Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres Part 21

"After the Trinity, you are our ONLY hope"; spes nostra unica; "you are placed there as our advocate; all of us who fear the wrath of the Judge, fly to the Judge's mother, who is logically compelled to sue for us, and stands in the place of a mother to the guilty."

Abelard's logic was always ruthless, and the "cogitur" is a stronger word than one would like to use now, with a priest in hearing. We need not insist on it; but what one must insist on, is the good faith of the whole people,--kings, queens, princes of all sorts, philosophers, poets, soldiers, artists, as well as of the commoners like ourselves, and the poor,--for the good faith of the priests is not important to the understanding, since any cla.s.s which is sufficiently interested in believing will always believe. In order to feel Gothic architecture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one must feel first and last, around and above and beneath it, the good faith of the public, excepting only Jews and atheists, permeating every portion of it with the conviction of an immediate alternative between heaven and h.e.l.l, with Mary as the ONLY court in equity capable of overruling strict law.

The Virgin was a real person, whose tastes, wishes, instincts, pa.s.sions, were intimately known. Enough of the Virgin's literature survives to show her character, and the course of her daily life. We know more about her habits and thoughts than about those of earthly queens. The "Miracles de la Vierge" make a large part, and not the poorest part, of the enormous literature of these two centuries, although the works of Albertus Magnus fill twenty-one folio volumes and those of Thomas Aquinas fill more, while the "Chansons de Geste"

and the "Romans," published or unpublished, are a special branch of literature with libraries to themselves. The collection of the Virgin's miracles put in verse by Gaultier de Coincy, monk, prior, and poet, between 1214 and 1233--the precise moment of the Chartres sculpture and gla.s.s--contains thirty thousand lines. Another great collection, narrating especially the miracles of the Virgin of Chartres, was made by a priest of Chartres Cathedral about 1240.

Separate series, or single tales, have appeared and are appearing constantly, but no general collection has ever been made, although the whole poetic literature of the Virgin could be printed in the s.p.a.ce of two or three volumes of scholastic philosophy, and if the Church had cared half as truly for the Virgin as it has for Thomas Aquinas, every miracle might have been collected and published a score of times. The miracles themselves, indeed, are not very numerous. In Gaultier de Coincy's collection they number only about fifty. The Chartres collection relates chiefly to the horrible outbreak of what was called leprosy--the "mal ardent,"--which ravaged the north of France during the crusades, and added intensity to the feelings which brought all society to the Virgin's feet.

Recent scholars are cataloguing and cla.s.sifying the miracles, as far as they survive, and have reduced the number within very moderate limits. As poetry, Gaultier de Coincy's are the best.

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

It is the most curious, and often the most singular monument of the infantile piety of the Middle Ages. Devotion to Mary is presented in it as a kind of infallible guarantee not only against every sort of evil, but also against the most legitimate consequences of sin and even of crime. In these stories which have revolted the most rational piety, as well as the philosophy of modern times, one must still admit a gentle and penetrating charm; a naivete; a tenderness and a simplicity of heart, which touch, while they raise a smile.

There, for instance, one sees a sick monk cured by the milk that Our Lady herself comes to invite him to draw from her "douce mamelle"; a robber who is in the habit of recommending himself to the Virgin whenever he is going to "embler," is held up by her white hands for three days on the gibbet where he is hung, until the miracle becomes evident, and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows only his Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead reveals his sanct.i.ty by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour of the five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted her convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds that the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased to offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled her place as sacristine, so that no one has perceived her absence.

Gaston Paris inclined to apologize to his "bons bourgeois de Paris"

for reintroducing to them a character so doubtful as the Virgin Mary, but, for our studies, the professor's elementary morality is eloquent. Clearly, M. Paris, the highest academic authority in the world, thought that the Virgin could hardly, in his time, say the year 1900, be received into good society in the Latin Quarter. Our own English ancestors, known as Puritans, held the same opinion, and excluded her from their society some four hundred years earlier, for the same reasons which affected M. Gaston Paris. These reasons were just, and showed the respectability of the citizens who held them.

In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said of most other saints as well as sinners. Her conduct was at times undignified, as M. Paris complained, She condescended to do domestic service, in order to help her friends, and she would use her needle, if she were in the mood, for the same object. The "Golden Legend"

relates that:--

A certain priest, who celebrated every day a ma.s.s in honour of the Holy Virgin, was brought up before Saint Thomas of Canterbury who suspended him from his charge, judging him to be short-witted and irresponsible. Now Saint Thomas had occasion to mend his hair-cloth shirt, and while waiting for an opportunity to do so, had hidden it under his bed; so the Virgin appeared to the priest and said to him: "Go find the archbishop and tell him that she, for love of whom you celebrated ma.s.ses, has herself mended his shirt for him which is under his bed; and tell him that she sends you to him that he may take off the interdict he has imposed on you." And Saint Thomas found that his shirt had in fact been mended. He relieved the priest, begging him to keep the secret of his wearing a hair-shirt.

Mary did some exceedingly unconventional things, and among them the darning Thomas A'Becket's hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber on the gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to have shocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas so much as they shocked M. Gaston Paris and M. Prudhomme. You have still to visit the cathedral at Le Mans for the sake of its twelfth- century gla.s.s, and there, in the lower panel of the beautiful, and very early, window of Saint Protais, you will see the full-length figure of a man, lying in bed, under a handsome blanket, watching, with staring eyes, the Virgin, in a green tunic, wearing her royal crown, who is striking him on the head with a heavy hammer and with both hands. The miracle belongs to local history, and is amusing only to show how little the Virgin cared for criticism of her manners or acts. She was above criticism. She made manners. Her acts were laws. No one thought of criticizing, in the style of a normal school, the will of such a queen; but one might treat her with a degree of familiarity, under great provocation, which would startle easier critics than the French, Here is an instance:--

A widow had an only child whom she tenderly loved. On hearing that this son had been taken by the enemy, chained, and put in prison, she burst into tears, and addressing herself to the Virgin, to whom she was especially devoted, she asked her with obstinacy for the release of her son; but when she saw at last that her prayers remained unanswered, she went to the church where there was a sculptured image of Mary, and there, before the image, she said: "Holy Virgin, I have begged you to deliver my son, and you have not been willing to help an unhappy mother! I've implored your patronage for my son, and you have refused it! Very good! just as my son has been taken away from me, so I am going to take away yours, and keep him as a hostage!" Saying this, she approached, took the statue child on the Virgin's breast, carried it home, wrapped it in spotless linen, and locked it up in a box, happy to have such a hostage for her son's return. Now, the following night, the Virgin appeared to the young man, opened his prison doors, and said: "Tell your mother, my child, to return me my Son now that I have returned hers!" The young man came home to his mother and told her of his miraculous deliverance; and she, overjoyed, hastened to go with the little Jesus to the Virgin, saying to her: "I thank you, heavenly lady, for restoring me my child, and in return I restore yours!"

For the exactness of this story in all its details, Bishop James of Voragio could not have vouched, nor did it greatly matter. What he could vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence between his people and the Queen of Heaven. The fact, conspicuous above all other historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was by essence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact of any ultimate value worth studying, and starts a number of questions that history has shown itself clearly afraid to touch. Protestant and Catholic differ little in that respect. No one has ventured to explain why the Virgin wielded exclusive power over poor and rich, sinners and saints, alike. Why were all the Protestant churches cold failures without her help? Why could not the Holy Ghost--the spirit of Love and Grace--equally answer their prayers? Why was the Son powerless? Why was Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth century-- like Lourdes to-day--the expression of what is in substance a separate religion? Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so exasperate the Pilgrim Father? Why was the Woman struck out of the Church and ignored in the State? These questions are not antiquarian or trifling in historical value; they tug at the very heart-strings of all that makes whatever order is in the cosmos. If a Unity exists, in which and toward which all energies centre, it must explain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity--s.e.x!

Although certain to be contradicted by every pious churchman, a heretic must insist on thinking that the Mater Dolorosa was the logical Virgin of the Church, and that the Trinity would never have raised her from the foot of the Cross, had not the Virgin of Majesty been imposed, by necessity and public unanimity, on a creed which was meant to be complete without her. The true feeling of the Church was best expressed by the Virgin herself in one of her attested miracles: "A clerk, trusting more in the Mother than in the Son, never stopped repeating the angelic salutation for his only prayer.

Once as he said again the 'Ave Maria,' the Lord appeared to him, and said to him: 'My Mother thanks you much for all the Salutations that you make her; but still you should not forget to salute me also: tamen et me salutare memento.'" The Trinity feared absorption in her, but was compelled to accept, and even to invite her aid, because the Trinity was a court of strict law, and, as in the old customary law, no process of equity could be introduced except by direct appeal to a higher power. She was imposed unanimously by all cla.s.ses, because what man wanted most in the Middle Ages was not merely law or equity, but also and particularly favour. Strict justice, either on earth or in heaven, was the last thing that society cared to face. All men were sinners, and had, at least, the merit of feeling that, if they got their deserts, not one would escape worse than whipping. The instinct of individuality went down through all cla.s.ses, from the count at the top, to the jugleors and menestreus at the bottom. The individual rebelled against restraint; society wanted to do what it pleased; all disliked the laws which Church and State were trying to fasten on them. They longed for a power above law,--or above the contorted ma.s.s of ignorance and absurdity bearing the name of law; but the power which they longed for was not human, for humanity they knew to be corrupt and incompetent from the day of Adam's creation to the day of the Last Judgment. They were all criminals; if not, they would have had no use for the Church and very little for the State; but they had at least the merit of their faults; they knew what they were, and, like children, they yearned for protection, pardon, and love. This was what the Trinity, though omnipotent, could not give. Whatever the heretic or mystic might try to persuade himself, G.o.d could not be Love. G.o.d was Justice, Order, Unity, Perfection; He could not be human and imperfect, nor could the Son or the Holy Ghost be other than the Father. The Mother alone was human, imperfect, and could love; she alone was Favour, Duality, Diversity. Under any conceivable form of religion, this duality must find embodiment somewhere, and the Middle Ages logically insisted that, as it could not be in the Trinity, either separately or together, it must be in the Mother. If the Trinity was in its essence Unity, the Mother alone could represent whatever was not Unity; whatever was irregular, exceptional, outlawed; and this was the whole human race.

The saints alone were safe, after they were sainted. Every one else was criminal, and men differed so little in degree of sin that, in Mary's eyes, all were subjects for her pity and help.

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

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

Now know you this for sure and true, Unless to-morrow this you do, --And do it very early too,-- Restore my chaplain to his due, A much worse fate remains for you!

Within a month your soul shall go To suffer in the flames below.

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

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

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

"HER sinner!" Mary would not have been a true queen unless she had protected her own. The whole morality of the Middle Ages stood in the obligation of every master to protect his dependent. The herdsmen of Count Garin of Beaucaire were the superiors of their damoiseau Auca.s.sins, while they felt sure of the Count. Mary was the highest of all the feudal ladies, and was the example for all in loyalty to her own, when she had to humiliate her own Bishop of Chartres for the sake of a worthless brute. "Do you suppose it doesn't annoy me," she said, "to see my friend buried in a common ditch? Take him out at once! I command! tell the clergy it is my order, and that I will never forgive them unless to-morrow morning without delay, they bury my friend in the best place in the cemetery!":--

Cuidies vos donc qu'il ne m'enuit Quant vos l'aves si adosse Que mis l'aves en un fosse?

Metes Ten fors je le comant!

Di le clergie que je li mant!

Ne me puet mi repaier Se le matin sans delayer A grant heneur n'est mis amis Ou plus beau leu de l'aitre mis.

Naturally, her order was instantly obeyed. In the feudal regime, disobedience to an order was treason--or even hesitation to obey-- when the order was serious; very much as in a modern army, disobedience is not regarded as conceivable. Mary's wish was absolute law, on earth as in heaven. For her, other laws were not made. Intensely human, but always Queen, she upset, at her pleasure, the decisions of every court and the orders of every authority, human or divine; interfered directly in the ordeal; altered the processes of nature; abolished s.p.a.ce; annihilated time. Like other queens, she had many of the failings and prejudices of her humanity.

In spite of her own origin, she disliked Jews, and rarely neglected a chance to maltreat them. She was not in the least a prude. To her, sin was simply humanity, and she seemed often on the point of defending her arbitrary acts of mercy, by frankly telling the Trinity that if the Creator meant to punish man, He should not have made him. The people, who always in their hearts protested against bearing the responsibility for the Creator's arbitrary creations, delighted to see her upset the law, and reverse the rulings of the Trinity. They idolized her for being strong, physically and in will, so that she feared nothing, and was as helpful to the knight in the melee of battle as to the young mother in child-bed. The only character in which they seemed slow to recognize Mary was that of bourgeoise. The bourgeoisie courted her favour at great expense, but she seemed to be at home on the farm, rather than in the shop. She had very rudimentary knowledge, indeed, of the principles of political economy as we understand them, and her views on the subject of money-lending or banking were so feminine as to rouse in that powerful cla.s.s a vindictive enmity which helped to overthrow her throne. On the other hand, she showed a marked weakness for chivalry, and one of her prettiest and most twelfth-century miracles is that of the knight who heard ma.s.s while Mary took his place in the lists. It is much too charming to lose (Bartsch, 1895, p. 311):--

Un chevalier courtois et sages, Hardis et de grant va.s.selages, Nus mieudres en chevalerie, Moult amoit la vierge Marie.

Pour son barnage demener Et son franc cors d'armes pener, Aloit a son tournoiement Garnis de son contentement.

Au dieu plaisir ainsi avint Que quant le jour du tournoi vint Il se hastoit de chevauchier, Bien vousist estre en champ premier.

D'une eglise qui pres estoit Oi les sains que l'on sonnoit Pour la sainte messe chanter.

Le chevalier sans arrester S'en est ale droit a l'eglise Pour escouter le dieu servise.

L'en chantoit tantost hautement Une messe devotement De la sainte Vierge Marie; Puis a on autre comencie.

Le chevalier vien l'escouta, De bon cuer la dame pria, Et quant la messe fut finee La tierce fu recomenciee Tantost en ce meisme lieu.

"Sire, pour la sainte char dieu!"

Ce li a dit son escuier, "L'heure pa.s.se de tournoier, Et vous que demourez ici?

Venez vous en, je vous en pri!

Volez vous devenir hermite Ou papelart ou ypocrite?

Alons en a nostre mestier!"

A knight both courteous and wise And brave and bold in enterprise.

No better knight was ever seen, Greatly loved the Virgin Queen.

Once, to contest the tourney's prize And keep his strength in exercise, He rode out to the listed field Armed at all points with lance and shield; But it pleased G.o.d that when the day Of tourney came, and on his way He pressed his charger's speed apace To reach, before his friends, the place, He saw a church hard by the road And heard the church-bells sounding loud To celebrate the holy ma.s.s.

Without a thought the church to pa.s.s The knight drew rein, and entered there To seek the aid of G.o.d in prayer.

High and dear they chanted then A solemn ma.s.s to Mary Queen; Then afresh began again.

Lost in his prayers the good knight stayed; With all his heart to Mary prayed; And, when the second one was done, Straightway the third ma.s.s was begun, Right there upon the self-same place.

"Sire, for mercy of G.o.d's grace!"

Whispered his squire in his ear; "The hour of tournament is near; Why do you want to linger here?

Is it a hermit to become, Or hypocrite, or priest of Rome?

Come on, at once! despatch your prayer!

Let us be off to our affair!"

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

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

In one of Milton's sonnets is a famous line which is commonly cla.s.sed among the n.o.blest verses of the English language:--

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

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

"Friend!" said to him the chevalier, "He tourneys very n.o.bly too, Who only hears G.o.d's service through!"