Our Fathers Have Told Us Part 13

26. HAGGAI.

Inside {A. The houses of the princes, _ornees de porch lambris_. i. 4.

{B. The heaven is stayed from dew. i. 10.

To the {C. The Lord's temple desolate. i. 4.

front {D. "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts." i. 7.

27. ZECHARIAH.

A. The lifting up of iniquity. v. 6-9.

B. The angel that spake to me. iv. 1.

28. MALACHI.

A. "Ye have wounded the Lord." ii. 17.

B. This commandment is to _you_. ii. 1.

[Footnote 60: See the Septuagint version.]

41. Having thus put the sequence of the statues and their quatrefoils briefly before the spectator--(in case the railway time presses, it may be a kindness to him to note that if he walks from the east end of the cathedral down the street to the south, Rue St. Denis, it takes him by the shortest line to the station)--I will begin again with St.

Peter, and interpret the sculptures in the quatrefoils a little more fully. Keeping the fixed numerals for indication of the statues, St.

Peter's quatrefoils will be 1 A and 1 B, and Malachi's 28 A and 28 B.

1, A. COURAGE, with a leopard on his shield; the French and English agreeing in the reading of that symbol, down to the time of the Black Prince's leopard coinage in Aquitaine.[61]

[Footnote 61: For a list of the photographs of the quatrefoils described in this chapter, see the appendices at the end of this volume.]

2, B. COWARDICE, a man frightened at an animal darting out of a thicket, while a bird sings on. The coward has not the heart of a thrush.

2, A. PATIENCE, holding a shield with a bull on it (never giving back).[62]

[Footnote 62: In the cathedral of Laon there is a pretty compliment paid to the oxen who carried the stones of its tower to the hill-top it stands on. The tradition is that they harnessed themselves,--but tradition does not say how an ox can harness himself even if he had a mind. Probably the first form of the story was only that they went joyfully, "lowing as they went." But at all events their statues are carved on the height of the tower, eight, colossal, looking from its galleries across the plains of France. See drawing in Viollet le Duc, under article "Clocher."]

2, B. ANGER, a woman stabbing a man with a sword. Anger is essentially a feminine vice--a man, worth calling so, may be driven to fury or insanity by _indignation_, (compare the Black Prince at Limoges,) but not by anger. Fiendish enough, often so--"Incensed with indignation, Satan stood, _unterrified_--" but in that last word is the difference, there is as much fear in Anger, as there is in Hatred.

3, A. GENTILLESSE, bearing shield with a lamb.

3, B. CHURLISHNESS, again a woman, kicking over her cup-bearer.

The final forms of ultimate French churlishness being in the feminine gestures of the Cancan.

See the favourite prints in shops of Paris.

4, A. LOVE; the Divine, not human love: "I in them, and Thou in me." Her shield bears a tree with many branches grafted into its cut-off stem: "In those days shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself."

4, B. DISCORD, a wife and husband quarrelling. She has dropped her distaff (Amiens wool manufacture, see farther on--9, A.)

5, A. OBEDIENCE, bears shield with camel. Actually the most disobedient and ill-tempered of all serviceable beasts,--yet pa.s.sing his life in the most painful service. I do not know how far his character was understood by the northern sculptor; but I believe he is taken as a type of burden-bearing, without joy or sympathy, such as the horse has, and without power of offence, such as the ox has. His bite is bad enough, (see Mr. Palgrave's account of him,) but presumably little known of at Amiens, even by Crusaders, who would always ride their own war-horses, or nothing.

5, B. REBELLION, a man snapping his fingers at his Bishop.

(As Henry the Eighth at the Pope,--and the modern French and English c.o.c.kney at all priests whatever.)

6, A. PERSEVERENCE, the grandest spiritual form of the virtue commonly called 'Fort.i.tude.' Usually, overcoming or tearing a lion; here, _caressing_ one, and _holding_ her crown. "Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown."

6, B. ATHEISM, leaving his shoes at the church door. The infidel fool is always represented in twelfth and thirteenth century MS. as barefoot--the Christian having "his feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace."

Compare "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O Prince's Daughter!"

7, A. FAITH, holding cup with cross above it, her accepted symbol throughout ancient Europe. It is also an enduring one, for, all differences of Church put aside, the words, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and Drink His blood, ye have no life in you," remain in their mystery, to be understood only by those who have learned the sacredness of food, in all times and places, and the laws of life and spirit, dependent on its acceptance, refusal, and distribution.

7, B. IDOLATRY, kneeling to a monster. The _contrary_ of Faith--not _want_ of Faith. Idolatry is faith in the wrong thing, and quite distinct from Faith in _No_ thing (6, B), the "Dixit Insipiens." Very wise men may be idolaters, but they cannot be atheists.

8, A. HOPE, with Gonfalon Standard and _distant_ crown; as opposed to the constant crown of Fort.i.tude (6, A).

The Gonfalon (Gund, war, fahr, standard, according to Poitevin's dictionary), is the pointed ensign of forward battle; essentially sacred; hence the constant name "Gonfaloniere" of the battle standard-bearers of the Italian republics.

Hope has it, because she fights forward always to her aim, or at least has the joy of seeing it draw nearer.

Faith and Fort.i.tude wait, as St. John in prison, but unoffended.

Hope is, however, put under St. James, because of the 7th and 8th verses of his last chapter, ending "Stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." It is he who examines Dante on the nature of Hope. 'Par.,' c. xxv., and compare Cary's notes.

8, B. DESPAIR, stabbing himself. Suicide not thought heroic or sentimental in the 13th century; and no Gothic Morgue built beside Somme.

9, A. CHARITY, bearing shield with woolly ram, and giving a mantle to a naked beggar. The old wool manufacture of Amiens having this notion of its purpose--namely, to clothe the poor first, the rich afterwards. No nonsense talked in those days about the evil consequences of indiscriminate charity.

9, B. AVARICE, with coffer and money. The modern, alike English and Amienois, notion of the Divine consummation of the wool manufacture.

10, A. CHASt.i.tY, shield with the Phoenix.[63]

[Footnote 63: For the sake of comparing the pollution, and reversal of its once glorious religion, in the modern French mind, it is worth the reader's while to ask at M. Goyer's (Place St. Denis) for the 'Journal de St. Nicholas' for 1880, and look at the 'Phenix,' as drawn on p.

610. The story is meant to be moral, and the Phoenix there represents Avarice, but the entire destruction of all sacred and poetical tradition in a child's mind by such a picture is an immorality which would neutralize a year's preaching. To make it worth M. Goyer's while to show you the number, buy the one with 'les conclusions de Jeanie' in it, p. 337: the church scene (with dialogue) in the text is lovely.]

10, B. l.u.s.t, a too violent kiss.

11, A. WISDOM, shield with, I think, an eatable root; meaning temperance, as the beginning of wisdom.

11, B. FOLLY, the ordinary type used in all early Psalters, of a glutton, armed with a club. Both this vice and virtue are the earthly wisdom and folly, completing the spiritual wisdom and folly opposite under St.

Matthew. Temperance, the complement of Obedience, and Covetousness, with violence, that of Atheism.

12, A. HUMILITY, shield with dove.

12, B. PRIDE, falling from his horse.

42. All these quatrefoils are rather symbolic than representative; and, since their purpose was answered enough if their sign was understood, they have been entrusted to a more inferior workman than the one who carved the now sequent series under the Prophets. Most of these subjects represent an historical fact, or a scene spoken of by the prophet as a real vision; and they have in general been executed by the ablest hands at the architect's command.

With the interpretation of these, I have given again the name of the prophet whose life or prophecy they ill.u.s.trate.

13. ISAIAH.

13, A. "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne" (vi. I).

The vision of the throne "high and lifted up"