Note The friendly eyes that read these pages, knowing the pathetic fatts relating to their publication, will not be content without a word to tell to other readers the story that will cause one and all to look on the little book in the same sympathetic mood. The trips among the scenes of the storied past, here recorded, were taken not so much in search of health as in search of diversion from the sad employment of watching the in- exorable approach of mortal disease. The writing was undertaken to occupy a vigorous mind, conscious that its tenement would not long endure. Alas ! the task was not done before its pur- pose had been fully completed, and to others was left the duty of reading the final proofs. Such imperfections as may be found should be charged to this account, and all the excel- lences are to be credited to the brave soul that fought her fight so silently that only a very few closest friends knew of the unequal battle. C. o. Cr. s .& ii *Q O ^s s - FLOWERS FROM MEDIEVAL HISTORY BY MINNIE D. KELLOGG / never can feel sure of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty. Keats ILLUSTRATED PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS SAN FRANCISCO COPYRIGHT, 1910 BY PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY Contents Tag. Advertisement vii By Way of Introduction xi Flowers of History from the Romantic Thirteenth Century 3 Mystics as Builders 15 The Golden Madonna of Rheims . .26 The Little Old Abbe of Saint Denis and the Imagiers 38 The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres . . 50 Caen: An Eleventh Century Tableau . 73 The Grandniece of the Grand Inquisitor 87 Stray Leaves from Old, Old Books . .98 The Romantic Twentieth Century : A Deduffion 118 A Word Regarding Bibliography . .139 Index 143 - Illustrations Facing Pagi The Abbatical Church of Saint Ouen .... Title As Art, Early Painting is Often Taken too Seri- ously; but as Literature, it is Charming . . xiv The Crucifix in the Town Hall of Rouen ... 4 The Virgin Greets the Angel of Death ... 8 Sainte Chapelle 10 Interior of Sainte Chapelle 12 Saint Martin Dividing His Coat, from an Old Antiphone 20 From the Certosa of Pavia 22 Tomb of Dante, Ravenna 24 A Recent Tribute to Clovis and Saint Remi, on the Interior Frieze of the Pantheon, Paris . 26 The Flying Buttress 32 The Sculptured Saint Upon a Gothic Cathedral . 34 In the Sixteenth Century the French Academy Changed the Name of the Imagiers* Guild to the Sculptors' 42 A Thirteenth Century Window 44 The Old- Time House of Prayer, which Still Dom- inates the City of Chartres 52 A Pillar at Chartres 54 A View Through the Port ail of Chartres . .56 A Detail of the Port ail Septentrional .... 60 South Portal of Chartres 64 A Page from the Sculptured " Bible of the Laity," Chartres . 68 Illustrations Altar-piece at Chartres 70 William the Conqueror's Old Fortress . . -74 Dinan 84 Old Moats Do Make Such Charming Gardens . 86 A Peep Into the Cranium of a Bible Reader in Lope de Vega's Time 88 The Literal, Limited God of a Fanatic and Father Adam Stock-taking in Eden 92 A Tribute to the Scribes of the Dark Ages . .100 The Baptistry Doors 1 02 A Page from the Bible of Jean Sans Peur . . 1 10 Head of Justice, from Fiore's Group . . . .130 An Ideal of the Gracious Republic of Venice, Paul Veronese 134 A Mediaeval Expression of Justice Attended by Archangels, by Fiore 136 [vi] r Advertisement *HESE accounts all relate to places and ob- jects that the uncommercial traveler may casually run upon at some turn of his way. Subjects mentioned in Baedeker have been considered here reflectively rather than de- scriptively. Although I do not propose to an- alyze the soil in which these flowers of history have sprung up, nor to speak of the rank weeds growing by their sides^ I have tried not to blight these blossoms with falsehood. Certainly one-half of the truth is as true as the other and it may be infinitely pleasant er. As far as they go ', these little historiettes are based upon evidence and authority. I want to teacb you so much history that your sympathy may grow continually wider and you may be able to realize past generations of men just as you do the present, sorrowing for them when they failed, triumphing with them when they pre- vailed; for I find this one conviflion never chang- ing with me but always increasing, that one cannot live a life manfully without a wide world of sympathy and love to exercise it in. Burne-yones to His Son. [vii] Advertisement Suggested itineraries for cathedral trips in Normandy, giving monuments of the first or- der only, places readily reached by rail: First. Land at Bologne sur Mer, Amiens, Laon, Rheims, Paris, Saint Denis, Chartres, Caen, Bayeux, Mt. San Michele, embark from Cherbourg. Second. Land from England at Dieppe, or from America at Havre, proceed to Rouen, which possesses the most perfeff example of later Gothic in the great abbatical Church of Saint Ouen; an excellent example of flam- boyant Gothic in Saint Maclou ; and a large, irregular but imposing Gothic cathedral on the order of Rheims; thence to Mt. San Michele, most unique of medieval monuments ; thence to Caen and Bayeux near by it, Chartres and Paris. Amiens and Rheims being very simi- lar, and on the order of Chartres and Notre Dame of Paris, are not included in this itin- erary. 'The traveler to whom time is money will be greatly tried by the connexions made and lost by the trains in Normandy that stop at small places. Both these itineraries respett the idiosyncrasies of French railroads. 'The motorist, rejoicing in the excellent Nor- man roads, can combine these itineraries very easily taking in the cathedrals of Le Mans, Bourg, Beauvais and Coutances. I would [viii] Advertisement especially call his attention to the small but interesting Early Norman church at Do/s, and to the walled town of San Mario on the sea, with picturesque little Dinan, fashionable Dinard, and a dirty little fishing village near by. [ix] By W^ay of Introduction ji /TODERN invention has actually reflecJedup- -*-'-* on ancient history: the railroad, the steam derrick and the -photograph have changed our conceptions of the past. Written history is now accepted as its author s opinion, while tangible records stand forth as faffs. 'This attitude brings the Middle Ages par- ticularly near to us, for though its people wrote comparatively little, they were wonder- ful builders: their art was more literally expressive than the classic; then, too, of course, it is better preserved. While the Greeks and Romans were our schoolmasters, the Europeans of the Middle Ages are our ancestors. Their experience fore- shadows our own; for however far removed from us in thought and acJion they may have been, they were akin to us in feeling. though the rude pioneers of Christianity were often intensely cruel, as you follow their history, you may meet with some gentle deed springing from the good seed, even when sown in stony places, with some attion in its sweet- [xi] By Way of Introduction ness and humility entirely beyond the pagan world. In their childish story one may trace the early workings of the Christian ideal. It did not control behavior , nor did it always direct it wisely ; morality, being judicial and scientific, implies a certain maturity of mind. Religion is simple ; it is unlogical, sentimental and impulsive. Whatever this indefinable in- stinct may be, it has manifested itself as a spiritualizing force in morality and an initia- tive force in art. Religion has in it a craving for a loveli- ness beyond all literal perception of the senses ; a philosophic mind projects this ideal in con- templation ; an artistic mind, in symbol; for, as Michael Angelo explains, "Rash is the thought and vain that maketb beauty from the senses grow." I'he Greeks did develop an art from the motif of physical beauty, however, but their statues, executed before art became mature enough to produce that beauty, have no mes- sage, while one often catches something high and holy from a very early Christian image. It may radiate from a pretty smile on the face of a crude Madonna, or a graceful upturned head, in a figure entirely destitute of anatomy, which looks as though the simple craftsman had called upon a higher power than knowledge. By Way of Introduction Spiritual beauty being the ideal in Christian art, the image, however rude, which suggests it, makes its appeal in the charmed language of that loving religion. Medieval archives have been ransacked by Protestants for the errors of Catholicism ; by political economists, who even penetrate to the Dark Ages in search of the chilly lessons of the dismal science, for wisdom; and between them what a conception we have! But it is not the whole story, for Chaucer assures us the Moyen Age was a fairly livable period, peopled by beings like ourselves; moreover, it was an artistic age which has left us not only a wonderful architecture but two supreme poets. Perhaps the fairest chroniclers of such a period are its own artists, great and small, for history has grown too democratic to con- fine herself to kings, however worthy. She does not find the crude carver voiceless who, in default of skill, surrounds his Madonna with gold and loads her with rude jewels; indeed, she often finds her sweetest flowers growing between the lines of an unskilful brush or chisel. Although as painting, medieval efforts are often taken too seriously, as literature they are charming, for they speak of the good and [xiii] By Way of Introduction the beautiful as their Age conceived it. While the written stories of the time were shallow and coarse beyond our endurance, its -painter; were giving us their accounts of this life and the next {particularly the next}. First come bright, pretty colors prettily placed, pretty thoughts of happy angels. tfhen gold back- grounds give way to skies, and shadows creep onto the canvas. 'Then they begin to tell sto- ries; so eager they are that they cram four or jive pictures into one, dotting the little scenes, by way of parenthesis, into the back- grounds. 'These pictures give the other half of the truth, the tenderer side of the old life and theology. What sympathetic Bible scholars some of the artists became! And, in general, the greatest were the tenderest. Albert Dur- er's Evangelists are interesting character studies for all time. He conceives of Saint Mark as a plain, simple enthusiast ; of Saint Paul, as a broad-minded, thoughtful man whom he even imagines to be bald. He does not try to make either of them exattly hand- some, but the way Mark looks up to Paul is most winning. A little later Andrea del Sarto paints a splendid account of the warring doc- tors of the Church, which shows clearly he saw beyond them : but this takes us into the [xiv] As Art, Early Painting is Often Taken too Seriously ; but as Literature, it is Charming. By Way of Introduction Renaissance which has been defined as a mar- riage of the Grecian and the Gothic. A strift analysis has come into art and it is creeping into life, our race childhood is drawing to a close but not without leaving us many things that are sweet to remember. W^e tell our children some of the very same stories that the wandering story-tellers used to relate to good knights and their fair ladies in the old baronial halls ', Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, or Puss in Boots, only the knights and their ladies believed them. 'There is a pathos in medieval story ; it is a tragedy of misdirected effort (as perhaps all history is), only the medieval tragedy strikes home. Its atJors were people of our own blood and of our own Church our own people only under delusions from which we have emancipated ourselves. To understand their story we must take them as children and listen with them for the imaginary voices that lead them on. A veritable allegory of the Age of Faith was presented on the great stage of history in 12 1 2, when two enormous armies of little boys and girls started from France and Ger- many singing, to march to the Holy Land; if any of these children turned back, none of them seem to have found their old homes. As far as is known to history, one child [XV] By Way of Introduction alone returned as an aged pilgrim, to tell the tale, how the bones of the children strewed the mountainside; how they had been em- barked on unseaworthy vessels to be sold into slavery; how few, how very few, ever reached their goal; how few, how very few, ever remained pure and holy. Connected with this tragedy was a horrible pope and a horrible doge, but now they seem but foils to the purity of the children, it was all so long ago. And that the mystic beauty of that little legion may live lyrically in our life, the Twentieth Century has set their pa- thetic march to music in stately oratorio ; for pure aspiration is the melody of melodies, the veritable flower of history. A certain childish disinterestedness was the tender grace of the Age of Faith, " the ten- der grace of a day that is dead" It must pass from a broader age ; taking all faftors duly into account even drives it from serious history its proportion is so inconsiderable. 'The life of Saint Francis, who espoused My Lady Poverty, is one of the sweetest examples of mediaeval disinterestedness. Viewed liter- ally, the accounts pifture a crazy man preach- ing to birds and fishes, making a bargain with a wolf and injudiciously mortifying his flesh till he became blind and useless. Viewed by [xvi] By Way of Introduction the light of their influence his teachings were revolutionary, they brought new-found energy and sympathy into the Church; yet, at best, they were only the teachings of Christ, without the Savior's beautiful sanity. Viewed by the results he brought about, Saint Francis must have been one of the pro- foundest of men, and yet his wisdom, if he had any, was only that of the heart. Sabatier has written a life of Francis, at once scholarly, judicious and vivid, but as the Franciscan Father remarked, he wrote the life of Mr. Francis. If you would learn of Saint Francis of blessed memory, you must study by yourself with loving diligence a childish old book which tells of the miracles wrought through the taff of Saint Francis "The Little Flowers of Saint Francis." The fruits of his- tory others may put before us, but the passing fragrance of the flowers we must perceive for ourselves. I here submit for your interpretation cer- tain incidents that seem to me the outgrowth of the fine feeling of the impulsive Moyen Age. FLOWERS FROM MEDLEVAL HISTORY Flowers of History From the Romantic Thirteenth Century I HAVE borrowed my title from a Thir- teenth Century chronicle, of disputed authorship, purporting to be a history of the world, but from 447 A. D. on it is engrossed with the story of England. From this insular partiality of its author I should be inclined to award the work to the English claimant, for what is a flower of history but a phase of the human story which especially charms the writer. To me the Gothic cathedrals are the flowers of Thirteenth Century history, which era saw every one of the greatest of them building. Their cornerstones may have been laid earlier, and the finishing touches came much later, but they owe their character to that one wonderful century which stands apart through the ages, thus telling its beads. The written history of the Thirteenth Century is cruel reading, but an age, like a [3] Flowers From Mediaeval History man, has two soul sides, and the better side is always the harder to fathom. The Thir- teenth Century opened for France, the native land of the Gothic, with an abom- inable pope, a selfish king and, nearer at hand, the evil of various tyrannical seig- neurs. The great social movement which endowed the French towns with their mag- nificent cathedrals was apart from those powers and hardly affected by their war or peace. These great edifices were built by the secular clergy and the townspeople for municipal, as well as religious, purposes. Therein they held councils for deliverance from their feudal lords, lay and ecclesiastic, for in the Thirteenth Century the Third Estate became a political power. The cathedrals express the patriotism, generosity and civic pride of the freemen of the old towns; they realize the dream of the socialist for the good and the beautiful held in common ; the love of the poet for beauty for its own sweet self; and the in- spiration of the artist, working at the white heat of a rising art, as surely as the rever- ence of the age of faith. In the Low Countries they built city halls at an early date, but the French towns [4] The Crucifix, the Eternal Warning, Built into the Very Walls of the Old Courtroom in the Town Hall of Rouen. The Romantic Thirteenth Century did not need them, for there the cathedrals lent pomp and circumstance to all muni- cipal assemblages. The first States Gen- eral was held in Notre Dame of Paris. The early Church had endeared itself to the people in many ways. It entertained the traveler, and it was well that it did, for the public houses were of a very low or- der; it instructed the children; it minis- tered to the sick, and, if it was a crazy physician, it was a gentle nurse. The modern hospital, the fairest monument of humanity, is directly descended from the old Hotels-Dieu, where monks and nuns tended the sick. In the cathedral sat the Bishops' Courts which, the people felt, were more just than the seigneurs. From these old Bishops' Courts the beautiful French custom has descended of hanging a crucifix back of the judge's seat in the courts of common law where the symbol, recalling a politic judge washing his hands of the blood of a just man, seems more than a human warning. Within the consecrated walls of the church was that ever-blessed privilege of the temple Christian, Pagan, or Jew- ish sanctuary, the right of the hunted. Of course it was abused, mercy expects to [5] Flowers From Mediaeval History be; therein it is more divine than human; but in a lawless day sanctuary was an un- conscious protest against lynching. We do read of accidents arising from it; a Christian Church at Seez was burned down in an attempt to dislodge a band of thieves, but this embarrassing circumstance reflects on the management of those who burned it rather than upon the church. A complaint comes down to us from the Thirteenth Century of the would-be pop- ular clergy who allowed their parishioners to dance in their churches and even assisted at these dances and at shows peu convenable given by jugglers and clowns, they them- selves playing at chess, all of which goes to show that we must regard these im- mense churches as meeting houses in the literal sense of the term and allow for the coarseness of the age in considering its amusements. Among other buffooneries, at Laon particularly, which seems to have been very " low church," we read of the an- nual fete des innocents^ in which the choir boys dressed up as priests and went through various antics in the church, which was given up to them for the night, the chap- ter giving them a supper after. At Laon again there is public complaint of a change [6] The Romantic Thirteenth Century having been made in the hour of mass and vespers on account of a miracle play that was given in the church. Lovers of the drama may look leniently upon this ar- rangement, whereas I suppose the stricter churchmen, when the ecclesiastical suprem- acy came to be questioned, even in the bishop's own church, both at Rheims and Laon, said, " I told you so." By such con- cessions the clergy induced the citizens to go in with them in building* such churches that succeeding generations have called them mad. Though the evolution of the Gothic is one of the most interesting chapters in the history of architecture, the history of the builders themselves, if we could only have it, might be still more fascinating. Indeed, "Who builds a church to God and not to fame, Will never mark the marble with his name." Hence we do not know who designed some of the noblest monuments of Gothic architecture, but we do catch charming psychological glimpses as we watch the mystical and the practical unconsciously * The Spaniards of Seville formally determined to build a cathe- dral upon so magnificent a scale that coming ages might proclaim them mad to have undertaken it. [7] Flowers From Mediaeval History working together for the beautiful in these old cathedrals, which make us wonder how such spiritual designs arose and how the artists who conceived them were able to carry them out. How could an age when kings could hardly read and write, when artists drew like children, evolve such works of art ? How could an age so igno- rant of physics and the abstract principles of mechanics erect such buildings ? Some hazy legends, fairy tales even, with their grain of truth (that truth which one troweth but cannot prove), and a few scant records, scattered among the archives of such old churches as have escaped the accidents of war and of peace, are really all that is left us with which to picture a beautiful phase of thought and feeling which lured a childish people onward to- ward art, organization and nationality. From the old archives of Chartres, which was built so slowly, from the old records of Saint Denis, which was built so quickly, between the lines of the nai've old letters of tactful old bishops who coaxed nobles and workmen alike, as much as they coerced them, thereby raising fabu- lous sums paid in labor or in gold with which to build such temples that succeed- [8] The Middle Ages Dealt Much in Allegory. The Virgin Greets the Angel of Death. A Sermon in Marble. T/ie Romantic Thirteenth Century ing generations have thought them in- spired, we may pick up a few fragments of the untold story of these exquisitely poetic Builders who taught architecture to speak a universal language. Saint Denis, which immediately antedat- ed the great Gothic churches of Northern France, is a stately mansion with a steeple at its side, but the Gothic cathedrals are Christian temples every inch ; their design itself is consecrate. Their lines and har- monies however varied, however bizarre, always resolve at last into some ideal of reverence,while their solemn beauty speaks a various language. From crypt to steeple the Gothic church is a Christian metaphor. Its ground plan is the Cross, while the huge cathedral with all its worshipers is but a standard bearer for loftier crosses borne upon its towers and spires. From the bulwarks of their massive foundations, laid in the Dark Ages, these old churches deliberately grew more or- nate, carrying with them countless genera- tions of architects growing steadily in pride and skill until it only required a burst of popular enthusiasm to bring forth the artistic revolution of the Thirteenth Cen- tury. Again (but not in wrath) the old [9] Flowers From Mediaeval History churches were demolished simply because they were no longer the noblest possible treasure houses for their precious relics. Then it was that the gentle, mystical, French monarch, who maintained his court so simply, purchased "The Crown of Thorns" from the mercenary Venetians, into whose hands it had fallen through a chattel mortgage given by those who had acquired it as a spoil of war. Never were the rites of the church so descriptive, so picturesque, so splendid, as in the Thirteenth Century. Barefooted and in penitential garb, but followed by a band of light, a great procession of wor- shipers, each carrying a candle, the king and his brother met the supreme relic and bore it tenderly onward to the Royal Chapel in Paris and all the cities, towns and hamlets through which they passed were reverently illuminated. Then Saint Louis entreated the great architects of his realm, whose genius was already proven, to strive to design a reli- quary even worthy of the Crown of Thorns, and in five years the beautiful Sainte Chapelle arose : like other poetry this lovely chapel was born of a passionate yearning. [10] Sainte which Sprang from the Crvwn of Thornt. The Romantic Thirteenth Century If the cathedrals are epics of architecture, the Sainte Chapelle is a sonnet, a master- piece of single-minded expression, the pur- ity of whose design established a standard. No cathedral could be finished on its ori- ginal plan; it was necessarily too long in building; but the model which was to har- monize the labors of successive builders may be sought in the little Sainte Chapelle of Paris which sprang from the Crown of Thorns. As every great work of art mirrors a human heart, reflecting that of which its author took no note as clearly as that which stirred his conscious being, so the Sainte Chapelle reflects Saint Louis and Saint Louis reflects the Age of Faith. He was its poet who wrote in deeds. It is not strange that Louis IX was can- onized for he was in perfect accord with the ideals of his age, asceticism, chivalry, humility and regality; and too, he was a great builder. Saint Louis built the Sainte Chapelle to hold that which did not physically exist; but as with the pen of a recording angel, on this tablet of stone he wrote a mes- sage from the better self of his age to all humanity. Flowers From Medieval History Though history repeats, the history of the Gothic is as unique as that architecture itself; when otherwise men were tram- meled body and soul its builders were free to create, to vary or to destroy. In the nineteenth century, when travel became general ( " he who runs may read " ), certain gentle readers like Corroyer, Hugo, Rodin, Ruskin, and most accurate of all, Viollet-le-Duc, interpreted this marvelous architecture of the Moyen Age to the multitude. "They builded better than they knew; they wrought in sad sincerity," vaguely exclaimed the philosopher. "They built as well as they knew; they built in glad sincerity," observed the archi- tect. Rodin reminds us that it is a mistake to imagine that the religious conceptions of that day were able to bring forth architec- tural masterpieces any more than that the religious conceptions of today are respon- sible for the defects in modern structures. The Gothic cathedrals are epics of labor. They grew up under the hands of many designers and builders, who were learn- ing as they worked. Democracy echoes through these noble buildings into which [i.a] Interior of Sainte Chapelle. " Much more than the ogive, the grotto, the cavern, the -window, is the essential of Gothic architc&ure." August Rodin. The Romantic Thirteenth Century were wrought the hope, the promise and the enthusiasm of a rising people. To the inartistic eighteenth century, whose mission was to fight tyranny, polit- ical and religious, these ornate structures seemed the meaningless labor of a down- trodden people. I doubt if logicians like Voltaire and Gibbon realized the elevating joy of passionate giving that came to some of the poorest donors. Think of a guild of pastry cooks presenting a magnificent window to the Church, their Mother ! No less a building than the Cathedral of Char- tres! Never were the lovely things of the Age of Faith more beloved than in the present Age of Doubt. We are trying to restore the noblest of the old cathedrals, stone for stone, and to lure back the sweetest prayers and truest penance confided to their walls to spiritualize their resurrection. Never were the maiden efforts of Chris- tian art more tenderly approached than in the technical twentieth century, when they are studied alike by Catholic, Protestant and Jew. The old theology has been very severely picked over, but underneath its mouldy leaves, like trailing arbutus in the spring, the " Little Flowers of St. Francis " [13] Flowers From Medieval History peep up. The nineteenth century con- cerned itself with the errors of the Med- iaeval Church, but the twentieth especially reads the gentler side related by the artists, and sometimes we catch hallowed messages from the pure in heart who have almost seen God. [H] Mystics as Builders WE ORDER the temples still standing destroyed that in their exact place may be raised the sign of the Christian re- ligion. Decree of Valentinian III. In the tribunal of history the Christian iconoclasts have been dealt with somewhat in the manner of defendants in damage suits. If a cow is killed by a railroad, is it not naturally assumed to have been a Durham? If a statue was destroyed by a fanatic why not put in a claim for a Phidias ? As a matter of fact, by the time the early Christians came into power the art of the day of Pericles had been copied for over seven hundred years. Of art, what worse could be said! Grecian art neither rose nor fell in a generation nor was it childless; original, though minor schools, Hellenic to the core, sprang up in the Grecian colonies and to the end the art and artists of Rome were Greeks. But during the later Ro- man Empire the degenerate Grecian artist ['5] Flowers From Medieval History commissioned by the degenerate Roman patron was simply cumbering the earth. Oh, yes, in those luxurious days they pat- ronized art as rich men should, as rich men do. The houses of Herculaneum and Pompeii teemed with articles of virtu. It was not statues the world of art needed, it was ideals. In art, it is the individual point of view that counts even if it be only that of the destroyer. Since art reflects life and life means change, the iconoclast has his place. A race, or more often the meeting of two races, may develop a school of art; it reaches its perfection in the work of a few genii of its golden age; to them it is given to embody the highest and best that was in the myriad of artists who have taught them and their teachers. Spellbound by its own perfection, this art can move no farther. The multitude seek to preserve it, for its value has been interpreted to them in quotations of the exchange. Art- ists are satisfied to copy it, and thereby artists they gradually cease to be. The de- stroyer comes, fire, fanatic, whirlwind, victor or worm the bulk and body of that art perishes, but the ideal, being a fruit of the spirit, lives. The final ruling [16] Mystics as Builders of Grecian architecture is still proclaimed from the Parthenon, while headless and armless the lone " Winged Victory " might immortalize the action of Grecian sculp- ture, the poetry of Grecian thought. Since architecture is the most national of the arts, its movements are the easiest to trace. Sometimes we actually detect the designer following in the footsteps of the iconoclast. Indeed, the most successful pa- tron architecture has known, the Catholic Church, commenced as a destroyer. In the south of France ecclesiastical ar- chitecture remained essentially classic until the Renaissance. This was largely due to one great sixth century bishop, Patiens de Lyons, who repaired the old temples and rebuilt anew on their lines so successfully that the people proudly said they could not tell the new from the old; but in the north of Gaul, where Martin of Tours and his followers had made a clean sweep of the pagan temples and their old influence, architectural and spiritual, an absolutely new style of church building developed. It is there that to this day we turn for the purest Gothic. Of this Martin we have some little his- tory, hazy though it be. He was a rude Flowers From Medieval History barbarian of the Roman legion, under the Emperor Julian, who embraced Christian- ity and brought the glad tidings to Tours. With a soldier's idea of conquest he de- molished the temples of false gods, like other superstitious converts; but he con- tended that to make the victory complete, at least an altar to the true God should mark the very spot; and he is credited with six religious foundations, one having been a church for the laity in the town of Tours. The present age might canonize Martin for a deed overlooked by his most ardent, early eulogists. He and Saint Am- brose protested against the " new heresy " of two Spanish bishops who put a gnostic to death for his heretical opinions. Hagiology, however, abounds in records of Saint Martin, for he became the best be- loved saint of old Gaul. It is natural that those who read the Roman Catholic breviary literally should doubt it somewhat. They fail to realize that the history of a saint lies entirely be- tween the lines of the account. The sacred lesson taught by this life reechoes in his antiphones, responses, versicles and les- sons, until he stands before his followers as a type of certain virtues. Thus Saint [.8] Mystics as Builders Sebastian stands for Christian courage; though his body is pierced with arrows and his hands are tied, he is always repre- sented looking bravely up to Heaven : torture is immaterial to him : he is sus- tained by faith. Saint Gregory, gentlest of pastors, greatest of popes, is represented with the emblem of the Holy Ghost, the dove, perched upon his shoulder; Saint Jerome, who translated the Scriptures, with the Book in his hand ; he generally has an angel near-by him. Two little pictures stand out in Saint Martin's iconography. In one, Saint Mar- tin cuts his cloak in half with his sword to divide it with a beggar and beholds the Savior abundantly clad in half of it ; and in the other, Saint Martin evokes the spectre of a pretended martyr worshiped in Tours, who comes to life and admits that he was hanged for crime, wherefore Saint Martin demolishes his shrine. To the early Church the relic was every- thing. Of course it should be pure and holy. In it there was inspiration. Above the grave of some dear saint or, perhaps, only to his memory, a shrine would arise, and from these shrines, like flowers from seed, churches grew. A crypt might be [19] Flowers From Mediaeval History made to hold some hallowed dust, where services might be held. This was reminis- cent of the Roman catacombs where the first Christians, believing literally in the resurrection of the body, had laid their dead, and where, unseen by the unsympa- thetic world, they had met for holy com- munion. The crypts of the early Church were the mortal resting-places of friendly immortals at the great court above who, in their robes of light, might plead acceptably for those who would so reverently approach the heavenly throne through spirits purer than their own. Of course, these pleaders must be very pure to turn their shrines to altars. What spiritual value had a pretty, paltry tomb honoring an unholy spirit ? Roman civilization was materialistic, but not so this new religion of Jesus of Naza- reth. Now, if things holy could pervade and hallow a building, why should not things unholy defile it? We may trace this idea carried out so literally, so picturesquely, so almost logi- cally in the legends of Martin of Tours, that we actually sympathize with the de- structive old bishop. Blindly defending the dream that was in him, he actually stands first in that long line of ecclesiastical build- [20] Saint Martin Dividing Hit Coat, from an Old Antifhont. Mystics as Builders ers who, in the fulness of time, jointly brought forth Gothic architecture. When Saint Martin put his rude fol- lowers to work building houses for their new faith he must have established a cer- tain amount of unity and order among them. Could there have been a better way to attach his crude converts to their Church than to induce them to work upon it? While Saint Martin was building at Tours, the Dark Ages were setting in, when men of action became marauders, preying upon others ; men of thought became monks, praying for themselves ; humanity went backwards, and history ceased from very shame. But through it all there were a few perplexed old bishops who, whatever their failings may have been, tried to do something for their fellows. However, in that lawless day, they had to defend rather than expand Christianity, and even protect its churches, for pagans, too, might be honest iconoclasts ! The best thing the Dark Ages did for civilization was to learn the builders' trade and teach it to a great many people. It was a general service, for to make a people in- dustrious is, sooner or later, to make them skilful and law-abiding. Flowers From Medieval History It is curious that Saint Martin who, even while he was a bishop, lodged in a hut covered with boughs, should head the great line of builders who jointly and severally developed French Gothic. In standing for the integrity of the relic, which was literally the seed of early Christian art, Saint Martin gave a new and a higher impetus to life, and with it, very indirectly, to art. Seventy years after Martin's death, to his blessed memory Saint Perpetuas built " the most beautiful church in existence," at least so Gregory of Tours affirms. We will not in- quire on what lines, for this was at the be- ginning of the Dark Ages, when nothing beautiful was made. A supreme recognition of the bold old iconoclast comes to us from devotees of the classic; from certain artists and connoisseurs of the Renaissance. This unexpected trib- ute to iconoclasm is published upon a mon- ument far removed from old Gaul in time and place, in ideal and execution. In a monastery dowered with the gold of two reigning dynasties of tyrants, dowered by the genius of two reigning dynasties of painters and sculptors, amid surround- ings perhaps the richest in the world, where fifty monks might dream away their From the Certosa of Pa-via. One of the Most Elaborate Monuments of Catholicism, Mystics as Builders lives in silence, in that lordly and exclu- sive playhouse for the soul of the Renais- sance, wherein the exuberance of the Gothic takes on the maturity of the Renaissance in an elaboration which for once does not cloy, in the Certosa di Pavia we find a tribute to crude, old Saint Martin, the iconoclast. On a mural of one of the side chapels of this Certosa behold him represented in the garb of a fifteenth century monk, with his sanctity emphasized by a large, glittering nimbus, to which the aerial perspective of the otherwise maturely realistic painting is deliberately sacrificed, calmly superin- tending a gilded youth of the Renaissance while he smashes a fine Grecian statue ! How did this rude act find endorsement in a temple of art? How did the coarsest of the saints win a place in the heart of the Renaissance? Was it because in him they saw a reflection of the subtlest hon- esty of Art, that god of the Renaissance? Was it because, above all else, Saint Mar- tin especially stood for the integrity of the ideal ? Though this little scene on the chapel wall may have been simply historic in its import, nothing is plainer than that the [23] Flowers From Medi