Aucassin & Nicolette, and Other Mediaeval Romances and Legends

Aucassin & Nicolette, and Other Mediaeval Romances and Legends

The little tales brought together in this volume are drawn from the literature of the Middle Ages, and in many cases were written in France of the thirteenth century. I hope that they may be found interesting in themselves, but to appreciate them fully they should be considered in their relations to a definite historical background. Their conceptions of society, of religion, of politics, of humourthat precious gift which always dies so youngare not common to all of us to-day. They are of the thirteenth century, and we of the twentieth. We may not be better than our forefathers, but a great chasm of seven hundred years yawns between us and them. To enjoy their work without reserve it is necessary for a time to breathe the same air that was breathedroughly speakingby the subjects of St. Louis of France. It is possible to love the period known as the Middle Ages, or it is possible to detest it. But you cannot ignore it, nor find it flavourless on the palate, because that period possesses character, "character, that personal quality, that idiosyncrasy which, no doubt, you are the richer for possessing, be it morally bad or goodfor it is surely better to have a bad character than none, and if you are a church, better to be like the Badia than the City Temple." Indeed, it is evident that the personal equation must largely determine what any writer's conception of the Middle Ages is. A great modern poet, for instance, loved the Middle Ages because economic conditions pressed less hardly on the poor; because London was small and white and clean; because chivalry afforded opportunity for that decorative treatment of knightly episodes which makes his poetry so attractive. Yet across the Channel, much at the same time, an equally distinguished poet treated of the same period in a book of poems which it is instructive to consider side by side with the work of William Morris, and the Frenchman's verse is[Pg viii] lurid with fire and bigotry, and the tale of man's inhumanity to man. And the strange point is that both writers could give chapter and verse for the very different type of story they selected. Again, the religious temperament is apt to look back fondly to the Middle Ages as the "Age of Faith." To such minds medivalism is a period of easy acquiescence in spiritual authority, a state of health before the world grew sick with our modern disease of doubt. Certainly these centuries produced saints whose arresting examples and haunting words must always be the glory of Christianity, and it is equally certain that the offices and doctrines of the Church entered far more intimately into the lives of the common folk than they do to-day. But side by side with faith there was a "spirit of rebellion and revolt against the moral and religious ideas of the time." It may be found in many strangely different shapes: in the life of Abelard; in the extraordinary spread of witchcraft; andin its supreme literary expression, perhapsin a famous passage of "Aucassin and Nicolette." And, to take a third illustration of the same difficulty, were the Middle Ages years of sheer lyric beauty, or rather years of inexpressible ugliness and filth? "If you love the very words 'Middle Age'; if they conjure up to your mind glowing old folios of black letter with gilt and florid initials; crimson and green and blue pages in which slim ladies with spiked head-dresses walk amid sparse flowers and trees like bouquets, or where men-at-arms attack walled cities no bigger than themselves, or long-legged youths with tight waists and frizzed hair kiss girls under apple-trees; or a king is on a dais with gold lilies for his background, minstrels on their knees before him, lovers in the gallery"well, if you accept all this dainty circumstance, you get sheer lyric beauty, and nothing else. Only there is another side, a side not very pleasant to dwell upon, and it may perhaps be hinted at by saying that such a necessary of the toilet as a pocket-handkerchief was not generally known in this Age of Beauty. Perhaps it would be truer to hold that the Middle Ages comprised all these thingsthe knight-errant and the tormentor; the altar and the witch's Sabbath; a dream of loveliness having its roots in slime and squalor. These centuries were both "enormous and delicate." They were great enough to include opposites, and to square the circle. You may love[Pg ix] them, or you may hate them; but they cannot be given the go-by. The philosophy of the Middle Agesthat is to say, the idea which governed their political and theological conceptionswas both simple and profound. The Emperor or King was considered to be the guardian of the temporal order of things, just as the Pope was held to be the supreme authority in matters of eternal and spiritual concern. It was an idea fascinating in its simplicity, but life is a tangled and complex matter, and in practice, planets, which in theory moved strictly in their own orbits, were continually striking across each other's path. Even St. Louis, the King, who carried saintliness to the extreme limit permitted to man, was involved in frequent political quarrels with the supreme head of his Church, and by one of the little ironies of fate came within measurable distance of excommunication. The Kingagain in theorywas the owner of all his realm. This was necessary to abolish Heptarchies. But for the support of the Crown he parcelled out his realm amongst great lords, and thus established Heptarchies again. The great barons, in their turn, divided their estates amongst knights, bound to assist them in their quarrels, and to furnish a certain number of soldiers to their service. Amongst these knights sprang up one of the supreme institutions of the Middle Agesthe institution of chivalry. "It took its birth in the interior of the feudal mansions, without any set purpose beyond that of declaring, first, the admission of the young man to the rank and occupation of the warrior; secondly, the tie which bound him to his feudal superiorhis lord, who conferred upon him the arms of knighthood. But when once the feudal society had acquired some degree of stability and confidence, the usages, the feelings, the circumstances of every kind which attended the young man's admission among the vassal warriors, came under two influences, which soon gave them a fresh direction, and impressed them with a novel character. Religion and imagination, poetry and the Church, laid hold on chivalry, and used it as a powerful means of attaining the objects they had in view, of meeting the moral wants which it was their business to provide for." Throughout a long apprenticeship, in a castle which contained practically but one woman, the wife of his lord and she removed how infinitely[Pg x] from him in distance and in station, the young squire was trained to feel towards all women something of the dreamy devotion with which art and religion taught him to regard Our Lady herself. And the apprenticeship culminated in the ceremony of knighthood, with all the mystical significance of the symbolism preserved for us in the little story of Sir Hugh of Tabarie and the Sultan Saladin, carefully calculated to impress the recipient in the highest degree. Devotion to God, to his king, and to his ladythese were the ideals of knighthood, not always, unfortunately, its realities. But ideals are difficult of realization in so faulty a world as ours. The Black Prince was the very pattern of chivalry in his youth, yet Froissart remarks in his account of the battle of Poitiers that "the Prince of Wales, who was as courageous and cruel as a lion, took great pleasure this day in fighting and chasing his enemies." The conduct of that perfect gentle knight, Sir Graelent, towards the lady he discovered bathing in the fountain, was far from chivalrous, according to modern notions, and yet I can assure the reader that I have walked delicately as Agag, and gone to the verge of weakness, in recounting the incident. Finally, here is a passage from a letter written by a knight of the fourteenth century to the Tyrant of Mantua, relating to a French girl, Jeannette, which is sufficiently explicit. "Let her be detained at my suit, for if you should have a thousand golden florins spent for her, I will pay them without delay, for if I should have to follow her to Avignon I will obtain this woman. Now, my lord, should I be asking a trifle contrary to law, yet ought you not to cross me in this, for some day I shall do more for you than a thousand united women could effect; and if there be need of me in a matter of greater import, you shall have for the asking a thousand spears at my back." Ah, well, ideals that are realized cease to be ideals. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 38110
Author: Mason, Eugene
Release Date: Nov 23, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Mason, Eugene