09350
THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES
THE WANING OF
THE MIDDLE AGES
A STUDY OF THE FORMS OF LIFE,
THOUGHT AND ART IN FRANCE AND
THE NETHERLANDS IN THE
AND XVTH CENTURIES
BY
J. HUIZINGA
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1924
I4tt riflitt nurntcCl
otw? jPnurrfedf in Great JBrit&irt by
Butler & T*mer L*tdL*
PREFACE
History has always been far more engrossed by problems
of origins than by those of decline and fall. When studying
any period, we are always looking for the promise of what the
next is to bring. Ever since Herodotus, and earlier still, the
questions imposing themselves upon the mind have been
concerned with the rise of families, nations, kingdoms, social
forms or ideas. So, in medieval history, we have been search-
ing so diligently for the origins of modern culture, that at
times it would seem as though what we call the Middle Ages
had been little more than the prelude to the Renaissance.
But in history, as in nature, birth and death are equally
balanced. The decay of overripe forms of civilization is as
suggestive a spectacle as the growth of new ones. And it
occasionally happens that a period in which one had, hitherto,
been mainly looking for the coming to birth of new things,
suddenly reveals itself as an epoch of fading and decay.
The present work deals with the history of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries regarded as a period of termination,
as the close of the Middle Ages. Such a view of them pre-
sented itself to the author of this volume, whilst endeavouring
to arrive at a genuine understanding of the art of the brothers
Van Eyck and their contemporaries, that is to say, to grasp
its meaning by seeing it in connection with the entire life of
their times. Now the common feature of the various mani-
festations of civilization of that epoch proved to be inherent
rather in that which links them to the past than in the germs
which they contain of the future. The significance, not of
the artists alone, but also of theologians, poets, chroniclers,
princes and statesmen, could be best appreciated by con-
sidering them, not as the harbingers of a coming culture, but
as perfecting and concluding the old.
This English edition is not a simple translation of the original
vi Preface
Dutch, (second edition 1921, first 1919), but the result of a
work of adaptation, reduction and consolidation under the
author's directions. The references, here left out, may be
found in full in the original.
Verse quotations are given in the original French throughout
the work. In order to avoid an undue increase in length,
quotations in prose are, as a rule, given in translations only,
except in the concluding chapters where the literary expression
as such is discussed, and the actual language becomes important.
Here the old French prose also is set out in full.
The author wishes to express his sincere thanks to Sir J.
Bennell Rodd, whose kind interest in the book gave ric to
this edition, and to the translator, Mr. F. Hopman, of Leiden,
whose clear insight into the exigencies of translation rendered
the recasting possible, and whose endless patience with the
wishes of an exacting author made the difficult task a work of
friendly co-operation.
LEIDEN, j\ jj
April, 1924.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE VIOLENT TENOR OF LIFE .... 1
II PESSIMISM AND THE IDEAL OF THE SUBLIME LIFE . 22
III THE HIERARCHIC CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY . . 46
IV THE IDEA OF CHIVALRY 50
V THE DKEAM OF HEROISM AND OF LOVE . . .66
VI ORDERS OF CHIVALRY AND Vows 74
VII THE POLITICAL AND MILITARY VALUE OP CHIVALROUS
IDEAS 82
VIII LOVE FORMALIZED 95
IX THE CONVENTIONS OF LOVE 107
X THE IDYLLIC VISION OF LIFE 115
XI THE VISION OF DEATH 124
XII RELIGIOUS THOUGHT CRYSTALLIZING INTO IMAGES . 136
XIII TYPES OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 160
XIV RELIGIOUS SENSIBILITY AND RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION 173
XV SYMBOLISM IN ITS DECLINE 182
XVI THE EFFECTS OF REALISM 195
XVII RELIGIOUS THOUGHT BEYOND THIS LIMITS OF IMAGINA-
TION 201
XVIII THE FORMS OF THOUGHT AND PRACTICAL LIFE , . 206
XIX ART AND LIFE 222
XX THE ^ESTHETIC SENTIMENT 243
XXI VERBAL AND PLASTIC EXPRESSION COMPARED. I . 252
XXII VERBAL AND PLASTIC EXPRESSION COMPARED. II . 270
XXIII THE ADVENT OF THE NEW FORM . . . .297
BIBLIOGRAPHY 309
INDK2C 319
via
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF PHILIP THE GOOD, DUKE OF BURGUNDY.
By Roams VAN DEB WEYDEN . . .. Frontispiece
Antwerp, The Museum.
CHARLES THE BOLD AND HIS COURT ..... 30
From a MS. in the British Museum (after P. Dwricv> " La Miniature
Flamande ").
MINIATURE FROM " LE JOUVENCEL." By ALBXANDBB BEJONQ. 62
From a MS. at Munich (Library of the University).
THE BISHOP AND THE SQUIRE ...... 130
From the Death-dance printed by Cfuyot Merchant, Paris, 1485.
THE MADONNA OF MELON. By JEHAN FOTTCQUBT . . . 142
Antwerp, The Museum.
" APRIL." By THE BBOTHBBS VAN LIMBURG .... 238
From foe Calendar of foe " Tree riches heures du Due dc Itorry, 11 in the, ,1/Wfl
Conde at ChantiUy. (from the edition of P. Durrieu, Librairic l*l**n,
Paris.)
PORTRAIT OF THE CHANCELLOR ROLEST. By Rooimt VAN
DEE WBYDEN ......... 242
Beaume, The Hospital.
PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNI ARNOLFINL By JAN VAN Evcic . 252
Berlin, State Museum.
"LEAL SOUVENIR." By JAN VAN EVCK ..... 254
London, The National QaUery.
THE MADONNA OF THE CHANCELLOR KOLIN. By JAN VAN
ETOK ........... 25$
Paris, The Louvre.
THE ANNUNCIATION. By JAN VAN EYCK . 2CO
Pefrograd, The Hermitage.
MINIATURE FROM "LE CUER D'AMOURS ESPRIS." . . 200
By an Unknown Master in a M8. in the State Library, Vienna.
" SEPTEMBER." By THE BBOXHBBB VAN LXMBURQ , . ,270
From* the Calendar ojihe " Tr is riches heurea du Dw de Berry/' in the Mwf*
Condea* OhontiKy. (From the edition of P. Durrieu, Itfrratne Pton,
Jrons.)
LYSBET VAN DUVENVOOIUOE. ByAKUNKWOWNMABSlB. . 280
Collection Tewrira de Mattoe, Vogetemang, Holland.
viii
THE
WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES
CHAPTER I
THE VIOLENT TENOR OF LITE
To the world when it was half a thousand years younger,
the outlines of all things seemed more clearly marked than
to us. The contrast between suffering and joy, between
adversity and happiness, appeared more striking. All expe-
rience had yet to the minds of men the directness and absolute-
ness of the pleasure and pain of child-life. Every event, every
action, was still embodied in expressive and solemn forms,
which raised them to the dignity of a ritual. For it was not
merely the great facts of birth, marriage and death which,
by the sacredness of the sacrament, were raised to the rank
of mysteries ; incidents of less importance, like a journey, a
task, a visit, were equally attended by a thousand formalities :
benedictions, ceremonies, formulae.
Calamities and indigence were more afflicting than at present ;
it was more difficult to guard against them, and to find solace.
Illness and health presented a more striking contrast ; the
cold and darkness of winter were more real evils. Honours
and riches were relished with greater avidity and contrasted
more vividly with surrounding misery. We, at the present
day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur
coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine,
were formerly enjoyed.
Then, again, all things in life were of a proud or cruel pub-
licity. Lepers sounded their rattles and went about in pro-
cessions, beggars exhibited their deformity and their misery
in churches. Every order and estate, every rank and pro-
fession, was distinguished by its costume. The great lords
I B
The Waning of the Middle Ages
never moved about without a glorious display of arms and
liveries, exciting fear and envy. Executions and other
public acts of justice, hawking, marriages and funerals, were
all announced by cries and processions, songs and muic.
The lover wore the colours of his lady ; companions the emblem
of their confraternity; parties and servants the badges or
blazon of their lords. Between town and country, too, the
contrast was very marked. A medieval town did not lose
itself in extensive suburbs of factories and villas ; girded by
its walls, it stood forth as a compact whole, bristling with
innumerable turrets. However tall and threatening the
houses of noblemen or merchants might be, in the aspect of
the town the lofty mass of the churches always remained
dominant.
The contrast between silence and sound, darkness and light,
like that between summer and winter, was more strongly
marked than it is in our lives. The modern town hardly
knows silence or darkness in their purity, nor tho effect of a
solitary light or a single distant cry.
All things presenting themselves to the mind in violent
contrasts and impressive forms, lent a tone of excitement and
of passion to everyday life and tended to produce that per-
petual oscillation between despair and distracted joy, between
cruelty and pious tenderness which characterize life in the
Middle Ages.
One sound rose ceaselessly above the noises of buy life
and lifted all things unto a sphere of order and serenity : tho
sound of bells. The bells were in daily life like good ftpirits,
which by their famUiar voices, now called upon tho citizens
to mourn and now to rejoice, now warned them o danger,
now exhorted them to piety. They were known by thoir
names : big Jacqueline, or the bell Roland. Every one knew
the difference in meaning of the various ways of ringing*
However continuous the ringing of the bells, people would
seem not to have become blunted to the effect of thoir
sound.
Throughout the famous judicial duel between two citizens
of Valenciennes, in 1455, the big bell, " which is MdeouB to
hear," says Chastellain, never stopped ringing. What in-
toxication the pealing of the bells of all the churches, and of
The Violent Tenor of Life
all the monasteries of Paris, must have produced, sounding
from morning till evening, and even during the night, when a
peace was concluded or a pope elected.
The frequent processions, too, were a continual source of
pious agitation. When the times were evil, as they often were,
processions were seen winding along, day after day, for weeks
on end. In 1412 daily processions were ordered in Paris, to
implore victory for the king, who had taken up the oriflamme
against the Armagnacs. They lasted from May to July, and
were formed by ever-varying orders and corporations, going
always by new roads, and always carrying different relics.
The Burgher of Paris calls them " the most touching proces-
sions in the memory of men." People looked on or followed,
"weeping piteously, with many tears, in great devotion."
All went barefooted and fasting, councillors of the Parlement
as well as the poorer citizens. Those who could afford it,
carried a torch or a taper* A great many small children were
always among them. Poor country-people of the environfl
of Paris came barefooted from afar to join the procession.
And nearly every day the rain came down in torrents.
Then there were the entries of princes, arranged with all the
resources of art and luxury belonging to the age. And, lastly,
most frequent of all, one might almost say, uninterrupted,
the executions. The cruel excitement and coarse compassion
raised by an execution formed an important item in the spiritual
food of the common people. They were spectacular plays
with a moral. For horrible crimes the law invented atrocious
punishments. At Brussels a young incendiary and murderer
is placed in the centre of a circle of burning fagots and straw,
and made fast to a stake by means of a chain running round
an iron ring. He addresses touching words to the spectators,
" and he so softened their hearts that every one burst into
tears and his death was commended as the finest that was ever
seen." During the Burgundian terror in Paris in 1411, one
of the victims, Messire Mansart du Bois, being requested by
the hangman, according to custom, to forgive him, is not only
ready to do so with all his heart, but begs the executioner to
embrace him. " There was a great multitude of people, who
nearly all wept hot tears."
When the criminals were great lords, the common people
The Waning of the Middle Ages
had the satisfaction of seeing rigid justice done, and at the
same time finding the inconstancy of fortune exemplified
more strikingly than in any sermon or picture. The magis-
trate took care that nothing should be wanting to the effect
of the spectacle : the condemned were conducted to the scaf-
fold, dressed in the garb of their high estate. Jean de Mon-
taigu, grand maitre d'hotel to the king, the victim of Jean
sans Peur, is placed high on a cart, preceded by two trumpeters.
He wears his robe of state, hood, cloak, and hose half red
and half white, and his gold spurs, which are left on the feet
of the beheaded and suspended corpse. By special order of
Louis XI, the head of maitre Oudart de Bussy, who had
refused a seat in the Parlement, was dug up and exhibited
in the market-place of Hesdin, covered with a scarlet hood
lined with fur " selon la mode des conseillers de Parlement,"
with explanatory verses.
Barer than processions and executions were the sermons
of itinerant preachers, coming to shake people by their elo-
quence. The modern reader of newspapers can no longer
conceive the violence of impression caused by the spoken
word on an ignorant mind lacking mental food. The Fran-
ciscan friar Richard preached in Paris in 1429 during ten
consecutive days. He began at five in the morning and spoke
without a break till ten or eleven, for the most part in the
cemetery of the Innocents. When, at the close of his tenth
sermon, he announced that it was to be his last, because he
had no permission to preach more, " great and small wept as
touchingly and as bitterly as if they were watching their
best friends being buried ; and so did he." Thinking that he
would preach once more at Saint Denis on the Sunday the
people flocked thither on Saturday evening, and passed the
night in the open, to secure good seats.
AnothOT Minorite friar, Antoine Fradin, whom the magis-
trate of RMS had forbidden to preach, because he inveighed
aamst the bad government, is guided night and day in the
Cordeliers monastery, by women posted axound the building
armed with ashes and stones. In all the towns where the
famous Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer is expected, the
an b ' and Pes
and bishops, set out to greet him with, joyous songs. He
The Violent Tenor o/ Life
journeys with a numerous and ever-increasing following of
adherents, who every night make a circuit of the town in
procession, with chants and flagellations. Officials are
appointed to take charge of lodging and feeding these multi-
tudes. A large number of priests of various religious orders
accompany him everywhere, to assist him in celebrating mass
and in confessing the faithful. Also several notaries, to
draw up, on the spot, deeds embodying the reconciliations
which this holy preacher everywhere brings about. His
pulpit has to be protected by a fence against the pressure of
the congregation which wants to kiss his hand or habit. Work
is at a stand-still all the time he preaches. He rarely fails
to move his auditors to teats. When he spoke of the Last
Judgment, of Hell, or of the Passion, both he and his hearers
wept so copiously that he had to suspend his sermon till the
sobbing had ceased. Malefactors threw themselves at his
feet, before every one, confessing their great sins. One day,
while he was preaching, he saw two persons, who had been
condemned to death a man and a woman being led to
execution. He begged to have the execution delayed, had
them both placed under the pulpit, and went on with his
sermon, preaching about their sins. After the sermon, only
some bones were found in the place they had occupied, and
the people were convinced that the word of the saint had
consumed and saved them at the same time.
After Olivier Maillard had been preaching Lenten sermons
at Orleans, the roofs of the houses surrounding the place
whence he had addressed the people had been so damaged by
the spectators who had climbed on to them, that the roofer
sent in a bill for repairs extending over sixty-four days.
The diatribes of the preachers against dissoluteness and
luxury produced violent excitement which was translated
into action. Long before Savonarola, started bonfires of
" vanities " at Florence, to the irreparable loss of art, the
custom of these holocausts of articles of luxury and amuse-
ment was prevalent both in France and in Italy. At the sum-
mons of a famous preacher, men and women would hasten
to bring cards, dice, finery, ornaments, and burn them with
great pomp. Renunciation of the sin of vanity in this way
had taken a fixed and solemn form of public manifestation,
6 The Waning of the Middle Ages
in accordance with the tendency of the age to invent a style
for everything.
All this general facility of emotions, of tears and spiritual
upheavals, must be borne in mind in order to conceive fully
how violent and high-strung was life at that period.
Public mourning still presented the outward appearance
of a general calamity. At the funeral of Charles VII, the
people are quite appalled on seeing the cortege of all the court
dignitaries, "dressed in the deepest mourning, which was
most pitiful to see ; and because of the great sorrow and grief
they exhibited for the death of their master, many tears were
shed and lamentations uttered throughout the town." People
were especially touched at the sight of six pages of the king
mounted on horses quite covered with black velvet. One of
the pages, according to a rumour, had neither eaten nor drunk
for four days. " And God knows what doleful and piteous
plaints they made, mourning for their master."
Solemnities of a political character also led to abundant
weeping. An ambassador of the king of France repeatedly
bursts into tears while addressing a courteous harangue to
Philip the Good. At the meeting of the kings of France and
of England at Ardres, at the reception of the dauphin at
Brussels, at the 1 departure of John of Counbre from the court
of Burgundy, all the spectators weep hot tears. Chastellain
describes the dauphin, the future Louis XI, during his volun-
tary exile in Brabant, as subject to frequent fits of weeping.
Unquestionably there is some exaggeration in these descrip-
tions of the chroniclers. In describing the emotion caused
by the addresses of the ambassadors at the peace congress at
Arras, in 1435, Jean Germain, bishop of Chalons, makes the
auditors throw themselves on the ground, sobbing and groan-
ing. Things, of course, did not happen thus, but thus the
bishop thought fit to represent them, and the palpable exag-
geration reveals a foundation of truth. As with the senti-
mentalists of the eighteenth century, tears were considered
fine and honourable. Even nowadays an indifferent spectator
of a public procession sometimes feels himself suddenly moved
to inexplicable teaxs. In an age filled with religious rever-
ence for all pomp and grandeur, this propensity will appear
altogether natural
The Violent Tenor of Life
A simple instance will suffice to show the high degree of
irritability which distinguishes the Middle Ages from our own
time. One can hardly imagine a more peaceful game than
that of chess. Still like the chansons de gestes of some centuries
back, Olivier de la Marche mentions frequent quarrels arising
over it : " le plus saige y pert patience."
A scientific historian of the Middle Ages, relying first and
foremost on official documents, which rarely refer to the
passions, except violence and cupidity, occasionally runs the
risk of neglecting the difference of tone between the life of the
expiring Middle Ages and that of our own days. Such docu-
ments would sometimes make us forget the vehement pathos
of medieval life, of which the chroniclers, however defective
as to material facts, always keep us in mind.
In more than one respect life had still the colours of a fairy-
story ; that is to say, it assumed those colours in the eyes of
contemporaries. The court chroniclers were men of culture,
and they observed the princes, whose deeds they recorded, at
close quarters, yet even they give these records a somewhat
archaic, hieratic air. The following story, told by Chastellain,
serves to prove this. The young count of Gharolais, the later
Charles the Bold, on arriving at Gorcum, in Holland, on his
way from Sluys, learns that his father, the duke, has taken all
his pensions and benefices from him. Thereupon he calls his
whole court into his presence, down to the scullions, and in a
touching speech imparts his misfortune to them, dwelling on
his respect for his ill-informed father, and on his anxiety about
the welfare of all his retinue. Let those who have the means
to live, remain with him awaiting the return of good fortune ;
let the poor go away freely, and let them come back when they
hear that the count's fortune has been re-established : they
will all return to their old places, and the count will reward
them for their patience. " Then were heard cries and sobs,
and with one accord they shouted : ' We all, we all, my lord,
will live and die with thee.' " Profoundly touched, Charles
accepts their devotion : " Well, then, stay and suffer, and I
will suffer for you, rather than that you should be in want."
The nobles then come and offer him what they possess, " one
saying, I have a thousand, another, ten thousand ; I have this,
8 The Waning of the Middle Ages
I have that to place at thy service, and I am ready to share all
that may befall thee." And in this way everything went on
as usual, and there was never a hen the less in the kitchen.
Clearly this story has been more or less touched up. What
interests us is that Chastellain sees the prince and his court
in the epic guise of a popular ballad. If this is a literary man's
conception, how brilliant must royal life have appeared, when
displayed in almost magic splendour, to the naive imagination
of the uneducated !
Although in reality the mechanism of government had
already assumed rather complicated forms, the popular mind
pictures it in simple and fixed figures. The current political
ideas are those of the Old Testament, of the romaunt and the
ballad. The kings of the time are reduced to a certain number
of types, every one of which corresponds, more or less, to a
literary motif. There is the wise and just prince, the prince
deceived by evil counsellors, the prince who avenges the
honour of his family, the unfortunate prince to whom his
servants remain faithful. In the mind of the people political
questions are reduced to stories of adventure. Philip the
Good knew the political language which the people under-
stands. To convince the Hollanders and Frisians that he was
perfectly able to conquer the bishopric of Utrecht, he exhibits,
during the festivities of the Hague, in 1456, precious plate to
the value of thirty thousand silver marks. Everybody may
come and look at it. Amongst other things, two hundred
thousand gold lions have been brought from Lille contained
in two chests which every one may try to lift up. The demon-
stration of the solvency of the state took the form of an enter-
tainment at a fair.
Often we find a fantastic element in the life of princes which
reminds us of the caliph of the Arabian Nights. Charles VI
disguised and mounted with a friend on a single horse wit-'
nesses the entrance of his betrothed and is knocked about in
the crowd by petty constables. Philip the Good, whom the
physicians ordered to have his head shaved, issues a command
to all the nobles to do likewise, and charges Pierre de Hagen^
bach with the cropping of any whom he finds recalcitrant. In
the midst of coolly calculated enterprises princes sometimes
act with an impetuous temerity, which endangers their lives
The Violent Tenor of Life 9
and their policy. Edward III does not hesitate to expose his
life and that of the prince of Wales in order to capture some
Spanish merchantmen, in revenge for deeds of piracy. Philip
the Good interrupts the most serious political business to
make the dangerous crossing from Rotterdam to Sluys for the
sake of a mere whim. On another occasion, mad with rage
in consequence of a quarrel with his son, he leaves Brussels
in the night alone, and loses his way in the woods. The knight
Philippe Pot, to whom fell the delicate task of pacifying him
on his return, lights upon the happy phrase : " Good day, my
liege, good day, what is this ? Art thou playing King Arthur,
now, or Sir Lancelot ? "
The custom of princes, in the fifteenth century, frequently
to seek counsel in political matters from ecstatic preachers
and great visionaries, maintained a kind of religious tension
in state affairs which at any moment might manifest itself in
decisions of a totally unexpected character.
At the end of the fourteenth century and at the beginning
of the fifteenth, the political stage of the kingdoms of Europe
was so crowded with fierce and tragic conflicts that the peoples
could not help seeing all that regards royalty as a succession
of sanguinary and romantic events : in England, King Richard
II dethroned and next secretly murdered, while nearly at the
same time the highest monarch in Christendom, his brother-
in-law Wenzel, king of the Romans, is deposed by the electors ;
in France, a mad king and soon afterwards fierce party strife,
openly breaking out with the appalling murder of Louis of
Orleans in 1407, and indefinitely prolonged by the retaliation
of 1419 when Jean sans Peur is murdered at Montereau. With
their endless train of hostility and vengeance, these two
murders have given to the history of Prance, during a whole
century, a sombre tone of hatred. For the contemporary
mind cannot help seeing all the national misfortunes which
the struggle of the houses of Orleans and of Burgundy was to
unchain, in the light of that sole dramatic motive of princely
vengeance. It finds no explanation for historic events save
in personal quarrels and motives of passion.
In addition to all these evils came the increasing obsession
of the Turkish peril, and the still vivid recollection of the
catastrophe of Nicopolis in 1396, where a reckless attempt
10 The Waning of the Middle Ages
to save Christendom had ended in the wholesale slaughter
of French chivalry. Lastly, the great schism of the West
had lasted already for a quarter of a century, unsettling all
notions about the stability of the Church, dividing every land
and community. Two, soon three, claimants contending for
the papacy ! One of them, the obstinate Aragonese Peter
of Luna, or Benedict XIII, was commonly called in France " le
Pappe. de la Lune." What can an ignorant populace have
imagined when hearing such a name ?
The familiar image of Fortune's wheel from which kings
are falling with their crowns and their sceptres took a living
shape in the person of many an expelled prince, roaming from
court to court, without means, but full of projects and still
decked with the splendour of the marvellous East whence he
had fled the king of Armenia, the king of Cyprus, before
long the emperor of Constantinople. It is not surprising that
the people of Paris should have believed in the tale of the
Gipsies, who presented themselves in 1427, "a duke and a
count and ten men, all on horseback," while others, to the
number of 120, had to stay outside the town. They came
from Egypt, they said ; the pope had ordered them, by way
of penance for their apostasy, to wander about for seven years,
without sleeping in a bed ; there had been 1,200 of them, but
their king, their queen and all the others had died on the way ;
as a mitigation the pope had ordered that every bishop and
abbot was to give them ten pounds tournois. The p6ople of
Paris came in great numbers to see them, and have their
fortunes told by women who eased thenf of their money " by
magic art or in other ways."
The inconstancy oithe fortune of princes was strikingly
embodied in the person of King Ben6. Having aspired to the
crowns of Hungaiy, of Sicily, and of Jerusalem, he had lost all
his opportunities, and reaped nothing but a series of defeats,
and imprisonments, chequered by perilous escapes. The royal
poet, a lover of the arts, consoled himself for all his dis-
appointments on his estates in Anjou and in Ptovence his
cruel fate had not cured him of his predilection for pastoral
enjoyment. He had seen all his children* die but one a
daughter for whom was reserved a fate even harder than his
own. Mamed at sixteen to an imbecile bigot, Bfexury VI of
The Vioknt Tenor of Life 11
England, Margaret of Anjou, full of wit, ambition and passion,
after living for many years in that hell of hatred and of perse-
cution, the English court, lost her crown when the quarrel
between York and Lancaster at last broke out into civil war.
Having found refuge, after many dangers and suffering, at
the court of Burgundy, she told Chastellain the story of her
adventures : how she had been forced to commit herself and
her young son to the mercy of a robber, how at mass she had
had to ask a Scotch archer a penny for her offering, " who
reluctantly and with regret took a groat scots for her out of
his purse and lent it her." The good historiographer, moved
by so much misfortune, dedicated to her "a certain little
treatise on fortune, based on its inconstancy and deceptive
nature," which he entitled Le Temple de Bocace. He could
not guess that still graver calamities were in store for the
unfortunate queen. At the battle of Tewkesbury, in 1471,
the fortunes of Lancaster went down for ever. Her only son
perished there, probably slaughtered after the battle. Her
husband was secretly murdered ; she herself was imprisoned
in the Tower of London, where she remained for five years,
to be at last given up by Edward IV to Louis XI, who made
her renounce her father's inheritance as the price of her
liberty.
An atmosphere of passion and adventure enveloped the
lives of princes. It was not popular fancy alone which lent
it that colour.
A present-day reader, studying the history of the Middle
Ages based on official documents, will never sufficiently realize
the extreme excitability of the medieval soul. The picture
drawn mainly from official records, though they may be the
most reliable sources, will lack one element : that of the
vehement passion possessing princes and peoples alike. To
be sure, the passionate element is not absent from modern
politics, but it is now restrained and diverted for the most
part by the complicated mechanism of social life. Five
centuries ago it still made frequent and violent irruptions into
practical politics, upsetting rational schemes. In princes this
violence of sentiment is doubled by pride and the conscious-
ness of power, and therefore operates with a twofold impetus.
It is not surprising, says Ghastellain, that princes often live
12 The Waning of the Middle Ages
in hostility, " for princes are men, and their affairs are high
and perilous, and their natures are subject to many passions,
such as hatred and envy ; their hearts are veritable dwelling-
places of these, because of their pride in reigning."
In writing the history of the house of Burgundy, the leit-
motiv should constantly keep before our minds the spirit of
revenge. Nobody, of course, will now seek the explanation
of the whole conflict of power and interests, whence proceeded
the secular struggle between Prance and the house of Austria,
in the family feud between Orleans and Burgundy. All
sorts of causes of a general nature political, economic,
ethnographic have contributed to the genesis of that great
conflict. But we should never forget that the apparent
origin of it, and the central motive dominating it, was, to the
men of the fifteenth century and even later, the thirst for
revenge. To them Philip the Good is always, in the first
place, the avenger, " he who, to avenge the outrage done to
the person of Duke John, sustained the war for sixteen years."
He had undertaken it as a sacred duty: "with the most
violent and deadly hatred he would give himself up to revenge
the dead, as far as ever God would permit him, and he would
devote to it body and soul, substance and lands, submitting
everything to Fortune, considering it more a salutary task and
agreeable to God to undertake it, than to leave it."
Bead the long list of expiatory deeds which the treaty of
Arras demanded in 1436 chapels, monasteries, churches,
chapters to be founded, crosses to be erected, masses to be
chanted then one realizes the immensely high rate at which
men valued the need of vengeance and of reparations to out-
raged honour. The Burgundians were not alone in thinking
after this fashion ; the most enlightened man of his century,
Aeneas Sylvius, in one of his letters praises Philip above all
the other princes of his time, for his ajoxiety to avenge his
father.
According to La Maxche, this duty of honour and revenge
was to the duke's subjects also the cardinal point of poli cy
All the dominions of the duke, he says, were clamouring for
vengeance along with him. We shall find it difficult to believe
tbos, wten we remember, for instance, the commercial relations
between Flaaders and England, a more important political
The Violent Tenor of Life 13
factor, it would seem, than the honour of the ducal family.
But to understand the sentiment of the age itself, one should
look for the avowed and conscious political ideas. There can be
no doubt that no other political motive could be better under-
stood by the people than the primitive motives of hatred and
of vengeance. Attachment to princes had still an emotional
character ; it was based on the innate and immediate senti-
ments of fidelity and fellowship, it was still feudal sentiment
at bottom. It was rather party feeling than political. The
last three centuries of the Middle Ages are the time of the
great party struggles. From the thirteenth century onward
inveterate party quarrels arise in nearly all countries : first
in Italy, then in France, the Netherlands, Germany and
England. Though economic interests may sometimes have
been at the bottom of these quarrels, the attempts which
have been made to disengage them often smack somewhat
of arbitrary construction. The desire to discover economic
causes is to some degree a craze with us, and sometimes
leads us to forget a much simpler psychological explanation
of the facts.
In the feudal age the private wars between two families
have no othey discernible reason than rivalry of rank and
covetousness of possessions. Racial pride, thirst of ven-?
geance, fidelity, are their primary and direct motives. There
are no grounds to ascribe another economic basis to them than
mere greed of one's neighbour's riches. Accordingly as the
central power consolidates and extends, these isolated quarrels
unite, agglomerate to groups ; large parties are formed, are
polarized, so to say ; while their members know of no other
grounds for their concord or enmity than those of honour,
tradition and fidelity. Their economic differences are often
only a consequence of their relation towards their rulers.
Every page of medieval history proves the spontaneous and
passionate character of the sentiments of loyalty and devotion
to the prince. At Abbeville, in 1462, a messenger comes at
night, bringing the news of a dangerous illness of the duke of
Burgundy. His son requests the good towns to pray for him.
At once the aldermen order the bells of the church of Saint
Vulfran to be rung ; the whole population wakes up and goes
to church, where it remains all night in prayer, kneeling or
14 The Waning of (he Middle Ages
prostrate on the ground, with "grandes allumeries merveil-
leuses," while the bells keep tolling.
It might be thought that the schism, which had no dogmatic
cause, could hardly awaken religious passions in countries
distant from Avignon and of Rome, in which the two popes
were only known by name. Yet in fact it immediately
engendered a fanatical hatred, such as exists between the
faithful and infidels. When the town of Bruges went over to
the " obedience " of Avignon, a great number of people left
their house, trade or prebend, to go and live according to their
party views in some diocese of the Urbanist obedience : Lidge,
Utrecht, or elsewhere. In 1382 the oriflamme, which might
only be unfurled in a holy cause, was taken up against the
Flemings, because they were Urbanists, that is, infidels.
Pierre Salmon, a ^French political agent, arriving at Utrecht
about Easter, could not find a priest there willing to admit
him to the communion service, " because they said I was a
schismatic and believed in Benedict the anti-pope."
The emotional character of party sentiments and of fidelity
was further heightened by the powerfully suggestive effect of
all the outward signs of these divergences : liveries, colours,
badges, party cries. During the first years of the war between
the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, these signs succeeded
eacli other in Paris with a dangerous alternation : a purple
hood with the cross of Saint Andrew, white hoods, then violet
ones. Even priests, women and children wore distinctive
signs. The images of saints were decorated with them; it
was asserted that certain priests, during mass and in baptizing,
refused to make the sign of the cross in the orthodox way, but
made it in the form of a Saint Andrew cross.
In the blind passion with which people followed their lord
or their party, the unshakable sentiment of right, character-
istic of the Middle Ages, is trying to find expression. Man at'
that time is convinced that right is absolutely fixed and
certain. Justice should prosecute the unjust everywhere and
to the end. Reparation and retribution have to be extreme,
and assume the character of revenge. la this exaggerated
need of justice, primitive barbarism, pagan at bottom, blends
with the Christian conception of society. The Church, on
the one hand, had inculcated gentleness and clemency, and
The Violent Tenor of Life 15
tried, in tliat way, to soften judicial morals. On the other
hand, in adding to the primitive need of retribution the horror
of sin, it had, to a certain extent, stimulated the sentiment of
justice. And sin, to violent and impulsive spirits, was only
too frequently another name for what their enemies did. The
barbarous idea of retaliation was reinforced by fanaticism.
The chronic insecurity made the greatest possible severity
on the part of the public authorities desirable ; crime came to
be regarded as a menace to order and society, as well as an
insult to divine majesty. Thus it was natural that the late
Middle Ages should become the special period of judicial
cruelty. That the criminal deserved his punishment was not
doubted for a moment. The popular sense of justice always
sanctioned the most rigorous penalties. At intervals the
magistrate undertook regular campaigns of severe justice,
now against brigandage, now against sorcery or sodomy.
What strikes us in this judicial cruelty and in the joy the
people felt at it, is rather brutality than perversity. Torture
and executions are enjoyed by the spectators like an enter-
tainment at a fair. The citizens of Mons bought a brigand,
at far too high a price, for the pleasure of seeing him quartered,
" at which the people rejoiced more than if a new holy body
had risen from the dead." The people of Bruges, in 1488,
during the captivity of Maximilian, king of the Romans,
cannot get their fill of seeing the tortures inflicted, on a high
platform in the middle of the market-place, on the magistrates
suspected of treason. The unfortunates are refused the death-
blow which they implore, that the people may feast again
upon their torments.
Both in France and in England, the custom existed of
refusing confession and the extreme unction to a criminal
condemned to death. Sufferings and fear of death were to
be aggravated by the certainty of eternal damnation. In
vain had the council of Vienne in 1311 ordered to grant them
at least the sacrament of penitence. Towards the end of the
fourteenth century the same custom still existed. Charles V
himself, moderate though he was, had declared that no change
would be made in his lifetime. The chancellor Pierre d'Orge-
mont, whose " forte cervelle," says Philippe de M&zi&res, was
more difficult to turn than a mill-stone, remained deaf to
16 The Waning of the Middle Ages
the humane remonstrances of the latter. It was only after
Gerson had joined his voice to that of M6zi&res that a royal
decree of the 12th of February, 1397, ordered that confession
should be accorded to the condemned. A stone cross erected
by the care of Pierre de Craon, who had interested himself in
the decree, marked the place where the Minorite friars might
assist penitents going to execution. And even then the bar-
barous custom did not disappear. Etienne Ponchier, bishop
of Paris, had to renew the decree of 1311 in 1500.
In 1427 a noble brigand is hanged in Paris. At the moment
when he is going to be executed, the great treasurer of the
regent appears on the scene and vents his hatred against him ;
he prevents his confession, in spite of his prayers ; he climbs
the ladder behind him, shouting insults, beats him with a
stick, and gives the hangman a thrashing for exhorting the
victim to think of his salvation. The hangman grows nervous
and bungles his work ; the cord snaps, the wretched criminal
falls on the ground, breaks a leg and some ribs, and in this
condition has to climb the ladder again.
The Middle Ages knew nothing of all those ideas which have
rendered our sentiment of justice timid and hesitating: doubts
as to the criminal's responsibility ; the conviction that society
is, to a certain extent, the accomplice of the individual ; the
desire to reform instead of inflicting pain ; and, we may even
add, the fear of judicial errors. Or rather these ideas were
implied, unconsciously, in the very strong and direct feeling
of pity and of forgiveness which alternated with extreme
severity. Instead of lenient penalties, inflicted with hesita-
tion, the Middle Ages knew but the two extremes : the ful-
ness of cruel punishment, and mercy. When the condemned
criminal is pardoned, the question whether he deserves it for
any special reasons is hardly asked ; for mercy has to be gratui-
tous, like the mercy of God. In practice, it was not always
pure pity which determined the question of pardon. The
princes of the fifteenth century were very liberal of " lettres
de remission " for misdeeds of all sorts, and contemporaries
thought it quite natural, that they were obtained by the inter-
cession of noble relatives. The majority of these documents,
however, concern poor common people.
The contrast of cruelty and of pity recurs at every turn in
The Violent Tenor of Life 17
the manners and customs of the Middle Ages. On the one
hand, the sick, the poor, the insane, are objects of that deeply
moved pity, born of a feeling of fraternity akin to that which
is so strikingly expressed in modern Russian literature ; on
the other hand, they are treated with incredible hardness or
cruelly mocked. The chronicler Pierre de Fenin, having
described the death of a gang of brigands, winds up naively :
" and people laughed a good deal, because they were all poor
men." In 1425, an " esbatement " takes place in Paris, of
four blind beggars, armed with sticks, with which they hit
each other in trying to kill a pig, which is the prize of the
combat. On the evening before they are led through
the town, " all armed, with a great banner in front, on which
was pictured a pig, and preceded by a man beating a drum."
In the fifteenth century, female dwarfs were objects of
amusement, as they still were at the court of Spain when
Velazquez painted their infinitely sad faces. Madame d'Or,
the blond dwarf of Philip the Good, was. famous. She was
made to wrestle, at a court festival, with the acrobat Hans.
At the wedding-feasts of Charles the Bold, in 1468, Madame
de Beaugrant, the female dwarf of Mademoiselle of Burgundy,
enters dressed like a shepherdess, mounted on a golden Eon,
larger than a horse ; she is presented to the young duchess
and placed on the table. As to the fate of these small creatures,
the account-books are more eloquent for us than any senti-
mental complaint could be. They tell us of a dwarf-girl
whom a duchess caused to be fetched from her home, and how
her parents came to visit her from time to time and receive a
gratuity. " Au p&re de Belon la folle, qui estoit venu veoir
ea fille. . . . 27s. 6eZ." The poor fellow perhaps went home
well pleased and much elated about the court function of his
daughter. That same year a locksmith of Blois furnished two
iron collars, the one " to make fast Belon, the fool, and the
other to put round the neck of the monkey of her grace the
Duchess."
In the harshness of those times there is something ingenuous
which almost forbids us to condemn it. When the massacre of
the Armagnacs was in full swing in 1418, the Parisians founded
a brotherhood of Saint Andrew in the church of Saint Eustache :
everyone, priest or layman, wore a wreath of red roses, so that
o
18 The Waning of the Middle Ages
the church was perfumed by them, " as if it had been washed
with rose-water." The people of Arras celebrate the annul-
ment of the sentences for witchcraft, which during the whole
year 1461 had infested the town like an epidemic, by joyous
festivals and a competition in acting "folies moralisees," of
which the prizes were a gold fleur-de-lis, a brace of capons,
etc. ; nobody, it seems, thought any more of the tortured
and executed victims.
So violent and motley was life, that it bore the mixed smell
of blood and of roses. The men of that time always oscillate
between the fear of hell and the most naive joy, between
cruelty and tenderness, between harsh asceticism and insane
attachment to the delights of this world, between hatred and
goodness, always miming to extremes.
After the close of the Middle Ages the mortal sins of pride,
anger and covetousness have never again shown the unabashed
insolence with which they manifested themselves in the life
of preceding centuries. The whole history of the house of
Burgundy is like an epic of overweening and heroic pride,
which takes the form of bravura and ambition with Philippe
le Hardi, of hatred and envy with Jean sans Peur, of the lust
of vengeance and fondness for display with Philip the Good,
of foolhardy temerity and obstinacy with Charles the Bold.
Medieval doctrine found the root of all evil either in the
sin of pride or in cupidity. Both opinions were based on
Scripture texts : A superbia initium sum/psit omnis perditio.
Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas. It seems, nevertheless,
that from the twelfth century downward people begin to find the
principle of evil rather in cupidity than in pride. The voices
which condemn blind cupidity, " la cieca cupidigia " of Dante,
become louder and louder. Pride might perhaps be called the
sin of the feudal and hierarchic age. Very little property is,
in the modern sense, liquid, while power is not yet associated,
predominantly, with money ; it is still rather inherent in the
person and depends on a sort of religious awe which he inspires ;
it makes itself felt by pomp and magnificence, or a numerous
train of faithful followers. Feudal or hierarchic thought ex-
presses the idea of grandeur by visible signs, lending to it
a symbolic shape, of homage paid kneeling, of ceremonial
reverence. Pride, therefore, is a symbolic sin, and from the
The Violent Tenor of Life 19
fact that, in the last resort, it derives from the pride of Lucifer,
the author of all evil, it assumes a metaphysical character.
Cupidity, on the other hand, has neither this symbolic
character nor these relations with theology. It is a purely
worldly sin, the impulse of nature and of the flesh. In the
later Middle Ages the conditions of power had been changed
by the increased circulation of money, and an illimitable field
opened to whosoever was desirous of satisfying his ambitions
by heaping up wealth. To this epoch cupidity becomes the
predominant sin. Riches have not acquired the spectral
impalpability which capitalism, founded on credit, will give
them later ; what haunts the imagination is still the tangible
yellow gold. The enjoyment of riches is direct and primitive ;
it is not yet weakened by the mechanism of an automatic
and invisible accumulation by investment ; the satisfaction
of being rich is found either in luxury and dissipation, or in
gross avarice.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages feudal and hierarchic
pride had lost nothing, as yet, of its vigour ; the relish for
pomp and display is as strong as ever. This primitive pride
has now united itself with the growing sin of cupidity, and it
is this mixture of the two which gives the expiring Middle
Ages a tone of extravagant passion that never appears again.
A furious chorus of invectives against cupidity and avarice
rises up everywhere from the literature of that period.
Preachers, moralists, satirical writers, chroniclers and poets
speak with one voice. Hatred of rich people, especially of the
new rich, who were then very numerous, is general. Official
records confirm the most incredible cases of unbridled avidity
told by the chronicles. In 1436 a quarrel between two beggars,
in which a few drops of blood had been shed, had soiled the
church of the Innocents at Paris. The bishop, Jacques du
Chfitelier, "a very ostentatious, grasping man, of a more
worldly disposition than his station required/' refused to
consecrate the church anew, unless he received a certain sum
of money from the two poor men, which they did not possess, so
that the service was interrupted for twenty-two days. Even
worse happened under his successor, Denys de Moulins.
During four months of the year 1441, he prohibited both
burials and processions in the cemetery of the Innocents, the
20 The Waning of the Middle Ages
most favoured of all, because the church could not pay the
tax he demanded. This Denys de Moulins was reputed " a
man who showed very little pity to people, if he did not receive
money or some equivalent ; and it was told for truth that he
had more than fifty lawsuits before the Parlement, for nothing
could be got out of him without going to law."
A general feeling of impending calamity hangs over all.
Perpetual danger prevails everywhere. To realize the continu-
ous insecurity in which the lives of great and small alike were
passed, it suffices to read the details which Monsieur Pierre
Champion has collected regarding the persons mentioned by
Villon in his Testament, or the notes of Monsieur A. Tuetey
to the diary of a Burgher of Paris. They present to us an
interminable string of lawsuits, crimes, assaults and perse-
cutions. A chronicle like that of Jacques du Clercq, or a diary
such as that of the citizen of Metz, Philippe de Vigneulles,
perhaps lay too much stress on the darker side of contemporary
lif e, but every investigation of the careers of individual persons
seems to confirm them, by revealing to us strangely troubled
lives.
In reading the chronicle of Mathieu d'Escouchy, simple,
exact, impartial, moralizing, one would think that the author
was a studious, quiet and honest man. His character was
unknown before Monsieur du Fresne de Beaucourt had elicited
the history of his life from the archives. But what a life
it was, that of this representative of " col&rique Picardie."
Alderman, then, towards 1445 provost, of P6ronne, we find
him from the outset engaged in a family quarrel with Jean
Froment, the city syndic. They harass each other recipro-
cally with lawsuits, for forgery and murder, for " exces et
attemptaz." The attempt of the provost to get the widow
of his enemy condemned for witchcraft costs him dear.
Summoned before the Parlement of Paris himself, d'Escouchy
is imprisoned. We find him again in prison as an accused
on five more occasions, always in grave criminal causes, and
more than once in heavy chains, A son of Froment wounds
him in an encounter. Each of the parties hires brigands to
assail the other. After this long feud ceases to be mentioned
in the records, others arise of similar violence. All this does
not check the career of d'Escouchy : he becomes bailiff, provost
The Violent Tenor of Life 21
of Eibemont, "procureur du roi" at Saint Quentin; he is
ennobled. He is taken prisoner at Montlhery, then comes
back maimed from a later campaign. Next he marries, but
not to settle down to a quiet life. Once more, he appears
accused of counterfeiting seals, conducted to Paris " comme
larron et murdrier," forced into confessions by torture, pre-
vented from appealing, condemned; then rehabilitated and
again condemned, till the traces of this career of hatred and
persecutions disappear from the records.
Is it surprising that the people could see their fate and that
of the world only as an endless succession of evils ? Bad
government, exactions, the cupidity and violence of the great,
wars and brigandage, scarcity, misery and pestilence to this
is contemporary history nearly reduced in the eyes of the
people. The feeling of general insecurity which was caused
by the chronic form wars were apt to take, by the constant
menace of the dangerous classes, by the mistrust of justice,
was further aggravated by the obsession of the coming end of
the world, and by the fear of hell, of sorcerers and of devils.
The background of all life in the world seems black. Every-
where the flames of hatred arise and injustice reigns. Satan
covers a gloomy earth with his sombre wings. In vain the
militant Church battles, preachers deliver their sermons ; the
world remains unconverted. According to a popular belief,
current towards the end of the fourteenth century, no one,
since the beginning of the great Western schism, had entered
Paradise.
CHAPTER II
PESSIMISM AND THE IDEAL OF THE SUBLIME
LIFE
At the close of the Middle Ages, a sombre melancholy weighs
on people's souls. Whether we read a chronicle, a poem, a
sermon, a legal document even, the same impression of im-
mense sadness is produced by them all. It would sometimes
seem as if this period had been particularly unhappy, as if it
had left behind only the memory of violence, of covetousness
and mortal hatred, as if it had known no other enjoyment but
that of intemperance, of pride and of cruelty.
Now in the records of all periods misfortune has left more
traces than happiness. Great evils form the groundwork of
history. We are perhaps inclined to assume without much
evidence that, roughly speaking, and notwithstanding all
calamities, the sum of happiness can have hardly changed
from one period to another. But in the fifteenth century, as
in the epoch of romanticism, it was, so to say, bad form to
praise the world and life openly. It was fashionable to see
only its suffering and misery, to discover everywhere signs
of decadence and of the near end in short, to condemn the
times or to despise them.
We look in vain in the French literature of the beginning
of the fifteenth century for the vigorous optimism which will
spring up at the Eenaissance though, by the way, the optimist
tendency of the Renaissance is sometimes exaggerated. The
exulting exclamation of TJlrich von Hutten, which has become
trite from much quoting, " saeculum, literae ! juvat
vivere ! " l expresses the enthusiasm of the scholar rather
than that of the man. With the humanists optimism is
still tempered by the ancient contempt, both Christian and
1 " O world, letters, it is a delight to live ! "
22
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 23
Stoic, for the world. A passage extracted from a letter written
by Erasmus in 1518, may serve better than Hutten's exclama-
tion to show the average valuation put upon life by a humanist.
" I am not so greatly attached to life ; having entered upon
my fifty-first year, I judge I have lived long enough ; and on
the other hand, I see in this life nothing so excellent or agree-
able that a man might wish for it, on whom the Christian
creed has conferred the hope of a much happier life, in store
for those who have attached themselves closely to piety.
Nevertheless, at present, I could almost wish to be rejuvenated
for a few years, for this only reason that I believe I see a golden
age dawning in the near future." He then describes the
concord reigning among the princes of Christendom and their
inclination to peace which was so dear to him personally
then he continues : " Everything confirms my hope that not
only good morals and Christian piety will be reborn and flourish,
but also pure and true literature and good learning." Thanks
to the protection of princes, be it understood. " It is to their
pious feelings that we are indebted for seeing everywhere, as
at a given signal, illustrious spirits awakening and conspiring
to restore good learning."
In short, the appreciation of the joys of life, which Erasmus
manifests, is fairly cool ; moreover, he soon changed his mood
of hopeful expectation, never to find it again. However,
compared with current feeling in the preceding century,
except in Italy, Erasmus's appreciation might rather be called
warm. The men of letters at the court of Charles VII, or at
that of Philip the Good, never tire of inveighing against life
and the age. The note of despair and profound dejection is
predominantly sounded not by ascetic monks, but by the
court poets and the chroniclers laymen, living in aristocratic
circles and amid aristocratic ideas. Possessing only a slight
intellectual and moral culture, being for the most part strangers
to study and learning, and of only a feebly religious temper,
they were incapable of finding consolation or hope in the
spectacle of universal misery and decay, and could only
bewail the decline of the world and despair of justice and of
peace.
No one has been so lavish of complaints of this nature as
Eustache Deschamps :
24 The Waning of the Middle Ages
" Temps de doleur et do temptacion,
Aages de plour, d'envie et de tourment,
Temps de langour et de dampnacion,
Aages meneur pres du definement,
Temps plains d'orreur qui tout fait faussement,
Aage menteur, plain d'orgueil et d'envie,
Temps sanz honeur et sanz vray jugement,
Aage en tristesse qui abrege la vie," *
The ballads he has composed in this spirit may be counted
by the dozen : monotonous and gloomy variations of the same
dismal theme. There must have prevailed among the nobility
a general disposition to melancholy ; otherwise we could not
account for the manifest popularity of these poems.
" Toute teesse deffaut,
Tous cueurs ont prins par assaut
Tristesse et merencolie." 2
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, the tone is still
unchanged ; Jean Meschinot sighs as did Deschamps.
" O miserable et trds dolente vie ! ...
La guerre avons, mortality, famine ;
Le froid, le chaud, le jour, la nuit nous mine ;
Puces, cirons et tant d'autre vermine
Nous guerroyent. Bref, miserere domine
Noz meschans corps, dont le vivre est tres court." 8
He too is convinced that all goes wrong in the world ; there
is no justice any more ; the great exploit the small, and the
small exploit each other. He pretends to have been led by
his hypochondria within an ace of suicide. He depicts him-
self in the following terms :
1 Time of mourning and of temptation, Age of tears, of envy and of tor-
ment, Tune of languor and of damnation, Age of decline nigh to the end,
T*ne Ml of horror which does all things falsely, Lying age, full of pride and
of envy, Time without honour and without true judgment, Age of sadness
which shortens life.
1 All mirth is lost, All hearts have been taken by storm By sadness and
melancholv*
miserable and very sad life 1 ... We suffer from warfare, death
and famtae ; Cold and heat, day and night, sap oar strength ; Fleai
antes aad so much otter vermin Make war upon us. In short, have
.uwd, upon owe wicked persons, whose life is very short.
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 25
"Et je, le pouvre escrivain,
An cueur triste, faible et vain,
Voyant de chascun le deuil,
Soucy me tient en sa main ;
Toujours les larmes a 1'ceil,
Rien fors mourir je ne vueil." *
All that we get to know of the moral state of the nobles
points to a sentimental need of enrobing their souls with the
garb of woe. There is hardly one who does not come forward
to affirm that he has seen nothing but misery during his life
and expects only worse things from the future. Georges
Chastellain, the historiographer of the dukes of Burgundy and
chief of the Burgundian rhetorical school, speaks thus of him-
self in the prologue to his chronicle : " I, man of sadness, born
in an eclipse of darkness, and thick fogs of lamentation." His
successor, Olivier de la Marche, chooses for his device the lament,
" tant a souffert La Marche." 2 It would be interesting to
study from the point of view of physiognomy the portraits
of that time, which for the most part strike us by their sad
expression.
It is curious to notice the variation of meaning which
the word melancholy shows in the fourteenth century. The
ideas of sadness, of reflection, and of fancy, are blended in the
term. For example, in speaking of Philip of Artevelde, lost
in thought, in consequence of a message he had just received,
Froissart expresses himself thus : " Quant il eut merancoliet
une espasse, il s'avisa que il rescriproit aus commissaires dou roi
de France." 8 Deschamps says of something that is uglier
than could be imagined : no artist is " merencolieux " enough
to be able to paint it. The change of meaning evidently
shows a tendency to identify all serious occupation of the
mind with sadness.
The poetry of Bustache Deschamps is full of petty reviling
of life and its inevitable troubles. Happy is he who has no
children, for babies mean nothing but crying and stench ;
1 And I, poor writer, With the sad, feeble and vain heart, When I see
every one mourning, Then Affliction holds me in her hand ; I have always
tears in my eye, I wish for nothing but to die.
8 So much has La Marche suffered.
8 When he had reflected for a space, he resolved to answer the emissaries
of the king of France,
26 The Waning of the Middle Ages
they give only trouble and anxiety ; they have to be clothed
shod, fed ; they are always in danger of falling and hurting
themselves ; they contract some illness and die. When they
grow up, they may go to the bad and be put in prison. Nothing
but cares and sorrows ; no happiness compensates us for our
anxiety, for the trouble and expenses of their education. Is
there a greater evil than to have deformed children ? The
poet has no word of pity for their misfortune ; he holds
" Quo horns de membre contrefais
Est en sa pens6e meffais,
Plains de pechiez et plains de vices." *
Happy are bachelors, for a man who has an evil wife has a
bad time of it, and he who has a good one always fears to lose
her. In other words, happiness is feared together with mis-
fortune. In old age the poet sees only evil and disgust, a
lamentable decline of the body and the mind, ridicule and
insipidity. It comes soon, at thirty for a woman, at fifty for
a man, and neither lives beyond sixty, for the most part. It
is a far cry to the serene ideality of Dante's conception of noble
old age in the Convivio !
The world, says Deschamps, is like an old man fallen into
dotage. He has begun by being innocent, then he has been
wise for a long time, just, virtuous and strong :
** Or est laches, chetis et molz,
Vieulx, convoiteux et mal parlant :
Je ne voy que foles et f olz. . . .
La fin s'approche, en v&ite 1 . . . .
Tout va mal." 2
In another place he laments :
"Pour quoy est si obscurs le temps,
Que li uns 1'autre ne cognoist,
Mais znuent les gouvernements
De mal en pis, si corome on voit t
1 That a man with deformed limbs is misshapen of mind, Full of sins
and full of vices.
* Now the world is cowardly, decayed and weak, Old, covetous, confused
of speech : I see only female and male fools. . . The end approaches, in
sooth. . . . AH goes badly.
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 27
Le temps passe* trop mieulx valoit.
Qui regne ? Tristesse et Emmy ;
n ne court justice ne droit ;
Je ne see* mais desquelz je stty." l
And again :
" Se ce temps tient, je deviendray hennite,
Car je n'i voys fors que dueil et tourment." *
Pessimism of this kind has hardly anything to do with
religion. Deschamps only gives an off-hand pious purport
to his reflections. Despondency and spleen are at the bottom
of them, not piety. A contempt of the world, which is domi-
nated by fear of weariness and of sorrow, of disease and of old
age, is but an asceticism of the blase, born of disillusion and
of satiety. It has nothing in common with religion but its
terminology.
Even in ascetic utterances of a purer and loftier kind such
fear of life, such recoiling before its inevitable sorrows, is not
seldom mingled. The series of arguments which Jean Gerson
propounds in his Discours de V excellence de Virginite, written
for his sisters, with a view to keep them from marrying,
does not essentially differ from Deschamps* gloomy lamenta-
tions. All the evils attaching to wedlock are found there.
The husband may be a drunkard, a spendthrift, a miser. If
he be honest and good, bad harvests, death of cattle, a ship-
wreck may occur, robbing him of all he possesses. What
misery it is to be pregnant ! How many women die in child-
bed. The woman who suckles her baby knows neither rest
nor pleasure. Children may be deformed or disobedient ; the
husband may die, and leave his widow behind in care and
poverty.
Thus, always and everywhere in the literature of the age,
we find a confessed pessimism. As soon as the soul of these
men has passed from childlike mirth and unreasoning enjoy-
1 Why are the times BO dark That men do not know each other, But govern-
ments move From bad to worse, as we see ? The past was much better.
Who reigns ? Affliction and annoyance ; Justice nor law are current ; I
know no more where I belong.
* If the times remain so, I shall become a hermit, For I see nothing but
grief and torment.
28 The Waning of the Middle Ages
ment to reflection, deep dejection about all earthly misery
takes their place and they see only the woe of life. Still this
very pessimism is the ground whence their soul will soar up
to the aspiration of a life of beauty and serenity. For at
all times the vision of a sublime life has haunted the souls of
men, and the gloomier the present is, the more strongly this
aspiration will make itself felt.
Three different paths, at all times, have seemed to lead to
the ideal life. Firstly, that of forsaking the world. The
perfection of life here seems only to be reached beyond the
domain of earthly labour and delight, by a loosening of all
ties. The second path conducts to amelioration of the world
itself, by consciously improving political, social and moral in-
stitutions and conditions. Now, in the Middle Ages, Christian
faith had so strongly implanted in all minds the ideal of
renunciation as the base of all personal and social perfection,
that there was scarcely any room left for entering upon this
path of material and political progress. The idea of a pur-
posed and continual reform and improvement of society did
not exist. Institutions in general are considered as good or
as bad as they can be ; having been ordained by God, they are
intrinsically good, only the sins of men pervert them. What
therefore is in need of remedy is the individual soul. Legisla-
tion in the Middle Ages never aims consciously and avowedly
at creating a new organism ; professedly it is always oppor-
tunistic, it only restores good old law (or at least thinks it
does no more) or mends special abuses. It looks more towards
an ideal past than towards an earthly future. For the true
future is the Last Judgment, and that is near at hand.
It goes without saying that this mental disposition must
have greatly contributed to the general pessimism. If in all
that regards the things of this world there is no hope of improve-
ment and of progress, however slow, those who love the world
too much to give up its delights, and who nevertheless cannot
help aspiring to a better order of things, see nothing before
them but a gulf. We will have to wait till the eighteenth
century for even the Renaissance does not truly bring the
idea of progressbefore men resolutely enter the path of
social optimism ; only then the perfectibility of man and
society is raised to the rank of a central dogma, and the next
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 29
century will only lose the naivet6 of this belief, but not the
courage and optimism which it inspired.
It would be a mistake to think that the medieval mind,
lacking the ideas of progress and conscious reform, had only
known the religious form of the aspiration to ideal life. For
there is a third path to a world more beautiful, trodden in all
ages and civilizations, the easiest and also the most fallacious
of all, that of the dream. A promise of escape from the
gloomy actual is held out to all ; we have only to colour life
with fancy, to enter upon the quest of oblivion, sought in the
delusion of ideal harmony. After the religious and the social
solution we here have the poetical.
A simple tune suffices for the enrapturing fugue to develop
itself ; an outlook on the heroism, the virtue or the happiness
of an ideal past is all that is wanted. The themes are few in
number, and have hardly changed since antiquity ; we may
call them the heroic and the bucolic theme. Nearly all the
literary culture of later ages has been built upon them.
But was it only a question of literature, this third path to
the sublime life, this flight from harsh reality into illusion ?
Surely it has been more. History pays too little attention to
the influence of these dreams of a sublime life on civilization
itself and on the forms of social life. The content of the ideal
is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.
All aspiration to raise life to that level, be it in poetry only or
in fact, is an imitation. The essence of chivalry is the imita-
tion of the ideal hero, just as the imitation of the ancient sage
is the essence of humanism. Strongest and most lasting of
all is the illusion of a return to nature and its innocent charms
by an imitation of the shepherd's life. Since Theocritus it
has never lost its hold upon civilized society.
Now, the more primitive a society is, the more the need of
conforming real life to an ideal standard overflows beyond
literature into the sphere of the actual. Modern man is a
worker. To work is his ideal. The modern male costume
since the end of the eighteenth century is essentially a work-
man's dress. Since political progress and social perfection
have stood foremost in general appreciation, and the ideal
itself is sought in the highest production and most equitable
distribution of goods, there is no longer any need for playing
30 The Waning of the Middle Ages
the hero or the sage. The ideal itself has become democratic.
In aristocratic periods, on the other hand, to be representative
of true culture means to produce by conduct, by customs, by
manners, by costume, by deportment, the illusion of a heroic
being, full of dignity and honour, of wisdom and, at all events,
of courtesy. This seems possible by the aforesaid imitation
of an ideal past. The dream of past perfection ennobles life
and its forms, fills them with beauty and fashions them anew
as forms of art. Life is regulated like a noble game. Only a
small aristocratic group can come up to the standard of this
artistic game. To imitate the hero and the sage is not every-
body's business. Without leisure or wealth one does not
succeed in giving life an epic or idyllic colour. The aspiration
to realize a dream of beauty in the forms of social life bears
as a vitium originis the stamp of aristocratic exclusiveness.
Here, then, we have attained a point of view from which
we can consider the lay culture of the waning Middle Ages :
aristocratic life decorated by ideal forms, gilded by chival-
rous romanticism, a world disguised in the fantastic gear of
the Round Table.
The quest of the life beautiful is much older than the Italian
quattrocento. Here, as elsewhere, the line of demarcation
between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has been too
much insisted upon. Florence had but to adopt and develop
ancient motifs which the Middle Ages had known. In spite
of the aesthetic distance separating the Giostre of the Medici
from the barbarous pageantry of the dukes of Burgundy, the
inspiration is the same. Italy, indeed, discovered new worlds
of beauty, and tuned life to a new tone ; but the impulse itself
to force it up to a thing of art, generally taken as typical of
the Renaissance, was not its invention.
In the Middle Ages the choice lay, in principle, only between
God and the world, between contempt or eager acceptance,
at the peril of one's soul, of all that makes up the beauty
and the charm of earthly life. All terrestrial beauty bore the
stain of sin. Even where art and piety succeeded in hallowing
it by placing it in the service of religion, the artist or the lover
of art had to take care not to surrender to the charms of colour
and line. Now, all noble life was in its essential manifestations
full of such beauty tainted by sin. Knightly exercises and
OHABLES THE BOLD AND HIS OOTJET.
From a MS. in the British Museum.
[See page 32.
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 31
courteous fashions with their worship of bodily strength ;
honours and dignities with their vanity and their pomp, and
especially love ; what were they but pride, envy, avarice and
lust, all condemned by religion ! To be admitted as elements
of higher culture all these things had to be ennobled and raised
to the rank of virtue.
It was here that the path of fancy proved its civilizing value*
All aristocratic life in the later Middle Ages is a wholesale
attempt to act the vision of a dream. In cloaking itself in
the fanciful brilliance of the heroism and probity of a past age,
the life of the nobles elevated itself towards the sublime. By
this trait the Renaissance is linked to the times of feudalism.
The need of high culture found its most direct expression
in all that constitutes ceremonial and etiquette. The actions
of princes, even daily and common actions, all assume a quasi-
symbolic form and tend to raise themselves to the rank of
mysteries. Births, marriages, deaths, are framed in an appara-
tus of solemn and sublime formalities. The emotions which
accompany them are dramatized and amplified. Byzantinism
is nothing but the expression of the same tendency, and to
realize that it survived the Middle Ages, it is sufficient to
remember the Roi-Soleil.
The court was pre-eminently the field where this sestheticism
flourished. Nowhere did it attain to greater development
than at the court of the dukes of Burgundy, which was more
pompous and better arranged than that of the kings of 3?rance.
It is well known how much importance the dukes attached to
the magnificence of their household. A splendid court could,
better than anything else, convince rivals of the high rank
the dukes claimed to occupy among the princes of Europe.
"After the deeds and exploits of war, which are. claims to
glory," says Ghastellain, " the household is the first thing that
strikes the eye, and which it is, therefore, most necessary to
conduct and arrange well/' It was boasted that the Burgun-
dian court was the richest and best regulated of all. Charles
the Bold, especially, had the passion of magnificence. The
archaic and idyllic function of justice administered by the
prince in person, even to the humblest of his subjects, was
practised by the duke, who was in the habit of sitting in
audience with great solemnity two or three times a week,
32 The Waning of the Middle Ages
when every one might tender his petition. He would deliver
judgment in the presence of all the noblemen of his household,
seated on a " hautdos " covered with gold-cloth, and assisted
by two " maltres des requetes," the warrant-officer and the
clerk kneeling before him. The noblemen were a good deal
bored, but there was no help for it, says Chastellain, who
expresses some doubt as to the use of these audiences. " It
seemed to be a magnificent and very praiseworthy thing, what-
ever fruit it might bear. But I have neither heard nor seen
such a thing done in my time by a prince or a king."
For amusements, too, Charles felt the need of solemn and
sliowy forms. " He was in the habit of devoting part of his
day to serious occupations, and, with games and laughter
mixed, pleased himself with fine speeches and with exhorting
his nobles, like an orator, to practise virtue. And in this
regard he was often seen sitting in a chair of state, with his
nobles before him, remonstrating with them according to time
and circumstances. And always, as the prince and chief of
all, he was richly and magnificently dressed, more so than all
the others."
This " haute magnificence de cceur pour estre vu et regard^
en singulieres choses," 1 is it not altogether according to the
spirit of the Renaissance, in spite of its naive and somewhat
stiff outward appearance ?
The meals of the duke were ceremonies of a dignity that
was almost liturgic. The descriptions by the master of cere-
monies, Olivier de la Marche, are well worth reading. His
treatise, L'Etat de la Maison du due Charles de Bourgogne,
composed at the request of the king of England, Edward IV,
to serve him for a model, expounds the complicated service
of breadmasters, carvers, cup-bearers, cooks, and the ordered
course of the banquet, which was crowned by all the noblemen
filing past the duke, who was still seated at table, " pour lui
donner gloire."
The kitchen regulations are truly Pantagruelistic. We may
picture them in operation in the kitchen of heroic dimen-
sions, with its seven gigantic chimneys, which can still be seen
in the ducal palace of Dijon. The chief cook is seated on a
1 High magnificence of heart to be seen and regarded in extraordinary
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 33
raised chair, overlooking the whole apartment ; " and he must
hold in his hand a big wooden ladle which serves him for a
double purpose : on the one hand to taste soup and broth,
on the other to chase the scullions from the kitchen to their
work, and to strike them, if need be."
La Marche speaks of the ceremonies which he describes, in
as respectful and quasi-scholastic a tone as if he were treating
of sacred mysteries. He submits to his readers grave questions
of precedence and of service, and answers them most knpwingly.
Why is the chief-cook present at the meals of his lord and
not the " 6cuye^ de la cuisine " ? How, does one proceed to
nominate the chief-cook ? To which he replies in his wisdom :
When the office of chief-cook falls vacant at the court of the
prince, the " riialtres d'hotel " call the " 6cuyers " and all the
kitchen servants to them one by one. Each one solemnly
gives his vote, attested by an oath, and in this way the chief-
cook is elected. Who is to take the chief-cook's place in case
he is absent : the " spit-master," or the " soup-master " ?
Answer : Neither ; the substitute will be designated by elec-
tion. Why do the " panetiers " and cup-bearers form the first
and second ranks, above the carvers and cooks ? Because they
are in charge of bread and wine, to which the sanctity of
the sacrament gives a holy character.
The extreme importance which attaches to questions of
precedence and etiquette can only be explained by the almost
religious significance ascribed to them wherever tradition is
strong, and where a primitive spirit still prevails. They con-
tain, so to say, a ritualistic element. All forms of etiquette are
elaborated so as to constitute a noble game, which, although
artificial, has not yet degenerated altogether into a vain
parade. Sometimes the polite form takes such an importance
that the gravity of the matter in hand is lost sight of.
Before the battle of Cr6cy, four French knights returned
from reconnoitring the English lines. The incident is told by
Proissart. Impatient to hear the news they bring, the king
rides forward to meet them and stops as soon as he sees them.
They force their way through the ranks of the men-at-arms
and reach the king. " What news, my lords ? " asks the king f
Then they look at each other without speaking a word, for not
one is willing to speak before his companions. And one said
D
34 The Waning of the Middle Ages
to the other : " Lord, do you say it, speak to the king. I shall
not speak before you." So, for a time they were debating,
as none would begin to speak " par honneur." Till at last the
king ordered Sir Monne de Basele to tell what he knew.
Messire Gaultier Rallart, " chevalier du guet " at Paris,
in 1418, was in the habit of never going his rounds without
being preceded "by three or four musicians playing brass
instruments, which appeared a strange thing to the people, for
they said that it seemed that he said to malefactors : ' Get
away, for I am coming.' " This case, reported by the Burgher
of Paris, of a chief of police warning malefactors of his approach,
is not an isolated one. Jean de Boye tells the same thing of
Jean Balue, bishop of Evreux in 1465. At night he went his
rounds, "with clarions, trumpets and other instruments of
music, through the streets and on the walls, which was not a
customary thing to do for men of the watch."
Even on the scaffold the honours due to rank are strictly
observed. Thus the scaffold mounted by the Constable of
Saint Pol is richly shrouded with black velvet strewn with
fleurs-de-lis ; the cloth with which his eyes are bandaged, the
cushion on which he kneels, are of crimson velvet, and the
hangman is a fellow who has never yet executed a single
criminal rather a doubtful privilege for the noble victim.
The struggles of politeness, which some forty years ago
were still characteristic of lower-middle-class etiquette, were
extraordinarily developed in the court life of the fifteenth
century. A person of fashion would have considered himself
dishonoured by not according to a superior the place which
belonged to him. The dukes of Burgundy give precedence
scrupulously to their royal relations of France. Jean sans
Peur never fails to show exaggerated respect to his daughter-
in-law, the young princess Michelle of France ; he calls her
Madame ; he bends his knee to the earth before her and at
table always tries to help her, which she will not suffer him
to do. When Philip the Good learns that his cousin, the
dauphin, in consequence of a quarrel with his father, has
removed to Brabant, he at once raises the siege of Deventer,
which formed the first step to his very important scheme of
conquering Friesland. He travels in hot haste to Brussels,
there to receive his royal guest. As the moment of the
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 35
meeting approaches, there follows a veritable race to be the
first in doing homage to the other. At the news that the
dauphin is coming to meet him, the old duke is extremely
vexed ; he sends him " three, four messages, one after the
other, to tell him, that if he should ride forward to meet him,
he had taken an oath, he would quickly return to where he
came from, and would retire before him so quickly and so
far, that the other would not find him for a whole year, nor
would see him, whatever he did ; for, he said, it would mean
to him, the duke, ridicule and shame, which would never cease,
but be imputed to him throughout the world, to all eternity
as a great outrage and a foolish thing; which he was very
anxious to avoid." Out of reverence for the blood of France,
the duke, although in the territory of the Empire, prohibits
his sword to be carried before him, on entering Brussels ;
before reaching the palace, he hastily alights from his horse,
enters the court and passes on quickly on perceiving the king's
son, " who has come down from his apartment, holding the
duchess by the hand, and rapidly goes to him in the inner
court with wide-open arms." At once the old duke bares his
head, kneels down for a moment and passes on quickly. The
duchess holds the dauphin to prevent his advancing a step,
the dauphin vainly seizes the duke to prevent him from kneeling,
and makes a fruitless attempt to make him rise. Both cried
with emotion, says Chastellain, and so did all the spectators.
In the royal receptions of modern times we undoubtedly
find ceremonies bordering on the ludicrous, but we shall look
in vain for this passionate anxiety about formalities, which
attests that towards the close of the Middle Ages a moral
significance still attached to them.
After the young count- of Charolais, out of modesty, has
obstinately refused to use the wash-basin before a meal at
the same time with the queen of England, the court talks the
whole day of the incident; the duke, to whom the case is
submitted, charges two noblemen to argue the case on both
sides. Humble refusals to take precedence of another last
upwards of a quarter of an hour ; the longer one resists, the
more one is praised. People hide their hands to avoid the
honour of a hand-kiss ; the queen of Spain does so on meeting
the young archduke Philippe la Beau ; the latter waits patiently,
36 The Waning of the Middle Ages
for a moment of inattentiveness on the part of the queen, to
seize her hand and kiss it. For once Spanish gravity was at
fault ; the court laughed.
AH the trifling amenities of social intercourse are minutely
regulated. Etiquette not only prescribes which ladies of the
court may hold each other by the hand, but also which lady
is entitled to encourage others to this mark of intimacy, by
beckoning them. This right of beckoning, "hucher," is a
technical question for the old court lady Ali6nor de Poitiers,
who has described the ceremonial of the court of Burgundy,
The departure of a guest is opposed with troublesome insist-
ence. Philip the Good refuses to let the queen of France go
on the day fixed by the king, in spite of the fear which the
poor queen and her train felt for the anger of Louis XI.
Goethe has said that there is not an outward sign of polite*
ness which has not a profound moral foundation, and Emerson
expresses almost the same thought when calling politeness
" virtue gone to seed." It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration
to say that at the end of the Middle Ages people were still
fully conscious of the ethical value of politeness ; but surely
people still felt its aesthetic value, which marks the transition
of these forms from sincere professions of affection to arid
formalities of civility.
It is obvious that this rich adornment of life flourished
nowhere so much as at the court of princes, where people could
devote time to it and had room for it. This same cult of forms,
however, spread downwards from the nobility to the middle
classes, where they lingered on, after having become obsolete
in higher circles. Customs such as that of urging a guest to
have another helping of a dish, or to prolong his visit, of
refusing to take precedence, now hardly fashionable, were in
full bloom in the fifteenth century, scnipulously observed,
though at the same time an object of satire*
Above all, public worship offered ample occasion for lengthy
displays of civility. In the first place, there is the " offirande " }
no one is willing to be the first to place his alms on the altar :
" Passez. Non leray. Or avant !
Certes si ferez, ma cousine.
-Non feray. Huehez no voisine,
Qu'elle doit miens devant offrir.
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 37
Vous ne le devriez souffrir."
Dist la voisine ; " n'appartient
A moy ; off rez, qu'a vous ne tient
Que li prestres ne se delivre." *
When at last the person'of highest rank has led the way, the
same debate will be repeated in connection with the " pax,"
a disc of wood, silver or ivory, that was kissed after the Agnus
Dei. Amid polite refusals to kiss first, the " pax " went from
hand to hand among the notabilities, with the result of a
.prolonged interruption of the service.
" Bespondre doit la juene fame :
Prenez, je ne prendray pas, dame,
Si ferez, prenez, douce amie.
Certes, je ne le prandray mie ;
L'en me tendroit pour une sote.
Baillez, damoiselle Marote.
Non feray, Jhesucrist m'en gart !
Portez a ma dame Ermagart.
Dame, prenez. Saincte Marie,
Portez la paix a la baillie
Non, mais a la gouverneresse." a
Even a holy man like Fran9ois de Paule thought it his duty
to take part in these childish observances ; the witnesses
in the process for his canonization considered this behaviour
a mark of great humility and merit, which shows that satire
can have hardly exaggerated and that the ethical idea of these
forms had not completely disappeared.
With all this business of compliments, attending public
worship became almost like dancing a minuet. For on
leaving the church similar scenes are enacted, in getting a
superior to walk on the right hand, or to be the first to cross a
plank-bridge or enter a narrow lane. Arrived at home, the
whole company has to be invited to enter and drink some wine
1 " Go onI shall not Come forward ! Certainly, you will do so, cousin
I shall not Call to our neighbour, That she should offer before you You
should not suffer it," the neighbour says : " it does not belong To me ; offer,
only for you The priest has to wait."
1 The young woman should answer, Take it, I shall not, lady Yes, do,
take it, dear friend I shall certainly not take it, dear ; People would take
me for a fool Pass it, miss Marote I shall not, Jesus Christ forbid ! Take
it to the lady Ermagart Lady, take it Holy Mary, Take the pax to the
bailiffs wife No, but to the governor's wife.
38 The Waning of the Middle Ages
(as Spanish, courtesy demands to this day). The company
excuse themselves politely, upon which it becomes requisite
to accompany them part of the way, in spite of their repeated
protestations.
These futile forms become touching, and their moral and
civilizing value is better understood, on remembering they
emanated from the passionate soul of a savage race, struggling
to tame its pride and its anger. Quarrels and acts of violence
go hand in hand with the ceremonious abdication of all pride,
of which they are the reverse. Noble families disputed fiercely
for that same precedence in church by which they courteously
pretended to set little store.
Often enough native rudeness pierces through the thin
veneer of politeness. Duke John of Bavaria, the elect of
Lidge, is a guest at Paris. At the festivities given in his
honour by the great nobles, he wins all their money from
them in gaming. One of the princes cannot restrain himself
any longer, and exclaims : " What devil of a priest have we
got here ? " (It is the chronicler of Ltege, Jean de Stavelot,
who reports the fact.) " What, is he to win all our money ?
Whereupon my lord of Liege rose from the table and said
angrily : I am not a priest and I do not want your money.
And he took it and threw it all about the room ; and many
marvelled greatly at his liberality."
The magnificent order maintained at the court of Burgundy,
praised by Christine de Pisan, by Chastellain, and by the
Bohemian nobleman Leon of Eozmital, acquires its full signi-
ficance only when compared with the disorder which reigned
at the court of France, Burgundy's older and more illustrious
model. In a number of his ballads Eustache Deschamps com-
plains of the misery at court, and these complaints are not
merely variations on the familiar theme of disparagement of
court life. Bad fare and poor lodgings ; continual noise and
disorder ; swearing and quarrels ; jealousies and injuries ; in
short, the court is an abyss of sins, the gate of hell.
Neither the sacred respect for royalty, nor the almost
sacramental value attaching to ceremonies, could prevent
decorum from being occasionally ignominiously thrust aside
on the most solemn occasions. At the coronation banquet
of Charles VI, in 1380, the duke of Burgundy seeks, by force,
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 39
to take the place to which he is entitled, as doyen of the peers,
between the king and the duke of Anjou. Already the train
of the duke begins to thrust aside their opponents ; threaten-
ing cries arise, a scuffle is breaking out when the king prevents
it, by doing justice to the claims of the duke of Burgundy.
Even the infractions of solemn forms tended to become
forms themselves. It seems that it was more or less a custom
for the funeral of a king of Prance to be interrupted by a
quarrel, of which the object was the possession of the utensils
of the ceremony. In 1422 the corporation of the " henouars,"
or salt-weighers, of Paris, whose privilege it was to carry the
king's corpse to Saint-Denis, came to blows with the monks
of the abbey, as both parties claimed the pall covering the
bier of Charles VI.
An analogous case occurred in 1461, at the funeral of Charles
YII. In consequence of an altercation with the monks, the
" henouars " put down the coffin when they have come half-
way and refuse to carry it any further, unless they are paid ten
pounds Paris. The Lord Grand Master of the Horse quiets
them by promising to pay them out of his own pocket, but the
delay had been so long that the cortege arrives at Saint-
Denis only towards eight at night. After the interment, a
new conflict arises with regard to the pall of gold-cloth, between
the monks and the Grand Master of the Horse himself.
The great publicity which it was customary to give to all
important events in the life of a king, and which survived to
the times of Louis XIV, sometimes led to a pitiable break-
down of discipline on the most solemn occasions. At the
coronation banquet of 1380, the throng of spectators, guests
and servants was such that the constable and the marshal of
Sancerre had to serve up the dishes on horseback. At the
coronation of Henry VI of England at Paris, in 1431, the people
force their way at daybreak into the great hall where the feast
was to take place, " some to look on, others to regale them-
selves, others to pilfer or to steal victuals or other things."
The members of the Parlement and of the University, the
provost of the merchants and the aldermen, after having
succeeded with great difficulty in entering the hall, find the
tables assigned to them occupied by all sorts of artisans. An
attempt is made to remove them, "but when they had
40 The Waning of the Middle Ages
succeeded in driving away one or two, six or eight sat down on
the other side." At the inauguration of Louis XI, in 1461,
the precaution had been taken of closing the doors of the
cathedral of Reims early and placing a guard there, so that
not more persons should enter the church than the choir could
hold. Nevertheless, the spectators so pressed round the altar
where the king was anointed, that the prelates assisting the
archbishop could scarcely move, and the princes of the blood
were nearly squeezed to death in their seats of honour.
The passionate and violent soul of the age, always vacil-
lating between tearful piety and frigid cruelty, between
respect and insolence, between despondency and wantonness,
could not dispense with the severest rules and the strictest
formalism. All emotions required a rigid system of con-
ventional forms, for without them passion and ferocity would
have made havoc of life. By this sublimating faculty each
event became a spectacle for others ; mirth and sorrow were
artificially and theatrically made up. For want of the faculty
to express emotions in a simple and natural way, recourse
must needs be had to aesthetic representations of sorrow and
of joy.
The ceremonies accompanying birth, marriage and death
fully assumed this character of spectacles. ^Esthetic values
have here taken the place of their old religious (pagan for the
most part) or magic signification.
Nowhere does the formalizing of the emotions assume a
more suggestive appearance than in the sphere of mourning
rites. There is a tendency in primitive times to exaggerate
the expression of grief, like that of joy. Pompous mourning
is the counterpart of immoderate rejoicings and of insane
luxury. At the death of Jean sans Peur the mourning is
organized with incomparable magnificence, in which there
was, no doubt, also a political by-purpose, The retinue
escorting Philip of Burgundy, who went out to meet the kings
of France and of England, carry two thousand black vanes,
to say nothing of the standards and banners seven yards long,
of the same colour. The carriage of the duke and also the
state seats have been painted black for the occasion. At
the meeting of Troyes, Philip wears a mantle of black velvet
Pessimism and the Ideal of the 8ublime Life 41
which is so long as to hang down from his horse to the ground.
For a long time afterwards he and his court only show them-
selves dressed in black.
Amidst the general black of court mourning the red worn
only by the king of France (not even by the queen) must have
made a most startling contrast. In 1393 the Parisians had
the surprise of a pompous funeral all in white : that of the
king of Armenia, Leon de Lusignan, who died in exile.
The manifestations of sorrow at the death of a prince, if
at times purposely exaggerated, undoubtedly often enfolded
a deep and unfeigned grief. The general instability of the
soul, the extreme horror of death, the fervour of family
attachment and loyalty, all contributed to make the decease
of a king or a prince an afflicting event. A savage exuberance
of grief breaks out when the news is brought to Ghent of the
murder of Jean sans Peur. All chronicles confirm it ; Chastel-
lain is diffuse on the subject. His heavy and trailing style is
wonderfully well adapted for reporting the long harangue of
the bishop of Tournay to prepare the young duke for the
awful tidings, as well as for the majestic lamentations of Philip
and of Michelle of France, his consort. Half a century later we
see Charles the Bold, at the death-bed of his father, weeping,
crying out, wringing his hands, falling on the ground, " so
as to make every one wonder at his unmeasured grief."
Whatever may be the share of the court style in these
narratives, what they tell us fits in too well with the over-
strung sensibility of the epoch, and at the same time with the
craving for clamorous mourning as an edifying thing, not to
be substantially true. Primitive custom demanding that the
dead should be publicly and loudly lamented still survived in
considerable strength in the fifteenth century. Noisy mani-
festations of sorrow were thought fine and becoming, and all
things connected with a deceased person had to bear witness
to unmeasured grief.
The extreme fear of announcing a death likewise bears
testimony to the same intermingling of primitive ritual and
passionate emotionalism. The death of her father is kept a
secret from the countess of Charolais, who is pregnant. During
an illness of Philip the Good, the court does not dare to
announce to him a single death touching him at all nearly ;
42 The Waning of the Middle Ages
Adolphus of Cleves is forbidden to go into mourning for his
wife, out of consideration for the duke, who is ill. The chan-
cellor Nicolas Rolin dies : the duke is left in ignorance of his
decease. Yet he begins to suspect it and asks the bishop of
Tournay, who has come to visit him, to tell him the truth.
" My liege, says the bishop in sooth, he is dead, indeed, for
he is old and broken, and cannot live long. Dea ! says the
duke, I do not ask that. I ask if he is truly dead and gone.
H& ! my liege the bishop retorts, he is not dead, but paralysed
on one side, and therefore practically dead. The duke grows
angry. Vechy merveilles ! Tell me clearly, now, whether
he is dead. Only then says the bishop : Yes, truly, my liege,
he is really dead/'
Does not this curious way of announcing a death suggest
some trace of ancient superstition, more even than the wish
to spare a sick man ? The anxiety to exclude systematically
the thought of death denotes a state of mind analogous to
that of Louis XI, who would never again wear the dress he
had on, nor use the horse he was riding at the moment when
evil tidings were announced to him, and who even had a part
of the forest of Loches cut down where the tidings of the death
of a new-born son were brought to him. "Monsieur the
Chancellor," the king writes on May 25, 1483, " I thank you
for the letters etc., but I beg you to send me no more by him
who brought them, for I found his face terribly changed since
I last saw him, and I tell you on my word that he made me
much afraid, and farewell."
The cultural value of mourning is that it gives grief its form
and rhythm. It transfers actual life to the sphere of the
drama. It shoes it with the cothurnus. Mourning at the
court of France or of Burgundy, at the time with which we
are concerned, has to be regarded as a sort of acted elegy.
Funeral ceremonial and funeral poetry, which in primitive
civilizations are still undistinguished (in Ireland, for instance),
had not yet been completely separated. Mourning still con-
tinued a remnant of its poetical functions. It dramatized
the effects of grief.
The nobler the deceased and the survivors are, the more
heroic the mourning. For a whole year the queen of France
may not leave the room in which the death of her consort was
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 43
announced to her. For the princesses the seclusion lasts six
weeks. During all the time that Madame de Charolais is in
mourning for her father, she remains in bed, propped up by
cushions and dressed in bands, coif and mantle. The rooms
are upholstered in black; the floor is covered with a large
black cloth. Ali6nor de Poitiers has described for us all the
gradations of the ceremonial, varying according to rank.
Under this fine outward show the feelings which are thus
exhibited and formalized often tend to disappear. The
pathetic posture belies itself behind the scenes. " State "
and real life are clearly and naively distinguished. Ali&ior,
having described the sumptuous mourning of the countess
of Charolais, adds : " When Madame was * en son particulier *
she by no means always lay in bed, nor confined herself to
one room."
Next to mourning, the lying-in chamber affords ample
opportunity for fine ceremonial and differentiation according
to rank. The colours and materials of coverings and clothes
all have a meaning. Green is the privilege of queens and
of princesses, whereas it was white in preceding ages. " La
chambre verde " was forbidden even to countesses. During
the lying-in of Isabelle de Bourbon, mother of Mary of Bur-
gundy, five large state beds, all draped with an artful fabric
of green curtain, remain empty, like state coaches at funerals,
only to serve for ceremonious use at the baptism, while the
mother reposes on a low couch near the fire. The blinds are
kept closed all the time, and the room is lighted by candles.
Through all the ranks of society a severe hierarchy of material
and colour kept classes apart, and gave to each estate or rank
an outward distinction, which preserved and exalted the
feeling of dignity.
Moreover, outside the sphere of birth, marriage and death,
a strongly felt esthetic need tends to create a solemn and
decorous form for every event and every notable deed. A
sinner who humbles himself, a condemned prisoner who re-
pents, a holy person sacrificing himself, all afford a kind of
public spectacle. Public life in this way almost presents the
appearance of a perpetual " morale en action."
Even intimate relations in medieval society are rather
paraded than kept secret. Not only love, but friendship too,
44 The Waning of the Middle Ages
has its finely made up forms. Two friends dress in the same
way, share the same room, or the same bed, and call one
another by the name of " mignon." It is good form for the
prince to have his minion. We must not let the well-known
case of Henry III of France affect for us the ordinary accept-
ance of the word " mignon " in the fifteenth century. There
have been princes and favourites in the Middle Ages too who
were accused of culpable relations Richard II of England and
Robert de Vere, for instance but minions would not have been
spoken of so freely, if we had to regard this institution as
connoting anything but sentimental friendship. It was a
distinction of which the friends boasted in public. On the
occasion of solemn receptions the prince leans on the shoulder
of the minion, as Charles V at his abdication leaned on William
of Orange. To understand the duke's sentiment towards Cesario
in Twelfth Night, we must recall this form of sentimental
friendship, which maintained itself as a formal institution till
the days of James I and George Villiers.
The complex of all these fine forms, veiling cruel reality
under apparent harmony, made life an art. This art leaves
no traces, and it is for this reason that its cultural importance
has been noticed too little. The tenderness of compliments,
the charming fiction of modesty and altruism, the hieratic
pomp of ceremonies, the pageant of marriage, all this is ephe-
meral and may seem culturally sterile. That which gives
them their style and expression is fashion, not art, and fashion
leaves no monuments behind.
And yet, at the close of the Middle Ages, the connections
between art and fashion were closer than at present. Art had
not yet fled to transcendental heights ; it formed an integral
part of social life. In the domain of costume art and fashion
were still inextricably blended, style in dress stood nearer to
artistic style than later, and the function of costume in social
life, that of accentuating the strict order of society itself,
almost partook of the liturgic. The amazing extravagance
of dress during the last centuries of the Middle Ages was, as
it were, the expression of an overflowing aesthetic craving,
which art alone did not suffice to satisfy.
All relations, all dignities, all actions, all sentiments, had
Pessimism and the Ideal of the Sublime Life 45
found their style. The higher the moral value of a social
function, the nearer its form of expression approached to
pure art. Whereas ceremony and courtesy have no other
expression than conversation and luxury, and pass away
without visible residue, the rites of mourning do not exhaust
themselves in funeral pomp and fictions of etiquette, but leave
a durable and artistic expression in the sepulchral monument.
As in the case of marriage and baptism, the link of mourning
with religion heightens its cultural value.
Still, the richest flower of beautiful forms was reserved for
three other elements of life courage, honour and love.
CHAPTER III
THE HIERARCHIC CONCEPTION OF SOCIETY
When, somewhat more than a hundred years ago, medieval
history began to assert itself as an object of interest and
admiration, the first element of it to draw general attention
and to become a source of enthusiasm and inspiration was
chivalry. To the epoch of romanticism the Middle Ages and
Chivalry were almost synonymous terms. Historical imagina-
tion dwelt by preference on crusades, tournaments, knights-
errant. Since then history has become democratic. Chivalry
is now only seen as a very special efflorescence of civilization,
which, far from having controlled the course of medieval
history, has been rather a secondary factor in the political
and social evolution of the epoch. For us the problems of the
Middle Ages lie first of all in the development of communal
organization, of economic conditions, of monarchic power, of
administrative and judicial institutions ; and, in the second
place, in the domain of religion, scholasticism and art. Towards
the end of the period our attention is almost entirely occupied
by the genesis of new forms of political and economic life
(absolutism, capitalism), and new modes of expression (Renais-
sance). From this point of view feudalism and chivalry appear
as little more than a remnant of a superannuated order already
crumbling into insignificance, and, for the understanding of
the epoch, almost negligible.
^ Nevertheless, an assiduous reader of the chronicles and
literature of the fifteenth century will hardly resist the im-
pression that nobility and chivalry occupy a much more con-
siderable place there than our general conception of the epoch
would imply. The reason of this disproportion lies in the
fact, that long after nobility and feudalism had ceased to be
really essential factors in the state and in society, they con-
tinued to impress the mind as dominant forms of life. The
46
The Hierarchic Conception of Society 47
men of the fifteenth century could not understand that the
real moving powers of political and social evolution might be
looked for anywhere else than in the doings of a warlike or
courtly nobility. They persisted in regarding the nobility
as the foremost of social forces and attributed a very exag-
gerated importance to it, undervaluing altogether the social
significance of the lower classes.
So the mistake, it may be argued, is theirs, and our con-
ception of the Middle Ages is right. This would be so if, to
understand the spirit of an age, it sufficed to know its real and
hidden forces and not its illusions, its fancies and its errors.
But for the history of civilization every delusion or opinion of
an epoch has the value of an important fact. In the fifteenth
century chivalry was still, after religion, the strongest of all
the ethical conceptions which dominated the mind and the
heart. It was thought of as the crown of the whole social
system. Medieval political speculation is imbued to the
marrow with the idea of a structure of society based upon
distinct orders. This notion of " orders " is itself by no means
fixed. The words " estate " and " order," almost synony-
mous, designate a great variety of social realities. The idea
of an " estate " is not at all limited to that of a class ; it extends
to every social function, to every profession, to every group.
Side by side with the French system of the three estates of
the realm, which in England, according to Professor Pollard,
was only secondarily and theoretically adopted after the
French model, we find traces of a system of twelve social
estates. The functions or groupings, which the Middle Ages
designated by the words " estate " and " order," are of very
diverse natures. There are, first of all, the estates of the
realm, but there are also the trades, the state of matrimony
and that of virginity, the state of sin. At court there are the
" four estates of body and mouth " : bread-masters, cup-bearers,
carvers, and cooks. In the Church there are sacerdotal orders
and monastic orders. Finally, there are the different orders
of chivalry. That which, in medieval thought, establishes
unity in the very dissimilar meanings of the word, is the
conviction that every one of these groupings represents a
divine institution, an element of the organism of Creation
emanating from the will of God, constituting an actual entity,
48 The Waning of the Middle Ages
and being, at bottom, as venerable as the angelic hierarchy.
Now, if the degrees of the social edifice are conceived as the
lower steps of the throne of the Eternal, the value assigned
to each order will not depend on its utility, but on its sanctity
that is to say, its proximity to the highest place. Even if the
Middle Ages had recognized the diminishing importance of
the nobility as a limb of the social body, that would not have
changed the conception they had of its high value, no more
than the spectacle of a violent and dissipated nobility ever
hindered the veneration of the order in itself. To the catholic
soul the unworthiness of the persons never compromises the
sacred character of the institution. The morals of the clergy,
or the decadence of chivalrous virtues, might be stigmatized,
without deviating for a moment from the respect due to the
Church or the nobility as such. The estates of society cannot
but be venerable and lasting, because they all have been
ordained by God. The conception of society in the Middle
Ages is statical, not dynamical.
The aspect which society and politics assume under the
influence of these general ideas is bound to be a strange one.
The chroniclers of the fifteenth century have, nearly all, been
the dupes of an absolute misappreciation of their times, of
which the real moving forces escaped their attention. Chas-
tellain, the historiographer of the dukes of Burgundy, may
serve as an instance. A Fleming by birth, he had been face
to face, in the Netherlands, with the power and the wealth of
the commoners, nowhere stronger and more self-conscious
than there. The extraordinary fortune of the Burgundian
branch of Valois transplanted to Flanders was in reality based
on the wealth of the Flemish and Brabant towns. Neverthe-
less, dazzled by the splendour and magnificence of an extrava-
gant court, Chastellain imagined that the power of the house
of Burgundy was especially due to the heroism and the devo-
tion of knighthood.
God, he says, created the common people to till the earth
and to procure by trade the commodities necessary for life ;
he created the clergy for the works of religion ; the nobles that
they should cultivate virtue and maintain justice, so that the
deeds and the morals of these fine personages might be a
pattern to others* All the highest tasks in the state are
The Hierarchic Conception of Society 49
assigned by ChasteUain to the nobility; notably those of
protecting the Church, augmenting the faith, defending the
people from oppression, maintaining public prosperity, com-
bating violence and tyranny, confirming peace. Veracity,
courage, integrity, liberality, appertain properly to the noble
class, and French nobility, according to this pompous pane-
gyrist, comes up to this ideal image. In spite of his general
pessimism, Chastellain does his best tp see his times through
the tinted glasses of this aristocratic conception.
This failing to see the social importance of the common
people, which is proper to nearly all authors of the fifteenth
century, may be regarded as a kind of mental inertia, which
is a phenomenon of frequent occurrence and vital importance
in history. The idea which people had of the third estate had
not yet been corrected and remodelled in accordance with
altered realities. This idea was simple and summary, like
those miniatures of breviaries, or those bas-reliefs of cathedrals,
representing the tasks of the year in the shape of the toiling
labourer, the industrious artisan, or the busy merchant. Among
archaic types like these there is neither place for the figure of
the wealthy patrician encroaching upon the power of the
nobleman, nor for that of the militant representative of a
revolutionary craft-guild. Nobody perceived that the nobility
only maintained itself, thanks to the blood and the riches of
the commoners. No distinction in principle was made, in the
third estate, between rich and poor citizens, nor between
townsmen and country-people. The figure of the poor peasant
alternates indiscriminately with that of the wealthy burgher,
but a sound definition of the economic and political functions
of these different classes does not take shape. In 1412 the
reform programme of an Augustinian friar demanded in all
earnest that every non-noble person in France should either
devote himself to some handicraft or to labour, or be banished
from the kingdom, evidently considering commerce and law
as useless occupations.
Chastellain, who is very naive in political matters and very
susceptible to ethical delusions, attributes sublime virtues
only to the nobility, and only inferior ones to the common
people. " Coming to the third estate, making up the kingdom
as a whole, it is the estate of the good towns, of merchants and
50 The Waning of the Middle Ages
of labouring men, of whom it is not becoming to give such a
long exposition as of the others, because it is hardly possible
to attribute great qualities to them, as they are of a servile
degree." Humility, diligence, obedience to the king, and
docility in bowing " voluntarily to the pleasure of the lords,"
those are the qualities which bring credit to " cestuy bas estat
de Frangois." 1
May not this strange infatuation, by preventing them from
foreseeing future times of economic expansion have contri-
buted to engender pessimism in minds such as that of Chastel-
lain, who could only expect the good of mankind from the
virtues of the nobility?
Chasteflain still calls the rich burghers simply villeins. He
has not the slightest notion of middle-class honour. Duke
Philip the Good was wont to abuse his power by marrying his
archers or other servants of lesser gentility to rich burgher
widows or heiresses. To avoid those alliances, the parents on
their side married their daughters as soon as they reached
marriageable age. Jacques du Clercq mentions the case of a
widow, who for this reason remarried two days after the
burial of her husband. Once the duke, while engaged in such
marriage-broking, met with an obstinate refusal from a rich
brewer of Lille, who felt affronted at such an alliance for his
daughter. The duke secured the person of the young girl ;
the father removed with all his possessions to Tournay, outside
the ducal jurisdiction, in order to be able to bring the matter
before the Parlement of Paris. This brought him nothing
but vexation, and he fell ill with grief. At last he sent his
wife to Lille " in order to beg mercy of the duke and give up
his daughter to him." The latter, in honour of Good Friday,
gave her back to the mother, but with scornful and humilia-
ting words. Chastellain's sympathies are all on the side of his
master, though, on other occasions, he did not at all fear
to record his disapproval of the duke's conduct. For the
injured father he has no other terms than " this rebellious
rustic brewer," " and such a naughty villein too."
There are in the sentiments of the aristocratic class towards
the people two parallel currents. Side by side with this
haughty disdain of the small man, already a little out of date,
1 This low estate of Frenchmen.
The Hierarchic Conception of Society 51
we notice a sympathetic attitude in the nobility, which seems
in absolute contrast with it. Whereas feudal satire goes on
expressing hatred mixed with contempt and sometimes with
fear, as in the Proverbes del Vilain and in the K erelslied, the
song of the Flemish villagers, the code of aristocratic ethics
teaches, on the other hand, a sentimental compassion for the
miseries of the oppressed and defenceless people. Despoiled
by war, exploited by the officials, the people live in the greatest
distress.
" Si fault de faim perir les innocens
Dont les grans loups font chacun jour ventre*e,
Qui amassent a milliers et a cens
Les faulx tr&sors ; c'est le grain, c'est le b!6e, .
Le sang, les os qui ont la terre are*e
Des povres gens, dont leur esperit crie
Vengence a Dieu, v6 a la seignourie." *
They suffer in patience. "The prince knows nothing of
this." If, at times, they murmur, " poor sheep, poor foolish
people," a word from the prince will suffice to appease them.
The devastation and insecurity which in consequence of the
Hundred Years' War had finally spread over almost all France,
gave these laments a sad actuality. From the year 1400
downwards there is no end to the complaints about the fate
of the peasants, plundered, squeezed, maltreated by gangs of
enemies or friends, robbed of their cattle, driven from their
homes. They are expressed by the great Churchmen who
favoured reform, such as Nicolas de Clemanges, in his Liber
de lapsu et reparationejiistitice, or Gerson in his political sermon
Vivat rex, preached on November 7, 1405, in the queen's
palace at Paris, before the regents and the court. " The poor
man " said the brave
