it was finished in1517. The dome of Saint Peter's at Rome, over which Bramante andRaphael and Michael Angelo toiled, was building at the same time;Leonardo da Vinci was working at Amboise; Jean Bullant, PierreLescot, and their patron, Francis I, were beginning theirarchitectural careers. Four hundred years, or thereabouts, separatedthe old spire from the new one; and four hundred more separate thenew one from us. If Viollet-le-Duc, who himself built Gothic spires, had cared to compare his fleches at Clermont-Ferrand with the newfleche at Chartres, he might perhaps have given us a rule where"adresse" ceases to have charm, and where detail becomes tiresome;but in the want of a schoolmaster to lay down a law of taste, youcan admire the new fleche as much as you please. Of course, one seesthat the lines of the new tower are not clean, like those of theold; the devices that cover the transition from the square to theoctagon are rather too obvious; the proportion of the fleche to thetower quite alters the values of the parts; a rigid classical tastemight even go so far as to hint that the new tower, in comparisonwith the old, showed signs of a certain tendency toward a dim anddistant vulgarity. There can be no harm in admitting that the newtower is a little wanting in repose for a tower whose business is tocounterpoise the very classic lines of the old one; but no lawcompels you to insist on absolute repose in any form of art; if sucha law existed, it would have to deal with Michael Angelo before itdealt with us. The new tower has many faults, but it has greatbeauties, as you can prove by comparing it with other late Gothicspires, including those of Viollet-le-Duc. Its chief fault is to bewhere it is. As a companion to the crusades and to Saint Bernard, itlacks austerity. As a companion to the Virgin of Chartres, itrecalls Diane de Poitiers. 

In fact, the new tower, which in years is four centuries youngerthan its neighbour, is in feeling fully four hundred years older. Itis self-conscious if not vain; its coiffure is elaborately arrangedto cover the effects of age, and its neck and shoulders are coveredwith lace and jewels to hide a certain sharpness of skeleton. Yet itmay be beautiful, still; the poets derided the wrinkles of Diane dePoitiers at the very moment when King Henry II idealized her withthe homage of a Don Quixote; an atmosphere of physical beauty anddecay hangs about the whole Renaissance. 

One cannot push these resemblances too far, even for the twelfthcentury and the old tower. Exactly what date the old towerrepresents, as a social symbol, is a question that might be as muchdisputed as the beauty of Diane de Poitiers, and yet half theinterest of architecture consists in the sincerity of its reflectionof the society that builds. In mere time, by actual date, the oldtower represents the second crusade, and when, in 1150, SaintBernard was elected chief of that crusade in this very cathedral, --or rather, in the cathedral of 1120, which was burned, --the workmenwere probably setting in mortar the stones of the fleche as we nowsee them; yet the fleche does not represent Saint Bernard infeeling, for Saint Bernard held the whole array of church-towers inhorror as signs merely of display, wealth and pride. The flecherather represents Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, Abbot Peter theVenerable of Cluny, Abbot Abelard of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, andQueen Eleanor of Guienne, who had married Louis-le-Jeune in 1137;who had taken the cross from Saint Bernard in 1147; who returnedfrom the Holy Land in 1149; and who compelled Saint Bernard toapprove her divorce in 1152. Eleanor and Saint Bernard werecenturies apart, yet they lived at the same time and in the samechurch. Speaking exactly, the old tower represents neither of them;the new tower itself is hardly more florid than Eleanor was; perhapsless so, if one can judge from the fashions of the court-dress ofher time. The old tower is almost Norman, while Eleanor was whollyGascon, and Gascony was always florid without being always correct. The new tower, if it had been built in 1150, like the old one, wouldhave expressed Eleanor perfectly, even in height and apparent effortto dwarf its mate, except that Eleanor dwarfed her husband withoutan effort, and both in art and in history the result lacked harmony. 

Be the contrast what it may, it does not affect the fact that noother church in France has two spires that need be discussed incomparison with these. Indeed, no other cathedral of the same classhas any spires at all, and this superiority of Chartres gave most ofits point to a saying that "with the spires of Chartres, the choirof Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, and the facade of Rheims, " onecould make a perfect church--for us tourists. 

The towers have taken much time, though they are the least religiousand least complicated part of church architecture, and in no wayessential to the church; indeed, Saint Bernard thought them anexcrescence due to pride and worldliness, and this is merely SaintBernard's way of saying that they were an ornament created togratify the artistic sense of beauty. Beautiful as they are, one'seyes must drop at last down to the church itself. If the spiresymbolizes aspiration, the door symbolizes the way; and the portalof Chartres is the type of French doors; it stands first in thehistory of Gothic art; and, in the opinion of most Gothic artists, first in the interest of all art, though this is no concern of ours. Here is the Way to Eternal Life as it was seen by the Church and theArt of the first crusade!

The fortune of this monument has been the best attested Miracle dela Vierge in the long list of the Virgin's miracles, for it comesdown, practically unharmed, through what may with literal accuracybe called the jaws of destruction and the flames of hell. Built sometime in the first half of the twelfth century, it passed, apparentlyunscathed, through the great fire of 1194 which burnt out the churchbehind, and even the timber interior of the towers in front of it. Owing to the enormous mass of timber employed in the structure ofthe great churches, these recurrent fires were as destructive asfire can be made, yet not only the portals with their statuary andcarving, but also the lancet windows with their glass, escaped theflames; and, what is almost equally strange, escaped also the handof the builder afterwards, who, if he had resembled otherarchitects, would have made a new front of his own, but who, withpiety unexampled, tenderly took the old stones down, one by one, andreplaced them forty feet in advance of their old position. TheEnglish wars and the wars of religion brought new dangers, sieges, and miseries; the revolution of 1792 brought actual rapine andwaste; boys have flung stones at the saints; architects have wreakedtheir taste within and without; fire after fire has calcined thechurch vaults; the worst wrecker of all, the restorer of thenineteenth century, has prowled about it; yet the porch stillstands, mutilated but not restored, burned but not consumed, aseloquent a witness to the power and perfections of Our Lady as itwas seven hundred years ago, and perhaps more impressive. 

You will see portals and porches more or less of the same periodelsewhere in many different places, --at Paris, Le Mans, Sens, Autun, Vezelay, Clermont-Ferrand, Moissac, Arles, --a score of them; for thesame piety has protected them more than once; but you will see noother so complete or so instructive, and you may search far beforeyou will find another equally good in workmanship. Study of theChartres portal covers all the rest. The feeling and motive of allare nearly the same, or vary only to suit the character of thepatron saint; and the point of all is that this feeling is thearchitectural child of the first crusade. At Chartres one can readthe first crusade in the portal, as at Mont-Saint-Michel in theAquilon and the promenoir. 

The Abbe Bulteau gives reason for assuming the year 1117 as theapproximate date of the sculpture about the west portal, and you sawat Mont-Saint-Michel, in the promenoir of Abbot Roger II, anaccurately dated work of the same decade; but whatever the date ofthe plan, the actual work and its spirit belong to 1145 orthereabouts, Some fifty years had passed since the crusadersstreamed through Constantinople to Antioch and Jerusalem, and theywere daily going and returning. You can see the ideas they broughtback with the relics and missals and enamels they bought inByzantium. Over the central door is the Christ, which might besculptured after a Byzantine enamel, with its long nimbus or aureoleor glory enclosing the whole figure. Over the left door is anAscension, bearing the same stamp; and over the right door, theseated Virgin, with her crown and her two attendant archangels, isan empress. Here is the Church, the Way, and the Life of the twelfthcentury that we have undertaken to feel, if not to understand!

First comes the central doorway, and above it is the glory ofChrist, as the church at Chartres understood Christ in the year1150; for the glories of Christ were many, and the Chartres Christis one. Whatever Christ may have been in other churches, here, onthis portal, he offers himself to his flock as the herald ofsalvation alone. Among all the imagery of these three doorways, there is no hint of fear, punishment, or damnation, and this is thenote of the whole time. Before 1200, the Church seems not to havefelt the need of appealing habitually to terror; the promise of hopeand happiness was enough; even the portal at Autun, which displays aLast Judgment, belonged to Saint Lazarus the proof and symbol ofresurrection. A hundred years later, every church portal showedChrist not as Saviour but as Judge, and He presided over a LastJudgment at Bourges and Amiens, and here on the south portal, wherethe despair of the damned is the evident joy of the artist, if it isnot even sometimes a little his jest, which is worse. At ChartresChrist is identified with His Mother, the spirit of love and grace, and His Church is the Church Triumphant. 

Not only is fear absent; there is not even a suggestion of pain;there is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom; and what isstill more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from theNativity to the Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns, the single scene that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, aseverywhere in this portal, the artists seem actually to have goneout of their way in order to avoid a suggestion of suffering. Theyhave pictured Christ and His Mother in all the other events of theirlives; they have represented evangelists; apostles; the twenty-fourold men of the Apocalypse; saints, prophets, kings, queens, andprinces, by the score; the signs of the zodiac, and even the sevenliberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; everything is there except misery. 

Perhaps Our Lady of Chartres was known to be peculiarly gracious andgentle, and this may partially account also for the extremepopularity of her shrine; but whatever the reason, her church wasclearly intended to show only this side of her nature, and toimpress it on her Son. You can see it in the grave and gracious faceand attitude of the Christ, raising His hand to bless you as youenter His kingdom; in the array of long figures which line theentrance to greet you as you pass; in the expression of majesty andmercy of the Virgin herself on her throne above the southerndoorway; never once are you regarded as a possible rebel, ortraitor, or a stranger to be treated with suspicion, or as a childto be impressed by fear. Equally distinct, perhaps even moreemphatic, is the sculptor's earnestness to make you feel, withoutdirect insistence, that you are entering the Court of the Queen ofHeaven who is one with her Son and His Church. The central dooralways bore the name of the "Royal Door, " because it belonged to thecelestial majesty of Christ, and naturally bears the stamp ofroyalty; but the south door belongs to the Virgin and to us. Stop amoment to see how she receives us, remembering, or trying toremember, that to the priests and artists who designed the portal, and to the generations that went on the first and second crusades, the Virgin in her shrine was at least as living, as real, aspersonal an empress as the Basilissa at Constantinople!

On the lintel immediately above the doorway is a succession of smallgroups: first, the Annunciation; Mary stands to receive theArchangel Gabriel, who comes to announce to her that she is chosento be the Mother of God. The second is the Visitation, and in thisscene also Mary stands, but she already wears a crown; at least, theAbbe Bulteau says so, although time has dealt harshly with it. Then, in the centre, follows the Nativity; Mary lies on a low bed, beneath, or before, a sort of table or cradle on which lies theInfant, while Saint Joseph stands at the bed's head. Then the angelappears, directing three shepherds to the spot, filling the rest ofthe space. 

In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace atChartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted herpeople to share. The Virgin of Chartres was the greatest of allqueens, but the most womanly of women, as we shall see; and herdouble character is sustained throughout her palace. She was alsointellectually gifted in the highest degree. In the upper zone yousee her again, at the Presentation in the Temple, supporting theChild Jesus on the altar, while Simeon aids. Other figures bringofferings. The voussures of the arch above contain six archangels, with curious wings, offering worship to the Infant and His ImperialMother. Below are the signs of the zodiac; the Fishes and the Twins. The rest of the arch is filled by the seven liberal arts, withPythagoras, Aristotle, Cicero, Euclid, Nicomachus, Ptolemy, andPriscian as their representatives, testifying to the Queen'sintellectual superiority. 

In the centre sits Mary, with her crown on her head and her Son inher lap, enthroned, receiving the homage of heaven and earth; of alltime, ancient and modern; of all thought, Christian and Pagan; ofall men, and all women; including, if you please, your homage andmine, which she receives without question, as her due; which shecannot be said to claim, because she is above making claims; she isempress. Her left hand bore a sceptre; her right supported theChild, Who looks directly forward, repeating the Mother's attitude, and raises His right hand to bless, while His left rests on the orbof empire. She and her Child are one. 

All this was noble beyond the nobility of man, but its earthly formwas inspired by the Empire rather than by the petty royalty ofLouis-le-Gros or his pious queen Alix of Savoy. One mark of theperiod is the long, oval nimbus; another is the imperial characterof the Virgin; a third is her unity with the Christ which is theChurch. To us, the mark that will distinguish the Virgin ofChartres, or, if you prefer, the Virgin of the Crusades, is hercrown and robes and throne. According to M. Rohault de Fleury's"Iconographie de la Sainte Vierge" (11, 62), the Virgin's headdressand ornaments had been for long ages borrowed from the costume ofthe Empresses of the East in honour of the Queen of Heaven. No doubtthe Virgin of Chartres was the Virgin recognized by the EmpressHelena, mother of Constantine, and was at least as old as Helena'spilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326. She was not a Western, feudal queen, nor was her Son a feudal king; she typified an authority which thepeople wanted, and the fiefs feared; the Pax Romana; the omnipotenceof God in government. In all Europe, at that time, there was nopower able to enforce justice or to maintain order, and no symbol ofsuch a power except Christ and His Mother and the Imperial Crown. 

This idea is very different from that which was the object of ourpilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel; but since all Chartres is to be onelong comment upon it, you can lay the history of the matter on theshelf for study at your leisure, if you ever care to study into theweary details of human illusions and disappointments, while here wepray to the Virgin, and absorb ourselves in the art, which is yourpleasure and which shall not teach either a moral or a usefullesson. The Empress Mary is receiving you at her portal, and whetheryou are an impertinent child, or a foolish old peasant-woman, or aninsolent prince, or a more insolent tourist, she receives you withthe same dignity; in fact, she probably sees very little differencebetween you. An empress of Russia to-day would probably feel littledifference in the relative rank of her subjects, and the Virgin wasempress over emperors, patriarchs, and popes. Any one, howeverignorant, can feel the sustained dignity of the sculptor's work, which is asserted with all the emphasis he could put into it. Notone of these long figures which line the three doorways but is anofficer or official in attendance on the Empress or her Son, andbears the stamp of the Imperial Court. They are mutilated, but, ifthey have been treated with indignity, so were often their temporalrivals, torn to pieces, trampled on, to say nothing of being merelybeheaded or poisoned, in the Sacred Palace and the Hippodrome, without losing that peculiar Oriental dignity of style which seemsto drape the least dignified attitudes. The grand air of the twelfthcentury is something like that of a Greek temple; you can, if youlike, hammer every separate stone to pieces, but you cannot hammerout the Greek style. There were originally twenty-four of thesestatues, and nineteen remain. Beginning at the north end, andpassing over the first figure, which carries a head that does notbelong to it, notice the second, a king with a long sceptre ofempire, a book of law, and robes of Byzantine official splendour. Beneath his feet is a curious woman's head with heavy braids ofhair, and a crown. The third figure is a queen, charming as a woman, but particularly well-dressed, and with details of ornament andperson elaborately wrought; worth drawing, if one could only draw;worth photographing with utmost care to include the strange supporton which she stands: a monkey, two dragons, a dog, a basilisk with adog's head. Two prophets follow--not so interesting;--prophetsrarely interest. Then comes the central bay: two queens who claimparticular attention, then a prophet, then a saint next the doorway;then on the southern jamb-shafts, another saint, a king, a queen, and another king. Last comes the southern bay, the Virgin's own, andthere stands first a figure said to be a youthful king; then astrongly sculptured saint; next the door a figure called also aking, but so charmingly delicate in expression that the robes alonebetray his sex; and who this exquisite young aureoled king may havebeen who stands so close to the Virgin, at her right hand, no onecan now reveal. Opposite him is a saint who may be, or should be, the Prince of the Apostles; then a bearded king with a brokensceptre, standing on two dragons; and, at last, a badly mutilatedqueen. 

These statues are the Eginetan marbles of French art; from them allmodern French sculpture dates, or ought to date. They are singularlyinteresting; as naif as the smile on the faces of the Greekwarriors, but no more grotesque than they. You will see Gothicgrotesques in plenty, and you cannot mistake the two intentions; thetwelfth century would sooner have tempted the tortures of everyfeudal dungeon in Europe than have put before the Virgin's eyes anyfigure that could be conceived as displeasing to her. These figuresare full of feeling, and saturated with worship; but what is most toour purpose is the feminine side which they proclaim and insistupon. Not only the number of the female figures, and their beauty, but also the singularly youthful beauty of several of the males; thesuperb robes they wear; the expression of their faces and theirfigures; the details of hair, stuffs, ornaments, jewels; therefinement and feminine taste of the whole, are enough to startleour interest if we recognize what meaning they had to the twelfthcentury. 

These figures looked stiff and long and thin and ridiculous toenlightened citizens of the eighteenth century, but they were madeto fit the architecture; if you want to know what an enthusiastthinks of them, listen to M. Huysmans's "Cathedral. " "Beyond adoubt, the most beautiful sculpture in the world is in this place. "He can hardly find words to express his admiration for the queens, and particularly for the one on the right of the central doorway. "Never in any period has a more expressive figure been thus wroughtby the genius of man; it is the chef-d'oeuvre of infantile grace andholy candour . . . . She is the elder sister of the Prodigal Son, theone of whom Saint Luke does not speak, but who, if she existed, would have pleaded the cause of the absent, and insisted, with thefather, that he should kill the fatted calf at his son's return. "The idea is charming if you are the returning son, as many twelfth-century pilgrims must have thought themselves; but, in truth, thefigure is that of a queen; an Eleanor of Guienne; her position thereis due to her majesty, which bears witness to the celestial majestyof the Court in which she is only a lady-in-waiting: and she ishardly more humanly fascinating than her brother, the youthful kingat the Virgin's right hand, who has nothing of the Prodigal Son, butwho certainly has much of Lohengrin, or even--almost--Tristan. 

The Abbe Bulteau has done his best to name these statues, but thenames would be only in your way. That the sculptor meant them for aQueen of Sheba or a King of Israel has little to do with theirmeaning in the twelfth century, when the people were much morelikely to have named them after the queens and kings they knew. Thewhole charm lies for us in the twelfth-century humanity of Mary andher Court; not in the scriptural names under which it was madeorthodox. Here, in this western portal, it stands as the crusadersof 1100-50 imagined it; but by walking round the church to the porchover the entrance to the north transept, you shall see it again asBlanche of Castile and Saint Louis imagined it, a hundred yearslater, so that you will know better whether the earthly attributesare exaggerated or untrue. 

Porches, like steeples, were rather a peculiarity of Frenchchurches, and were studied, varied, one might even say petted, byFrench architects to an extent hardly attempted elsewhere; but amongall the French porches, those of Chartres are the most famous. Thereare two: one on the north side, devoted to the Virgin; the other, onthe south, devoted to the Son, "The mass of intelligence, knowledge, acquaintance with effects, practical experience, expended on thesetwo porches of Chartres, " says Viollet-le-Duc, "would be enough toestablish the glory of a whole generation of artists. " We begin withthe north porch because it belonged to the Virgin; and it belongedto the Virgin because the north was cold, bleak, sunless, windy, andneeded warmth, peace, affection, and power to protect against theassaults of Satan and his swarming devils. There the all-sufferingbut the all-powerful Mother received other mothers who suffered likeher, but who, as a rule, were not powerful. Traditionally in theprimitive church, the northern porch belonged to the women. Whenthey needed help, they came here, because it was the only place inthis world or in any other where they had much hope of finding evena reception. See how Mary received them!

The porch extends the whole width of the transept, about one hundredand twenty feet (37. 65 metres), divided into three bays some twentyfeet deep, and covered with a stone vaulted roof supported on piersoutside. Begun toward 1215 under Philip Augustus, the architecturalpart was finished toward 1225 under Louis VIII; and after his deathin 1226, the decorative work and statuary were carried on under theregency of his widow, Blanche of Castile, and through the reign ofher son, Saint Louis (1235-70), until about 1275, when the work wascompleted by Philip the Hardy. A gift of the royal family of France, all the members of the family seem to have had a share in buildingit, and several of their statues have been supposed to adorn it. Thewalls are lined--the porch, in a religious sense, is inhabited--bymore than seven hundred figures, great and small, all, in one way oranother, devoted to the glory of the Queen of Heaven. You will seethat a hundred years have converted the Byzantine Empress into aFrench Queen, as the same years had converted Alix of Savoy intoBlanche of Castile; but the note of majesty is the same, and theassertion of power is, if possible, more emphatic. 

The highest note is struck at once, in the central bay, over thedoor, where you see the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven, afavourite subject in art from very early times, and the dominantidea of Mary's church. You see Mary on the left, seated on herthrone; on the right, seated on a precisely similar throne, isChrist, Who holds up His right hand apparently to bless, since Maryalready bears the crown. Mary bends forward, with her hands raisedtoward her Son, as though in gratitude or adoration or prayer, butcertainly not in an attitude of feudal homage. On either side, anarchangel swings a censer. 

On the lintel below, on the left, is represented the death of Mary;on the right, Christ carries, in the folds of His mantle, the soulof Mary in the form of a little child, and at the same time blessesthe body which is carried away by angels--The Resurrection of Mary. 

Below the lintel, supporting it, and dividing the doorway in halves, is the trumeau, --the central pier, --a new part of the portal whichwas unknown to the western door. Usually in the Virgin's churches, as at Rheims, or Amiens or Paris, the Virgin herself, with her Sonin her arms, stands against this pier, trampling on the dragon withthe woman's head. Here, not the Virgin with the Christ, but hermother Saint Anne stands, with the infant Virgin in her arms; whilebeneath is, or was, Saint Joachim, her husband, among his flocks, receiving from the Archangel Gabriel the annunciation. 

So at the entrance the Virgin declares herself divinely Queen in herown right; divinely born; divinely resurrected from death, on thethird day; seated by divine right on the throne of Heaven, at theright hand of God, the Son, with Whom she is one. 

Unless we feel this assertion of divine right in the Queen ofHeaven, apart from the Trinity, yet one with It, Chartres isunintelligible. The extreme emphasis laid upon it at the church doorshows what the church means within. Of course, the assertion was notstrictly orthodox; perhaps, since we are not members of the Church, we might be unnoticed and unrebuked if we start by suspecting thatthe worship of the Virgin never was strictly orthodox; but Chartreswas hers before it ever belonged to the Church, and, like Lourdes inour own time, was a shrine peculiarly favoured by her presence. Themere fact that it was a bishopric had little share in its sanctity. The bishop was much more afraid of Mary than he was of any ChurchCouncil ever held. 

Critics are doing their best to destroy the peculiar personalinterest of this porch, but tourists and pilgrims may be excused forinsisting on their traditional rights here, since the porch issingular, even in the thirteenth century, for belonging entirely tothem and the royal family of France, subject only to the Virgin. True artists, turned critics, think also less of rules than ofvalues, and no ignorant public can be trusted to join the critics inlosing temper judiciously over the date or correctness of a portraituntil they knew something of its motives and merits. The public hasalways felt certain that some of the statues which stand against theouter piers of this porch are portraits, and they see no force inthe objection that such decoration was not customary in the Church. Many things at Chartres were not customary in the Church, althoughthe Church now prefers not to dwell on them. Therefore the studentreturns to Viollet-le-Duc with his usual delight at finding at leastone critic whose sense of values is stronger than his sense of rule:"Each statue, " he says in his "Dictionary" (111, 166), "possessesits personal character which remains graven on the memory like therecollection of a living being whom one has known . . . . A large partof the statues in the porches of Notre Dame de Chartres, as well asof the portals of the Cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims, possess theseindividual qualities, and this it is which explains why thesestatues produce on the crowd so vivid an impression that it namesthem, knows them, and attaches to each of them an idea, often alegend. "

Probably the crowd did so from the first moment they saw thestatues, and with good reason. At all events, they have attached totwo of the most individual figures on the north porch, two names, perhaps the best known in France in the year 1226, but which sincethe year 1300 can have conveyed only the most shadowy meaning to anybut pure antiquarians. The group is so beautiful as to be given aplate to itself in the "Monographie" (number 26), as representingPhilip Hurepel and his wife Mahaut de Boulogne. So little could anycrowd, or even any antiquarian, at any time within six hundred yearshave been likely to pitch on just these persons to associate withBlanche of Castile in any kind of family unity, that the meresuggestion seems wild; yet Blanche outlived Pierre by nearly twentyyears, and her power over this transept and porch ended only withher death as regent in 1252. 

Philippe, nicknamed Hurepel, --Boarskin, --was a "fils deFrance, "whose father, Philip Augustus, had serious, not to say fatal, difficulties with the Church about the legality of his marriage, and was forced to abandon his wife, who died in 1201, after givingbirth to Hurepel in 1200. The child was recognized as legitimate, and stood next to the throne, after his half-brother Louis, who wasthirteen years older. Almost at his birth he was affianced toMahaut, Countess of Boulogne, and the marriage was celebrated in1216. Rich and strongly connected, Hurepel naturally thoughthimself--and was--head of the royal family next to the King, andwhen his half-brother, Louis VIII, died in 1226, leaving only a son, afterwards Saint Louis, a ten-year-old boy, to succeed, Hurepel veryproperly claimed the guardianship of his infant nephew, and deeplyresented being excluded by Queen Blanche from what he regarded--perhaps with justice--as his right. Nearly all the great lords andthe members of the royal family sided with him, and entered into acivil war against Blanche, at the moment when these two porches ofChartres were building, between 1228 and 1230. The two greatestleaders of the conspiracy were Hurepel, whom we are expected torecognize on the pier of this porch, and Pierre Mauclerc, ofBrittany and Dreux, whom we have no choice but to admit on thetrumeau of the other. In those days every great feudal lord was moreor less related by blood to the Crown, and although Blanche ofCastile was also a cousin as well as queen-mother, they hated her asa Spanish intruder with such hatred as men felt in an age whenpassions were real. 

That these two men should be found here, associated with Blanche inthe same work, at the same time, under the same roof, is a fantasticidea, and students can feel in this political difficulty a muchstronger objection to admitting Hurepel to Queen Blanche's porchthan any supposed rule of Church custom; yet the first privilege oftourist ignorance is the right to see, or try to see, theirthirteenth century with thirteenth-century eyes. Passing by thestatues of Philip and Mahaut, and stepping inside the church door, almost the first figure that the visitor sees on lifting his eyes tothe upper windows of the transept is another figure of PhilippeHurepel, in glass, on his knees, with clasped hands, before analtar; and to prevent possibility of mistake his blazoned coat bearsthe words: "Phi: Conte de Bolone. " Apparently he is the donor, for, in the rose above, he sits in arms on a white horse with a shieldbearing the blazon of France. Obliged to make his peace with theQueen in 1230, Hurepel died in 1233 or 1234, while Blanche was stillregent, and instantly took his place as of right side by side withBlanche's castles of Castile among the great benefactors of thechurch. 

Beneath the next rose is Mahaut herself, as donor, bearing herhusband's arms of France, suggesting that the windows must have beengiven together, probably before Philip's death in 1233, since Mahautwas married again in 1238, this time to Alfonso of Portugal, whorepudiated her in 1249, and left her to die in her own town ofBoulogne in 1258. Lastly, in the third window of the series, is herdaughter Jeanne, --"Iehenne, "--who was probably born before 1220, andwho was married in 1236 to Gaucher de Chatillon, one of the greatestwarriors of his time. Jeanne also--according to the Abbe Bulteau(111, 225)--bears the arms of her father and mother; which seems tosuggest that she gave this window before her marriage. These threewindows, therefore, have the air of dating at least as early as 1233when Philip Hurepel died, while next them follow two more roses, andthe great rose of France, presumably of the same date, all scatteredover with the castles of Queen Blanche. The motive of the porchoutside is repeated in the glass, as it should be, and as the SaintAnne of the Rose of France, within, repeats the Saint Anne on thetrumeau of the portal. The personal stamp of the royal family isintense, but the stamp of the Virgin's personality is intenserstill. In the presence of Mary, not only did princes hide theirquarrels, but they also put on their most courteous manners and themost refined and even austere address. The Byzantine display ofluxury and adornment had vanished. All the figures suggest thesanctity of the King and his sister Isabel; the court has the air ofa convent; but the idea of Mary's majesty is asserted through itall. The artists and donors and priests forgot nothing which, intheir judgment, could set off the authority, elegance, andrefinement of the Queen of Heaven; even the young ladies-in-waitingare there, figured by the twelve Virtues and the fourteenBeatitudes; and, indeed, though men are plenty and some of them arehandsome, women give the tone, the charm, and mostly theintelligence. The Court of Mary is feminine, and its charms areGrace and Love; perhaps even more grace than love, in a socialsense, if you look at Beauty and Friendship among Beatitudes. 

M. Huysmans insists that this sculpture is poor in comparison withhis twelfth-century Prodigal Daughter, and I hope you can enter intothe spirit of his enthusiasm; but other people prefer thethirteenth-century work, and think it equals the best Greek. Approaching, or surpassing this, --as you like, --is the sculpture youwill see at Rheims, of the same period, and perhaps the same hands;but, for our purpose, the Queen of Sheba, here in the right-handbay, is enough, because you can compare it on the spot with M. Huysmans's figure on the western portal, which may also be a Queenof Sheba, who, as spouse of Solomon, typified the Church, andtherefore prefigured Mary herself. Both are types of Court beautyand grace, one from the twelfth century, the other from thethirteenth, and you can prefer which you please; but you want tobear in mind that each, in her time, pleased the Virgin. You caneven take for a settled fact that these were the types of femininebeauty and grace which pleased the Virgin beyond all others. 

The purity of taste, feeling, and manners which stamps the art ofthese centuries, as it did the Court of Saint Louis and his mother, is something you will not wholly appreciate till you reach thedepravity of the Valois; but still you can see how exquisite theVirgin's taste was, and how pure. You can also see how she shrankfrom the sight of pain. Here, in the central bay, next to KingDavid, who stands at her right hand, is the great figure of Abrahamabout to sacrifice Isaac. If there is one subject more revoltingthan another to a woman who typifies the Mother, it is this subjectof Abraham and Isaac, with its compound horror of masculinestupidity and brutality. The sculptor has tried to make even thismotive a pleasing one. He has placed Abraham against the column inthe correct harshness of attitude, with his face turned aside andup, listening for his orders; but the little Isaac, with hands andfeet tied, leans like a bundle of sticks against his father's kneewith an expression of perfect faith and confidence, while Abraham'sleft hand quiets him and caresses the boy's face, with a movementthat must have gone straight to Mary's heart, for Isaac alwaysprefigured Christ. 

The glory of Mary was not one of terror, and her porch contains noappeal to any emotion but those of her perfect grace. If we were tostay here for weeks, we should find only this idea worked into everydetail. The Virgin of the thirteenth century is no longer anEmpress; she is Queen Mother, --an idealized Blanche of Castile;--toohigh to want, or suffer, or to revenge, or to aspire, but not toohigh to pity, to punish, or to pardon. The women went to her porchfor help as naturally as babies to their mother; and the men, in herpresence, fell on their knees because they feared her intelligenceand her anger. 

Not that all the men showed equal docility! We must go next, roundthe church, to the south porch, which was the gift of PierreMauclerc, Comte de Dreux, another member of the royal family, great-grandson of Louis VI, and therefore second cousin to Louis VIII andPhilip Hurepel. Philip Augustus, his father's first cousin, marriedthe young man, in 1212, to Alix, heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, and this marriage made him one of the most powerful vassals of theCrown. He joined Philip Hurepel in resisting the regency of QueenBlanche in 1227, and Blanche, after a long struggle, caused him tobe deposed in 1230. Pierre was obliged to submit, and was pardoned. Until 1236, he remained in control of the Duchy of Brittany, butthen was obliged to surrender his power to his son, and turned histurbulent activity against the infidels in Syria and Egypt, dying in1250, on his return from Saint Louis's disastrous crusade. Pierre deDreux was a masculine character, --a bad cleric, as his nicknameMauclerc testified, but a gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, and, what is more to our purpose, a man of taste. He built the southporch at Chartres, apparently as a memorial of his marriage withAlix in 1212, and the statuary is of the same date with that of thenorth porch, but, like that, it was not finished when Pierre died in1250. 

One would like to know whether Pierre preferred to take the southernentrance, or whether he was driven there by the royal claim to theVirgin's favour. The southern porch belongs to the Son, as thenorthern belongs to the Mother. Pierre never showed much deferenceto women, and probably felt more at his ease under the protection ofthe Son than of Mary; but in any case he showed as clearly aspossible what he thought on this question of persons. To Pierre, Christ was first, and he asserted his opinion as emphatically asBlanche asserted hers. 

Which porch is the more beautiful is a question for artists todiscuss and decide, if they can. Either is good enough for us, whosepose is ignorance, and whose pose is strictly correct; but apartfrom its beauty or its art, there is also the question of feeling, of motive, which puts the Porche de Dreux in contrast with thePorche de France, and this is wholly within our competence. At theoutset, the central bay displays, above the doorway, Christ, on athrone, raising His hands to show the stigmata, the wounds whichwere the proof of man's salvation. At His right hand sits theMother, --without her crown; on His left, in equal rank with theMother, sits Saint John the Evangelist. Both are in the sameattitude of supplication as intercessors; there is no distinction inrank or power between Mary and John, since neither has any powerexcept what Christ gives them. Pierre did not, indeed, put theMother on her knees before the Son, as you can see her at Amiens andin later churches, --certainly bad taste in Mary's own palace; but heallowed her no distinction which is not her strict right. The angelsabove and around bear the symbols of the Passion; they areunconscious of Mary's presence; they are absorbed in the perfectionsof the Son. On the lintel just below is the Last Judgment, whereSaint Michael reappears, weighing the souls of the dead which Maryand John above are trying to save from the strict justice of Christ. The whole melodrama of Church terrors appears after the manner ofthe thirteenth century, on this church door, without regard toMary's feelings; and below, against the trumeau, stands the greatfigure of Christ, --the whole Church, --trampling on the lion anddragon. On either side of the doorway stand six great figures of theApostles asserting themselves as the columns of the Church, andlooking down at us with an expression no longer calculated to calmour fears or encourage extravagant hopes. No figure on this porchsuggests a portrait or recalls a memory. 

Very grand, indeed, is this doorway; dignified, impressive, andmasculine to a degree seldom if ever equalled in art; and the leftbay rivals it. There, in the tympanum, Christ appears again;standing; bearing on His head the crown royal; alone, except for thetwo angels who adore, and surrounded only by the martyrs, Hiswitnesses. The right bay is devoted to Saint Nicholas and the SaintsConfessors who bear witness to the authority of Christ in faith. Ofthe twenty-eight great figures, the officers of the royal court, whomake thus the strength of the Church beneath Christ, not one is awoman. The masculine orthodoxy of Pierre Mauclerc has spared neithersex nor youth; all are of a maturity which chills the blood, excepting two, whose youthful beauty is heightened by the severityof their surroundings, so that the Abbe Bulteau makes bold even tosay that "the two statues of Saint George and of Saint Theodore maybe regarded as the most beautiful of our cathedral, perhaps even asthe two masterpieces of statuary at the end of the thirteenthcentury. " On that point, let every one follow his taste; but onereflection at least seems to force itself on the mind in comparingthese twenty-eight figures. Certainly the sword, however it maycompare with the pen in other directions, is in art more powerfulthan all the pens, or volumes, or crosiers ever made. Your "GoldenLegend" and Roman Breviary are here the only guide-books worthconsulting, and the stories of young George and Theodore stand thererecorded; as their miracle under the walls of Antioch, during thefirst crusade, is matter of history; but among these magnificentfigures one detects at a glance that it is not the religion orsacred purity of the subject, or even the miracles or thesufferings, which inspire passion for Saint George and SaintTheodore, under the Abbe's robe; it is with him, as with the plainboy and girl, simply youth, with lance and sword and shield. 

These two figures stand in the outer embrasures of the left bay, where they can be best admired, and perhaps this arrangement showswhat Perron de Dreux, as he was commonly called, loved most, in hisheart of hearts; but elsewhere, even in this porch, he relaxed hisseverity, and became at times almost gracious to women. Good judgeshave, indeed, preferred this porch to the northern one; but, be thatas you please, it contains seven hundred and eighty-three figures, large and small, to serve for comparison. Among these, the femaleelement has its share, though not a conspicuous one; and even theVirgin gets her rights, though not beside her Son. To see her, youmust stand outside in the square and, with a glass, look at thecentral pignon, or gable, of the porch. There, just above the pointof the arch, you will see Mary on her throne, crowned, wearing herroyal robes, and holding the Child on her knees, with the twoarchangels on either side offering incense. Pierre de Dreux, or someone else, admitted at last that she was Queen Regent, althoughevidently not eager to do so; and if you turn your glass up to thegable of the transept itself, above the great rose and the colonnadeover it, you can see another and a colossal statue of the Virgin, but standing, with the Child on her left arm. She seems to becrowned, and to hold the globe in her right hand; but the AbbeBulteau says it is a flower. The two archangels are still there. This figure is thought to have been a part of the finishingdecoration added by Philip the Fair in 1304. 

In theology, Pierre de Dreux seems to show himself a more learnedclerk than his cousins of France, and, as an expression of themeaning the church of Mary should externally display, the Porche deDreux, if not as personal, is as energetic as the Porche de France, or the western portal. As we pass into the Cathedral, under thegreat Christ, on the trumeau, you must stop to look at Pierrehimself. A bridegroom, crowned with flowers on his wedding-day, hekneels in prayer, while two servants distribute bread to the poor. Below, you see him again, seated with his wife Alix before a tablewith one loaf, assisting at the meal they give to the poor. Pierrekneels to God; he and his wife bow before the Virgin and the poor;--but not to Queen Blanche!

Now let us enter!--

CHAPTER VI

THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES

We must take ten minutes to accustom our eyes to the light, and wehad better use them to seek the reason why we come to Chartresrather than to Rheims or Amiens or Bourges, for the cathedral thatfills our ideal. The truth is, there are several reasons; theregenerally are, for doing the things we like; and after you havestudied Chartres to the ground, and got your reasons settled, youwill never find an antiquarian to agree with you; the architectswill probably listen to you with contempt; and even these excellentpriests, whose kindness is great, whose patience is heavenly, andwhose good opinion you would so gladly gain, will turn from you withpain, if not with horror. The Gothic is singular in this; one seemseasily at home in the Renaissance; one is not too strange in theByzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walkblindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; allthese styles seem modern, when we come close to them; but the Gothicgets away. No two men think alike about it, and no woman agrees witheither man. The Church itself never agreed about it, and thearchitects agree even less than the priests. To most minds it caststoo many shadows; it wraps itself in mystery; and when people talkof mystery, they commonly mean fear. To others, the Gothic seemshoary with age and decrepitude, and its shadows mean death. What iscurious to watch is the fanatical conviction of the Gothicenthusiast, to whom the twelfth century means exuberant youth, theeternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality broods likethe day; it is so simple and yet so complicated; it sees so much andso little; it loves so many toys and cares for so few necessities;its youth is so young, its age so old, and its youthful yearning forold thought is so disconcerting, like the mysterious senility of thebaby that--

 Deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep, Haunted forever by the eternal mind. 

One need not take it more seriously than one takes the baby itself. Our amusement is to play with it, and to catch its meaning in itssmile; and whatever Chartres maybe now, when young it was a smile. To the Church, no doubt, its cathedral here has a fixed andadministrative meaning, which is the same as that of every otherbishop's seat and with which we have nothing whatever to do. To us, it is a child's fancy; a toy-house to please the Queen of Heaven, --to please her so much that she would be happy in it, --to charm hertill she smiled. 

The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was absolute; shecould be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still awoman, who loved grace, beauty, ornament, --her toilette, robes, jewels;--who considered the arrangements of her palace withattention, and liked both light and colour; who kept a keen eye onher Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from king andarchbishops as well as from beggars and drunken priests. Sheprotected her friends and punished her enemies. She required space, beyond what was known in the Courts of kings, because she was liableat all times to have ten thousand people begging her for favours--mostly inconsistent with law--and deaf to refusal. She was extremelysensitive to neglect, to disagreeable impressions, to want ofintelligence in her surroundings. She was the greatest artist, asshe was the greatest philosopher and musician and theologist, thatever lived on earth, except her Son, Who, at Chartres, is still anInfant under her guardianship. Her taste was infallible; hersentence eternally final. This church was built for her in thisspirit of simple-minded, practical, utilitarian faith, --in thissingleness of thought, exactly as a little girl sets up a doll-housefor her favourite blonde doll. Unless you can go back to your dolls, you are out of place here. If you can go back to them, and get ridfor one small hour of the weight of custom, you shall see Chartresin glory. 

The palaces of earthly queens were hovels compared with thesepalaces of the Queen of Heaven at Chartres, Paris, Laon, Noyon, Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Bayeux, Coutances, --a list that might bestretched into a volume. The nearest approach we have made to apalace was the Merveille at Mont-Saint-Michel, but no Queen had apalace equal to that. The Merveille was built, or designed, aboutthe year 1200; toward the year 1500, Louis XI built a great castleat Loches in Touraine, and there Queen Anne de Bretagne hadapartments which still exist, and which we will visit. At Blois youshall see the residence which served for Catherine de Medicis tillher death in 1589. Anne de Bretagne was trebly queen, and Catherinede Medicis took her standard of comfort from the luxury of Florence. At Versailles you can see the apartments which the queens of theBourbon line occupied through their century of magnificence. All puttogether, and then trebled in importance, could not rival thesplendour of any single cathedral dedicated to Queen Mary in thethirteenth century; and of them all, Chartres was built to bepeculiarly and exceptionally her delight. 

One has grown so used to this sort of loose comparison, thisreckless waste of words, that one no longer adopts an idea unless itis driven in with hammers of statistics and columns of figures. Withthe irritating demand for literal exactness and perfectly straightlines which lights up every truly American eye, you will certainlyask when this exaltation of Mary began, and unless you get thedates, you will doubt the facts. It is your own fault if they aretiresome; you might easily read them all in the "Iconographie de laSainte Vierge, " by M. Rohault de Fleury, published in 1878. You canstart at Byzantium with the Empress Helena in 326, or with theCouncil of Ephesus in 431. You will find the Virgin acting as thepatron saint of Constantinople and of the Imperial residence, underas many names as Artemis or Aphrodite had borne. As Godmother [wordin Greek] Deipara [word in Greek], Pathfinder [word in Greek], afterwards gave to Murillo the subject of a famous painting, toldthat once, when he was reciting before her statue the "Ave MarisStella, " and came to the words, "Monstra te esse Matrem, " the image, pressing its breast, dropped on the lips of her servant three dropsof the milk which had nourished the Saviour. The same miracle, invarious forms, was told of many other persons, both saints andsinners; but it made so much impression on the mind of the age that, in the fourteenth century, Dante, seeking in Paradise for someofficial introduction to the foot of the Throne, found nointercessor with the Queen of Heaven more potent than Saint Bernard. You can still read Bernard's hymns to the Virgin, and even hissermons, if you like. To him she was the great mediator. In the eyesof a culpable humanity, Christ was too sublime, too terrible, toojust, but not even the weakest human frailty could fear to approachhis Mother. Her attribute was humility; her love and pity wereinfinite. "Let him deny your mercy who can say that he has everasked it in vain. "

Saint Bernard was emotional and to a certain degree mystical, likeAdam de Saint-Victor, whose hymns were equally famous, but theemotional saints and mystical poets were not by any means allowed toestablish exclusive rights to the Virgin's favour. Abelard was asdevoted as they were, and wrote hymns as well. Philosophy claimedher, and Albert the Great, the head of scholasticism, the teacher ofThomas Aquinas, decided in her favour the question: "Whether theBlessed Virgin possessed perfectly the seven liberal arts. " TheChurch at Chartres had decided it a hundred years before by puttingthe seven liberal arts next her throne, with Aristotle himself towitness; but Albertus gave the reason: "I hold that she did, for itis written, 'Wisdom has built herself a house, and has sculpturedseven columns. ' That house is the blessed Virgin; the seven columnsare the seven liberal arts. Mary, therefore, had perfect mastery ofscience. " Naturally she had also perfect mastery of economics, andmost of her great churches were built in economic centres. Theguilds were, if possible, more devoted to her than the monks; thebourgeoisie of Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Laon, spend money by millionsto gain her favour. Most surprising of all, the great military classwas perhaps the most vociferous. Of all inappropriate haunts for thegentle, courteous, pitying Mary, a field of battle seems to be theworst, if not distinctly blasphemous; yet the greatest Frenchwarriors insisted on her leading them into battle, and in the actualmelee when men were killing each other, on every battle-field inEurope, for at least five hundred years, Mary was present, leadingboth sides. The battle-cry of the famous Constable du Guesclin was"Notre-Dame-Guesclin"; "Notre-Dame-Coucy" was the cry of the greatSires de Coucy; "Notre-Dame-Auxerre"; "Notre-Dame-Sancerre"; "Notre-Dame-Hainault"; "Notre-Dame-Gueldres"; "Notre-Dame-Bourbon"; "Notre-Dame-Bearn";--all well-known battle-cries. The King's own battle atone time cried, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Denis-Montjoie"; the Dukes ofBurgundy cried, "Notre-Dame-Bourgogne"; and even the soldiers of thePope were said to cry, "Notre-Dame-Saint-Pierre. "

The measure of this devotion, which proves to any religious Americanmind, beyond possible cavil, its serious and practical reality, isthe money it cost. According to statistics, in the single centurybetween 1170 and 1270, the French built eighty cathedrals and nearlyfive hundred churches of the cathedral class, which would have cost, according to an estimate made in 1840, more than five thousandmillions to replace. Five thousand million francs is a thousandmillion dollars, and this covered only the great churches of asingle century. The same scale of expenditure had been going onsince the year 1000, and almost every parish in France had rebuiltits church in stone; to this day France is strewn with the ruins ofthis architecture, and yet the still preserved churches of theeleventh and twelfth centuries, among the churches that belong tothe Romanesque and Transition period, are numbered by hundreds untilthey reach well into the thousands. The share of this capital whichwas--if one may use a commercial figure--invested in the Virgincannot be fixed, any more than the total sum given to religiousobjects between 1000 and 1300; but in a spiritual and artisticsense, it was almost the whole, and expressed an intensity ofconviction never again reached by any passion, whether of religion, of loyalty, of patriotism, or of wealth; perhaps never evenparallelled by any single economic effort, except in war. Nearlyevery great church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries belongedto Mary, until in France one asks for the church of Notre Dame asthough it meant cathedral; but, not satisfied with this, shecontracted the habit of requiring in all churches a chapel of herown, called in English the "Lady Chapel, " which was apt to be aslarge as the church but was always meant to be handsomer; and there, behind the high altar, in her own private apartment, Mary sat, receiving her innumerable suppliants, and ready at any moment tostep up upon the high altar itself to support the totteringauthority of the local saint. 

Expenditure like this rests invariably on an economic idea. Just asthe French of the nineteenth century invested their surplus capitalin a railway system in the belief that they would make money by itin this life, in the thirteenth they trusted their money to theQueen of Heaven because of their belief in her power to repay itwith interest in the life to come. The investment was based on thepower of Mary as Queen rather than on any orthodox Church conceptionof the Virgin's legitimate station. Papal Rome never greatly lovedByzantine empresses or French queens. The Virgin of Chartres wasnever wholly sympathetic to the Roman Curia. To this day the Churchwriters--like the Abbe Bulteau or M. Rohault de Fleury--aresingularly shy of the true Virgin of majesty, whether at Chartres orat Byzantium or wherever she is seen. The fathers Martin and Cahierat Bourges alone left her true value. Had the Church controlled her, the Virgin would perhaps have remained prostrate at the foot of theCross. Dragged by a Byzantine Court, backed by popular insistenceand impelled by overpowering self-interest, the Church accepted theVirgin throned and crowned, seated by Christ, the Judge throned andcrowned; but even this did not wholly satisfy the French of thethirteenth century who seemed bent on absorbing Christ in HisMother, and making the Mother the Church, and Christ the Symbol. 

The Church had crowned and enthroned her almost from the beginning, and could not have dethroned her if it would. In all Christian art--sculpture or mosaic, painting or poetry--the Virgin's rank wasexpressly asserted. Saint Bernard, like John Comnenus, and probablyat the same time (1120-40), chanted hymns to the Virgin as Queen:--

O salutaris Virgo Stella Maris Generans prolem, Aequitatis solem, Lucis auctorem, Retinens pudorem, Suscipe laudem!

Celi Regina Per quam medicina Datur aegretis, Gratia devotis, Gaudium moestis, Mundo lux coelestis, Spesque salutis;

Aula regalis, Virgo specialis, Posce medelam Nobis et tutelam, Suscipe vota, Precibusque cuncta Pelle molesta!

O Saviour Virgin, Star of Sea, Who bore for child the Son of Justice, The source of Light, Virgin always Hear our praise!

Queen of Heaven who have given Medicine to the sick, Grace to the devout, Joy to the sad, Heaven's light to the world And hope of salvation;

Court royal, Virgin typical, Grant us cure and guard, Accept our vows, and by prayers Drive all griefs away!

As the lyrical poet of the twelfth century, Adam de Saint-Victorseems to have held rank higher if possible than that of SaintBernard, and his hymns on the Virgin are certainly quite as emphatican assertion of her majesty:--

Imperatrix supernorum! Superatrix infernorum! Eligenda via coeli, Retinenda spe fideli, Separatos a te longe Revocatos ad te junge Tuorum collegio!

Empress of the highest, Mistress over the lowest, Chosen path of Heaven, Held fast by faithful hope, Those separated from you far, Recalled to you, unite In your fold!

To delight in the childish jingle of the mediaeval Latin is a signof a futile mind, no doubt, and I beg pardon of you and of theChurch for wasting your precious summer day on poetry which wasregarded as mystical in its age and which now sounds like a nurseryrhyme; but a verse or two of Adam's hymn on the Assumption of theVirgin completes the record of her rank, and goes to complete alsothe documentary proof of her majesty at Chartres:--

Salve, Mater Salvatoris! Vas electum! Vas honoris! Vas coelestis Gratiae! Ab aeterno Vas provisum! Vas insigne! Vas excisum Manu sapientiae!

Salve, Mater pietatis, Et totius Trinitatis Nobile Triclinium! Verbi tamen incarnati Speciale majestati Praeparans hospitium!

O Maria! Stella maris! Dignitate singularis, Super omnes ordinaries Ordines coelestium! In supremo sita poli Nos commenda tuae proli, Ne terrores sive doli Nos supplantent hostium!

Mother of our Saviour, hail! Chosen vessel! Sacred Grail! Font of celestial grace! From eternity forethought! By the hand of Wisdom wrought! Precious, faultless Vase!

Hail, Mother of Divinity! Hail, Temple of the Trinity! Home of the Triune God! In whom the Incarnate Word had birth, The King! to whom you gave on earth Imperial abode. 

Oh, Maria! Constellation! Inspiration! Elevation! Rule and Law and Ordination Of the angels' host! Highest height of God's Creation, Pray your Son's commiseration, Lest, by fear or fraud, salvation For our souls be lost!

Constantly--one might better say at once, officially, she wasaddressed in these terms of supreme majesty: "Imperatrixsupernorum!" "Coeli Regina!" "Aula regalis!" but the twelfth centuryseemed determined to carry the idea out to its logical conclusionin defiance of dogma. Not only was the Son absorbed in the Mother, orrepresented as under her guardianship, but the Father fared nobetter, and the Holy Ghost followed. The poets regarded the Virginas the "Templum Trinitatis"; "totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium. "She was the refectory of the Trinity--the "Triclinium"--because therefectory was the largest room and contained the whole of themembers, and was divided in three parts by two rows of columns. Shewas the "Templum Trinitatis, " the Church itself, with its tripleaisle. The Trinity was absorbed in her. 

This is a delicate subject in the Church, and you must feel it withdelicacy, without brutally insisting on its necessarycontradictions. All theology and all philosophy are full ofcontradictions quite as flagrant and far less sympathetic. Thisparticular variety of religious faith is simply human, and has madeits appearance in one form or another in nearly all religions; butthough the twelfth century carried it to an extreme, and at Chartresyou see it in its most charming expression, we have got always tomake allowances for what was going on beneath the surface in men'sminds, consciously or unconsciously, and for the latent scepticismwhich lurks behind all faith. The Church itself never quite acceptedthe full claims of what was called Mariolatry. One may be sure, too, that the bourgeois capitalist and the student of the schools, eachfrom his own point of view, watched the Virgin with anxiousinterest. The bourgeois had put an enormous share of, his capitalinto what was in fact an economical speculation, not unlike theSouth Sea Scheme, or the railway system of our own time; except thatin one case the energy was devoted to shortening the road to Heaven;in the other, to shortening the road to Paris; but no seriousschoolman could have felt entirely convinced that God would enterinto a business partnership with man, to establish a sort of joint-stock society for altering the operation of divine and universallaws. The bourgeois cared little for the philosophical doubt if theeconomical result proved to be good, but he watched this result withhis usual practical sagacity, and required an experience of onlyabout three generations (1200-1300) to satisfy himself that relicswere not certain in their effects; that the Saints were not alwaysable or willing to help; that Mary herself could not certainly bebought or bribed; that prayer without money seemed to be quite asefficacious as prayer with money; and that neither the road toHeaven nor Heaven itself had been made surer or brought nearer by aninvestment of capital which amounted to the best part of the wealthof France. Economically speaking, he became satisfied that hisenormous money-investment had proved to be an almost total loss, andthe reaction on his mind was as violent as the emotion. For threehundred years it prostrated France. The efforts of the bourgeoisieand the peasantry to recover their property, so far as it wasrecoverable, have lasted to the present day and we had best takecare not to get mixed in those passions. 

If you are to get the full enjoyment of Chartres, you must, for thetime, believe in Mary as Bernard and Adam did, and feel her presenceas the architects did, in every stone they placed, and every touchthey chiselled. You must try first to rid your mind of thetraditional idea that the Gothic is an intentional expression ofreligious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of theGothic architects. They needed light and always more light, untilthey sacrificed safety and common sense in trying to get it. Theyconverted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminishedtheir piers, until their churches could no longer stand. You willsee the limits at Beauvais; at Chartres we have not got so far, buteven here, in places where the Virgin wanted it, --as above the highaltar, --the architect has taken all the light there was to take. Forthe same reason, fenestration became the most important part of theGothic architect's work, and at Chartres was uncommonly interestingbecause the architect was obliged to design a new system, whichshould at the same time satisfy the laws of construction and thetaste and imagination of Mary. No doubt the first command of theQueen of Heaven was for light, but the second, at least equallyimperative, was for colour. Any earthly queen, even though she werenot Byzantine in taste, loved colour; and the truest of queens--theonly true Queen of Queens--had richer and finer taste in colour thanthe queens of fifty earthly kingdoms, as you will see when we cometo the immense effort to gratify her in the glass of her windows. Illusion for illusion, --granting for the moment that Mary was anillusion, --the Virgin Mother in this instance repaid to herworshippers a larger return for their money than the capitalist hasever been able to get, at least in this world, from any otherillusion of wealth which he has tried to make a source of pleasureand profit. 

The next point on which Mary evidently insisted was the arrangementfor her private apartments, the apse, as distinguished from herthrone-room, the choir; both being quite distinct from the hall, orreception-room of the public, which was the nave with itsenlargements in the transepts. This arrangement marks thedistinction between churches built as shrines for the deity andchurches built as halls of worship for the public. The difference ischiefly in the apse, and the apse of Chartres is the mostinteresting of all apses from this point of view. 

The Virgin required chiefly these three things, or, if you like, these four: space, light, convenience; and colour decoration tounite and harmonize the whole. This concerns the interior; on theexterior she required statuary, and the only complete system ofdecorative sculpture that existed seems to belong to her churches:--Paris, Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres. Mary required all thismagnificence at Chartres for herself alone, not for the public. Asfar as one can see into the spirit of the builders, Chartres wasexclusively intended for the Virgin, as the Temple of Abydos wasintended for Osiris. The wants of man, beyond a mere roof-cover, andperhaps space to some degree, enter to no very great extent into theproblem of Chartres. Man came to render homage or to ask favours. The Queen received him in her palace, where she alone was at home, and alone gave commands. 

The artist's second thought was to exclude from his work everythingthat could displease Mary; and since Mary differed from livingqueens only in infinitely greater majesty and refinement, the artistcould admit only what pleased the actual taste of the great ladieswho dictated taste at the Courts of France and England, whichsurrounded the little Court of the Counts of Chartres. What theywere--these women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--we shallhave to see or seek in other directions; but Chartres is perhaps themost magnificent and permanent monument they left of their taste, and we can begin here with learning certain things which they werenot. 

In the first place, they were not in the least vague, dreamy, ormystical in a modern sense;--far from it! They seemed anxious onlyto throw the mysteries into a blaze of light; not so much physical, perhaps, --since they, like all women, liked moderate shadow fortheir toilettes, --but luminous in the sense of faith. There isnothing about Chartres that you would think mystical, who know yourLohengrin, Siegfried, and Parsifal. If you care to make a study ofthe whole literature of the subject, read M. Male's "Art Religieuxdu XIIIe Siecle en France, " and use it for a guide-book. Here youneed only note how symbolic and how simple the sculpture is, on theportals and porches. Even what seems a grotesque or an abstract ideais no more than the simplest child's personification. On the wallsyou may have noticed the Ane qui vielle, --the ass playing the lyre;and on all the old churches you can see "bestiaries, " as they werecalled, of fabulous animals, symbolic or not; but the symbolism isas simple as the realism of the oxen at Laon. It gave play to theartist in his effort for variety of decoration, and it amused thepeople, --probably the Virgin also was not above being amused;--nowand then it seems about to suggest what you would call an esotericmeaning, that is to say, a meaning which each one of us can considerprivate property reserved for our own amusement, and from which thepublic is excluded; yet, in truth, in the Virgin's churches thepublic is never excluded, but invited. The Virgin even had theadditional charm to the public that she was popularly supposed tohave no very marked fancy for priests as such; she was a queen, awoman, and a mother, functions, all, which priests could notperform. Accordingly, she seems to have had little taste formysteries of any sort, and even the symbols that seem mostmysterious were clear to every old peasant-woman in her church. Themost pleasing and promising of them all is the woman's figure yousaw on the front of the cathedral in Paris; her eyes bandaged; herhead bent down; her crown falling; without cloak or royal robe;holding in her hand a guidon or banner with its staff broken in morethan one place. On the opposite pier stands another woman, withroyal mantle, erect and commanding. The symbol is so graceful thatone is quite eager to know its meaning; but every child in theMiddle Ages would have instantly told you that the woman with thefalling crown meant only the Jewish Synagogue, as the one with theroyal robe meant the Church of Christ. 

Another matter for which the female taste seemed not much to carewas theology in the metaphysical sense. Mary troubled herself littleabout theology except when she retired into the south transept withPierre de Dreux. Even there one finds little said about the Trinity, always the most metaphysical subtlety of the Church. Indeed, youmight find much amusement here in searching the cathedral for anydistinct expression at all of the Trinity as a dogma recognized byMary. 

One cannot take seriously the idea that the three doors, the threeportals, and the three aisles express the Trinity, because, in thefirst place, there was no rule about it; churches might have whatportals and aisles they pleased; both Paris and Bourges have five;the doors themselves are not allotted to the three members of theTrinity, nor are the portals; while another more serious objectionis that the side doors and aisles are not of equal importance withthe central, but mere adjuncts and dependencies, so that thearchitect who had misled the ignorant public into accepting so blacka heresy would have deserved the stake, and would probably have goneto it. Even this suggestion of trinity is wanting in the transepts, which have only one aisle, and in the choir, which has five, as wellas five or seven chapels, and, as far as an ignorant mind canpenetrate, no triplets whatever. Occasionally, no doubt, you willdiscover in some sculpture or window, a symbol of the Trinity, butthis discovery itself amounts to an admission of its absence as acontrolling idea, for the ordinary worshipper must have been atleast as blind as we are, and to him, as to us, it would have seemeda wholly subordinate detail. Even if the Trinity, too, is anywhereexpressed, you will hardly find here an attempt to explain itsmetaphysical meaning--not even a mystic triangle. 

The church is wholly given up to the Mother and the Son. The Fatherseldom appears; the Holy Ghost still more rarely. At least, this isthe impression made on an ordinary visitor who has no motive to beorthodox; and it must have been the same with the thirteenth-centuryworshipper who came here with his mind absorbed in the perfectionsof Mary. Chartres represents, not the Trinity, but the identity ofthe Mother and Son. The Son represents the Trinity, which is thusabsorbed in the Mother. The idea is not orthodox, but this is noaffair of ours. The Church watches over its own. 

The Virgin's wants and tastes, positive and negative, ought now tobe clear enough to enable you to feel the artist's sincerity intrying to satisfy them; but first you have still to convinceyourselves of the people's sincerity in employing the artists. Thispoint is the easiest of all, for the evidence is express. In theyear 1145 when the old fleche was begun, --the year before SaintBernard preached the second crusade at Vezelay, --Abbot Haimon, ofSaint-Pierre-sur-Dives in Normandy, wrote to the monks of TutburyAbbey in England a famous letter to tell of the great work which theVirgin was doing in France and which began at the Church ofChartres. "Hujus sacrae institutionis ritus apud Carnotensemecclesiam est inchoatus. " From Chartres it had spread throughNormandy, where it produced among other things the beautiful spirewhich we saw at Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives. "Postremo per totam fereNormanniam longe lateque convaluit ac loca per singula Matrimisericordiae dicata praecipue occupavit. " The movement affectedespecially the places devoted to Mary, but ran through all Normandy, far and wide. Of all Mary's miracles, the best attested, next to thepreservation of her church, is the building of it; not so muchbecause it surprises us as because it surprised even more the peopleof the time and the men who were its instruments. Such deep popularmovements are always surprising, and at Chartres the miracle seemsto have occurred three times, coinciding more or less with the datesof the crusades, and taking the organization of a crusade, asArchbishop Hugo of Rouen described it in a letter to Bishop Thierryof Amiens. The most interesting part of this letter is the evidentastonishment of the writer, who might be talking to us to-day, somodern is he:--

The inhabitants of Chartres have combined to aid in the constructionof their church by transporting the materials; our Lord has rewardedtheir humble zeal by miracles which have roused the Normans toimitate the piety of their neighbours . . . Since then the faithful ofour diocese and of other neighbouring regions have formedassociations for the same object; they admit no one into theircompany unless he has been to confession, has renounced enmities andrevenges, and has reconciled himself with his enemies. That done, they elect a chief, under whose direction they conduct their waggonsin silence and with humility. 

The quarries at Bercheres-l'Eveque are about five miles fromChartres. The stone is excessively hard, and was cut in blocks ofconsiderable size, as you can see for yourselves; blocks whichrequired great effort to transport and lay in place. The work wasdone with feverish rapidity, as it still shows, but it is thesolidest building of the age, and without a sign of weakness yet. The Abbot told, with more surprise than pride, of the spirit whichwas built into the cathedral with the stone:--Who has ever seen!--Who has ever heard tell, in times past, that powerful princes of theworld, that men brought up in honour and in wealth, that nobles, menand women, have bent their proud and haughty necks to the harness ofcarts, and that, like beasts of burden, they have dragged to theabode of Christ these waggons, loaded with wines, grains, oil, stone, wood, and all that is necessary for the wants of life, or forthe construction of the church? But while they draw these burdens, there is one thing admirable to observe; it is that often when athousand persons and more are attached to the chariots, --so great isthe difficulty, --yet they march in such silence that not a murmur isheard, and truly if one did not see the thing with one's eyes, onemight believe that among such a multitude there was hardly a personpresent. When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but theconfession of sins, and pure and suppliant prayer to God to obtainpardon. At the voice of the priests who exhort their hearts topeace, they forget all hatred, discord is thrown far aside, debtsare remitted, the unity of hearts is established. 

But if any one is so far advanced in evil as to be unwilling topardon an offender, or if he rejects the counsel of the priest whohas piously advised him, his offering is instantly thrown from thewagon as impure, and he himself ignominiously and shamefullyexcluded from the society of the holy. There one sees the priestswho preside over each chariot exhort every one to penitence, toconfession of faults, to the resolution of better life! There onesees old people, young people, little children, calling on the Lordwith a suppliant voice, and uttering to Him, from the depth of theheart, sobs and sighs with words of glory and praise! After thepeople, warned by the sound of trumpets and the sight of banners, have resumed their road, the march is made with such ease that noobstacle can retard it . . . When they have reached the church theyarrange the wagons about it like a spiritual camp, and during thewhole night they celebrate the watch by hymns and canticles. On eachwaggon they light tapers and lamps; they place there the infirm andsick, and bring them the precious relics of the Saints for theirrelief. Afterwards the priests and clerics close the ceremony byprocessions which the people follow with devout heart, imploring theclemency of the Lord and of his Blessed Mother for the recovery ofthe sick. 

Of course, the Virgin was actually and constantly present during allthis labour, and gave her assistance to it, but you would get nolight on the architecture from listening to an account of hermiracles, nor do they heighten the effect of popular faith. Withoutthe conviction of her personal presence, men would not have beeninspired; but, to us, it is rather the inspiration of the art whichproves the Virgin's presence, and we can better see the convictionof it in the work than in the words. Every day, as the work went on, the Virgin was present, directing the architects, and it is thisdirection that we are going to study, if you have now got arealizing sense of what it meant. Without this sense, the church isdead. Most persons of a deeply religious nature would tell youemphatically that nine churches out of ten actually were dead-born, after the thirteenth century, and that church architecture became apure matter of mechanism and mathematics; but that is a question foryou to decide when you come to it; and the pleasure consists not inseeing the death, but in feeling the life. 

Now let us look about!

CHAPTER VII

ROSES AND APSES

Like all great churches, that are not mere storehouses of theology, Chartres expressed, besides whatever else it meant, an emotion, thedeepest man ever felt, --the struggle of his own littleness to graspthe infinite. You may, if you like, figure in it a mathematicformula of infinity, --the broken arch, our finite idea of space; thespire, pointing, with its converging lines, to unity beyond space;the sleepless, restless thrust of the vaults, telling theunsatisfied, incomplete, overstrained effort of man to rival theenergy, intelligence, and purpose of God. Thomas Aquinas and theschoolmen tried to put it in words, but their Church is anotherchapter. In act, all man's work ends there;--mathematics, physics, chemistry, dynamics, optics, every sort of machinery science mayinvent, --to this favour come at last, as religion and philosophy didbefore science was born. All that the centuries can do is to expressthe idea differently:--a miracle or a dynamo; a dome or a coal-pit;a cathedral or a world's fair; and sometimes to confuse the twoexpressions together. The world's fair tends more and morevigorously to express the thought of infinite energy; the greatcathedrals of the Middle Ages always reflected the industries andinterests of a world's fair. Chartres showed it less than Laon orParis, for Chartres was never a manufacturing town, but a shrine, such as Lourdes, where the Virgin was known to have done miracles, and had been seen in person; but still the shrine turned itself intoa market and created valuable industries. Indeed, this was the chiefobjection which Saint Paul made to Ephesus and Saint Bernard to thecathedrals. They were in some ways more industrial than religious. The mere masonry and structure made a vast market for labour; thefixed metalwork and woodwork were another; but the decoration was byfar the greatest. The wood-carving, the glass windows, thesculpture, inside and out, were done mostly in workshops on thespot, but besides these fixed objects, precious works of the highestperfection filled the church treasuries. Their money value was greatthen; it is greater now. No world's fair is likely to do better to-day. After five hundred years of spoliation, these objects fillmuseums still, and are bought with avidity at every auction, atprices continually rising and quality steadily falling, until a bitof twelfth-century glass would be a trouvaille like an emerald; atapestry earlier than 1600 is not for mere tourists to hope; anenamel, a missal, a crystal, a cup, an embroidery of the Middle Agesbelongs only to our betters, and almost invariably, if not to theState, to the rich Jews, whose instinctive taste has seized thewhole field of art which rested on their degradation. Royalty andfeudality spent their money rather on arms and clothes. The Churchalone was universal patron, and the Virgin was the dictator oftaste. 

With the Virgin's taste, during her regency, critics never findfault. One cannot know its whole magnificence, but one can accept itas a matter of faith and trust, as one accepts all her othermiracles without cavilling over small details of fact. The period ofeighteenth-century scepticism about such matters and the bourgeoistaste of Voltaire and Diderot have long since passed, with theadvent of a scientific taste still more miraculous; the whole worldof the Virgin's art, catalogued in the "Dictionnaire du MobilierFrancais" in six volumes by Viollet-le-Duc; narrated as history byM. Labarte, M. Molinier, M. Paul Lacroix; catalogued in museums byM. Du Sommerard and a score of others, in works almost as costly asthe subjects, --all the vast variety of bric-a-brac, useful orornamental, belonging to the Church, increased enormously by theinsatiable, universal, private demands for imagery, in ivory, wood, metal, stone, for every room in every house, or hung about everyneck, or stuck on every hat, made a market such as artists neverknew before or since, and such as instantly explains to thepractical American not only the reason for the Church's tenacity oflife, but also the inducements for its plunder. The Virginespecially required all the resources of art, and the highest. NotreDame of Chartres would have laughed at Notre Dame of Paris if shehad detected an economy in her robes; Notre Dame of Rheims or Rouenwould have derided Notre Dame of Amiens if she had shown a feminine, domestic, maternal turn toward cheapness. The Virgin was nevercheap. Her great ceremonies were as splendid as her rank of Queen inHeaven and on Earth required; and as her procession wound its wayalong the aisles, through the crowd of her subjects, up to the highaltar, it was impossible then, and not altogether easy now, toresist the rapture of her radiant presence. Many a young person, andnow and then one who is not in first youth, witnessing the sight inthe religious atmosphere of such a church as this, without asuspicion of susceptibility, has suddenly seen what Paul saw on theroad to Damascus, and has fallen on his face with the crowd, grovelling at the foot of the Cross, which, for the first time inhis life, he feels. 

If you want to know what churches were made for, come down here onsome great festival of the Virgin, and give yourself up to it; butcome alone! That kind of knowledge cannot be taught and can seldombe shared. We are not now seeking religion; indeed, true religiongenerally comes unsought. We are trying only to feel Gothic art. Forus, the world is not a schoolroom or a pulpit, but a stage, and thestage is the highest yet seen on earth. In this church the oldRomanesque leaps into the Gothic under our eyes; of a sudden, between the portal and the shrine, the infinite rises into a newexpression, always a rare and excellent miracle in thought. The twoexpressions are nowhere far apart; not further than the Mother fromthe Son. The new artist drops unwillingly the hand of his father orhis grandfather; he looks back, from every corner of his own work, to see whether it goes with the old. He will not part with thewestern portal or the lancet windows; he holds close to the roundcolumns of the choir; he would have kept the round arch if he could, but the round arch was unable to do the work; it could not rise; sohe broke it, lifted the vaulting, threw out flying buttresses, andsatisfied the Virgin's wish. 

The matter of Gothic vaulting, with its two weak points, the flyingbuttress and the false, wooden shelter-roof, is the bete noire ofthe Beaux Arts. The duty of defence does not lie on tourists, whoare at best hardly able to understand what it matters whether a wallis buttressed without or within, and whether a roof is single ordouble. No one objects to the dome of Saint Peter's. No one findsfault with the Pont Neuf. Yet it is true that the Gothic architectshowed contempt for facts. Since he could not support a heavy stonevault on his light columns, he built the lightest possible stonevault and protected it with a wooden shelter-roof which constantlyburned. The lightened vaults were still too heavy for the walls andcolumns, so the architect threw out buttress beyond buttress restingon separate foundations, exposed to extreme inequalities of weather, and liable to multiplied chances of accident. The results werecertainly disastrous. The roofs burned; the walls yielded. 

Flying buttresses were not a necessity. The Merveille had none; theAngevin school rather affected to do without them; Albi had none;Assisi stands up independent; but they did give support wherever thearchitect wanted it and nowhere else; they were probably cheap; andthey were graceful. Whatever expression they gave to a church, atleast it was not that of a fortress. Amiens and Albi are differentreligions. The expression concerns us; the construction concerns theBeaux Arts. The problem of permanent equilibrium which distressesthe builder of arches is a technical matter which does not worry, but only amuses, us who sit in the audience and look with delight atthe theatrical stage-decoration of the Gothic vault; the astonishingfeat of building up a skeleton of stone ribs and vertebrae, on whichevery pound of weight is adjusted, divided, and carried down fromlevel to level till it touches ground at a distance as a bird wouldalight. If any stone in any part, from apex to foundation, weathersor gives way, the whole must yield, and the charge for repairs isprobably great, but, on the best building the Ecole des Beaux Artscan build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, andat least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crackor crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly builtfrom the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothicstructures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind blowsover its windy plains, has managed to survive, after a fashion, sixor seven hundred years, which is all that our generation had a rightto ask. 

The vault of Beauvais is nearly one hundred and sixty feet high (48metres), and was cheaply built. The vault of Saint Peter's at Romeis nearly one hundred and fifty feet (45 metres). That of Amiens isone hundred and forty-four feet (44 metres). Rheims, Bourges, andChartres are nearly the same height; at the entrance, one hundredand twenty-two feet. Paris is one hundred and ten feet. The AbbeBulteau is responsible for these measurements; but at Chartres, asin several very old churches, the nave slopes down to the entrance, because--as is said--pilgrims came in such swarms that they wereobliged to sleep in the church, and the nave had to be sluiced withwater to clean it. The true height of Chartres, at the croisee ofnave and transept, is as near as possible one hundred and twentyfeet (36. 55 metres). 

The measured height is the least interest of a church. Thearchitect's business is to make a small building look large, and hisfailures are in large buildings which he makes to look small. Onechief beauty of the Gothic is to exaggerate height, and one of itsmost curious qualities is its success in imposing an illusion ofsize. Without leaving the heart of Paris any one can study thisillusion in the two great churches of Notre Dame and Saint-Sulpice;for Saint-Sulpice is as lofty as Notre Dame in vaulting, and largerin its other dimensions, besides being, in its style, a finebuilding; yet its Roman arches show, as if they were of the eleventhcentury, why the long, clean, unbroken, refined lines of the Gothic, curving to points, and leading the eye with a sort of compulsion tothe culminating point above, should have made an architecturaltriumph that carried all Europe off its feet with delight. The worldhad seen nothing to approach it except, perhaps, in the dome ofSancta Sophia in Constantinople; and the discovery came at a momentwhen Europe was making its most united and desperate struggle toattain the kingdom of Heaven. 

According to Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres was the final triumph of theexperiment on a very great scale, for Chartres has never beenaltered and never needed to be strengthened. The flying buttressesof Chartres answered their purpose, and if it were not a matter ofpure construction it would be worth while to read what Viollet-le-Duc says about them (article, "Arcs-boutants"). The vaulting aboveis heavy, about fifteen inches thick; the buttressing had also to beheavy; and to lighten it, the architect devised an amusing sort ofarcades, applied on his outside buttresses. Throughout the church, everything was solid beyond all later custom, so that architectswould have to begin by a study of the crypt which came down from theeleventh century so strongly built that it still carries the churchwithout a crack in its walls; but if we went down into it, we shouldunderstand nothing; so we will begin, as we did outside, at thefront. 

A single glance shows what trouble the architect had with the oldfacade and towers, and what temptation to pull them all down. Onecannot quite say that he has spoiled his own church in trying tosave what he could of the old, but if he did not quite spoil it, hesaved it only by the exercise of an amount of intelligence that weshall never learn enough to feel our incapacity to understand. Trueignorance approaches the infinite more nearly than any amount ofknowledge can do, and, in our case, ignorance is fortified by acertain element of nineteenth-century indifference which refuses tobe interested in what it cannot understand; a violent reaction fromthe thirteenth century which cared little to comprehend anythingexcept the incomprehensible. The architect at Chartres was requiredby the Virgin to provide more space for her worshippers within thechurch, without destroying the old portal and fleche which sheloved. That this order came directly from the Virgin, may be takenfor granted. At Chartres, one sees everywhere the Virgin, andnowhere any rival authority; one sees her give orders, andarchitects obey them; but very rarely a hesitation as though thearchitect were deciding for himself. In his western front, thearchitect has obeyed orders so literally that he has not even takenthe trouble to apologize for leaving unfinished the details which, if he had been responsible for them, would have been his anxiouscare. He has gone to the trouble of moving the heavy doorwaysforward, so that the chapels in the towers, which were meant to openon a porch, now open into the nave, and the nave itself has, inappearance, two more spans than in the old church; but the workshows blind obedience, as though he were doing his best to pleasethe Virgin without trying to please himself. Probably he could in nocase have done much to help the side aisles in their abruptcollision with the solid walls of the two towers, but he might atleast have brought the vaulting of his two new bays, in the nave, down to the ground, and finished it. The vaulting is awkward inthese two bays, and yet he has taken great trouble to effect whatseems at first a small matter. Whether the great rose window was anafterthought or not can never be known, but any one can see with aglass, and better on the architectural plan, that the vaulting ofthe main church was not high enough to admit the great rose, andthat the architect has had to slope his two tower-spans upward. Sogreat is the height that you cannot see this difference of levelvery plainly even with a glass, but on the plans it seems to amountto several feet; perhaps a metre. The architect has managed todeceive our eyes, in order to enlarge the rose; but you can see asplainly as though he were here to tell you, that, like a greatgeneral, he has concentrated his whole energy on the rose, becausethe Virgin has told him that the rose symbolized herself, and thatthe light and splendour of her appearance in the west were to redeemall his awkwardnesses. 

Of course this idea of the Virgin's interference sounds to you amere bit of fancy, and that is an account which may be settledbetween the Virgin and you; but even twentieth-century eyes can seethat the rose redeems everything, dominates everything, and givescharacter to the whole church. 

In view of the difficulties which faced the artist, the rose isinspired genius, --the kind of genius which Shakespeare showed whenhe took some other man's play, and adapted it. Thus far, it showsits power chiefly by the way it comes forward and takes possessionof the west front, but if you want a foot-rule to measure by, youmay mark that the old, twelfth-century lancet-windows below it arenot exactly in its axis. At the outset, in the original plan of1090, or thereabouts, the old tower--the southern tower--was givengreater width than the northern. Such inequalities were common inthe early churches, and so is a great deal of dispute in modernbooks whether they were accidental or intentional, while no onedenies that they are amusing. In these towers the difference is notgreat, --perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches, --but it caused thearchitect to correct it, in order to fit his front to the axis ofthe church, by throwing his entrance six or seven inches to thesouth, and narrowing to that extent the south door and south lancet. The effect was bad, even then, and went far to ruin the southwindow; but when, after the fire of 1194, the architect inserted hisgreat rose, filling every inch of possible space between the lancetand the arch of the vault, he made another correction which threwhis rose six or seven inches out of axis with the lancets. Not oneperson in a hundred thousand would notice it, here in the interior, so completely are we under the control of the artist and the Virgin;but it is a measure of the power of the rose. 

Looking farther, one sees that the rose-motive, which so dominatesthe west front, is carried round the church, and comes to anotheroutburst of splendour in the transepts. This leads back tofenestration on a great scale, which is a terribly ambitious flightfor tourists; all the more, because here the tourist gets littlehelp from the architect, who, in modern times, has seldom theopportunity to study the subject at all, and accepts as solved theproblems of early Gothic fenestration. One becomes pedantic andpretentious at the very sound of the word, which is an intolerablepiece of pedantry in itself; but Chartres is all windows, and itswindows were as triumphant as its Virgin, and were one of hermiracles. One can no more overlook the windows of Chartres than theglass which is in them. We have already looked at the windows ofMantes; we have seen what happened to the windows at Paris. Parishad at one leap risen twenty-five feet higher than Noyon, and evenat Noyon, the architect, about 1150, had been obliged to invent newfenestration. Paris and Mantes, twenty years later, made anothereffort, which proved a failure. Then the architect of Chartres, in1195, added ten feet more to his vault, and undertook, once for all, to show how a great cathedral should be lighted. As an architecturalproblem, it passes far beyond our powers of understanding, even whensolved; but we can always turn to see what the inevitable Viollet-le-Duc says about its solution at Chartres:--

Toward the beginning of the thirteenth century, the architect of theCathedral of Chartres sought out entirely new window combinations tolight the nave from above. Below, in the side aisles he kept to thecustoms of the times; that is, he opened pointed windows which didnot wholly fill the spaces between the piers; he wanted, or waswilling to leave here below, the effect of a wall. But in the upperpart of his building we see that he changed the system; he throws around arch directly across from one pier to the next; then, in theenormous space which remains within each span, he inserts two largepointed windows surmounted by a great rose . . . We recognize in thisconstruction of Notre Dame de Chartres a boldness, a force, whichcontrast with the fumbling of the architects in the Ile de Franceand Champagne. For the first time one sees at Chartres the builderdeal frankly with the clerestory, or upper fenestration, occupyingthe whole width of the arches, and taking the arch of the vault asthe arch of the window. Simplicity of construction, beauty in form, strong workmanship, structure true and solid, judicious choice ofmaterial, all the characteristics of good work, unite in thismagnificent specimen of architecture at the beginning of thethirteenth century. 

Viollet-le-Duc does not call attention to a score of other matterswhich the architect must have had in his mind, such as thedistribution of light, and the relations of one arrangement withanother: the nave with the aisles, and both with the transepts, andall with the choir. Following him, we must take the choirseparately, and the aisles and chapels of the apse also. One cannothope to understand all the experiments and refinements of theartist, either in their successes or their failures, but, withdiffidence, one may ask one's self whether the beauty of thearrangement, as compared with the original arrangement in Paris, didnot consist in retaining the rose-motive throughout, while throwingthe whole upper wall into window. Triumphant as the clerestorywindows are, they owe their charm largely to their roses, as you seeby looking at the same scheme applied on a larger scale on thetransept fronts; and then, by taking stand under the croisee, andlooking at all in succession as a whole. 

The rose window was not Gothic but Romanesque, and needed a greatdeal of coaxing to feel at home within the pointed arch. At first, the architects felt the awkwardness so strongly that they avoided itwherever they could. In the beautiful facade of Laon, one of thechief beauties is the setting of the rose under a deep round arch. The western roses of Mantes and Paris are treated in the same way, although a captious critic might complain that their treatment isnot so effective or so logical. Rheims boldly imprisoned the roseswithin the pointed arch; but Amiens, toward 1240, took refuge in thesame square exterior setting that was preferred, in 1200, here atChartres; and in the interior of Amiens the round arch of the roseis the last vault of the nave, seen through a vista of pointedvaults, as it is here. All these are supposed to be among the chiefbeauties of the Gothic facade, although the Gothic architect, if hehad been a man of logic, would have clung to his lines, and put apointed window in his front, as in fact he did at Coutances. He feltthe value of the rose in art, and perhaps still more in religion, for the rose was Mary's emblem. One is fairly sure that the greatChartres rose of the west front was put there to please her, sinceit was to be always before her eyes, the most conspicuous object shewould see from the high altar, and therefore the most carefullyconsidered ornament in the whole church, outside the choir. The meresize proves the importance she gave it. The exterior diameter isnearly forty-four feet (13. 36 metres). The nave of Chartres is, nextperhaps to the nave of Angers, the widest of all Gothic naves; aboutfifty-three feet (16. 31 metres); and the rose takes every inch itcan get of this enormous span. The value of the rose, amongarchitects of the time, was great, since it was the only part of thechurch that Villard de Honnecourt sketched; and since his time, ithas been drawn and redrawn, described and commented by generationsof architects till it has become as classic as the Parthenon. 

Yet this Chartres rose is solid, serious, sedate, to a degreeunusual in its own age; it is even more Romanesque than the pureRomanesque roses. At Beauvais you must stop a moment to look at aRomanesque rose on the transept of the Church of Saint-Etienne;Viollet-le-Duc mentions it, with a drawing (article, "Pignon"), asnot earlier than the year 1100, therefore about a century earlierthan the rose of Chartres; it is not properly a rose, but a wheel offortune, with figures climbing up and falling over. Another supposedtwelfth-century rose is at Etampes, which goes with that of Laon andSaint-Leu-d'Esserent and Mantes. The rose of Chartres is so much themost serious of them all that Viollet-le-Duc has explained it by itsmaterial, --the heavy stone of Bercheres;--but the material was notallowed to affect the great transept roses, and the architect madehis material yield to his object wherever he thought it worth while. Standing under the central croisee, you can see all three roses bysimply turning your head. That on the north, the Rose de France, wasbuilt, or planned, between 1200 and 1210, in the reign of PhilipAugustus, since the porch outside, which would be a laterconstruction, was begun by 1212. The Rose de France is the same indiameter as the western rose, but lighter, and built of lighterstone. Opposite the Rose de France stands, on the south front, Pierre Mauclerc's Rose de Dreux, of the same date, with the samemotive, but even lighter; more like a rose and less like a wheel. All three roses must have been planned at about the same time, perhaps by the same architect, within the same workshop; yet thewestern rose stands quite apart, as though it had been especiallydesigned to suit the twelfth-century facade and portal which itrules. Whether this was really the artist's idea is a question thatneeds the artist to answer; but that this is the effect, needs noexpert to prove; it stares one in the face. Within and without, onefeels that the twelfth-century spirit is respected and preservedwith the same religious feeling which obliged the architect toinjure his own work by sparing that of his grandfathers. 

Conspicuous, then, in the west front are two feelings:--respect forthe twelfth-century work, and passion for the rose fenestration;both subordinated to the demand for light. If it worries you to haveto believe that these three things are in fact one; that thearchitect is listening, like the stone Abraham, for orders from theVirgin, while he caresses and sacrifices his child; that Mary andnot her architects built this facade; if the divine intention seemsto you a needless impertinence, you can soon get free from it bygoing to any of the later churches, where you will not be forced tosee any work but that of the architect's compasses. According toViollet-le-Duc, the inspiration ceased about 1250, or, as the Virginwould have dated it, on the death of Blanche of Castile in 1252. Thework of Chartres, where her own hand is plainly shown, belongs infeeling, if not in execution, to the last years of the twelfthcentury (1195-1200). The great western rose which gives the motivefor the whole decoration and is repeated in the great roses of thetransepts, marks the Virgin's will, --the taste and knowledge of"cele qui la rose est des roses, " or, if you prefer the Latin ofAdam de Saint-Victor, the hand of her who is "Super rosam rosida. "

All this is easy; but if you really cannot see the hand of Maryherself in these broad and public courts, which were intended, notfor her personal presence, but for the use of her common people, youhad better stop here, and not venture into the choir. Great hallsseem to have been easy architecture. Naves and transepts were notoften failures; facades and even towers and fleches are invariablymore or less successful because they are more or less balanced, mathematical, calculable products of reason and thought. The mostserious difficulties began only with the choir, and even then didnot become desperate until the architect reached the curve of theapse, with its impossible vaultings, its complicated lines, itscross-thrusts, its double problems, internal and external, itsdefective roofing and unequal lighting. A perfect Gothic apse wasimpossible; an apse that satisfied perfectly its principal objectswas rare; the simplest and cheapest solution was to have no apse atall, and that was the English scheme, which was tried also at Laon;a square, flat wall and window. If the hunt for Norman towersoffered a summer's amusement, a hunt for apses would offer aneducation, but it would lead far out of France. Indeed, it would besimpler to begin at once with Sancta Sophia at Constantinople, SanVitale at Ravenna and Monreale at Palermo, and the churches atTorcello and Murano, and San Marco at Venice; and admit that nodevice has ever equalled the startling and mystical majesty of theByzantine half-dome, with its marvellous mosaic Madonna dominatingthe church, from the entrance, with her imperial and divinepresence. Unfortunately, the northern churches needed light, and thenorthern architects turned their minds to a desperate effort for anew apse. 

The scheme of the cathedral at Laon seems to have been rejectedunanimously; the bare, flat wall at the end of the choir was aneyesore; it was quite bad enough at the end of the nave, and becameannoying at the end of the transepts, so that at Noyon and Soissonsthe architect, with a keen sense of interior form, had rounded thetransept ends; but, though external needs might require a squaretransept, the unintelligence of the flat wall became insufferable atthe east end. Neither did the square choir suit the churchceremonies and processions, or offer the same advantages ofarrangement, as the French understood them. With one voice, theFrench architects seem to have rejected the Laon experiment, andturned back to a solution taken directly from the Romanesque. 

[Illustration with caption: SAINT-MARTIN-DES-CHAMPS]

Quite early--in the eleventh century--a whole group of churches hadbeen built in Auvergne, --at Clermont and Issoire, for example, --possibly by one architect, with a circular apse, breaking out intofive apsidal chapels. Tourists who get down as far south as Toulousesee another example of this Romanesque apse in the famous Church ofSaint Sernin, of the twelfth century; and few critics take offenceat one's liking it. Indeed, as far as concerns the exterior, onemight even risk thinking it more charming than the exterior of anyGothic apse ever built. Many of these Romanesque apses of theeleventh and twelfth centuries still remain in France, showingthemselves in unsuspected parish churches, here and there, butalways a surprise for their quiet, unobtrusive grace, making aharmony with the Romanesque tower, if there is one, into which theyrise, as at Saint Sernin; but all these churches had only one aisle, and, in the interior, there came invariable trouble when the vaultsrose in height. The architect of Chartres, in 1200, could get nodirect help from these, or even from Paris which was a beautifullyperfect apse, but had no apsidal chapels. The earliest apse thatcould have served as a suggestion for Chartres--or, at least, as apoint of observation for us--was that of the Abbey Church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, which we went to see in Paris, and which is saidto date from about 1150. 

Here is a circular choir, surrounded by two rows of columns, irregularly spaced, with circular chapels outside, which seems tohave been more or less what the architect of Chartres, for theVirgin's purposes, had set his heart on obtaining. Closely followingthe scheme of Saint-Martin-des-Champs came the scheme of the AbbeyChurch at Vezelay, built about 1160-80. Here the vaulting sprangdirectly from the last arch of the choir, as is shown on the plan, and bearing first on the light columns of the choir, which wereevenly spaced, then fell on a row of heavier columns outside, whichwere also evenly spaced, and came to rest at last on massive piers, between which were five circular chapels. The plan shows at a glancethat this arrangement stretched the second row of columns far apart, and that a church much larger than Vezelay would need to space themso much farther apart that the arch uniting them would have to riseindefinitely; while, if beyond this, another aisle were addedoutside, the piers finally would require impossible vaulting. 

[Illustration with caption: VEZELAY]

The problem stood thus when the great cathedrals were undertaken, and the architect of Paris boldly grappled with the double aisle ona scale requiring a new scheme. Here, in spite of the most virtuousresolutions not to be technical, we must attempt a technicality, because without it, one of the most interesting eccentricities ofChartres would be lost. Once more, Viollet-le-Duc:--

As the architect did not want to give the interior bays of the apsespaces between the columns (AA) less than that of the parallel bays(BB), it followed that the first radiating bay gave a first space(LMGH) which was difficult to vault, and a second space (HGEF) whichwas impossible; for how establish an arch from F to E? Even ifround, its key would have risen much higher than the key of thepointed archivolt LM. As the second radiating bay opened out stillwider, the difficulty was increased. The builder therefore insertedthe two intermediate pillars O and P between the columns of thesecond aisle (H, G, and I); which he supported, in the outside wallof the church, by one corresponding pier (Q) in the first bay of theapse, and by two similar piers (R and S) in the second bay. 

[Illustration with caption: NOTRE DAME DE PARIS]

"There is no need to point out, " continued Viollet-le-Duc, as thoughhe much suspected that there might be need of pointing out, "whatskill this system showed and how much the art of architecture hadalready been developed in the Ile de France toward the end of thetwelfth century; to what an extent the unity of arrangement andstyle preoccupied the artists of that province. "

In fact, the arrangement seems mathematically and technicallyperfect. At all events, we know too little to criticize it. Yet onewould much like to be told why it was not repeated by any otherarchitect or in any other church. Apparently the Parisiansthemselves were not quite satisfied with it, since they altered it ahundred years later, in 1296, in order to build out chapels betweenthe piers. As the architects of each new cathedral had, in theinterval, insisted on apsidal chapels, one may venture to guess thatthe Paris scheme hampered the services. 

At Chartres the church services are Mary's own tastes; the church isMary; and the chapels are her private rooms. She was not pleasedwith the arrangements made for her in her palace at Paris; they weretoo architectural; too regular and mathematical; too popular; tooimpersonal; and she rather abruptly ordered her architect atChartres to go back to the old arrangement. The apse at Paris washardly covered with its leading before the architect of Chartresadopted a totally new plan, which, according to Viollet-le-Duc, doeshim little credit, but which was plainly imposed on him, like thetwelfth-century portal. Not only had it nothing of the mathematicalcorrectness and precision of the Paris scheme, easy to understandand imitate, but it carried even a sort of violence--a wrench--inits system, as though the Virgin had said, with her grand Byzantineair:--I will it!

[Illustration with caption: CHARTRES]

"At Chartres, " said Viollet-le-Duc, "the choir of the Cathedralpresents a plan which does no great honour to its architect. Thereis want of accord between the circular apse and the parallel sidesof the sanctuary; the spacings of the columns of the secondcollateral are loose (laches); the vaults quite poorly combined; andin spite of the great width of the spaces between the columns of thesecond aisle, the architect had still to narrow those between theinterior columns. "

The plan shows that, from the first, the architect must havedeliberately rejected the Paris scheme; he must have begun bynarrowing the spaces between his inner columns; then, with a sort ofviolence, he fitted on his second row of columns; and, finally, heshowed his motive by constructing an outer wall of an original orunusual shape. Any woman would see at once the secret of all thisingenuity and effort. The Chartres apse, enormous in size and width, is exquisitely lighted. Here, as everywhere throughout the church, the windows give the law, but here they actually take place of law. The Virgin herself saw to the lighting of her own boudoir. Accordingto Viollet-le-Duc, Chartres differs from all the other greatcathedrals by being built not for its nave or even for its choir, but for its apse; it was planned not for the people or the court, but for the Queen; not a church but a shrine; and the shrine is theapse where the Queen arranged her light to please herself and nother architect, who had already been sacrificed at the western portaland who had a free hand only in the nave and transepts where theQueen never went, and which, from her own apartment, she did noteven see. 

[Illustration with caption: LAON]

This is, in effect, what Viollet-le-Duc says in his professionallanguage, which is perhaps--or sounds--more reasonable to tourists, whose imaginations are hardly equal to the effort of fancying a realdeity. Perhaps, indeed, one might get so high as to imagine a realBishop of Laon, who should have ordered his architect to build anenormous hall of religion, to rival the immense abbeys of the day, and to attract the people, as though it were a clubroom. There theywere to see all the great sights; church ceremonies; theatricals;political functions; there they were to do business, and frequentsociety. They were to feel at home in their church because it wastheirs, and did not belong to a priesthood or to Rome. Jealousy ofRome was a leading motive of Gothic architecture, and Rome repaid itin full. The Bishop of Laon conceded at least a transept to customor tradition, but the Archbishop of Bourges abolished even thetransept, and the great hall had no special religious expressionexcept in the circular apse with its chapels which Laon hadabandoned. One can hardly decide whether Laon or Bourges is the morepopular, industrial, political, or, in other words, the lessreligious; but the Parisians, as the plan of Viollet-le-Duc hasshown, were quite as advanced as either, and only later alteredtheir scheme into one that provided chapels for religious service. 

[Illustration with caption: BOURGES]

[Illustration with caption: AMIENS]

Amiens and Beauvais have each seven chapels, but only one aisle, sothat they do not belong in the same class with the apses of Paris, Bourges, and Chartres, though the plans are worth studying forcomparison, since they show how many-sided the problem was, and howfar from satisfied the architects were with their own schemes. Themost interesting of all, for comparison with Chartres, is Le Mans, where the apsidal chapels are carried to fanaticism, while thevaulting seems to be reasonable enough, and the double aislesuccessfully managed, if Viollet-le-Duc permits ignorant people toform an opinion on architectural dogma. For our purposes, thearchitectural dogma may stand, and the Paris scheme may be taken forgranted, as alone correct and orthodox; all that Viollet-le-Ducteaches is that the Chartres scheme is unorthodox, not to sayheretical; and this is the point on which his words are mostinteresting. 

[Illustration with caption: BEAUVAIS]

The church at Chartres belonged not to the people, not to thepriesthood, and not even to Rome; it belonged to the Virgin. "Herethe religious influence appears wholly; three large chapels in theapse; four others less pronounced; double aisles of great widthround the choir; vast transepts! Here the church ceremonial coulddisplay all its pomp; the choir, more than at Paris, more than atBourges, more than at Soissons, and especially more than at Laon, isthe principal object; for it, the church is built. "

[Illustration with caption: LE MANS]

One who is painfully conscious of ignorance, and who never woulddream of suggesting a correction to anybody, may not venture tosuggest an idea of any sort to an architect; but if it were allowedto paraphrase Viollet-le-Duc's words into a more or less emotionalor twelfth-century form, one might say, after him, that, comparedwith Paris or Laon, the Chartres apse shows the same genius that isshown in the Chartres rose; the same large mind that overrules, --thesame strong will that defies difficulties. The Chartres apse is asentertaining as all the other Gothic apses together, because itoverrides the architect. You may, if you really have no imaginationwhatever, reject the idea that the Virgin herself made the plan; thefeebleness of our fancy is now congenital, organic, beyond stimulantor strychnine, and we shrink like sensitive-plants from the touch ofa vision or spirit; but at least one can still sometimes feel awoman's taste, and in the apse of Chartres one feels nothing else. 

[Illustration with caption: CHARTRES]

CHAPTER VIII

THE TWELFTH-CENTURY GLASS

At last we are face to face with the crowning glory of Chartres. Other churches have glass, --quantities of it, and very fine, --but wehave been trying to catch a glimpse of the glory which stands behindthe glass of Chartres, and gives it quality and feeling of its own. For once the architect is useless and his explanations are pitiable;the painter helps still less; and the decorator, unless he works inglass, is the poorest guide of all, while, if he works in glass, heis sure to lead wrong; and all of them may toil until PierreMauclerc's stone Christ comes to life, and condemns them among theunpardonable sinners on the southern portal, but neither they norany other artist will ever create another Chartres. You had betterstop here, once for all, unless you are willing to feel thatChartres was made what it is, not by artist, but by the Virgin. 

If this imperial presence is stamped on the architecture and thesculpture with an energy not to be mistaken, it radiates through theglass with a light and colour that actually blind the true servantof Mary. One becomes, sometimes, a little incoherent in talkingabout it; one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be;one has no business to labour painfully to explain and prove toone's self what is as clear as the sun in the sky; one loses temperin reasoning about what can only be felt, and what ought to be feltinstantly, as it was in the twelfth century, even by the truie quifile and the ane qui vielle. Any one should feel it that wishes; anyone who does not wish to feel it can let it alone. Still, it may bethat not one tourist in a hundred--perhaps not one in a thousand ofthe English-speaking race--does feel it, or can feel it even whenexplained to him, for we have lost many senses. 

Therefore, let us plod on, laboriously proving God, although, evento Saint Bernard and Pascal, God was incapable of proof; and usingsuch material as the books furnish for help. It is not much. TheFrench have been shockingly negligent of their greatest artisticglory. One knows not even where to seek. One must go to the NationalLibrary and beg as a special favour permission to look at themonumental work of M. Lasteyrie, if one wishes to make even abeginning of the study of French glass. Fortunately there exists afragment of a great work which the Government began, but nevercompleted, upon Chartres; and another, quite indispensable, but notofficial, upon Bourges; while Viollet-le-Duc's article "Vitrail"serves as guide to the whole. Ottin's book "Le Vitrail" isconvenient. Male's volume "L'Art Religieux" is essential. InEnglish, Westlake's "History of Design" is helpful. Perhaps, afterreading all that is readable, the best hope will be to provide thebest glasses with the largest possible field; and, choosing an hourwhen the church is empty, take seat about halfway up the nave, facing toward the western entrance with a morning light, so that theglass of the western windows shall not stand in direct sun. 

The glass of the three lancets is the oldest in the cathedral. Ifthe portal beneath it, with the sculpture, was built in the twentyor thirty years before 1150, the glass could not be much later. Itgoes with the Abbe Suger's glass at Saint-Denis, which was surelymade as early as 1140-50, since the Abbe was a long time at work onit, before he died in 1152. Their perfection proves, what hisbiographer asserted, that the Abbe Suger spent many years as well asmuch money on his windows at Saint-Denis, and the specialists affirmthat the three lancets at Chartres are quite as good as what remainsof Suger's work. Viollet-le-Duc and M. Paul Durand, the Governmentexpert, are positive that this glass is the finest ever made, as faras record exists; and that the northern lancet representing the Treeof Jesse stands at the head of all glasswork whatever. The windowsclaim, therefore, to be the most splendid colour decoration theworld ever saw, since no other material, neither silk nor gold, andno opaque colour laid on with a brush, can compare with translucentglass, and even the Ravenna mosaics or Chinese porcelains aredarkness beside them. 

The claim may not be modest, but it is none of ours. Viollet-le-Ducmust answer for his own sins, and he chose the lancet window of theTree of Jesse for the subject of his lecture on glass in general, asthe most complete and perfect example of this greatest decorativeart. Once more, in following him, one is dragged, in spite of one'sself, into technique, and, what is worse, into a colour world whosetechnique was forgotten five hundred years ago. Viollet-le-Duc triedto recover it. "After studying our best French windows, " hecautiously suggests that "one might maintain, " as their secret ofharmony, that "the first condition for an artist in glass is to knowhow to manage blue. The blue is the light in windows, and light hasvalue only by opposition. " The radiating power of blue is, therefore, the starting-point, and on this matter Viollet-le-Duc hasmuch to say which a student would need to master; but a touristnever should study, or he ceases to be a tourist; and it is enoughfor us if we know that, to get the value they wanted, the artistshatched their blues with lines, covered their surface with figuresas though with screens, and tied their blue within its own fieldwith narrow circlets of white or yellow, which, in their turn, werebeaded to fasten the blue still more firmly in its place. We havechiefly to remember the law that blue is light:--

But also it is that luminous colour which gives value to all others. If you compose a window in which there shall be no blue, you willget a dirty or dull (blafard) or crude surface which the eye willinstantly avoid; but if you put a few touches of blue among allthese tones, you will immediately get striking effects if notskilfully conceived harmony. So the composition of blue glasssingularly preoccupied the glassworkers of the twelfth andthirteenth centuries. If there is only one red, two yellows, two orthree purples, and two or three greens at the most, there areinfinite shades of blue, . . . And these blues are placed with a verydelicate observation of the effects they should produce on othertones, and other tones on them. 

Viollet-le-Duc took the window of the Tree of Jesse as his firstillustration of the rule, for the reason that its blue ground is onecontinuous strip from top to bottom, with the subordinate red oneither side, and a border uniting the whole so plainly that no onecan fail to see its object or its method. 

The blue tone of the principal subject [that is to say, the groundof the Tree of Jesse] has commanded the tonality of all the rest. This medium was necessary to enable the luminous splendour todisplay its energy. This primary condition had dictated the redground for the prophets, and the return to the blue on reaching theoutside semicircular band. To give full value both to the vigour ofthe red, and to the radiating transparency of the blue, the groundof the corners is put in emerald green; but then, in the cornersthemselves, the blue is recalled and is given an additional solidityof value by the delicate ornamentation of the squares. 

This translation is very free, but one who wants to know thesewindows must read the whole article, and read it here in the church, the Dictionary in one hand, and binocle in the other, for thebinocle is more important than the Dictionary when it reaches thecomplicated border which repeats in detail the colour-scheme of thecentre:--

The border repeats all the tones allotted to the principal subjects, but by small fragments, so that this border, with an effect bothsolid and powerful, shall not enter into rivalry with the largearrangements of the central parts. 

One would think this simple enough; easily tested on any illuminatedmanuscript, Arab, Persian, or Byzantine; verified by any Orientalrug, old or new; freely illustrated by any Chinese pattern on a Mingjar, or cloisonne vase; and offering a kind of alphabet for theshop-window of a Paris modiste. A strong red; a strong and a weakyellow; a strong and a weak purple; a strong and a weak green, areall to be tied together, given their values, and held in theirplaces by blue. The thing seems simpler still when it appears thatperspective is forbidden, and that these glass windows of thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries, like Oriental rugs, imply a flatsurface, a wall which must not be treated as open. The twelfth-century glassworker would sooner have worn a landscape on his backthan have costumed his church with it; he would as soon havedecorated his floors with painted holes as his walls. He wanted tokeep the coloured window flat, like a rug hung on the wall. 

The radiation of translucent colours in windows cannot be modifiedby the artist; all his talent consists in profiting by it, accordingto a given harmonic scheme on a single plane, like a rug, but notaccording to an effect of aerial perspective. Do what you like, aglass window never does and never can represent anything but a planesurface; its real virtues even exist only on that condition. Everyattempt to present several planes to the eye is fatal to the harmonyof colour, without producing any illusion in the spectator . . . Translucid painting can propose as its object only a designsupporting as energetically as possible a harmony of colours. 

Whether this law is absolute you can tell best by looking at modernglass which is mostly perspective; but, whether you like it or not, the matter of perspective does not enter into a twelfth-centurywindow more than into a Japanese picture, and may be ignored. Thedecoration of the twelfth century, as far as concerns us, wasintended only for one plane, and a window was another form of rug orembroidery or mosaic, hung on the wall for colour, --simpledecoration to be seen as a whole. If the Tree of Jesse teachesanything at all, it is that the artist thought first of controllinghis light, but he wanted to do it not in order to dim the colours;on the contrary, he toiled, like a jeweller setting diamonds andrubies, to increase their splendour. If his use of blue teaches thislesson, his use of green proves it. The outside border of the Treeof Jesse is a sort of sample which our schoolmaster Viollet-le-Ducsets, from which he requires us to study out the scheme, beginningwith the treatment of light, and ending with the value of theemerald green ground in the corners. 

Complicated as the border of the Tree of Jesse is, it has its matesin the borders of the two other twelfth-century windows, and a fewof the thirteenth-century in the side aisles; but the southern ofthe three lancets shows how the artists dealt with a difficulty thatupset their rule. The border of the southern window does not countas it should; something is wrong with it and a little study showsthat the builder, and not the glassworker, was to blame. Owing tohis miscalculation--if it was really a miscalculation--in the widthof the southern tower, the builder economized six or eight inches inthe southern door and lancet, which was enough to destroy thebalance between the colour-values, as masses, of the south and northwindows. The artist was obliged to choose whether he would sacrificethe centre or the border of his southern window, and decided thatthe windows could not be made to balance if he narrowed the centre, but that he must balance them by enriching the centre, andsacrificing the border. He has filled the centre with medallions asrich as he could make them, and these he has surrounded withborders, which are also enriched to the utmost; but these medallionswith their borders spread across the whole window, and when yousearch with the binocle for the outside border, you see its patternclearly only at the top and bottom. On the sides, at intervals ofabout two feet, the medallions cover and interrupt it; but this ispartly corrected by making the border, where it is seen, so rich asto surpass any other in the cathedral, even that of the Tree ofJesse. Whether the artist has succeeded or not is a question forother artists--or for you, if you please--to decide; but apparentlyhe did succeed, since no one has ever noticed the difficulty or thedevice. 

The southern lancet represents the Passion of Christ. Granting toViollet-le-Duc that the unbroken vertical colour-scheme of the Treeof Jesse made the more effective window, one might still ask whetherthe medallion-scheme is not the more interesting. Once past theworkshop, there can be no question about it; the Tree of Jesse hasthe least interest of all the three windows. A genealogical tree haslittle value, artistic or other, except to those who belong in itsbranches, and the Tree of Jesse was put there, not to please us, butto please the Virgin. The Passion window was also put there toplease her, but it tells a story, and does it in a way that has morenovelty than the subject. The draughtsman who chalked out the designon the whitened table that served for his sketch-board was either aGreek, or had before him a Byzantine missal, or enamel or ivory. Thefirst medallion on these legendary windows is the lower left-handone, which begins the story or legend; here it represents Christafter the manner of the Greek Church. In the next medallion is theLast Supper; the fish on the dish is Greek. In the middle of thewindow, with the help of the binocle, you will see a Crucifixion, oreven two, for on the left is Christ on the Cross, and on the right aDescent from the Cross; in this is the figure of man pulling outwith pincers the nails which fasten Christ's feet; a figure unknownto Western religious art. The Noli Me Tangere, on the right, nearthe top, has a sort of Greek character. All the critics, especiallyM. Paul Durand, have noticed this Byzantine look, which is even moremarked in the Suger window at Saint-Denis, so as to suggest thatboth are by the same hand, and that the hand of a Greek. If theartist was really a Greek, he has done work more beautiful than anyleft at Byzantium, and very far finer than anything in the beautifulwork at Cairo, but although the figures and subjects are more orless Greek, like the sculptures on the portal, the art seems to beFrench. 

Look at the central window! Naturally, there sits the Virgin, withher genealogical tree on her left, and her Son's testimony on herright to prove her double divinity. She is seated in the long halo;as, on the western portal, directly beneath her, her Son isrepresented in stone, Her crown and head, as well as that of theChild, are fourteenth-century restorations more or less like theoriginal; but her cushioned throne and her robes of imperial state, as well as the flowered sceptre in either hand, are as old as thesculpture of the portal, and redolent of the first crusade. Oneither side of her, the Sun and the Moon offer praise; her twoArchangels, Michael and Gabriel, with resplendent wings, offer notincense as in later times, but the two sceptres of spiritual andtemporal power; while the Child in her lap repeats His Mother'saction and even her features and expression. At first sight, onewould take for granted that all this was pure Byzantium, and perhapsit is; but it has rather the look of Byzantium gallicized, andcarried up to a poetic French ideal. At Saint-Denis the littlefigure of the Abbe Suger at the feet of the Virgin has a veryOriental look, and in the twin medallion the Virgin resemblesgreatly the Virgin of Chartres, yet, for us, until some specialistshows us the Byzantine original, the work is as thoroughly French asthe fleches of the churches. 

Byzantine art is altogether another chapter, and, if we could buttake a season to study it in Byzantium, we might get greatamusement; but the art of Chartres, even in 1100, was French andperfectly French, as the architecture shows, and the glass is evenmore French than the architecture, as you can detect in many otherways. Perhaps the surest evidence is the glass itself. The men whomade it were not professionals but amateurs, who may have had someknowledge of enamelling, but who worked like jewellers, unused toglass, and with the refinement that a reliquary or a crozierrequired. The cost of these windows must have been extravagant; oneis almost surprised that they are not set in gold rather than inlead. The Abbe Suger shirked neither trouble nor expense, and theonly serious piece of evidence that this artist was a Greek is givenby his biographer who unconsciously shows that the artist cheatedhim: "He sought carefully for makers of windows and workmen in glassof exquisite quality, especially in that made of sapphires in greatabundance that were pulverized and melted up in the glass to give itthe blue colour which he delighted to admire. " The "materiasaphirorum" was evidently something precious, --as precious as crudesapphires would have been, --and the words imply beyond question thatthe artist asked for sapphires and that Suger paid for them; yet allspecialists agree that the stone known as sapphire, if ground, couldnot produce translucent colour at all. The blue which Suger loved, and which is probably the same as that of these Chartres windows, cannot be made out of sapphires. Probably the "materia saphirorum"means cobalt only, but whatever it was, the glassmakers seem toagree that this glass of 1140-50 is the best ever made. M. PaulDurand in his official report of 1881 said that these windows, bothartistically and mechanically, were of the highest class: "I willalso call attention to the fact that the glass and the execution ofthe painting are, materially speaking, of a quality much superior towindows of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Having passedseveral months in contact with these precious works when I copiedthem, I was able to convince myself of their superiority in everyparticular, especially in the upper parts of the three windows. " Hesaid that they were perfect and irreproachable. The true enthusiastin glass would in the depths of his heart like to say outright thatthese three windows are worth more than all that the French havesince done in colour, from that day to this; but the matter concernsus chiefly because it shows how French the experiment was, and howSuger's taste and wealth made it possible. 

Certain it is, too, that the southern window--the Passion--was madeon the spot, or near by, and fitted for the particular space withcare proportionate to its cost. All are marked by the hand of theChartres Virgin. They are executed not merely for her, but by her. At Saint-Denis the Abbe Suger appeared, --it is true that he wasprostrate at her feet, but still he appeared. At Chartres no one--nosuggestion of a human agency--was allowed to appear; the Virginpermitted no one to approach her, even to adore. She is enthronedabove, as Queen and Empress and Mother, with the symbols ofexclusive and universal power. Below her, she permitted the world tosee the glories of her earthly life;--the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity; the Magi; King Herod; the Journey to Egypt; and thesingle medallion, which shows the gods of Egypt falling from theirpedestals at her coming, is more entertaining than a whole picture-gallery of oil paintings. 

In all France there exist barely a dozen good specimens of twelfth-century glass. Besides these windows at Chartres and the fragmentsat Saint-Denis, there are windows at Le Mans and Angers and bits atVendome, Chalons, Poitiers, Rheims, and Bourges; here and there onehappens on other pieces, but the earliest is the best, because theglass-makers were new at the work and spent on it an infinite amountof trouble and money which they found to be unnecessary as theygained experience. Even in 1200 the value of these windows was sowell understood, relatively to new ones, that they were preservedwith the greatest care. The effort to make such windows was neverrepeated. Their jewelled perfection did not suit the scale of thevast churches of the thirteenth century. By turning your head towardthe windows of the side aisles, you can see the criticism which thelater artists passed on the old work. They found it too refined, toobrilliant, too jewel-like for the size of the new cathedral; theplay of light and colour allowed the eye too little repose; indeed, the eye could not see their whole beauty, and half their value wasthrown away in this huge stone setting. At best they must haveseemed astray on the bleak, cold, windy plain of Beauce, --homesickfor Palestine or Cairo, --yearning for Monreale or Venice, --but thisis not our affair, and, under the protection of the Empress Virgin, Saint Bernard himself could have afforded to sin even to drunkennessof colour. With trifling expense of imagination one can still catcha glimpse of the crusades in the glory of the glass. The longer onelooks into it, the more overpowering it becomes, until one beginsalmost to feel an echo of what our two hundred and fifty millionarithmetical ancestors, drunk with the passion of youth and thesplendour of the Virgin, have been calling to us from Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. No words and no wine could revive theiremotions so vividly as they glow in the purity of the colours; thelimpidity of the blues; the depth of the red; the intensity of thegreen; the complicated harmonies; the sparkle and splendour of thelight; and the quiet and certain strength of the mass. 

With too strong direct sun the windows are said to suffer, andbecome a cluster of jewels--a delirium of coloured light. The lines, too, have different degrees of merit. These criticisms seldom strikea chance traveller, but he invariably makes the discovery that thedesigns within the medallions are childish. He may easily correctthem, if he likes, and see what would happen to the window; butalthough this is the alphabet of art, and we are past spelling wordsof one syllable, the criticism teaches at least one lesson. Primitive man seems to have had a natural colour-sense, instinctivelike the scent of a dog. Society has no right to feel it as a moralreproach to be told that it has reached an age when it can no longerdepend, as in childhood, on its taste, or smell, or sight, orhearing, or memory; the fact seems likely enough, and in no waysinful; yet society always denies it, and is invariably angry aboutit; and, therefore, one had better not say it. On the other hand, wecan leave Delacroix and his school to fight out the battle theybegan against Ingres and his school, in French art, nearly a hundredyears ago, which turned in substance on the same point. Ingres heldthat the first motive in colour-decoration was line, and that apicture which was well drawn was well enough coloured. Societyseemed, on the whole, to agree with him. Society in the twelfthcentury agreed with Delacroix. The French held then that the firstpoint in colour-decoration was colour, and they never hesitated toput their colour where they wanted it, or cared whether a greencamel or a pink lion looked like a dog or a donkey provided they gottheir harmony or value. Everything except colour was sacrificed toline in the large sense, but details of drawing were conventionaland subordinate. So we laugh to see a knight with a blue face, on agreen horse, that looks as though drawn by a four-year-old child, and probably the artist laughed, too; but he was a colourist, andnever sacrificed his colour for a laugh. 

We tourists assume commonly that he knew no better. In our simplefaith in ourselves, great hope abides, for it shows an earnestnesshardly less than that of the crusaders; but in the matter of colourone is perhaps less convinced, or more open to curiosity. No schoolof colour exists in our world to-day, while the Middle Ages had adozen; but it is certainly true that these twelfth-century windowsbreak the French tradition. They had no antecedent, and no fitsuccession. All the authorities dwell on their exceptionalcharacter. One is sorely tempted to suspect that they were in someway an accident; that such an art could not have sprung, in suchperfection, out of nothing, had it been really French; that it musthave had its home elsewhere--on the Rhine--in Italy--in Byzantium--or in Bagdad. 

The same controversy has raged for near two hundred years over theGothic arch, and everything else mediaeval, down to the philosophyof the schools. The generation that lived during the first andsecond crusades tried a number of original experiments, besidescapturing Jerusalem. Among other things, it produced the westernportal of Chartres, with its statuary, its glass, and its fleche, asa by-play; as it produced Abelard, Saint Bernard, and Christian ofTroyes, whose acquaintance we have still to make. It took ideaswherever it found them;--from Germany, Italy, Spain, Constantinople, Palestine, or from the source which has always attracted the Frenchmind like a magnet--from ancient Greece. That it actually did takethe ideas, no one disputes, except perhaps patriots who hold thateven the ideas were original; but to most students the ideas need tobe accounted for less than the taste with which they were handled, and the quickness with which they were developed. That the taste wasFrench, you can see in the architecture, or you will see if ever youmeet the Gothic elsewhere; that it seized and developed an ideaquickly, you have seen in the arch, the fleche, the porch, and thewindows, as well as in the glass; but what we do not comprehend, andnever shall, is the appetite behind all this; the greed for novelty:the fun of life. Every one who has lived since the sixteenth centuryhas felt deep distrust of every one who lived before it, and ofevery one who believed in the Middle Ages. True it is that the lastthirteenth-century artist died a long time before our planet beganits present rate of revolution; it had to come to rest, and beginagain; but this does not prevent astonishment that the twelfth-century planet revolved so fast. The pointed arch not only came asan idea into France, but it was developed into a system ofarchitecture and covered the country with buildings on a scale ofheight never before attempted except by the dome, with anexpenditure of wealth that would make a railway system look cheap, all in a space of about fifty years; the glass came with it, andwent with it, at least as far as concerns us; but, if you need otherevidence, you can consult Renan, who is the highest authority: "Oneof the most singular phenomena of the literary history of the MiddleAges, " says Renan of Averroes, "is the activity of the intellectualcommerce, and the rapidity with which books were spread from one endof Europe to the other. The philosophy of Abelard during hislifetime (1100-42) had penetrated to the ends of Italy. The Frenchpoetry of the trouveres counted within less than a centurytranslations into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, Dutch, Bohemian, Italian, Spanish"; and he might have added thatEngland needed no translation, but helped to compose the poetry, notbeing at that time so insular as she afterwards became. "Such orsuch a work, composed in Morocco or in Cairo, was known at Paris andat Cologne in less time than it would need in our days for a Germanbook of capital importance to pass the Rhine"; and Renan wrote thisin 1852 when German books of capital importance were revolutionizingthe literary world. 

One is apt to forget the smallness of Europe, and how quickly itcould always be crossed. In summer weather, with fair winds, one cansail from Alexandria or from Syria, to Sicily, or even to Spain andFrance, in perfect safety and with ample room for freight, as easilynow as one could do it then, without the aid of steam; but one doesnot now carry freight of philosophy, poetry, or art. The world stillstruggles for unity, but by different methods, weapons, and thought. The mercantile exchanges which surprised Renan, and which havepuzzled historians, were in ideas. The twelfth century was as greedyfor them in one shape as the nineteenth century in another. Francepaid for them dearly, and repented for centuries; but what createssurprise to the point of incredulity is her hunger for them, theyouthful gluttony with which she devoured them, the infallible tastewith which she dressed them out. The restless appetite that snatchedat the pointed arch, the stone fleche, the coloured glass, theilluminated missal, the chanson and roman and pastorelle, thefragments of Aristotle, the glosses of Avicenne, was nothingcompared with the genius which instantly gave form and flower tothem all. 

This episode merely means that the French twelfth-century artist maybe supposed to have known his business, and if he produced agrotesque, or a green-faced Saint, or a blue castle, or a syllogism, or a song, that he did it with a notion of the effect he had inmind. The glass window was to him a whole, --a mass, --and its detailswere his amusement; for the twelfth-century Frenchman enjoyed hisfun, though it was sometimes rather heavy for modern French taste, and less refined than the Church liked. These three twelfth-centurywindows, like their contemporary portal outside, and the fleche thatgoes with them, are the ideals of enthusiasts of mediaeval art; theyare above the level of all known art, in religious form; they areinspired; they are divine! This is the claim of Chartres and itsVirgin. Actually, the French artist, whether architect, sculptor, orpainter in glass, did rise here above his usual level. He knew itwhen he did it, and probably he attributed it, as we do, to theVirgin; for these works of his were hardly fifty years old when therest of the old church was burned; and already the artist felt thevirtue gone out of him. He could not do so well in 1200 as he did in1150; and the Virgin was not so near. 

The proof of it--or, if you prefer to think so, the proof againstit--is before our eyes on the wall above the lancet windows. WhenVillard de Honnecourt came to Chartres, he seized at once on thewestern rose as his study, although the two other roses wereprobably there, in all their beauty and lightness. He saw in thewestern rose some quality of construction which interested him; and, in fact, the western rose is one of the flowers of architecturewhich reveals its beauties slowly without end; but its chief beautyis the feeling which unites it with the portal, the lancets, and thefleche. The glassworker here in the interior had the same task toperform. The glass of the lancets was fifty years old when the glassfor the rose was planned; perhaps it was seventy, for the exactdates are unknown, but it does not matter, for the greater theinterval, the more interesting is the treatment. Whatever the date, the glass of the western rose cannot be much earlier or much laterthan that of the other roses, or that of the choir, and yet you seeat a glance that it is quite differently treated. On such mattersone must, of course, submit to the opinion of artists, which onedoes the more readily because they always disagree; but until theartists tell us better, we may please ourselves by fancying that theglass of the rose was intended to harmonize with that of thelancets, and unite it with the thirteenth-century glass of the naveand transepts. Among all the thirteenth-century windows the westernrose alone seems to affect a rivalry in brilliancy with the lancets, and carries it so far that the separate medallions and pictures arequite lost, --especially in direct sunshine, --blending in a confusedeffect of opals, in a delirium of colour and light, with a resultlike a cluster of stones in jewelry. Assuming as one must, in wantof the artist's instruction, that he knew what he wanted to do, anddid it, one must take for granted that he treated the rose as awhole, and aimed at giving it harmony with the three preciouswindows beneath. The effect is that of a single large ornament; around breastpin, or what is now called a sunburst, of jewels, withthree large pendants beneath. 

We are ignorant tourists, liable to much error in trying to seekmotives in artists who worked seven hundred years ago for a societywhich thought and felt in forms quite unlike ours, but the medievalpilgrim was more ignorant than we, and much simpler in mind; if theidea of an ornament occurs to us, it certainly occurred to him, andstill more to the glassworker whose business was to excite hisillusions. An artist, if good for anything, foresees what his publicwill see; and what his public will see is what he ought to haveintended--the measure of his genius. If the public sees more than hehimself did, this is his credit; if less, this is his fault. Nomatter how simple or ignorant we are, we ought to feel a discord ora harmony where the artist meant us to feel it, and when we see amotive, we conclude that other people have seen it before us, andthat it must, therefore, have been intended. Neither of the transeptroses is treated like this one; neither has the effect of a personalornament; neither is treated as a jewel. No one knew so well as theartist that such treatment must give the effect of a jewel. TheRoses of France and of Dreux bear indelibly and flagrantly thecharacter of France and Dreux; on the western rose is stamped withgreater refinement but equal decision the character of a muchgreater power than either of them. 

No artist would have ventured to put up, before the eyes of Mary inMajesty, above the windows so dear to her, any object that she hadnot herself commanded. Whether a miracle was necessary, or whethergenius was enough, is a point of casuistry which you can settle withAlbertus Magnus or Saint Bernard, and which you will understand aslittle when settled as before; but for us, beyond the futilities ofunnecessary doubt, the Virgin designed this rose; not perhaps inquite the same perfect spirit in which she designed the lancets, butstill wholly for her own pleasure and as her own idea. She placedupon the breast of her Church--which symbolized herself--a jewel sogorgeous that no earthly majesty could bear comparison with it, andwhich no other heavenly majesty has rivalled. As one watches thelight play on it, one is still overcome by the glories of thejewelled rose and its three gemmed pendants; one feels a little ofthe effect she meant it to produce even on infidels, Moors, andheretics, but infinitely more on the men who feared and the womenwho adored her;--not to dwell too long upon it, one admits that hersis the only Church. One would admit anything that she shouldrequire. If you had only the soul of a shrimp, you would crawl, likethe Abbe Suger, to kiss her feet. 

Unfortunately she is gone, or comes here now so very rarely that wenever shall see her; but her genius remains as individual here asthe genius of Blanche of Castile and Pierre de Dreux in thetransepts. That the three lancets were her own taste, as distinctlyas the Trianon was the taste of Louis XIV, is self-evident. Theyrepresent all that was dearest to her; her Son's glory on her right;her own beautiful life in the middle; her royal ancestry on herleft: the story of her divine right, thrice-told. The pictures areall personal, like family portraits. Above them the man who workedin 1200 to carry out the harmony, and to satisfy the Virgin'swishes, has filled his rose with a dozen or two little compositionsin glass, which reveal their subjects only to the best powers of abinocle. Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeouscombination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a LastJudgment--the one subject carefully excluded from the old work, andprobably not existing on the south portal for another twenty years. If the scheme of the western rose dates from 1200, as is reasonableto suppose, this Last Judgment is the oldest in the church, andmakes a link between the theology of the first crusade, beneath, andthe theology of Pierre Mauclerc in the south porch. The churchman isthe only true and final judge on his own doctrine, and we neitherknow nor care to know the facts; but we are as good judges as he ofthe feeling, and we are at full liberty to feel that such a LastJudgment as this was never seen before or since by churchman orheretic, unless by virtue of the heresy which held that the trueChristian must be happy in being damned since such is the will ofGod. That this blaze of heavenly light was intended, either by theVirgin or by her workmen, to convey ideas of terror or pain, is anotion which the Church might possibly preach, but which we sinnersknew to be false in the thirteenth century as well as we know itnow. Never in all these seven hundred years has one of us looked upat this rose without feeling it to be Our Lady's promise ofParadise. 

Here as everywhere else throughout the church, one feels theVirgin's presence, with no other thought than her majesty and grace. To the Virgin and to her suppliants, as to us, who though outcastsin other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was nota symbol of God's justice or man's corruption, but of her owninfinite mercy. The Trinity judged, through Christ;--Christ lovedand pardoned, through her. She wielded the last and highest power onearth and in hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the lightof her Son's infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, turning the Last Judgment itself into the highest proof of herdivine and supreme authority. The rudest ruffian of the Middle Ages, when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed; for what was the LastJudgment to her! An ornament, a plaything, a pleasure! a jewelleddecoration which she wore on her breast! Her chief joy was topardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion waspity! On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only theopaline colours of heaven. Christ the Trinity might judge as much asHe pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servantscould look boldly into the flames. 

If you, or even our friends the priests who still serve Mary'sshrine, suspect that there is some exaggeration in this language, itwill only oblige you to admit presently that there is none; but forthe moment we are busy with glass rather than with faith, and thereis a world of glass here still to study. Technically, we are donewith it. The technique of the thirteenth century comes naturally andonly too easily out of that of the twelfth. Artistically, the motiveremains the same, since it is always the Virgin; but although theVirgin of Chartres is always the Virgin of Majesty, there aredegrees in the assertion of her majesty even here, which affect theart, and qualify its feeling. Before stepping down to the thirteenthcentury, one should look at these changes of the Virgin's royalpresence. 

First and most important as record is the stone Virgin on the southdoor of the western portal, which we studied, with her ByzantineCourt; and the second, also in stone, is of the same period, on oneof the carved capitals of the portal, representing the Adoration ofthe Magi. The third is the glass Virgin at the top of the centrallancet. All three are undoubted twelfth-century work; and you cansee another at Paris, on the same door of Notre Dame, and still moreon Abbe Suger's window at Saint-Denis, and, later, within abeautiful grisaille at Auxerre; but all represent the same figure; aQueen, enthroned, crowned, with the symbols of royal power, holdingin her lap the infant King whose guardian she is. Without pretendingto know what special crown she bears, we can assume, till corrected, that it is the Carlovingian imperial, not the Byzantine. The Trinitynowhere appears except as implied in the Christ. At the utmost, amystic hand may symbolize the Father. The Virgin as represented bythe artists of the twelfth century in the Ile de France and atChartres seems to be wholly French in spite of the Greek atmosphereof her workmanship. One might almost insist that she is blonde, fullin face, large in figure, dazzlingly beautiful, and not more thanthirty years of age. The Child never seems to be more than five. 

You are equally free to see a Southern or Eastern type in her face, and perhaps the glass suggests a dark type, but the face of theVirgin on the central lancet is a fourteenth-century restorationwhich may or may not reproduce the original, while all the otherVirgins represented in glass, except one, belong to the thirteenthcentury. The possible exception is a well-known figure called Notre-Dame-de-la-Belle-Verriere in the choir next the south transept. Astrange, almost uncanny feeling seems to haunt this window, heightened by the veneration in which it was long held as a shrine, though it is now deserted for Notre-Dame-du-Pilier on the oppositeside of the choir. The charm is partly due to the beauty of thescheme of the angels, supporting, saluting, and incensing the Virginand Child with singular grace and exquisite feeling, but rather thatof the thirteenth than of the twelfth century. Here, too, the faceof the Virgin is not ancient. Apparently the original glass wasinjured by time or accident, and the colours were covered or renewedby a simple drawing in oil. Elsewhere the colour is thought to beparticularly good, and the window is a favourite mine of motives forartists to exploit, but to us its chief interest is its singulardepth of feeling. The Empress Mother sits full-face, on a richthrone and dais, with the Child on her lap, repeating her attitudeexcept that her hands support His shoulders. She wears her crown;her feet rest on a stool, and both stool, rug, robe, and throne areas rich as colour and decoration can make them. At last a doveappears, with the rays of the Holy Ghost. Imperial as the Virgin is, it is no longer quite the unlimited empire of the western lancet. The aureole encircles her head only; she holds no sceptre; the HolyGhost seems to give her support which she did not need before, whileSaint Gabriel and Saint Michael, her archangels, with their symbolsof power, have disappeared. Exquisite as the angels are who surroundand bear up her throne, they assert no authority. The window itselfis not a single composition; the panels below seem inserted latermerely to fill up the space; six represent the Marriage of Cana, andthe three at the bottom show a grotesque little demon temptingChrist in the Desert. The effect of the whole, in this angle whichis almost always dark or filled with shadow, is deep and sad, asthough the Empress felt her authority fail, and had come down fromthe western portal to reproach us for neglect. The face is haunting. Perhaps its force may be due to nearness, for this is the onlyinstance in glass of her descending so low that we can almost touchher, and see what the twelfth century instinctively felt in thefeatures which, even in their beatitude, were serious and almost sadunder the austere responsibilities of infinite pity and power. 

No doubt the window is very old, or perhaps an imitation orreproduction of one which was much older, but to the pilgrim itsinterest lies mostly in its personality, and there it stands alone. Although the Virgin reappears again and again in the lower windows, --as in those on either side of the Belle-Verriere; in the remnant ofwindow representing her miracles at Chartres, in the south aislenext the transept; in the fifteenth-century window of the chapel ofVendome which follows; and in the third window which follows that ofVendome and represents her coronation, --she does not show herselfagain in all her majesty till we look up to the high windows above. There we shall find her in her splendour on her throne, above thehigh altar, and still more conspicuously in the Rose of France inthe north transept. Still again she is enthroned in the first windowof the choir next the north transept. Elsewhere we can see herstanding, but never does she come down to us in the full splendourof her presence. Yet wherever we find her at Chartres, and ofwhatever period, she is always Queen. Her expression and attitudeare always calm and commanding. She never calls for sympathy byhysterical appeals to our feelings; she does not even altogethercommand, but rather accepts the voluntary, unquestioning, unhesitating, instinctive faith, love, and devotion of mankind. Shewill accept ours, and we have not the heart to refuse it; we havenot even the right, for we are her guests. 

CHAPTER IX

THE LEGENDARY WINDOWS

One's first visit to a great cathedral is like one's first visit tothe British Museum; the only intelligent idea is to follow the orderof time, but the museum is a chaos in time, and the cathedral isgenerally all of one and the same time. At Chartres, after finishingwith the twelfth century, everything is of the thirteenth. To catcheven an order in time, one must first know what part of thethirteenth-century church was oldest. The books say it was thechoir. After the fire of 1194, the pilgrims used the great crypt asa church where services were maintained; but the builders must havebegun with the central piers and the choir, because the choir wasthe only essential part of the church. Nave and transepts might besuppressed, but without a choir the church was useless, and in ashrine, such as Chartres, the choir was the whole church. Toward thechoir, then, the priest or artist looks first; and, since dates areuseful, the choir must be dated. The same popular enthusiasm, whichhad broken out in 1145, revived in 1195 to help the rebuilding; andthe work was pressed forward with the same feverish haste, so thatten years should have been ample to provide for the choir, if fornothing more; and services may have been resumed there as early asthe year 1206; certainly in 1210. Probably the windows were designedand put in hand as soon as the architect gave the measurements, andany one who intended to give a window would have been apt to chooseone of the spaces in the apse, in Mary's own presence, next thesanctuary. 

The first of the choir windows to demand a date is the Belle-Verriere, which is commonly classed as early thirteenth-century, andmay go with the two windows next it, one of which--the so-calledZodiac window--bears a singularly interesting inscription: "COMESTEOBALDUS DAT. . . AD PRECES COMIXIS PTICENSIS. " If Shakespeare couldwrite the tragedy of "King John, " we cannot admit ourselves not tohave read it, and this inscription might be a part of the play. The"pagus perticensis" lies a short drive to the west, some fifteen ortwenty miles on the road to Le Mans, and in history is known as theComte du Perche, although its memory is now preserved chiefly by itsfamous breed of Percheron horses. Probably the horse also dates fromthe crusades, and may have carried Richard Coeur-de-Lion, but in anycase the count of that day was a vassal of Richard, and one of hisintimate friends, whose memory is preserved forever by a single linein Richard's prison-song:--

 Mes compaignons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain. 

In 1194, when Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote these verses, the Comte duPerche was Geoffrey III, who had been a companion of Richard on hiscrusade in 1192, where, according to the Chronicle, "he shewedhimself but a timid man"; which seems scarcely likely in a companionof Richard; but it is not of him that the Chartres window speaks, except as the son of Mahaut or Matilda of Champagne who was a sisterof Alix of Champagne, Queen of France. The Table shows, therefore, that Geoffroi's son and successor as the Comte du Perche--Thomas--was second cousin of Louis the Lion, known as King Louis VIII ofFrance. They were probably of much the same age. 

If this were all, one might carry it in one's head for a while, butthe relationship which dominates the history of this period was thatof all these great ruling families with Richard Coeur-de-Lion andhis brother John, nicknamed Lackland, both of whom in successionwere the most powerful Frenchmen in France. The Table shows thattheir mother Eleanor of Guienne, the first Queen of Louis VII, borehim two daughters, one of whom, Alix, married, about 1164, the CountThibaut of Chartres and Blois, while the other, Mary, married thegreat Count of Champagne. Both of them being half-sisters of Coeur-de-Lion and John, their children were nephews or half-nephews, indiscriminately, of all the reigning monarchs, and Coeur-de-Lionimmortalized one of them by a line in his prison-song, as heimmortalized Le Perche:--

 Je nel di pas de celi de Chartain, La mere Loeis. 

"Loeis, " therefore, or Count Louis of Chatres, was not only nephewof Coeur-de-Lion and John Lackland, but was also, like Count Thomasof Le Perche, a second cousin of Louis VIII. Feudally and personallyhe was directly attached to Coeur-de-Lion rather than to PhilipAugustus. 

If society in the twelfth century could follow the effects of theserelationships, personal and feudal, it was cleverer than society inthe twentieth; but so much is simple: Louis of France, Thibaut ofChartres, and Thomas of Le Perche, were cousins and close friends inthe year 1215, and all were devoted to the Virgin of Chartres. Judging from the character of Louis's future queen, Blanche ofCastile, their wives were, if possible, more devoted still; and inthat year Blanche gave birth to Saint Louis, who seems to have beenthe most devoted of all. 

Meanwhile their favourite uncle, Coeur-de-Lion, had died in the year1199. Thibaut's great-grandmother, Eleanor of Guienne, died in 1202. King John, left to himself, rapidly accumulated enemies innumerable, abroad and at home. In 1203, Philip Augustus confiscated all thefiefs he held from the French Crown, and in 1204 seized Normandy. John sank rapidly from worse to worst, until at last the Englishbarons rose and forced him to grant their Magna Carta at Runnimedein 1215. 

The year 1215 was, therefore, a year to be remembered at Chartres, as at Mont-Saint-Michel; one of the most convenient dates inhistory. Every one is supposed, even now, to know what happenedthen, to give another violent wrench to society, like the NormanConquest in 1066. John turned on the barons and broke them down;they sent to

[Genealogical chart showing the relationships among England, Champagne and Chartres and France and La Perche. ]

France for help, and offered the crown of England to young Louis, whose father, Philip Augustus, called a council which pledgedsupport to Louis. Naturally the Comte du Perche and the Comte deChartres must have pledged their support, among the foremost, to gowith Louis to England. He was then twenty-nine years old; they wereprobably somewhat younger. 

The Zodiac window, with its inscription, was the immediate result. The usual authority that figures in the histories is Roger ofWendover, but much the more amusing for our purpose is a garrulousFrenchman known as the Menestrel de Rheims who wrote some fiftyyears later. After telling in his delightful thirteenth-centuryFrench, how the English barons sent hostages to Louis, "et mes siresLoueys les fit bien gardeir et honourablement, " the Menestrelcontinued:--

Et assembla granz genz par amours, et par deniers, et par lignage. Et fu avec lui li cuens dou Perche, et li cuens de Montfort, et licuens de Chartres, et li cuens de Monbleart, et mes sires Enjorransde Couci, et mout d'autre grant seigneur dont je ne parole mie. 

The Comte de Chartres, therefore, may be supposed to have gone withthe Comte du Perche, and to have witnessed the disaster at Lincolnwhich took place May 20, 1217, after King John's death:--

Et li cuens dou Perche faisait l'avantgarde, et courut tout leiz desportes; et la garnisons de laienz issi hors et leur coururent sus;et i ot asseiz trait et lancie; et chevaus morz et chevaliersabatuz, et gent a pie morz et navreiz. Et li cuens dou Perche i fumorz par un ribaut qui li leva le pan dou hauberc, et l'ocist d'uncoutel; et fu desconfite l'avantgarde par la mort le conte. Et quantmes sires Loueys le sot, si ot graigneur duel qu'il eust onques, caril estoit ses prochains ami de char. 

Such language would be spoiled by translation. For us it is enoughto know that the "ribaut" who lifted the "pan, " or skirt, of theCount's "hauberc" or coat-of-mail, as he sat on his horse refusingto surrender to English traitors, and stabbed him from below with aknife, may have been an invention of the Menestrel; or the knightwho pierced with his lance through the visor to the brain, may havebeen an invention of Roger of Wendover; but in either case, CountThomas du Perche lost his life at Lincoln, May 20, 1217, to thedeepest regret of his cousin Louis the Lion as well as of the CountThibaut of Chartres, whom he charged to put up a window for him inhonour of the Virgin. 

The window must have been ordered at once, because Count Thibaut, "le Jeune ou le Lepreux, " died himself within a year, April 22, 1218, thus giving an exact date for one of the choir windows. Probably it was one of the latest, because the earliest to beprovided would have been certainly those of the central apsidalchapel. According to the rule laid down by Viollet-le-Duc, thewindows in which blue strongly predominates, like the SaintSylvester, are likely to be earlier than those with a prevailingtone of red. We must take for granted that some of these greatlegendary windows were in place as early as 1210, because, inOctober of that year, Philip Augustus attended mass here. There aresome two dozen of these windows in the choir alone, each of whichmay well have represented a year's work in the slow processes ofthat day, and we can hardly suppose that the workshops of 1200 wereon a scale such as to allow of more than two to have been in hand atonce. Thirty or forty years later, when the Sainte Chapelle wasbuilt, the workshops must have been vastly enlarged, but with theenlargement, the glass deteriorated. Therefore, if the architecturewere so far advanced in the year 1200 as to allow of beginning workon the glass, in the apse, the year 1225 is none too late to allowfor its completion in the choir. 

Dates are stupidly annoying;--what we want is not dates but taste;--yet we are uncomfortable without them. Except the Perche window, none of the lower ones in the choir helps at all; but the clere-story is more useful. There they run in pairs, each pair surmountedby a rose. The first pair (numbers 27 and 28) next the northtransept, shows the Virgin of France, supported, according to theAbbes Bulteau and Clerval, by the arms of Bishop Reynault de Moucon, who was Bishop of Chartres at the time of the great fire in 1194 anddied in 1217. The window number 28 shows two groups of peasants onpilgrimage; below, on his knees, Robert of Berou, as donor:"ROBERTUS DE BEROU: CARN. CANCELLARIUS. " The Cartulary of theCathedral contains an entry (Bulteau, i, 123): "The 26th February, 1216, died Robert de Berou, Chancellor, who has given us a window. "The Cartulary mentions several previous gifts of windows by canonsor other dignitaries of the Church in the year 1215. 

Next follow, or once followed, a pair of windows (numbers 29 and 30)which were removed by the sculptor Bridan, in 1788, in order toobtain light for his statuary below. The donor was "DOMINA JOHANNESBAPTISTA, " who, we are told, was Jeanne de Dammartin; and the windowwas given in memory, or in honour, of her marriage to Ferdinand ofCastile in 1237. Jeanne was a very great lady, daughter of the Comted'Aumale and Marie de Ponthieu. Her father affianced her in 1235 tothe King of England, Henry III, and even caused the marriage to becelebrated by proxy, but Queen Blanche broke it off, as she hadforbidden, in 1231, that of Yolande of Britanny. She relented so faras to allow Jeanne in 1237 to marry Ferdinand of Castile, who stillsits on horseback in the next rose: "REX CASTILLAE. " He won thecrown of Castile in 1217 and died in 1252, when Queen Jeannereturned to Abbeville and then, at latest, put up this window atChartres in memory of her husband. 

The windows numbers 31 and 32 are the subject of much dispute, butwhether the donors were Jean de Chatillon or the three children ofThibaut le Grand of Champagne, they must equally belong to the laterseries of 1260-70, rather than to the earlier of 1210-20. The samething is or was true of the next pair, numbers 33 and 34, which wereremoved in 1773, but the record says that at the bottom of number 34was the figure of Saint Louis's son, Louis of France, who died in1260, before his father, who still rides in the rose above. 

Thus the north side of the choir shows a series of windows thatprecisely cover the lifetime of Saint Louis (1215-70). The southside begins, next the apse, with windows numbers 35 and 36, whichbelong, according to the Comte d'Armancourt, to the family ofMontfort, whose ruined castle crowns the hill of Montfort l'Amaury, on the road to Paris, some forty kilometres northeast of Chartres. Every one is supposed to know the story of Simon de Montfort who waskilled before Toulouse in 1218. Simon left two sons, Amaury andSimon. The sculptor Bridan put an end also to the window of Amaury, but in the rose, Amaury, according to the Abbes, still rides on awhite horse. Amaury's history is well known. He was made Constableof France by Queen Blanche in 1231; went on crusade in 1239; wascaptured by the infidels, taken to Babylon, ransomed, and inreturning to France, died at Otranto in 1241. For that age Amaurywas but a commonplace person, totally overshadowed by his brotherSimon, who went to England, married King John's daughter Eleanor, and became almost king himself as Earl of Leicester. At your leisureyou can read Matthew Paris's dramatic account of him and of hisdeath at the battle of Evesham, August 5, 1265. He was perhaps thelast of the very great men of the thirteenth century, exceptingSaint Louis himself, who lived a few years longer. M. D'Armancourtinsists that it is the great Earl of Leicester who rides with hisvisor up, in full armour, on a brown horse, in the rose above thewindows numbers 37 and 38. In any case, the windows would be laterthan 1240. 

The next pair of windows, numbers 39 and 40, also removed in 1788, still offer, in their rose, the figure of a member of the Courtenayfamily. Gibbon was so much attracted by the romance of theCourtenays as to make an amusing digression on the subject whichdoes not concern us or the cathedral except so far as it tells usthat the Courtenays, like so many other benefactors of ChartresCathedral, belonged to the royal blood. Louis-le-Gros, who died in1137, besides his son Louis-le-Jeune, who married Eleanor of Guiennein that year, had a younger son, Pierre, whom he married to Isabelde Courtenay, and who, like Philip Hurepel, took the title of hiswife. Pierre had a son, Pierre II, who was a cousin of PhilipAugustus, and became the hero of the most lurid tragedy of the time. Chosen Emperor of Constantinople in 1216, to succeed his brothers-in-law Henry and Baldwin, he tried to march across Illyria andMacedonia, from Durazzo opposite Brindisi, with a little army offive thousand men, and instantly disappeared forever. The Epirotescaptured him in the summer of 1217, and from that moment nothing isknown of his fate. 

On the whole, this catastrophe was perhaps the grimmest of all theShakespearean tragedies of the thirteenth century; and one wouldlike to think that the Chartres window was a memorial of thisPierre, who was a cousin of France and an emperor without empire;but M. D'Armancourt insists that the window was given in memory notof this Pierre, but of his nephew, another Pierre de Courtenay, Seigneur de Conches, who went on crusade with Saint Louis in 1249 toEgypt, and died shortly before the defeat and captivity of the King, on February 8, 1250. His brother Raoul, Seigneur d'Illiers, who diedin 1271, is said to be donor of the next window, number 40. The dateof the Courtenay windows should therefore be no earlier than thedeath of Saint Louis in 1270; yet one would like to know what hasbecome of another Courtenay window left by the first Pierre's son-in-law, Gaucher or Gaultier of Bar-sur-Seine, who seems to have beenVicomte de Chartres, and who, dying before Damietta in 1218, made awill leaving to Notre Dame de Chartres thirty silver marks, "dequibus fieri debet miles montatus super equum suum. " Not only wouldthis mounted knight on horseback supply an early date for theseinteresting figures, but would fix also the cost, for a markcontained eight ounces of silver, and was worth ten sous, or half alivre. We shall presently see that Aucassins gave twenty sous, or alivre, for a strong ox, so that the "miles montatus super equumsuum" in glass was equivalent to fifteen oxen if it were money ofParis, which is far from certain. 

This is an economical problem which belongs to experts, but thehistorical value of these early evidences is still something, --perhaps still as much as ten sous. All the windows tend to the sameconclusion. Even the last pair, numbers 41 and 42, offer threepersonal clues which lead to the same result:--the arms of Bouchardde Marly who died in 1226, almost at the same time as Louis VIII; acertain Colinus or Colin, "de camera Regis, " who was alive in 1225;and Robert of Beaumont in the rose, who seems to be a Beaumont of LePerche, of whom little or nothing is as yet certainly known. As ageneral rule, there are two series of windows, one figuring thecompanions or followers of Louis VIII (1215-26); the other, friendsor companions of Saint Louis (1226-70), Queen Blanche uniting both. What helps to hold the sequences in a certain order, is that thechoir was complete, and services regularly resumed there, in 1210, while in 1220 the transept and nave were finished and vaulted. Forthe apside windows, therefore, we will assume, subject tocorrection, a date from 1200 to 1225 for their design andworkmanship; for the transept, 1220 to 1236; and for the nave ageneral tendency to the actual reign of Saint Louis from 1236 to1270. Since there is a deal of later glass scattered everywhereamong the earlier, the margin of error is great; but by keeping thereign of Louis VIII and its personages distinct from that of LouisIX and his generation, we can be fairly sure of our main facts. Meanwhile the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, wholly built and completedbetween 1240 and 1248, offers a standard of comparison for thelegendary windows. 

The choir of Chartres is as long as the nave, and much broader, besides that the apse was planned with seven circular projectionswhich greatly increased the window space, so that the guidebookreckons thirty-seven windows. A number of these are grisailles, andthe true amateur of glass considers the grisailles to be as wellworth study as the legendary windows. They are a decoration whichhas no particular concern with churches, and no distinct religiousmeaning, but, it seems, a religious value which Viollet-le-Duc is atsome trouble to explain; and, since his explanation is not verytechnical, we can look at it, before looking at the legends:--

The colouration of the windows had the advantage of throwing on theopaque walls a veil, or coloured glazing, of extreme delicacy, always assuming that the coloured windows themselves wereharmoniously toned. Whether their resources did not permit theartists to adopt a complete system of coloured glass, or whetherthey wanted to get daylight in purer quality into their interiors, --whatever may have been their reasons, --they resorted to thisbeautiful grisaille decoration which is also a colouring harmonyobtained by the aid of a long experience in the effects of light ontranslucent surfaces. Many of our churches retain grisaille windowsfilling either all, or only a part, of their bays. In the lattercase, the grisailles are reserved for the side windows which aremeant to be seen obliquely, and in that case the coloured glassfills the bays of the fond, the apsidal openings which are meant tobe seen in face from a distance. These lateral grisailles are stillopaque enough to prevent the solar rays which pass through them fromlighting the coloured windows on the reverse side; yet, at certainhours of the day, these solar rays throw a pearly light on thecoloured windows which gives them indescribable transparence andrefinement of tones. The lateral windows in the choir of the AuxerreCathedral, half-grisaille, half-coloured, throw on the whollycoloured apsidal window, by this means, a glazing the softness ofwhich one can hardly conceive. The opaline light which comes throughthese lateral bays, and makes a sort of veil, transparent in theextreme, under the lofty vaulting, is crossed by the brilliant tonesof the windows behind, which give the play of precious stones. Thesolid outlines then seem to waver like objects seen through a sheetof clear water. Distances change their values, and take depths inwhich the eye gets lost. With every hour of the day these effectsare altered, and always with new harmonies which one never tires oftrying to understand; but the deeper one's study goes, the moreastounded one becomes before the experience acquired by theseartists, whose theories on the effects of colour, assuming that theyhad any, are unknown to us and whom the most kindly-disposed amongus treat as simple children. 

You can read the rest for yourselves. Grisaille is a separate branchof colour-decoration which belongs with the whole system of lightingand fenetrage, and will have to remain a closed book because thefeeling and experience which explained it once are lost, and wecannot recover either. Such things must have been always felt ratherthan reasoned, like the irregularities in plan of the builders; thebest work of the best times shows the same subtlety of sense as thedog shows in retrieving, or the bee in flying, but which touristshave lost. All we can do is to note that the grisailles wereintended to have values. They were among the refinements of lightand colour with which the apse of Chartres is so crowded that onemust be content to feel what one can, and let the rest go. 

Understand, we cannot! nothing proves that the greatest artists whoever lived have, in a logical sense, understood! or that omnipotencehas ever understood! or that the utmost power of expression has everbeen capable of expressing more than the reaction of one energy onanother, but not of two on two; and when one sits here, in thecentral axis of this complicated apse, one sees, in mere lightalone, the reaction of hundreds of energies, although time has leftonly a wreck of what the artist put here. One of the best windowspaces is wholly filled up by the fourteenth-century doorway to thechapel of Saint Piat, and only by looking at the two windows whichcorrespond on the north does a curious inquirer get a notion of theprobable loss. The same chapel more or less blocks the light ofthree other principal windows. The sun, the dust, the acids ofdripping water, and the other works of time, have in seven hundredyears corroded or worn away or altered the glass, especially on thesouth side. Windows have been darkened by time and mutilated bywilful injury. Scores of the panels are wholly restored, modernreproductions or imitations. Even after all this loss, the glass isprobably the best-preserved, or perhaps the only preserved part ofthe decoration in colour, for we never shall know the colour-decoration of the vaults, the walls, the columns, or the floors. Only one point is fairly sure;--that on festivals, if not at othertimes, every foot of space was covered in some way or another, throughout the apse, with colour; either paint or tapestry orembroidery or Byzantine brocades and Oriental stuffs or rugs, liningthe walls, covering the altars, and hiding the floor. Occasionallyyou happen upon illuminated manuscripts showing the interiors ofchapels with their colour-decoration; but everything has perishedhere except the glass. 

If one may judge from the glass of later centuries, the firstimpression from the thirteenth-century windows ought to bedisappointment. You should find them too effeminate, too soft, toosmall, and above all not particularly religious. Indeed, except forthe nominal subjects of the legends, one sees nothing religiousabout them; the medallions, when studied with the binocle, turn outto be less religious than decorative. Saint Michael would not havefelt at home here, and Saint Bernard would have turned from themwith disapproval; but when they were put up, Saint Bernard was longdead, and Saint Michael had yielded his place to the Virgin. Thisapse is all for her. At its entrance she sat, on either side, in theBelle-Verriere or as Our Lady of the Pillar, to receive the secretsand the prayers of suppliants who wished to address her directly inperson; there she bent down to our level, resumed her humanity, andfelt our griefs and passions. Within, where the cross-lights fellthrough the wide columned space behind the high altar, was herwithdrawing room, where the decorator and builder thought only ofpleasing her. The very faults of the architecture and effeminacy oftaste witness the artists' object. If the glassworkers had thoughtof themselves or of the public or even of the priests, they wouldhave strained for effects, strong masses of colour, and strikingsubjects to impress the imagination. Nothing of the sort is evensuggested. The great, awe-inspiring mosaic figure of the Byzantinehalf-dome was a splendid religious effect, but this artist had inhis mind an altogether different thought. He was in the Virgin'semploy; he was decorating her own chamber in her own palace; hewanted to please her; and he knew her tastes, even when she did notgive him her personal orders. To him, a dream would have been anorder. The salary of the twelfth-century artist was out of allrelation with the percentage of a twentieth-century decorator. Theartist of 1200 was probably the last who cared little for the baron, not very much for the priest, and nothing for the public, unless hehappened to be paid by the guild, and then he cared just to theextent of his hire, or, if he was himself a priest, not even forthat. His pay was mostly of a different kind, and was the same asthat of the peasants who were hauling the stone from the quarry atBercheres while he was firing his ovens. His reward was to come whenhe should be promoted to decorate the Queen of Heaven's palace inthe New Jerusalem, and he served a mistress who knew better than hedid what work was good and what was bad, and how to give him hisright place. Mary's taste was infallible; her knowledge like herpower had no limits; she knew men's thoughts as well as acts, andcould not be deceived. Probably, even in our own time, an artistmight find his imagination considerably stimulated and his workpowerfully improved if he knew that anything short of his best wouldbring him to the gallows, with or without trial by jury; but in thetwelfth century the gallows was a trifle; the Queen hardlyconsidered it a punishment for an offence to her dignity. The artistwas vividly aware that Mary disposed of hell. 

All this is written in full, on every stone and window of this apse, as legible as the legends to any one who cares to read. The artistswere doing their best, not to please a swarm of flat-eared peasantsor slow-witted barons, but to satisfy Mary, the Queen of Heaven, towhom the Kings and Queens of France were coming constantly for help, and whose absolute power was almost the only restraint recognized byEmperor, Pope, and clown. The colour-decoration is hers, and hersalone. For her the lights are subdued, the tones softened, thesubjects selected, the feminine taste preserved. That other greatladies interested themselves in the matter, even down to itstechnical refinements, is more than likely; indeed, in the centralapside chapel, suggesting the Auxerre grisaille that Viollet-le-Ducmentioned, is a grisaille which bears the arms of Castile and QueenBlanche; further on, three other grisailles bear also the famouscastles, but this is by no means the strongest proof of femininetaste. The difficulty would be rather to find a touch of certainlymasculine taste in the whole apse. 

Since the central apside chapel is the most important, we can beginwith the windows there, bearing in mind that the subject of thecentral window was the Life of Christ, dictated by rule or custom. On Christ's left hand is the window of Saint Peter; next him isSaint Paul. All are much restored; thirty-three of the medallionsare wholly new. Opposite Saint Peter, at Christ's right hand, is thewindow of Saint Simon and Saint Jude; and next is the grisaille withthe arms of Castile. If these windows were ordered between 1205 and1210, Blanche, who was born in 1187, and married in 1200, would havebeen a young princess of twenty or twenty-five when she gave thiswindow in grisaille to regulate and harmonize and soften thelighting of the Virgin's boudoir. The central chapel must be takento be the most serious, the most studied, and the oldest of thechapels in the church, above the crypt. The windows here should rankin importance next to the lancets of the west front which are onlyabout sixty years earlier. They show fully that difference. 

Here one must see for one's self. Few artists know much about it, and still fewer care for an art which has been quite dead these fourhundred years. The ruins of Nippur would hardly be more intelligibleto the ordinary architect of English tradition than these twelfth-century efforts of the builders of Chartres. Even the learning ofViollet-le-Duc was at fault in dealing with a building so personalas this, the history of which is almost wholly lost. This centralchapel must have been meant to give tone to the apse, and it showswith the colour-decoration of a queen's salon, a subject-decorationtoo serious for the amusement of heretics. One sees at a glance thatthe subject-decoration was inspired by church-custom, while colourwas an experiment and the decorators of this enormous window spacewere at liberty as colourists to please the Countess of Chartres andthe Princess Blanche and the Duchess of Brittany, without muchregarding the opinions of the late Bernard of Clairvaux or evenAugustine of Hippo, since the great ladies of the Court knew betterthan the Saints what would suit the Virgin. 

The subject of the central window was prescribed by tradition. Christ is the Church, and in this church he and his Mother are one;therefore the life of Christ is the subject of the central window, but the treatment is the Virgin's, as the colours show, and as theabsence of every influence but hers, including the Crucifixion, proves officially. Saint Peter and Saint Paul are in their properplace as the two great ministers of the throne who represent the twogreat parties in western religion, the Jewish and the Gentile. Opposite them, balancing by their family influence the weight ofdelegated power, are two of Mary's nephews, Simon and Jude; but thissubject branches off again into matters so personal to Mary thatSimon and Jude require closer acquaintance. One must study a newguidebook--the "Golden Legend, " by the blessed James, Bishop ofGenoa and member of the order of Dominic, who was born at Varazze orVoragio in almost the same year that Thomas was born at Aquino, andwhose "Legenda Aurea, " written about the middle of the thirteenthcentury, was more popular history than the Bible itself, and moregenerally consulted as authority. The decorators of the thirteenthcentury got their motives quite outside the Bible, in sources thatJames of Genoa compiled into a volume almost as fascinating as the"Fioretti of Saint Francis. "

According to the "Golden Legend" and the tradition accepted inJerusalem by pilgrims and crusaders, Mary's family connection waslarge. It appears that her mother Anne was three times married, andby each husband had a daughter Mary, so that there were three Marys, half-sisters. 

Joachim-Anne- Cleophas- -Salome

Joseph-Mary Alpheus-Mary Mary-Zebedee

Christ James Joseph Simon Jude James Johnthe Minor the the Major the EvangelistApostle Just St. Iago of Compostella

Simon and Jude were, therefore, nephews of Mary and cousins ofChrist, whose lives were evidence of the truth not merely ofScripture, but specially of the private and family distinction oftheir aunt, the Virgin Mother of Christ. They were selected, ratherthan their brothers, or cousins James and John, for the conspicuoushonour of standing opposite Peter and Paul, doubtless by reason ofsome merit of their own, but perhaps also because in art the twocounted as one, and therefore the one window offered two witnesses, which allowed the artist to insert a grisaille in place of anotherlegendary window to complete the chapel on their right. According toViollet-le-Duc, the grisaille in this position regulates the lightand so completes the effect. 

If custom prescribed a general rule for the central chapel, it seemsto have left great freedom in the windows near by. At Chartres thecurved projection that contains the next two windows was not achapel, but only a window-bay, for the sake of the windows, and, ifthe artists aimed at pleasing the Virgin, they would put their bestwork there. At Bourges in the same relative place are three of thebest windows in the building:--the Prodigal Son, the New Allianceand the Good Samaritan; all of them full of life, story, and colour, with little reference to a worship or a saint. At Chartres thechoice is still more striking, and the windows are also the best inthe building, after the twelfth-century glass of the west front. Thefirst, which comes next to Blanche's grisaille in the centralchapel, is given to another nephew of Mary and apostle of Christ, Saint James the Major, whose life is recorded in the proper BibleDictionaries, with a terminal remark as follows:--

For legends respecting his death and his connections with Spain, seethe Roman Breviary, in which the healing of a paralytic and theconversion of Hermogenes are attributed to him, and where it isasserted that he preached the Gospel in Spain, and that his remainswere translated to Compostella . . . As there is no shadow offoundation for any of the legends here referred to, we pass them bywithout further notice. Even Baronius shows himself ashamed ofthem. . . . 

If the learned Baronius thought himself required to show shame forall the legends that pass as history, he must have suffered cruellyduring his laborious life, and his sufferings would not have beenconfined to the annals of the Church; but the historical accuracy ofthe glass windows is not our affair, nor are historians especiallyconcerned in the events of the Virgin's life, whether recorded orlegendary. Religion is, or ought to be, a feeling, and thethirteenth-century windows are original documents, much morehistorical than any recorded in the Bible, since their inspirationis a different thing from their authority. The true life of SaintJames or Saint Jude or any other of the apostles, did not, in theopinion of the ladies in the Court of France, furnish subjectsagreeable enough to decorate the palace of the Queen of Heaven; andthat they were right, any one must feel, who compares these twowindows with subjects of dogma. Saint James, better known asSantiago of Compostella, was a compliment to the young Dauphine--before Dauphines existed--the Princess Blanche of Castile, whosearms, or castles, are on the grisaille window next to it. Perhapsshe chose him to stand there. Certainly her hand is seen plainlyenough throughout the church to warrant suspecting it here. As anephew, Saint James was dear to the Virgin, but, as a friend toSpain, still more dear to Blanche, and it is not likely that pureaccident caused three adjacent windows to take a Spanish tone. 

The Saint James in whom the thirteenth century delighted, and whosewindows one sees at Bourges, Tours, and wherever the scallop-shelltells of the pilgrim, belongs not to the Bible but to the "GoldenLegend. " This window was given by the Merchant Tailors whosesignature appears at the bottom, in the corners, in two picturesthat paint the tailor's shop of Chartres in the first quarter of thethirteenth century. The shop-boy takes cloth from chests for hismaster to show to customers, and to measure off by his ell. Thestory of Saint James begins in the lower panel, where he receiveshis mission from Christ, Above, on the right, he seems to bepreaching. On the left appears a figure which tells the reason forthe popularity of the story. It is Almogenes, or in the Latin, Hermogenes, a famous magician in great credit among the Pharisees, who has the command of demons, as you see, for behind his shoulder, standing, a little demon is perched, while he orders his pupilFiletus to convert James. Next, James is shown in discussion with agroup of listeners. Filetus gives him a volume of false doctrine. Almogenes then further instructs Filetus. James is led away by arope, curing a paralytic as he goes. He sends his cloak to Filetusto drive away the demon. Filetus receives the cloak, and the drolllittle demon departs in tears. Almogenes, losing his temper, sendstwo demons, with horns on their heads and clubs in their hands, toreason with James; who sends them back to remonstrate withAlmogenes. The demons then bind Almogenes and bring him beforeJames, who discusses differences with him until Almogenes burns hisbooks of magic and prostrates himself before the Saint. Both arethen brought before Herod, and Almogenes breaks a pretty heathenidol, while James goes to prison. A panel comes in here, out ofplace, showing Almogenes enchanting Filetus, and the demon enteringinto possession of him. Then Almogenes is seen being very roughlyhandled by a young Jew, while the bystanders seem to approve. Jamesnext makes Almogenes throw his books of magic into the sea; both areled away to execution, curing the infirm on their way; their headsare cut off; and, at the top, God blesses the orb of the world. 

That this window was intended to amuse the Virgin seems quite asreasonable an idea as that it should have been made to instruct thepeople, or us. Its humour was as humorous then as now, for theFrench of the thirteenth century loved humour even in churches, astheir grotesques proclaim. The Saint James window is a tale ofmagic, told with the vivacity of a fabliau; but if its motive ofamusement seems still a forced idea, we can pass on, at once, to thecompanion window which holds the best position in the church, where, in the usual cathedral, one expects to find Saint John or some otherapostle; or Saint Joseph; or a doctrinal lesson such as that calledthe New Alliance where the Old and New Testaments are united. Thewindow which the artists have set up here is regarded as the best ofthe thirteenth-century windows, and is the least religious. 

The subject is nothing less than the "Chanson de Roland" in picturesof coloured glass, set in a border worth comparing at leisure withthe twelfth-century borders of the western lancets. Even atChartres, the artists could not risk displeasing the Virgin and theChurch by following a wholly profane work like the "Chanson" itself, and Roland had no place in religion. He could be introduced onlythrough Charlemagne, who had almost as little right there as he. Thetwelfth century had made persistent efforts to get Charlemagne intothe Church, and the Church had made very little effort to keep himout; yet by the year 1200, Charlemagne had not been sainted exceptby the anti-Pope Pascal III in 1165, although there was a popularbelief, supported in Spain by the necessary documents, that PopeCalixtus II in 1122 had declared the so-called Chronicle ofArchbishop Turpin to be authentic. The Bishop of Chartres in 1200was very much too enlightened a prelate to accept the Chronicle orTurpin or Charlemagne himself, still less Roland and Thierry, asauthentic in sanctity; but if the young and beautiful Dauphine ofFrance, and her cousins of Chartres, and their artists, warmlybelieved that the Virgin would be pleased by the story ofCharlemagne and Roland, the Bishop might have let them have theirway in spite of the irregularity. That the window was anirregularity, is plain; that it has always been immensely admired, is certain; and that Bishop Renaud must have given his assent to it, is not to be denied. 

The most elaborate account of this window can be found in Male's"Art Religieux" (pp. 444-50). Its feeling or motive is quite anothermatter, as it is with the statuary on the north porch. The Furriersor Fur Merchants paid for the Charlemagne window, and theirsignature stands at the bottom, where a merchant shows a fur-linedcloak to his customer. That Mary was personally interested in furs, no authority seems to affirm, but that Blanche and Isabel and everylady of the Court, as well as every king and every count, in thatday, took keen interest in the subject, is proved by the prices theypaid, and the quantities they wore. Not even the Merchant Tailorshad a better standing at Court than the Furriers, which may accountfor their standing so near the Virgin. Whatever the cause, theFurriers were allowed to put their signature here, side by side withthe Tailors, and next to the Princess Blanche. Their gift warrantedit. Above the signature, in the first panel, the Emperor Constantineis seen, asleep, in Constantinople, on an elaborate bed, while anangel is giving him the order to seek aid from Charlemagne againstthe Saracens. Charlemagne appears, in full armour of the year 1200, on horseback. Then Charlemagne, sainted, wearing his halo, converseswith two bishops on the subject of a crusade for the rescue ofConstantine. In the next scene, he arrives at the gates ofConstantinople where Constantine receives him. The fifth picture ismost interesting; Charlemagne has advanced with his knights andattacks the Saracens; the Franks wear coats-of-mail, and carry long, pointed shields; the infidels carry round shields; Charlemagne, wearing a crown, strikes off with one blow of his sword the head ofa Saracen emir; but the battle is desperate; the chargers are atfull gallop, and a Saracen is striking at Charlemagne with hisbattle-axe. After the victory has been won, the Emperor Constantinerewards Charlemagne by the priceless gift of three chasses orreliquaries, containing a piece of the true Cross; the Suaire orgrave-cloth of the Saviour; and a tunic of the Virgin. Charlemagnethen returns to France, and in the next medallion presents the threechasses and the crown of the Saracen king to the church at Aix, which to a French audience meant the Abbey of Saint-Denis. Thisscene closes the first volume of the story. 

The second part opens on Charlemagne, seated between two persons, looking up to heaven at the Milky Way, called then the Way of SaintJames, which directs him to the grave of Saint James in Spain. SaintJames himself appears to Charlemagne in a dream, and orders him toredeem the tomb from the infidels. Then Charlemagne sets out, withArchbishop Turpin of Rheims and knights. In presence of his army hedismounts and implores the aid of God. Then he arrives beforePampeluna and transfixes with his lance the Saracen chief as heflies into the city. Mounted, he directs workmen to construct achurch in honour of Saint James; a little cloud figures the hand ofGod. Next is shown the miracle of the lances; stuck in the ground atnight, they are found in the morning to have burst into foliage, prefiguring martyrdom. Two thousand people perish in battle. Thenbegins the story of Roland which the artists and donors are so eagerto tell, knowing, as they do, that what has so deeply interested menand women on earth, must interest Mary who loves them. You seeArchbishop Turpin celebrating mass when an angel appears, to warnhim of Roland's fate. Then Roland himself, also wearing a halo, isintroduced, in the act of killing the giant Ferragus. The combat ofRoland and Ferragus is at the top, out of sequence, as often happensin the legendary windows. Charlemagne and his army are seen marchinghomeward through the Pyrenees, while Roland winds his horn andsplits the rock without being able to break Durendal. Thierry, likewise sainted, brings water to Roland in a helmet. At lastThierry announces Roland's death. At the top, on either side ofRoland and Ferragus, is an angel with incense. 

The execution of this window is said to be superb. Of the colour, and its relations with that of the Saint James, one needs time andlong acquaintance to learn the value. In the feeling, compared withthat of the twelfth century, one needs no time in order to see achange. These two windows are as French and as modern as a pictureof Lancret; they are pure art, as simply decorative as thedecorations of the Grand Opera. The thirteenth century knew moreabout religion and decoration than the twentieth century will everlearn. The windows were neither symbolic nor mystical, nor morereligious than they pretended to be. That they are more intelligentor more costly or more effective is nothing to the purpose, so longas one grants that the combat of Roland and Ferragus, or Rolandwinding his olifant, or Charlemagne cutting off heads andtransfixing Moors, were subjects never intended to teach religion orinstruct the ignorant, but to please the Queen of Heaven as theypleased the queens of earth with a roman, not in verse but incolour, as near as possible to decorative perfection. Instinctivelyone looks to the corresponding bay, opposite, to see what theartists could have done to balance these two great efforts of theirart; but the bay opposite is now occupied by the entrance to SaintPiat's chapel and one does not know what changes may have been madein the fourteenth century to rearrange the glass; yet, even as itnow stands, the Sylvester window which corresponds to theCharlemagne is, as glass, the strongest in the whole cathedral. Inthe next chapel, on our left, come the martyrs, with Saint Stephen, the first martyr, in the middle window. Naturally the subject ismore serious, but the colour is not differently treated. A stepfurther, and you see the artists returning to their lightersubjects. The stories of Saint Julian and Saint Thomas are moreamusing than the plots of half the thirteenth-century romances, andnot very much more religious. The subject of Saint Thomas is apendant to that of Saint James, for Saint Thomas was a greattraveller and an architect, who carried Mary's worship to India asSaint James carried it to Spain. Here is the amusement of many daysin studying the stories, the colour and the execution of thesewindows, with the help of the "Monographs" of Chartres and Bourgesor the "Golden Legend" and occasional visits to Le Mans, Tours, Clermont Ferrand, and other cathedrals; but, in passing, one has tonote that the window of Saint Thomas was given by France, and bearsthe royal arms, perhaps for Philip Augustus the King; while thewindow of Saint Julian was given by the Carpenters and Coopers. Onefeels no need to explain how it happens that the taste of the royalfamily, and of their tailors, furriers, carpenters, and coopers, should fit so marvellously, one with another, and with that of theVirgin; but one can compare with theirs the taste of the Stone-workers opposite, in the window of Saint Sylvester and SaintMelchiades, whose blues almost kill the Charlemagne itself, and ofthe Tanners in that of Saint Thomas of Canterbury; or, in the lastchapel on the south side, with that of the Shoemakers in the windowto Saint Martin, attributed for some reason to a certain Clemensvitrearius Carnutensis, whose name is on a window in the cathedralof Rouen. The name tells nothing, even if the identity could beproved. Clement the glassmaker may have worked on his own account, or for others; the glass differs only in refinements of taste orperhaps of cost. Nicolas Lescine, the canon, or Geoffroi Chardonnel, may have been less rich than the Bakers, and even the Furriers mayhave not had the revenues of the King; but some controlling hand hasgiven more or less identical taste to all. 

What one can least explain is the reason why some windows, thatshould be here, are elsewhere. In most churches, one finds in thechoir a window of doctrine, such as the so-called New Alliance, buthere the New Alliance is banished to the nave. Besides the costlyCharlemagne and Saint James windows in the apse, the Furriers andDrapers gave several others, and one of these seems particularlysuited to serve as companion to Saint Thomas, Saint James, and SaintJulian, so that it is best taken with these while comparing them. Itis in the nave, the third window from the new tower, in the northaisle, --the window of Saint Eustace. The story and treatment andbeauty of the work would have warranted making it a pendant toAlmogenes, in the bay now serving as the door to Saint Piat'schapel, which should have been the most effective of all thepositions in the church for a legendary story. Saint Eustace, whosename was Placidas, commanded the guards of the Emperor Trajan. Oneday he went out hunting with huntsmen and hounds, as the legend inthe lower panel of the window begins; a pretty picture of a staghunt about the year 1200; followed by one still prettier, where thestag, after leaping upon a rock, has turned, and shows a crucifixbetween his horns, the stag on one side balancing the horse on theother, while Placidas on his knees yields to the miracle of Christ. Then Placidas is baptized as Eustace; and in the centre, you see himwith his wife and two children--another charming composition--leaving the city. Four small panels in the corners are said tocontain the signatures of the Drapers and Furriers. Above, the storyof adventure goes on, showing Eustace bargaining with a shipmasterfor his passage; his embarcation with wife and children, and theirarrival at some shore, where the two children have landed, and themaster drives Eustace after them while he detains the wife. Foursmall panels here have not been identified, but the legend was nodoubt familiar to the Middle Ages, and they knew how Eustace and thechildren came to a river, where you can see a pink lion carrying offone child, while a wolf, which has seized the other, is attacked byshepherds and dogs. The children are rescued, and the wifereappears, on her knees before her lord, telling of her escape fromthe shipmaster, while the children stand behind; and then thereunited family, restored to the Emperor's favour, is seen feastingand happy. At last Eustace refuses to offer a sacrifice to agraceful antique idol, and is then shut up, with all his family, ina brazen bull; a fire is kindled beneath it; and, from above, a handconfers the crown of martyrdom. 

Another subject, which should have been placed in the apse, standsin a singular isolation which has struck many of the students inthis branch of church learning. At Sens, Saint Eustace is in thechoir, and by his side is the Prodigal Son. At Bourges also theProdigal Son is in the choir. At Chartres, he is banished to thenorth transept, where you will find him in the window next the nave, almost as though he were in disgrace; yet the glass is said to bevery fine, among the best in the church, while the story is toldwith rather more vivacity than usual; and as far as colour andexecution go, the window has an air of age and quality higher thanthe average. At the bottom you see the signature of the corporationof Butchers. The window at Bourges was given by the Tanners. Thestory begins with the picture showing the younger son asking thefather for his share of the inheritance, which he receives in thenext panel, and proceeds, on horseback, to spend, as one cannot helpsuspecting, at Paris, in the Latin Quarter, where he is seenarriving, welcomed by two ladies. No one has offered to explain whyChartres should consider two ladies theologically more correct thanone; or why Sens should fix on three, or why Bourges should requiresix. Perhaps this was left to the artist's fancy; but, beforequitting the twelfth century, we shall see that the usual young manwho took his share of patrimony and went up to study in the LatinQuarter, found two schools of scholastic teaching, one calledRealism, the other Nominalism, each of which in turn the Church hadbeen obliged to condemn. Meanwhile the Prodigal Son is seen feastingwith them, and is crowned with flowers, like a new Abelard, singinghis songs to Heloise, until his religious capital is exhausted, andhe is dragged out of bed, to be driven naked from the house withsticks, in this also I resembling Abelard. At Bourges he is gentlyturned out; at Sens he is dragged away by three devils. Then heseeks service, and is seen knocking acorns from boughs, to feed hisemployer's swine; but, among the thousands of young men who musthave come here directly from the schools, nine in every ten saidthat he was teaching letters to his employer's children or lecturingto the students of the Latin Quarter. At last he decides to returnto his father, --possibly the Archbishop of Paris or the Abbot ofSaint-Denis, --who receives him with open arms, and gives him a newrobe, which to the ribald student would mean a church living--anabbey, perhaps Saint Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany, or elsewhere. Thefatted calf is killed, the feast is begun, and the elder son, whomthe malicious student would name Bernard, appears in order to makeprotest. Above, God, on His throne, blesses the globe of the world. 

The original symbol of the Prodigal Son was a rather different formof prodigality. According to the Church interpretation, the Fatherhad two sons; the older was the people of the Jews; the younger, theGentiles. The Father divided his substance between them, giving tothe older the divine law, to the younger, the law of nature. Theyounger went off and dissipated his substance, as one must believe, on Aristotle; but repented and returned when the Father sacrificedthe victim--Christ--as the symbol of reunion. That the Synagoguealso accepts the sacrifice is not so clear; but the Church clung tothe idea of converting the Synagogue as a necessary proof ofChrist's divine character. Not until about the time when this windowmay have been made, did the new Church, under the influence of SaintDominic, abandon the Jews and turn in despair to the Gentiles alone. 

The old symbolism belonged to the fourth and fifth centuries, and, as told by the Jesuit fathers Martin and Cahier in their "Monograph"of Bourges, it should have pleased the Virgin who was particularlyloved by the young, and habitually showed her attachment to them. AtBourges the window stands next the central chapel of the apse, whereat Chartres is the entrance to Saint Piat's chapel; but Bourges didnot belong to Notre Dame, nor did Sens. The story of the prodigalsons of these years from 1200 to 1230 lends the window a littlepersonal interest that the Prodigal Son of Saint Luke's Gospel couldhardly have had even to thirteenth-century penitents. Neither theChurch nor the Crown loved prodigal sons. So far from killing fattedcalves for them, the bishops in 1209 burned no less than ten inParis for too great intimacy with Arab and Jew disciples ofAristotle. The position of the Bishop of Chartres between theschools had been always awkward. As for Blanche of Castile, herfirst son, afterwards Saint Louis, was born in 1215; and after thattime no Prodigal Son was likely to be welcomed in any society whichshe frequented. For her, above all other women on earth or inheaven, prodigal sons felt most antipathy, until, in 1229, thequarrel became so violent that she turned her police on them andbeat a number to death in the streets. They retaliated withoutregard for loyalty or decency, being far from model youth and proneto relapses from virtue, even when forgiven and beneficed. 

The Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, showed no prejudice againstprodigal sons, or even prodigal daughters. She would hardly, of herown accord, have ordered such persons out of her apse, when SaintStephen at Bourges and Sens showed no such puritanism; yet theChartres window is put away in the north transept. Even there itstill stands opposite the Virgin of the Pillar, on the women's andQueen Blanche's side of the church, and in an excellent position, better seen from the choir than some of the windows in the choiritself, because the late summer sun shines full upon it, and carriesits colours far into the apse. This may have been one of the manyinstances of tastes in the Virgin which were almost too imperial forher official court. Omniscient as Mary was, she knew no differencebetween the Blanches of Castile and the students of the LatinQuarter. She was rather fond of prodigals, and gentle toward theladies who consumed the prodigal's substance. She admitted MaryMagdalen and Mary the Gipsy to her society. She fretted little aboutAristotle so long as the prodigal adored her, and naturally theprodigal adored her almost to the exclusion of the Trinity. Shealways cared less for her dignity than was to be wished. Especiallyin the nave and on the porch, among the peasants, she liked toappear as one of themselves; she insisted on lying in bed, in astable, with the cows and asses about her, and her baby in a cradleby the bedside, as though she had suffered like other women, thoughthe Church insisted she had not. Her husband, Saint Joseph, wasnotoriously uncomfortable in her Court, and always preferred to getas near to the door as he could. The choir at Chartres, on thecontrary, was aristocratic; every window there had a court quality, even down to the contemporary Thomas a'Becket, the fashionablemartyr of good society. Theology was put into the transepts or stillfurther away in the nave where the window of the New Alliance elbowsthe Prodigal Son. Even to Blanche of Castile, Mary was neither aphilanthropist nor theologist nor merely a mother, --she was anabsolute Empress, and whatever she said was obeyed, but sometimesshe seems to have willed an order that worried some of her mostpowerful servants. 

Mary chose to put her Prodigal into the transept, and one would liketo know the reason. Was it a concession to the Bishop or the Queen?Or was it to please the common people that these familiar picture-books, with their popular interest, like the Good Samaritan and theProdigal Son, were put on the walls of the great public hall? Thiscan hardly be, since the people would surely have preferred theCharlemagne and Saint James to any other. We shall never know; butsitting here in the subdued afternoon light of the apse, one goes onfor hours reading the open volumes of colour, and listening to thesteady discussion by the architects, artists, priests, princes, andprincesses of the thirteenth century about the arrangements of thisapse. However strong-willed they might be, each in turn whetherpriest, or noble, or glassworker, would have certainly appealed tothe Virgin and one can imagine the architect still beside us, in thegrowing dusk of evening, mentally praying, as he looked at the workof a finished day: "Lady Virgin, show me what you like best! Thecentral chapel is correct, I know. The Lady Blanche's grisailleveils the rather strong blue tone nicely, and I am confident it willsuit you. The Charlemagne window seems to me very successful, butthe Bishop feels not at all easy about it, and I should never havedared put it here if the Lady Blanche had not insisted on a Spanishbay. To balance at once both the subjects and the colour, we havetried the Stephen window in the next chapel, with more red; but ifSaint Stephen is not good enough to satisfy you, we have tried againwith Saint Julian, whose story is really worth telling you as wetell it; and with him we have put Saint Thomas because you loved himand gave him your girdle. I do not myself care so very much forSaint Thomas of Canterbury opposite, though the Count is wild aboutit, and the Bishop wants it; but the Sylvester is stupendous in themorning sun. What troubles me most is the first right-hand bay. Theprincesses would not have let me put the Prodigal Son there, even ifit were made for the place. I've nothing else good enough to balancethe Charlemagne unless it be the Eustace. Gracious Lady, what oughtI to do? Forgive me my blunders, my stupidity, my wretched want oftaste and feeling! I love and adore you! All that I am, I am foryou! If I cannot please you, I care not for Heaven! but without yourhelp, I am lost!"

Upon my word, you may sit here forever imagining such appeals, andthe endless discussions and criticisms that were heard every day, under these vaults, seven hundred years ago. That the Virginanswered the questions is my firm belief, just as it is myconviction that she did not answer them elsewhere. One sees herpersonal presence on every side. Any one can feel it who will onlyconsent to feel like a child. Sitting here any Sunday afternoon, while the voices of the children of the maitrise are chanting in thechoir, --your mind held in the grasp of the strong lines and shadowsof the architecture; your eyes flooded with the autumn tones of theglass; your ears drowned with the purity of the voices; one sensereacting upon another until sensation reaches the limit of itsrange, --you, or any other lost soul, could, if you cared to look andlisten, feel a sense beyond the human ready to reveal a sense divinethat would make that world once more intelligible, and would bringthe Virgin to life again, in all the depths of feeling which sheshows here, --in lines, vaults, chapels, colours, legends, chants, --more eloquent than the prayer-book, and more beautiful than theautumn sunlight; and any one willing to try could feel it like thechild, reading new thought without end into the art he has studied ahundred times; but what is still more convincing, he could, at will, in an instant, shatter the whole art by calling into it a singlemotive of his own. 

CHAPTER X

THE COURT OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN

All artists love the sanctuary of the Christian Church, and alltourists love the rest. The reason becomes clear as one leaves thechoir, and goes back to the broad, open hall of the nave. The choirwas made not for the pilgrim but for the deity, and is as old asAdam, or perhaps older; at all events old enough to have existed incomplete artistic and theological form, with the whole mystery ofthe Trinity, the Mother and Child, and even the Cross, thousands ofyears before Christ was born; but the Christian Church not only tookthe sanctuary in hand, and gave it a new form, more beautiful andmuch more refined than the Romans or Greeks or Egyptians had everimagined, but it also added the idea of the nave and transepts, anddeveloped it into imperial splendour. The pilgrim-tourist feels athome in the nave because it was built for him; the artist loves thesanctuary because he built it for God. 

Chartres was intended to hold ten thousand people easily, or fifteenthousand when crowded, and the decoration of this great space, though not a wholly new problem, had to be treated in a new way. Sancta Sofia was built by the Emperor Justinian, with all theresources of the Empire, in a single violent effort, in six years, and was decorated throughout with mosaics on a general scheme, withthe unity that Empire and Church could give, when they actedtogether. The Norman Kings of Sicily, the richest princes of thetwelfth century, were able to carry out a complete work of the mostcostly kind, in a single sustained effort from beginning to end, according to a given plan. Chartres was a local shrine, in anagricultural province, not even a part of the royal domain, and itscathedral was the work of society, without much more tie than theVirgin gave it. Socially Chartres, as far as its stone-work goes, seems to have been mostly rural; its decoration, in the porches andtransepts, is royal and feudal; in the nave and choir it is chieflybourgeois. The want of unity is much less surprising than the unity, but it is still evident, especially in the glass. The mosaics ofMonreale begin and end; they are a series; their connection isartistic and theological at once; they have unity. The windows ofChartres have no sequence, and their charm is in variety, inindividuality, and sometimes even in downright hostility to eachother, reflecting the picturesque society that gave them. They have, too, the charm that the world has made no attempt to popularize themfor its modern uses, so that, except for the useful little guide-book of the Abbe Clerval, one can see no clue to the legendarychaos; one has it to one's self, without much fear of being trampledupon by critics or Jew dealers in works of art; any Chartres beggar-woman can still pass a summer's day here, and never once bemortified by ignorance of things that every dealer in bric-a-brac issupposed to know. 

Yet the artists seem to have begun even here with some idea ofsequence, for the first window in the north aisle, next the newtower, tells the story of Noah; but the next plunges into the localhistory of Chartres, and is devoted to Saint Lubin, a bishop of thisdiocese who died in or about the year 556, and was, for some reason, selected by the Wine-Merchants to represent them, as theirinteresting medallions show. Then follow three amusing subjects, charmingly treated: Saint Eustace, whose story has been told; Josephand his brethren; and Saint Nicholas, the most popular saint of thethirteenth century, both in the Greek and in the Roman Churches. Thesixth and last window on the north aisle of the nave is the NewAlliance. 

Opposite these, in the south aisle, the series begins next the towerwith John the Evangelist, followed by Saint Mary Magdalen, given bythe Water-Carriers. The third, the Good Samaritan, given by theShoemakers, has a rival at Sens which critics think even better. Thefourth is the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin. Thencomes the fifteenth-century Chapel of Vendome, to compare the earlyand later glass. The sixth is, or was, devoted to the Virgin'sMiracles at Chartres; but only one complete subject remains. 

These windows light the two aisles of the nave and decorate thelower walls of the church with a mass of colour and variety of linestill practically intact in spite of much injury; but the windows ofthe transepts on the same level have almost disappeared, except theProdigal Son and a border to what was once a Saint Lawrence, on thenorth; and, on the south, part of a window to Saint Apollinaris ofRavenna, with an interesting hierarchy of angels above:--seraphimand cherubim with six wings, red and blue; Dominations; Powers;Principalities; all, except Thrones. 

All this seems to be simple enough, at least to the people for whomthe nave was built, and to whom the windows were meant to speak. There is nothing esoteric here; nothing but what might have suitedthe great hall of a great palace. There is no difference in tastebetween the Virgin in the choir, and the Water-Carriers by thedoorway. Blanche, the young Queen, liked the same colours, legends, and lines that her Grocers and Bakers liked. All equally loved theVirgin. There was not even a social difference. In the choir, Thibaut, the Count of Chartres, immediate lord of the province, lethimself be put in a dark corner next the Belle Verriere, and leftthe Bakers to display their wealth in the most serious spot in thechurch, the central window of the central chapel, while in the naveand transepts all the lower windows that bear signatures were givenby trades, as though that part of the church were abandoned to thecommons. One might suppose that the feudal aristocracy would havefortified itself in the clerestory and upper windows, but even therethe bourgeoisie invaded them, and you can see, with a glass, thePastrycooks and Turners looking across at the Weavers and Curriersand Money-Changers, and the "Men of Tours. " Beneath the throne ofthe Mother of God, there was no distinction of gifts; and above itthe distinction favoured the commonalty. 

Of the seven immense windows above and around the high altar, whichare designed as one composition, none was given by a prince or anoble. The Drapers, the Butchers, the Bakers, the Bankers arecharged with the highest duties attached to the Virgin's service. Apparently neither Saint Louis, nor his father Louis VIII, nor hismother Blanche, nor his uncle Philippe Hurepel, nor his cousin SaintFerdinand of Castile, nor his other cousin Pierre de Dreux, nor theDuchess Alix of Brittany, cared whether their portraits or armorialshields were thrust out of sight into corners by Pastrycooks andTeamsters, or took a whole wall of the church to themselves. Theonly relation that connects them is their common relation to theVirgin, but that is emphatic, and dominates the whole. 

It dominates us, too, if we reflect on it, even after seven hundredyears that its meaning has faded. When one looks up to this displayof splendour in the clerestory, and asks what was in the minds ofthe people who joined to produce, with such immense effort and atsuch self-sacrifice, this astonishing effect, the question seems toanswer itself like an echo. With only half of an atrophiedimagination, in a happy mood we could still see the nave andtransepts filled with ten thousand people on their knees, and theVirgin, crowned and robed, seating herself on the embroideredcushion that covered her imperial throne; sparkling with gems;bearing in her right hand the sceptre, and in her lap the infantKing; but, in the act of seating herself, we should see her pause amoment to look down with love and sympathy on us, --her people, --whopack the enormous hall, and throng far out beyond the open portals;while, an instant later, she glances up to see that her great lords, spiritual and temporal, the advisers of her judgment, the supportsof her authority, the agents of her will, shall be in place; robed, mitred, armed; bearing the symbols of her authority and theiroffice; on horseback, lance in hand; all of them ready at a sign tocarry out a sentence of judgment or an errand of mercy; to touchwith the sceptre or to strike with the sword; and never err. 

There they still stand! unchanged, unfaded, as alive and complete aswhen they represented the real world, and the people below were theunreal and ephemeral pageant! Then the reality was the Queen ofHeaven on her throne in the sanctuary, and her court in the glass;not the queens or princes who were prostrating themselves, with thecrowd, at her feet. These people knew the Virgin as well as theyknew their own mothers; every jewel in her crown, every stitch ofgold-embroidery in her many robes; every colour; every fold; everyexpression on the perfectly familiar features of her grave, imperialface; every care that lurked in the silent sadness of her power;repeated over and over again, in stone, glass, ivory, enamel, wood;in every room, at the head of every bed, hanging on every neck, standing at every street-corner, the Virgin was as familiar to everyone of them as the sun or the seasons; far more familiar than theirown earthly queen or countess, although these were no strangers intheir daily life; familiar from the earliest childhood to the lastagony; in every joy and every sorrow and every danger; in every actand almost in every thought of life, the Virgin was present with areality that never belonged to her Son or to the Trinity, and hardlyto any earthly being, prelate, king, or kaiser; her daily life wasas real to them as their own loyalty which brought to her the bestthey had to offer as the return for her boundless sympathy; butwhile they knew the Virgin as though she were one of themselves, andbecause she had been one of themselves, they were not so familiarwith all the officers of her court at Chartres; and pilgrims fromabroad, like us, must always have looked with curious interest atthe pageant. 

Far down the nave, next the western towers, the rank began withsaints, prophets, and martyrs, of all ages and countries; local, like Saint Lubin; national, like Saint Martin of Tours and SaintHilary of Poitiers; popular like Saint Nicholas; militant like SaintGeorge; without order; symbols like Abraham and Isaac; the Virginherself, holding on her lap the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost;Christ with the Alpha and Omega; Moses and Saint Augustine; SaintPeter; Saint Mary the Egyptian; Saint Jerome; a whole throne-room ofheavenly powers, repeating, within, the pageant carved on theporches and on the portals without. From the croisee in the centre, where the crowd is most dense, one sees the whole almost better thanMary sees it from her high altar, for there all the great rosewindows flash in turn, and the three twelfth-century lancets glow onthe western sun. When the eyes of the throng are directed to thenorth, the Rose of France strikes them almost with a physical shockof colour, and, from the south, the Rose of Dreux challenges theRose of France. 

Every one knows that there is war between the two! The thirteenthcentury has few secrets. There are no outsiders. We are one familyas we are one Church. Every man and woman here, from Mary on herthrone to the beggar on the porch, knows that Pierre de Dreuxdetests Blanche of Castile, and that their two windows carry on waracross the very heart of the cathedral. Both unite only in askinghelp from Mary; but Blanche is a woman, alone in the world withyoung children to protect, and most women incline strongly tosuspect that Mary will never desert her. Pierre, with all hismasculine strength, is no courtier. He wants to rule by force. Hecarries the assertion of his sex into the very presence of the Queenof Heaven. 

The year happens to be 1230, when the roses may be supposed justfinished and showing their whole splendour for the first time. QueenBlanche is forty-three years old, and her son Louis is fifteen. Blanche is a widow these four years, and Pierre a widower since1221. Both are regents and guardians for their heirs. They havenecessarily carried their disputes before Mary. Queen Blanche claimsfor her son, who is to be Saint Louis, the place of honour at Mary'sright hand; she has taken possession of the north porch outside, andof the north transept within, and has filled the windows with glass, as she is filling the porch with statuary. Above is the huge rose;below are five long windows; and all proclaim the homage that Francerenders to the Queen of Heaven. 

The Rose of France shows in its centre the Virgin in her majesty, seated, crowned, holding the sceptre with her right hand, while herleft supports the infant Christ-King on her knees; which shows thatshe, too, is acting as regent for her Son. Round her, in a circle, are twelve medallions; four containing doves; four six-winged angelsor Thrones; four angels of a lower order, but all symbolizing thegifts and endowments of the Queen of Heaven. Outside these aretwelve more medallions with the Kings of Judah, and a third circlecontains the twelve lesser prophets. So Mary sits, hedged in by allthe divinity that graces earthly or heavenly kings; while betweenthe two outer circles are twelve quatrefoils bearing on a blueground the golden lilies of France; and in each angle below the roseare four openings, showing alternately the lilies of Louis and thecastles of Blanche. We who are below, the common people, understandthat France claims to protect and defend the Virgin of Chartres, asher chief vassal, and that this ostentatious profusion of lilies andcastles is intended not in honour of France, but as a demonstrationof loyalty to Notre Dame, and an assertion of her rights as QueenRegent of Heaven against all comers, but particularly againstPierre, the rebel, who has the audacity to assert rival rights inthe opposite transept. 

Beneath the rose are five long windows, very unlike the twelfth-century pendants to the western rose. These five windows blaze withred, and their splendour throws the Virgin above quite into thebackground. The artists, who felt that the twelfth-century glass wastoo fine and too delicate for the new scale of the church, have notonly enlarged their scale and coarsened their design, but havecoarsened their colour-scheme also, discarding blue in order tocrush us under the earthly majesty of red. These windows, too, bearthe stamp and seal of Blanche's Spanish temper as energetically asthough they bore her portrait. The great central figure, the tallestand most commanding in the whole church, is not the Virgin, but hermother Saint Anne, standing erect as on the trumeau of the doorbeneath, and holding the infant Mary on her left arm. She wears noroyal crown, but bears a flowered sceptre. The only other differencebetween Mary and her mother, that seems intended to strikeattention, is that Mary sits, while her mother stands; but as thoughto proclaim still more distinctly that France supports the royal anddivine pretensions of Saint Anne, Queen Blanche has put beneath thefigure a great shield blazoned with the golden lilies on an azureground. 

With singular insistence on this motive, Saint Anne has at eitherhand a royal court of her own, marked as her own by containing onlyfigures from the Old Testament. Standing next on her right isSolomon, her Prime Minister, bringing wisdom in worldly counsel, andtrampling on human folly. Beyond Wisdom stands Law, figured by Aaronwith the Book, trampling on the lawless Pharaoh. Opposite them, onSaint Anne's left, is David, the energy of State, trampling on aSaul suggesting suspicions of a Saul de Dreux; while last, Melchisedec who is Faith, tramples on a disobedient NebuchadnezzarMauclerc. 

How can we, the common people, help seeing all this, and much more, when we know that Pierre de Dreux has been for years in constantstrife with the Crown and the Church? He is very valiant and lion-hearted;--so say the chroniclers, priests though they are;--veryskilful and experienced in war whether by land or sea; very adroit, with more sense than any other great lord in France; but restless, factious, and regardless of his word. Brave and bold as the day;full of courtesy and "largesse"; but very hard on the clergy; a goodChristian but a bad churchman! Certainly the first man of his time, says Michelet! "I have never found any that sought to do me more illthan he, " says Blanche, and Joinville gives her very words; indeed, this year, 1230, she has summoned our own Bishop of Chartres amongothers to Paris in a court of peers, where Pierre has been foundguilty of treason and deposed. War still continues, but Pierre mustmake submission. Blanche has beaten him in politics and in thefield! Let us look round and see how he fares in theology and art!

There is his rose--so beautiful that Blanche may well think it seeksto do hers ill! As colour, judge for yourselves whether it holds itsown against the flaming self-assertion of the opposite wall! Assubject, it asserts flat defiance of the monarchy of Queen Blanche. In the central circle, Christ as King is seated on a royal throne, both arms raised, one holding the golden cup of eternal priesthood, the other, blessing the world. Two great flambeaux burn beside Him. The four Apocalyptic figures surround and worship Him; and in theconcentric circles round the central medallion are the angels andthe kings in a blaze of colour, symbolizing the New Jerusalem. 

All the force of the Apocalypse is there, and so is some of theweakness of theology, for, in the five great windows below, Pierreshows his training in the schools. Four of these windows representwhat is called, for want of a better name, the New Alliance; thedependence of the New Testament on the Old; but Pierre's choice insymbols was as masculine as that of Blanche was feminine. In each ofthe four windows, a gigantic Evangelist strides the shoulders of acolossal Prophet. Saint John rides on Ezekiel; Saint Mark bestridesDaniel; Saint Matthew is on the shoulders of Isaiah; Saint Luke iscarried by Jeremiah. The effect verges on the grotesque. The balanceof Christ's Church seems uncertain. The Evangelists clutch theProphets by the hair, and while the synagogue stands firm, theChurch looks small, feeble, and vacillating. The new dispensationhas not the air of mastery either physical or intellectual; the oldgives it all the support it has, and, in the absence of Saint Paul, both old and new seem little concerned with the sympathies ofFrenchmen. The synagogue is stronger than the Church, but even theChurch is Jew. 

That Pierre could ever have meant this is not to be dreamed; butwhen the true scholar gets thoroughly to work, his logic isremorseless, his art is implacable, and his sense of humour isblighted. In the rose above, Pierre had asserted the exclusiveauthority of Christ in the New Jerusalem, and his scheme requiredhim to show how the Church rested on the Evangelists below, who intheir turn had no visible support except what the Prophets gavethem. Yet the artist may have had a reason for weakening theEvangelists, because there remained the Virgin! One dares no morethan hint at a motive so disrespectful to the Evangelists; but it iscertainly true that, in the central window, immediately beneath theChrist, and His chief support, with the four staggering Evangelistsand Prophets on either hand, the Virgin stands, and betrays no signof weakness. 

The compliment is singularly masculine; a kind of twelfth-centuryflattery that might have softened the anger of Blanche herself, ifthe Virgin had been her own; but the Virgin of Dreux is not theVirgin of France. No doubt she still wears her royal crown, and herhead is circled with the halo; her right hand still holds theflowered sceptre, and her left the infant Christ, but she stands, and Christ is King. Note, too, that she stands directly opposite toher mother Saint Anne in the Rose of France, so as to place her onestage lower than the Virgin of France in the hierarchy. She is theSaint Anne of France, and shows it. "She is no longer, " says theofficial Monograph, "that majestic queen who was seated on a throne, with her feet on the stool of honour; the personages have becomeless imposing and the heads show the decadence. " She is the Virginof Theology; she has her rights, and no more; but she is not theVirgin of Chartres. 

She, too, stands on an altar or pedestal, on which hangs a shieldbearing the ermines, an exact counterpart of the royal shieldbeneath Saint Anne. In this excessive display of armorial bearings--for the two roses above are crowded with them--one likes to thinkthat these great princes had in their minds not so much the thoughtof their own importance--which is a modern sort of religion--as thethought of their devotion to Mary. The assertion of power andattachment by one is met by the assertion of equal devotion by theother, and while both loudly proclaim their homage to the Virgin, each glares defiance across the church. Pierre meant the Queen ofHeaven to know that, in case of need, her left hand was as good asher right, and truer; that the ermines were as well able to defendher as the lilies, and that Brittany would fight her battles asbravely as France. Whether his meaning carried with it more devotionto the Virgin or more defiance to France depends a little on thedate of the windows, but, as a mere point of history, every one mustallow that Pierre's promise of allegiance was kept more faithfullyby Brittany than that of Blanche and Saint Louis has been kept byFrance. 

The date seems to be fixed by the windows themselves. Beneath theProphets kneel Pierre and his wife Alix, while their two children, Yolande and Jean, stand. Alix died in 1221. Jean was born in 1217. Yolande was affianced in marriage in 1227, while a child, and givento Queen Blanche to be brought up as the future wife of her youngerson John, then in his eighth year. When John died, Yolande wascontracted to Thibaut of Champagne in 1231, and Blanche is said tohave written to Thibaut in consequence: "Sire Thibauld of Champagne, I have heard that you have covenanted and promised to take to wifethe daughter of Count Perron of Brittany. Wherefore I charge you, ifyou do not wish to lose whatever you possess in the kingdom ofFrance, not to do it. If you hold dear or love aught in the saidkingdom, do it not. " Whether Blanche wrote in these words or not, she certainly prevented the marriage, and Yolande remained singleuntil 1238 when she married the Comte de la Marche, who was, by theway, almost as bitter an enemy of Blanche as Pierre had been; but bythat time both Blanche and Pierre had ceased to be regents. Yolande's figure in the window is that of a girl, perhaps twelve orfourteen years old; Jean is younger, certainly not more than eightor ten years of age; and the appearance of the two children showsthat the window itself should date between 1225 and 1230, the yearwhen Pierre de Dreux was condemned because he had renounced hishomage to King Louis, declared war on him, and invited the King ofEngland into France. As already told, Philippe Hurepel de Boulogne, the Comte de la Marche, Enguerrand de Couci, --nearly all the greatnobles, --had been leagued with Pierre de Dreux since Blanche'sregency began in 1226. 

That these transept windows harmonize at all, is due to the Virgin, not to the donors. At the time they were designed, supposing it tobe during Blanche's regency (1226-36), the passions of these donorsbrought France to momentary ruin, and the Virgin in Blanche's Rosede France, as she looked across the church, could not see a singlefriend of Blanche. What is more curious, she saw enemies in plenty, and in full readiness for battle. We have seen in the centre of thesmall rose in the north transept, Philippe Hurepel still waiting herorders; across the nave, in another small rose of the southtransept, sits Pierre de Dreux on his horse. The upper windows onthe side walls of the choir are very interesting but impossible tosee, even with the best glasses, from the floor of the church. Theirsequence and dates have already been discussed; but their feeling isshown by the character of the Virgin, who in French territory, nextthe north transept, is still the Virgin of France, but in Pierre'sterritory, next the Rose de Dreux, becomes again the Virgin ofDreux, who is absorbed in the Child, --not the Child absorbed inher, --and accordingly the window shows the chequers and ermines. 

The figures, like the stone figures outside, are the earliest ofFrench art, before any school of painting fairly existed. Amongthem, one can see no friend of Blanche. Indeed, outside of her ownimmediate family and the Church, Blanche had no friend of muchimportance except the famous Thibaut of Champagne, the single memberof the royal family who took her side and suffered for her sake, andwho, as far as books tell, has no window or memorial here. One mightsuppose that Thibaut, who loved both Blanche and the Virgin, wouldhave claimed a place, and perhaps he did; but one seeks him in vain. If Blanche had friends here, they are gone. Pierre de Dreux, lancein hand, openly defies her, and it was not on her brother-in-lawPhilippe Hurepel that she could depend for defence. 

This is the court pageant of the Virgin that shows itself to thepeople who are kneeling at high mass. We, the public, whoever weare, --Chartrain, Breton, Norman, Angevin, Frenchman, Percherain, orwhat not, --know our local politics as intimately as our lords do, oreven better, for our imaginations are active, and we do not loveBlanche of Castile. We know how to read the passions that fill thechurch. From the north transept Blanche flames out on us in splendidreds and flings her Spanish castles in our face. From the southtransept Pierre retorts with a brutal energy which shows itself inthe Prophets who serve as battle-chargers and in the Evangelists whoserve as knights, --mounted warriors of faith, --whose great eyesfollow us across the church and defy Saint Anne and her Frenchshield opposite. Pierre was not effeminate; Blanche was fairlymasculine. Between them, as a matter of sex, we can see little tochoose; and, in any case, it is a family quarrel; they are allcousins; they are all equals on earth, and none means to submit toany superior except the Virgin and her Son in heaven. The Virgin isnot afraid. She has seen many troubles worse than this; she knowshow to manage perverse children, and if necessary she will shut themup in a darker room than ever their mothers kept open for them inthis world. One has only to look at the Virgin to see!

There she is, of course, looking down on us from the great windowabove the high altar, where we never forget her presence! Is there athought of disturbance there? Around the curve of the choir areseven great windows, without roses, filling the whole semicircle andthe whole vault, forty-seven feet high, and meant to dominate thenave as far as the western portal, so that we may never forget howMary fills her church without being disturbed by quarrels, and mayunderstand why Saint Ferdinand and Saint Louis creep out of oursight, close by the Virgin's side, far up above brawls; and whyFrance and Brittany hide their ugly or their splendid passions atthe ends of the transepts, out of sight of the high altar where Maryis to sit in state as Queen with the young King on her lap. In aninstant she will come, but we have a moment still to look about atthe last great decoration of her palace, and see how the artistshave arranged it. 

Since the building of Sancta Sofia, no artist has had such a chance. No doubt, Rheims and Amiens and Bourges and Beauvais, which are nowbuilding, may be even finer, but none of them is yet finished, andall must take their ideas from here. One would like, before lookingat it, to think over the problem, as though it were new, and sochoose the scheme that would suit us best if the decoration were tobe done for the first time. The architecture is fixed; we have to doonly with the colour of this mass of seven huge windows, forty-sevenfeet high, in the clerestory, round the curve of the choir, whichclose the vista of the church as viewed from the entrance. Thisvista is about three hundred and thirty feet long. The windows riseabove a hundred feet. How ought this vast space to be filled? Shouldthe perpendicular upward leap of the architecture be followed andaccented by a perpendicular leap of colour? The decorators of thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries seem to have thought so, and madeperpendicular architectural drawings in yellow that simulated gold, and lines that ran with the general lines of the building. Manyfifteenth-century windows seem to be made up of florid Gothicdetails rising in stages to the vault. No doubt critics complained, and still complain, that the monotony of this scheme, and itscheapness of intelligence, were objections; but at least the effectwas light, decorative, and safe. The artist could not go far wrongand was still at liberty to do beautiful work, as can be seen in anynumber of churches scattered broadcast over Europe and swarming inParis and France. On the other hand, might not the artist disregardthe architecture and fill the space with a climax of colour? Couldhe not unite the Roses of France and Dreux above the high altar inan overpowering outburst of purples and reds? The seventeenthcentury might have preferred to mass clouds and colours, and MichaelAngelo, in the sixteenth, might have known how to do it. What wewant is not the feeling of the artist so much as the feeling ofChartres. What shall it be--the jewelled brilliancy of the westernwindows, or the fierce self-assertion of Pierre Mauclerc, or theroyal splendour of Queen Blanche, or the feminine grace anddecorative refinement of the Charlemagne and Santiago windows in theapse?

Never again in art was so splendid a problem offered, either beforeor since, for the artist of Chartres solved it, as he did the wholematter of fenestration, and later artists could only offervariations on his work. You will see them at Bourges and Tours andin scores of thirteenth and fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenthcentury churches and windows, and perhaps in some of the twentiethcentury, --all of them interesting and some of them beautiful, --andfar be it from us, mean and ignorant pilgrims of art, to condemn anyintelligent effort to vary or improve the effect; but we have setout to seek the feeling, and while we think of art in relation toourselves, the sermon of Chartres, from beginning to end, teachesand preaches and insists and reiterates and hammers into our torpidminds the moral that the art of the Virgin was not that of herartists but her own. We inevitably think of our tastes; they thoughtinstinctively of hers. 

In the transepts, Queen Blanche and Duke Perron, in legal possessionof their territory, showed that they were thinking of each other aswell as of the Virgin, and claimed loudly that they ought each to befirst in the Virgin's favour; and they stand there in place, as thethirteenth century felt them. Subject to their fealty to Mary, thetransepts belonged to them, and if Blanche did not, like Pierre, assert Herself and her son on the Virgin's window, perhaps shethought the Virgin would resent Pierre's boldness the more bycontrast with her own good taste. So far as is known, nowhere doesBlanche appear in person at Chartres; she felt herself too near theVirgin to obtrude a useless image, or she was too deeply religiousto ask anything for herself. A queen who was to have two childrensainted, to intercede for her at Mary's throne, stood in a solitudealmost as unique as that of Mary, and might ignore the rawbrutalities of a man-at-arms; but neither she nor Pierre has carriedthe quarrel into Mary's presence, nor has the Virgin condescendedeven to seem conscious of their temper. This is the theme of theartist--the purity, the beauty, the grace, and the infiniteloftiness of Mary's nature, among the things of earth, and above theclamour of kings. 

Therefore, when we, and the crushed crowd of kneeling worshippersaround us, lift our eyes at last after the miracle of the mass, wesee, far above the high altar, high over all the agitation ofprayer, the passion of politics, the anguish of suffering, theterrors of sin, only the figure of the Virgin in majesty, lookingdown on her people, crowned, throned, glorified, with the infantChrist on her knees. She does not assert herself; probably sheintends to be felt rather than feared. Compared with the GreekVirgin, as you see her, for example, at Torcello, the ChartresVirgin is retiring and hardly important enough for the place. She isnot exaggerated either in scale, drawing, or colour. She shows not asign of self-consciousness, not an effort for brilliancy, not atrace of stage effect--hardly even a thought of herself, except thatshe is at home, among her own people, where she is loved and knownas well as she knows them. The seven great windows are onecomposition; and it is plain that the artist, had he been ordered tomake an exhibition of power, could have overwhelmed us with a stormof purple, red, yellows, or given us a Virgin of Passion who wouldhave torn the vault asunder; his ability is never in doubt, and ifhe has kept true to the spirit of the western portal and thetwelfth-century, it is because the Virgin of Chartres was the Virginof Grace, and ordered him to paint her so. One shudders to think howa single false note--a suggestion of meanness, in this climax ofline and colour--would bring the whole fabric down in ruins on theeighteenth-century meanness of the choir below; and one notes, almost bashfully, the expedients of the artists to quiet theireffects. So the lines of the seven windows are built up, to avoidthe horizontal, and yet not exaggerate the vertical. 

The architect counts here for more than the colourist; but thecolour, when you study it, suggests the same restraint. Three greatwindows on the Virgin's right, balanced by three more on her left, show the prophets and precursors of her Son; all architecturallysupport and exalt the Virgin, in her celestial atmosphere of blue, shot with red, calm in the certainty of heaven. Any one who isprematurely curious to see the difference in treatment betweendifferent centuries should go down to the church of Saint Pierre inthe lower town, and study there the methods of the Renaissance. Thenwe can come back to study again the ways of the thirteenth century. The Virgin will wait; she will not be angry; she knows her power; weall come back to her in the end. 

Or the Renaissance, if one prefers, can wait equally well, while onekneels with the thirteenth century, and feels the little one stillcan feel of what it felt. Technically these apsidal windows have notreceived much notice; the books rarely speak of them; travellersseldom look at them; and their height is such that even with thebest glass, the quality of the work is beyond our power to judge. Wesee, and the artists meant that we should see, only the great lines, the colour, and the Virgin. The mass of suppliants before the choirlook up to the light, clear blues and reds of this great space, andfeel there the celestial peace and beauty of Mary's nature andabode. There is heaven! and Mary looks down from it, into herchurch, where she sees us on our knees, and knows each one of us byname. There she actually is--not in symbol or in fancy, but inperson, descending on her errands of mercy and listening to each oneof us, as her miracles prove, or satisfying our prayers merely byher presence which calms our excitement as that of a mother calmsher child. She is there as Queen, not merely as intercessor, and herpower is such that to her the difference between us earthly beingsis nothing. Her quiet, masculine strength enchants us most. PierreMauclerc and Philippe Hurepel and their men-at-arms are afraid ofher, and the Bishop himself is never quite at his ease in herpresence; but to peasants, and beggars, and people in trouble, thissense of her power and calm is better than active sympathy. Peoplewho suffer beyond the formulas of expression--who are crushed intosilence, and beyond pain--want no display of emotion--no bleedingheart--no weeping at the foot of the Cross--no hysterics--nophrases! They want to see God, and to know that He is watching overHis own. How many women are there, in this mass of thirteenthcentury suppliants, who have lost children? Probably nearly all, forthe death rate is very high in the conditions of medieval life. There are thousands of such women here, for it is precisely thisclass who come most; and probably every one of them has looked up toMary in her great window, and has felt actual certainty, as thoughshe saw with her own eyes--there, in heaven, while she looked--herown lost baby playing with the Christ-Child at the Virgin's knee, asmuch at home as the saints, and much more at home than the kings. Before rising from her knees, every one of these women will havebent down and kissed the stone pavement in gratitude for Mary'smercy. The earth, she says, is a sorry place, and the best of it isbad enough, no doubt, even for Queen Blanche and the Duchess Alixwho has had to leave her children here alone; but there above isMary in heaven who sees and hears me as I see her, and who keeps mylittle boy till I come; so I can wait with patience, more or less!Saints and prophets and martyrs are all very well, and Christ isvery sublime and just, but Mary knows!

It was very childlike, very foolish, very beautiful, and very true, --as art, at least:--so true that everything else shades off intovulgarity, as you see the Persephone of a Syracusan coin shade offinto the vulgarity of a Roman emperor; as though the heaven thatlies about us in our infancy too quickly takes colours that are notso much sober as sordid, and would be welcome if no worse than that. Vulgarity, too, has feeling, and its expression in art has truth andeven pathos, but we shall have time enough in our lives for that, and all the more because, when we rise from our knees now, we havefinished our pilgrimage. We have done with Chartres. For sevenhundred years Chartres has seen pilgrims, coming and going more orless like us, and will perhaps see them for another seven hundredyears; but we shall see it no more, and can safely leave the Virginin her majesty, with her three great prophets on either hand, ascalm and confident in their own strength and in God's providence asthey were when Saint Louis was born, but looking down from adeserted heaven, into an empty church, on a dead faith. 

CHAPTER XI

THE THREE QUEENS

After worshipping at the shrines of Saint Michael on his Mount andof the Virgin at Chartres, one may wander far and wide over France, and seldom feel lost; all later Gothic art comes naturally, and nonew thought disturbs the perfected form. Yet tourists of Englishblood and American training are seldom or never quite at home there. Commonly they feel it only as a stage-decoration. The twelfth andthirteenth centuries, studied in the pure light of politicaleconomy, are insane. The scientific mind is atrophied, and suffersunder inherited cerebral weakness, when it comes in contact with theeternal woman--Astarte, Isis, Demeter, Aphrodite, and the last andgreatest deity of all, the Virgin. Very rarely one lingers, with amild sympathy, such as suits the patient student of human error, willing to be interested in what he cannot understand. Still morerarely, owing to some revival of archaic instincts, he rediscoversthe woman. This is perhaps the mark of the artist alone, and hissolitary privilege. The rest of us cannot feel; we can only study. The proper study of mankind is woman and, by common agreement sincethe time of Adam, it is the most complex and arduous. The study ofOur Lady, as shown by the art of Chartres, leads directly back toEve, and lays bare the whole subject of sex. 

If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain thatNature regards the female as the essential, the male as thesuperfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for studyof the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, andespecially with queen bees. Precisely where the French man may comein, on the genealogical tree of parthenogenesis, one hesitates tosay; but certain it is that the French woman, from very early times, has shown qualities peculiar to herself, and that the French womanof the Middle Ages was a masculine character. Almost any book whichdeals with the social side of the twelfth century has something tosay on this subject, like the following page from M. Garreau'svolume published in 1899, on the "Social State of France during theCrusades":--

A trait peculiar to this epoch is the close resemblance between themanners of men and women. The rule that such and such feelings oracts are permitted to one sex and forbidden to the other was notfairly settled. Men had the right to dissolve in tears, and womenthat of talking without prudery . . . . If we look at theirintellectual level, the women appear distinctly superior. They aremore serious; more subtle. With them we do not seem dealing with therude state of civilization that their husbands belong to . . . . As arule, the women seem to have the habit of weighing their acts; ofnot yielding to momentary impressions. While the sense ofChristianity is more developed in them than in their husbands, onthe other hand they show more perfidy and art in crime . . . . Onemight doubtless prove by a series of examples that the maternalinfluence when it predominated in the education of a son gave him amarked superiority over his contemporaries. Richard Coeur-de-Lionthe crowned poet, artist, the king whose noble manners and refinedmind in spite of his cruelty exercised so strong an impression onhis age, was formed by that brilliant Eleanor of Guienne who, in herstruggle with her husband, retained her sons as much as possiblewithin her sphere of influence in order to make party chiefs ofthem. Our great Saint Louis, as all know, was brought up exclusivelyby Blanche of Castile; and Joinville, the charming writer so worthyof Saint Louis's friendship, and apparently so superior to hissurroundings, was also the pupil of a widowed and regent mother. 

The superiority of the woman was not a fancy, but a fact. Man'sbusiness was to fight or hunt or feast or make love. The man wasalso the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from homefor months together, while the woman carried on the business. Thewoman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy;supplied the intelligence, and dictated the taste. Her ascendancywas secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent hermost intelligent children; and a priest or clerk, for the most part, counted socially as a woman. Both physically and mentally the womanwas robust, as the men often complained, and she did not greatlyresent being treated as a man. Sometimes the husband beat her, dragged her about by the hair, locked her up in the house; but hewas quite conscious that she always got even with him in the end. Asa matter of fact, probably she got more than even. On this point, history, legend, poetry, romance, and especially the popularfabliaux--invented to amuse the gross tastes of the coarser class--are all agreed, and one could give scores of volumes illustratingit. The greatest men illustrate it best, as one might show almost athazard. The greatest men of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenthcenturies were William the Norman; his great grandson Henry IIPlantagenet; Saint Louis of France; and, if a fourth be needed, Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Notoriously all these men had as muchdifficulty as Louis XIV himself with the women of their family. Tradition exaggerates everything it touches, but shows, at the sametime, what is passing in the minds of the society which tradites. InNormandy, the people of Caen have kept a tradition, told elsewherein other forms, that one day, Duke William, --the Conqueror, --exasperated by having his bastardy constantly thrown in his face bythe Duchess Matilda, dragged her by the hair, tied to his horse'stail, as far as the suburb of Vaucelles; and this legend accountsfor the splendour of the Abbaye-aux-Dames, because William, thecommon people believed, afterwards regretted the impropriety, andatoned for it by giving her money to build the abbey. The storybetrays the man's weakness. The Abbaye-aux-Dames stands in the samerelation to the Abbaye-aux-Hommes that Matilda took towards William. Inferiority there was none; on the contrary, the woman was sociallythe superior, and William was probably more afraid of her than sheof him, if Mr. Freeman is right in insisting that he married her inspite of her having a husband living, and certainly two children. IfWilliam was the strongest man in the eleventh century, his great-grandson, Henry II of England, was the strongest man of the twelfth;but the history of the time resounds with the noise of his battleswith Queen Eleanor whom he, at last, held in prison for fourteenyears. Prisoner as she was, she broke him down in the end. One istempted to suspect that, had her husband and children been guided byher, and by her policy as peacemaker for the good of Guienne, mostof the disasters of England and France might have been postponed forthe time; but we can never know the truth, for monks and historiansabhor emancipated women, --with good reason, since such women are aptto abhor them, --and the quarrel can never be pacified. Historianshave commonly shown fear of women without admitting it, but the manof the Middle Ages knew at least why he feared the woman, and toldit openly, not to say brutally. Long after Eleanor and Blanche weredead, Chaucer brought the Wife of Bath on his Shakespearean stage, to explain the woman, and as usual he touched masculine frailty withcaustic, while seeming to laugh at woman and man alike:--

"My liege lady! generally, " quoth he, "Women desiren to have soverainetee. "

The point was that the Wife of Bath, like Queen Blanche and QueenEleanor, not only wanted sovereignty, but won and held it. 

That Saint Louis, even when a grown man and king, stood in awe ofhis mother, Blanche of Castile, was not only notorious but seemed tobe thought natural. Joinville recorded it not so much to mark theKing's weakness, as the woman's strength; for his Queen, Margaret ofProvence, showed the courage which the King had not. Blanche andMargaret were exceedingly jealous of each other. "One day, " saidJoinville, "Queen Blanche went to the Queen's [Margaret] chamberwhere her son [Louis IX] had gone before to comfort her, for she wasin great danger of death from a bad delivery; and he hid himselfbehind the Queen [Margaret] to avoid being seen; but his motherperceived him, and taking him by the hand said: 'Come along! youwill do no good here!' and put him out of the chamber. QueenMargaret, observing this, and that she was to be separated from herhusband, cried aloud: 'Alas! will you not allow me to see my lordeither living or dying?'" According to Joinville, King Louis alwayshid himself when, in his wife's chamber, he heard his mother coming. 

The great period of Gothic architecture begins with the coming ofEleanor (1137) and ends with the passing of Blanche (1252). Eleanor's long life was full of energy and passion of which next tonothing is known; the woman was always too slippery for monks orsoldiers to grasp. 

Eleanor came to Paris, a Queen of fifteen years old, in 1137, bringing Poitiers and Guienne as the greatest dowry ever offered tothe French Crown. She brought also the tastes and manners of theSouth, little in harmony with the tastes and manners of SaintBernard whose authority at court rivalled her own. The Abbe Sugersupported her, but the King leaned toward the Abbe Bernard. Whatthis puritan reaction meant is a matter to be studied by itself, ifone can find a cloister to study in; but it bore the mark of mostpuritan reactions in its hostility to women. As long as the womanremained docile, she ruled, through the Church; but the man fearedher and was jealous of her, and she of him. Bernard specially adoredthe Virgin because she was an example of docile obedience to theTrinity who atoned for the indocility of Eve, but Eve herselfremained the instrument of Satan, and French society as a wholeshowed a taste for Eves. 

[Genealogical chart showing the relationships among the threequeens. ]

Eleanor could hardly be called docile. Whatever else she loved, shecertainly loved rule. She shared this passion to the full with heronly great successor and rival on the English throne, QueenElizabeth, and she happened to become Queen of France at the momentwhen society was turning from worship of its military ideal, SaintMichael, to worship of its social ideal, the Virgin. According tothe monk Orderic, men had begun to throw aside their old militarydress and manners even before the first crusade, in the days ofWilliam Rufus (1087-1100), and to affect feminine fashions. In allages, priests and monks have denounced the growing vices of society, with more or less reason; but there seems to have been a realoutbreak of display at about the time of the first crusade, whichset a deep mark on every sort of social expression, even down to theshoes of the statues on the western portal of Chartres:--

A debauched fellow named Robert [said Orderic] was the first, aboutthe time of William Rufus, who introduced the practice of fillingthe long points of the shoes with tow, and of turning them up like aram's horn. Hence he got the surname of Cornard; and this absurdfashion was speedily adopted by great numbers of the nobility as aproud distinction and sign of merit. At this time effeminacy was theprevailing vice throughout the world . . . They parted their hair fromthe crown of the head on each side of the forehead, and their locksgrew long like women, and wore long shirts and tunics, closely tiedwith points . . . In our days, ancient customs are almost all changedfor new fashions. Our wanton youths are sunk in effeminacy . . . Theyinsert their toes in things like serpents' tails which present toview the shape of scorpions. Sweeping the dusty ground with theprodigious trains of their robes and mantles, they cover their handswith gloves . . . 

If you are curious to follow these monkish criticisms on yourancestors' habits, you can read Orderic at your leisure; but youwant only to carry in mind the fact that the generation of warriorswho fought at Hastings and captured Jerusalem were regarded bythemselves as effeminate, and plunged in luxury. "Their locks arecurled with hot irons, and instead of wearing caps, they bind theirheads with fillets. A knight seldom appears in public with his headuncovered and properly shaved according to the apostolic precept. "The effeminacy of the first crusade took artistic shape in the westportal of Chartres and the glass of Saint-Denis, and led instantlyto the puritan reaction of Saint Bernard, followed by the gentleasceticism of Queen Blanche and Saint Louis. Whether the pilgrimagesto Jerusalem and contact with the East were the cause or only aconsequence of this revolution, or whether it was all one, --a resultof converting the Northern pagans to peaceful habits and theconsequent enrichment of northern Europe, --is indifferent; the factand the date are enough. The art is French, but the ideas may havecome from anywhere, like the game of chess which the pilgrims orcrusaders brought home from Syria. In the Oriental game, the Kingwas followed step by step by a Minister whose functions werepersonal. The crusaders freed the piece from control; gave itliberty to move up or down or diagonally, forwards and backwards;made it the most arbitrary and formidable champion on the board, while the King and the Knight were the most restricted in movement;and this piece they named Queen, and called the Virgin:--

 Li Baudrains traist sa fierge por son paon sauver, E cele son aufin qui cuida conquester La firge ou le paon, ou faire reculer. 

The aufin or dauphin became the Fou of the French game, and thebishop of the English. Baldwin played his Virgin to save his pawn;his opponent played the bishop to threaten either the Virgin or thepawn. 

For a hundred and fifty years, the Virgin and Queens ruled Frenchtaste and thought so successfully that the French man has never yetquite decided whether to be more proud or ashamed of it. Life hasever since seemed a little flat to him, and art a little cheap. Hesaw that the woman, in elevating herself, had made him appearridiculous, and he tried to retaliate with a wit not alwayssparkling, and too often at his own expense. Sometimes in museums orcollections of bric-a-brac, you will see, in an illuminatedmanuscript, or carved on stone, or cast in bronze, the figure of aman on his hands and knees, bestridden by another figure holding abridle and a whip; it is Aristotle, symbol of masculine wisdom, bridled and driven by woman. Six hundred years afterwards, Tennysonrevived the same motive in Merlin, enslaved not for a time butforever. In both cases the satire justly punished the man. Anotherversion of the same story--perhaps the original--was the Mystery ofAdam, one of the earliest Church plays. Gaston Paris says "it waswritten in England in the twelfth century, and its author had realpoetic talent; the scene of the seduction of Eve by the serpent isone of the best pieces of Christian dramaturgy . . . This remarkablework seems to have been played no longer inside the church, butunder the porch":--

Diabolus. Jo vi Adam mais trop est fols. 

Eva. Un poi est durs. 

Diabolus. Il serra mols. Il est plus durs qui n'est enfers. 

Eva. Il est mult francs. 

Diabolus. Ainz est mult sers. Cure ne volt prendre de sei Car la prenge sevals de tei. Tu es fieblette et tendre chose E es plus fresche que n'est rose. Tu es plus blanche que crystal Que neif que chiet sor glace en val. Mal cuple en fist li Criatur. Tu es trop tendre e il trop dur. Mais neporquant tu es plus sage En grant sens as mis tun corrage For co fait bon traire a tei. Parler te voil. 

Eva. Ore ja fai. 

Devil. Adam I've seen, but he's too rough. 

Eve. A little hard!

Devil. He'll soon be soft enough! Harder than hell he is till now. 

Eve. He's very frank!

Devil. Say very low! To help himself he does not care; The helping you shall be my share; For you are tender, gentle, true, The rose is not so fresh as you; Whiter than crystal, or than snow That falls from heaven on ice below. A sorry mixture God has brewed, You too tender, he too rude. But you have much the greater sense, Your will is all intelligence. Therefore it is I turn to you. I want to tell you--

Eve. Do it now!

The woman's greater intelligence was to blame for Adam's fall. Evewas justly punished because she should have known better, whileAdam, as the Devil truly said, was a dull animal, hardly worth thetrouble of deceiving. Adam was disloyal, too, untrue to his wifeafter being untrue to his Creator:--

La femme que tu me donas Ele fist prime icest trespass Donat le mei e jo mangai. Or mest vis tornez est a gwai Mal acontai icest manger. Jo ai mesfait par ma moiller. 

The woman that you made me take First led me into this mistake. She gave the apple that I ate And brought me to this evil state. Badly for me it turned, I own, But all the fault is hers alone. 

The audience accepted this as natural and proper. They recognizedthe man as, of course, stupid, cowardly, and traitorous. The men ofthe baser sort revenged themselves by boorishness that passed withthem for wit in the taverns of Arras, but the poets of the higherclass commonly took sides with the women. Even Chaucer, who livedafter the glamour had faded, and who satirized women to satiety, told their tale in his "Legend of Good Women, " with evidentsympathy. To him, also, the ordinary man was inferior, --stupid, brutal, and untrue. "Full brittle is the truest, " he said:--

For well I wote that Christ himself telleth That in Israel, as wide as is the lond, That so great faith in all the loud he ne fond As in a woman, and this is no lie; And as for men, look ye, such tyrannie They doen all day, assay hem who so list, The truest is full brotell for to trist. 

Neither brutality nor wit helped the man much. Even Bluebeard in theend fell a victim to the superior qualities of his last wife, andScheherazade's wit alone has preserved the memory of her royalhusband. The tradition of thirteenth-century society still rules theFrench stage. The struggle between two strong-willed women to controlone weak-willed man is the usual motive of the French drama in thenineteenth century, as it was the whole motive of Partenopeus ofBlois, one of the best twelfth-century romans; and Joinvilledescribed it, in the middle of the thirteenth, as the leading motivein the court of Saint Louis, with Queen Blanche and Queen Margaretfor players, and Saint Louis himself for pawn. 

One has only to look at the common, so-called Elzevirian, volume ofthirteenth-century nouvelles to see the Frenchman as he saw himself. The story of "La Comtesse de Ponthieu" is the more Shakespearean, but "La Belle Jehanne" is the more natural and lifelike. The plot isthe common masculine intrigue against the woman, which was used overand over again before Shakespeare appropriated it in "Much Ado"; butits French development is rather in the line of "All's Well. " Thefair Jeanne, married to a penniless knight, not at all by herchoice, but only because he was a favourite of her father's, was awoman of the true twelfth-century type. She broke the head of thetraitor, and when he, with his masculine falseness, caused herhusband to desert her, she disguised herself as a squire andfollowed Sir Robert to Marseilles in search of service in war, forthe poor knight could get no other means of livelihood. Robert wasthe husband, and the wife, in entering his service as squire withoutpay, called herself John:--

Molt fu mesire Robiers dolans cant il vint a Marselle de cou k'iln'oi parler de nulle chose ki fust ou pais; si dist a Jehan:

--Ke ferons nous? Vous m'aves preste de vos deniers la vostremierchi, si les vos renderai car je venderai mon palefroi etm'acuiterai a vous. 

--Sire, dist Jehans, crees moi se il vous plaist je vous dirai kenous ferons; jou ai bien enchore c sous de tournois, s'll vousplaist je venderai nos ii chevaus et en ferai deniers; et je suis limiousdres boulengiers ke vous sacies, si ferai pain francois et jene douc mie ke je ne gaagne bien et largement mon depens. 

--Jehans, dist mesire Robiers, je m'otroi del tout a faire votrevolente

Et lendemam vendi Jehans ses . Ii. Chevaux X livres de tornois, etachata son ble et le fist muire, et achata des corbelles etcoumencha a faire pain francois si bon et si bien fait k'il envendoit plus ke li doi melleur boulengier de la ville, et fist tantdedens les ii ans k'il ot bien c livres de katel. Lors dist Jehans ason segnour:

--Je lo bien que nous louons une tres grant mason et jou akateraidel vin et hierbegerai la bonne gent

--Jehan, dist mesire Robiers, faites a vo volente kar je l'otroi etsi me loc molt de vous. 

Jehans loua une mason grant et bielle, et si hierbrega la bonne gentet gaegnoit ases a plente, et viestoit son segnour biellement etrichement, et avoit mesire Robiers son palefroi et aloit boire etmengier aveukes les plus vallans de la ville, et Jehans li envoioitvins et viandes ke tout cil ki o lui conpagnoient s'enesmervelloient. Si gaegna tant ke dedens . Iiii ans il gaegna plus deccc livres de meuble sains son harnois qui valoit bien . L. Livres. 

Much was Sir Robert grieved when he came to Marseilles and foundthat there was no talk of anything doing in the country, and he saidto John: "What shall we do? You have lent me your money, I thankyou, and will repay you, for I will sell my palfrey and dischargethe debt to you. "

"Sir, " said John, "trust to me, if you please, I will tell you whatwe will do, I have still a hundred sous, if you please I will sellour two horses and turn them into money, and I am the best baker youever knew, I will make French bread, and I've no doubt I shall paymy expenses well and make money"

"John, " said Sir Robert, "I agree wholly to do whatever you like"

And the next day John sold their two horse for ten pounds, andbought his wheat and had it ground, and bought baskets, and began tomake French bread so good and so well made that he sold more of itthan the two best bakers in the city, and made so much within twoyears that he had a good hundred pound property Then he said to hislord "I advise our hiring a very large house, and I will buy wineand will keep lodgings for good society

"John, " said Sir Robert, "do what you please, for I grant it, and amgreatly pleased with you. "

John hired a large and fine house and lodged the best people andgained a great plenty, and dressed his master handsomely and richly, and Sir Robert kept his palfrey and went out to eat and drink withthe best people of the city, and John sent them such wines and foodthat all his companions marvelled at it. He made so much that withinfour years he gained more than three hundred pounds in money besidesclothes, etc, well worth fifty. 

The docile obedience of the man to the woman seemed as reasonable tothe thirteenth century as the devotion of the woman to the man, notbecause she loved him, for there was no question of love, butbecause he was HER man, and she owned him as though he were child. The tale went on to develop her character always in the same sense. When she was ready, Jeanne broke up the establishment at Marseilles, brought her husband back to Hainault, and made him, without knowingher object, kill the traitor and redress her wrongs. Then afterseven years' patient waiting, she revealed herself and resumed herplace. 

If you care to see the same type developed to its highest capacity, go to the theatre the first time some ambitious actress attempts thepart of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare realized the thirteenth-centurywoman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; butthat is no new thing to say of Shakespeare. The author of "LaComtesse de Ponthieu" made no bad sketch of the character. These arefictions, but the Chronicles contain the names of women by scoreswho were the originals of the sketch. The society which Ordericdescribed in Normandy--the generation of the first crusade--produceda great variety of Lady Macbeths. In the country of Evreux, about1100, Orderic says that "a worse than civil war was waged betweentwo powerful brothers, and the mischief was fomented by the spitefuljealousy of their haughty wives. The Countess Havise of Evreux tookoffence at some taunts uttered by Isabel de Conches, --wife of Ralph, the Seigneur of Conches, some ten miles from Evreux, --and used allher influence with her husband, Count William, and his barons, tomake trouble . . . Both the ladies who stirred up these fierceenmities were great talkers and spirited as well as handsome; theyruled their husbands, oppressed their vassals, and inspired terrorin various ways. But still their characters were very different. Havise had wit and eloquence, but she was cruel and avaricious. Isabel was generous, enterprising, and gay, so that she was belovedand esteemed by those about her. She rode in knight's armour whenher vassals were called to war, and showed as much daring among men-at-arms and mounted knights as Camilla . . . " More than three hundredyears afterwards, far off in the Vosges, from a village never heardof, appeared a common peasant of seventeen years old, a girl withoutbirth, education, wealth, or claim of any sort to consideration, whomade her way to Chinon and claimed from Charles VII a commission tolead his army against the English. Neither the king nor the courthad faith in her, and yet the commission was given, and the rank-and-file showed again that the true Frenchman had more confidence inthe woman than in the man, no matter what the gossips might say. Noone was surprised when Jeanne did what she promised, or when the menburned her for doing it. There were Jeannes in every village. Ridicule was powerless against them. Even Voltaire became what theFrench call frankly "bete, " in trying it. 

Eleanor of Guienne was the greatest of all Frenchwomen. Her decisionwas law, whether in Bordeaux or Poitiers, in Paris or in Palestine, in London or in Normandy; in the court of Louis VII, or in that ofHenry II, or in her own Court of Love. For fifteen years she wasQueen of France; for fifty she was Queen in England; for eighty orthereabouts she was equivalent to Queen over Guienne. No otherFrenchwoman ever had such rule. Unfortunately, as Queen of France, she struck against an authority greater than her own, that of SaintBernard, and after combating it, with Suger's help, from 1137 until1152, the monk at last gained such mastery that Eleanor quitted thecountry and Suger died. She was not a person to accept defeat. Sheroyally divorced her husband and went back to her own kingdom ofGuienne. Neither Louis nor Bernard dared to stop her, or to hold herterritories from her, but they put the best face they could on theirdefeat by proclaiming her as a person of irregular conduct. Theirregularity would not have stood in their way, if they had dared tostand in hers, but Louis was much the weaker, and made himselfweaker still by allowing her to leave him for the sake of Henry ofAnjou, a story of a sort that rarely raised the respect in whichFrench kings were held by French society. Probably politics had moreto do with the matter than personal attachments, for Eleanor was agreat ruler, the equal of any ordinary king, and more powerful thanmost kings living in 1152. If she deserted France in order to jointhe enemies of France, she had serious reasons besides love foryoung Henry of Anjou; but in any case she did, as usual, whatpleased her, and forced Louis to pronounce the divorce at a councilheld at Beaugency, March 18, 1152, on the usual pretext ofrelationship. The humours of the twelfth century were Shakespearean. Eleanor, having obtained her divorce at Beaugency, to the deepregret of all Frenchmen, started at once for Poitiers, knowing howunsafe she was in any territory but her own. Beaugency is on theLoire, between Orleans and Blois, and Eleanor's first night was atBlois, or should have been; but she was told, on arriving, thatCount Thibaut of Blois, undeterred by King Louis's experience, wasmaking plans to detain her, with perfectly honourable views ofmarriage; and, as she seems at least not to have been in love withThibaut, she was obliged to depart at once, in the night, to Tours. A night journey on horseback from Blois to Tours in the middle ofMarch can have been no pleasure-trip, even in 1152; but, on arrivingat Tours in the morning, Eleanor found that her lovers were still sodangerously near that she set forward at once on the road toPoitiers. As she approached her own territory she learned thatGeoffrey of Anjou, the younger brother of her intended husband, waswaiting for her at the border, with views of marriage as strictlyhonourable as those of all the others. She was driven to takeanother road, and at last got safe to Poitiers. 

About no figure in the Middle Ages, man or woman, did so manylegends grow, and with such freedom, as about Eleanor, whosestrength appealed to French sympathies and whose adventures appealedto their imagination. They never forgave Louis for letting her go. They delighted to be told that in Palestine she had carried onrelations of the most improper character, now with a Saracen slaveof great beauty; now with Raymond of Poitiers, her uncle, thehandsomest man of his time; now with Saladin himself; and, as allthis occurred at Antioch in 1147 or 1148, they could not explain whyher husband should have waited until 1152 in order to express hisunwilling disapproval; but they quoted with evident sympathy aremark attributed to her that she thought she had married a king, and found she had married a monk. To the Frenchman, Eleanor remainedalways sympathetic, which is the more significant because, inEnglish tradition, her character suffered a violent and incrediblechange. Although English history has lavished on Eleanor somewhatmore than her due share of conventional moral reproof, consideringthat, from the moment she married Henry of Anjou, May 18, 1152, shewas never charged with a breath of scandal, it atoned for her wantof wickedness by French standards, in the usual manner ofhistorians, by inventing traits which reflected the moral standardsof England. Tradition converted her into the fairy-book type offeminine jealousy and invented for her the legend of the FairRosamund and the poison of toads. 

For us, both legends are true. They reflected, not perhaps thecharacter of Eleanor, but what the society liked to see acted on itstheatre of life. Eleanor's real nature in no way concerns us. Thesingle fact worth remembering was that she had two daughters byLouis VII, as shown in the table; who, in due time, married--Mary, in 1164, married Henry, the great Count of Champagne; Alix, at thesame time, became Countess of Chartres by marriage with Thibaut, whohad driven her mother from Blois in 1152 by his marital intentions. Henry and Thibaut were brothers whose sister Alix had married LouisVII in 1160, eight years after the divorce. The relations thuscreated were fantastic, especially for Queen Eleanor, who, besidesher two French daughters, had eight children as Queen of England. Her second son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, born in 1157, was affiancedin 1174 to a daughter of Louis VII and Alix, a child only six yearsold, who was sent to England to be brought up as future queen. Thiswas certainly Eleanor's doing, and equally certain was it that thechild came to no good in the English court. The historians, byexception, have not charged this crime to Queen Eleanor; theycharged it to Eleanor's husband, who passed most of his life incrossing his wife's political plans; but with politics we want aslittle as possible to do. We are concerned with the artistic andsocial side of life, and have only to notice the coincidence thatwhile the Virgin was miraculously using the power of spiritual loveto elevate and purify the people, Eleanor and her daughters wereusing the power of earthly love to discipline and refine the courts. Side by side with the crude realities about them, they insisted onteaching and enforcing an ideal that contradicted the realities, andhad no value for them or for us except in the contradiction. 

The ideals of Eleanor and her daughter Mary of Champagne were a formof religion, and if you care to see its evangels, you had best godirectly to Dante and Petrarch, or, if you like it better, to DonQuixote de la Mancha. The religion is dead as Demeter, and its artalone survives as, on the whole, the highest expression of man'sthought or emotion; but in its day it was almost as practical as itnow is fanciful. Eleanor and her daughter Mary and her granddaughterBlanche knew as well as Saint Bernard did, or Saint Francis, what abrute the emancipated man could be; and as though they foresaw thesociety of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they used everyterror they could invent, as well as every tenderness they couldinvoke, to tame the beasts around them. Their charge was of manners, and, to teach manners, they made a school which they called theirCourt of Love, with a code of law to which they gave the name of"courteous love. " The decisions of this court were recorded, likethe decisions of a modern bench, under the names of the great ladieswho made them, and were enforced by the ladies of good society forwhose guidance they were made. They are worth reading, and any onewho likes may read them to this day, with considerable scepticismabout their genuineness. The doubt is only ignorance. We do not, andnever can, know the twelfth-century woman, or, for that matter, anyother woman, but we do know the literature she created; we know theart she lived in, and the religion she professed. We can collectfrom them some idea why the Virgin Mary ruled, and what she wastaken to be, by the world which worshipped her. 

Mary of Champagne created the literature of courteous love. She musthave been about twenty years old when she married Count Henry andwent to live at Troyes, not actually a queen in title, but certainlya queen in social influence. In 1164, Champagne was a powerfulcountry, and Troyes a centre of taste. In Normandy, at the samedate, William of Saint Pair and Wace were writing the poetry weknow. In Champagne the court poet was Christian of Troyes, whosepoems were new when the churches of Noyon and Senlis and Saint Leud'Esserent, and the fleche of Chartres, and the Leaning Tower ofPisa, were building, at the same time with the Abbey of Vezelay, andbefore the church at Mantes. Christian died not long after 1175, leaving a great mass of verse, much of which has survived, and whichyou can read more easily than you can read Dante or Petrarch, although both are almost modern compared with Christian. The qualityof this verse is something like the quality of the glass windows--conventional decoration; colours in conventional harmonies;refinement, restraint, and feminine delicacy of taste. Christian hasnot the grand manner of the eleventh century, and never recalls themasculine strength of the "Chanson de Roland" or "Raoul de Cambrai. "Even his most charming story, "Erec et Enide, " carries chiefly amoral of courtesy. His is poet-laureate's work, says M. GastonParis; the flower of a twelfth-century court and of twelfth-centuryFrench; the best example of an admirable language; but not lyric;neither strong, nor deep, nor deeply felt. What we call tragedy isunknown to it. Christian's world is sky-blue and rose, with onlyenough red to give it warmth, and so flooded with light that evenits mysteries count only by the clearness with which they are shown. 

Among other great works, before Mary of France came to TroyesChristian had, toward 1160, written a "Tristan, " which is lost. Maryherself, he says, gave him the subject of "Lancelot, " with therequest or order to make it a lesson of "courteous love, " which heobeyed. Courtesy has lost its meaning as well as its charm, and youmight find the "Chevalier de la Charette" even more unintelligiblethan tiresome; but its influence was great in its day, and thelesson of courteous love, under the authority of Mary of Champagne, lasted for centuries as the standard of taste. "Lancelot" was neverfinished, but later, not long after 1174, Christian wrote a"Perceval, " or "Conte du Graal, " which must also have been intendedto please Mary, and which is interesting because, while the"Lancelot" gave the twelfth-century idea of courteous love, the"Perceval" gave the twelfth-century idea of religious mystery. Marywas certainly concerned with both. "It is for this same Mary, " saysGaston Paris, "that Walter of Arras undertook his poem of 'Eracle';she was the object of the songs of the troubadours as well as oftheir French imitators; for her use also she caused the translationsof books of piety like Genesis, or the paraphrase at great length, in verse, of the psalm 'Eructavit. '"

With her theories of courteous love, every one is more or lessfamiliar if only from the ridicule of Cervantes and the follies ofQuixote, who, though four hundred years younger, was Lancelot'schild; but we never can know how far she took herself and her lawsof love seriously, and to speculate on so deep a subject as herseriousness is worse than useless, since she would herself have beenas uncertain as her lovers were. Visionary as the courtesy was, theHoly Grail was as practical as any bric-a-brac that has survived ofthe time. The mystery of Perceval is like that of the Gothiccathedral, illuminated by floods of light, and enlivened by riversof colour. Unfortunately Christian never told what he meant by thefragment, itself a mystery, in which he narrated the story of theknight who saw the Holy Grail, because the knight, who was warned, as usual, to ask no questions, for once, unlike most knights, obeyedthe warning when he should have disregarded it. As knights-errantnecessarily did the wrong thing in order to make their adventurespossible, Perceval's error cannot be in itself mysterious, nor wasthe castle in any way mysterious where the miracle occurred, Itappeared to him to be the usual castle, and he saw nothing unusualin the manner of his reception by the usual old lord, or in the factthat both seated themselves quite simply before the hall-fire withthe usual household. Then, as though it were an everyday habit, theHoly Grail was brought in (Bartsch, "Chrestomathie, " 183-85, ed. 1895):--

Et leans avail luminaire Si grant con l'an le porrait faire De chandoiles a un ostel. Que qu'il parloient d'un et d'el, Uns vallez d'une chambre vint Qui une blanche lance tint Ampoigniee par le mi lieu. Si passa par endroit le feu Et cil qui al feu se seoient, Et tuit cil de leans veoient La lance blanche et le fer blanc. S'issoit une gote de sang Del fer de la lance au sommet, Et jusqu'a la main au vaslet Coroit cele gote vermoille. . . . A tant dui autre vaslet vindrent Qui chandeliers an lors mains tindrent De fin or ovrez a neel. Li vaslet estoient moult bel Qui les chandeliers aportoient. An chacun chandelier ardoient Dous chandoiles a tot le mains. Un graal antre ses dous mains Une demoiselle tenoit, Qui avec les vaslets venoit, Bele et gente et bien acesmee. Quant cle fu leans antree Atot le graal qu'ele tint Une si granz clartez i vint Qu'ausi perdirent les chandoiles Lor clarte come les estoiles Qant li solauz luist et la lune. Apres celi an revint une Qui tint un tailleor d'argent. 

Le graal qui aloit devant De fin or esmere estoit, Pierres precieuses avoit El graal de maintes menieres Des plus riches et des plus chieres Qui en mer ne en terre soient. Totes autres pierres passoient Celes del graal sanz dotance. 

Tot ainsi con passa la lance Par devant le lit trespasserent Et d'une chambre a l'autre alerent. Et li vaslet les vit passer, Ni n'osa mire demander Del graal cui l'an an servoit. 

And, within, the hall was bright As any hall could be with light Of candles in a house at night. So, while of this and that they talked, A squire from a chamber walked, Bearing a white lance in his hand, Grasped by the middle, like a wand; And, as he passed the chimney wide, Those seated by the fireside, And all the others, caught a glance Of the white steel and the white lance. As they looked, a drop of blood Down the lance's handle flowed; Down to where the youth's hand stood. From the lance-head at the top They saw run that crimson drop. . . . Presently came two more squires, In their hands two chandeliers, Of fine gold in enamel wrought. Each squire that the candle brought Was a handsome chevalier. There burned in every chandelier Two lighted candles at the least. A damsel, graceful and well dressed, Behind the squires followed fast Who carried in her hands a graal; And as she came within the hall With the graal there came a light So brilliant that the candles all Lost clearness, as the stars at night When moon shines, or in day the sun. After her there followed one Who a dish of silver bore. 

The graal, which had gone before, Of gold the finest had been made, With precious stones had been inlaid, Richest and rarest of each kind That man in sea or earth could find. All other jewels far surpassed Those which the holy graal enchased. 

Just as before had passed the lance They all before the bed advance, Passing straightway through the hall, And the knight who saw them pass Never ventured once to ask For the meaning of the graal. 

The simplicity of this narration gives a certain dramatic effect tothe mystery, like seeing a ghost in full daylight, but Christiancarried simplicity further still. He seemed either to feel, or towant others to feel, the reality of the adventure and the miracle, and he followed up the appearance of the graal by a solid meal inthe style of the twelfth century, such as one expects to find in"Ivanhoe" or the "Talisman. " The knight sat down with his host tothe best dinner that the county of Champagne afforded, and they atetheir haunch of venison with the graal in full view. They dranktheir Champagne wine of various sorts, out of gold cups:--

 Vins clers ne raspez ne lor faut A copes dorees a boivre;

they sat before the fire and talked till bedtime, when the squiresmade up the beds in the hall, and brought in supper--dates, figs, nutmegs, spices, pomegranates, and at last lectuaries, suspiciouslylike what we call jams; and "alexandrine gingerbread"; after whichthey drank various drinks, with or without spice or honey or pepper;and old moret, which is thought to be mulberry wine, but whichgenerally went with clairet, a colourless grape-juice, or piment. Atleast, here are the lines, and one may translate them to suit one'sself:--

Et li vaslet aparellierent Les lis et le fruit au colchier Que il en i ot de moult chier, Dates, figues, et nois mugates, Girofles et pomes de grenates, Et leituaires an la fin, Et gingenbret alixandrin. Apres ce burent de maint boivre, Piment ou n'ot ne miel ne poivre Et viez more et cler sirop. 

The twelfth century had the child's love of sweets and spices andpreserved fruits, and drinks sweetened or spiced, whether they weretaken for supper or for poetry; the true knight's palate was freshand his appetite excellent either for sweets or verses or love; theworld was young then; Robin Hoods lived in every forest, and RichardCoeur-de-Lion was not yet twenty years old. The pleasant adventuresof Robin Hood were real, as you can read in the stories of a dozenoutlaws, and men troubled themselves about pain and death much ashealthy bears did, in the mountains. Life had miseries enough, butfew shadows deeper than those of the imaginative lover, or theterrors of ghosts at night. Men's imaginations ran riot, but did notkeep them awake; at least, neither the preserved fruits nor themulberry wine nor the clear syrup nor the gingerbread nor the HolyGraal kept Perceval awake, but he slept the sound and healthy sleepof youth, and when he woke the next morning, he felt only a mildsurprise to find that his host and household had disappeared, leaving him to ride away without farewell, breakfast, or Graal. 

Christian wrote about Perceval in 1174 in the same spirit in whichthe workmen in glass, thirty years later, told the story ofCharlemagne. One artist worked for Mary of Champagne; the others forMary of Chartres, commonly known as the Virgin; but all did theirwork in good faith, with the first, fresh, easy instinct of colour, light, and line. Neither of the two Maries was mystical, in a modernsense; none of the artists was oppressed by the burden of doubt;their scepticism was as childlike as faith. If one has to make anexception, perhaps the passion of love was more serious than that ofreligion, and gave to religion the deepest emotion, and the mostcomplicated one, which society knew. Love was certainly a passion;and even more certainly it was, as seen in poets like Dante andPetrarch, --in romans like "Lancelot" and "Aucassin, "--in ideals likethe Virgin, --complicated beyond modern conception. For this reasonthe loss of Christian's "Tristan" makes a terrible gap in art, forChristian's poem would have given the first and best idea of whatled to courteous love. The "Tristan" was written before 1160, andbelonged to the cycle of Queen Eleanor of England rather than tothat of her daughter Mary of Troyes; but the subject was one neitherof courtesy nor of France; it belonged to an age far behind theeleventh century, or even the tenth, or indeed any century withinthe range of French history; and it was as little fitted forChristian's way of treatment as for any avowed burlesque. Theoriginal Tristan--critics say--was not French, and neither Tristannor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their veins. In theirform as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; they camefrom Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the northern ocean, or farther still. Behind the Welsh Tristan, which passed probably through England toNormandy and thence to France and Champagne, critics detect a farmore ancient figure living in a form of society that France couldnot remember ever to have known. King Marc was a tribal chief of theStone Age whose subjects loved the forest and lived on the sea or incaves; King Marc's royal hall was a common shelter on the banks of astream, where every one was at home, and king, queen, knights, attendants, and dwarf slept on the floor, on beds laid down wherethey pleased; Tristan's weapons were the bow and stone knife; henever saw a horse or a spear; his ideas of loyalty and Isolde'sideas of marriage were as vague as Marc's royal authority; and allwere alike unconscious of law, chivalry, or church. The note theysang was more unlike the note of Christian, if possible, than thatof Richard Wagner; it was the simplest expression of rude andprimitive love, as one could perhaps find it among North AmericanIndians, though hardly so defiant even there, and certainly in theIcelandic Sagas hardly so lawless; but it was a note of realpassion, and touched the deepest chords of sympathy in theartificial society of the twelfth century, as it did in that of thenineteenth. The task of the French poet was to tone it down and giveit the fashionable dress, the pointed shoes and long sleeves, of thetime. "The Frenchman, " says Gaston Paris, "is specially interestedin making his story entertaining for the society it is meant for; heis 'social'; that is, of the world; he smiles at the adventures hetells, and delicately lets you see that he is not their dupe; heexerts himself to give to his style a constant elegance, a uniformpolish, in which a few neatly turned, clever phrases sparkle hereand there; above all, he wants to please, and thinks of his audiencemore than of his subject. "

In the twelfth century he wanted chiefly to please women, as Ordericcomplained; Isolde came out of Brittany to meet Eleanor coming upfrom Guienne, and the Virgin from the east; and all united in givinglaw to society. In each case it was the woman, not the man, who gavethe law;--it was Mary, not the Trinity; Eleanor, not Louis VII;Isolde, not Tristan. No doubt, the original Tristan had given thelaw like Roland or Achilles, but the twelfth-century Tristan was acomparatively poor creature. He was in his way a secondary figure inthe romance, as Louis VII was to Eleanor and Abelard to Heloise. Every one knows how, about twenty years before Eleanor came toParis, the poet-professor Abelard, the hero of the Latin Quarter, had sung to Heloise those songs which--he tells us--resoundedthrough Europe as widely as his scholastic fame, and probably tomore effect for his renown. In popular notions Heloise was Isolde, and would in a moment have done what Isolde did (Bartsch, 107-08):--

Quaint reis Marcs nus out conjeies E de sa curt nus out chascez, As mains ensemble nus preismes E hors de la sale en eissimes, A la forest puis en alasmes

E un mult bel liu i trouvames E une roche, fu cavee, Devant ert estraite la entree, Dedans fu voesse ben faite, Tante bel cum se fust portraite. 

When King Marc had banned us both, And from his court had chased us forth, Hand in hand each clasping fast Straight from out the hall we passed; To the forest turned our face;

Found in it a perfect place, Where the rock that made a cave Hardly more than passage gave; Spacious within and fit for use, As though it had been planned for us. 

At any time of her life, Heloise would have defied society orchurch, and would--at least in the public's fancy--have takenAbelard by the hand and gone off to the forest much more readilythan she went to the cloister; but Abelard would have made a poorfigure as Tristan. Abelard and Christian of Troyes were as remote aswe are from the legendary Tristan; but Isolde and Heloise, Eleanorand Mary were the immortal and eternal woman. The legend of Isolde, both in the earlier and the later version, seems to have served as asacred book to the women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Christian's Isolde surely helped Mary in giving law to the Courtof Troyes and decisions in the Court of Love. 

Countess Mary's authority lasted from 1164 to 1198, thirty-fouryears, during which, at uncertain intervals, glimpses of herinfluence flash out in poetry rather than in prose. Christian beganhis "Roman de la Charette" by invoking her:--

Puisque ma dame de Chanpaigne Vialt que romans a faire anpraigne

Si deist et jel tesmoignasse Que ce est la dame qui passe Totes celes qui sont vivanz Si con li funs passe les vanz Qui vante en Mai ou en Avril

Dirai je: tant com une jame Vaut de pailes et de sardines Vaut la contesse de reines?

Christian chose curious similes. His dame surpassed all livingrivals as smoke passes the winds that blow in May; or as much as agem would buy of straws and sardines is the Countess worth inqueens. Louis XIV would have thought that Christian might belaughing at him, but court styles changed with their masters. LouisXIV would scarcely have written a prison-song to his sister such asRichard Coeur-de-Lion wrote to Mary of Champagne:--

Ja nus bons pris ne dirat sa raison Adroitement s'ansi com dolans non; Mais par confort puet il faire chanson. Moult ai d'amins, mais povre sont li don; Honte en avront se por ma reancon Suix ces deus yvers pris. 

Ceu sevent bien mi home et mi baron, Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon, Ke je n'avoie si povre compaingnon Cui je laissasse por avoir au prixon. Je nel di pas por nulle retraison, Mais ancor suix je pris. 

Or sai ge bien de voir certainement Ke mors ne pris n'ait amin ne parent, Cant on me lait por or ne por argent. Moult m'est de moi, mais plus m'est de ma gent C'apres ma mort avront reprochier grant Se longement suix pris. 

N'est pas mervelle se j'ai lo cuer dolent Cant li miens sires tient ma terre en torment. S'or li menbroit de nostre sairement Ke nos feismes andui communament, Bien sai de voir ke ceans longement Ne seroie pas pris. 

Ce sevent bien Angevin et Torain, Cil bacheler ki or sont fort et sain, C'ancombreis suix long d'aus en autrui main. Forment m'amoient, mais or ne m'aimment grain. De belles armes sont ores veut cil plain, Por tant ke je suix pris. 

Mes compaingnons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim, Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain, Me di, chanson, kil ne sont pas certain, C'onques vers aus n'en oi cuer faus ne vain. S'il me guerroient, il font moult que villain Tant com je serai pris. 

Comtesse suer, vostre pris soverain Vos saut et gart cil a cui je me claim Et par cui je suix pris. Je n'ou di pas de celi de Chartain La meire Loweis. 

No prisoner can tell his honest thought Unless he speaks as one who suffers wrong; But for his comfort he may make a song. My friends are many, but their gifts are naught. Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, here I lie another year. 

They know this well, my barons and my men, Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou, That I had never follower so low Whom I would leave in prison to my gain. I say it not for a reproach to them, But prisoner I am!

The ancient proverb now I know for sure: Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie, Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie. Much for myself I grieve; for them still more. After my death they will have grievous wrong If I am prisoner long. 

What marvel that my heart is sad and sore When my own lord torments my helpless lands! Well do I know that, if he held his hands, Remembering the common oath we swore, I should not here imprisoned with my song, Remain a prisoner long. 

They know this well who now are rich and strong Young gentlemen of Anjou and Touraine, That far from them, on hostile bonds I strain. They loved me much, but have not loved me long. Their plains will see no more fair lists arrayed, While I lie here betrayed. 

Companions, whom I loved, and still do love, Geoffroi du Perche and Ansel de Caleux, Tell them, my song, that they are friends untrue. 

Never to them did I false-hearted prove; But they do villainy if they war on me, While I lie here, unfree. 

Countess sister! your sovereign fame May he preserve whose help I claim, Victim for whom am I! I say not this of Chartres' dame, Mother of Louis!

Richard's prison-song, one of the chief monuments of Englishliterature, sounds to every ear, accustomed to twelfth-centuryverse, as charming as when it was household rhyme to

 mi ome et mi baron Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon. 

Not only was Richard a far greater king than any Louis ever was, buthe also composed better poetry than any other king who is known totourists, and, when he spoke to his sister in this cry of the heartaltogether singular among monarchs, he made law and style, abovediscussion. Whether he meant to reproach his other sister, Alix ofChartres, historians may tell, if they know. If he did, the reproachanswered its purpose, for the song was written in 1193; Richard wasransomed and released in 1194; and in 1198 the young Count "Loweis"of Chartres and Blois leagued with the Counts of Flanders, LePerche, Guines, and Toulouse, against Philip Augustus, in favor ofCoeur-de-Lion to whom they rendered homage. In any case, neitherMary nor Alice in 1193 was reigning Countess. Mary was a widow since1181, and her son Henry was Count in Champagne, apparently a greatfavourite with his uncle Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The life of thisHenry of Champagne was another twelfth-century romance, but canserve no purpose here except to recall the story that his mother, the great Countess Mary, died in 1198 of sorrow for the death ofthis son, who was then King of Jerusalem, and was killed, in 1197, by a fall from the window of his palace at Acre. Coeur-de-Lion diedin 1199. In 1201, Mary's other son, who succeeded Henry, --CountThibaut III, --died, leaving a posthumous heir, famous in thethirteenth century as Thibaut-le-Grand--the Thibaut of QueenBlanche. 

They were all astonishing--men and women--and filled the world, fortwo hundred years, with their extraordinary energy and genius; butthe greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her sonCoeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands, --Louis-le-Jeune andHenry II Plantagenet, --and was left in 1200 still struggling torepair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. "Queen by thewrath of God, " she called herself, and she knew what just claim shehad to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, littleremained except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of hisfamily, his friends, his enemies, and even his admirers, achieved areputation for excelling in every form of twelfth-century crime. Hewas a liar and a traitor, as was not uncommon, but he was thought tobe also a coward, which, in that family, was singular. Someredeeming quality he must have had, but none is recorded. His mothersaw him running, in his masculine, twelfth-century recklessness, todestruction, and she made a last and a characteristic effort to savehim and Guienne by a treaty of amity with the French king, to besecured by the marriage of the heir of France, Louis, to Eleanor'sgranddaughter, John's niece, Blanche of Castile, then twelve orthirteen years old. Eleanor herself was eighty, and yet she made thejourney to Spain, brought back the child to Bordeaux, affianced herto Louis VIII as she had herself been affianced in 1137 to LouisVII, and in May, 1200, saw her married. The French had then given uptheir conventional trick of attributing Eleanor's acts to her wantof morals; and France gave her--as to most women after sixty yearsold--the benefit of the convention which made women respectableafter they had lost the opportunity to be vicious. In French eyes, Eleanor played out the drama according to the rules. She could notsave John, but she died in 1202, before his ruin, and you can stillsee her lying with her husband and her son Richard at Fontevrault inher twelfth-century tomb. 

In 1223, Blanche became Queen of France. She was thirty-six yearsold. Her husband, Louis VIII, was ambitious to rival his father, Philip Augustus, who had seized Normandy in 1203. Louis undertook toseize Toulouse and Avignon. In 1225, he set out with a large army inwhich, among the chief vassals, his cousin Thibaut of Champagne leda contingent. Thibaut was five-and-twenty years old, and, likePierre de Dreux, then Duke of Brittany, was one of the mostbrilliant and versatile men of his time, and one of the greatestrulers. As royal vassal Thibaut owed forty days' service in thefield; but his interests were at variance with the King's, and atthe end of the term he marched home with his men, leaving the Kingto fall ill and die in Auvergne, November 8, 1226, and a child often years old to carry on the government as Louis IX. 

Chartres Cathedral has already told the story twice, in stone andglass; but Thibaut does not appear there, although he saved theQueen. Some member of the royal family must be regent. Queen Blanchetook the place, and of course the princes of the blood, who thoughtit was their right, united against her. At first, Blanche turnedviolently on Thibaut and forbade him to appear at the coronation atRheims in his own territory, on November 29, as though she held himguilty of treason; but when the league of great vassals united todeprive her of the regency, she had no choice but to detach at anycost any member of the league, and Thibaut alone offered help. Whatprice she paid him was best known to her; but what price she wouldbe believed to have paid him was as well known to her as what hadbeen said of her grandmother Eleanor when she changed her allegiancein 1152. If the scandal had concerned Thibaut alone, she might havebeen well content, but Blanche was obliged also to pay desperatecourt to the papal legate. Every member of her husband's familyunited against her and libelled her character with the freedom whichenlivened and envenomed royal tongues. 

 Maintes paroles en dit en Comme d'Iseult et de Tristan. 

Had this been all, she would have cared no more than Eleanor or anyother queen had cared, for in French drama, real or imaginary, suchcharges were not very serious and hardly uncomplimentary; but Iseulthad never been accused, over and above her arbitrary views on themarriage-contract, of acting as an accomplice with Tristan inpoisoning King Marc. French convention required that Thibaut shouldhave poisoned Louis VIII for love of the Queen, and that this secretreciprocal love should control their lives. Fortunately for Blancheshe was a devout ally of the Church, and the Church believed evilonly of enemies. The legate and the prelates rallied to her supportand after eight years of desperate struggle they crushed PierreMauclerc and saved Thibaut and Blanche. 

For us the poetry is history, and the facts are false. French artstarts not from facts, but from certain assumptions as conventionalas a legendary window, and the commonest convention is the Woman. The fact, then as now, was Power, or its equivalent in exchange, butFrenchmen, while struggling for the Power, expressed it in terms ofArt. They looked on life as a drama, --and on drama as a phase oflife--in which the bystanders were bound to assume and accept theregular stage-plot. That the plot might be altogether untrue to reallife affected in no way its interest. To them Thibaut and Blanchewere bound to act Tristan and Isolde. Whatever they were when offthe stage, they were lovers on it. Their loves were as real and asreasonable as the worship of the Virgin. Courteous love was avowedlya form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion forillusion, courteous love, in Thibaut's hands, or in the hands ofDante and Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention;--thebalance of trade, the rights of man, or the Athanasian Creed. Inthat sense the illusions alone were real; if the Middle Ages hadreflected only what was practical, nothing would have survived forus. 

Thibaut was Tristan, and is said to have painted his verses on thewalls of his chateau. If he did, he painted there, in the opinion ofM. Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper orparchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did inboth characters whatever he pleased. In modern equivalents, onewould give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on itswalls. Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps somechurches and glass of Thibaut's time which hold their own with thebest. Even of Thibaut himself, something survives, and though itwere only the memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire deJoinville, history and France would be poor without him. WithJoinville in hand, you may still pass an hour in the company ofthese astonishing thirteenth-century men and women:--crusaders whofight, hunt, make love, build churches, put up glass windows to theVirgin, buy missals, talk scholastic philosophy, compose poetry:Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, Saint Dominic, Saint Francis--you may know them as intimately as youcan ever know a world that is lost; and in the case of Thibaut youmay know more, for he is still alive in his poems; he even vibrateswith life. One might try a few verses, to see what he meant bycourtesy. Perhaps he wrote them for Queen Blanche, but, to whomeverhe sent them, the French were right in thinking that she ought tohave returned his love (edition of 1742):--

Nus hom ne puet ami reconforter Se cele non ou il a son cuer mis. Pour ce m'estuet sovent plaindre et plourer Que mis confors ne me vient, ce m'est vis, De la ou j'ai tote ma remembrance. Pour bien amer ai sovent esmaiance A dire voir. Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir. 

Jene puis pas sovent a li parler Ne remirer les biaus iex de son vis. Ce pois moi que je n'i puis aler Car ades est mes cuers ententis. 

Ho! bele riens, douce sans conoissance, Car me mettez en millor attendance De bon espoir! Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir. 

Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamer Quant je ne di a qui je suis amis; Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penser Nus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le dis Couardement a pavours a doutance Dont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblance Mon cuer savoir. Dame, merci! donez moi esperance De joie avoir. 

There is no comfort to be found for pain Save only where the heart has made its home. Therefore I can but murmur and complain Because no comfort to my pain has come From where I garnered all my happiness. From true love have I only earned distress The truth to say. Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day. 

Seldom the music of her voice I hear Or wonder at the beauty of her eyes. It grieves me that I may not follow there Where at her feet my heart attentive lies. 

Oh, gentle Beauty without consciousness, Let me once feel a moment's hopefulness, If but one ray! Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day. 

Certain there are who blame upon me throw Because I will not tell whose love I seek; But truly, lady, none my thought shall know, None that is born, save you to whom I speak In cowardice and awe and doubtfulness, That you may happily with fearlessness My heart essay. Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess A hope, one day. 

Does Thibaut's verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of thethirteenth-century glass--so refined and complicated that sensiblepeople are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Anyblunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of thesethree stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concernedthere as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are asperfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. Thesestanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see howThibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queenof Heaven!

De grant travail et de petit esploit Voi ce siegle cargie et encombre Que tant somes plain de maleurte Ke nus ne pens a faire ce qu'il doit, Ains avons si le Deauble trouve Qu'a lui servir chascuns paine et essaie Et Diex ki ot pour nos ja cruel plaie Metons arrier et sa grant dignite; Molt est hardis qui pour mort ne s'esmaie. 

Diex que tout set et tout puet et tout voit Nous auroit tost en entre-deus giete Se la Dame plaine de grant bonte Pardelez lui pour nos ne li prioit

 Si tres douc mot plaisant et savoure Le grant courous dou grant Signour apaie; Molt par est fox ki autre amor essai K'en cestui n'a barat ne fausete Ne es autres n'a ne merti ne manaie. 

La souris quiert pour son cors garandir Contre l'yver la noif et le forment Et nous chaitif nous n'alons rien querant Quant nous morrons ou nous puissions garir. Nous ne cherchons fors k'infer le puant; Or esgardes come beste sauvage Pourvoit de loin encontre son domage Et nous n'avons ne sens ne hardement; Il est avis que plain somes de rage. 

Li Deable a getey por nos ravir Quatre amecons aescbies de torment; Covoitise lance premierement Et puis Orguel por sa grant rois emplir Et Luxure va le batel trainant Felonie les governe et les nage. Ensi peschant s'en viegnent au rivage Dont Diex nous gart par son commandement En qui sains fons nous feismes homage. 

A la Dame qui tous les bien avance T'en va, chancon s'el te vielt escouter Onques ne fu nus di millor chaunce. 

With travail great, and little cargo fraught, See how our world is labouring in pain; So filled we are with love of evil gain That no one thinks of doing what he ought, But we all hustle in the Devil's train, And only in his service toil and pray; And God, who suffered for us agony, We set behind, and treat him with disdain; Hardy is he whom death does not dismay. 

God who rules all, from whom we can hide nought, Had quickly flung us back to nought again But that our gentle, gracious, Lady Queen Begged him to spare us, and our pardon wrought;

 Striving with words of sweetness to restrain Our angry Lord, and his great wrath allay. Felon is he who shall her love betray Which is pure truth, and falsehood cannot feign, While all the rest is lie and cheating play. 

The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold, Garners the nuts and grain within his cell, While man goes groping, without sense to tell Where to seek refuge against growing old. We seek it in the smoking mouth of Hell. With the poor beast our impotence compare! See him protect his life with utmost care, While us nor wit nor courage can compel To save our souls, so foolish mad we are. The Devil doth in snares our life enfold; Four hooks has he with torments baited well; And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell, And then, to fill his nets, has Pride enrolled, And Luxury steers the boat, and fills the sail, And Perfidy controls and sets the snare; Thus the poor fish are brought to land, and there May God preserve us and the foe repel! Homage to him who saves us from despair!

To Mary Queen, who passes all compare, Go, little song! to her your sorrows tell! Nor Heaven nor Earth holds happiness so rare. 

CHAPTER XII

NICOLETTE AND MARION

C'est d'Aucassins et de Nicolete. 

Qui vauroit bons vers oir Del deport du viel caitiff De deus biax enfans petis Nicolete et Aucassins; Des grans paines qu'il soufri Et des proueces qu'il fist For s'amie o le cler vis. Dox est li cans biax est li dis Et cortois et bien asis. Nus hom n'est si esbahis Tant dolans ni entrepris De grant mal amaladis Se il l'oit ne soit garis Et de joie resbaudis Tant par est dou-ce. 

This is of Aucassins and Nicolette. 

Whom would a good ballad please By the captive from o'er-seas, A sweet song in children's praise, Nicolette and Aucassins; What he bore for her caress, What he proved of his prowess For his friend with the bright face? The song has charm, the tale has grace, And courtesy and good address. No man is in such distress, Such suffering or weariness, Sick with ever such sickness, But he shall, if he hear this, Recover all his happiness, So sweet it is!

This little thirteenth-century gem is called a "chante-fable, " astory partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according tomusical notation accompanying the words in the single manuscriptknown, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxfordin 1896. Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few yearsbeen more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than "Aucassins, "yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells himlittle. Nothing is known of the author or his date. The second linealone offers a hint, but nothing more. "Caitif" means in the firstplace a captive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man. Critics have liked to think that the word means here a captive tothe Saracens, and that the poet, like Cervantes three or fourhundred years later, may have been a prisoner to the infidels. Whatthe critics can do, we can do. If liberties can be taken withimpunity by scholars, we can take the liberty of supposing that thepoet was a prisoner in the crusade of Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe-Auguste; that he had recovered his liberty, with his master, in1194; and that he passed the rest of his life singing to the oldQueen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the lords of all thechateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, not to mentionEngland. The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny atmosphere ofthe Southern poetry proves. 

 Dox est li cans; biax est li dis, Et cortois et bien asis. 

The poet-troubadour who composed and recited "Aucassins" could nothave been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, andnot of ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, "courteous love, " which gives the tale a place in the direct linebetween Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William ofLorris. Christian of Troyes died in 1175; at least he wrote nothingof a later date, so far as is certainly known. Richard Coeur-de-Liondied in 1199, very soon after the death of his half-sister Mary ofChampagne. Thibaut-le-Grand was born in 1201. William of Lorris, whoconcluded the line of great "courteous" poets, died in 1260 orthereabouts. For our purposes, "Aucassins" comes between Christianof Troyes and William of Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, was a "viel caitif" when the Chartres glass was set up, and theCharlemagne window designed, about 1210, or perhaps a little later. When one is not a professor, one has not the right to make ineptguesses, and, when one is not a critic, one should not riskconfusing a difficult question by baseless assumptions; but even asummer tourist may without offence visit his churches in the orderthat suits him best; and, for our tour, "Aucassins" followsChristian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the chatelain deCoucy, as the most exquisite expression of "courteous love. " As oneof "Aucassins'" German editors says in his introduction: "Love isthe medium through which alone the hero surveys the world aroundhim, and for which he contemns everything that the age prized:knightly honour; deeds of arms; father and mother; hell, and evenheaven; but the mere promise by his father of a kiss from Nicoletteinspires him to superhuman heroism; while the old poet sings andsmiles aside to his audience as though he wished them to understandthat Aucassins, a foolish boy, must not be judged quite seriously, but that, old as he was himself, he was just as foolish aboutNicolette. "

Aucassins was the son of the Count of Beaucaire. Nicolette was ayoung girl whom the Viscount of Beaucaire had redeemed as a captiveof the Saracens, and had brought up as a god-daughter in his family. Aucassins fell in love with Nicolette, and wanted to marry her. Theaction turned on marriage, for, to the Counts of Beaucaire, as toother counts, not to speak of kings, high alliance was not a matterof choice but of necessity, without which they could not defendtheir lives, let alone their counties; and, to make Aucassins'conduct absolutely treasonable, Beaucaire was at that timesurrounded and besieged, and the Count, Aucassins' father, stood indire need of his son's help. Aucassins refused to stir unless hecould have Nicolette. What were honours to him if Nicolette were notto share them. "S'ele estait empereris de Colstentinoble ud'Alemaigne u roine de France u d'Engletere, si aroit il asses peuen li, tant est france et cortoise et de bon aire et entecie detoutes bones teces. " To be empress of "Colstentinoble" would be nonetoo good for her, so stamped is she with nobility and courtesy andhigh-breeding and all good qualities. 

So the Count, after a long struggle, sent for his Viscount andthreatened to have Nicolette burned alive, and the Viscount himselftreated no better, if he did not put a stop to the affair; and theViscount shut up Nicolette, and remonstrated with Aucassins: "Marrya king's daughter, or a count's! leave Nicolette alone, or you willnever see Paradise!" This at once gave Aucassins the excuse for acharming tirade against Paradise, for which, a century or two later, he would properly have been burned together with Nicolette:--

En paradis qu'ai je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer mais que j'aieNicolete, ma tres douce amie, que j'aim tant. C'en paradis ne vontfors tex gens con je vous dirai. Il i vont ci viel prestre et cilvieil clop et cil manke, qui tote jour et tote nuit cropent devantces autex et en ces vies cruutes, et ci a ces vies capes ereses et aces vies tatereles vestues, qui sont nu et decauc et estrumele, quimoeurent de faim et d'esci et de froid et de mesaises. Icil vont enparadis; aveuc ciax n'ai jou que faire; mais en infer voil jou aler. Car en infer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier qui sont mort astornois et as rices gueres, et li bien sergant et li franc home. Aveuc ciax voil jou aler. Et si vont les beles dames cortoises queeles ont ii amis ou iii avec leurs barons. Et si va li ors et liagens et li vairs et li gris; et si i vont herpeor et jogleor et liroi del siecle. Avec ciax voil jou aler mais que j'aie Nicolete, matres douce amie, aveuc moi. 

In Paradise what have I to do? I do not care to go there unless Imay have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, whom I love so much. Forto Paradise goes no one but such people as I will tell you of. Therego old priests and old cripples and the maimed, who all day and allnight crouch before altars and in old crypts, and are clothed withold worn-out capes and old tattered rags; who are naked and footbareand sore; who die of hunger and want and misery. These go toParadise; with them I have nothing to do; but to Hell I am willingto go. For, to Hell go the fine scholars and the fair knights whodie in tournies and in glorious wars; and the good men-at-arms andthe well-born. With them I will gladly go. And there go the faircourteous ladies whether they have two or three friends besidestheir lords. And the gold and silver go there, and the ermines andsables; and there go the harpers and jongleurs, and the kings of theworld. With these will I go, if only I may have Nicolette, my verysweet friend, with me. 

Three times, in these short extracts, the word "courteous" hasalready appeared. The story itself is promised as "courteous";Nicolette is "courteous"; and the ladies who are not to go to heavenare "courteous. " Aucassins is in the full tide of courtesy, andevidently a professional, or he never would have claimed a place forharpers and jongleurs with kings and chevaliers in the next world. The poets of "courteous love" showed as little interest in religionas the poets of the eleventh century had shown for it in their poemsof war. Aucassins resembled Christian of Troyes in this, and both ofthem resembled Thibaut, while William of Lorris went beyond themall. The literature of the "siecle" was always unreligious, from the"Chanson de Roland" to the "Tragedy of Hamlet"; to be "papelard" wasunworthy of a chevalier; the true knight of courtesy made nothing ofdefying the torments of hell, as he defied the lance of a rival, thefrowns of society, the threats of parents or the terrors of magic;the perfect, gentle, courteous lover thought of nothing but hislove. Whether the object of his love were Nicolette of Beaucaire orBlanche of Castile, Mary of Champagne or Mary of Chartres, was adetail which did not affect the devotion of his worship. 

So Nicolette, shut up in a vaulted chamber, leaned out at the marblewindow and sang, while Aucassins, when his father promised that heshould have a kiss from Nicolette, went out to make fabulousslaughter of the enemy; and when his father broke the promise, shuthimself up in his chamber, and also sang; and the action went on byscenes and interludes, until, one night, Nicolette let herself downfrom the window, by the help of sheets and towels, into the garden, and, with a natural dislike of wetting her skirts which hasdelighted every hearer or reader from that day to this, "prist sevesture a l'une main devant et a l'autre deriere si s'escorca por lerousee qu'ele vit grande sor l'erbe si s'en ala aval le gardin"; sheraised her skirts with one hand in front and the other behind, forthe dew which she saw heavy on the grass, and went off down thegarden, to the tower where Aucassins was locked up, and sang to himthrough a crack in the masonry, and gave him a lock of her hair, andthey talked till the friendly night-watch came by and warned her bya sweetly-sung chant, that she had better escape. So she badefarewell to Aucassins, and went on to a breach in the city wall, andshe looked through it down into the fosse which was very deep andvery steep. So she sang to herself--

Peres rois de maeste Or ne sai quel part aler. Se je vois u gaut rame Ja me mengeront li le Li lions et li sengler Dont il i a a plente. 

Father, King of Majesty! Now I know not where to flee. If I seek the forest free, Then the lions will eat me, Wolves and wild boars terribly, Of which plenty there there be. 

The lions were a touch of poetic licence, even for Beaucaire, butthe wolves and wild boars were real enough; yet Nicolette fearedeven them less than she feared the Count, so she slid down what heraudience well knew to be a most dangerous and difficult descent, andreached the bottom with many wounds in her hands and feet, "et sanen sali bien en xii lius"; so that blood was drawn in a dozenplaces, and then she climbed up the other side, and went off bravelyinto the depths of the forest; an uncanny thing to do by night, asyou can still see. 

Then followed a pastoral, which might be taken from the works ofanother poet of the same period, whose acquaintance no one canneglect to make--Adam de la Halle, a Picard, of Arras. Adam lived, it is true, fifty years later than the date imagined for Aucassins, but his shepherds and shepherdesses are not so much like, asidentical with, those of the Southern poet, and all have so singularan air of life that the conventional courteous knight fades outbeside them. The poet, whether bourgeois, professional, noble, orclerical, never much loved the peasant, and the peasant never muchloved him, or any one else. The peasant was a class by himself, andhis trait, as a class, was suspicion of everybody and all things, whether material, social, or divine. Naturally he detested his lord, whether temporal or spiritual, because the seigneur and the priesttook his earnings, but he was never servile, though a serf; he wasfar from civil; he was commonly gross. He was cruel, but not more sothan his betters; and his morals were no worse. The object ofoppression on all sides, --the invariable victim, whoever else mightescape, --the French peasant, as a class, held his own--and more. Infact, he succeeded in plundering Church, Crown, nobility, andbourgeoisie, and was the only class in French history that rosesteadily in power and well-being, from the time of the crusades tothe present day, whatever his occasional suffering may have been;and, in the thirteenth century, he was suffering. When Nicolette, onthe morning after her escape, came upon a group of peasants in theforest, tending the Count's cattle, she had reason to be afraid ofthem, but instead they were afraid of her. They thought at firstthat she was a fairy. When they guessed the riddle, they kept thesecret, though they risked punishment and lost the chance of rewardby protecting her. Worse than this, they agreed, for a smallpresent, to give a message to Aucassins if he should ride that way. 

Aucassins was not very bright, but when he got out of prison afterNicolette's escape, he did ride out, at his friends' suggestion, andtried to learn what had become of her. Passing through the woods hecame upon the same group of shepherds and shepherdesses:--

 Esmeres et Martinet, Fruelins et Johannes, Robecons etAubries, --

who might have been living in the Forest of Arden, so like were theyto the clowns of Shakespeare. They were singing of Nicolette and herpresent, and the cakes and knives and flute they would buy with it. Aucassins jumped to the bait they offered him; and they instantlybegan to play him as though he were a trout:--

"Bel enfant, dix vos i ait!"

"Dix vos benie!" fait cil qui fu plus enparles des autres. 

"Bel enfant, " fait il, "redites le cancon que vos disiez ore!"

"Nous n'i dirons, " fait cil qui plus fu enparles des autres. "Dehaitore qui por vos i cantera, biax sire!"

"Bel enfant!" fait Aucassins, "enne me connissies vos?"

"Oil! nos savions bien que vos estes Aucassins, nos damoisiax, maisnos ne somes mie a vos, ains somes au conte. "

"Bel enfant, si feres, je vos en pri!"

"Os, por le cuer be!" fait cil. "Por quoi canteroie je por vos, s'ilne me seoit! Quant il n'a si rice home en cest pais sans le cors leconte Garin s'il trovait mes bues ne mes vaces ne mes brebis en sespres n'en sen forment qu'il fust mie tant hardis por les es a creverqu'il les en ossast cacier. Et por quoi canteroie je por vos s'il neme seoit?"

"Se dix vos ait, bel enfant, si feres! et tenes x sous que j'ai cien une borse!"

"God bless you, fair child!" said Aucassins. 

"God be with you!" replied the one who talked best. 

"Fair child!" said he, "repeat the song you were just singing. "

"We won't!" replied he who talked best among them. "Bad luck to himwho shall sing for you, good sir!"

"Fair child, " said Aucassins, "do you know me?"

"Yes! we know very well that you are Aucassins, our young lord; butwe are none of yours; we belong to the Count. "

"Fair child, indeed you'll do it, I pray you!"

"Listen, for love of God!" said he. "Why should I sing for you if itdoes not suit me? when there is no man so powerful in this country, except Count Garin, if he found my oxen or my cows or my sheep inhis pasture or his close, would not rather risk losing his eyes thandare to turn them out! and why should I sing for you, if it does notsuit me!"

"So God help you, good child, indeed you will do it! and take theseten sous that I have here in my purse. "

"Sire les deniers prenderons nos, mais je ne vos canterai mie, carj'en ai jure. Mais je le vos conterai se vos voles. "

"De par diu!" faits Aucassins. "Encore aim je mix center que nient. "

"Sire, the money we will take, but I'll not sing to you, for I'vesworn it. But I will tell it you, if you like. "

"For God's sake!" said Aucassins; "better telling than nothing!"

Ten sous was no small gift! twenty sous was the value of a strongox. The poet put a high money-value on the force of love, but he seta higher value on it in courtesy. These boors were openly insolentto their young lord, trying to extort money from him, andthreatening him with telling his father; but they were in theirright, and Nicolette was in their power. At heart they meantAucassins well, but they were rude and grasping, and the poet usedthem in order to show how love made the true lover courteous even toclowns. Aucassins' gentle courtesy is brought out by the boors'greed, as the colours in the window were brought out and given theirvalue by a bit of blue or green. The poet, having got his littletouch of colour rightly placed, let the peasants go. "Cil qui fuplus enparles des autres, " having been given his way and his money, told Aucassins what he knew of Nicolette and her message; soAucassins put spurs to his horse and cantered into the forest, singing:--

Se diu plaist le pere fort Je vos reverai encore Suer, douce a-mie!

So please God, great and strong, I will find you now ere long, Sister, sweet friend!

But the peasant had singular attraction for the poet. Whether thecharacter gave him a chance for some clever mimicry, which was oneof his strong points as a story-teller: or whether he wanted totreat his subjects, like the legendary windows, in pairs; or whetherhe felt that the forest-scene specially amused his audience, heimmediately introduced a peasant of another class, much morestrongly coloured, or deeply shadowed. Every one in the audiencewas--and, for that matter, still would be--familiar with the greatforests, the home of half the fairy and nursery tales of Europe, still wild enough and extensive enough to hide in, although theyhave now comparatively few lions, and not many wolves or wild boarsor serpents such as Nicolette feared. Every one saw, without aneffort, the young damoiseau riding out with his hound or hawk, looking for game; the lanes under the trees, through the wood, orthe thick underbrush before lanes were made; the herdsmen watchingtheir herds, and keeping a sharp look-out for wolves; the peasantseeking lost cattle; the black kiln-men burning charcoal; and in thedepths of the rocks or swamps or thickets--the outlaw. Even now, forests like Rambouillet, or Fontainebleau or Compiegne are enormousand wild; one can see Aucassins breaking his way through thorns andbranches in search of Nicolette, tearing his clothes and woundinghimself "en xl lius u en xxx, " until evening approached, and hebegan to weep for disappointment:--

Il esgarda devant lui enmi la voie si vit un vallet tei que je vosdirai. Grans estoit et mervellex et lais et hidex. Il avoit unegrande hure plus noire qu'une carbouclee, et avoit plus de plannepaume entre ii ex, et avoit unes grandes joes et un grandisme nezplat, et une grans narines lees et unes grosses levres plus rougesd'unes carbounees, et uns grans dens gaunes et lais et estoitcaucies d'uns housiax et d'uns sollers de buef fretes de tilledusque deseure le genol et estoit afules d'une cape a ii envers siestoit apoiies sor une grande macue. Aucassins s'enbati sor luis'eut grand paor quant il le sorvit. . . 

"Baix frere, dix ti ait!"

"Dix vos benie!" fait cil. "Se dix t'ait, que fais tu ilec?"

"A vos que monte?" fait cil. 

"Nient!" fait Aucassins; "je nel vos demant se por bien non. "

"Mais pour quoi ploures vos?" fait cil, "et faites si fait doel?Certes se j'estoie ausi rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne meferoit mie plorer. "

"Ba! me conissies vos!" fait Aucassins. 

"Oie! je sai bien que vos estes Aucassins li fix le conte, et se vosme dites por quoi vos plores je vos dirai que je fac ici. "

As he looked before him along the way he saw a man such as I willtell you. Tall he was, and menacing, and ugly, and hideous. He hada great mane blacker than charcoal and had more than a full palm-width between his two eyes, and had big cheeks, and a huge flat noseand great broad nostrils, and thick lips redder than raw beef, andlarge ugly yellow teeth, and was shod with hose and leggings of rawhide laced with bark cord to above the knee, and was muffled in acloak without lining, and was leaning on a great club. Aucassinscame upon him suddenly and had great fear when he saw him. 

"Fair brother, good day!" said he. 

"God bless you!" said the other. 

"As God help you, what do you here?"

"What is that to you?" said the other. 

"Nothing!" said Aucassins; "I ask only from good-will. "

"But why are you crying!" said the other, "and mounring so loud?Sure, if I were as great a man as you are, nothing on earth wouldmake me cry. "

"Bah! you know me?" said Aucassins. 

"Yes, I know very well that you are Aucassins, the count's son; andif you will tell me what you are crying for, I will tell you what Iam doing here. "

Aucassins seemed to think this an equal bargain. All damoiseaux werenot as courteous as Aucassins, nor all "varlets" as rude as hispeasants; we shall see how the young gentlemen of Picardy treatedthe peasantry for no offence at all; but Aucassins carried a softer, Southern temper in a happier climate, and, with his invariablegentle courtesy, took no offence at the familiarity with which theploughman treated him. Yet he dared not tell the truth, so heinvented, on the spur of the moment, an excuse;--he has lost, hesaid, a beautiful white hound. The peasant hooted--

"Os!" fait cil; "por le cuer que cil sires eut en sen ventre! quevos plorastes por un cien puant! Mal dehait ait qui ja mais vosprisera quant il n'a si rice home en ceste tere se vos peres lenmandoit x u xv u xx qu'il ne les envoyast trop volontiers et s'enesteroit trop lies. Mais je dois plorer et dol faire?"

"Et tu de quoi frere?"

"Sire je lo vos dirai. J'estoie liues a un rice vilain si cacoie secarue. Iiii bues i avoit. Or a iii jors qu il m'avint une grandemalaventure que je perdi le mellor de mes bues Roget le mellor de mecarue. Si le vois querant. Si ne mengai ne ne bue iii jors a passes. Si n'os aler a le vile c'on me metroit en prison que je ne l'ai dequoi saure. De tot l'avoir du monde n'ai je plus vaillant que vosvees sor le cors de mi. Une lasse mere avoie, si n'avoit plusvaillant que une keutisele, si h a on sacie de desous le dos si gista pur l'estrain, si m'en poise asses plus que denu. Car avoirs va etviaent; se j'ai or perdu je gaaignerai une autre fois si sorrai monbuef quant je porrai, ne ja por cien n'en plorerai. Et vos plorastespor un cien de longaigne! Mal dehait ait qui mais vos prisera!"

"Certes tu es de bon confort, biax frere! que benois sois tu! Et quevaloit tes bues!"

"Sire xx sous m'en demande on, je n'en puis mie abatre une seulemaille. "

"Or, tien" fait Aucassins, "xx que j'ai ci en me borse, si sol tenbuef!"

"Listen!" said he, "By the heart God had in his body, that youshould cry for a stinking dog! Bad luck to him who ever prizes you!When there is no man in this land so great, if your father sent tohim for ten or fifteen or twenty but would fetch them very gladly, and be only too pleased. But I ought to cry and mourn. "

"And--why you, brother?"

"Sir, I will tell you. I was hired out to a rich farmer to drive hisplough. There were four oxen. Now three days ago I had a greatmisfortune, for I lost the best of my oxen, Roget, the best of myteam. I am looking to find him. I've not eaten or drunk these threedays past. I dare n't go to the town, for they would put me inprison as I've nothing to pay with. In all the world I've not theworth of anything but what you see on my body I've a poor old motherwho owned nothing but a feather mattress, and they've dragged itfrom under her back so she lies on the bare straw, and she troublesme more than myself. For riches come and go if I lose to day, I gainto-morrow; I will pay for my ox when I can, and will not cry forthat. And you cry for a filthy dog! Bad luck to him who ever thinkswell of you!"

"Truly, you counsel well, good brother! God bless you! And what wasyour ox worth?"

"Sir, they ask me twenty sous for it. I cannot beat them down asingle centime. "

"Here are twenty, " said Aucassins, "that I have in my purse! Pay foryour ox!"

"Sire!" fait il, "grans mercies! et dix vos laist trover ce que voxqueres!"

"Sir!" said he; "many thanks! and Go! grant you find what you seek!"

The little episode was thrown in without rhyme or reason to therapid emotion of the love-story, as though the jongleur were showinghis own cleverness and humour, at the expense of his hero, asjongleurs had a way of doing; but he took no such liberties with hisheroine. While Aucassins tore through the thickets on horseback, crying aloud, Nicolette had built herself a little hut in the depthsof the forest:--

Ele prist des flors de lis Et de l'erbe du garris Et de le foille autresi; Une belle loge en fist, Ainques tant gente ne vi. Jure diu qui ne menti Se par la vient Aucassins Et il por l'amor de li Ne si repose un petit Ja ne sera ses amis N'ele s'a-mie. 

So she twined the lilies' flower, Roofed with leafy branches o'er, Made of it a lovely bower, With the freshest grass for floor Such as never mortal saw. By God's Verity, she swore, Should Aucassins pass her door, And not stop for love of her, To repose a moment there, He should be her love no more, Nor she his dear!

So night came on, and Nicolette went to sleep, a little distanceaway from her hut. Aucassins at last came by, and dismounted, spraining his shoulder in doing it. Then he crept into the littlehut, and lying on his back, looked up through the leaves to themoon, and sang:--

Estoilete, je te voi, Que la lune trait a soi. Nicolete est aveuc toi, M'amiete o le blond poil. Je quid que dix le veut avoir Por la lumiere de soir Que par li plus clere soit. Vien, amie, je te proie! Ou monter vauroie droit, Que que fust du recaoir. Que fuisse lassus o toi Ja te baiseroi estroit. Se j'estoie fix a roi S'afferies vos bien a moi Suer douce amie!

I can see you, little star, That the moon draws through the air. Nicolette is where you are, My own love with the blonde hair. I think God must want her near To shine down upon us here That the evening be more clear. Come down, dearest, to my prayer, Or I climb up where you are! Though I fell, I would not care. If I once were with you there I would kiss you closely, dear! If a monarch's son I were You should all my kingdom share, Sweet friend, sister!

How Nicolette heard him sing, and came to him and rubbed hisshoulder and dressed his wounds as though he were a child; and howin the morning they rode away together, like Tennyson's "SleepingBeauty, "--

 O'er the hills and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, beyond the day, singing as they rode, the story goes on to tell or to sing in verse--

Aucassins, li biax, li blons, Li gentix, It amorous, Est issous del gaut parfont, Entre ses bras ses amors Devant lui sor son arcon. Les ex li baise et le front, Et le bouce et le menton. Elle l'a mis a raison. "Aucassins, biax amis dox, "En quel tere en irons nous?" "Douce amie, que sai jou? "Moi ne caut u nous aillons, "En forest u en destor "Mais que je soie aveuc vous. " Passent les vaus et les mons, Et les viles et les bors A la mer vinrent au jor, Si descendent u sablon Les le rivage. 

Aucassins, the brave, the fair, Courteous knight and gentle lover, From the forest dense came forth; In his arms his love he bore On his saddle-bow before; Her eyes he kisses and her mouth, And her forehead and her chin. She brings him back to earth again: "Aucassins, my love, my own, "To what country shall we turn?" "Dearest angel, what say you? "I care nothing where we go, "In the forest or outside, "While you on my saddle ride. " So they pass by hill and dale, And the city, and the town, Till they reach the morning pale, And on sea-sands set them down, Hard by the shore. 

There we will leave them, for their further adventures have not muchto do with our matter. Like all the romans, or nearly all, "Aucassins" is singularly pure and refined. Apparently the ladies ofcourteous love frowned on coarseness and allowed no licence. Theirpower must have been great, for the best romans are as free fromgrossness as the "Chanson de Roland" itself, or the church glass, orthe illuminations in the manuscripts; and as long as the power ofthe Church ruled good society, this decency continued. As far aswomen were concerned, they seem always to have been more clean thanthe men, except when men painted them in colours which men likedbest. 

Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century thanin the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, andas the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional atthe Renaissance. The rule held good for the bourgeoisie as well asamong the dames cortoises. Christian and Thibaut, "Aucassins" andthe "Roman de la Rose, " may have expressed only the tastes of high-born ladies, but other poems were avowedly bourgeois, and among thebourgeois poets none was better than Adam de la Halle. Adam wrotealso for the court, or at least for Robert of Artois, Saint Louis'snephew, whom he followed to Naples in 1284, but his poetry was aslittle aristocratic as poetry could well be, and most of it wascynically--almost defiantly--middle-class, as though the weavers ofArras were his only audience, and recognized him and the objects ofhis satire in every verse. The bitter personalities do not concernus, but, at Naples, to amuse Robert of Artois and his court, Adamcomposed the first of French comic operas, which had an immensesuccess, and, as a pastoral poem, has it still. The Idyll of Arraswas a singular contrast to the Idyll of Beaucaire, but the socialvalue was the same in both; Robin and Marion were a pendant toAucassins and Nicolette; Robin was almost a burlesque on Aucassins, while Marion was a Northern, energetic, intelligent, pastoralNicolette. 

"Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion" had little or no plot. Adam strungtogether, on a thread of dialogue and by a group of suitablefigures, a number of the favourite songs of his time, followed bythe favourite games, and ending with a favourite dance, the"tresca. " The songs, the games, and the dances do not concern us, but the dialogue runs along prettily, with an air of Flemishrealism, like a picture of Teniers, as unlike that of "courtoisie"as Teniers was to Guido Reni. Underneath it all a tone of satiremade itself felt, good-natured enough, but directed wholly againstthe men. 

The scene opens on Marion tending her sheep, and singing the prettyair: "Robin m'aime, Robin ma'a, " after which enters a chevalier oresquire, on horseback, and sings: "Je me repairoie du tournoiement. "Then follows a dialogue between the chevalier and Marion, with noother object than to show off the charm of Marion against themasculine defects of the knight. Being, like most squires, somewhatslow of ideas in conversation with young women, the gentleman beganby asking for sport for his falcon. Has she seen any duck down bythe river?

 Mais veis tu par chi devant Vers ceste riviere nul ane?

"Ane, " it seems, was the usual word for wild duck, the falcon'sprey, and Marion knew it as well as he, but she chose tomisunderstand him:--

C'est une bete qui recane; J'en vis ier iii sur che quemin, Tous quarchies aler au moulin. Est che chou que vous demandes?

"It is a beast that brays; I saw three yesterday on the road, allwith loads going to the mill. Is that what you ask?" That is notwhat the squire has asked, and he is conscious that Marion knows it, but he tries again. If she has not seen a duck, perhaps she has seena heron:--

 Hairons, sire? par me foi, non! Je n'en vi nesun puis quareme Que j'en vi mengier chies dame Eme Me taiien qui sorit ches brebis. 

"Heron, sir! by my faith, no! I've not seen one since Lent when Isaw some eaten at my grandmother's--Dame Emma who owns these sheep. ""Hairons, " it seems, meant also herring, and this wilfulmisunderstanding struck the chevalier as carrying jest too far:--

 Par foi! or suis j'ou esbaubis! N'ainc mais je ne fui si gabes!

"On my word, I am silenced! never in my life was I so chaffed!"Marion herself seems to think her joke a little too evident, for shetakes up the conversation in her turn, only to conclude that shelikes Robin better than she does the knight; he is gayer, and whenhe plays his musette he starts the whole village dancing. At this, the squire makes a declaration of love with such energy as to spurhis horse almost over her:--

 Aimi, sirel ostez vo cheval! A poi que il ne m'a blechie. Li Robin ne regiete mie Quand je voie apres se karue. 

"Aimi!" is an exclamation of alarm, real or affected: "Dear me, sir!take your horse away! he almost hurt me! Robin's horse never rearswhen I go behind his plough!" Still the knight persists, and thoughMarion still tells him to go away, she asks his name, which he saysis Aubert, and so gives her the catchword for another song:--"Vosperdes vo paine, sire Aubert!"--which ends the scene with a duo. Thesecond scene begins with a duo of Marion and Robin, followed by hergiving a softened account of the chevalier's behaviour, and thenthey lunch on bread and cheese and apples, and more songs follow, till she sends him to get Baldwin and Walter and Peronette and thepipers, for a dance. In his absence the chevalier returns andbecomes very pressing in his attentions, which gives her occasion tosing:-

 J'oi Robin flagoler Au flagol d'argent. 

When Robin enters, the knight picks a quarrel with him for nothandling properly the falcon which he has caught in the hedge; andRobin gets a severe beating. The scene ends by the horseman carryingoff Marion by force; but he soon gets tired of carrying her againsther will, and drops her, and disappears once for all. 

 Certes voirement sui je beste Quant a ceste beste m'areste. Adieu, bergiere!

Bete the knight certainly was, and was meant to be, in order to givethe necessary colour to Marion's charms. Chevaliers were seldomintellectually brilliant in the mediaeval romans, and even the"Chansons de Geste" liked better to talk of their prowess than oftheir wit; but Adam de la Halle, who felt no great love forchevaliers, was not satisfied with ridiculing them in order to exaltMarion; his second act was devoted to exalting Marion at the expenseof her own boors. 

The first act was given up to song; the second, to games and dances. The games prove not to be wholly a success; Marion is bored by them, and wants to dance. The dialogue shows Marion trying constantly tocontrol her clowns and make them decent, as Blanche of Castile hadbeen all her life trying to control her princes, and Mary ofChartres her kings. Robin is a rustic counterpart to Thibaut. He istamed by his love of Marion, but he has just enough intelligence tothink well of himself, and to get himself into trouble withoutknowing how to get out of it. Marion loves him much as she would herchild; she makes only a little fun of him; defends him from theothers; laughs at his jealousy; scolds him on occasion; flatters hisdancing; sends him on errands, to bring the pipers or drive away thewolf; and what is most to our purpose, uses him to make the otherpeasants decent. Walter and Baldwin and Hugh are coarse, and theiridea of wit is to shock the women or make Robin jealous. Love makesgentlemen even of boors, whether noble or villain, is the constantmoral of mediaeval story, and love turns Robin into a champion ofdecency. When, at last, Walter, playing the jongleur, begins torepeat a particularly coarse fabliau, or story in verse, Robin stopshim short--

Ho, Gautier, je n'en voeil plus! fi! Dites, seres vous tous jours teus! Vous estes un ors menestreus!

"Ho, Walter! I want no more of that: Shame! Say! are you going to bealways like that? You're a dirty beggar!" A fight seems inevitable, but Marion turns it into a dance, and the whole party, led by thepipers, with Robin and Marion at the head of the band, leave thestage in the dance which is said to be still known in Italy as the"tresca. " Marion is in her way as charming as Nicolette, but we areless interested in her charm than in her power. Always the womanappears as the practical guide; the one who keeps her head, even inlove:--

 Elle l'a mis a raison: "Aucassins, biax amis dox, En quele tere en irons nous?" "Douce amie, que sai jou? Moi ne caut ou nous aillons. "

The man never cared; he was always getting himself into crusades, orfeuds, or love, or debt, and depended on the woman to get him out. The story was always of Charles VII and Jeanne d'Arc, or AgnesSorel. The woman might be the good or the evil spirit, but she wasalways the stronger force. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries werea period when men were at their strongest; never before or sincehave they shown equal energy in such varied directions, or suchintelligence in the direction of their energy; yet these marvels ofhistory, --these Plantagenets; these scholastic philosophers; thesearchitects of Rheims and Amiens; these Innocents, and Robin Hoodsand Marco Polos; these crusaders, who planted their enormousfortresses all over the Levant; these monks who made the wastes andbarrens yield harvests;--all, without apparent exception, bowed downbefore the woman. 

Explain it who will! We are not particularly interested in theexplanation; it is the art we have chased through this Frenchforest, like Aucassins hunting for Nicolette; and the art leadsalways to the woman. Poetry, like the architecture and thedecoration, harks back to the same standard of taste. The specimensof Christian of Troyes, Thibaut, Tristan, Aucassins, and Adam de laHalle were mild admissions of feminine superiority compared withsome that were more in vogue, If Thibaut painted his love-verses onthe walls of his castle, he put there only what a more famous poet, who may have been his friend, set on the walls of his Chateau ofCourteous Love, which, not being made with hands or with stone, butmerely with verse, has not wholly perished. The "Roman de la Rose"is the end of true mediaeval poetry and goes with the Sainte-Chapelle in architecture, and three hundred years of more or lessgraceful imitation or variation on the same themes which followed. Our age calls it false taste, and no doubt our age is right;--everyage is right by its own standards as long as its standards amuseit;--but after all, the "Roman de la Rose" charmed Chaucer, --it maywell charm you. The charm may not be that of Mont-Saint-Michel or ofRoland; it has not the grand manner of the eleventh century, or thejewelled brilliancy of the Chartres lancets, or the splendid self-assertion of the roses: but even to this day it gives out a faintodour of Champagne and Touraine, of Provence and Cyprus. One hearsThibaut and sees Queen Blanche. 

Of course, this odour of true sanctity belongs only to the "Roman"of William of Lorris, which dates from the death of Queen Blancheand of all good things, about 1250; a short allegory of courteouslove in forty-six hundred and seventy lines. To modern taste, anallegory of forty-six hundred and seventy lines seems to be not soshort as it might be; but the fourteenth century found five thousandverses totally inadequate to the subject, and, about 1300, Jean deMeung added eighteen thousand lines, the favourite reading ofsociety for one or two hundred years, but beyond our horizon. The"Roman" of William of Lorris was complete in itself; it had shape;beginning, middle, and end; even a certain realism, action, --almostlife!

The Rose is any feminine ideal of beauty, intelligence, purity, orgrace, --always culminating in the Virgin, --but the scene is theCourt of Love, and the action is avowedly in a dream, without timeor place. The poet's tone is very pure; a little subdued; at timessad; and the poem ends sadly; but all the figures that werepositively hideous were shut out of the court, and painted on theoutside walls:--Hatred; Felony; Covetousness; Envy; Poverty;Melancholy, and Old Age. Death did not appear. The passion forrepresenting death in its horrors did not belong to the sunnyatmosphere of the thirteenth century, and indeed jarred on Frenchtaste always, though the Church came to insist on it; but Old Agegave the poet a motive more artistic, foreshadowing Death, and quitesad enough to supply the necessary contrast. The poet who approachedthe walls of the chateau and saw, outside, all the unpleasant factsof life conspicuously posted up, as though to shut them out ofdoors, hastened to ask for entrance, and, when once admitted, founda court of ideals. Their names matter little. In the mind of Williamof Lorris, every one would people his ideal world with whateverideal figures pleased him, and the only personal value of William'sfigures is that they represent what he thought the thirteenth-century ideals of a perfect society. Here is Courtesy, with atranslation long thought to be by Chaucer:-

Apres se tenoit Cortoisie Qui moult estoit de tous prisie. Si n'ere orgueilleuse ne fole. C'est cele qui a la karole, La soe merci, m'apela, Ains que nule, quand je vins la. Et ne fut ne nice n'umbrage, Mais sages auques, sans outrage, De biaus respons et de biaus dis, Onc nus ne fu par li laidis, Ne ne porta nului rancune, Et fu clere comme la lune Est avers les autres estoiles Qui ne resemblent que chandoiles. Faitisse estoit et avenant; Je ne sai fame plus plaisant. Ele ert en toutes cors bien digne D'estre empereris ou roine. 

And next that daunced Courtesye, That preised was of lowe and hye, For neither proude ne foole was she; She for to daunce called me, I pray God yeve hir right good grace, When I come first into the place. She was not nyce ne outrageous, But wys and ware and vertuous; Of faire speche and of faire answere; Was never wight mysseid of her, Ne she bar rancour to no wight. Clere browne she was, and thereto bright

Of face, of body avenaunt. I wot no lady so pleasaunt. She were worthy forto bene An empresse or crowned quene. 

You can read for yourselves the characters, and can follow thesimple action which owes its slight interest only to the constanteffort of the dreamer to attain his ideal, --the Rose, --and owes itscharm chiefly to the constant disappointment and final defeat. Anundertone of sadness runs through it, felt already in the picture ofTime which foreshadows the end of Love--the Rose--and her court, andwith it the end of hope:--

Li tens qui s'en va nuit et jor, Sans repos prendre et sans sejor, Et qui de nous se part et emble Si celeement qu'il nous semble Qu'il s'arreste ades en un point, Et il ne s'i arreste point, Ains ne fine de trespasser, Que nus ne puet neis penser Quex tens ce est qui est presens; S'el demandes as clers lisans, Aincois que l'en l'eust pense Seroit il ja trois tens passe; Li tens qui ne puet sejourner, Ains vait tous jors sans retorner, Com l'iaue qui s'avale toute, N'il n'en retourne arriere goute; Li tens vers qui noient ne dure, Ne fer ne chose tant soit dure, Car il gaste tout et menjue; Li tens qui tote chose mue, Qui tout fait croistre et tout norist, Et qui tout use et tout porrist. 

The tyme that passeth nyght and daye. And restelesse travayleth aye, And steleth from us so prively, That to us semeth so sykerly That it in one poynt dwelleth never, But gothe so fast, and passeth aye

That there nys man that thynke may What tyme that now present is; Asketh at these clerkes this, For or men thynke it readily Thre tymes ben ypassed by. The tyme that may not sojourne But goth, and may never returne, As water that down renneth ay, But never drope retourne may. There may no thing as time endure, Metall nor earthly creature: For alle thing it frette and shall. The tyme eke that chaungith all, And all doth waxe and fostered be, And alle thing distroieth he. 

The note of sadness has begun, which the poets were to find so muchmore to their taste than the note of gladness. From the "Roman de laRose" to the "Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis" was a short step forthe Middle-Age giant Time, --a poor two hundred years. Then Villonwoke up to ask what had become of the Roses:--Ou est la tres sageHelois Pour qui fut chastie puis moyne, Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis? Pour son amour ot cest essoyne. 

Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine Qu' Englois brulerent a Rouan; Ou sont elles, Vierge Souvraine? Mais ou sont les neiges dantan?

Where is the virtuous Heloise, For whom suffered, then turned monk, Pierre Abelard at Saint-Denis? For his love he bore that pain. 

And Jeanne d'Arc, the good Lorraine, Whom the English burned at Rouen! Where are they, Virgin Queen? But where are the snows of spring?

Between the death of William of Lorris and the advent of John ofMeung, a short half-century (1250-1300), the Woman and the Rosebecame bankrupt. Satire took the place of worship. Man, with hisusual monkey-like malice, took pleasure in pulling down what he hadbuilt up. The Frenchman had made what he called "fausse route. "William of Lorris was first to see it, and say it, with more sadnessand less bitterness than Villon showed; he won immortality bytelling how he, and the thirteenth century in him, had lost himselfin pursuing his Rose, and how he had lost the Rose, too, waking upat last to the dull memory of pain and sorrow and death, that "toutporrist. " The world had still a long march to make from the Rose ofQueen Blanche to the guillotine of Madame du Barry; but the "Romande la Rose" made epoch. For the first time since Constantineproclaimed the reign of Christ, a thousand years, or so, beforePhilip the Fair dethroned Him, the deepest expression of socialfeeling ended with the word: Despair. 

CHAPTER XIII

LES MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME

Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio, Umile ed alta piu che creatura, Termine fisso d'eterno consiglio, Tu sei colei che l'umana natura Nobilitasti si, che il suo fattore Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura. . . . La tua benignita non pur soccorre A chi dimanda, ma molte fiate Liberamente al dimandar precorre. In te misericordia, in te pietate, In te magnificenza, in te s'aduna Quantunque in creatura e di bontate. 

Vergine bella, che di sol vestita, Coronata di stelle, al sommo sole Piacesti si che'n te sua luce ascose; Amor mi spinge a dir di te parole; Ma non so 'ncominciar senza tu aita, E di colui ch'amando in te si pose. Invoco lei che ben sempre rispose Chi la chiamo con fede. Vergine, s'a mercede Miseria estrema dell' umane cose Giammai ti volse, al mio prego t'inchina! Soccorri alia mia guerra, Bench'i sia terra, e tu del del regina!

Dante composed one of these prayers; Petrarch the other. Chaucertranslated Dante's prayer in the "Second Nonnes Tale. " He who willmay undertake to translate either;--not I! The Virgin, in whom isunited whatever goodness is in created being, might possibly, in herinfinite grace, forgive the sacrilege; but her power has limits, ifnot her grace; and the whole Trinity, with the Virgin to aid, hadnot the power to pardon him who should translate Dante and Petrarch. The prayers come in here, not merely for their beauty, --although theVirgin knows how beautiful they are, whether man knows it or not;but chiefly to show the good faith, the depth of feeling, theintensity of conviction, with which society adored its ideal ofhuman perfection. 

The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of thetime that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony toher direct action and constant presence in every moment and form ofthe illusion which men thought they thought their existence. Thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries believed in the supernatural, andmight almost be said to have contracted a miracle-habit, as morbidas any other form of artificial stimulant; they stood, likechildren, in an attitude of gaping wonder before the miracle ofmiracles which they felt in their own consciousness; but one can seein this emotion, which is, after all, not exclusively infantile, nospecial reason why they should have so passionately flung themselvesat the feet of the Woman rather than of the Man. Dante wrote in1300, after the height of this emotion had passed; and Petrarchwrote half a century later still; but so slowly did the vision fade, and so often did it revive, that, to this day, it remains thestrongest symbol with which the Church can conjure. 

Men were, after all, not wholly inconsequent; their attachment toMary rested on an instinct of self-preservation. They knew their ownperil. If there was to be a future life, Mary was their only hope. She alone represented Love. The Trinity were, or was, One, andcould, by the nature of its essence, administer justice alone. Onlychildlike illusion could expect a personal favour from Christ. Turnthe dogma as one would, to this it must logically come. Call thethree Godheads by what names one liked, still they must remain One;must administer one justice; must admit only one law. In that law, no human weakness or error could exist; by its essence it wasinfinite, eternal, immutable. There was no crack and no cranny inthe system, through which human frailty could hope for escape. Onewas forced from corner to corner by a remorseless logic until onefell helpless at Mary's feet. 

Without Mary, man had no hope except in atheism, and for atheism theworld was not ready. Hemmed back on that side, men rushed like sheepto escape the butcher, and were driven to Mary; only too happy infinding protection and hope in a being who could understand thelanguage they talked, and the excuses they had to offer. Howpassionately they worshipped Mary, the Cathedral of Chartres shows;and how this worship elevated the whole sex, all the literature andhistory of the time proclaim. If you need more proof, you can readmore Petrarch; but still one cannot realize how actual Mary was, tothe men and women of the Middle Ages, and how she was present, as amatter of course, whether by way of miracle or as a habit of life, throughout their daily existence. The surest measure of her realityis the enormous money value they put on her assistance, and the artthat was lavished on her gratification, but an almost equallycertain sign is the casual allusion, the chance reference to her, which assumes her presence. 

The earliest prose writer in the French language, who gave a pictureof actual French life, was Joinville; and although he wrote afterthe death of Saint Louis and of William of Lorris and Adam de laHalle, in the full decadence of Philip the Fair, toward 1300, he hadbeen a vassal of Thibaut and an intimate friend of Louis, and hismemories went back to the France of Blanche's regency. Born in 1224, he must have seen in his youth the struggles of Thibaut against theenemies of Blanche, and in fact his memoirs contain Blanche'semphatic letter forbidding Thibaut to marry Yolande of Brittany. Heknew Pierre de Dreux well, and when they were captured by theSaracens at Damietta, and thrown into the hold of a galley, "I hadmy feet right on the face of the Count Pierre de Bretagne, whosefeet, in turn, were by my face. " Joinville is almost twelfth-centuryin feeling. He was neither feminine nor sceptical, but simple. Heshowed no concern for poetry, but he put up a glass window to theVirgin. His religion belonged to the "Chanson de Roland. " When SaintLouis, who had a pleasant sense of humour put to him his favouritereligious conundrums, Joinville affected not the least hypocrisy. "Would you rather be a leper or commit a mortal sin?" asked theKing. "I would rather commit thirty mortal sins than be a leper, "answered Joinville. "Do you wash the feet of the poor on HolyThursday?" asked the King. "God forbid!" replied Joinville; "neverwill I wash the feet of such creatures!" Saint Louis mildlycorrected his, or rather Thibaut's, seneschal, for these impieties, but he was no doubt used to them, for the soldier was never achurchman. If one asks Joinville what he thinks of the Virgin, heanswers with the same frankness:--

Ung jour moi estant devant le roi lui demanday congie d'aller enpelerinage a nostre Dame de Tourtouze [Tortosa in Syria] qui estoitung veage tres fort requis. Et y avoit grant quantite de pelerinspar chacun jour pour ce que c'est le premier autel qui onques fustfait en l'onneur de la Mere de Dieu ainsi qu'on disoit lors. Et yfaisoit nostre Dame de grans miracles a merveilles. Entre lesquelzelle en fist ung d'un pouvre homme qui estoit hors de son sens etdemoniacle. Car il avoit le maling esperit dedans le corps. Etadvint par ung jour qu'il fut amene a icelui autel de nostre Dame deTourtouze. Et ainsi que ses amys qui l'avoient la amene prioient anostre Dame qu'elle lui voulsist recouvrer sante et guerison lediable que la pouvre creature avoit ou corps respondit: "Nostre Damen'est pas ici; elle est en Egipte pour aider au Roi de France et auxChrestiens qui aujourdhui arrivent en la Terre sainte centre toutepaiennie qui sont a cheval. " Et fut mis en escript le jour que ledeable profera ces motz et fut apporte au legat qui estoit avecquesle roi de France; lequel me dist depuis que a celui jour nous estionarrivez en la terre d'Egipte. Et suis bien certain que la bonne DameMarie nous y eut bien besoin. 

This happened in Syria, after the total failure of the crusade inEgypt. The ordinary man, even if he were a priest or a soldier, needed a miraculous faith to persuade him that Our Lady or any otherdivine power, had helped the crusades of Saint Louis. Few of theusual fictions on which society rested had ever required suchdefiance of facts; but, at least for a time, society held firm. Thethirteenth century could not afford to admit a doubt. Society hadstaked its existence, in this world and the next, on the reality andpower of the Virgin; it had invested in her care nearly its wholecapital, spiritual, artistic, intellectual, and economical, even tothe bulk of its real and personal estate; and her overthrow wouldhave been the most appalling disaster the Western world had everknown. Without her, the Trinity itself could not stand; the Churchmust fall; the future world must dissolve. Not even the collapse ofthe Roman Empire compared with a calamity so serious; for that hadcreated, not destroyed, a faith. 

If sceptics there were, they kept silence. Men disputed and doubtedabout the Trinity, but about the Virgin the satirists Rutebeuf andAdam de la Halle wrote in the same spirit as Saint Bernard andAbelard, Adam de Saint-Victor and the pious monk Gaultier de Coincy. In the midst of violent disputes on other points of doctrine, thedisputants united in devotion to Mary; and it was the singleredeeming quality about them. The monarchs believed almost moreimplicitly than their subjects, and maintained the belief to thelast. Doubtless the death of Queen Blanche marked the flood-tide atits height; but an authority so established as that of the Virgin, founded on instincts so deep, logic so rigorous, and, above all, onwealth so vast, declined slowly. Saint Louis died in 1270. Twohundred long and dismal years followed, in the midst of wars, decline of faith, dissolution of the old ties and interests, until, toward 1470, Louis XI succeeded in restoring some semblance ofsolidity to the State; and Louis XI divided his time and his moneyimpartially between the Virgin of Chartres and the Virgin of Paris. In that respect, one can see no difference between him and SaintLouis, nor much between Philippe de Commines and Joinville. AfterLouis XI, another fantastic century passed, filled with the foulesthorrors of history--religious wars; assassinations; SaintBartholomews; sieges of Chartres; Huguenot leagues and sweepingdestruction of religious monuments; Catholic leagues and fanaticalreprisals on friends and foes, --the actual dissolution of society ina mass of horrors compared with which even the Albigensian crusadewas a local accident, all ending in the reign of the last Valois, Henry III, the weirdest, most fascinating, most repulsive, mostpathetic and most pitiable of the whole picturesque series of Frenchkings. If you look into the Journal of Pierre de l'Estoile, underdate of January 26, 1582, you can read the entry:--

The King and the Queen [Louise de Lorraine], separately, and eachaccompanied by a good troop [of companions] went on foot from Paristo Chartres on a pilgrimage [voyage] to Notre-Dame-de-dessous-Terre[Our Lady of the Crypt], where a neuvaine was celebrated at the lastmass at which the King and Queen assisted, and offered a silver-giltstatue of Notre Dame which weighed a hundred marks [eight hundredounces], with the object of having lineage which might succeed tothe throne. 

In the dead of winter, in robes of penitents, over the roughestroads, on foot, the King and Queen, then seven years married, walkedfifty miles to Chartres to supplicate the Virgin for children, andback again; and this they did year after year until Jacques Clementput an end to it with his dagger, in 1589, although the Virgin neverchose to perform that miracle; but, instead, allowed the House ofValois to die out and sat on her throne in patience while the Houseof Bourbon was anointed in their place. The only French King evercrowned in the presence of Our Lady of Chartres was Henry IV--aheretic. 

The year 1589, which was so decisive for Henry IV in France, markedin England the rise of Shakespeare as a sort of stage-monarch. Whilein France the Virgin still held such power that kings and queensasked her for favours, almost as instinctively as they had done fivehundred years before, in England Shakespeare set all human natureand all human history on the stage, with hardly an allusion to theVirgin's name, unless as an oath. The exceptions are worth noting asa matter of curious Shakespearean criticism, for they are but two, and both are lines in the "First Part of Henry VI, " spoken by theMaid of Orleans:--

Christ's mother helps me, else I were too weak!

Whether the "First Part of Henry VI" was written by Shakespeare atall has been a doubt much discussed, and too deep for tourists; butthat this line was written by a Roman Catholic is the more likelybecause no such religious thought recurs in all the rest ofShakespeare's works, dramatic or lyric, unless it is implied inGaunt's allusion to "the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son. " Thus, while three hundred years caused in England the disappearance of thegreat divinity on whom the twelfth and thirteenth centuries hadlavished all their hopes, and during these three centuries everyearthly throne had been repeatedly shaken or shattered, the Churchhad been broken in halves, faith had been lost, and philosophiesoverthrown, the Virgin still remained and remains the most intenselyand the most widely and the most personally felt, of all characters, divine or human or imaginary, that ever existed among men. Nothinghas even remotely taken her place. The only possible exception isthe Buddha, Sakya Muni; but to the Western mind, a figure like theBuddha stood much farther away than the Virgin. That of the Christeven to Saint Bernard stood not so near as that of his mother. Abelard expressed the fact in its logical necessity even morestrongly than Saint Bernard did:--

Te requirunt vota fidelium, Ad te corda suspirant omnium, Tu spes nostra post Deum unica, Advocata nobis es posita. Ad judicis matrem confugiunt, Qui judicis iram effugiunt, Quae praecari pro eis cogitur, Quae pro reis mater efficitur. 

"After the Trinity, you are our ONLY hope"; spes nostra unica; "youare placed there as our advocate; all of us who fear the wrath ofthe Judge, fly to the Judge's mother, who is logically compelled tosue for us, and stands in the place of a mother to the guilty. "Abelard's logic was always ruthless, and the "cogitur" is a strongerword than one would like to use now, with a priest in hearing. Weneed not insist on it; but what one must insist on, is the goodfaith of the whole people, --kings, queens, princes of all sorts, philosophers, poets, soldiers, artists, as well as of the commonerslike ourselves, and the poor, --for the good faith of the priests isnot important to the understanding, since any class which issufficiently interested in believing will always believe. In orderto feel Gothic architecture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one must feel first and last, around and above and beneath it, thegood faith of the public, excepting only Jews and atheists, permeating every portion of it with the conviction of an immediatealternative between heaven and hell, with Mary as the ONLY court inequity capable of overruling strict law. 

The Virgin was a real person, whose tastes, wishes, instincts, passions, were intimately known. Enough of the Virgin's literaturesurvives to show her character, and the course of her daily life. Weknow more about her habits and thoughts than about those of earthlyqueens. The "Miracles de la Vierge" make a large part, and not thepoorest part, of the enormous literature of these two centuries, although the works of Albertus Magnus fill twenty-one folio volumesand those of Thomas Aquinas fill more, while the "Chansons de Geste"and the "Romans, " published or unpublished, are a special branch ofliterature with libraries to themselves. The collection of theVirgin's miracles put in verse by Gaultier de Coincy, monk, prior, and poet, between 1214 and 1233--the precise moment of the Chartressculpture and glass--contains thirty thousand lines. Another greatcollection, narrating especially the miracles of the Virgin ofChartres, was made by a priest of Chartres Cathedral about 1240. Separate series, or single tales, have appeared and are appearingconstantly, but no general collection has ever been made, althoughthe whole poetic literature of the Virgin could be printed in thespace of two or three volumes of scholastic philosophy, and if theChurch had cared half as truly for the Virgin as it has for ThomasAquinas, every miracle might have been collected and published ascore of times. The miracles themselves, indeed, are not verynumerous. In Gaultier de Coincy's collection they number only aboutfifty. The Chartres collection relates chiefly to the horribleoutbreak of what was called leprosy--the "mal ardent, "--whichravaged the north of France during the crusades, and added intensityto the feelings which brought all society to the Virgin's feet. Recent scholars are cataloguing and classifying the miracles, as faras they survive, and have reduced the number within very moderatelimits. As poetry, Gaultier de Coincy's are the best. 

Of Gaultier de Coincy and his poetry, Gaston Paris has something tosay which is worth quoting:--

It is the most curious, and often the most singular monument of theinfantile piety of the Middle Ages. Devotion to Mary is presented init as a kind of infallible guarantee not only against every sort ofevil, but also against the most legitimate consequences of sin andeven of crime. In these stories which have revolted the mostrational piety, as well as the philosophy of modern times, one muststill admit a gentle and penetrating charm; a naivete; a tendernessand a simplicity of heart, which touch, while they raise a smile. There, for instance, one sees a sick monk cured by the milk that OurLady herself comes to invite him to draw from her "douce mamelle"; arobber who is in the habit of recommending himself to the Virginwhenever he is going to "embler, " is held up by her white hands forthree days on the gibbet where he is hung, until the miracle becomesevident, and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows onlyhis Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead revealshis sanctity by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour ofthe five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted herconvent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and findsthat the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceasedto offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled herplace as sacristine, so that no one has perceived her absence. 

Gaston Paris inclined to apologize to his "bons bourgeois de Paris"for reintroducing to them a character so doubtful as the VirginMary, but, for our studies, the professor's elementary morality iseloquent. Clearly, M. Paris, the highest academic authority in theworld, thought that the Virgin could hardly, in his time, say theyear 1900, be received into good society in the Latin Quarter. Ourown English ancestors, known as Puritans, held the same opinion, andexcluded her from their society some four hundred years earlier, forthe same reasons which affected M. Gaston Paris. These reasons werejust, and showed the respectability of the citizens who held them. In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said ofmost other saints as well as sinners. Her conduct was at timesundignified, as M. Paris complained, She condescended to do domesticservice, in order to help her friends, and she would use her needle, if she were in the mood, for the same object. The "Golden Legend"relates that:--

A certain priest, who celebrated every day a mass in honour of theHoly Virgin, was brought up before Saint Thomas of Canterbury whosuspended him from his charge, judging him to be short-witted andirresponsible. Now Saint Thomas had occasion to mend his hair-clothshirt, and while waiting for an opportunity to do so, had hidden itunder his bed; so the Virgin appeared to the priest and said to him:"Go find the archbishop and tell him that she, for love of whom youcelebrated masses, has herself mended his shirt for him which isunder his bed; and tell him that she sends you to him that he maytake off the interdict he has imposed on you. " And Saint Thomasfound that his shirt had in fact been mended. He relieved thepriest, begging him to keep the secret of his wearing a hair-shirt. 

Mary did some exceedingly unconventional things, and among them thedarning Thomas A'Becket's hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber onthe gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to haveshocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas somuch as they shocked M. Gaston Paris and M. Prudhomme. You havestill to visit the cathedral at Le Mans for the sake of its twelfth-century glass, and there, in the lower panel of the beautiful, andvery early, window of Saint Protais, you will see the full-lengthfigure of a man, lying in bed, under a handsome blanket, watching, with staring eyes, the Virgin, in a green tunic, wearing her royalcrown, who is striking him on the head with a heavy hammer and withboth hands. The miracle belongs to local history, and is amusingonly to show how little the Virgin cared for criticism of hermanners or acts. She was above criticism. She made manners. Her actswere laws. No one thought of criticizing, in the style of a normalschool, the will of such a queen; but one might treat her with adegree of familiarity, under great provocation, which would startleeasier critics than the French, Here is an instance:--

A widow had an only child whom she tenderly loved. On hearing thatthis son had been taken by the enemy, chained, and put in prison, she burst into tears, and addressing herself to the Virgin, to whomshe was especially devoted, she asked her with obstinacy for therelease of her son; but when she saw at last that her prayersremained unanswered, she went to the church where there was asculptured image of Mary, and there, before the image, she said:"Holy Virgin, I have begged you to deliver my son, and you have notbeen willing to help an unhappy mother! I've implored your patronagefor my son, and you have refused it! Very good! just as my son hasbeen taken away from me, so I am going to take away yours, and keephim as a hostage!" Saying this, she approached, took the statuechild on the Virgin's breast, carried it home, wrapped it inspotless linen, and locked it up in a box, happy to have such ahostage for her son's return. Now, the following night, the Virginappeared to the young man, opened his prison doors, and said: "Tellyour mother, my child, to return me my Son now that I have returnedhers!" The young man came home to his mother and told her of hismiraculous deliverance; and she, overjoyed, hastened to go with thelittle Jesus to the Virgin, saying to her: "I thank you, heavenlylady, for restoring me my child, and in return I restore yours!"

For the exactness of this story in all its details, Bishop James ofVoragio could not have vouched, nor did it greatly matter. What hecould vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence betweenhis people and the Queen of Heaven. The fact, conspicuous above allother historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was byessence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact ofany ultimate value worth studying, and starts a number of questionsthat history has shown itself clearly afraid to touch. Protestantand Catholic differ little in that respect. No one has ventured toexplain why the Virgin wielded exclusive power over poor and rich, sinners and saints, alike. Why were all the Protestant churches coldfailures without her help? Why could not the Holy Ghost--the spiritof Love and Grace--equally answer their prayers? Why was the Sonpowerless? Why was Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth century--like Lourdes to-day--the expression of what is in substance aseparate religion? Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother soexasperate the Pilgrim Father? Why was the Woman struck out of theChurch and ignored in the State? These questions are not antiquarianor trifling in historical value; they tug at the very heart-stringsof all that makes whatever order is in the cosmos. If a Unityexists, in which and toward which all energies centre, it mustexplain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity--Sex!

Although certain to be contradicted by every pious churchman, aheretic must insist on thinking that the Mater Dolorosa was thelogical Virgin of the Church, and that the Trinity would never haveraised her from the foot of the Cross, had not the Virgin of Majestybeen imposed, by necessity and public unanimity, on a creed whichwas meant to be complete without her. The true feeling of the Churchwas best expressed by the Virgin herself in one of her attestedmiracles: "A clerk, trusting more in the Mother than in the Son, never stopped repeating the angelic salutation for his only prayer. Once as he said again the 'Ave Maria, ' the Lord appeared to him, andsaid to him: 'My Mother thanks you much for all the Salutations thatyou make her; but still you should not forget to salute me also:tamen et me salutare memento. '" The Trinity feared absorption inher, but was compelled to accept, and even to invite her aid, because the Trinity was a court of strict law, and, as in the oldcustomary law, no process of equity could be introduced except bydirect appeal to a higher power. She was imposed unanimously by allclasses, because what man wanted most in the Middle Ages was notmerely law or equity, but also and particularly favour. Strictjustice, either on earth or in heaven, was the last thing thatsociety cared to face. All men were sinners, and had, at least, themerit of feeling that, if they got their deserts, not one wouldescape worse than whipping. The instinct of individuality went downthrough all classes, from the count at the top, to the jugleors andmenestreus at the bottom. The individual rebelled against restraint;society wanted to do what it pleased; all disliked the laws whichChurch and State were trying to fasten on them. They longed for apower above law, --or above the contorted mass of ignorance andabsurdity bearing the name of law; but the power which they longedfor was not human, for humanity they knew to be corrupt andincompetent from the day of Adam's creation to the day of the LastJudgment. They were all criminals; if not, they would have had nouse for the Church and very little for the State; but they had atleast the merit of their faults; they knew what they were, and, likechildren, they yearned for protection, pardon, and love. This waswhat the Trinity, though omnipotent, could not give. Whatever theheretic or mystic might try to persuade himself, God could not beLove. God was Justice, Order, Unity, Perfection; He could not behuman and imperfect, nor could the Son or the Holy Ghost be otherthan the Father. The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and couldlove; she alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under anyconceivable form of religion, this duality must find embodimentsomewhere, and the Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it couldnot be in the Trinity, either separately or together, it must be inthe Mother. If the Trinity was in its essence Unity, the Motheralone could represent whatever was not Unity; whatever wasirregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this was the whole human race. The saints alone were safe, after they were sainted. Every one elsewas criminal, and men differed so little in degree of sin that, inMary's eyes, all were subjects for her pity and help. 

This general rule of favour, apart from law, or the reverse of law, was the mark of Mary's activity in human affairs. Take, for anexample, an entire class of her miracles, applying to the disciplineof the Church! A bishop ejected an ignorant and corrupt priest fromhis living, as all bishops constantly had to do. The priest hadtaken the precaution to make himself Mary's MAN; he had devotedhimself to her service and her worship. Mary instantly interfered, --just as Queen Eleanor or Queen Blanche would have done, --mostunreasonably, and never was a poor bishop more roughly scolded by anorthodox queen! "Moult airieement, " very airily or angrily, she saidto him (Bartsch, 1887, p. 363):--

Ce saches tu certainement Se tu li matinet bien main Ne rapeles mon chapelain A son servise et a s'enor, L'ame de toi a desenor Ains trente jors departira Et es dolors d'infer ira. 

Now know you this for sure and true, Unless to-morrow this you do, --And do it very early too, -- Restore my chaplain to his due, A much worse fate remains for you! Within a month your soul shall go To suffer in the flames below. 

The story-teller--himself a priest and prior--caught the lofty trickof manner which belonged to the great ladies of the court, and wasinherited by them, even in England, down to the time of QueenElizabeth, who treated her bishops also like domestic servants;--"matinet bien main!" To the public, as to us, the justice of therebuke was nothing to the point; but that a friend should exist onearth or in heaven, who dared to browbeat a bishop, caused thekeenest personal delight. The legends are clearer on this point thanon any other. The people loved Mary because she trampled onconventions; not merely because she could do it, but because sheliked to do what shocked every well-regulated authority. Her pityhad no limit. 

One of the Chartres miracles expresses the same motive in languagealmost plainer still. A good-for-nothing clerk, vicious, proud, vain, rude, and altogether worthless, but devoted to the Virgin, died, and with general approval his body was thrown into a ditch(Bartsch, 1887, p. 369):--

Mais cele ou sort tote pities Tote douceurs tote amisties Et qui les siens onques n'oublie SON PECHEOR n'oblia mie. 

"HER sinner!" Mary would not have been a true queen unless she hadprotected her own. The whole morality of the Middle Ages stood inthe obligation of every master to protect his dependent. Theherdsmen of Count Garin of Beaucaire were the superiors of theirdamoiseau Aucassins, while they felt sure of the Count. Mary was thehighest of all the feudal ladies, and was the example for all inloyalty to her own, when she had to humiliate her own Bishop ofChartres for the sake of a worthless brute. "Do you suppose itdoesn't annoy me, " she said, "to see my friend buried in a commonditch? Take him out at once! I command! tell the clergy it is myorder, and that I will never forgive them unless to-morrow morningwithout delay, they bury my friend in the best place in thecemetery!":--

Cuidies vos donc qu'il ne m'enuit Quant vos l'aves si adosse Que mis l'aves en un fosse? Metes Ten fors je le comant! Di le clergie que je li mant! Ne me puet mi repaier Se le matin sans delayer A grant heneur n'est mis amis Ou plus beau leu de l'aitre mis. 

Naturally, her order was instantly obeyed. In the feudal regime, disobedience to an order was treason--or even hesitation to obey--when the order was serious; very much as in a modern army, disobedience is not regarded as conceivable. Mary's wish wasabsolute law, on earth as in heaven. For her, other laws were notmade. Intensely human, but always Queen, she upset, at her pleasure, the decisions of every court and the orders of every authority, human or divine; interfered directly in the ordeal; altered theprocesses of nature; abolished space; annihilated time. Like otherqueens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity. In spite of her own origin, she disliked Jews, and rarely neglecteda chance to maltreat them. She was not in the least a prude. To her, sin was simply humanity, and she seemed often on the point ofdefending her arbitrary acts of mercy, by frankly telling theTrinity that if the Creator meant to punish man, He should not havemade him. The people, who always in their hearts protested againstbearing the responsibility for the Creator's arbitrary creations, delighted to see her upset the law, and reverse the rulings of theTrinity. They idolized her for being strong, physically and in will, so that she feared nothing, and was as helpful to the knight in themelee of battle as to the young mother in child-bed. The onlycharacter in which they seemed slow to recognize Mary was that ofbourgeoise. The bourgeoisie courted her favour at great expense, butshe seemed to be at home on the farm, rather than in the shop. Shehad very rudimentary knowledge, indeed, of the principles ofpolitical economy as we understand them, and her views on thesubject of money-lending or banking were so feminine as to rouse inthat powerful class a vindictive enmity which helped to overthrowher throne. On the other hand, she showed a marked weakness forchivalry, and one of her prettiest and most twelfth-century miraclesis that of the knight who heard mass while Mary took his place inthe lists. It is much too charming to lose (Bartsch, 1895, p. 311):--

Un chevalier courtois et sages, Hardis et de grant vasselages, Nus mieudres en chevalerie, Moult amoit la vierge Marie. Pour son barnage demener Et son franc cors d'armes pener, Aloit a son tournoiement Garnis de son contentement. Au dieu plaisir ainsi avint Que quant le jour du tournoi vint Il se hastoit de chevauchier, Bien vousist estre en champ premier. D'une eglise qui pres estoit Oi les sains que l'on sonnoit Pour la sainte messe chanter. Le chevalier sans arrester S'en est ale droit a l'eglise Pour escouter le dieu servise. L'en chantoit tantost hautement Une messe devotement De la sainte Vierge Marie; Puis a on autre comencie. Le chevalier vien l'escouta, De bon cuer la dame pria, Et quant la messe fut finee La tierce fu recomenciee Tantost en ce meisme lieu. "Sire, pour la sainte char dieu!" Ce li a dit son escuier, "L'heure passe de tournoier, Et vous que demourez ici? Venez vous en, je vous en pri! Volez vous devenir hermite Ou papelart ou ypocrite? Alons en a nostre mestier!"

A knight both courteous and wise And brave and bold in enterprise. No better knight was ever seen, Greatly loved the Virgin Queen. Once, to contest the tourney's prize And keep his strength in exercise, He rode out to the listed field Armed at all points with lance and shield; But it pleased God that when the day Of tourney came, and on his way He pressed his charger's speed apace To reach, before his friends, the place, He saw a church hard by the road And heard the church-bells sounding loud To celebrate the holy mass. Without a thought the church to pass The knight drew rein, and entered there To seek the aid of God in prayer. 

High and dear they chanted then A solemn mass to Mary Queen; Then afresh began again. Lost in his prayers the good knight stayed; With all his heart to Mary prayed; And, when the second one was done, Straightway the third mass was begun, Right there upon the self-same place. "Sire, for mercy of God's grace!" Whispered his squire in his ear; "The hour of tournament is near; Why do you want to linger here? Is it a hermit to become, Or hypocrite, or priest of Rome? Come on, at once! despatch your prayer! Let us be off to our affair!"

The accent of truth still lingers in this remonstrance of thesquire, who must, from all time, have lost his temper on finding hischevalier addicted to "papelardie" when he should have beenfighting; but the priest had the advantage of telling the story andpointing the moral. This advantage the priest neglected rarely, butin this case he used it with such refinement and so much literaryskill that even the squire might have been patient. With theinvariable gentle courtesy of the true knight, the chevalier repliedonly by soft words:--

 "Amis!" ce dist li chevalier, "Cil tournoie moult noblement Qui le servise dieu entent. "

In one of Milton's sonnets is a famous line which is commonlyclassed among the noblest verses of the English language:--

 "They also serve, who only stand and wait. "

Fine as it is, with the simplicity of the grand style, like the"Chanson de Roland" the verse of Milton does not quite destroy thecharm of thirteenth-century diction:--

 "Friend!" said to him the chevalier, "He tourneys very nobly too, Who only hears God's service through!"

No doubt the verses lack the singular power of the eleventh century;it is not worth while to pretend that any verse written in thethirteenth century wholly holds its own against "Roland":--

 "Sire cumpain! faites le vus de gred? Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vos soelt amer!"

The courtesy of Roland has the serious solidity of the Romanesquearch, and that of Lancelot and Aucassins has the grace of alegendary window; but one may love it, all the same; and one mayeven love the knight, --papelard though he were, --as he turned backto the altar and remained in prayer until the last mass was ended. 

Then they mounted and rode on toward the field, and of course youforesee what had happened. In itself the story is bald enough, butit is told with such skill that one never tires of it. As thechevalier and the squire approached the lists, they met the otherknights returning, for the jousts were over; but, to theastonishment of the chevalier, he was greeted by all who passed himwith shouts of applause for his marvellous triumph in the lists, where he had taken all the prizes and all the prisoners:--

Les chevaliers ont encontrez, Qui du tournois sont retournes, Qui du tout en tout est feru. S'en avoit tout le pris eu Le chevalier qui reperoit Des messes qu' oies avoit. Les autres qui s'en reperoient Le saluent et le conjoient Et distrent bien que onques mes Nul chevalier ne prist tel fes D'armes com il ot fet ce jour; A tousjours en avroit l'onnour. Moult en i ot qui se rendoient A lui prisonier, et disoient "Nous somes vostre prisonier, Ne nous ne pourrions nier, Ne nous aiez par armes pris. " Lors ne fu plus cil esbahis, Car il a entendu tantost Que cele fu pour lui en l'ost Pour qui il fu en la chapelle. 

His friends, returning from the fight, On the way there met the knight, For the jousts were wholly run, And all the prizes had been won By the knight who had not stirred From the masses he had heard. All the knights, as they came by, Saluted him and gave him joy, And frankly said that never yet Had any knight performed such feat, Nor ever honour won so great As he had done in arms that day; While many of them stopped to say That they all his prisoners were: "In truth, your prisoners we are: We cannot but admit it true: Taken we were in arms by you!" Then the truth dawned on him there, And all at once he saw the light, That She, by whom he stood in prayer, --The Virgin, --stood by him in fight!

The moral of the tale belongs to the best feudal times. The knightat once recognized that he had become the liege-man of the Queen, and henceforth must render his service entirely to her. So he calledhis "barons, " or tenants, together, and after telling them what hadhappened, took leave of them and the "siecle":--

"Moult est ciest tournoiement beaux Ou ele a pour moi tournoie; Mes trop l'avroit mal emploie Se pour lui je ne tournoioie! Fox seroie se retournoie A la mondaine vanite. A dieu promet en verite Que james ne tournoierai Fors devant le juge verai Qui conoit le bon chevalier Et selonc le fet set jutgier. " Lors prent congie piteusement, Et maint en plorent tenrement. D'euls se part, en une abaie Servi puis la vierge Marie. 

"Glorious has the tourney been Where for me has fought the Queen; But a disgrace for me it were If I tourneyed not for her. Traitor to her should I be, Returned to worldly vanity. I promise truly, by God's grace, Never again the lists to see, Except before that Judge's face, Who knows the true knight from the base, And gives to each his final place. " Then piteously he takes his leave While in tears his barons grieve. So he parts, and in an abbey Serves henceforth the Virgin Mary. 

Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service! Usually thelegends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they weretold in the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems ofRutebeuf, and they would not have been told very differently bysoldiers, if one may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virginherself prescribed the kind of service she wished. Especially to theyoung knight who had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, she showed herself as exacting as other great ladies showedthemselves toward their Lancelots and Tristans. When she chose, shecould even indulge in more or less coquetry, else she could neverhave appealed to the sympathies of the thirteenth-century knight-errant. One of her miracles told how she disciplined the young menwho were too much in the habit of assuming her service in order toobtain selfish objects. A youthful chevalier, much given totournaments and the other worldly diversions of the siecle, fell inlove, after the rigorous obligation of his class, as you know fromyour Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as was also prescribed bythe rules of courteous love, declined to listen to him. An abbot ofhis acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, suggested to himthe happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen of Heaven. Hefollowed the advice, and for an entire year shut himself up, andprayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the heart ofhis beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer. At the end ofthe twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of hisearnestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge againin innocent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after hisrelease, he started out on horseback for a day's hunting. Probablythousands of young knights and squires were always doing more orless the same thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rodethrough the fields or forests, they should happen on a solitarychapel or shrine, as this knight did. He stopped long enough tokneel in it and renew his prayer to the Queen:--

La mere dieu qui maint chetif A retrait de chetivete Par sa grant debonnairte Par sa courtoise courtoisie Au las qui tant l'apele et prie Ignelement s'est demonstree, D'une coronne corronnee Plaine de pierres precieuses Si flamboianz si precieuses Pour pou li euil ne li esluisent. Si netement ainsi reluisent Et resplendissent com la raie Qui en este au matin raie. Tant par a bel et cler le vis Que buer fu mez, ce li est vis, Qui s'i puest assez mirer. "Cele qui te fait soupirer Et en si grant erreur t'a mis, " Fait nostre dame, "biau douz amis, Est ele plus bele que moi?" Li chevaliers a tel effroi De la clarte, ne sai que face; Ses mains giete devant sa face; Tel hide a et tel freeur Chaoir se laisse de freeur; Mais cele en qui pitie est toute Li dist: "Amis, or n'aies doute! Je suis cele, n'en doute mie, Qui te doi faire avoir t'amie. Or prens garde que tu feras. Cele que tu miex ameras De nous ii auras a amie. "

God's Mother who to many a wretch Has brought relief from wretchedness. By her infinite goodness, By her courteous courteousness, To her suppliant in distress Came from heaven quickly down; On her head she bore the crown, Full of precious stones and gems Darting splendour, flashing flames, Till the eye near lost its sight In the keenness of the light, As the summer morning's sun Blinds the eyes it shines upon. So beautiful and bright her face, Only to look on her is grace. 

"She who has caused you thus to sigh, And has brought you to this end, "-- Said Our Lady, --"Tell me, friend, Is she handsomer than I?" Scared by her brilliancy, the knight Knows not what to do for fright; He clasps his hands before his face, And in his shame and his disgrace Falls prostrate on the ground with fear; But she with pity ever near Tells him:--"Friend, be not afraid! Doubt not that I am she whose aid Shall surely bring your love to you; But take good care what you shall do! She you shall love most faithfully Of us two, shall your mistress be. "

One is at a loss to imagine what a young gentleman could do, in sucha situation, except to obey, with the fewest words possible, thesuggestion so gracefully intended. Queen's favours might be fatalgifts, but they were much more fatal to reject than to accept. Whatever might be the preferences of the knight, he had invited hisown fate, and in consequence was fortunate to be allowed the optionof dying and going to heaven, or dying without going to heaven. Marywas not always so gentle with young men who deserted or neglectedher for an earthly rival;--the offence which irritated her most, andoccasionally caused her to use language which hardly bearstranslation into modern English. Without meaning to assert that theQueen of Heaven was jealous as Queen Blanche herself, one must stilladmit that she was very severe on lovers who showed willingness toleave her service, and take service with any other lady. One of heradmirers, educated for the priesthood but not yet in full orders, was obliged by reasons of family interest to quit his career inorder to marry. An insult like this was more than Mary could endure, and she gave the young man a lesson he never forgot:--

Ireement li prent a dire La mere au roi de paradis: "Di moi, di moi, tu que jadis M'amoies tant de tout ton coeur. Pourquoi m'as tu jete puer? Di moi, di moi, ou est donc cele Qui plus de moi bone est et bele?. . . Pourquoi, pourquoi, las durfeus, Las engignez, las deceuz, Me lais pour une lasse fame, Qui suis du del Royne et Dame? Enne fais tu trop mauvais change Qui tu por une fame estrange Me laisses qui par amors t'amoie Et ja ou ciel t'apareilloie En mes chambres un riche lit Por couchier t'ame a grand delit? Trop par as faites grant merveilles S'autrement tost ne te conseilles Ou ciel serra tes lits deffais Et en la flamme d'enfer faiz!"

With anger flashing in her eyes Answers the Queen of Paradise: "Tell me, tell me! you of old Loved me once with love untold; Why now throw me aside? Tell me, tell me! where a bride Kinder or fairer have you won?. . . Wherefore, wherefore, wretched one, Deceived, betrayed, misled, undone, Leave me for a creature mean, Me, who am of Heaven the Queen? Can you make a worse exchange, You that for a woman strange, Leave me who, with perfect love, Waiting you in heaven above, Had in my chamber richly dressed A bed of bliss your soul to rest? Terrible is your mistake! Unless you better council take, In heaven your bed shall be unmade, And in the flames of hell be spread. "

A mistress who loved in this manner was not to be gainsaid. Noearthly love had a chance of holding its own against this unfaircombination of heaven and hell, and Mary was as unscrupulous as anyother great lady in abusing all her advantages in order to save HERsouls. Frenchmen never found fault with abuses of power for whatthey thought a serious object. The more tyrannical Mary was, themore her adorers adored, and they wholly approved, both in love andin law, the rule that any man who changed his allegiance withoutpermission, did so at his own peril. His life and property wereforfeit. Mary showed him too much grace in giving him an option. 

Even in anger Mary always remained a great lady, and in the ordinaryrelations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when temperswere not overwrought. The very brutality of the brutal compelled thecourteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family wereas coarse as the king was delicate in manners. In heaven the mannerswere perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver. On one occasion Saint Peter found himself embarrassed by an affairwhich the public opinion of the Court of Heaven, although not by anymeans puritanic, thought more objectionable--in fact, more franklydiscreditable--than an honest corrupt job ought to be; and even hisinfluence, though certainly considerable, wholly failed to carry itthrough the law-court. The case, as reported by Gaultier de Coincy, was this: A very worthless creature of Saint Peter's--a monk ofCologne--who had led a scandalous life, and "ne cremoit dieu, ordrene roule, " died, and in due course of law was tried, convicted, anddragged off by the devils to undergo his term of punishment. SaintPeter could not desert his sinner, though much ashamed of him, andaccordingly made formal application to the Trinity for a pardon. TheTrinity, somewhat severely, refused. Finding his own interestinsufficient, Saint Peter tried to strengthen it by asking thearchangels to help him; but the case was too much for them also, andthey declined. The brother apostles were appealed to, with the sameresult; and finally even the saints, though they had so obviousinterest in keeping friendly relations with Peter, found publicopinion too strong to defy. The case was desperate. The Trinitywere--or was--emphatic, and--what was rare in the Middle Ages--everymember of the feudal hierarchy sustained its decision. Nothing morecould be done in the regular way. Saint Peter was obliged to divesthimself of authority, and place himself and his dignity in the handsof the Virgin. Accordingly he asked for an audience, and stated thecase to Our Lady. With the utmost grace, she instantly responded:--

"Pierre, Pierre, " dit Nostre Dame, "En moult grand poine et por ceste ame De mon douz filz me fierai Tant que pour toi l'en prierai. " La Mere Dieu lors s'est levee, Devant son filz s'en est alee Et ses virges toutes apres. De lui si tint Pierre pres, Quar sanz doutance bien savoit Que sa besoigne faite avoit Puisque cele l'avoit en prise Ou forme humaine avoit prise. 

Quant sa Mere vit li douz Sire Qui de son doit daigna escrire Qu'en honourant et pere et mere En contre lui a chere clere Se leva moult festivement Et si li dist moult doucement; "Bien veigniez vous, ma douce mere, " Comme douz filz, comme douz pere. Doucement l'a par la main prise Et doucement lez lui assise; Lors li a dit:--"A douce chiere, Que veus ma douce mere chiere, Mes amies et mes sereurs?"

"Pierre, Pierre, " our Lady said, "With all my heart I'll give you aid, And to my gentle Son I'll sue Until I beg that soul for you. " God's Mother then arose straightway, And sought her Son without delay; All her virgins followed her, And Saint Peter kept him near, For he knew his task was done And his prize already won, Since it was hers, in whom began The life of God in form of Man. 

When our dear Lord, who deigned to write With his own hand that in his sight Those in his kingdom held most dear Father and mother honoured here, -- When He saw His Mother's face He rose and said with gentle grace: "Well are you come, my heart's desire!" Like loving son, like gracious sire; Took her hand gently in His own; Gently placed her on His throne, Wishing her graciously good cheer:-- "What brings my gentle Mother here, My sister, and my dearest friend?"

One can see Queen Blanche going to beg--or command--a favour of herson, King Louis, and the stately dignity of their address, whileSaint Peter and the virgins remain in the antechamber; but, as forSaint Peter's lost soul, the request was a mere form, and the doorsof paradise were instantly opened to it, after such briefformalities as should tend to preserve the technical record of thelaw-court. We tread here on very delicate ground. Gaultier deCoincy, being a priest and a prior, could take liberties which wecannot or ought not to take. The doctrines of the Church are tooserious and too ancient to be wilfully misstated, and the doctrinesof what is called Mariolatry were never even doctrines of theChurch. Yet it is true that, in the hearts of Mary's servants, theChurch and its doctrines were at the mercy of Mary's will. Gaultierde Coincy claimed that Mary exasperated the devils by exercising awholly arbitrary and illegitimate power. Gaultier not merelyadmitted, but frankly asserted, that this was the fact:--

Font li deables:--"de cest plait, Mal por mal, assez miex nous plest Que nous aillons au jugement Li haut jugeur qui ne ment. C'au plait n'au jugement sa mere De droit jugier est trop avere; Mais dieu nous juge si adroit, Plainement nous lest notre droit. Sa mere juge en tel maniere Qu'elle nous met touz jors arriere Quant nous cuidons estre devant. . . . . . . . En ciel et en terre est plus Dame Par un petit que Diex ne soit. Il l'aimme tant et tant la croit, N'est riens qu'elle face ne die Qu'il desveile ne contredie. Quant qu'elle veut li fait acroire, S'elle disoit la pie est noire Et l'eue trouble est toute clere: Si diroit il voir dit ma mere!"

"In this law-suit, " say the devils, "Since it is a choice of evils, We had best appeal on high To the Judge Who does not lie. What is law to any other, 'T is no use pleading with His Mother; But God judges us so true That He leaves us all our due. His Mother judges us so short That she throws us out of court When we ought to win our cause. . . . . . . . . In heaven and earth she makes more laws By far, than God Himself can do, He loves her so, and trusts her so, There's nothing she can do or say That He'll refuse, or say her nay. Whatever she may want is right, Though she say that black is white, And dirty water clear as snow:-- My Mother says it, and it's so!"

If the Virgin took the feelings of the Trinity into consideration, or recognized its existence except as her Son, the case has not beenreported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out ofsight by the Virgin's poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncingMary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed casein regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimedbecause he had learned the "Ave Maria, " the devils became veryangry, indeed, and protested vehemently:--

Li lait maufe, li rechinie Adonc ont ris et eschinie. C'en font il:--"Merveillans merveille! Por ce vilain plate oreille Aprent vo Dame a saluer, Se nous vorro trestous tuer Se regarder osons vers s'ame. De tout le monde vieut estre Dame! Ains nule dame ne fu tiez. II est avis qu'ele soit Diex Ou qu'ele ait Diex en main bornie. Nul besoigne n'est fournie, Ne terrienne ne celestre, Que toute Dame ne veille estre. Il est avis que tout soit suen; Dieu ne deable n'i ont rien. "

The ugly demons laugh outright And grind their teeth with envious spite; Crying:--"Marvel marvellous! Because that flat-eared ploughman there Learned to make your Dame a prayer, She would like to kill us all Just for looking toward his soul. All the world she wants to rule! No such Dame was ever seen! She thinks that she is God, I ween, Or holds Him in her hollow hand. Not a judgment or command Or an order can be given Here on earth or there in heaven, That she does not want control. She thinks that she ordains the whole, And keeps it all for her own profit. God nor Devil share not of it. "

As regards Mary of Chartres, these charges seem to have beenliterally true, except so far as concerned the "laid maufe" Pierrede Dreux. Gaultier de Coincy saw no impropriety in accepting, assufficiently exact, the allegations of the devils against theVirgin's abuse of power. Down to the death of Queen Blanche, whichis all that concerns us, the public saw no more impropriety in itthan Gaultier did. The ugly, envious devils, notorious as studentsof the Latin Quarter, were perpetually making the same chargesagainst Queen Blanche and her son, without disturbing her authority. No one could conceive that the Virgin held less influence in heaventhan the queen mother on earth. Nevertheless there were points inthe royal policy and conduct of Mary which thoughtful men even thenhesitated to approve. The Church itself never liked to be draggedtoo far under feminine influence, although the moment it discardedfeminine influence it lost nearly everything of any value to it orto the world, except its philosophy. Mary's tastes were too popular;some of the uglier devils said they were too low; many ladies andgentlemen of the "siecle" thought them disreputable, though theydared not say so, or dared say so only by proxy, as in "Aucassins. "As usual, one must go to the devils for the exact truth, and inspite of their outcry, the devils admitted that they had no reasonto complain of Mary's administration:--

"Les beles dames de grant pris Qui traynant vont ver et gris, Roys, roynes, dus et contesses, En enfer vienent a granz presses; Mais ou ciel vont pres tout a fait Tort et bocu et contrefait. Ou ciel va toute la ringaille; Le grain avons et diex la paille. "

"All the great dames and ladies fair Who costly robes and ermine wear, Kings, queens, and countesses and lords Come down to hell in endless hordes; While up to heaven go the lamed, The dwarfs, the humpbacks, and the maimed; To heaven goes the whole riff-raff; We get the grain and God the chaff. "

True it was, although one should not say it jestingly, that theVirgin embarrassed the Trinity; and perhaps this was the reason, behind all the other excellent reasons, why men loved and adored herwith a passion such as no other deity has ever inspired: and why we, although utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down onour knees and praying to her still. Mary concentrated in herself thewhole rebellion of man against fate; the whole protest againstdivine law; the whole contempt for human law as its outcome; thewhole unutterable fury of human nature beating itself against thewalls of its prison-house, and suddenly seized by a hope that in theVirgin man had found a door of escape. She was above law; she tookfeminine pleasure in turning hell into an ornament; she delighted intrampling on every social distinction in this world and the next. She knew that the universe was as unintelligible to her, on anytheory of morals, as it was to her worshippers, and she felt, likethem, no sure conviction that it was any more intelligible to theCreator of it. To her, every suppliant was a universe in itself, tobe judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for her, --by nomeans on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in the Church, or according to his correctness in defining the nature of theTrinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains overhuman imagination--as you can see at Lourdes--was due much less toher power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with peoplewho suffered under law, --divine or human, --justly or unjustly, byaccident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She carednot a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion ofletting her friends be punished, to the tenth or any othergeneration, for the sins of their ancestors or the peccadilloes ofEve. 

So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste ofany respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough inmaking this world decent and pay its bills, without having tocontinue the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own, so independent that the Trinity might have perished without muchaffecting her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity couldlook on and see her dethroned with almost a breath of relief. Aucassins and the devils of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger. Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had nofavours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heavenby the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply thatthree hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfiedwith abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether asthe cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The Puritans abandonedthe New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to thebeginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church'saffair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it withChurch or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists areseriously interested in putting the feeling back into the deadarchitecture where it belongs. 

Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took nospecial interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the wise. For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and withtheir doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered; but occasionally shecould not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of themanner in which the Trinity allowed their--the regular--Church to beadministered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she hadany, --and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them, --whileshe was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court. One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dyingin the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accuratehistorian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names ordates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Marynever loved bankers, and had no reason for taking interest in thisone, or for doing him injury; but it happened that the parish priestwas summoned to both death-beds at the same time, and neglected theold pauper in the hope of securing a bequest for his church from thebanker. This was the sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in theChurch of the Trinity, which, in her opinion, was not cared for asit should be, and she felt it her duty to intimate as much. 

Although the priest refused to come at the old woman's summons, hisyoung clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in orders, took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her hut, which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age:--

Close de piex et de serciaus Comme une viez souz a porciaus. 

Roof of hoops, and wall of logs, Like a wretched stye for hogs. 

There the beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, oncoarse thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. Thepicture represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century;a hovel without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins'ploughman described his mother's want; and the old woman alone, dying, as the clerk appeared at the opening:--

Li clers qui fu moult bien apris Le cors Nostre Seigneur a pris A l'ostel a la povre fame S'en vient touz seus mes n'i treuve ame. Si grant clarte y a veue Que grant peeur en a eue. Ou povre lit a la vieillete Qui couvers iert d'une nateite

Assises voit XII puceles Si avenans et si tres beles N'est nus tant penser i seust Qui raconter le vout peust. A coutee voist Nostre Dame Sus le chevez la povre fame Qui por la mort sue et travaille. La Mere Dieu d'une tovaille Qui blanche est plus que fleur de lis La grant sueur d'entor le vis A ses blanches mains li essuie. 

The clerk, well in these duties taught, The body of our Saviour brought Where she lay upon her bed Without a soul to give her aid. But such brightness there he saw As filled his mind with fear and awe. Covered with a mat of straw The woman lay; but round and near

A dozen maidens sat, so fair No mortal man could dream such light, No mortal tongue describe the sight. Then he saw that next the bed, By the poor old woman's head, As she gasped and strained for breath In the agony of death, Sat Our Lady, --bending low, -- While, with napkin white as snow, She dried the death-sweat on the brow. 

The clerk, in terror, hesitated whether to turn and run away, butOur Lady beckoned him to the bed, while all rose and kneeleddevoutly to the sacrament. Then she said to the trembling clerk:--

"Friend, be not afraid! But seat yourself, to give us aid, Beside these maidens, on the bed. "

And when the clerk had obeyed, she continued--

"Or tost, amis!" fait Nostre Dame, "Confessies ceste bone fame Et puis apres tout sans freeur Recevra tost son sauveeur Qui char et sanc vout en moi prendre. "

"Come quickly, friend!" Our Lady says, "This good old woman now confess And afterwards without distress She will at once receive her God Who deigned in me take flesh and blood. "

After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simpledeath-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth-century manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony:--

Lors dit une des demoiselles A madame sainte Marie: "Encore, dame, n'istra mie Si com moi semble du cors l'ame. " "Bele fille, " fait Nostre Dame, "Traveiller lais un peu le cors, Aincois que l'ame en isse hors, Si que puree soil et nete Aincois qu'en Paradis la mete. N'est or mestier qui soions plus, Ralon nous en ou ciel lassus, Quant tens en iert bien reviendrons En paradis l'ame emmerrons. "

A maiden said to Saint Marie, "My lady, still it seems to me The soul will not the body fly. " "Fair child!" Our Lady made reply, "Still let awhile the body fight Before the soul shall leave it quite. So that it pure may be, and cleansed When it to Paradise ascends. No longer need we here remain; We can go back to heaven again; We will return before she dies, And take the soul to paradise. "

The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was of adifferent character, but Mary's interest in death-beds of that kindwas small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knewtoo well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange withthe officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. The administration of heaven was very like the administration ofFrance; the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could notwholly approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shuther eyes to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, were for the most part mere evidence of her pity for those whoneeded it most, and these were rarely the well-to-do people of thesiecle, but more commonly the helpless. Every saint performedmiracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any oneintermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyondthese exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to thewhole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity andthe only hope of despair. One might go on for a volume, studying thecharacter of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from theearliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles atLourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied adevelopment, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets longago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what wasmost dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous earlymiracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which waswhat one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantinemiracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and hisfellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as theirmasters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramaticmaterial untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remainuntouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth muchmoney--so much that the rival shrines stole each other's miracleswithout decency--one does not care to see one's Virgin put to money-making for Jew theatre-managers. One's two-hundred and fifty millionarithmetical ancestors shrink. 

For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the littleJew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and wasthrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when thefurnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of theflames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is thatcalled the "Tombeor de Notre Dame, " only recently printed; told bysome unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as anyof Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" has hadmore success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as oneknows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modernFrench taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only tospoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as aglossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm. 

The story is that of a tumbler--tombeor, street-acrobat--who wasdisgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation forbecoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into thefamous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerlybeen blessed by the Virgin's presence. Ignorant at best, andespecially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of areligious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:--

Car n'ot vescu fors de tumer Et d'espringier et de baler. Treper, saillir, ice savoit; Ne d'autre rien il ne savoit; Car ne savoit autre lecon Ne "pater noster" ne chancon Ne le "credo" ne le salu Ne rien qui fust a son salu. 

For he had learned no other thing Than to tumble, dance and spring: Leaping and vaulting, that he knew, But nothing better could he do. He could not say his prayers by rote; Not "Pater noster", not a note, Not "Ave Mary, " nor the creed; Nothing to help his soul in need. 

Tormented by the sense of his uselessness to the society whose breadhe ate without giving a return in service, and afraid of beingexpelled as a useless member, one day while the bells were callingto mass he hid in the crypt, and in despair began to soliloquizebefore the Virgin's altar, at the same spot, one hopes, where theVirgin had shown herself, or might have shown herself, in herinfinite bounty, to Saint Bernard, a hundred years before:--

"Hai, " fait il, "con suis trais! Or dira ja cascuns sa laisse Et jo suis ci i hues en laisse Qui ne fas ci fors que broster Et viandes por nient gaster. Si ne dirai ne ne ferai? Par la mere deu, si ferai! Ja n'en serai ore repris; Jo ferai ce que j'ai apris; Si servirai de men mestier La mere deu en son mostier; Li autre servent de canter Et jo servirai de tumer. " Sa cape oste, si se despoille, Deles l'autel met sa despoille, Mais por sa char que ne soit nue Une cotele a retenue Qui moult estait tenre et alise, Petit vaut miex d'une chemise, Si est en pur le cors remes. Il s'est bien chains et acesmes, Sa cote caint et bien s'atorne, Devers l'ymage se retorne Mout humblement et si l'esgarde: "Dame, " fait il, "en vostre garde Comant jo et mon cors et m'ame. Douce reine, douce dame, Ne despisies ce que jo sai Car jo me voil metre a l'asai De vos servir en bone foi Se dex m'ait sans nul desroi. Jo ne sai canter ne lire Mais certes jo vos voil eslire Tos mes biax gieus a eslicon. Or soie al fuer de taurecon Qui trepe et saut devant sa mere. Dame, qui n'estes mie amere A cels qui vos servent a droit, Quelsque jo soie, por vos soit!"

Lors li commence a faire saus Bas et petits et grans et haus

Primes deseur et puis desos, Puis se remet sor ses genols, Devers l'ymage, et si l'encline: "He!" fait il, "tres douce reine Par vo pitie, par vo francise, Ne despisies pas mon servise!"

"Ha!" said he, "how I am ashamed! To sing his part goes now each priest, And I stand here, a tethered beast, Who nothing do but browse and feed And waste the food that others need. Shall I say nothing, and stand still? No! by God's mother, but I will! She shall not think me here for naught; At least I'll do what I've been taught! At least I'll serve in my own way God's mother in her church to-day. The others serve to pray and sing; I will serve to leap and spring. " Then he strips him of his gown, Lays it on the altar down; But for himself he takes good care Not to show his body bare, But keeps a jacket, soft and thin, Almost a shirt, to tumble in. Clothed in this supple woof of maille His strength and health and form showed well. And when his belt is buckled fast, Toward the Virgin turns at last: Very humbly makes his prayer; "Lady!" says he, "to your care I commit my soul and frame. Gentle Virgin, gentle dame, Do not despise what I shall do, For I ask only to please you, To serve you like an honest man, So help me God, the best I can. I cannot chant, nor can I read, But I can show you here instead, All my best tricks to make you laugh, And so shall be as though a calf Should leap and jump before its dam. Lady, who never yet could blame Those who serve you well and true, All that I am, I am for you. "

Then he begins to jump about, High and low, and in and out, Straining hard with might and main; Then, falling on his knees again, Before the image bows his face: "By your pity! by your grace!" Says he, "Ha! my gentle queen, Do not despise my offering!"

In his earnestness he exerted himself until, at the end of hisstrength, he lay exhausted and unconscious on the altar steps. Pleased with his own exhibition, and satisfied that the Virgin wasequally pleased, he continued these devotions every day, until atlast his constant and singular absence from the regular servicesattracted the curiosity of a monk, who kept watch on him andreported his eccentric exercise to the Abbot. 

The mediaeval monasteries seem to have been gently administered. Indeed, this has been made the chief reproach on them, and theexcuse for robbing them for the benefit of a more energetic crownand nobility who tolerated no beggars or idleness but their own; atleast, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economicallyadministered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbotof Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor andsending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what thestrange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, and how easily one might hide in its shadows while mass is said atthe altars. The Abbot and his informant hid themselves behind acolumn in the shadow, and watched the whole performance to its endwhen the exhausted tumbler dropped unconscious and drenched withperspiration on the steps of the altar, with the words:--

"Dame!" fait il, "ne puis plus ore; Mais voire je reviendrai encore. "

"Lady!" says he, "no more I can, But truly I'll come back again!"

You can imagine the dim crypt; the tumbler lying unconscious beneaththe image of the Virgin; the Abbot peering out from the shadow ofthe column, and wondering what sort of discipline he could inflictfor this unforeseen infraction of rule; when suddenly, before hecould decide what next to do, the vault above the altar, of its ownaccord, opened:--

L'abes esgarde sans atendre Et vit de la volte descendre Une dame si gloriouse Ains nus ne vit si preciouse Ni si ricement conreee, N'onques tant bele ne fu nee. Ses vesteures sont bien chieres D'or et de precieuses pieres. 

Avec li estoient li angle Del ciel amont, et li arcangle, Qui entor le menestrel vienent, Si le solacent et sostienent. Quant entor lui sont arengie S'ot tot son cuer asoagie. Dont s'aprestent de lui servir Por ce qu'ils volrent deservir La servise que fait la dame Qui tant est precieuse geme. Et la douce reine france Tenoit une touaille blance, S'en avente son menestrel Mout doucement devant l'autel. La franc dame debonnaire Le col, le cors, et le viaire Li avente por refroidier; Bien s'entremet de lui aidier; La dame bien s'i abandone; Li bons hom garde ne s'en done, Car il ne voit, si ne set mie Qu'il ait si bele compaignie. 

The Abbot strains his eyes to see, And, from the vaulting, suddenly, A lady steps, --so glorious, -- Beyond all thought so precious, -- Her robes so rich, so nobly worn, -- So rare the gems the robes adorn, -- As never yet so fair was born. 

Along with her the angels were, Archangels stood beside her there; Round about the tumbler group To give him solace, bring him hope; And when round him in ranks they stood, His whole heart felt its strength renewed. So they haste to give him aid Because their wills are only made To serve the service of their Queen, Most precious gem the earth has seen. And the lady, gentle, true, Holds in her hand a towel new; Fans him with her hand divine Where he lies before the shrine. The kind lady, full of grace, Fans his neck, his breast, his face! Fans him herself to give him air! Labours, herself, to help him there! The lady gives herself to it; The poor man takes no heed of it; For he knows not and cannot see That he has such fair company. 

Beyond this we need not care to go. If you cannot feel the colourand quality--the union of naivete and art, the refinement, theinfinite delicacy and tenderness--of this little poem, then nothingwill matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, without more assistance, the majesty of Chartres. 

CHAPTER XIV

ABELARD

Super cuncta, subter cuncta, Extra cuncta, intra cuncta, Intra cuncta nec inclusus, Extra cuncta nec exclusus, Super cuncta nec elatus, Subter cuncta nec substratus, Super totus, praesidendo, Subter totus, sustinendo, Extra totus, complectendo, Intra totus est, implendo. 

According to Hildebert, Bishop of Le Mans and Archbishop of Tours, these verses describe God. Hildebert was the first poet of his time;no small merit, since he was contemporary with the "Chanson deRoland" and the first crusade; he was also a strong man, since hewas able, as Bishop of Le Mans, to gain great credit by maintaininghimself against William the Norman and Fulk of Anjou; and finally hewas a prelate of high authority. He lived between 1055 and 1133. Supposing his verses to have been written in middle life, toward theyear 1100, they may be taken to represent the accepted doctrine ofthe Church at the time of the first crusade. They were little morethan a versified form of the Latin of Saint Gregory the Great whowrote five-hundred years before: "Ipse manet intra omnia, ipse extraomnia, ipse supra omnia, ipse infra omnia; et superior est perpotentiam et inferior per sustentationem; exterior per magnitudinemet interior per subtilitatem; sursum regens, deorsum continens, extra circumdans, interius penetrans; nec alia parte superior, aliainferior, aut alia ex parte exterior atque ex alia manet interior, sed unus idemque totus ubique. " According to Saint Gregory, in thesixth century, God was "one and the same and wholly everywhere";"immanent within everything, without everything, above everything, below everything, sursum regens, dear sum continens"; whileaccording to Archbishop Hildebert in the eleventh century: "God isoverall things, under all things; outside all, inside all; withinbut not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up;below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding; wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly without, embracing; wholly within, filling. "Finally, according to Benedict Spinoza, another five hundred yearslater still: "God is a being, absolutely infinite; that is to say, asubstance made up of an infinity of attributes, each one of whichexpresses an eternal and infinite essence. "

Spinoza was the great pantheist, whose name is still a terror to theorthodox, and whose philosophy is--very properly--a horror to theChurch--and yet Spinoza never wrote a line that, to the unguidedstudent, sounds more Spinozist than the words of Saint Gregory andArchbishop Hildebert. If God is everywhere; wholly; presiding, sustaining, embracing and filling, "sursum regens, deorsumcontinens, " He is the only possible energy, and leaves no place forhuman will to act. A force which is "one and the same and whollyeverywhere" is more Spinozist than Spinoza, and is likely to bemistaken for frank pantheism by the large majority of religiousminds who must try to understand it without a theological course ina Jesuit college. In the year 1100 Jesuit colleges did not exist, and even the great Dominican and Franciscan schools were far fromsight in the future; but the School of Notre Dame at Paris existed, and taught the existence of God much as Archbishop Hildebertdescribed it. The most successful lecturer was William of Champeaux, and to any one who ever heard of William at all, the name instantlycalls up the figure of Abelard, in flesh and blood, as he sang toHeloise the songs which he says resounded through Europe. Thetwelfth century, with all its sparkle, would be dull without Abelardand Heloise. With infinite regret, Heloise must be left out of thestory, because she was not a philosopher or a poet or an artist, butonly a Frenchwoman to the last millimetre of her shadow. Even thoughone may suspect that her famous letters to Abelard are, for the mostpart, by no means above scepticism, she was, by French standards, worth at least a dozen Abelards, if only because she called SaintBernard a false apostle. 

Unfortunately, French standards, by which she must be judged in ourignorance, take for granted that she philosophized only for the sakeof Abelard, while Abelard taught philosophy to her not so muchbecause he believed in philosophy or in her as because he believedin himself. To this day, Abelard remains a problem as perplexing ashe must have been to Heloise, and almost as fascinating. As the westportal of Chartres is the door through which one must of necessityenter the Gothic architecture of the thirteenth century, so Abelardis the portal of approach to the Gothic thought and philosophywithin. Neither art nor thought has a modern equivalent; onlyHeloise, like Isolde, unites the ages. 

The first crusade seems, in perspective, to have rilled the wholefield of vision in France at the time; but, in fact, France seethedwith other emotions, and while the crusaders set out to scale heavenby force at Jerusalem, the monks, who remained at home, undertook toscale heaven by prayer and by absorption of body and soul in God;the Cistercian Order was founded in 1098, and was joined in 1112 byyoung Bernard, born in 1090 at Fontaines-les-Dijon, drawing with himor after him so many thousands of young men into the self-immolationof the monastery as carried dismay into the hearts of half the womenof France. At the same time--that is, about 1098 or 1100--Abelardcame up to Paris from Brittany, with as much faith in logic asBernard had in prayer or Godfrey of Bouillon in arms, and led anequal or even a greater number of combatants to the conquest ofheaven by force of pure reason. None showed doubt. Hundreds ofthousands of young men wandered from their provinces, mostly toPalestine, largely to cloisters, but also in great numbers to Parisand the schools, while few ever returned. 

Abelard had the advantage of being well-born; not so highlydescended as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas who were to completehis work in the thirteenth century, but, like Bernard, a gentlemanborn and bred. He was the eldest son of Berenger, Sieur du Pallet, achateau in Brittany, south of the Loire, on the edge of Poitou. Hisname was Pierre du Pallet, although, for some unknown reason, hecalled himself Pierre Abailard, or Abeillard, or Esbaillart, orBeylard; for the spelling was never fixed. He was born in 1079, andwhen, in 1096, the young men of his rank were rushing off to thefirst crusade, Pierre, a boy of seventeen, threw himself with equalzeal into the study of science, and, giving up his inheritance orbirthright, at last came to Paris to seize a position in theschools. The year is supposed to have been 1100. 

The Paris of Abelard's time was astonishingly old; so old thathardly a stone of it can be now pointed out. Even the oldest of thebuildings still standing in that quarter--Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Saint-Severin, and the tower of the Lycee Henri IV--are more modern;only the old Roman Thermae, now part of the Musee de Cluny, withinthe walls, and the Abbey Tower of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, outside, in the fields, were standing in the year 1100. Politically, Pariswas a small provincial town before the reign of Louis-le-Gros (1108-37), who cleared its gates of its nearest enemies; but as a school, Paris was even then easily first. Students crowded into it bythousands, till the town is said to have contained more studentsthan citizens, Modern Paris seems to have begun as a university townbefore it had a university. Students flocked to it from greatdistances, encouraged and supported by charity, and stimulated byprivileges, until they took entire possession of what is stillcalled the Latin Quarter from the barbarous Latin they chattered;and a town more riotous, drunken, and vicious than it became, in thecourse of time, hardly existed even in the Middle Ages. In 1100, when enthusiasm was fresh and faith in science was strong, the greatmass of students came there to study, and, having no regularuniversity organization or buildings, they thronged the cloister ofNotre Dame--not our Notre Dame, which dates only from 1163, but theold Romanesque cathedral which stood on the same spot--and therethey listened, and retained what they could remember, for they werenot encouraged to take notes even if they were rich enough to buynotebooks, while manuscripts were far beyond their means. Onevaluable right the students seem to have had--that of askingquestions and even of disputing with the lecturer provided theyfollowed the correct form of dialectics. The lecturer himself waslicensed by the Bishop. 

Five thousand students are supposed to have swarmed about thecloister of Notre Dame, across the Petit Pont, and up the hill ofSainte-Genevieve; three thousand are said to have paid fees toAbelard in the days of his great vogue and they seem to haveattached themselves to their favourite master as a champion to beupheld against the world. Jealousies ran high, and neither scholarsnor masters shunned dispute. Indeed, the only science they taught orknew was the art of dispute--dialectics. Rhetoric, grammar, anddialectics were the regular branches of science, and bold students, who were not afraid of dabbling in forbidden fields, extended theirstudies to mathematics--"exercitium nefarium, " according to Abelard, which he professed to know nothing about but which he studiednevertheless. Abelard, whether pupil or master, never held histongue if he could help it, for his fortune depended on using itwell; but he never used it so well in dialectics or theology as hedid, toward the end of his life, in writing a bit of autobiography, so admirably told, so vivid, so vibrating with the curious intensityof his generation, that it needed only to have been written in"Romieu" to be the chief monument of early French prose, as thewestern portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early Frenchsculpture, and of about the same date. Unfortunately Abelard was anoble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even withHeloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much thebetter on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, thenaivetes of a young language--the egotism, jealousies, suspicions, boastings, and lamentations of a childlike time--take a false air ofoutworn Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives:--

I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics hadspecially flourished under William of Champeaux, rightly reckonedthe first of my masters in that branch of study. I stayed some timein his school, but, though well received at first, I soon got to bean annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain ideas ofhis, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument againsthim, I sometimes got the better. This boldness, too, roused thewrath of those fellow students who were classed higher, because I wasthe youngest and the last comer. This was the beginning of my seriesof misfortunes which still last; my renown every day increasing, envy was kindled against me in every direction. 

This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, dayafter day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of olderstudents, paints Abelard to the life; but one may safely add a fewtouches that heighten the effect; as that William of Champeauxhimself was barely thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career, made use of every social and personal advantage to gain a point, with little scruple either in manner or in sophistry. One may easilyimagine the scene. Teachers are always much the same. Pupils andstudents differ only in degrees of docility. In 1100, both classesbegan by accepting the foundations of society, as they have to dostill; only they then accepted laws of the Church and Aristotle, while now they accept laws of the legislature and of energy. In1100, the students took for granted that, with the help of Aristotleand syllogisms, they could build out the Church intellectually, asthe architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were soon toenlarge it architecturally. They never doubted the certainty oftheir method. To them words had fixed values, like numbers, andsyllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, inorder to reach any height or support any weight. Every sentence wasmade to take the form of a syllogism. One must have been educated ina Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogismscorrectly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggesthow the phrases sounded in their simplest form. For example, Platoor other equally good authority deemed substance as that whichstands underneath phenomena; the most universal of universals, theultimate, the highest in order of generalization. The ultimateessence or substance is indivisible; God is substance; God isindivisible. The divine substance is incapable of alteration oraccident; all other substance is liable to alteration or accident;therefore, the divine substance differs from all other substance. Asubstance is a universal; as for example, Humanity, or the Human, isa universal and indivisible; the Man Socrates, for instance, is nota universal, but an individual; therefore, the substance Humanity, being indivisible, must exist entire and undivided in Socrates. 

The form of logic most fascinating to youthful minds, as well as tosome minds that are only too acute, is the reductio ad absurdum; theforcing an opponent into an absurd alternative or admission; and thesyllogism lent itself happily to this use. Socrates abused theweapon and Abelard was the first French master of the art; butneither State nor Church likes to be reduced to an absurdity, and, on the whole, both Socrates and Abelard fared ill in the result. Even now, one had best be civil toward the idols of the forum. Abelard would find most of his old problems sensitive to his touchto-day. Time has settled few or none of the essential points ofdispute. Science hesitates, more visibly than the Church ever did, to decide once for all whether unity or diversity is ultimate law;whether order or chaos is the governing rule of the universe, ifuniverse there is; whether anything, except phenomena, exists. Evenin matters more vital to society, one dares not speak too loud. Why, and for what, and to whom, is man a responsible agent? Every juryand judge, every lawyer and doctor, every legislator and clergymanhas his own views, and the law constantly varies. Every nation mayhave a different system. One court may hang and another may acquitfor the same crime, on the same day; and science only repeats whatthe Church said to Abelard, that where we know so little, we hadbetter hold our tongues. 

According to the latest authorities, the doctrine of universalswhich convulsed the schools of the twelfth century has neverreceived an adequate answer. What is a species? what is a genus or afamily or an order? More or less convenient terms of classification, about which the twelfth century cared very little, while it careddeeply about the essence of classes! Science has become too complexto affirm the existence of universal truths, but it strives fornothing else, and disputes the problem, within its own limits, almost as earnestly as in the twelfth century, when the whole fieldof human and superhuman activity was shut between these barriers ofsubstance, universals, and particulars. Little has changed exceptthe vocabulary and the method. The schools knew that their societyhung for life on the demonstration that God, the ultimate universal, was a reality, out of which all other universal truths or realitiessprang. Truth was a real thing, outside of human experience. Theschools of Paris talked and thought of nothing else. John ofSalisbury, who attended Abelard's lectures about 1136, and becameBishop of Chartres in 1176, seems to have been more surprised thanwe need be at the intensity of the emotion. "One never gets awayfrom this question, " he said. "From whatever point a discussionstarts, it is always led back and attached to that. It is themadness of Rufus about Naevia; 'He thinks of nothing else; talks ofnothing else, and if Naevia did not exist, Rufus would be dumb. '"

Abelard began it. After his first visit to Paris in 1100, he seemsto have passed several years elsewhere, while Guillaume de Champeauxin 1108, retired from the school in the cloister of Notre Dame, and, taking orders, established a class in a chapel near by, afterwardsfamous as the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. The Jardin des Plantes and theGare d'Orleans now cover the ground where the Abbey stood, on thebanks of the Seine outside the Latin Quarter, and not a trace isleft of its site; but there William continued his course indialectics, until suddenly Abelard reappeared among his scholars, and resumed his old attacks. This time Abelard could hardly callhimself a student. He was thirty years old, and long since had beenhimself a teacher; he had attended William's course on dialecticsnearly ten years before, and was past master in the art; he hadnothing to learn from William in theology, for neither William norhe was yet a theologist by profession. If Abelard went back toschool, it was certainly not to learn; but indeed, he himself madelittle or no pretence of it, and told with childlike candour notonly why he went, but also how brilliantly he succeeded in hisobject:--

I returned to study rhetoric in his school. Among othercontroversial battles, I succeeded, by the most irrefutableargument, in making him change, or rather ruin his doctrine ofuniversals. His doctrine consisted in affirming the perfect identityof the essence in every individual of the same species, so thataccording to him there was no difference in the essence but only inthe infinite variety of accidents. He then came to amend hisdoctrine so as to affirm, not the identity any longer, but theabsence of distinction--the want of difference--in the essence. Andas this question of universals had always been one of the mostimportant questions of dialectics--so important that Porphyry, touching on it in his Preliminaries, did not dare to take theresponsibility of cutting the knot, but said, "It is a very gravepoint, "--Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and thenrenounce it, saw his course fall into such discredit that theyhardly let him make his dialectical lectures, as though dialecticsconsisted entirely in the question of universals. 

Why was this point so "very grave"? Not because it was meredialectics! The only part of the story that seems grave today is thepart that Abelard left out; the part which Saint Bernard, thirtyyears later put in, on behalf of William. We should be morecredulous than twelfth-century monks, if we believed, on Abelard'sword in 1135, that in 1110 he had driven out of the schools the mostaccomplished dialectician of the age by an objection so familiarthat no other dialectician was ever silenced by it--whatever mayhave been the case with theologians--and so obvious that it couldnot have troubled a scholar of fifteen. William stated a settleddoctrine as old as Plato; Abelard interposed an objection as old asAristotle. Probably Plato and Aristotle had received the questionand answer from philosophers ten-thousand years older thanthemselves. Certainly the whole of philosophy has always beeninvolved in the dispute. 

The subject is as amusing as a comedy; so amusing that ten minutesmay be well given to playing the scene between William and Abelard, not as it happened, but in a form nearer our ignorance, with libertyto invent arguments for William, and analogies--which are figuresintended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocenttoys if they fail--such as he never imagined; while Abelard canrespond with his true rejoinder, fatal in a different sense. For thechief analogy, the notes of music would serve, or the colours of thesolar spectrum, or an energy, such as gravity--but the best isgeometrical, because Euclid was as scholastic as William ofChampeaux himself, and his axioms are even more familiar to theschoolboy of the twentieth, than to the schoolman of the twelfthcentury. 

In these scholastic tournaments the two champions started fromopposite points--one, from the ultimate substance, God--theuniversal, the ideal, the type--the other from the individual, Socrates, the concrete, the observed fact of experience, the objectof sensual perception. The first champion--William in this instance--assumed that the universal was a real thing; and for that reason hewas called a realist. His opponent--Abelard--held that the universalwas only nominally real; and on that account he was called anominalist. Truth, virtue, humanity, exist as units and realities, said William. Truth, replied Abelard, is only the sum of allpossible facts that are true, as humanity is the sum of all actualhuman beings. The ideal bed is a form, made by God, said Plato. Theideal bed is a name, imagined by ourselves, said Aristotle. "I startfrom the universe, " said William. "I start from the atom, " saidAbelard; and, once having started, they necessarily came intocollision at some point between the two. 

William of Champeaux, lecturing on dialectics or logic, comes to thequestion of universals, which he says, are substances. Starting fromthe highest substance, God, all being descends through createdsubstances by stages, until it reaches the substance animality, fromwhich it descends to the substance humanity: and humanity being, like other essences or substances, indivisible, passes wholly intoeach individual, becoming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, much asthe divine substance exists wholly and undivided in each member ofthe Trinity. 

Here Abelard interrupts. The divine substance, he says, operates bylaws of its own, and cannot be used for comparison. In treating ofhuman substance, one is bound by human limitations. If the whole ofhumanity is in Socrates, it is wholly absorbed by Socrates, andcannot be at the same time in Plato, or elsewhere. Following hisfavourite reductio ad absurdum, Abelard turns the idea round, andinfers from it that, since Socrates carries all humanity in him, hecarries Plato, too; and both must be in the same place, thoughSocrates is at Athens and Plato in Rome. 

The objection is familiar to William, who replies by anothercommonplace:--

"Mr. Abelard, might I, without offence, ask you a simple matter? Canyou give me Euclid's definition of a point?"

"If I remember right it is, 'illud cujus nulla pars est'; that whichhas no parts. "

"Has it existence?"

"Only in our minds. "

"Not, then, in God?"

"All necessary truths exist first in God. If the point is anecessary truth, it exists first there. "

"Then might I ask you for Euclid's definition of the line?"

"The line is that which has only extension; 'Linea vocatur illa quaesolam longitudinem habet. '" "Can you conceive an infinite straightline?"

"Only as a line which has no end, like the point extended. "

"Supposing we imagine a straight line, like opposite rays of thesun, proceeding in opposite directions to infinity--is it real?"

"It has no reality except in the mind that conceives it. "

"Supposing we divide that line which has no reality into two partsat its origin in the sun or star, shall we get two infinities?--orshall we say, two halves of the infinite?"

"We conceive of each as partaking the quality of infinity. "

"Now, let us cut out the diameter of the sun; or rather--since thisis what our successors in the school will do, --let us take a line ofour earth's longitude which is equally unreal, and measure a degreeof this thing which does not exist, and then divide it into equalparts which we will use as a measure or metre. This metre, which isstill nothing, as I understand you, is infinitely divisible intopoints? and the point itself is infinitely small? Therefore we havethe finite partaking the nature of the infinite?"

"Undoubtedly!"

"One step more, Mr. Abelard, if I do not weary you! Let me takethree of these metres which do not exist, and place them so that theends of one shall touch the ends of the others. May I ask what isthat figure?"

"I presume you mean it to be a triangle. "

"Precisely! and what sort of a triangle?"

"An equilateral triangle, the sides of which measure one metreeach. "

"Now let me take three more of these metres which do not exist, andconstruct another triangle which does not exist;--are these twotriangles or one triangle?"

"They are most certainly one--a single concept of the only possibleequilateral triangle measuring one metre on each face. "

"You told us a moment ago that a universal could not exist whollyand exclusively in two individuals at once. Does not the universalby definition--THE equilateral triangle measuring one metre on eachface--does it not exist wholly, in its integrity of essence, in eachof the two triangles we have conceived?"

"It does--as a conception. "

"I thank you! Now, although I fear wearying you, perhaps you willconsent to let me add matter to mind. I have here on my desk anobject not uncommon in nature, which I will ask you to describe. "

"It appears to be a crystal. "

"May I ask its shape?"

"I should call it a regular octahedron. "

"That is, two pyramids, set base to base? making eight planesurfaces, each a perfect equilateral triangle?"

"Concedo triangula (I grant the triangles). "

"Do you know, perchance, what is this material which seems to givesubstantial existence to these eight triangles?"

"I do not. "

"Nor I! nor does it matter, unless you conceive it to be the work ofman?"

"I do not claim it as man's work. "

"Whose, then?"

"We believe all actual creation of matter, united with form, to bethe work of God. "

"Surely not the substance of God himself? Perhaps you mean that thisform--this octahedron--is a divine concept. "

"I understand such to be the doctrine of the Church. "

"Then it seems that God uses this concept habitually to create thisvery common crystal. One question more, and only one, if you willpermit me to come to the point. Does the matter--the material--ofwhich this crystal is made affect in any way the form--the nature, the soul--of the universal equilateral triangle as you see itbounding these eight plane surfaces?"

"That I do not know, and do not think essential to decide. As far asthese triangles are individual, they are made so by the will of God, and not by the substance you call triangle. The universal--theabstract right angle, or any other abstract form--is only an idea, aconcept, to which reality, individuality, or what we might callenergy is wanting. The only true energy, except man's free will, isGod. "

"Very good, Mr. Abelard! we can now reach our issue. You affirmthat, just as the line does not exist in space, although the eyesees little else in space, so the triangle does not exist in thiscrystal, although the crystal shows eight of them, each perfect. Youare aware that on this line which does not exist, and itscombination in this triangle which does not exist, rests the wholefabric of mathematics with all its necessary truths. In other words, you know that in this line, though it does not exist, is bound upthe truth of the only branch of human knowledge which claimsabsolute certainty for human processes. You admit that this line andtriangle, which are mere figments of our human imagination, not onlyexist independent of us in the crystal, but are, as we suppose, habitually and invariably used by God Himself to give form to thematter contained within the planes of the crystal. Yet to this lineand triangle you deny reality. To mathematical truth, you denycompulsive force. You hold that an equilateral triangle may, to youand all other human individuals, be a right-angled triangle if youchoose to imagine it so. Allow me to say, without assuming any claimto superior knowledge, that to me your logic results in a differentconclusion. If you are compelled, at one point or another of thechain of being, to deny existence to a substance, surely it shouldbe to the last and feeblest. I see nothing to hinder you fromdenying your own existence, which is, in fact, impossible todemonstrate. Certainly you are free, in logic, to argue thatSocrates and Plato are mere names--that men and matter are phantomsand dreams. No one ever has proved or ever can prove the contrary, Infallibly, a great philosophical school will some day be founded onthat assumption. I venture even to recommend it to your acute andsceptical mind; but I cannot conceive how, by any process ofreasoning, sensual or supersensual, you can reach the conclusionthat the single form of truth which instantly and inexorably compelsour submission to its laws--is nothing. "

Thus far, all was familiar ground; certainly at least as familiar asthe Pons Asinorum; and neither of the two champions had need to feelruffled in temper by the discussion. The real struggle began only atthis point; for until this point was reached, both positions wereabout equally tenable. Abelard had hitherto rested quietly on thedefensive, but William's last thrust obliged him to strike in histurn, and he drew himself up for what, five hundred years later, wascalled the "Coup de Jarnac":--

"I do not deny, " he begins; "on the contrary, I affirm that theuniversal, whether we call it humanity, or equilateral triangle, hasa sort of reality as a concept; that it is something; even asubstance, if you insist upon it. Undoubtedly the sum of allindividual men results in the concept of humanity. What I deny isthat the concept results in the individual. You have correctlystated the essence of the point and the line as sources of ourconcept of the infinite; what I deny is that they are divisions ofthe infinite. Universals cannot be divided; what is capable ofdivision cannot be a universal. I admit the force of your analogy inthe case of the crystal; but I am obliged to point out to you that, if you insist on this analogy, you will bring yourself and me intoflagrant contradiction with the fixed foundations of the Church. Ifthe energy of the triangle gives form to the crystal, and the energyof the line gives reality to the triangle, and the energy of theinfinite gives substance to the line, all energy at last becomesidentical with the ultimate substance, God Himself. Socrates becomesGod in small; Judas is identical with both; humanity is of thedivine essence, and exists, wholly and undivided, in each of us. Theequilateral triangle we call humanity exists, therefore, entire, identical, in you and me, as a subdivision of the infinite line, space, energy, or substance, which is God. I need not remind youthat this is pantheism, and that if God is the only energy, humanfree will merges in God's free will; the Church ceases to have areason for existence; man cannot be held responsible for his ownacts, either to the Church or to the State; and finally, though veryunwillingly, I must, in regard for my own safety, bring the subjectto the attention of the Archbishop, which, as you know better thanI, will lead to your seclusion, or worse. "

Whether Abelard used these precise words is nothing to the point. The words he left on record were equivalent to these. As translatedby M. De Remusat from a manuscript entitled: "Glossulae magistriPetri Baelardi super Porphyrium, " the phrase runs: "A grave heresyis at the end of this doctrine; for, according to it, the divinesubstance which is recognized as admitting of no form, isnecessarily identical with every substance in particular and withall substance in general. " Even had he not stated the heresy sobluntly, his objection necessarily pushed William in face of it. Realism, when pressed, always led to pantheism. William of Champeauxand Bishop or Archbishop Hildebert were personal friends, andHildebert's divine substance left no more room for human free willthan Abelard saw in the geometric analogy imagined for William. Throughout the history of the Church for fifteen hundred years, whenever this theological point has been pressed against churchmenit has reduced them to evasion or to apology. Admittedly, the weakpoint of realism was its fatally pantheistic term. 

Of course, William consulted his friends in the Church, probablyArchbishop Hildebert among the rest, before deciding whether tomaintain or to abandon his ground, and the result showed that he wasguided by their advice. Realism was the Roman arch--the onlypossible foundation for any Church; because it assumed unity, andany other scheme was compelled to prove it, for a starting-point. Let us see, for a moment, what became of the dialogue, when pushedinto theology, in order to reach some of the reasons which reducedWilliam to tacit abandonment of a doctrine he could never havesurrendered unless under compulsion. That he was angry is sure, forAbelard, by thus thrusting theology into dialectics, had struck hima full blow; and William knew Abelard well:--

"Ah!" he would have rejoined; "you are quick, M. Du Pallet, to turnwhat I offered as an analogy, into an argument of heresy against myperson. You are at liberty to take that course if you choose, thoughI give you fair warning that it will lead you far. But now I mustask you still another question. This concept that you talk about--this image in the mind of man, of God, of matter; for I know notwhere to seek it--whether is it a reality or not?"

"I hold it as, in a manner, real. "

"I want a categorical answer--Yes or No!"

"Distinguo! (I must qualify. )"

"I will have no qualifications. A substance either is, or not. Choose!"

To this challenge Abelard had the choice of answering Yes, or ofanswering no, or of refusing to answer at all. He seems to have donethe last; but we suppose him to have accepted the wager of battle, and to answer:--

"Yes, then!"

"Good!" William rejoins; "now let us see how your pantheism differsfrom mine. My triangle exists as a reality, or what science willcall an energy, outside my mind, in God, and is impressed on my mindas it is on a mirror, like the triangle on the crystal, its energygiving form. Your triangle you say is also an energy, but an essenceof my mind itself; you thrust it into the mind as an integral partof the mirror; identically the same concept, energy, or necessarytruth which is inherent in God. Whatever subterfuge you may resortto, sooner or later you have got to agree that your mind isidentical with God's nature as far as that concept is concerned. Your pantheism goes further than mine. As a doctrine of the RealPresence peculiar to yourself, I can commend it to the Archbishoptogether with your delation of me. "

Supposing that Abelard took the opposite course, and answered:--

"No! my concept is a mere sign. "

"A sign of what, in God's name!"

"A sound! a word! a symbol! an echo only of my ignorance. "

"Nothing, then! So truth and virtue and charity do not exist at all. You suppose yourself to exist, but you have no means of knowing God;therefore, to you God does not exist except as an echo of yourignorance; and, what concerns you most, the Church does not existexcept as your concept of certain individuals, whom you cannotregard as a unity, and who suppose themselves to believe in aTrinity which exists only as a sound, or a symbol. I will not repeatyour words, M. Du Pallet, outside this cloister, because theconsequences to you would certainly be fatal; but it is only tooclear that you are a materialist, and as such your fate must bedecided by a Church Council, unless you prefer the stake by judgmentof a secular court. "

In truth, pure nominalism--if, indeed, any one ever maintained it--afforded no cover whatever. Nor did Abelard's concept help thematter, although for want of a better refuge, the Church was oftendriven into it. Conceptualism was a device, like the false woodenroof, to cover and conceal an inherent weakness of construction. Unity either is, or is not. If soldiers, no matter in what number, can never make an army, and worshippers, though in millions, do notmake a Church, and all humanity united would not necessarilyconstitute a State, equally little can their concepts, individual orunited, constitute the one or the other. Army, Church, and State, each is an organic whole, complex beyond all possible addition ofunits, and not a concept at all, but rather an animal that thinks, creates, devours, and destroys. The attempt to bridge the chasmbetween multiplicity and unity is the oldest problem of philosophy, religion, and science, but the flimsiest bridge of all is the humanconcept, unless somewhere, within or beyond it, an energy notindividual is hidden; and in that case the old question instantlyreappears: What is that energy?

Abelard would have done well to leave William alone, but Abelard wasan adventurer, and William was a churchman. To win a victory over achurchman is not very difficult for an adventurer, and is always atempting amusement, because the ambition of churchmen to shine inworldly contests is disciplined and checked by the broader interestsof the Church: but the victory is usually sterile, and rarely harmsthe churchman. The Church cares for its own. Probably the bishopsadvised William not to insist on his doctrine, although every bishopmay have held the same view. William allowed himself to be silencedwithout a judgment, and in that respect stands almost if not quitealone among schoolmen. The students divined that he had sold himselfto the Church, and consequently deserted him. Very soon he receivedhis reward in the shape of the highest dignity open to privateambition--a bishopric. As Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne he made forhimself a great reputation, which does not concern us, although itdeeply concerned the unfortunate Abelard, for it happened, either bychance or design, that within a year or two after Williamestablished himself at Chalons, young Bernard of Citeaux chose aneighbouring diocese in which to establish a branch of theCistercian Order, and Bishop William took so keen an interest in thesuccess of Bernard as almost to claim equal credit for it. Clairvauxwas, in a manner, William's creation, although not in his diocese, and yet, if there was a priest in all France who fervently despisedthe schools, it was young Bernard. William of Champeaux, the chiefof schoolmen, could never have gained Bernard's affections. BishopWilliam of Chalons must have drifted far from dialectics intomysticism in order to win the support of Clairvaux, and train up anew army of allies who were to mark Abelard for an easy prey. 

Meanwhile Abelard pursued his course of triumph in the schools, andin due time turned from dialectics to theology, as every ambitiousteacher could hardly fail to do. His affair with Heloise and theirmarriage seem to have occupied his time in 1117 or 1118, for theyboth retired into religious orders in 1119, and he resumed hislectures in 1120. With his passion for rule, he was fatally certainto attempt ruling the Church as he ruled the schools; and, as it wasalways enough for him that any point should be tender in order thathe should press upon it, he instantly and instinctively seized onthe most sensitive nerve of the Church system to wrench it into hisservice. He became a sort of apostle of the Holy Ghost. 

That the Trinity is a mystery was a law of theology so absolute asin a degree to hide the law of philosophy that the Trinity was meantas a solution of a greater mystery still. In truth, as a matter ofphilosophy, the Trinity was intended to explain the eternal andprimary problem of the process by which unity could producediversity. Starting from unity alone, philosophers found themselvesunable to stir hand or foot until they could account for duality. Tothe common, ignorant peasant, no such trouble occurred, for he knewthe Trinity in its simpler form as the first condition of life, liketime and space and force. No human being was so stupid as not tounderstand that the father, mother, and child made a trinity, returning into each other, and although every father, every mother, and every child, from the dawn of man's intelligence, had asked why, and had never received an answer more intelligible to them than tophilosophers, they never showed difficulty in accepting that trinityas a fact. They might even, in their beneficent blindness, ask theChurch why that trinity, which had satisfied the Egyptians for fiveor ten-thousand years, was not good enough for churchmen. Theythemselves were doing their utmost, though unconsciously, toidentify the Holy Ghost with the Mother, while philosophy insistedon excluding the human symbol precisely because it was human and ledback to an infinite series. Philosophy required three units to startfrom; it posed the equilateral triangle, not the straight line, asthe foundation of its deometry. The first straight line, infinite inextension, must be assumed, and its reflection engendered thesecond, but whence came the third? Under protest, philosophy wascompelled to accept the symbol of Father and Son as a matter offaith, but, if the relation of Father and Son were accepted for thetwo units which reflected each other, what relation expressed theHoly Ghost? In philosophy, the product of two units was not a thirdunit, but diversity, multiplicity, infinity. The subject was, forthat reason, better handled by the Arabs, whose reasoning workedback on the Christian theologists and made the point more delicatestill. Common people, like women and children and ourselves, couldnever understand the Trinity; naturally, intelligent peopleunderstood it still less, but for them it did not matter; they didnot need to understand it provided their neighbours would leave italone. 

The mass of mankind wanted something nearer to them than either theFather or the Son; they wanted the Mother, and the Church tried, inwhat seems to women and children and ourselves rather a feeble way, to give the Holy Ghost, as far as possible, the Mother's attributes--Love, Charity, Grace; but in spite of conscientious effort andunswerving faith, the Holy Ghost remained to the mass of Frenchmensomewhat apart, feared rather than loved. The sin against the HolyGhost was a haunting spectre, for no one knew what else it was. 

Naturally the Church, and especially its official theologists, tookan instinctive attitude of defence whenever a question on thissubject was asked, and were thrown into a flutter of irritationwhenever an answer was suggested. No man likes to have hisintelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubtsabout it himself. The distinguishing essence of the Holy Ghost, as atheological substance, was its mystery. That this mystery should betouched at all was annoying to every one who knew the dangers thatlurked behind the veil, but that it should be freely handled beforeaudiences of laymen by persons of doubtful character was impossible. Such license must end in discrediting the whole Trinity underpretence of making it intelligible. 

Precisely this license was what Abelard took, and on it he chose toinsist. He said nothing heretical; he treated the Holy Ghost withalmost exaggerated respect, as though other churchmen did not quiteappreciate its merits; but he would not let it alone, and the Churchdreaded every moment lest, with his enormous influence in theschools, he should raise a new storm by his notorious indiscretion. Yet so long as he merely lectured, he was not molested; only when hebegan to publish his theology did the Church interfere. Then acouncil held at Soissons in 1121 abruptly condemned his book inblock, without reading it, without specifying its errors, andwithout hearing his defence; obliged him to throw the manuscriptinto the fire with his own hands, and finally shut him up in amonastery. 

He had invited the jurisdiction by taking orders, but even theChurch was shocked by the summary nature of the judgment, whichseems to have been quite irregular. In fact, the Church has neverknown what it was that the council condemned. The latest great workon the Trinity, by the Jesuit Father de Regnon, suggests thatAbelard's fault was in applying to the Trinity his theory ofconcepts. 

"Yes!" he says; "the mystery is explained; the key of conceptualismhas opened the tabernacle, and Saint Bernard was right in sayingthat, thanks to Abelard, every one can penetrate it and contemplateit at his ease; 'even the graceless, even the uncircumcised. ' Yes!the Trinity is explained, but after the manner of the Sabellians. For to identify the Persons in the terms of human concepts is, inthe same stroke, to destroy their 'subsistances propres. '"

Although the Saviour seems to have felt no compunctions aboutidentifying the persons of the Trinity in the terms of humanconcepts, it is clear that tourists and heretics had best leave theChurch to deal with its "subsistances propres, " and with its ownmembers, in its own way. In sum, the Church preferred to stand firmon the Roman arch, and the architects seem now inclined to think itwas right; that scholastic science and the pointed arch proved to befailures. In the twelfth century the world may have been rough, butit was not stupid. The Council of Soissons was held while thearchitects and sculptors were building the west porch of Chartresand the Aquilon at Mont-Saint-Michel. Averroes was born at Cordovain 1126; Omar Khayyam died at Naishapur in 1123. Poetry andmetaphysics owned the world, and their quarrel with theology was aprivate, family dispute. Very soon the tide turned decisively inAbelard's favour. Suger, a political prelate, became minister of theKing, and in March, 1122, Abbot of Saint-Denis. In both capacitieshe took the part of Abelard, released him from restraint, and evenrestored to him liberty of instruction, at least beyond thejurisdiction of the Bishop of Paris. Abelard then took a line ofconduct singularly parallel with that of Bernard. Quitting civilizedlife he turned wholly to religion. "When the agreement, " he said, "had been executed by both parties to it, in presence of the Kingand his ministers, I next retired within the territory of Troyes, upon a desert spot which I knew, and on a piece of ground given meby certain persons, I built, with the consent of the bishop of thediocese, a sort of oratory of reeds and thatch, which I placed underthe invocation of the Holy Trinity . . . Founded at first in the nameof the Holy Trinity, then placed under its invocation, it was called'Paraclete' in memory of my having come there as a fugitive and inmy despair having found some repose in the consolations of divinegrace. This denomination was received by many with greatastonishment, and some attacked it with violence under pretext thatit was not permitted to consecrate a church specially to the HolyGhost any more than to God the Father, but that, according toancient usage, it must be dedicated either to the Son alone or tothe Trinity. "

The spot is still called Paraclete, near Nogent-sur-Seine, in theparish of Quincey about halfway between Fontainebleau and Troyes. The name Paraclete as applied to the Holy Ghost meant the Consoler, the Comforter, the Spirit of Love and Grace; as applied to theoratory by Abelard it meant a renewal of his challenge totheologists, a separation of the Persons in the Trinity, avulgarization of the mystery; and, as his story frankly says, it wasso received by many. The spot was not so remote but that hisscholars could follow him, and he invited them to do so. They camein great numbers, and he lectured to them. "In body I was hidden inthis spot; but my renown overran the whole world and filled it withmy word. " Undoubtedly Abelard taught theology, and, in defiance ofthe council that had condemned him, attempted to define the personsof the Trinity. For this purpose he had fallen on a spot only fiftyor sixty miles from Clairvaux where Bernard was inspiring a contraryspirit of religion; he placed himself on the direct line betweenClairvaux and its source at Citeaux near Dijon; indeed, if he hadsought for a spot as central as possible to the active movement ofthe Church and the time, he could have hit on none more convenientand conspicuous unless it were the city of Troyes itself, thecapital of Champagne, some thirty miles away. The proof that hemeant to be aggressive is furnished by his own account of theconsequences. Two rivals, he says, one of whom seems to have beenBernard of Clairvaux, took the field against him, "and succeeded inexciting the hostility of certain ecclesiastical and secularauthorities, by charging monstrous things, not only against myfaith, but also against my manner of life, to such a point as todetach from me some of my principal friends; even those whopreserved some affection for me dared no longer display it, forfear. God is my witness that I never heard of the union of anecclesiastical assembly without thinking that its object was mycondemnation. " The Church had good reason, for Abelard's conductdefied discipline; but far from showing harshness, the Church thistime showed a true spirit of conciliation most creditable toBernard. Deeply as the Cistercians disliked and distrusted Abelard, they did not violently suppress him, but tacitly consented to letthe authorities buy his silence with Church patronage. 

The transaction passed through Suger's hands, and offered anordinary example of political customs as old as history. An abbey inBrittany became vacant; at a hint from the Duke Conan, which maywell be supposed to have been suggested from Paris, the monks choseAbelard as their new abbot, and sent some of their number to Sugerto request permission for Abelard, who was a monk of Saint-Denis, tobecome Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, near Vannes, in Brittany. Suger probably intimated to Abelard, with a certain degree ofauthority, that he had better accept. Abelard, "struck with terror, and as it were under the menace of a thunderbolt, " accepted. Ofcourse the dignity was in effect banishment and worse, and was sounderstood on all sides. The Abbaye-de-Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, thoughless isolated than Mont-Saint-Michel, was not an agreeable winterresidence. Though situated in Abelard's native province of Brittany, only sixty or eighty miles from his birthplace, it was for him aprison with the ocean around it and a singularly wild people to dealwith; but he could have endured his lot with contentment, had notdiscipline or fear or pledge compelled him to hold his tongue. From1125, when he was sent to Brittany until 1135 when he reappeared inParis, he never opened his mouth to lecture. "Never, as God is mywitness, --never would I have acquiesced in such an offer, had it notbeen to escape, no matter how, from the vexations with which I wasincessantly overwhelmed. "

A great career in the Church was thus opened for him against hiswill, and if he did not die an archbishop it was not wholly thefault of the Church. Already he was a great prelate, the equal inrank of the Abbe Suger, himself, of Saint-Denis; of Peter theVenerable of Cluny; of Bernard of Clairvaux. He was in a manner apeer of the realm. Almost immediately he felt the advantages of thechange. Barely two years passed when, in 1127, the Abbe Suger, inreforming his subordinate Abbey of Argenteuil, was obliged todisturb Heloise, then a sister in that congregation. Abelard waswarned of the necessity that his wife should be protected, and withthe assistance of everyone concerned, he was allowed to establishhis wife at the Paraclete as head of a religious sisterhood. "Ireturned there; I invited Heloise to come there with the nuns of hercommunity; and when they arrived, I made them the entire donation ofthe oratory and its dependencies . . . The bishops cherished her astheir daughter; the abbots as their sister; the laymen as theirmother. " This was merely the beginning of her favour and of his. Forten years they were both of them petted children of the Church. 

The formal establishment of Heloise at the Paraclete took place in1129. In February, 1130, on the death of the Pope at Rome, a schismbroke out, and the cardinals elected two popes, one of whom took thename of Innocent II, and appealed for support to France. Suger saw agreat political opportunity and used it. The heads of the FrenchChurch agreed in supporting Innocent, and the King summoned a Churchcouncil at Etampes to declare its adhesion. The council met in thelate summer; Bernard of Clairvaux took the lead; Peter theVenerable, Suger of Saint-Denis, and the Abbot of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys supported him; Innocent himself took refuge at Cluny inOctober, and on January 20, 1131, he stopped at the BenedictineAbbey of Morigny. The Chronicle of the monastery, recording theabbots present on this occasion, --the Abbot of Morigny itself, ofFeversham; of Saint-Lucien of Beauvais, and so forth, --addedespecially: "Bernard of Clairvaux, who was then the most famouspulpit orator in France; and Peter Abelard, Abbot of Saint-Gildas, also a monk and the most eminent master of the schools to which thescholars of almost all the Latin races flowed. "

Innocent needed popular support; Bernard and Abelard were the twoleaders of popular opinion in France. To attach them, Innocent couldrefuse nothing. Probably Abelard remained with Innocent, but in anycase Innocent gave him, at Auxerre, in the following November, adiploma, granting to Heloise, prioress of the Oratory of the HolyTrinity, all rights of property over whatever she might possess, against all assailants; which proves Abelard's favour. At this timehe seems to have taken great interest in the new sisterhood. "I madethem more frequent visits, " he said, "in order to work for theirbenefit. " He worked so earnestly for their benefit that hescandalized the neighbourhood and had to argue at unnecessary lengthhis innocence of evil. He went so far as to express a wish to takerefuge among them and to abandon his abbey in Brittany. He professedto stand in terror of his monks; he excommunicated them; they paidno attention to him; he appealed to the Pope, his friend, andInnocent sent a special legate to enforce their submission "inpresence of the Count and the Bishops. "

Even since that, they would not keep quiet. And quite recently, since the expulsion of those of whom I have spoken, when I returnedto the abbey, abandoning myself to the rest of the brothers whoinspired me with less distrust, I found them even worse than theothers. It was no longer a question of poison; it was the daggerthat they now sharpened against my breast. I had great difficulty inescaping from them under the guidance of one of the neighbouringlords. Similar perils menace me still and every day I see the swordraised over my head. Even at table I can hardly breathe . . . This isthe torture that I endure every moment of the day; I, a poor monk, raised to the prelacy, becoming more miserable in becoming moregreat, that by my example the ambitious may learn to curb theirgreed. 

With this, the "Story of Calamity" ends. The allusions to InnocentII seem to prove that it was written not earlier than 1132; theconfession of constant and abject personal fear suggests that it waswritten under the shock caused by the atrocious murder of the Priorof Saint-Victor by the nephews of the Archdeacon of Paris, who hadalso been subjected to reforms. This murder was committed a fewmiles outside of the walls of Paris, on August 20, 1133. The "Storyof Calamity" is evidently a long plea for release from therestraints imposed on its author by his position in the prelacy andthe tacit, or possibly the express, contract he had made, or towhich he had submitted, in 1125. This plea was obviously written inorder to serve one of two purposes:--either to be placed before theauthorities whose consent alone could relieve Abelard from hisrestraints; or to justify him in throwing off the load of theChurch, and resuming the profession of schoolman. Supposing thesecond explanation, the date of the paper would be more or lessclosely fixed by John of Salisbury, who coming to Paris as astudent, in 1136, found Abelard lecturing on the Mont-Sainte-Genevieve; that is to say, not under the license of the Bishop ofParis or his Chancellor, but independently, in a private school ofhis own, outside the walls. "I attached myself to the PalatinePeripatician who then presided on the hill of Sainte-Genevieve, thedoctor illustrious, admired by all. There, at his feet, I receivedthe first elements of the dialectic art, and according to themeasure of my poor understanding I received with all the avidity ofmy soul everything that came from his mouth. "

This explanation is hardly reasonable, for no prelate who was notalso a temporal lord would have dared throw off his official dutieswithout permission from his superiors. In Abelard's case the onlysuperior to whom he could apply, as Abbot of Saint-Gildas inBrittany, was probably the Pope himself. In the year 1135 the momentwas exceedingly favourable for asking privileges. Innocent, drivenfrom Rome a second time, had summoned a council at Pisa for May 30to help him. Louis-le-Gros and his minister Suger gave at first nosupport to this council, and were overruled by Bernard of Clairvauxwho in a manner drove them into giving the French clergy permissionto attend. The principal archbishops, a number of bishops, andsixteen abbots went to Pisa in May, 1135, and some one of themcertainly asked Innocent for favours on behalf of Abelard, which thePope granted. 

The proof is a papal bull, dated in 1136, in favour of Heloise, giving her the rank and title of Abbess, accompanied by anothergiving to the Oratory of the Holy Trinity the rank and name ofMonastery of the Paraclete, a novelty in Church tradition soextraordinary or so shocking that it still astounds churchmen. Withthis excessive mark of favour Innocent could have felt littledifficulty in giving Abelard the permission to absent himself fromhis abbey, and with this permission in his hands Abelard might havelectured on dialectics to John of Salisbury in the summer or autumnof 1136. He did not, as far as known, resume lectures on theology. 

Such success might have turned heads much better balanced than thatof Abelard. With the support of the Pope and at least one of themost prominent cardinals, and with relations at court with theministers of Louis-le-Gros, Abelard seemed to himself as strong asBernard of Clairvaux, and a more popular champion of reform. Theyear 1137, which has marked a date for so many great points in ourtravels, marked also the moment of Abelard's greatest vogue. Thevictory of Aristotle and the pointed arch seemed assured when Sugereffected the marriage of the young Prince Louis to the heiressEleanor of Guienne. The exact moment was stamped on the facade ofhis exquisite creation, the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, finished in1140 and still in part erect. From Saint-Denis to Saint-Sulpice wasbut a step. Louis-le-Grand seems to stand close in succession toLouis-le-Gros. 

Fortunately for tourists, the world, restless though it might be, could not hurry, and Abelard was to know of the pointed arch verylittle except its restlessness. Just at the apex of his triumph, August 1, 1137, Louis-le-Gros died. Six months afterwards the anti-pope also died, the schism ended, and Innocent II needed Abelard'shelp no more. Bernard of Clairvaux became Pope and King at once. Both Innocent and Louis-le-Jeune were in a manner his personalcreations. The King's brother Henry, next in succession, actuallybecame a monk at Clairvaux not long afterwards. Even thearchitecture told the same story, for at Saint-Denis, though thearch might simulate a point, the old Romanesque lines still assertas firmly as ever their spiritual control. The fleche that gave thefacade a new spirit was not added until 1215, which marks Abelard'serror in terms of time. 

Once arrived at power, Bernard made short work of all that tried toresist him. During 1139 he seems to have been too busy or too ill totake up the affair of Abelard, but in March, 1140, the attack wasopened in a formal letter from William of Saint-Thierry, who wasBernard's closest friend, bringing charges against Abelard beforeBernard and the Bishop of Chartres. The charges were simple enough:--

Pierre Abelard seized the moment, when all the masters ofecclesiastical doctrine have disappeared from the scene of theworld, to conquer a place apart, for himself, in the schools, and tocreate there an exclusive domination. He treats Holy Scripture asthough it were dialectics. It is a matter with him of personalinvention and annual novelties. He is the censor and not thedisciple of the faith; the corrector and not the imitator of theauthorized masters. 

In substance, this is all. The need of action was even simpler. Abelard's novelties were becoming a danger; they affected not onlythe schools, but also even the Curia at Rome. Bernard must actbecause there was no one else to act: "This man fears you; he dreadsyou! if you shut your eyes, whom will he fear? . . . The evil hasbecome too public to allow a correction limited to amicablediscipline and secret warning. " In fact, Abelard's works were flyingabout Europe in every direction, and every year produced a novelty. One can still read them in M. Cousin's collected edition; amongothers, a volume on ethics: "Ethica, seu Scito teipsum"; on theologyin general, an epitome; a "Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum etChristianum"; and, what was perhaps the most alarming of all, anabstract of quotations from standard authorities, on the principleof the parallel column, showing the fatal contradictions of theauthorized masters, and entitled "Sic et Non"! Not one of theseworks but dealt with sacred matters in a spirit implying that theEssence of God was better understood by Pierre du Pallet than by thewhole array of bishops and prelates in Europe! Had Bernard beenfortunate enough to light upon the "Story of Calamity, " which mustalso have been in existence, he would have found there Abelard's ownchildlike avowal that he taught theology because his scholars "saidthat they did not want mere words; that one can believe only whatone understands; and that it is ridiculous to preach to others whatone understands no better than they do. " Bernard himself nevercharged Abelard with any presumption equal to this. Bernard saidonly that "he sees nothing as an enigma, nothing as in a mirror, butlooks on everything face to face. " If this had been all, evenBernard could scarcely have complained. For several thousand yearsmankind has stared Infinity in the face without pretending to be thewiser; the pretension of Abelard was that, by his dialectic method, he could explain the Infinite, while all other theologists talkedmere words; and by way of proving that he had got to the bottom ofthe matter, he laid down the ultimate law of the universe as hisstarting-point: "All that God does, " he said, "He wills necessarilyand does it necessarily; for His goodness is such that it pushes Himnecessarily to do all the good He can, and the best He can, and thequickest He can . . . Therefore it is of necessity that God willed andmade the world. " Pure logic admitted no contingency; it was bound tobe necessitarian or ceased to be logical; but the result, as Bernardunderstood it, was that Abelard's world, being the best and onlypossible, need trouble itself no more about God, or Church, or man. 

Strange as the paradox seems, Saint Bernard and Lord Bacon, thoughlooking at the world from opposite standpoints, agreed in this: thatthe scholastic method was false and mischievous, and that the longerit was followed, the greater was its mischief. Bernard thought thatbecause dialectics led wrong, therefore faith led right. He saw noalternative, and perhaps in fact there was none. If he had lived acentury later, he would have said to Thomas Aquinas what he said toa schoolman of his own day: "If you had once tasted true food, "--ifyou knew what true religion is, --"how quick you would leave thoseJew makers of books (literatoribus judaeis) to gnaw their crusts bythemselves!" Locke or Hume might perhaps still have resented alittle the "literator judaeus, " but Faraday or Clerk-Maxwell wouldhave expressed the same opinion with only the change of a word: "Ifthe twelfth century had once tasted true science, how quick theywould have dropped Avicenna and Averroes!" Science admits thatBernard's disbelief in scholasticism was well founded, whatever itmay think of his reasons. The only point that remains is personal:Which is the more sympathetic, Bernard or Abelard?

The Church feels no doubt, but is a bad witness. Bernard is not acharacter to be taken or rejected in a lump. He was many-sided, andeven toward Abelard he showed more than one surface. He wanted nounnecessary scandals in the Church; he had too many that were not ofhis seeking. He seems to have gone through the forms of friendlynegotiation with Abelard although he could have required nothingless than Abelard's submission and return to Brittany, and silence;terms which Abelard thought worse than death. On Abelard's refusal, Bernard began his attack. We know, from the "Story of Calamity, "what Bernard's party could not have certainly known then, --theabject terror into which the very thought of a council had fortwenty years thrown Abelard whenever he was threatened with it; andin 1140 he saw it to be inevitable. He preferred to face it withdignity, and requested to be heard at a council to meet at Sens inJune. One cannot admit that he felt the shadow of a hope to escape. At the utmost he could have dreamed of nothing more than a hearing. Bernard's friends, who had a lively fear of his dialectics, tookcare to shut the door on even this hope. The council was carefullypacked and overawed. The King was present; archbishops, bishops, abbots, and other prelates by the score; Bernard acted in person asthe prosecuting attorney; the public outside were stimulated tothreaten violence. Abelard had less chance of a judicial hearingthan he had had at Soissons twenty years before. He acted with aproper sense of their dignity and his own by simply appearing andentering an appeal to Rome. The council paid no attention to theappeal, but passed to an immediate condemnation. His friends saidthat it was done after dinner; that when the volume of Abelard's"Theology" was produced and the clerk began to read it aloud, afterthe first few sentences the bishops ceased attention, talked, joked, laughed, stamped their feet, got angry, and at last went to sleep. They were waked only to growl "Damnamus--namus, " and so made an end. The story may be true, for all prelates, even in the twelfthcentury, were not Bernards of Clairvaux or Peters of Cluny; alldrank wine, and all were probably sleepy after dinner; whileAbelard's writings are, for the most part, exceedingly hard reading. The clergy knew quite well what they were doing; the judgment wascertain long in advance, and the council was called only to registerit. Political trials were usually mere forms. 

The appeal to Rome seems to have been taken seriously by Bernard, which is surprising unless the character of Innocent II inspired hisfriends with doubts unknown to us. Innocent owed everything toBernard, while Abelard owed everything to Innocent. The Pope was notin a position to alienate the French Church or the French King. Toany one who knows only what is now to be known, Bernard seems tohave been sure of the Curia, yet he wrote in a tone of excitement asthough he feared Abelard's influence there even more than at home. He became abusive; Abelard was a crawling viper (coluber tortuosus)who had come out of his hole (egressus est de caverna sua), andafter the manner of a hydra (in similitudinem hydrae), after havingone head cut off at Soissons, had thrown out seven more. He was amonk without rule; a prelate without responsibility; an abbotwithout discipline; "disputing with boys; conversing with women. "The charges in themselves seem to be literally true, and would notin some later centuries have been thought very serious; neitherfaith nor morals were impugned. On the other hand, Abelard neveraffected or aspired to be a saint, while Bernard always affected tojudge the acts and motives of his fellow-creatures from a standpointof more than worldly charity. Bernard had no right to Abelard'svices; he claimed to be judged by a higher standard; but his temperwas none of the best, and his pride was something of the worst;which gave to Peter the Venerable occasion for turning on himsharply with a rebuke that cut to the bone. "You perform all thedifficult religious duties, " wrote Peter to the saint who wroughtmiracles; "you fast; you watch; you suffer; but you will not endurethe easy ones--you do not love (non vis levia ferre, ut diligas). "

This was the end of Abelard. Of course the Pope confirmed thejudgment, and even hurried to do so in order that he might not beobliged to give Abelard a hearing. The judgment was not severe, asjudgments went; indeed, it amounted to little more than an order tokeep silence, and, as it happened, was never carried into effect. Abelard, at best a nervous invalid, started for Rome, but stopped atCluny, perhaps the most agreeable stopping-place in Europe. Personally he seems to have been a favourite of Abbot Peter theVenerable, whose love for Bernard was not much stronger thanAbelard's or Suger's. Bernard was an excessively sharp critic, andspared worldliness, or what he thought lack of spirituality, in noprelate whatever; Clairvaux existed for nothing else, politically, than as a rebuke to them all, and Bernard's enmity was their bond ofunion. Under the protection of Peter the Venerable, the most amiablefigure of the twelfth century, and in the most agreeable residencein Europe, Abelard remained unmolested at Cluny, occupied, as isbelieved, in writing or revising his treatises, in defiance of thecouncil. He died there two years later, April 21, 1142, in fullcommunion, still nominal Abbot of Saint-Gildas, and so distinguisheda prelate that Peter the Venerable thought himself obliged to writea charming letter to Heloise at the Paraclete not far away, condoling with her on the loss of a husband who was the Socrates, the Aristotle, the Plato, of France and the West; who, if amonglogicians he had rivals, had no master; who was the prince of study, learned, eloquent, subtle, penetrating; who overcame everything bythe force of reason, and was never so great as when he passed totrue philosophy, that of Christ. 

All this was in Latin verses, and seems sufficiently strong, considering that Abelard's philosophy had been so recently and soemphatically condemned by the entire Church, including Peter theVenerable himself. The twelfth century had this singular charm ofliberty in practice, just as its architecture knew no mathematicalformula of precision; but Peter's letter to Heloise went furtherstill, and rang with absolute passion:--

Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, he to whom you are united, after your tie in the flesh, by the better and stronger bond of thedivine love; he, with whom, and under whom, you have served theLord, the Lord now takes, in your place, like another you, and warmsin His bosom; and, for the day of His coming, when shall sound thevoice of the archangel and the trumpet of God descending fromheaven, He keeps him to restore him to you by His grace. 

CHAPTER XV

THE MYSTICS

The schoolmen of the twelfth century thought they could reach God byreason; the Council of Sens, guided by Saint Bernard, replied thatthe effort was futile and likely to be mischievous. The council madelittle pretence of knowing or caring what method Abelard followed;they condemned any effort at all on that line; and no sooner hadBernard silenced the Abbot of Saint-Gildas for innovation than heturned about and silenced the Bishop of Poitiers for conservatism. Neither in the twelfth nor in any other century could three men haveunderstood alike the meaning of Gilbert de la Poree, who seems toone high authority unworthy of notice and to another, worthy of anelaborate but quite unintelligible commentary. When M. Rousselet andM. Haureau judge so differently of a voluminous writer, the Councilat Rheims which censured Bishop Gilbert in 1148 can hardly have beenclear in mind. One dare hazard no more than a guess at Gilbert'soffence, but the guess is tolerably safe that he, like Abelard, insisted on discussing and analyzing the Trinity. Gilbert seems tohave been a rigid realist, and he reduced to a correct syllogism theidea of the ultimate substance--God. To make theology a systemcapable of scholastic definition he had to suppose, behind theactive deity, a passive abstraction, or absolute substance withoutattributes; and then the attributes--justice, mercy, and the rest--fell into rank as secondary substances. "Formam dei divinitatemappellant. " Bernard answered him by insisting with his usual fieryconviction that the Church should lay down the law, once for all, and inscribe it with iron and diamond, that Divinity--Divine Wisdom--is God. In philosophy and science the question seems to be stillopen. Whether anything ultimate exists--whether substance is morethan a complex of elements--whether the "thing in itself" is areality or a name--is a question that Faraday and Clerk-Maxwell seemto answer as Bernard did, while Haeckel answers it as Gilbert did;but in theology even a heretic wonders how a doubt was possible. Theabsolute substance behind the attributes seems to be pure Spinoza. 

This supposes that the heretic understands what Gilbert or Haeckelmeant, which is certainly a mistake; but it is possible that he maysee in part what Bernard meant and this is enough if it is all. Abelard's necessitarianism and Gilbert's Spinozism, if Bernardunderstood them right, were equally impossible theology, and theChurch could by no evasion escape the necessity of condemning both. Unfortunately, Bernard could not put his foot down so roughly on theschools without putting it on Aristotle as well; and, for at leastsixty years after the Council of Rheims, Aristotle was eithertacitly or expressly prohibited. 

One cannot stop to explain why Aristotle himself would have beenfirst to forbid the teaching of what was called by his name in theMiddle Ages; but you are bound to remember that this period between1140 and 1200 was that of Transition architecture and art. One mustgo to Noyon, Soissons, and Laon to study the Church that trampled onthe schools; one must recall how the peasants of Normandy and theChartrain were crusading for the Virgin in 1145, and building herfleches at Chartres and Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives while Bernard wascondemning Gilbert at Rheims in 1148; we must go to the poets to seewhat they all meant by it; but the sum is an emotion--clear andstrong as love and much clearer than logic--whose charm lies in itsunstable balance. The Transition is the equilibrium between the loveof God--which is faith--and the logic of God--which is reason;between the round arch and the pointed. One may not be sure whichpleases most, but one need not be harsh toward people who think thatthe moment of balance is exquisite. The last and highest moment isseen at Chartres, where, in 1200, the charm depends on the constantdoubt whether emotion or science is uppermost. At Amiens, doubtceases; emotion is trained in school; Thomas Aquinas reigns. 

Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Aquino were both artists, --verygreat artists, if the Church pleases, --and one need not decide whichwas the greater; but between them is a region of pure emotion--ofpoetry and art--which is more interesting than either. In every ageman has been apt to dream uneasily, rolling from side to side, beating against imaginary bars, unless, tired out, he has sunk intoindifference or scepticism. Religious minds prefer scepticism. Thetrue saint is a profound sceptic; a total disbeliever in humanreason, who has more than once joined hands on this ground with somewho were at best sinners. Bernard was a total disbeliever inscholasticism; so was Voltaire. Bernard brought the society of histime to share his scepticism, but could give the society no otherintellectual amusement to relieve its restlessness. His crusadefailed; his ascetic enthusiasm faded; God came no nearer. If therewas in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical Englishmanof the future Church of England type than John of Salisbury, he hasleft no trace; and John wrote a description of his time which makesa picturesque contrast with the picture painted by Abelard, his oldmaster, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abelard andthe schools against Bernard and the cloister, and coolly concludedthat the way to truth led rather through Citeaux, which brought himto Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. "Iprefer to doubt, " he said, "rather than rashly define what ishidden. " The battle with the schools had then resulted only increating three kinds of sceptics:--the disbelievers in human reason;the passive agnostics; and the sceptics proper, who would have beenatheists had they dared. The first class was represented by theSchool of Saint-Victor; the second by John of Salisbury himself; thethird, by a class of schoolmen whom he called Cornificii, as thoughthey made a practice of inventing horns of dilemma on which to fixtheir opponents; as, for example, they asked whether a pig which wasled to market was led by the man or the cord. One asks instantly:What cord?--whether Grace, for instance, or Free Will?

Bishop John used the science he had learned in the school only toreach the conclusion that, if philosophy were a science at all, itsbest practical use was to teach charity--love. Even the early, superficial debates of the schools, in 1100-50, had so exhausted thesubject that the most intelligent men saw how little was to begained by pursuing further those lines of thought. The twelfthcentury had already reached the point where the seventeenth centurystood when Descartes renewed the attempt to give a solid, philosophical basis for deism by his celebrated "Cogito, ergo sum. "Although that ultimate fact seemed new to Europe when Descartesrevived it as the starting-point of his demonstration, it was as oldand familiar as Saint Augustine to the twelfth century, and aslittle conclusive as any other assumption of the Ego or the Non-Ego. The schools argued, according to their tastes, from unity tomultiplicity, or from multiplicity to unity; but what they wantedwas to connect the two. They tried realism and found that it led topantheism. They tried nominalism and found that it ended inmaterialism. They attempted a compromise in conceptualism whichbegged the whole question. Then they lay down, exhausted. In theseventeenth century the same violent struggle broke out again, andwrung from Pascal the famous outcry of despair in which the Frenchlanguage rose, perhaps for the last time, to the grand style of thetwelfth century. To the twelfth century it belongs; to the centuryof faith and simplicity; not to the mathematical certainties ofDescartes and Leibnitz and Newton, or to the mathematicalabstractions of Spinoza. Descartes had proclaimed his famousconceptual proof of God: "I am conscious of myself, and must exist;I am conscious of God and He must exist. " Pascal wearily repliedthat it was not God he doubted, but logic. He was tortured by theimpossibility of rejecting man's reason by reason; unconsciouslysceptical, he forced himself to disbelieve in himself rather thanadmit a doubt of God. Man had tried to prove God, and had failed:"The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote (eloignees) from thereasoning of men, and so contradictory (impliquees, far-fetched)that they make little impression; and even if they served toconvince some people, it would only be during the instant that theysee the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to have deceivedthemselves. " Moreover, this kind of proof could lead only to aspeculative knowledge, and to know God only in that way was not toknow Him at all. The only way to reach God was to deny the value ofreason, and to deny reason was scepticism:--

En voyant l'aveuglement et la misere de l'homme et ces contrarietesetonnantes qui se decouvrent dans sa nature, et regardant toutl'univers muet, et l'homme sans lumiere, abandonne a lui-meme etcomme egare dans ce recoin de l'umvers, sans savoir qui l'y a mis, ce qu'il y est venu faire, ce qu'il deviendra en mourant, j'entre eneffroi comme un homme qu'on aurait porte endormi dans une iledeserte et effroyable, et qui s'eveillerait sans connaitre ou il estet sans avoir aucun moyen d'en sortir. Et sur cela j'admire commenton n'entre pas en desespoir d'un si miserable etat. Je vois d'autrespersonnes aupres de moi de semblable nature, et je leur demandes'ils sont mieux instruits que moi, et ils me disent que non Et surcela, ces miserables egares, ayant regarde autour d'eux, et ayant vuquelques objets plaisants, s'y sont donnes et s'y sont attaches Pourmoi je n'ai pu m'y arreter ni me reposer dans la societe de cespersonnes, en tout semblables a moi, miserables comme moi, impuissants comme moi. Je vois qu'ils ne m'aideraient pas a mourir, je mourrai seul, il faut donc faire comme si j'etais seul or, sij'etais seul, je ne batirais pas des maisons, je ne m'embarrasseraispoint dans des occupations tumultuaires, je ne chercherais l'estimede personne, mais je tacherais settlement a decouvrir la verite. 

Ainsi, considerant combien il y a d'apparence qu'il y a autre choseque ce que je vois, j'ai recherche si ce Dieu dont tout le mondeparle n'aurait pas laisse quelques marques de lui. Je regarde detoutes parts et ne vois partout qu' obscuritd. La nature ne m'offrerien que ne soit matiere de doute et d'inquietude. Si je n'y voyaisrien qui marquat une divinite, je me determinerais a n'en riencroire. Si je voyais partout les marques d'un Createur, je mereposerais en paix dans la foi. Mais voyant trop pour nier, et troppeu pour m'assurer, je suis dans un etat a plaindre, et ou j'aisouhaite cent fois que si un Dieu soutient la nature, elle lemarquat sans Equivoque; et que, si les marques qu'elle en donne sonttrompeuses, elle les supprimat tout a fait; qu'elle dit tout ourien, afin que je visse quel parti je dois suivre. 

When I see the blindness and misery of man and the astonishingcontradictions revealed in his nature, and observe the wholeuniverse mute, and man without light, abandoned to himself, asthough lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who puthim here, or what he has come here to do, or what will become of himin dying, I feel fear like a man who has been carried when asleepinto a desert and fearful island, and has waked without knowingwhere he is and without having means of rescue. And thereupon Iwonder how man escapes despair at so miserable an estate. I seeothers about me, like myself, and I ask them if they are betterinformed than I, and they tell me no. And then these wretchedwanderers, after looking about them and seeing some pleasant object, have given themselves up and attached themselves to it. As for me Icannot stop there, or rest in the company of these persons, whollylike myself, miserable like me, impotent like me. I see that theywould not help me to die, I shall die alone, I must then act asthough alone, but if I were alone I should not build houses, Ishould not fret myself with bustling occupations, I should seek theesteem of no one, but I should try only to discover the truth. 

So, considering how much appearance there is that something existsother than what I see I have sought whether this God of Whom everyone talks may not have left some marks of Himself. I searcheverywhere, and see only obscurity everywhere. Nature offers menothing but matter of possible doubt and disquiet. If I saw therenothing to mark a divinity, I should make up my mind to believenothing of it. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I shouldrest in peace in faith. But seeing too much to deny, and too littleto affirm, I am in a pitiable state, where I have an hundred timeswishes that, if a God supports nature, she would show it withoutequivocation; and that, if the marks she gives are deceptive, shewould suppress them wholly; that she say all of nothing, that I maysee my path. 

This is the true Prometheus lyric, but when put back in its place itrefuses to rest at Port-Royal which has a right to nothing butprecision; it has but one real home--the Abbaye-de-Saint-Victor. Themind that recoils from itself can only commit a sort of ecstaticsuicide; it must absorb itself in God; and in the bankruptcy oftwelfth-century science the Western Christian seemed actually on thepoint of attainment; he, like Pascal, touched God behind the veil ofscepticism. 

The schools had already proved one or two points which need neverhave been discussed again. In essence, religion was love; in no casewas it logic. Reason can reach nothing except through the senses;God, by essence, cannot be reached through the senses; if He is tobe known at all, He must be known by contact of spirit with spirit, essence with essence; directly; by emotion; by ecstasy; byabsorption of our existence in His; by substitution of his spiritfor ours. The world had no need to wait five hundred years longer inorder to hear this same result reaffirmed by Pascal. Saint Francisof Assisi had affirmed it loudly enough, even if the voice of SaintBernard had been less powerful than it was. The Virgin had assertedit in tones more gentle, but any one may still see how convincing, who stops a moment to feel the emotion that lifted her wonderfulChartres spire up to God. 

The Virgin, indeed, made all easy, for it was little enough shecared for reason or logic. She cared for her baby, a simple matter, which any woman could do and understand. That, and the grace of God, had made her Queen of Heaven. The Trinity had its source in her, --totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium, --and she was maternity. She wasalso poetry and art. In the bankruptcy of reason, she alone wasreal. 

So Guillaume de Champeaux, half a century dead, came to life againin another of his creations. His own Abbey of Saint-Victor, whereAbelard had carried on imaginary disputes with him, became thedominant school. As far as concerns its logic, we had best pass itby. The Victorians needed logic only to drive away logicians, whichwas hardly necessary after Bernard had shut up the schools. As forits mysticism, all training is much alike in idea, whether onefollows the six degrees of contemplation taught by Richard of Saint-Victor, or the eightfold noble way taught by Gautama Buddha. Thetheology of the school was still less important, for the Victorianscontented themselves with orthodoxy only in the sense of caring aslittle for dogma as for dialectics; their thoughts were fixed onhigher emotions. Not Richard the teacher, but Adam the poet, represents the school to us, and when Adam dealt with dogma hefrankly admitted his ignorance and hinted his indifference; he was, as always, conscientious; but he was not always, or often, as cold. His statement of the Trinity is a marvel; but two verses of it areenough:--

Digne loqui de personis Vim transcendit rationis, Excedit ingenia. Quid sit gigni, quid processus, Me nescire sum professus, Sed fide non dubia. 

Qui sic credit, non festinet, Et a via non declinet Insolenter regia. Servet fidem, formet mores, Nec attendat ad errors Quos damnat Ecclesia. 

Of the Trinity to reason Leads to license or to treason Punishment deserving. What is birth and what procession Is not mine to make profession, Save with faith unswerving. 

Thus professing, thus believing, Never insolently leaving The highway of our faith, Duty weighing, law obeying, Never shall we wander straying Where heresy is death. 

Such a school took natural refuge in the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, --Grace and Love, --but the Holy Ghost, as usual, profited by it muchless than the Virgin. Comparatively little of Adam's poetry isexpressly given to the Saint Esprit, and too large a part of thishas a certain flavour of dogma:--

Qui procedis ab utroque Genitore Genitoque Pariter, Paraclite! . . . . . . . . . Amor Patris, Filiique Par amborum et utrique Compar et consimilis!

The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding. 

The whole three Persons are coeternal together; and coequal. 

This sounds like a mere versification of the Creed, yet when Adamceased to be dogmatic and broke into true prayer, his verse added alofty beauty even to the Holy Ghost; a beauty too serious for modernrhyme:--

Oh, juvamen oppressorum, Oh, solamen miserorum, Pauperum refugium, Da contemptum terrenorum! Ad amorem supernorum Trahe desiderium!

Consolator et fundator, Habitator et amator, Cordium humilium, Pelle mala, terge sordes, Et discordes fac Concordes, Et affer praesidium!

Oh, helper of the heavy-laden, Oh, solace of the miserable, Of the poor, the refuge, Give contempt of earthly pleasures! To the love of heavenly treasures Lift our hearts' desire!

Consolation and foundation, Dearest friend and habitation Of the lowly-hearted, Dispel our evil, cleanse our foulness, And our discords turn to concord, And bring us succour!

Adam's scholasticism was the most sympathetic form of mediaevalphilosophy. Even in prose, the greatest writers have not oftensucceeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that infinity canmake itself finite, or that space can make itself bounds, or thateternity can generate time. In verse, Adam did it as easily asthough he were writing any other miracle, --as Gaultier de Coincytold the Virgin's, --and any one who thinks that the task was as easyas it seems, has only to try it and see whether he can render into amodern tongue any single word which shall retain the whole value ofthe word which Adam has chosen:--

Ne periret homo reus Redemptorem misit Deus, Pater unigenitum; Visitavit quos amavit Nosque vitae revocavit Gratia non meritum. 

Infinitus et Immensus, Quem non capit ullus sensus Nec locorum spatia, Ex eterno temporalis, Ex immenso fit localis, Ut restauret omnia. 

To death condemned by awful sentence, God recalled us to repentance, Sending His only Son; Whom He loved He came to cherish; Whom His justice doomed to perish, By grace to life he won. 

Infinity, Immensity, Whom no human eye can see Or human thought contain, Made of infinity a space, Made of Immensity a place, To win us Life again. 

The English verses, compared with the Latin, are poor enough, withthe canting jingle of a cheap religion and a thin philosophy, but bycontrast and comparison they give higher value to the Latin. Onefeels the dignity and religious quality of Adam's chants the betterfor trying to give them an equivalent. One would not care to hazardsuch experiments on poetry of the highest class like that of Danteand Petrarch, but Adam was conventional both in verse and thought, and aimed at obtaining his effects from the skilful use of the Latinsonorities for the purposes of the chant. With dogma and metaphysicshe dealt boldly and even baldly as he was required to do, andsuccessfully as far as concerned the ear or the voice; but poetrywas hardly made for dogma; even the Trinity was better expressedmathematically than by rhythm. With the stronger emotions, such asterror, Adam was still conventional, and showed that he thought ofthe chant more than of the feeling and exaggerated the sound beyondthe value of the sense. He could never have written the "Dies Irae. "He described the shipwreck of the soul in magnificent sounds withoutrousing an emotion of fear; the raging waves and winds that swepthis bark past the abysses and up to the sky were as conventional asthe sirens, the dragons, the dogs, and the pirates that lay in wait. The mast nodded as usual; the sails were rent; the sailors ceasedwork; all the machinery was classical; only the prayer to the Virginsaved the poetry from sinking like the ship; and yet, when chanted, the effect was much too fine to bear translation:--

Ave, Virgo singularis, Mater nostri Salutaris, Quae vocaris Stella Maris, Stella non erratica; Nos in hujus vitae mari Non permitte naufragari, Sed pro nobis Salutari Tuo semper supplica!

Saevit mare, fremunt venti, Fluctus surgunt turbulenti; Navis currit, sed currenti Tot occurrunt obvia! Hic sirenes voluptatis, Draco, canes cum piratis, Mortem pene desperatis Haec intentant omnia. 

Post abyssos, nunc ad coelum Furens unda fert phaselum; Nutat malus, fluit velum, Nautae cessat opera; Contabescit in his malis Homo noster animalis; Tu nos, Mater spiritalis, Pereuntes liberal!

Finer still is the famous stanza sung at Easter, in which Christrises, the Lion of Judah, in the crash of the burst gates of death, at the roar of the Father Lion:--

Sic de Juda, leo fortis, Fractis portis dirae mortis, Die surgens tertia, Rugiente voce patris Ad supernae sinum matris Tot revexit spolia. 

For terror or ferocity or images of pain, the art of the twelfthcentury had no use except to give a higher value to their images oflove. The figures on the west portal of Chartres are alive with thespirit of Adam's poetry, but it is the spirit of the Virgin. LikeSaint Bernard, Adam lavished his affections on Mary, and even morethan Saint Bernard he could claim to be her poet-laureate. Bernardwas not himself author of the hymn "Stella Maris" which brought himthe honour of the Virgin's personal recognition, but Adam was authorof a dozen hymns in which her perfections were told with equalfervour, and which were sung at her festivals. Among these was thefamous

Salve, Mater Pietatis, Et totius Trinitatis Nobile Triclinium!

a compliment so refined and yet so excessive that the VenerableThomas Cantimpratensis who died a century later, about 1280, relatedin his "Apiarium" that when "venerabilis Adam" wrote down theselines, Mary herself appeared to him and bent her head inrecognition. Although the manuscripts do not expressly mention thismiracle, they do contain, at that stanza, a curious note expressingan opinion, apparently authorized by the prior, that, if the Virginhad seen fit to recognize the salutation of the Venerable Adam inthis manner, she would have done only what he merited: "ab earesalutari et regratiari meruit. "

Adam's poems are still on the shelves of most Parisian bookshops, ascommon as "Aucassins" and better known than much poetry of our owntime; for the mediaeval Latin rhymes have a delightful sonority andsimplicity that keep them popular because they were not made to beread but to be sung. One does not forget their swing:--

Infinitus et Immensus;

or--

Oh, juvamen oppressorum;

or--

Consolatrix miserorum Suscitatrix mortuorum. 

The organ rolls through them as solemnly as ever it did in the AbbeyChurch; but in mediaeval art so much more depends on the mass thanon the measure--on the dignity than on the detail--that equivalentsare impossible. Even Walter Scott was content to translate onlythree verses of the "Dies Irae. " At best, Viollet-le-Duc couldreproduce only a sort of modern Gothic; a more or less effaced oraffected echo of a lost emotion which the world never felt but onceand never could feel again. Adam composed a number of hymns to theVirgin, and, in them all, the feeling counts for more, by far, thanthe sense. Supposing we choose the simplest and try to give it amodern version, aiming to show, by comparison, the difference ofsound; one can perhaps manage to recover a little of the simplicity, but give it the grand style one cannot; or, at least, if any one hasever done both, it is Walter Scott, and merely by placing side byside the "Dies Irae" and his translation of it, one can see at aglance where he was obliged to sacrifice simplicity only to obtainsound:--

Dies irae, dies illa, Solvet seclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sibylla. 

Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando judex est venturus, Cuncta stride discussurus!

Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum, Coget omnes ante thronum. 

That day of wrath, that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away, What power shall be the sinner's stay? How shall he meet that dreadful day?

When shrivelling like a parched scroll The flaming heavens together roll; When louder yet and yet more dread Swells the high trump that wakes the dead. 

As translation the last line is artificial. 

The "Dies Irae" does not belong, in spirit, to the twelfth century;it is sombre and gloomy like the Last Judgments on the thirteenth-century portals; it does not love. Adam loved. His verses expressthe Virgin; they are graceful, tender, fervent, and they hold thesame dignity which cannot be translated:--

In hac valle lacrimarum Nihil dulce, nihil carum, Suspecta sunt omnia; Quid hic nobis erit tutum, Cum nec ipsa vel virtutum Tuta sit victoria!

Caro nobis adversatur, Mundus cami suffragatur In nostram perniciem; Hostis instat, nos infestans, Nunc se palam manifestans, Nunc occultans rabiem. 

Et peccamus et punimur, Et diversis irretimur Laqueis venantium. O Maria, mater Dei, Tu, post Deum, summa spei, Tu dulce refugium;

Tot et tantis irretiti, Non valemus his reniti Ne vi nec industria; Consolatrix miserorum, Suscitatrix mortuorum, Mortis rompe retia!

In this valley full of tears, Nothing softens, nothing cheers, All is suspected lure; What safety can we hope for, here, When even virtue faints for fear Her victory be not sure!

Within, the flesh a traitor is, Without, the world encompasses, A deadly wound to bring. The foe is greedy for our spoils, Now clasping us within his coils, Or hiding now his sting. 

We sin, and penalty must pay, And we are caught, like beasts of prey, Within the hunter's snares. Nearest to God! oh Mary Mother! Hope can reach us from none other, Sweet refuge from our cares;

We have no strength to struggle longer, For our bonds are more and stronger Than our hearts can bear! You who rest the heavy-laden, You who lead lost souls to Heaven, Burst the hunter's snare!

The art of this poetry of love and hope, which marked the mystics, lay of course in the background of shadows which marked thecloister. "Inter vania nihil vanius est homine. " Man is animperceptible atom always trying to become one with God. If evermodern science achieves a definition of energy, possibly it mayborrow the figure: Energy is the inherent effort of everymultiplicity to become unity. Adam's poetry was an expression of theeffort to reach absorption through love, not through fear; but to dothis thoroughly he had to make real to himself his own nothingness;most of all, to annihilate pride; for the loftiest soul cancomprehend that an atom, --say, of hydrogen, --which is proud of itspersonality, will never merge in a molecule of water. The familiarverse: "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" echoes Adam'sepitaph to this day:--

Haeres peccati, natura filius irae, Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo. Unde superbit homo, cujus conceptio culpa, Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori?

Heir of sin, by nature son of wrath, Condemned to exile, every man is born. Whence is man's pride, whose conception fault, Birth pain, life labour, and whose death is sure?

Four concluding lines, not by him, express him even better:--

Hic ego qui jaceo, miser et miserabilis Adam, Unam pro summo munere posco precem. Peccavi, fateor; veniam peto; parce fatenti; Parce, pater: fratres, parcite; parce, Deus!

One does not conceive that Adam insisted so passionately on his sinsbecause he thought them--or himself--important before the Infinite. Chemistry does not consider an atom of oxygen as in itselfimportant, yet if it wishes to get a volume of pure gas, it mustseparate the elements. The human soul was an atom that could unitewith God only as a simple element. The French mystics showed intheir mysticism the same French reasonableness; the sense ofmeasure, of logic, of science; the allegiance to form; thetransparency of thought, which the French mind has always shown onits surface like a shell of nacre. The mystics were in substancerather more logical than the schoolmen and much more artistic intheir correctness of line and scale. At bottom, French saints werenot extravagant. One can imagine a Byzantine asserting that noFrench saint was ever quite saintly. Their aims and ideals were veryhigh, but not beyond reaching and not unreasonable. Drag the Frenchmind as far from line and logic as space permits, the instant it isfreed it springs back to the classic and tries to look consequent. 

This paradox, that the French mystics were never mystical, runsthrough all our travels, so obstinately recurring in architecture, sculpture, legend, philosophy, religion, and poetry, that it becomestiresome; and yet it is an idea that, in spite of Matthew Arnold andmany other great critics, never has got lodgment in the English orGerman mind, and probably never will. Every one who loves travelwill hope that it never may. If you are driven to notice it as themost distinctive mark of French art, it is not at all for thepurpose of arguing a doubtful law, but only in order to widen theamusement of travel. We set out to travel from Mont-Saint-Michel toChartres, and no farther; there we stop; but we may still lookacross the boundary to Assisi for a specimen of Italian Gothicarchitecture, a scheme of colour decoration, or still better for amystic to compare with the Bernadines and Victorians. Every one whoknows anything of religion knows that the ideal mystic saint ofwestern Europe was Francis of Assisi, and that Francis, though heloved France, was as far as possible from being French; though notin the least French, he was still the finest flower from the Frenchmediaeval garden; and though the French mystics could never haveunderstood him, he was what the French mystics would have liked tobe or would have thought they liked to be as long as they knew himto be not one of themselves. As an Italian or as a Spaniard, Franciswas in harmony with his world; as a Frenchman, he would have beenout of place even at Clairvaux, and still more among his ownCordeliers at the doors of the Sorbonne. 

Francis was born in 1186, at the instant when French art wasculminating, or about to culminate, in the new cathedrals of Laonand Chartres, on the ruins of scholastic religion and in the fullsummer of the Courts of Love. He died in 1226, just as Queen Blanchebecame Regent of France and when the Cathedral of Beauvais wasplanned. His life precisely covered the most perfect moment of artand feeling in the thousand years of pure and confidentChristianity. To an emotional nature like his, life was still aphantasm or "concept" of crusade against real or imaginary enemiesof God, with the "Chanson de Roland" for a sort of evangel, and afeminine ideal for a passion. He chose for his mistress "dominanostra paupertas, " and the rules of his order of knighthood were asvisionary as those of Saint Bernard were practical. "Isti suntfratres mei milites tabulae rotundae, qui latitant in desertis"; hisKnights of the Round Table hid themselves for their training indeserts of poverty, simplicity, humility, innocence of self, absorption in nature, in the silence of God, and, above all, in loveand joy incarnate, whose only influence was example. Poverty of bodyin itself mattered nothing; what Francis wanted was poverty ofpride, and the external robe or the bare feet were outward andnecessary forms of protection against its outward display. Againstriches or against all external and visible vanity, rules and lawscould be easily enforced if it were worth while, although the puresthumility would be reached only by those who were indifferent andunconscious of their external dress; but against spiritual pride thesoul is defenceless, and of all its forms the subtlest and themeanest is pride of intellect. If "nostra domina paupertas" had amortal enemy, it was not the pride beneath a scarlet robe, but thatin a schoolmaster's ferule, and of all schoolmasters the vainest andmost pretentious was the scholastic philosopher. Satan was logic. Lord Bacon held much the same opinion. "I reject the syllogism, " wasthe starting-point of his teaching as it was the essence of SaintFrancis's, and the reasons of both men were the same though theiraction was opposite. "Let men please themselves as they will inadmiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain:--that, as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to itsown figure and section, so the mind . . . Cannot be trusted . . . "Bacon's first object was the same as that of Francis, to humiliateand if possible destroy the pride of human reason; both of them knewthat this was their most difficult task, and Francis, who wascharity incarnate, lost his self-control whenever he spoke of theschools, and became almost bitter, as though in constant terror of apoison or a cancer. "Praeodorabat etiam tempora non longe ventura inquibus jam praesciebat scientiam inflativam debere esse occasionemruinae. " He foresaw the time not far off when puffed-up sciencewould be the ruin of his "domina paupertas. " His struggle with thisform of human pride was desperate and tragical in its instantfailure. He could not make even his novices understand what hemeant. The most impossible task of the mind is to reject in practicethe reflex action of itself, as Bacon pointed out, and only thehighest training has sometimes partially succeeded in doing it. Theschools--ancient, mediaeval, or modern--have almost equally failed, but even the simple rustics who tried to follow Francis could notsee why the rule of poverty should extend to the use of a psalter. Over and over again he explained vehemently and dramatically as onlyan Italian or a Spaniard could, and still they failed to catch anotion of what he meant. 

 Quum ergo venisset beatus Franciscus ad locum ubi erat illenovitius, dixit ille novitius: "Pater, mihi esset magna consolatiohabere psalterium, sed licet generalis illud mihi concesserit, tamenvellem ipsum habere, pater, de conscientia tua. " Cui beatusFranciscus respondit: "Carolus imperator, Rolandus et Oliverus etomnes palatini et robusti viri qui potentes fuerunt in proelio, prosequendo infideles cum multa sudore et labore usque ad mortem, habuerunt de illis victoriara memorialiter, et ad ultimum ipsisancti martyres sunt mortui pro fide Christi in certamine. Nuncautem multi sunt qui sola narratione eorum quae illi fecerunt voluntrecipere honorem et humanam laudem. Ita et inter nos sunt multi quisolum recitando et praedicando opera quae sancti fecerunt voluntrecipere honorem et laudem; . . . Postquam habueris psalterium, concupisces et volueris habere breviarium; et postquam habuerisbreviarium, sedebis in cathedra tanquam magnus prelatus et dicesfratri tuo:--Apporta mihi breviarium!"

Haec autem dicens beatus Franciscus cum magno fervore spiritusaccepit de cinere et posuit super caput suum, et ducendo manum supercaput suum in circuitu sicut ille qui lavat caput, dicebat: "Egobreviarium! ego breviarium!" et sic reiteravit multoties ducendomanum per caput. Et stupefactus et verecundatus est frater ille . . . Elapsis autem pluribus mensibus quum esset beatus Franciscus apudlocum sanctae Mariae de Portiuncula, juxta cellam post domum in via, praedictus frater iterum locutus est ei de psalterio. Cui beatusFranciscus dixit: "Vade et facias de hoc sicut dicet tibi ministertuus!" Quo audito, frater ille coepit redire per viam unde venerat. Beatus autem Franciscus remanens in via coepit considerare illudquod dixerat illi fratri, et statim clamavit post cum, dicens:"Expecta me, frater! expecta!" Et ivit usque ad eum et ait illi:"Revertere mecum, frater, et ostende mihi locum ubi dixi tibi quodfaceres de psalterio sicut diceret minister tuus. " Quum ergopervenissent ad locum, beatus Franciscus genuflexit coram fratreillo, et dixit: "Mea culpa, frater! mea culpa! quia quicunque vultesse frater Minor non debet habere nisi tunicam, sicut regula sibiconcedit, et cordam et femoralia et qui manifesta necessitatecoguntur calciamenta. "

So when Saint Francis happened to come to the place where the novicewas, the novice said: "Father, it would be a great comfort to me tohave a psalter, but though my general should grant it, still I wouldrather have it, father, with your knowledge too. " Saint Francisanswered: "The Emperor Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver, and all thepalatines and strong men who were potent in battle, pursuing theinfidels with much toil and sweat even to death, triumphed over themmemorably [without writing it?], and at last these holy martyrs diedin the contest for the faith of Christ. But now there are many who, merely by telling of what those men did, want to receive honour andhuman praise. So, too, among us are many who, merely by reciting andpreaching the works which the saints have done, want to receivehonour and praise; . . . After you have got the psalter, you willcovet and want a breviary; and after getting the breviary, you willsit on your throne like a bishop, and will say to your brother:'Bring me the breviary!'"

While saying this, Saint Francis with great vehemence took up ahandful of ashes and spread it over his bead; and moving his handabout his head in a circle as though washing it, said: "I, breviary!I, breviary!" and so kept on, repeatedly moving his hand about hishead; and stupefied and ashamed was that novice. . . . But severalmonths afterwards when Saint Francis happened to be near Sta Mariade Portiuncula, by the cell behind the house on the road, the samebrother again spoke to him about the psalter. Saint Francis replied:"Go and do about it as your director says. " On this the brotherturned back, but Saint Francis, standing in the road, began toreflect on what he had said, and suddenly called after him: "Waitfor me, brother! wait!" and going after him, said: "Return with me, brother, and show me the place where I told you to do as yourdirector should say, about the psalter. " When they had come back toit, Saint Francis bent before the brother, and said: "Mea culpa, brother, mea culpa! because whoever wishes to be a Minorite musthave nothing but a tunic, as the rule permits, and the cord, and theloincloth, and what covering is manifestly necessary for the limbs. "

So vivid a picture of an actual mediaeval saint stands out upon thissimple background as is hardly to be found elsewhere in all therecords of centuries, but if the brother himself did not understandit and was so shamed and stupefied by Francis's vehemence, the worldcould understand it no better; the Order itself was ashamed of SaintFrancis because they understood him too well. They hastened tosuppress this teaching against science, although it was the life ofFrancis's doctrine. He taught that the science of the schools led toperdition because it was puffed up with emptiness and pride. Humility, simplicity, poverty were alone true science. They aloneled to heaven. Before the tribunal of Christ, the schoolmen would becondemned, "and, with their dark logic (opinionibus tenebrosis)shall be plunged into outer darkness with the spirits of thedarkness. " They were devilish, and would perish with the devils. 

One sees instantly that neither Francis of Assisi nor Bacon ofVerulam could have hoped for peace with the schools; twelfth-centuryecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly asseventeenth-century scepticism was to feel it; and yet when Francisdied in 1226 at Assisi, Thomas was just being born at Aquino sometwo hundred kilometres to the southward. True scholasticism had notbegun. Four hundred years seem long for the human mind to standstill--or go backward; the more because the human mind was neverbetter satisfied with itself than when thus absorbed in its mirror;but with that chapter we have nothing to do. The pleasantest way totreat it was that of Saint Francis; half-serious, half-jesting; asthough, after all, in the thought of infinity, four hundred yearswere at most only a serio-comic interlude. At Assisi, once, when atheologian attacked Fra Egidio by the usual formal arraignment insyllogisms, the brother waited until the conclusions were laid down, and then, taking out a flute from the folds of his robe, he playedhis answer in rustic melodies. The soul of Saint Francis was arustic melody and the simplest that ever reached so high anexpression. Compared with it, Theocritus and Virgil are as modern asTennyson and ourselves. 

All this shows only what Saint Francis was not; to understand whathe was and how he goes with Saint Bernard and Saint Victor throughthe religious idyll of Transition architecture, one must wanderabout Assisi with the "Floretum" or "Fioretti" in one's hand;--thelegends which are the gospel of Francis as the evangels are thegospel of Christ, who was reincarnated in Assisi. We have given adeal of time to showing our own sceptical natures how simple thearchitects and decorators of Chartres were in their notions of theVirgin and her wants; but French simple-mindedness was alreadycomplex compared with Italian. The Virgin was human; Francis waselementary nature itself, like sun and air; he was Greek in his joyof life:--

 . . . Recessit inde et venit inter Cannarium et Mevanium. Et respexit quasdam arbores juxta viam in quibus residebat tanta multitudo avium diversarum quod nunquam in partibus illis visa similis multitudo. In campo insuper juxta praedictas arbores etiam multitudo maxima residebat. Quam multitudinem sanctus Franciscus respiciens et admirans, facto super eum Spiritu Dei, dixit sociis: "Vobis hic me in via exspectantibus, ibo et praedicabo sororibus nostris aviculis. " Et intravit in campum ad aves quae residebant in terra. Et statim quum praedicare incepit omnes aves in arboribus residentes descenderunt ad eum et simul cum aliis de campo immobiles perman serunt, quum tamen ipse inter eas iret plurimas tunica contingendo. Et nulla earum penitus movebatur, sicut recitavit frater Jacobus de Massa, sanctus homo, qui omnia supradicta habuit ab ore fratris Massei, qui fuit unus de iis qui tune erant socii sancti patris. 

Quibus avibus sanctus Franciscus ait: "Multum tenemini Deo, sorores meas aves, et debetis eum semper et ubique laudare propter liberum quem ubique habetis volatum, propter vestitum duplicatum et triplicatum, propter habitum pictum et ornatum, propter victum sine vestro labore paratum, propter cantum a Creatore vobis intimatum, propter numerum ex Dei benedictione multiplicatum, propter semen vestrum a Deo in area reservatum, propter elementum aeris vobis deputatum. Vos non seminatis neque metitis, et Deus vos pascit; et dedit vobis flumina et fontes ad potandum, montes et colles, saxa et ibices ad refugium, et arbores altes ad nidificandum; et quum nec filare nec texere sciatis, praebet tam vobis quam vestris filiis necessarium indumentum. Unde multum diligit vos Creator qui tot beneficia contulit. Quapropter cavete, sorores mes aviculae, ni sitis ingratae sed semper laudare Deum studete. "

. . . He departed thence and came between Cannara and Bevagna; and near the road he saw some trees on which perched so great a number of birds as never in those parts had been seen the like. Also in the field beyond, near these same trees, a very great multitude rested on the ground. This multitude, Saint Francis seeing with wonder, the spirit of God descending on him he said to his companions: "Wait for me on the road, while I go and preach to our sisters the little birds. " And he went into the field where the birds were on the ground. And as soon as he began to preach, all the birds in the trees came down to him and with those in the field stood quite still, even when he went among them touching many with his robe. Not one of them moved, as Brother James of Massa related, a saintly man who had the whole story from the mouth of Brother Masseo who was one of those then with the sainted father. 

To these birds, Saint Francis said: "Much are you bound to God, birds, my sisters, and everywhere and always must you praise him for the free flight you everywhere have; for the double and triple covering; for the painted and decorated robe; for the food prepared without your labour; for the song taught you by the Creator; for your number multiplied by God's blessing; for your seed preserved by God in the ark; for the element of air allotted to you. You neither sow nor reap, and God feeds you; and has given you rivers and springs to drink at, mountains and hills, rocks and wild goats for refuge, and high trees for nesting; and though you know neither how to spin nor to weave, He gives both you and your children all the garments you need. Whence much must the Creator love you, Who confers so many blessings. Therefore take care, my small bird sisters, never to be ungrateful, but always strive to praise God. "

Fra Ugolino, or whoever wrote from the dictation of Brother James ofMassa, after the tradition of Brother Masseo of Marignano reportedSaint Francis's sermon in absolute good faith as Saint Francisprobably made it and as the birds possibly received it. All wereGod's creatures, brothers and sisters, and God alone knew or knowswhether or how far they understand each other; but Saint Francis, inany case, understood them and believed that they were in sympathywith him. As far as the birds or wolves were concerned, it was nogreat matter, but Francis did not stop with vertebrates or even withorganic forms. "Nor was it surprising, " said the "Speculum, " "iffire and other creatures sometimes revered and obeyed him; for, aswe who were with him very frequently saw, he held them in suchaffection and so much delighted in them, and his soul was moved bysuch pity and compassion for them, that he would not see themroughly handled, and talked with them with such evident delight asif they were rational beings":--

Nam quadam vice, quum sederet juxta ignem, ipso nesciente, ignisinvasit pannos ejus de lino, sive brachas, juxta genu, quumquesentiret calorem ejus nolebat ipsum extinguere. Socius autem ejusvidens comburi pannos ejus cucurrit ad eum volens extinguere ignem;ipse vero prohibuit ei, dicens: "Noli, frater, carissime, noli malefacere igni!" Et sic nullo modo voluit quod extingueret ipsum. Illevero festinanter ivit ad fratrem qui erat guardianus ipsius, etduxit eum ad beatum Franciscum, et statim contra voluntatem beatiFrancisci, extinxit ignem. Unde quacunque necessitate urgentenunquam voluit extinguere ignem vel lampadem vel candelam, tantumpietate movebatur ad ipsum. Nolebat etiam quod frater projiceretignem vel lignum fumigantem de loco ad locum sicut solet fieri, sedvolebat ut plane poneret ipsum in terra ob reverentiam illius cujusest creatura. 

For once when he was sitting by the fire, a spark, without hisknowing it, caught his linen drawers and set them burning near theknee, and when he felt the heat he would not extinguish it; but hiscompanion, seeing his clothes on fire, ran to put it out, and heforbade it, saying: "Don't, my dearest brother, don't hurt thefire!" So he utterly refused to let him put it out, and the brotherhurried off to get his guardian, and brought him to Saint Francis, and together they put out the fire at once against Saint Francis'swill. So, no matter what the necessity, he would never put out fireOr a lamp or candle, so strong was his feeling for it; he would noteven let a brother throw fire or a smoking log from place to place, as is usual, but wanted it placed gently (piano) on the ground, outof respect for Him Whose creature it is. 

The modern tourist, having with difficulty satisfied himself thatSaint Francis acted thus in good faith, immediately exclaims that hewas a heretic and should have been burned; but, in truth, theimmense popular charm of Saint Francis, as of the Virgin, wasprecisely his heresies. Both were illogical and heretical byessence;--in strict discipline, in the days of the Holy Office, ahundred years later, both would have been burned by the Church, asJeanne d'Arc was, with infinitely less reason, in 1431. The charm ofthe twelfth-century Church was that it knew how to be illogical--nogreat moral authority ever knew it better--when God Himself becameillogical. It cared no more than Saint Francis, or Lord Bacon, forthe syllogism. Nothing in twelfth-century art is so fine as the airand gesture of sympathetic majesty with which the Church drew asideto let the Virgin and Saint Francis pass and take the lead--for atime. Both were human ideals too intensely realized to be resistedmerely because they were illogical. The Church bowed and was silent. 

This does not concern us. What the Church thought or thinks is itsown affair, and what it chooses to call orthodox is orthodox. Wehave been trying only to understand what the Virgin and SaintFrancis thought, which is matter of fact, not of faith. SaintFrancis was even more outspoken than the Virgin. She calmly setherself above dogma, and, with feminine indifference to authority, overruled it. He, having asserted in the strongest terms theprinciple of obedience, paid no further attention to dogma, but, without the least reticence, insisted on practices and ideas that noChurch could possibly permit or avow. Toward the end of his life, his physician cauterized his face for some neuralgic pain:--

Et posito ferro in igne pro coctura fienda, beatus Franciscus volensconfortare spiritum suum ne pavesceret, sic locutus est ad ignem:"Frater mi, ignis, nobilis et utilis inter alias creaturas, estomihi curialis in hac hora quia olim te dilexi et diligam amoreillius qui creavit te. Deprecor etiam creatorem nostrum qui noscreavit ut ita tuum calorem temperct ut ipsum sustinere valeam. " Etoratione finita signavit ignem signo crucis. 

When the iron was put on the fire for making the cotterie, SaintFrancis, wishing to encourage himself against fear, spoke thus tothe fire: "My brother, fire, noblest and usefullest of creatures, begentle to me now, because I have loved and will love you with thelove of Him who created you. Our Creator, too, Who created us both, I implore so to temper your heat that I may have strength to bearit. " And having spoken, he signed the fire with the cross. 

With him, this was not merely a symbol. Children and saints canbelieve two contrary things at the same time, but Saint Francis hadalso a complete faith of his own which satisfied him wholly. Allnature was God's creature. The sun and fire, air and water, wereneither more nor less brothers and sisters than sparrows, wolves, and bandits. Even "daemones sunt castalli Domini nostri"; the devilsare wardens of our Lord. If Saint Francis made any exception fromhis univeral law of brotherhood it was that of the schoolmen, but itwas never expressed. Even in his passionate outbreak, in thepresence of Saint Dominic, at the great Chapter of his Order atSancta Maria de Portiuncula in 1218, he did not go quite to thelength of denying the brotherhood of schoolmen, although he placedthem far below the devils, and yet every word of this address seemsto sob with the anguish of his despair at the power of the schoolanti-Christ:--

Quum beatus Franciscus esset in capitulo generali apud SanctamMariam de Portiuncula . . . Et fuerunt ibi quinque millia fratres, quamplures fratres sapientes et scientiati iverunt ad dominumOstiensem qui erat ibidem, et dixerunt ei: "Domine, volumus utsuadetis fratri Francisco quod sequatur consilium fratrum sapientiumet permittat se interdum duci ab eis. " Et allegabant regulam sanctiBenedicti, Augustini et Bernardi qui docent sic et sic vivereordinate. Quae omnia quum retulisset cardinalis beato Francisco permodum admoni admonitionis, beatus Franciscus, nihil sibi respondens, cepit ipsum per manum et duxit eum ad fratres congregatos incapitulo, et sic locutus est fratribus in fervore et virtute Spiritus sancti:--

"Fratres mei, fratres mei, Dominus vocavit me per viam simplicitatiset humilitatis, et bane viam ostendit mini in veritate pro me et proillis qui volunt mini credere et imitari. Et ideo volo quod nonnominetis mihi aliquam regulam neque sancti Benedicti neque sanctiAugustini neque sancti Bernardi, neque aliquam viam et formamvivendi praeter illam quae mihi a Domino est ostensa misericorditeret donata. Et dixit mihi Dominus quod volebat me esse unum pauperemet stultum idiotam [magnum fatuum] in hoc mundo et noluit nos ducereper viam aliam quam per istam scientiam. Sed per vestram scientiamet sapientiam Deus vos confundet et ego confido in castallis Domini[idest dasmonibus] quod per ipsos puniet vos Deus et adhuc redibitisad vestrum statum cum vituperio vestro velitis nolitis. "

When Saint Francis was at the General Chapter held at Sancta marisde Portiuncula . . . And five thousand brothers were present, A numberof them who were schoolmen went to Cardinal Hugolino who was there, and said to him: "My lord, we want you to persuade Brother Francisto follow the council of the learned brothers, and sometimes lethimself be guided by them. " And they suggested the rule of SaintBenedict or Augustine or Bernard who require their congregations tolive so and so, by regulation. When the cardinal had repeated allthis to Saint Francis by way of counsel, Saint Francis, making noanswer, took him by the hand and led him to the brothers assembledin Chapter, and in the fervour and virtue of the Holy Ghost, spokethus to the brothers:

"My brothers, my brothers, God has called me by way of simplicityand humility, and has shown me in verity this path for me andthose who want to believe and follow me; so I want you to talk of noRule to me, neither Saint Benedict nor Saint Augustine nor SaintBernard, nor any way or form of Life whatever except that which Godhas mercifully pointed out and granted to me. And God said that hewanted me to be a pauper [poverello] and an idiot--a great fool--inthis world, and would not lead us by any other path of science thanthis. But by your science and syllogisms God will confound you, andI trust in God's warders, the devils, that through them God shallpunish you, and you will yet come back to your proper station withshame, whether you will or no. "

The narration continues: "Tunc cardinalis obstupuit valde et nihilrespondit. Et omnes fratres plurimum timuerunt. "

One feels that the reporter has not exaggerated a word; on thecontrary, he softened the scandal, because in his time the Cardinalhad gained his point, and Francis was dead. One can hear Francisbeginning with some restraint, and gradually carried away by passiontill he lost control of himself and his language: "'God told me, with his own words, that he meant me to be a beggar and a greatfool, and would not have us on any other terms; and as for yourscience, I trust in God's devils who will beat you out of it, as youdeserve. ' And the Cardinal was utterly dumbfounded and answerednothing; and all the brothers were scared to death. " The CardinalHugolino was a great schoolman, and Dominic was then founding thefamous order in which the greatest of all doctors, Albertus Magnus, was about to begin his studies. One can imagine that the Cardinal"obstupuit valde, " and that Dominic felt shaken in his scheme ofschool instruction. For a single instant, in the flash of Francis'spassion, the whole mass of five thousand monks in a state of semi-ecstasy recoiled before the impassable gulf that opened between themand the Church. 

No one was to blame--no one ever is to blame--because God wantedcontradictory things, and man tried to carry out, as he saw them, God's trusts. The schoolmen saw their duty in one direction; Francissaw his in another; and, apparently, when both lines had beencarried, after such fashion as might be, to their utmost results, and five hundred years had been devoted to the effort, societydeclared both to be failures. Perhaps both may some day be revived, for the two paths seem to be the only roads that can exist, if manstarts by taking for granted that there is an object to be reachedat the end of his journey. The Church, embracing all mankind, had nochoice but to march with caution, seeking God by every possiblemeans of intellect and study. Francis, acting only for himself, could throw caution aside and trust implicitly in God, like thechildren who went on crusade. The two poles of social and politicalphilosophy seem necessarily to be organization or anarchy; man'sintellect or the forces of nature. Francis saw God in nature, if hedid not see nature in God; as the builders of Chartres saw theVirgin in their apse. Francis held the simplest and most childlikeform of pantheism. He carried to its last point the mystical unionwith God, and its necessary consequence of contempt and hatred forhuman intellectual processes. Even Saint Bernard would have thoughthis ideas wanting in that "mesure" which the French mind so muchprizes. At the same time we had best try, as innocently as may be, to realize that no final judgment has yet been pronounced, either bythe Church or by society or by science, on either or any of thesepoints; and until mankind finally settles to a certainty where itmeans to go, or whether it means to go anywhere, --what its objectis, or whether it has an object, --Saint Francis may still prove tohave been its ultimate expression. In that case, his famous chant--the "Cantico del Sole"--will be the last word of religion, as it wasprobably its first. Here it is--too sincere for translation:--

CANTICO DEL SOLE

. . . Laudato sie, misignore, con tucte le tue creature spetialmente messor lo frate sole lo quale iorno et allumini noi per loi et ellu e bellu e radiante cum grande splendore de te, altissimo, porta significatione. 

Laudato si, misignore, per sora luna e le stelle in celu lai formate clarite et pretiose et belle. 

Laudato si, misignore, per frate vento et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo per lo quale a le tue creature dai sustentamento. 

 Laudato si, misignore, per sor aqua la quale e multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta. Laudato si, misignore, per frate focu per lo quale enallumini la nocte ed ello e bello et jocondo et robustoso et forte. 

 Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra matre terra la quale ne sustenta et governa et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra morte corporale de la quale nullu homo vivente po skappare guai acquelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali. . . . 

The verses, if verses they are, have little or nothing in commonwith the art of Saint Bernard or Adam of Saint-Victor. Whatever artthey have, granting that they have any, seems to go back to thecave-dwellers and the age of stone. Compared with the naivete of the"Cantico del Sole, " the "Chanson de Roland" or the "Iliad" is atriumph of perfect technique. The value is not in the verse. The"Chant of the Sun" is another "Pons Seclorum"--or perhaps rather a"Pons Sanctorum"--over which only children and saints can pass. Itis almost a paraphrase of the sermon to the birds. "Thank you, misignore, for messor brother sun, in especial, who is your symbol;and for sister moon and the stars; and for brother wind and air andsky; and for sister water; and for brother fire; and for motherearth! We are all yours, mi signore! We are your children; yourhousehold; your feudal family! but we never heard of a Church. Weare all varying forms of the same ultimate energy; shifting symbolsof the same absolute unity; but our only unity, beneath you, isnature, not law! We thank you for no human institutions, even forthose established in your name; but, with all our hearts we thankyou for sister our mother Earth and its fruits and colouredflowers!"

Francis loved them all--the brothers and sisters--as intensely as achild loves the taste and smell of a peach, and as simply; butbehind them remained one sister whom no one loved, and for whom, inhis first verses, Francis had rendered no thanks. Only on his death-bed he added the lines of gratitude for "our sister death, " thelong-sought, never-found sister of the schoolmen, who solved allphilosophy and merged multiplicity in unity. The solution was atleast simple; one must decide for one's self, according to one'spersonal standards, whether or not it is more sympathetic than thatwith which we have got lastly to grapple in the works of SaintThomas Aquinas. 

CHAPTER XVI

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS

Long before Saint Francis's death, in 1226, the French mystics hadexhausted their energies and the siecle had taken new heart. Societycould not remain forever balancing between thought and act. A fewgifted natures could absorb themselves in the absolute, but the restlived for the day, and needed shelter and safety. So the Church bentagain to its task, and bade the Spaniard Dominic arm new levies withthe best weapons of science, and flaunt the name of Aristotle on theChurch banners along with that of Saint Augustine. The year 1215, which happened to be the date of Magna Charta and other easily fixedevents, like the birth of Saint Louis, may serve to mark the triumphof the schools. The pointed arch revelled at Rheims and the Gothicarchitects reached perfection at Amiens just as Francis died atAssisi and Thomas was born at Aquino. The Franciscan Order itselfwas swept with the stream that Francis tried to dam, and the greatFranciscan schoolman, Alexander Hales, in 1222, four years beforethe death of Francis, joined the order and began lecturing as thoughFrancis himself had lived only to teach scholastic philosophy. 

The rival Dominican champion, Albertus Magnus, began his career alittle later, in 1228. Born of the noble Swabian family ofBollstadt, in 1193, he drifted, like other schoolmen, to Paris, andthe Rue Maitre Albert, opposite Notre Dame, still records his fameas a teacher there. Thence he passed to a school established by theorder at Cologne, where he was lecturing with great authority in1243 when the general superior of the order brought up from Italy ayoung man of the highest promise to be trained as his assistant. 

Thomas, the new pupil, was born under the shadow of Monte Cassino in1226 or 1227. His father, the Count of Aquino, claimed descent fromthe imperial line of Swabia; his mother, from the Norman princes ofSicily; so that in him the two most energetic strains in Europe met. His social rank was royal, and the order set the highest value onit. He took the vows in 1243, and went north at once to helpAlbertus at Cologne. In 1245, the order sent Albertus back to Paris, and Thomas with him. There he remained till 1248 when he was orderedto Cologne as assistant lecturer, and only four years afterwards, attwenty-five years old, he was made full professor at Paris. Hisindustry and activity never rested till his death in 1274, not yetfifty years old, when he bequeathed to the Church a mass ofmanuscript that tourists will never know enough to estimate exceptby weight. His complete works, repeatedly printed, fill betweentwenty and thirty quarto volumes. For so famous a doctor, this isalmost meagre. Unfortunately his greatest work, the "SummaTheologiae, " is unfinished--like Beauvais Cathedral. 

Perhaps Thomas's success was partly due to his memory which is saidto have been phenomenal; for, in an age when cyclopaedias wereunknown, a cyclopaedic memory must have counted for half the battlein these scholastic disputes where authority could be met only byauthority; but in this case, memory was supported by mind. OutwardlyThomas was heavy and slow in manner, if it is true that hiscompanions called him "the big dumb ox of Sicily"; and infashionable or court circles he did not enjoy reputation for acutesense of humour. Saint Louis's household offers a picture not whollyclerical, least of all among the King's brothers and sons; andperhaps the dinner-table was not much more used then than now toabrupt interjections of theology into the talk about hunting andhounds; but however it happened, Thomas one day surprised thecompany by solemnly announcing--"I have a decisive argument againstthe Manicheans!" No wit or humour could be more to the point--between two saints that were to be--than a decisive argument againstenemies of Christ, and one greatly regrets that the rest of theconversation was not reported, unless, indeed, it is somewhere inthe twenty-eight quarto volumes; but it probably lacked humour forcourtiers. 

The twenty-eight quarto volumes must be closed books for us. Nonebut Dominicans have a right to interpret them. No Franciscan--oreven Jesuit--understands Saint Thomas exactly or explains him withauthority. For summer tourists to handle these intricate problems ina theological spirit would be altogether absurd; but, for us, thesegreat theologians were also architects who undertook to build aChurch Intellectual, corresponding bit by bit to the ChurchAdministrative, both expressing--and expressed by--the ChurchArchitectural. Alexander Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and the rest, were artists; and if Saint Thomas happensto stand at their head as type, it is not because we choose him orunderstand him better than his rivals, but because his order chosehim rather than his master Albert, to impose as authority on theChurch; and because Pope John XXII canonized him on the ground thathis decisions were miracles; and because the Council of Trent placedhis "Summa" among the sacred books on their table; and becauseInnocent VI said that his doctrine alone was sure; and finally, because Leo XIII very lately made a point of declaring that, on thewings of Saint Thomas's genius, human reason has reached the mostsublime height it can probably ever attain. 

Although the Franciscans, and, later, the Jesuits, have not alwaysshown as much admiration as the Dominicans for the genius of SaintThomas, and the mystics have never shown any admiration whatever forthe philosophy of the schools, the authority of Leo XIII is final, at least on one point and the only one that concerns us. SaintThomas is still alive and overshadows as many schools as he everdid; at all events, as many as the Church maintains. He has outlivedDescartes and Leibnitz and a dozen other schools of philosophy moreor less serious in their day. He has mostly outlived Hume, Voltaire, and the militant sceptics. His method is typical and classic; hissentences, when interpreted by the Church, seem, even to anuntrained mind, intelligible and consistent; his Church Intellectualremains practically unchanged, and, like the Cathedral of Beauvais, erect, although the storms of six or seven centuries haveprostrated, over and over again, every other social or political orjuristic shelter. Compared with it, all modern systems are complexand chaotic, crowded with self-contradictions, anomalies, impracticable functions and outworn inheritances; but beyond alltheir practical shortcomings is their fragmentary character. Aneconomic civilization troubles itself about the universe much as ahive of honey-bees troubles about the ocean, only as a region to beavoided. The hive of Saint Thomas sheltered God and man, mind andmatter, the universe and the atom, the one and the multiple, withinthe walls of an harmonious home. 

Theologians, like architects, were supposed to receive their Churchcomplete in all its lines; they were modern judges who interpretedthe laws but never invented it. Saint Thomas merely selected betweendisputed opinions, but he allowed himself to wander very far afield, indeed, in search of opinions to dispute. The field embraced allthat existed, or might have existed, or could never exist. Theimmense structure rested on Aristotle and Saint Augustine at thelast, but as a work of art it stood alone, like Rheims or AmiensCathedral, as though it had no antecedents. Then, although, likeRheims, its style was never meant to suit modern housekeeping and isill-seen by the Ecole des Beaux Arts, it reveals itself in its greatmass and intelligence as a work of extraordinary genius; a system asadmirably proportioned as any cathedral and as complete; a successnot universal either in art or science. 

Saint Thomas's architecture, like any other work of art, is beststudied by itself as though he created it outright; otherwise atourist would never get beyond its threshold. Beginning with thefoundation which is God and God's active presence in His Church, Thomas next built God into the walls and towers of His Church, inthe Trinity and its creation of mind and matter in time and space;then finally he filled the Church by uniting mind and matter in man, or man's soul, giving to humanity a free will that rose, like thefleche, to heaven. The foundation--the structure--the congregation--are enough for students of art; his ideas of law, ethics, andpolitics; his vocabulary, his syllogisms, his arrangement are, likethe drawings of Villard de Honnecourt's sketch-book, curious but notvital. After the eleventh-century Romanesque Church of Saint Michaelcame the twelfth-century Transition Church of the Virgin, and allmerged and ended at last in the thirteenth-century Gothic Cathedralof the Trinity. One wants to see the end. 

The foundation of the Christian Church should be--as the simpledeist might suppose--always the same, but Saint Thomas knew better. His foundation was Norman, not French; it spoke the practicalarchitect who knew the mathematics of his art, and who saw that thefoundation laid by Saint Bernard, Saint Victor, Saint Francis, thewhole mystical, semi-mystical, Cartesian, Spinozan foundation, pastor future, could not bear the weight of the structure to be put onit. Thomas began by sweeping the ground clear of them. God must be aconcrete thing, not a human thought. God must be proved by thesenses like any other concrete thing; "nihil est in intellectu quinprius fuerit in sensu"; even if Aristotle had not affirmed the law, Thomas would have discovered it. He admitted at once that God couldnot be taken for granted. 

The admission, as every boy-student of the Latin Quarter knew, wasexceedingly bold and dangerous. The greatest logicians commonlyshrank from proving unity by multiplicity. Thomas was one of thegreatest logicians that ever lived; the question had always been atthe bottom of theology; he deliberately challenged what every oneknew to be an extreme peril. If his foundation failed, his Churchfell. Many critics have thought that he saw dangers four hundredyears ahead. The time came, about 1650-1700, when Descartes, deserting Saint Thomas, started afresh with the idea of God as aconcept, and at once found himself charged with a deity thatcontained the universe; nor did the Cartesians--until Spinoza madeit clear--seem able or willing to see that the Church could notaccept this deity because the Church required a God who caused theuniverse. The two deities destroyed each other. One was passive; theother active. Thomas warned Descartes of a logical quicksand whichmust necessarily swallow up any Church, and which Spinoza exploredto the bottom. Thomas said truly that every true cause must beproved as a cause, not merely as a sequence; otherwise they must endin a universal energy or substance without causality--a source. 

Whatever God might be to others, to His Church he could not be asequence or a source. That point had been admitted by William ofChampeaux, and made the division between Christians and infidels. Onthe other hand, if God must be proved as a true cause in order towarrant the Church or the State in requiring men to worship Him asCreator, the student became the more curious--if a churchman, themore anxious--to be assured that Thomas succeeded in his proof, especially since he did not satisfy Descartes and still less Pascal. That the mystics should be dissatisfied was natural enough, sincethey were committed to the contrary view, but that Descartes shoulddesert was a serious blow which threw the French Church intoconsternation from which it never quite recovered. 

"I see motion, " said Thomas: "I infer a motor!" This reasoning, which may be fifty thousand years old, is as strong as ever it was;stronger than some more modern inferences of science; but theaverage mechanic stated it differently. "I see motion, " he admitted:"I infer energy. I see motion everywhere; I infer energyeverywhere. " Saint Thomas barred this door to materialism by adding:"I see motion; I cannot infer an infinite series of motors: I canonly infer, somewhere at the end of the series, an intelligent, fixed motor. " The average modern mechanic might not dissent butwould certainly hesitate. "No doubt!" he might say; "we can conductour works as well on that as on any other theory, or as we could onno theory at all; but, if you offer it as proof, we can only saythat we have not yet reduced all motion to one source or allenergies to one law, much less to one act of creation, although wehave tried our best. " The result of some centuries of experimenttended to raise rather than silence doubt, although, even in his ownday, Thomas would have been scandalized beyond the resources of hisLatin had Saint Bonaventure met him at Saint Louis's dinner-tableand complimented him, in the King's hearing, on having proved, beyond all Franciscan cavils, that the Church Intellectual hadnecessarily but one first cause and creator--himself. 

The Church Intellectual, like the Church Architectural, implied notone architect, but myriads, and not one fixed, intelligent architectat the end of the series, but a vanishing vista without a beginningat any definite moment; and if Thomas pressed his argument, thetwentieth-century mechanic who should attend his conferences at theSorbonne would be apt to say so. "What is the use of trying to argueme into it? Your inference may be sound logic, but is not proof. Actually we know less about it than you did. All we know is thething we handle, and we cannot handle your fixed, intelligent primemotor. To your old ideas of form we have added what we call force, and we are rather further than ever from reducing the complex tounity. In fact, if you are aiming to convince me, I will tell youflatly that I know only the multiple, and have no use for unity atall. "

In the thirteenth century men did not depend so much as now onactual experiment, but the nominalist said in effect the same thing. Unity to him was a pure concept, and any one who thought it realwould believe that a triangle was alive and could walk on its legs. Without proving unity, philosophers saw no way to prove God. Theycould only fall back on an attempt to prove that the concept ofunity proved itself, and this phantasm drove the Cartesians to dropThomas's argument and assert that "the mere fact of having within usthe idea of a thing more perfect than ourselves, proves the realexistence of that thing. " Four hundred years earlier Saint Thomashad replied in advance that Descartes wanted to prove altogether toomuch, and Spinoza showed mathematically that Saint Thomas had beenin the right. The finest religious mind of the time--Pascal--admitted it and gave up the struggle, like the mystics of Saint-Victor. 

Thus some of the greatest priests and professors of the Church, including Duns Scotus himself, seemed not wholly satisfied thatThomas's proof was complete, but most of them admitted that it wasthe safest among possible foundations, and that it showed, asarchitecture, the Norman temper of courage and caution. The Normanwas ready to run great risks, but he would rather grasp too littlethan too much; he narrowed the spacing of his piers rather thanspread them too wide for safe vaulting. Between Norman blood andBreton blood was a singular gap, as Renan and every other Breton hasdelighted to point out. Both Abelard and Descartes were Breton. TheBreton seized more than he could hold; the Norman took less than hewould have liked. 

God, then, is proved. What the schools called form, what sciencecalls energy, and what the intermediate period called the evidenceof design, made the foundation of Saint Thomas's cathedral. God isan intelligent, fixed prime motor--not a concept, or proved byconcepts;--a concrete fact, proved by the senses of sight and touch. On that foundation Thomas built. The walls and vaults of his Churchwere more complex than the foundation; especially the towers weretroublesome. Dogma, the vital purpose of the Church, requiredsupport. The most weighty dogma, the central tower of the Normancathedral, was the Trinity, and between the Breton solution whichwas too heavy, and the French solution which was too light, theNorman Thomas found a way. Remembering how vehemently the FrenchChurch, under Saint Bernard, had protected the Trinity from allinterference whatever, one turns anxiously to see what Thomas saidabout it; and unless one misunderstands him, --as is very likely, indeed, to be the case, since no one may even profess to understandthe Trinity, --Thomas treated it as simply as he could. "God, beingconscious of Himself, thinks Himself; his thought is Himself, hisown reflection in the Verb--the so-called Son. " "Est in Deointelligente seipsum Verbum Dei quasi Deus intellectus. " The ideawas not new, and as ideas went it was hardly a mystery; but the nextstep was naif:--God, as a double consciousness, loves Himself, andrealizes Himself in the Holy Ghost. The third side of the triangleis love or grace. 

Many theologians have found fault with this treatment of thesubject, which seemed open to every objection that had been made toAbelard, Gilbert de la Poree, or a thousand other logicians. Theycommonly asked why Thomas stopped the Deity's self-realizations atlove, or inside the triangle, since these realizations were real, not symbolic, and the square was at least as real as any othercombination of line. Thomas replied that knowledge and will--theVerb and the Holy Ghost--were alone essential. The reply did notsuit every one, even among doctors, but since Saint Thomas rested onthis simple assertion, it is no concern of ours to argue thetheology. Only as art, one can afford to say that the form is morearchitectural than religious; it would surely have been suspiciousto Saint Bernard. Mystery there was none, and logic little. Theconcept of the Holy Ghost was childlike; for a pupil of Aristotle itwas inadmissible, since it led to nothing and helped no step towardthe universe. 

Admitting, if necessary, the criticism, Thomas need not admit theblame, if blame there were. Every theologian was obliged to stop thepursuit of logic by force, before it dragged him into paganism andpantheism. Theology begins with the universal, --God, --who must be areality, not a symbol; but it is forced to limit the process ofGod's realizations somewhere, or the priest soon becomes aworshipper of God in sticks and stones. Theologists had commonlychosen, from time immemorial, to stop at the Trinity; within thetriangle they were wholly realist; but they could not admit that Godwent on to realize Himself in the square and circle, or that thethird member of the Trinity contained multiplicity, because theTrinity was a restless weight on the Church piers, which, like thecentral tower, constantly tended to fall, and needed to belightened. Thomas gave it the lightest form possible, and therefixed it. 

Then came his great tour-de-force, the vaulting of his broad nave;and, if ignorance is allowed an opinion, even a lost soul may admirethe grand simplicity of Thomas's scheme. He swept away thehorizontal lines altogether, leaving them barely as a part ofdecoration. The whole weight of his arches fell, as in the latestGothic, where the eye sees nothing to break the sheer spring of thenervures, from the rosette on the keystone a hundred feet above downto the church floor. In Thomas's creation nothing intervened betweenGod and his world; secondary causes become ornaments; only twoforces, God and man, stood in the Church. 

The chapter of Creation is so serious, and Thomas's creation, likeevery other, is open to so much debate, that no student can allowanother to explain it; and certainly no man whatever, either saintor sceptic, can ever yet have understood Creation aright unlessdivinely inspired; but whatever Thomas's theory was as he meant it, he seems to be understood as holding that every created individual--animal, vegetable, or mineral--was a special, divine act. Whateverhas form is created, and whatever is created takes form directlyfrom the will of God, which is also his act. The intermediateuniversals--the secondary causes--vanish as causes; they are, atmost, sequences or relations; all merge in one universal act ofwill; instantaneous, infinite, eternal. 

Saint Thomas saw God, much as Milton saw him, resplendent in

 That glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty, Wherewith he wont, at Heaven's high council-table, To sit the midst of Trinal Unity;

except that, in Thomas's thought, the council-table was a work-table, because God did not take counsel; He was an act. The Trinitywas an infinite possibility of will; nothing within but

 The baby image of the giant mass Of things to come at large. 

Neither time nor space, neither matter nor mind, not even forceexisted, nor could any intelligence conceive how, even though theyshould exist, they could be united in the lowest association. Acrystal was as miraculous as Socrates. Only abstract force, or whatthe schoolmen called form, existed undeveloped from eternity, likethe abstract line in mathematics. 

Fifty or a hundred years before Saint Thomas settled the Churchdogma, a monk of Citeaux or some other abbey, a certain Alain ofLille, had written a Latin poem, as abstruse an allegory as thebest, which had the merit of painting the scene of man's creation asfar as concerned the mechanical process much as Thomas seems to haveseen it. M. Haureau has printed an extract (vol. I, p. 352). Alainconceded to the weakness of human thought, that God was working intime and space, or rather on His throne in heaven, when nature, proposing to create a new and improved man, sent Reason and Prudenceup to ask Him for a soul to fit the new body. Having passed throughvarious adventures and much scholastic instruction, the messengerPrudence arrived, after having dropped her dangerous friend Reasonby the way. The request was respectfully presented to God, andfavourably received. God promised the soul, and at once sent Hisservant Noys--Thought--to the storehouse of ideas, to choose it:--

Ipse Deus rem prosequitur, producit in actum Quod pepigit. Vocat ergo Noym quae praepaert illi Numinis exemplar, humanae mentis Idaeam, Ad cujus formam formetur spiritus omni Munere virtutum dives, qui, nube caducae Carnis odumbratus veletur corporis umbra. Tunc Noys ad regis praeceptum singula rerum

Vestigans exempla, novam perquirit Idaeam. Inter tot species, speciem vix invenit illam Quam petit; offertur tandem quaesita petenti. Hanc formam Noys ipsa Deo praesentat ut ejus Formet ad exemplar animam. Tunc ille sigillum Sumit, ad ipsius formae vestigia formam Dans animae, vultum qualem deposcit Idaea Imprimit exemplo; totas usurpat imago Exemplaris opes, loquiturque figura sigillum. 

God Himself pursues the task, and sets in act What He promised. So He calls Noys to seek A copy of His will, Idea of the human mind, To whose form the spirit should be shaped, Rich in every virtue, which, veiled in garb Of frail flesh, is to be hidden in a shade of body, Then Noys, at the King's order, turning one by one

Each sample, seeks the new Idea. Among so many images she hardly finds that Which she seeks; at last the sought one appears. This form Noys herself brings to God for Him To form a soul to its pattern. He takes the seal, And gives form to the soul after the model Of the form itself, stamping on the sample The figure such as the Idea requires. The seal Covers the whole field, and the impression expresses the stamp. 

The translation is probably full of mistakes; indeed, one ispermitted to doubt whether Alain himself accurately understood theprocess; but in substance he meant that God contained a storehouseof ideas, and stamped each creation with one of these forms. Thepoets used a variety of figures to help out their logic, but that ofthe potter and his pot was one of the most common. Omar Khayyam wasusing it at the same time with Alain of Lille, but with adifference: for his pot seems to have been matter alone, and hissoul was the wine it received from God; while Alain's soul seems tohave been the form and not the contents of the pot. 

The figure matters little. In any case God's act was the union ofmind with matter by the same act or will which created both. Nointermediate cause or condition intervened; no secondary influencehad anything whatever to do with the result. Time had nothing to dowith it. Every individual that has existed or shall exist wascreated by the same instantaneous act, for all time. "When thequestion regards the universal agent who produces beings and time, we cannot consider him as acting now and before, according to thesuccession of time. " God emanated time, force, matter, mind, as Hemight emanate gravitation, not as a part of His substance but as anenergy of His will, and maintains them in their activity by the sameact, not by a new one. Every individual is a part of the direct act;not a secondary outcome. The soul has no father or mother. Of allerrors one of the most serious is to suppose that the soul descendsby generation. "Having life and action of its own, it subsistswithout the body; . . . It must therefore be produced directly, andsince it is not a material substance, it cannot be produced by wayof generation; it must necessarily be created by God. Consequentlyto suppose that the intelligence [or intelligent soul] is the effectof generation is to suppose that it is not a pure and simplesubstance, but corruptible like the body. It is therefore heresy tosay that this soul is transmitted by generation. " What is true ofthe soul should be true of all other form, since no form is amaterial substance. The utmost possible relation between any twoindividuals is that God may have used the same stamp or mould for aseries of creations, and especially for the less spiritual: "God isthe first model for all things. One may also say that, among Hiscreatures some serve as types or models for others because there aresome which are made in the image of others"; but generation meanssequence, not cause. The only true cause is God. Creation is Hissole act, in which no second cause can share. " Creation is moreperfect and loftier than generation, because it aims at producingthe whole substance of the being, though it starts from absolutenothing. "

Thomas Aquinas, when he pleased, was singularly lucid, and on thispoint he was particularly positive. The architect insisted on thecontrolling idea of his structure. The Church was God, and its linesexcluded interference. God and the Church embraced all theconverging lines of the universe, and the universe showed none butlines that converged. Between God and man, nothing whateverintervened. The individual was a compound of form, or soul, andmatter; but both were always created together, by the same act, outof nothing. "Simpliciter fatendum est animas simul cum corporibuscreari et infundi. " It must be distinctly understood that souls werenot created before bodies, but that they were created at the sametime as the bodies they animate. Nothing whatever preceded thisunion of two substances which did not exist: "Creatio est productioalicujus rei secundum suam totam substantiam, nullo praesupposito, quod sit vel increatum vel ab aliquo creatum. " Language can go nofurther in exclusion of every possible preceding, secondary, orsubsequent cause, "Productio universalis entis a Deo non est motusnec mutatio, sed est quaedam simplex emanatio. " The whole universeis, so to speak, a simple emanation from God. 

The famous junction, then, is made!--that celebrated fusion of theuniversal with the individual, of unity with multiplicity, of Godand nature, which had broken the neck of every philosophy everinvented; which had ruined William of Champeaux and was to ruinDescartes; this evolution of the finite from the infinite wasaccomplished. The supreme triumph was as easily effected by ThomasAquinas as it was to be again effected, four hundred years later, bySpinoza. He had merely to assert the fact: "It is so! it cannot beotherwise!" "For the thousandth and hundred-thousandth time;--whatis the use of discussing this prime motor, this Spinozan substance, any longer? We know it is there!" that--as Professor Haeckel veryjustly repeats for the millionth time--is enough. 

One point, however, remained undetermined. The Prime Motor and Hisaction stood fixed, and no one wished to disturb Him; but this wasnot the point that had disturbed William of Champeaux. Abelard'squestion still remained to be answered. How did Socrates differ fromPlato--Judas from John--Thomas Aquinas from Professor Haeckel? Werethey, in fact, two, or one? What made an individual? What was God'scentimetre measure? The abstract form or soul which existed as apossibility in God, from all time, --was it one or many? To theChurch, this issue overshadowed all else, for, if humanity was oneand not multiple, the Church, which dealt only with individuals, waslost. To the schools, also, the issue was vital, for, if the soul orform was already multiple from the first, unity was lost; theultimate substance and prime motor itself became multiple; the wholeissue was reopened. 

To the consternation of the Church, and even of his own order, Thomas, following closely his masters, Albert and Aristotle, asserted that the soul was measured by matter. "Division occurs insubstances in ratio of quantity, as Aristotle says in his 'Physics. 'And so dimensional quantity is a principle of individuation. " Thesoul is a fluid absorbed by matter in proportion to the absorptivepower of the matter. The soul is an energy existing in matterproportionately to the dimensional quantity of the matter. The soulis a wine, greater or less in quantity according to the size of thecup. In our report of the great debate of 1110, between Champeauxand Abelard, we have seen William persistently tempting Abelard tofall into this admission that matter made the man;--that theuniversal equilateral triangle became an individual if it wereshaped in metal, the matter giving it reality which mere form couldnot give; and Abelard evading the issue as though his life dependedon it. In fact, had Abelard dared to follow Aristotle into whatlooked like an admission that Socrates and Plato were identical asform and differed only in weight, his life might have been theforfeit. How Saint Thomas escaped is a question closely connectedwith the same inquiry about Saint Francis of Assisi. A Church whichembraced, with equal sympathy, and within a hundred years, theVirgin, Saint Bernard, William of Champeaux and the School of Saint-Victor, Peter the Venerable, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure, was more liberal thanany modern State can afford to be. Radical contradictions the Statemay perhaps tolerate, though hardly, but never embrace or profess. Such elasticity long ago vanished from human thought. 

Yet only Dominicans believe that the Church adopted this law ofindividualization, or even assented to it. If M. Jourdain is right, Thomas was quickly obliged to give it another form:--that, thoughall souls belonged to the same species, they differed in theiraptitudes for uniting with particular bodies. "This soul iscommensurate with this body, and not with that other one. " The ideais double; for either the souls individualized themselves, andThomas abandoned his doctrine of their instantaneous creation, withthe bodies, out of nothing; or God individualized them in the act ofcreation, and matter had nothing to do with it. The difficulty is noconcern of ours, but the great scholars who took upon themselves toexplain it made it worse, until at last one gathers only that SaintThomas held one of three views: either the soul of humanity wasindividualized by God, or it individualized itself, or it wasdivided by ratio of quantity, that is, by matter. This amounts tosaying that one knows nothing about it, which we knew before and mayadmit with calmness; but Thomas Aquinas was not so happily placed, between the Church and the schools. Humanity had a form common toitself, which made it what it was. By some means this form wasassociated with matter; in fact, matter was only known as associatedwith form. If, then, God, by an instantaneous act, created matterand gave it form according to the dimensions of the matter, innocentignorance might infer that there was, in the act of God, one world-soul and one world-matter, which He united in different proportionsto make men and things. Such a doctrine was fatal to the Church. Nogreater heresy could be charged against the worst Arab or Jew, andThomas was so well aware of his danger that he recoiled from it witha vehemence not at all in keeping with his supposed phlegm. Withfeverish eagerness to get clear of such companions, he denied anddenounced, in all companies, in season and out of season, the ideathat intellect was one and the same for all men, differing only withthe quantity of matter it accompanied. He challenged the adherent ofsuch a doctrine to battle; "let him take the pen if he dares!" Noone dared, seeing that even Jews enjoyed a share of common sense andhad seen some of their friends burn at the stake not very longbefore for such opinions, not even openly maintained; whileuneducated people, who are perhaps incapable of receiving intellectat all, but for whose instruction and salvation the great work ofSaint Thomas and his scholars must chiefly exist, cannot do battlebecause they cannot understand Thomas's doctrine of matter and formwhich to them seems frank pantheism. 

So it appeared to Duns Scotus also, if one may assert in the DoctorSubtilis any opinion without qualification. Duns began his careeronly about 1300, after Thomas's death, and stands, therefore, beyondour horizon; but he is still the pride of the Franciscan Order andstands second in authority to the great Dominican alone. In denyingThomas's doctrine that matter individualizes mind, Duns laid himselfopen to the worse charge of investing matter with a certainembryonic, independent, shadowy soul of its own. Scot's system, compared with that of Thomas, tended toward liberty. Scot held thatthe excess of power in Thomas's prime motor neutralized the power ofhis secondary causes, so that these appeared altogether superfluous. This is a point that ought to be left to the Church to decide, butthere can be no harm in quoting, on the other hand, the authority ofsome of Scot's critics within the Church, who have thought that hisdoctrine tended to deify matter and to keep open the road toSpinoza. Narrow and dangerous was the border-line always betweenpantheism and materialism, and the chief interest of the schools wasin finding fault with each other's paths. 

The opinions in themselves need not disturb us, although thequestion is as open to dispute as ever it was and perhaps as muchdisputed; but the turn of Thomas's mind is worth study. A century ortwo later, his passion to be reasonable, scientific, architecturalwould have brought him within range of the Inquisition. Francis ofAssisi was not more archaic and cave-dweller than Thomas of Aquinowas modern and scientific. In his effort to be logical he forced hisDeity to be as logical as himself, which hardly suited Omnipotence. He hewed the Church dogmas into shape as though they were roughstones. About no dogma could mankind feel interest more acute thanabout that of immortality, which seemed to be the single pointvitally necessary for any Church to prove and define as clearly aslight itself. Thomas trimmed down the soul to half its legitimateclaims as an immortal being by insisting that God created it fromnothing in the same act or will by which He created the body andunited the two in time and space. The soul existed as form for thebody, and had no previous existence. Logic seemed to require thatwhen the body died and dissolved, after the union which had lasted, at most, only an instant or two of eternity, the soul, which fittedthat body and no other, should dissolve with it. In that case theChurch dissolved, too, since it had no reason for existence exceptthe soul. Thomas met the difficulty by suggesting that the body'sform might take permanence from the matter to which it gave form. That matter should individualize mind was itself a violent wrench oflogic, but that it should also give permanence--the one quality itdid not possess--to this individual mind seemed to many learneddoctors a scandal. Perhaps Thomas meant to leave the responsibilityon the Church, where it belonged as a matter not of logic but ofrevealed truth. At all events, this treatment of mind and matterbrought him into trouble which few modern logicians would suspect. 

The human soul having become a person by contact with matter, andhaving gained eternal personality by the momentary union, wasfinished, and remains to this day for practical purposes unchanged;but the angels and devils, a world of realities then more real thanman, were never united with matter, and therefore could not bepersons. Thomas admitted and insisted that the angels, beingimmaterial, --neither clothed in matter, nor stamped on it, nor mixedwith it, --were universals; that is, each was a species in himself, aclass, or perhaps what would be now called an energy, with no otherindividuality than he gave himself. 

The idea seems to modern science reasonable enough. Science has todeal, for example, with scores of chemical energies which it knowslittle about except that they always seem to be constant to the sameconditions; but every one knows that in the particular relation ofmind to matter the battle is as furious as ever. The soul has alwaysrefused to live in peace with the body. The angels, too, were alwaysin rebellion. They insisted on personality, and the devils even moreobstinately than the angels. The dispute was--and is--far fromtrifling. Mind would rather ignore matter altogether. In thethirteenth century mind did, indeed, admit that matter wassomething, --which it quite refuses to admit in the twentieth, --buttreated it as a nuisance to be abated. To the pure in spirit oneargued in vain that spirit must compromise; that nature compromised;that God compromised; that man himself was nothing but a somewhatclumsy compromise. No argument served. Mind insisted on absolutedespotism. Schoolmen as well as mystics would not believe thatmatter was what it seemed, --if, indeed, it existed;--unsubstantial, shifty, shadowy; changing with incredible swiftness into dust, gas, flame; vanishing in mysterious lines of force into space beyond hopeof recovery; whirled about in eternity and infinity by that mind, form, energy, or thought which guides and rules and tyrannizes andis the universe. The Church wanted to be pure spirit; she regardedmatter with antipathy as something foul, to be held at arms' lengthlest it should stain and corrupt the soul; the most she wouldwillingly admit was that mind and matter might travel side by side, like a doubleheaded comet, on parallel lines that never met, with apreestablished harmony that existed only in the prime motor. 

Thomas and his master Albert were almost alone in imposing on theChurch the compromise so necessary for its equilibrium. The balanceof matter against mind was the same necessity in the ChurchIntellectual as the balance of thrusts in the arch of the Gothiccathedral. Nowhere did Thomas show his architectural obstinacy quiteso plainly as in thus taking matter under his protection. Nothingwould induce him to compromise with the angels. He insisted onkeeping man wholly apart, as a complex of energies in which mattershared equally with mind. The Church must rest firmly on both. Theangels differed from other beings below them' precisely because theywere immaterial and impersonal. Such rigid logic outraged thespiritual Church. 

Perhaps Thomas's sudden death in 1274 alone saved him from the fateof Abelard, but it did not save his doctrine. Two years afterwards, in 1276, the French and English churches combined to condemn it. Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, presided over the French Synod;Robert Kilwardeby, of the Dominican Order, Archbishop of Canterbury, presided over the Council at Oxford. The synods were composed ofschoolmen as well as churchmen, and seem to have been the result ofa serious struggle for power between the Dominican and FranciscanOrders. Apparently the Church compromised between them by condemningthe errors of both. Some of these errors, springing from AlexanderHales and his Franciscan schools, were in effect the foundation ofanother Church. Some were expressly charged against Brother Thomas. "Contra fratrem Thomam" the councils forbade teaching that--"quiaintelligentiae non habent materiam, Deus non potest plures ejusdemspeciei facere; et quod materia non est in angelis"; further, thecouncils struck at the vital centre of Thomas's system--"quod Deusnon potest individua multiplicare sub una specie sine materia"; andagain in its broadest form, --"quod formae non accipiunt divisionemnisi secundam materiam. " These condemnations made a great stir. OldAlbertus Magnus, who was the real victim of attack, fought forhimself and for Thomas. After a long and earnest effort, theThomists rooted out opposition in the order, and carried theircampaign to Rome. After fifty years of struggle, by use of everymethod known in Church politics, the Dominican Order, in 1323, caused John XXII to canonize Thomas and in effect affirm hisdoctrine. 

The story shows how modern, how heterodox, how material, howaltogether new and revolutionary the system of Saint Thomas seemedat first even in the schools; but that was the affair of the Churchand a matter of pure theology. We study only his art. Step by step, stone by stone, we see him build his church-building like astonemason, "with the care that the twelfth-century architects putinto" their work, as Viollet-le-Duc saw some similar architect atRouen, building the tower of Saint-Romain: "He has thrown over hiswork the grace and finesse, the study of detail, the sobriety inprojections, the perfect harmony, " which belongs to his school, andyet he was rigidly structural and Norman. The foundation showed it;the elevation, which is God, developed it; the vaulting, with itsbalance of thrusts in mind and matter, proved it; but he had stillthe hardest task in art, to model man. 

The cathedral, then, is built, and God is built into it, but, thusfar, God is there alone, filling it all, and maintains theequilibrium by balancing created matter separately against createdmind. The proportions of the building are superb; nothing so lofty, so large in treatment, so true in scale, so eloquent of multiplicityin unity, has ever been conceived elsewhere; but it was the virtueor the fault of superb structures like Bourges and Amiens and theChurch universal that they seemed to need man more than man neededthem; they were made for crowds, for thousands and tens of thousandsof human beings; for the whole human race, on its knees, hungry forpardon and love. Chartres needed no crowd, for it was meant as apalace of the Virgin, and the Virgin filled it wholly; but theTrinity made their church for no other purpose than to accommodateman, and made man for no other purpose than to fill their church; ifman failed to fill it, the church and the Trinity seemed equallyfailures. Empty, Bourges and Beauvais are cold; hardly as religiousas a wayside cross; and yet, even empty, they are perhaps morereligious than when filled with cattle and machines. Saint Thomasneeded to fill his Church with real men, and although he had createdhis own God for that special purpose, the task was, as every boyknew by heart, the most difficult that Omnipotence had dealt with. 

God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The schoolsanswered: Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, or abee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modernscience, with infinite effort, has discovered and announced that manis a bewildering complex of energies, which helps little to explainhis relations with the ultimate substance or energy or prime motorwhose existence both science and schoolmen admit; which sciencestudies in laboratories and religion worships in churches. The manwhom God created to fill his Church, must be an energy independentof God; otherwise God filled his own Church with his own energy. Thus far, the God of Saint Thomas was alone in His Church. Thebeings He had created out of nothing--Omar's pipkins of clay andshape--stood against the walls, waiting to receive the wine of life, a life of their own. 

Of that life, energy, will, or wine, --whatever the poets orprofessors called it, --God was the only cause, as He was also theimmediate cause, and support. Thomas was emphatic on that point. Godis the cause of energy as the sun is the cause of colour: "prout soldicitur causa manifestationis coloris. " He not only gives forms tohis pipkins, or energies to his agents, but He also maintains thoseforms in being: "dat formas creaturis agentibus et eas tenet inesse. " He acts directly, not through secondary causes, on everythingand every one: "Deus in omnibus intime operatur. " If, for aninstant, God's action, which is also His will, were to stop, theuniverse would not merely fall to pieces, but would vanish, and mustthen be created anew from nothing: "Quia non habet radicem in aere, statim cessat lumen, cessante actione solis. Sic autem se habetomnis creatura ad Deum sicut aer ad solem illuminantem. " Godradiates energy as the sun radiates light, and "the whole fabric ofnature would return to nothing" if that radiation ceased even for aninstant. Everything is created by one instantaneous, eternal, universal act of will, and by the same act is maintained in being. 

Where, then, --in what mysterious cave outside of creation, --couldman, and his free will, and his private world of responsibilitiesand duties, lie hidden? Unless man was a free agent in a world ofhis own beyond constraint, the Church was a fraud, and it helpedlittle to add that the State was another. If God was the sole andimmediate cause and support of everything in His creation, God wasalso the cause of its defects, and could not--being Justice andGoodness in essence--hold man responsible for His own omissions. Still less could the State or Church do it in His name. 

Whatever truth lies in the charge that the schools discussed futilequestions by faulty methods, one cannot decently deny that in thiscase the question was practical and the method vital. Theist oratheist, monist or anarchist must all admit that society and scienceare equally interested with theology in deciding whether theuniverse is one or many, a harmony or a discord. The Church andState asserted that it was a harmony, and that they were itsrepresentatives. They say so still. Their claim led to singular butunavoidable conclusions, with which society has struggled for sevenhundred years, and is still struggling. 

Freedom could not exist in nature, or even in God, after the single, unalterable act or will which created. The only possible free willwas that of God before the act. Abelard with his rigid logic averredthat God had no freedom; being Himself whatever is most perfect, Heproduced necessarily the most perfect possible world. Nothing seemedmore logical, but if God acted necessarily, His world must also beof necessity the only possible product of His act, and the Churchbecame an impertinence, since man proved only fatuity by attemptingto interfere. Thomas dared not disturb the foundations of theChurch, and therefore began by laying down the law that God--previous to His act--could choose, and had chosen, whatever schemeof creation He pleased, and that the harmony of the actual schemeproved His perfections. Thus he saved God's free will. 

This philosophical apse would have closed the lines and finished theplan of his church-choir had the universe not shown somedivergencies or discords needing to be explained. The student of theLatin Quarter was then harder to convince than now that God wasInfinite Love and His world a perfect harmony, when perfect love andharmony showed them, even in the Latin Quarter, and still more inrevealed truth, a picture of suffering, sorrow, and death; plague, pestilence, and famine; inundations, droughts, and frosts;catastrophes world-wide and accidents in corners; cruelty, perversity, stupidity, uncertainty, insanity; virtue begetting vice;vice working for good; happiness without sense, selfishness withoutgain, misery without cause, and horrors undefined. The students inpublic dared not ask, as Voltaire did, "avec son hideux sourire, "whether the Lisbon earthquake was the final proof of God's infinitegoodness, but in private they used the argumentum ad personamdivinam freely enough, and when the Church told them that evil didnot exist, the ribalds laughed. 

Saint Augustine certainly tempted Satan when he fastened the Churchto this doctrine that evil is only the privation of good, an amissioboni; and that good alone exists. The point was infinitelytroublesome. Good was order, law, unity. Evil was disorder, anarchy, multiplicity. Which was truth? The Church had committed itself tothe dogma that order and unity were the ultimate truth, and that theanarchist should be burned. She could do nothing else, and societysupported her--still supports her; yet the Church, who was wiserthan the State, had always seen that Saint Augustine dealt with onlyhalf the question. She knew that evil might be an excess of good aswell as absence of it; that good leads to evil, evil to good; andthat, as Pascal says, "three degrees of polar elevation upset alljurisprudence; a meridian decides truth; fundamental laws change;rights have epochs. Pleasing Justice! bounded by a river or amountain! truths on this side the Pyrenees! errors beyond!" Thomasconceded that God Himself, with the best intentions, might be thesource of evil, and pleaded only that his action might in the endwork benefits. He could offer no proof of it, but he could assume asprobable a plan of good which became the more perfect for the veryreason that it allowed great liberty in detail. 

One hardly feels Saint Thomas here in all his force. He offerssuggestion rather than proof;--apology--the weaker because ofobvious effort to apologize--rather than defence, for InfiniteGoodness, Justice, and Power; scoffers might add that he invented anew proof ab defectu, or argument for proving the perfection of amachine by the number of its imperfections; but at all events, society has never done better by way of proving its right to enforcemorals or unity of opinion. Unless it asserts law, it can onlyassert force. Rigid theology went much further. In God's providence, man was as nothing. With a proper sense of duty, every solar systemshould be content to suffer, if thereby the efficiency of the MilkyWay were improved. Such theology shocked Saint Thomas, who neverwholly abandoned man in order to exalt God. He persistently broughtGod and man together, and if he erred, the Church rightly pardonshim because he erred on the human side. Whenever the path laythrough the valley of despair he called God to his aid, as though hefelt the moral obligation of the Creator to help His creation. 

At best the vision of God, sitting forever at His work-table, willing the existence of mankind exactly as it is, while consciousthat, among these myriad arbitrary creations of His will, hardly onein a million could escape temporary misery or eternal damnation, wasnot the best possible background for a Church, as the Virgin and theSaviour frankly admitted by taking the foreground; but the Churchwas not responsible for it. Mankind could not admit an anarchical--adual or a multiple--universe. The world was there, staring them inthe face, with all its chaotic conditions, and society insisted onits unity in self-defence. Society still insists on treating it asunity, though no longer affecting logic. Society insists on its freewill, although free will has never been explained to thesatisfaction of any but those who much wish to be satisfied, andalthough the words in any common sense implied not unity but dualityin creation. The Church had nothing to do with inventing thisriddle--the oldest that fretted mankind. 

Apart from all theological interferences, --fall of Adam or fault ofEve, Atonement, Justification, or Redemption, --either the universewas one, or it was two, or it was many; either energy was one, seenonly in powers of itself, or it was several; either God was harmony, or He was discord. With practical unanimity, mankind rejected thedual or multiple scheme; it insisted on unity. Thomas took thequestion as it was given him. The unity was full of defects; he didnot deny them; but he claimed that they might be incidents, and thatthe admitted unity might even prove their beneficence. Granting thisenormous concession, he still needed a means of bringing into thesystem one element which vehemently refused to be brought:--that is, man himself, who insisted that the universe was a unit, but that hewas a universe; that energy was one, but that he was another energy;that God was omnipotent, but that man was free. The contradictionhad always existed, exists still, and always must exist, unless maneither admits that he is a machine, or agrees that anarchy and chaosare the habit of nature, and law and order its accident. Theagreement may become possible, but it was not possible in thethirteenth century nor is it now. Saint Thomas's settlement couldnot be a simple one or final, except for practical use, but itserved, and it holds good still. 

No one ever seriously affirmed the literal freedom of will. Absoluteliberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint;therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible only tohimself. This principle is the philosophical foundation ofanarchism, and, for anything that science has yet proved, may be thephilosophical foundation of the universe; but it is fatal to allsociety and is especially hostile to the State. Perhaps the Churchof the thirteenth century might have found a way to use even thisprinciple for a good purpose; certainly, the influence of SaintBernard was sufficiently unsocial and that of Saint Francis wassufficiently unselfish to conciliate even anarchists of the militantclass; but Saint Thomas was working for the Church and the

State, not for the salvation of souls, and his chief object was torepress anarchy. The theory of absolute free will never entered hismind, more than the theory of material free will would enter themind of an architect. The Church gave him no warrant for discussingthe subject in such a sense. In fact, the Church never admitted freewill, or used the word when it could be avoided. In Latin, the termused was "liberum arbitrium, "--free choice, --and in French to thisday it remains in strictness "libre arbitre" still. From SaintAugustine downwards the Church was never so unscientific as to admitof liberty beyond the faculty of choosing between paths, someleading through the Church and some not, but all leading to the nextworld; as a criminal might be allowed the liberty of choosingbetween the guillotine and the gallows, without infringing on thesupremacy of the judge. 

Thomas started from that point, already far from theoretic freedom. "We are masters of our acts, " he began, "in the sense that we canchoose such and such a thing; now, we have not to choose our end, but the means that relate to it, as Aristotle says. " Unfortunately, even this trenchant amputation of man's free energies would notaccord with fact or with logic. Experience proved that man's powerof choice in action was very far from absolute, and logic seemed torequire that every choice should have some predetermining causewhich decided the will to act. Science affirmed that choice was notfree, --could not be free, --without abandoning the unity of force andthe foundation of law. Society insisted that its choice must be leftfree, whatever became of science or unity. Saint Thomas was requiredto illustrate the theory of "liberum arbitrium" by choosing a paththrough these difficulties, where path there was obviously none. 

Thomas's method of treating this problem was sure to be asscientific as the vaulting of a Gothic arch. Indeed, one follows itmost easily by translating his school-vocabulary into moderntechnical terms. With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomasmight now be written thus:--

By the term God, is meant a prime motor which supplies all energy tothe universe, and acts directly on man as well as on all othercreatures, moving him as a mechanical motor might do; but man, beingspecially provided with an organism more complex than the organismsof other creatures, enjoys an exceptional capacity for reflexaction, --a power of reflection, --which enables him within certainlimits to choose between paths; and this singular capacity is calledfree choice or free will. Of course, the reflection is not choice, and though a man's mind reflected as perfectly as the facets of alighthouse lantern, it would never reach a choice without an energywhich impels it to act. 

Now let us read Saint Thomas:--

Some kind of an agent is required to determine one's choice; thatagent is reflection. Man reflects, then, in order to learn whatchoice to make between the two acts which offer themselves. Butreflection is, in its turn, a faculty of doing opposite things, forwe can reflect or not reflect; and we are no further forward thanbefore. One cannot carry back this process infinitely, for in thatcase one would never decide. The fixed point is not in man, since wemeet in him, as a being apart by himself, only the alternativefaculties; we must, therefore, recur to the intervention of anexterior agent who shall impress on our will a movement capable ofputting an end to its hesitations:--That exterior agent is nothingelse than God!

The scheme seems to differ little, and unwillingly, from a system ofdynamics as modern as the dynamo. Even in the prime motor, from themoment of action, freedom of will vanished. Creation was notsuccessive; it was one instantaneous thought and act, identical withthe will, and was complete and unchangeable from end to end, including time as one of its functions. Thomas was as clear aspossible on that point:--"Supposing God wills anything in effect; Hecannot will not to will it, because His will cannot change. " Hewills that some things shall be contingent and others necessary, butHe wills in the same act that the contingency shall be necessary. "They are contingent because God has willed them to be so, and withthis object has subjected them to causes which are so. " In the sameway He wills that His creation shall develop itself in time andspace and sequence, but He creates these conditions as well as theevents. He creates the whole, in one act, complete, unchangeable, and it is then unfolded like a rolling panorama, with itspredetermined contingencies. 

Man's free choice--liberum arbitrium--falls easily into place as apredetermined contingency. God is the first cause, and acts in allsecondary causes directly; but while He acts mechanically on therest of creation, --as far as is known, --He acts freely at one point, and this free action remains free as far as it extends on that line. Man's freedom derives from this source, but it is simply apparent, as far as he is a cause; it is a reflex action determined by a newagency of the first cause. 

However abstruse these ideas may once have sounded, they are farfrom seeming difficult in comparison with modern theories of energy. Indeed, measured by that standard, the only striking feature ofSaint Thomas's motor is its simplicity. Thomas's prime motor wasvery powerful, and its lines of energy were infinite. Among theseinfinite lines, a certain group ran to the human race, and, as longas the conduction was perfect, each man acted mechanically. In caseswhere the current, for any reason, was for a moment checked, --thatis to say, produced the effect of hesitation or reflection in themind, --the current accumulated until it acquired power to leap theobstacle. As Saint Thomas expressed it, the Prime Motor, Who wasnothing else than God, intervened to decide the channel of thecurrent. The only difference between man and a vegetable was thereflex action of the complicated mirror which was called mind, andthe mark of mind was reflective absorption or choice. The apparentfreedom was an illusion arising from the extreme delicacy of themachine, but the motive power was in fact the same--that of God. 

This exclusion of what men commonly called freedom was carried stillfurther in the process of explaining dogma. Supposing the conduction to be insufficient for a given purpose; a purpose whichshall require perfect conduction? Under ordinary circumstances, inninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the conductor will be burnedout, so to speak; condemned, and thrown away. This is the case withmost human beings. Yet there are cases where the conductor iscapable of receiving an increase of energy from the prime motor, which enables it to attain the object aimed at. In dogma, this storeof reserved energy is technically called Grace. In the strict, theological sense of the word, as it is used by Saint Thomas, theexact, literal meaning of Grace is "a motion which the Prime Motor, as a supernatural cause, produces in the soul, perfecting freewill. " It is a reserved energy, which comes to aid and reinforce thenormal energy of the battery. 

To religious minds this scientific inversion of solemn truths seems, and is, sacrilege; but Thomas's numerous critics in the Church havealways brought precisely this charge against his doctrine, and aredoing so still. They insist that he has reduced God to a mechanismand man to a passive conductor of force. He has left, they say, nothing but God in the universe. The terrible word which annihilatesall other philosophical systems against which it is hurled, has beenhurled freely against his for six hundred years and more, withoutvisibly affecting the Church; and yet its propriety seems, to thevulgar, beyond reasonable cavil. To Father de Regnon, of theextremely learned and intelligent Society of Jesus, the differencebetween pantheism and Thomism reduces itself to this: "Pantheism, starting from the notion of an infinite substance which is theplenitude of being, concludes that there can exist no other beingsthan THE being; no other realities than the absolute reality. Thomism, starting from the efficacy of the first cause, tends toreduce more and more the efficacy of second causes, and to replaceit by a passivity which receives without producing, which isdetermined without determining. " To students of architecture, whoknow equally little about pantheism and about Thomism, --or, indeed, for that matter, about architecture, too, --the quality that rousesmost surprise in Thomism is its astonishingly scientific method. TheFranciscans and the Jesuits call it pantheism, but science, too, ispantheism, or has till very recently been wholly pantheistic. Avowedly science has aimed at nothing but the reduction ofmultiplicity to unity, and has excommunicated, as though it wereitself a Church, any one who doubted or disputed its object, itsmethod, or its results. The effort is as evident and quite aslaborious in modern science, starting as it does from multiplicity, as in Thomas Aquinas, who started from unity; and it is necessarilyless successful, for its true aims, as far as it is science and notdisguised religion, were equally attained by reaching infinitecomplexity; but the assertion or assumption of ultimate unity hascharacterized the Law of Energy as emphatically as it hascharacterized the definition of God in theology. If it is a reproachto Saint Thomas, it is equally a reproach to Clerk-Maxwell. Intruth, it is what men most admire in both--the power of broad andlofty generalization. 

Under any conceivable system the process of getting God and manunder the same roof--of bringing two independent energies under thesame control--required a painful effort, as science has much causeto know. No doubt, many good Christians and some heretics have beenshocked at the tour de force by which they felt themselves suddenlyseized, bound hand and foot, attached to each other, and draggedinto the Church, without consent or consultation. To religiousmystics, whose scepticism concerned chiefly themselves and their ownexistence, Saint Thomas's man seemed hardly worth herding, at somuch expense and trouble, into a Church where he was not eager togo. True religion felt the nearness of God without caring to see themechanism. Mystics like Saint Bernard, Saint Francis, SaintBonaventure, or Pascal had a right to make this objection, sincethey got into the Church, so to speak, by breaking through thewindows; but society at large accepted and retains Saint Thomas'sman much as Saint Thomas delivered him to the Government; a two-sided being, free or unfree, responsible or irresponsible, an energyor a victim of energy, moved by choice or moved by compulsion, asthe interests of society seemed for the moment to need. CertainlySaint Thomas lavished no excess of liberty on the man he created, but still he was more generous than the State has ever been. SaintThomas asked little from man, and gave much; even as much freedom ofwill as the State gave or now gives; he added immortality hereafterand eternal happiness under reasonable restraints; his God watchedover man's temporal welfare far more anxiously than the State hasever done, and assigned him space in the Church which he never canhave in the galleries of Parliament or Congress; more than all this, Saint Thomas and his God placed man in the centre of the universe, and made the sun and the stars for his uses. No statute law ever didas much for man, and no social reform ever will try to do it; yetman bitterly complained that he had not his rights, and even in theChurch is still complaining, because Saint Thomas set a limit, moreor less vague, to what the man was obstinate in calling his freedomof will. 

Thus Saint Thomas completed his work, keeping his converging linesclear and pure throughout, and bringing them together, unbroken, inthe curves that gave unity to his plan. His sense of scale andproportion was that of the great architects of his age. One might goon studying it for a lifetime. He showed no more hesitation inkeeping his Deity in scale than in adjusting man to it. Strange asit sounds, although man thought himself hardly treated in respect tofreedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, man was in action muchthe superior of God, Whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomasdid not allow God even an undetermined will; He was pure Act, and assuch He could not change. Man alone was allowed, in act, to changedirection. What was more curious still, man might absolutely provehis freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his lifehe could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its beingdone for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for asingle instant His continuous action. If man had the singular fancyof making himself absurd, --a taste confined to himself but attestedby evidence exceedingly strong, --he could be as absurd as he liked;but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deitythe right to contradict Himself, which is one of man's chiefpleasures. While man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, anunlimited freedom to be wicked, --a privilege which, as both Churchand State bitterly complained and still complain, he hasoutrageously abused, --God was Goodness, and could be nothing else. While man moved about his relatively spacious prison with a certaindegree of ease, God, being everywhere, could not move. In onerespect, at least, man's freedom seemed to be not relative butabsolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space ortime or order or object or sense; but God's thought was His act andwill at once; speaking correctly, God could not think; He is. SaintThomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, asAbelard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of adivine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself. The atmosphereof Saint Louis surrounds the God of Saint Thomas, and its pure ethershuts out the corruption and pollution to come, --the Valois andBourbons, the Occams and Hobbes's, the Tudors and the Medicis, of anenlightened Europe. 

The theology turns always into art at the last, and ends inaspiration. The spire justifies the church. In Saint Thomas'sChurch, man's free will was the aspiration to God, and he treated itas the architects of Chartres and Laon had treated their famousfleches. The square foundation-tower, the expression of God's powerin act, --His Creation, --rose to the level of the Church facade as apart of the normal unity of God's energy; and then, suddenly, without show of effort, without break, without logical violence, became a many-sided, voluntary, vanishing human soul, and neitherVillard de Honnecourt nor Duns Scotus could distinguish where God'spower ends and man's free will begins. All they saw was the soulvanishing into the skies. How it was done, one does not care to ask;in a result so exquisite, one has not the heart to find fault with"adresse. "

About Saint Thomas's theology we need not greatly disturb ourselves;it can matter now not much, whether he put more pantheism than thelaw allowed or more materialism than Duns Scotus approved--or lessof either--into his universe, since the Church is still on the spot, responsible for its own doctrines; but his architecture is anothermatter. So scientific and structural a method was never an accidentor the property of a single mind even with Aristotle to prompt it. Neither his Church nor the architect's church was a sketch, but acompletely studied structure. Every relation of parts, everydisturbance of equilibrium, every detail of construction was treatedwith infinite labour, as the result of two hundred years ofexperiment and discussion among thousands of men whose minds andwhose instincts were acute, and who discussed little else. Scienceand art were one. Thomas Aquinas would probably have built a bettercathedral at Beauvais than the actual architect who planned it; butit is quite likely that the architect might have saved Thomas someof his errors, as pointed out by the Councils of 1276. Both weregreat artists; perhaps in their professions, the greatest that everlived; and both must have been great students beyond their practice. Both were subject to constant criticism from men and bodies of menwhose minds were as acute and whose learning was as great as theirown. If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Pariscondemned Thomas, the Bernardines had, for near two hundred years, condemned Beauvais in advance. Both the "Summa Theologiae" andBeauvais Cathedral were excessively modern, scientific, andtechnical, marking the extreme points reached by Europe on the linesof scholastic science. This is all we need to know. If we like, wecan go on to study, inch by inch, the slow decline of the art. Theessence of it--the despotic central idea--was that of organic unityboth in the thought and the building. From that time, the universehas steadily become more complex and less reducible to a centralcontrol. With as much obstinacy as though it were human, it hasinsisted on expanding its parts; with as much elusiveness as thoughit were feminine, it has evaded the attempt to impose on it a singlewill. Modern science, like modern art, tends, in practice, to dropthe dogma of organic unity. Some of the mediaeval habit of mindsurvives, but even that is said to be yielding before the dailyevidence of increasing and extending complexity. The fault, then, was not in man, if he no longer looked at science or art as anorganic whole or as the expression of unity. Unity turned itselfinto complexity, multiplicity, variety, and even contradiction. Allexperience, human and divine, assured man in the thirteenth centurythat the lines of the universe converged. How was he to know thatthese lines ran in every conceivable and inconceivable direction, and that at least half of them seemed to diverge from any imaginablecentre of unity! Dimly conscious that his Trinity required in logica fourth dimension, how was the schoolman to supply it, when eventhe mathematician of to-day can only infer its necessity? Naturallyman tended to lose his sense of scale and relation. A straight line, or a combination of straight lines, may have still a sort ofartistic unity, but what can be done in art with a series ofnegative symbols? Even if the negative were continuous, the artistmight express at least a negation; but supposing that Omar's kineticanalogy of the ball and the players turned out to be a scientificformula!--supposing that the highest scientific authority, in orderto obtain any unity at all, had to resort to the Middle Ages for animaginary demon to sort his atoms!--how could art deal with suchproblems, and what wonder that art lost unity with philosophy andscience! Art had to be confused in order to express confusion; butperhaps it was truest, so. 

Some future summer, when you are older, and when I have left, likeOmar, only the empty glass of my scholasticism for you to turn down, you can amuse yourselves by going on with the story after the deathof Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, and William of Lorris, and after thefailure of Beauvais. The pathetic interest of the drama deepens withevery new expression, but at least you can learn from it that yourparents in the nineteenth century were not to blame for losing thesense of unity in art. As early as the fourteenth century, signs ofunsteadiness appeared, and, before the eighteenth century, unitybecame only a reminiscence. The old habit of centralizing a strainat one point, and then dividing and subdividing it, and distributingit on visible lines of support to a visible foundation, disappearedin architecture soon after 1500, but lingered in theology twocenturies longer, and even, in very old-fashioned communities, fardown to our own time; but its values were forgotten, and it survivedchiefly as a stock jest against the clergy. The passage between thetwo epochs is as beautiful as the Slave of Michael Angelo; but, tofeel its beauty, you should see it from above, as it came from itsradiant source. Truth, indeed, may not exist; science avers it to beonly a relation; but what men took for truth stares one everywherein the eye and begs for sympathy. The architects of the twelfth andthirteenth centuries took the Church and the universe for truths, and tried to express them in a structure which should be final. Knowing by an enormous experience precisely where the strains wereto come, they enlarged their scale to the utmost point of materialendurance, lightening the load and distributing the burden until thegutters and gargoyles that seem mere ornament, and the grotesquesthat seem rude absurdities, all do work either for the arch or forthe eye; and every inch of material, up and down, from crypt tovault, from man to God, from the universe to the atom, had its task, giving support where support was needed, or weight whereconcentration was felt, but always with the condition of showingconspicuously to the eye the great lines which led to unity and thecurves which controlled divergence; so that, from the cross on thefleche and the keystone of the vault, down through the ribbednervures, the columns, the windows, to the foundation of the flyingbuttresses far beyond the walls, one idea controlled every line; andthis is true of Saint Thomas's Church as it is of Amiens Cathedral. The method was the same for both, and the result was an art markedby singular unity, which endured and served its purpose until manchanged his attitude toward the universe. The trouble was not in theart or the method or the structure, but in the universe itself whichpresented different aspects as man moved. Granted a Church, SaintThomas's Church was the most expressive that man has made, and thegreat Gothic cathedrals were its most complete expression. 

Perhaps the best proof of it is their apparent instability. Of allthe elaborate symbolism which has been suggested for the Gothiccathedral, the most vital and most perfect may be that the slendernervure, the springing motion of the broken arch, the leap downwardsof the flying buttress, --the visible effort to throw off a visiblestrain, --never let us forget that Faith alone supports it, and that, if Faith fails, Heaven is lost. The equilibrium is visibly delicatebeyond the line of safety; danger lurks in every stone. The peril ofthe heavy tower, of the restless vault, of the vagrant buttress; theuncertainty of logic, the inequalities of the syllogism, theirregularities of the mental mirror, --all these haunting nightmaresof the Church are expressed as strongly by the Gothic cathedral asthough it had been the cry of human suffering, and as no emotion hadever been expressed before or is likely to find expression again. The delight of its aspirations is flung up to the sky. The pathos ofits self-distrust and anguish of doubt is buried in the earth as itslast secret. You can read out of it whatever else pleases your youthand confidence; to me, this is all. 

THE END