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<x*val History
picture is intended to honor an uncom-
promising, bishop of the early Church.
Through the confusion that disinte-
grated empire, Saint Martin was a rude
standard-bearer of two ideals broad enough
to rebuild nations Sincerity and Brother-
hood. "First he wrought and after that
he taught" and first the spirit of his
teaching was put into rude pictures, be-
cause in Gaul so few people could read
and still fewer could condense an idea into
forceful words.
It was long, long after an angel had ap-
peared and carried Saint Martin's soul in
the form of a child straight to God, as a
gentle old writer attests, that a modern
geologist voiced the fundamental idea of
the best beloved saint of old Gaul, "An
honest god is the noblest work of man."
But the past, as well as the present, has
its peculiar eloquence wherewith to honor
the dead. Over one of the oldest Chris-
tian altars spared to us by time, in solemn,
enduring mosaic, big and simple, stands
Saint Martin leading a line of saints to
Christ. And this great hieratic on the wall
of an old church of old Ravenna describes,
as no language of the present may, an
early builder of the great mystic Church
[*]
The Last Resting Place of
the Great Poet of Meditt-valhm Tomb
of Dante, Ravenna.
Mystics as Builders
which "rests upon the brawny trunks of
heroes . . . whose spans and arches are the
joined hands of comrades . . . and whose
heights and spaces are inscribed by the
numberless musings of all the dreamers of
the world."
The Golden Madonna
of Rheims
EPE in the fifth century, while the con-
fusion of the Dark Ages reigned su-
preme, the Christian bishop of the Remi
was at work on the discouraging task of
rebuilding his church after pagan depreda-
tions at Rheims, when the great joy was
vouchsafed to him of baptizing Clovis, the
ruler of the largest Teutonic State of the
age. _
Saint Remi recommended Clovis to adore
that which he had burned and to burn that
which he had adored, that the work of ju-
dicious destruction might continue. Clovis
sent offerings to all the sanctuaries, particu-
larly to that of the old soldier Saint Mar-
tin. Three thousand Franks were baptized;
Clovis exchanged the three toads on his
shield for the fleur-de-lis, and France be-
came Christian toute de suite. Then Saint
Remi dreamt of great things yet to come:
of a king and a people governed by the
!? 3 - o' & ^
5 P a 3 ?L
The Golden Madonna of Rheims
Church of Christ, temporally and spirit-
ually. And he interpreted this dream to
the people by a charming symbol: he ex-
plained how the Holy Ghost, the Heavenly
Dove, had brought from above some spir-
itual oil with which to anoint Clovis at his
baptism. But to make the idea clear to
these many men of childish minds and
many patois, he showed them a little am-
pulla filled with oil, which, he explained,
"the Dove" had brought to him from
Heaven to grace the baptism of their chief.
And they decided to keep the oil that was
left in the ampulla for great occasions,
like coronations. This wonderful ointment
united the Crown and the Church as long
as it lasted. During the Revolution a sans-
culotte shattered the old vessel. Orthodoxy
claimed to have caught one drop and en-
cased it in a beautiful new vase ; it was used
again, but its efficacy was no more. And
not long thereafter the French people de-
cided to do without coronations, or monas-
teries, but they still love Clovis and Saint
Remi.
Civilization is much indebted to the
early bishops and a goodly number of them
have been canonized. The monastic clergy
were the snobs of the Church, securely
Flowers From Mediezval History
selfish in the magnificent fastnesses they
creeled for themselves in the skies; con-
descending comfortably to pray for those
that fed them (though who knows but they
even shirked that obligation), while the
secular clergy were working out, amid in-
spiration and error, the foundations of a
Christian civilization. The idea of the
early bishops that the Church ought to
rule the world was a natural and an hon-
est mistake. The later bishops were quite
a different class. The stout little church
of Saint Remi near Rheims pleads still for
its brave old bishop, though as a building
it is eclipsed by the great cathedral of the
city.
The dynasty of Clovis passed away and
the next reigning house came in with Pep-
in. He had good reason to approve of the
Church as an institution, for it had early
played into his hand. Had not the Abbe
of Saint Denis journeyed to Rome to se-
cure the papal confirmation of his crown ?
And had not Pope Stephen, while enjoying
the prote6tion of that same abbey, anointed
Charlemagne, his little son ? On this was
based the succession. With his own good
sword Charlemagne defended it and brought
a semblance of order to the land of the
[28]
The Golden Madonna of Rheims
Gaul and the Frank; and, genius that he
was, he anticipated, in his interest in archi-
tecture, the genius of his great people.
But it was rather Charlemagne's attitude
toward church building and letters that told,
in the long run, than any literal achieve-
ment in them during this time. However,
from the reign of his youngest son, Louis
the Pious, we may trace the steady, con-
sistent growth of an original order of build-
ing which culminated in the unparalleled
Gothic of Northern France.
By that time the nobility had built so
many sanctuaries in their domains that they
had to be interdicted from establishing use-
less private foundations and, in a more
democratic spirit, sixteen or seventeen
churches, all edifices of dignity, were begun.
Then Bishop Ebbon saw a golden oppor-
tunity to build a magnificent cathedral on
the long-hallowed soil of Rheims. There
the Druid had raised his altar, there the
Roman his temple, which may have ab-
sorbed the old Druid's stones into its walls
as it had his old gods into its adaptive
bosom, to fall, in its turn, a mightier pile,
from which the Christian built again and
again as he grew in skill. Indeed, beyond
their generation the people of Rheims were
Flowers From Mediaeval History
experienced builders. In addition to all the
stone quarried by varied wors-hipers of the
long past at Rheims, Louis the Pious put
at Ebbon's service the materials of the city
wall and sent him his favorite architect
Rumald. And it was found that the new
cathedral protected the city better than the
old walls. La paix religieuse turned away
many an invader. One golden cup from
the altar bought off the Norsemen (not
that it turned their hearts) ; they swooped
down upon Chartres instead.
The old chroniclers assure us that this
early Cathedral of Rheims was the finest
in the realm. It must have beggared de-
scription, for what manner of building it
was none of them seem to say. But they
tell of its wonderful altar of Our Lady,
covered with gold and studded with gems,
upon which stood a glorious virgin made
of solid gold. That impressed them. Was
this altar built with the loot of war? Was
it built in remorse, or, worse, in mercenary
superstition ? Or was it lavished like the
woman's precious ointment upon our Sa-
vior? This much it certainly was, a
united tribute of the material to the imma-
terial, coming from many men of many
minds.
The Golden Madonna of Rheims
It was about this time that the Virgin
became so peculiarly near and dear to
the Catholic world. They loaded her with
jewels and appealed to her as one of them-
selves, human, though divinely so. They
painted her on the inside of their jewel
boxes that she might turn the heart of the
thief; they appealed to her in embarrass-
ing human situations and loved her as a
helpful, pitying woman who brought re-
ligion home to them.
In due time this golden Virgin of Rheims,
so imposing, so splendid to her rude wor-
shipers, gently made way for a line of ten-
derer virgins who were gradually infusing
sweetness and skill into those who sought to
spiritualize wood and stone into a sugges-
tion of the mother of Christ. When the
old ninth century church at Rheims was
burned it is supposed that the barbarians'
gold was minted to rebuild the cathedral.
Or shall we say that, purified by fire, the
golden Virgin arose again and again from
her ashes to rebuild her shrine in maturer
beauty ?
After many fires, in 1212 the present
Cathedral of Rheims was commenced upon
the old, old crypt; before the middle of
the century the main body of the church
[31]
Flowers From Mediteva! History
was complete, and once again the Cathedral
of Rheims was the finest in the realm ! In
1903 a vote was taken for the noblest
Gothic monument, and the returns, as al-
ways before, were, "the Cathedral of
Rheims."
Through the Dark Ages the people of
Rheims had not built in vain. Effort after
effort was destroyed, it is true, but like the
golden virgin it was minted to rebuild
anew.
Lacking the mathematical knowledge,
which is the mainstay of the modern archi-
tect, these early builders must have learned
empirically, that is, in the school of de-
feat but, too, there are triumphs there.
Did the idea of the beautiful flying but-
tress (which is simply a constructive device
to strengthen walls pierced by enormous
windows) come suddenly to some baffled
old architect, as from the lips of an angel,
in answer to work and prayer ? These old
builders of Rheims leave us no written
word, but there is a great Florentine archi-
tect who is a little more communicative;
he leaves a discreet hint or two of his
method of reasoning and also of securing
contracts. Regarding the construction of
the projected dome of the Cathedral of
Did the Idea of that Beautiful
Strufiural Device, the Flying Buttress, Come, Like an
Angel Vision, to Some Baffled ArchiteSl in
Answer to Work and Prayer?
'The Golden Madonna of ' Rheims
Santa Maria del Fiore, which the public
regarded as impracticable, Brunelleschi
writes: "Yet, remembering that this is a
temple consecrated to God and the Virgin,
I confidently trust that for a work exe-
cuted in their honor, they will not fail to
infuse knowledge where it is wanting and
will bestow strength, wisdom and genius
on him who shall be the author of such a
project. But how can I help you, seeing
that the work is not mine? I tell you
plainly that, if it belonged to me, my cour-
age and power would, beyond all doubt,
suffice to discover means whereby the work
might be effected without so many diffi-
culties, but as yet I have not reflected on
the matter to any extent." And when he
got the contract and reflected, he turned to
the "parent past" he went to Rome,
where the vaulting of the Parthenon taught
him to vault that lovelier Florentine dome
which "clasps the ancient to the modern
world."
The builders of the Gothic were in some
ways more original than the builders of the
Renaissance; they evolved their own brac-
ing; thus gradually at Rheims, the "Athens
of the Middle Ages," a great cathedral
grew up that ranks with the Parthenon.
[33]
Flowers From Medieval History
The Greek had the subtlest of languages
in which to speak of the good and the
beautiful, while where the greatest Gothic
churches were designed there was only a
corrupt dead language and a partially de-
veloped living one; but the subtle poets
of Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, Rouen,
Bourges and Laon built strongly into their
cathedrals the sweetest things they had to
say. When the Parthenon was constructed
Athens was so wealthy that it was one of
the glories of Pericles that he was able to
spend so much so well upon the greatest
capital in the world. Rheims was simply,
as the Middle Ages went, a rich see, and
the Middle Ages were wretchedly poor,
yet her cathedral is the more elaborate
building of the two. To the end of time it
is a monument of civic and religious en-
thusiasm ; and, as we seek the human story,
so elusively suggested through the mar-
velous pile, we realize at least how great
a thing it is for each worker to give, in
perfect self-effacement, of his best. The
decorations of the mighty temple are so
exquisitely subservient to the great whole
that the handiwork of the gifted imagier,
with that of his weaker brother, the one
serving as a foil to the other, holds to-
[34]
The Sculptured Saint Upon a
Gothic Cathedral Fills His Place in the Long, Narrow
Niche, Annihilating Himself for the Great
Church, as a Devotee Should.
The Golden Madonna of Rheims
gether like their prayers in the noble
harmony of the great church. Gothic
sculpture is for all sorts and conditions of
men, but least of all for artists. It speaks
its simple lesson distinctly. It is not sculp-
ture for sculpture's sake, but rather for
decoration and lyric expression. Its ema-
ciated saint betokens sacrifice ; literally and
figuratively he fills his place in the long,
narrow niche, annihilating himself for the
great church as a Catholic priest should.
Would you know how the Gothic affects
a sculptor ?
Says August Rodin: " Life is made up
of strength and grace ; the Gothic gives us
this; its influence has entered into my
blood and grown into my being."
Nowadays, when all " the world travels,"
schools of art do not grow up in little com-
munities; intellectual boundaries are in no
way geographic, and the moral effect of
one man on another is hidden from view.
But on the walls of the old mediaeval
churches a simpler people, as their work
improved, show their direct obligations to
one another.
The Gothic cathedrals which served
as Bibles for the laity (who, as a rule,
could not read print) are now the most
[35]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
veracious chronicles of the period that
we possess. Their statements cannot be
gainsaid, however variously they may be
understood. If some of the last judgments
sculptured on their walls, with half of
the figures marching toward heaven and
the other half (very similar in appearance)
moving serenely toward hell, are rather
too didactic for this age of doubt, between
the lines of these great stone volumes a
gentle reader finds countless beautiful
stories, much more convincingly told, of
artists and artisans working away with
smiles on their faces, carving Bible stories
under the direction of the clergy ; devising
figures to personify the virtues and vices;
inserting little angels here and there to fill
out the design, while the best artist is re-
warded with the sweet honor of carving
the Madonna.
The barbarian's gold pays interest yet ;
the spirit of the bequest is not changed;
a united tribute of the material to the
spiritual coming from many men of many
minds. The old golden Madonna is pa-
troness still of the five thousand statues
of the Cathedral of Rheims, whose mute
lips speak so various a language. They
tell of a day that is dead and of a day that
[36] '
The Golden Madonna of Rheims
is eternal ; they speak of substance and of
spirit; of error and of intuition; of things
human and of things divine. Indeed,
" Of every work of art the silent part
is best,
Of all expression, that which cannot
be expressed."
[37]
E
The Little Old
Abbe of Saint Denis and the
Imagiers
ARLY in the twelfth century, within the
hospitable walls of the old Abbey of
Saint Denis, a prince and a charity child
grew up together; there a love, almost ro-
mantic, developed between them. When
the prince became king and embarked up-
on a crusade he left the reins of govern-
ment in the hands of his old comrade, who
in the meantime had become the Abbe of
Saint Denis and was, incidentally, one of
the cleverest of politicians. Suger paid the
royal debts (democratic good pay seems
to have been an ideal with him), and called
the realm to order so successfully that
statesmen came from afar to study his very
novel methods, for the crusades had set the
people traveling. On his return the king
graciously greeted his regent as "father of
his country." Suger, not to be outdone,
instituted a somewhat legendary liturgy to
[38]
Abbe of Saint Denis and the Imagiers
be celebrated annually at Saint Denis com-
memorating the merits of Louis the Lusty
(or Louis the Fat, as we call him).
Was this liturgy so different from the
campaign songs we sing now ? It was really
more called for, since enthusiasm over the
royal person is one of the legitimate tools
of monarchy, and Louis VI is an early
monarch who deserves credit for abetting
the gradual advance of France from a feu-
dality to a veritable kingdom.
Suger, individually, did not stand too
greatly in awe of royalty, for he peremp-
torily ordered Louis VII to come back
from the "Holy Wars" to attend to his
mundane duties, and be it credited to that
monarch that he graciously obeyed the old
friend of his father.
Suger is the most interesting personality
that comes down to us from France of the
twelfth century. Though a few character-
istic anecdotes are told of him, we know
him most intimately as the builder of Saint
Denis and the far-seeing friend of the arts
and crafts. It was said that he was a good
goldsmith, and his sympathy with skilled
labor lends color to the statement; but
however hazy our other impressions of
Suger may be, we know how he loved the
[39]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
old Abbey of Saint Denis " sa mere et sa
nourrtce." As a churchman he loved the
blessed spot to which the angels had es-
corted brave old Saint Denis, when, after
his martyrdom, he picked up his head and
walked along with them unto the place
"where he now resteth by his election and
the puveance of God. And there was heard
so grete and swete a melody of angels that
many that heard it byleuyd in oure lorde."
He loved the old building that Dagobert,
the Robin Hood of French monarchs, had
built so royally, almost five hundred years
before his day, for the poor and lowly, and
for which the pleasant Saint Eloi, patron
of goldsmiths, singing as he worked, had
made the wondrously beautiful old reli-
quary ; and as a man of literary feeling, he
loved the old Abbey as his Alma Mater.
But the diocese had grown, and on festal
days so pressing were the crowds who would
touch the holy relics of Saint Denis that
good people were continually being trod-
den underfoot by eager and other worldly
worshipers. So Suger decided to enlarge
the church. He did not touch the dear
old choir of Saint Denis: that was con-
secrated to God and, too, it was tenderly
hallowed to man by many human associa-
Abbe of Saint Denis and the Imagiers
tions ; but he decided to add to it a great
nave.
Of course at first the crowds vigorously
abetted him, humbly harnessing themselves
together like beasts of burden to draw
the stone from the quarry. The trumpet
sounded ; banners were unfurled, and the
procession marched ; except for the mur-
mur of those who confessed their sins to
God, silence reigned. When the concourse
arrived at the holy site, the multitude burst
forth into a song of praise. Their sins once
disposed of, the ardor of the multitude
may have flagged, for we read of the busy
little Abbe leaving the cares of state to go
himself to the forests in search of the big
timber others had not the enthusiasm to
find.
That the very earth might pay its trib-
ute to the blessed martyr, Suger studded
the new golden screen in front of the tomb
of Saint Denis with gems from "every land
of the world," and then the little old Abbe
conceived of a still higher tribute : he gath-
ered skill from " every country in the
world" ( his world was small, it is true) ; he
gave to these skilled craftsmen the honor of
working on "the Church, his Mother";
besides, they taught in the layman's school
[41]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
of architecture, which he established in the
yard of the old abbey.
To the amazement of the world, in that
day of serfdom, Suger voluntarily paid his
workmen and paid them by the week; and
with the force and intensity that was in
him, he advanced architecture as much in
the ten years he was rebuilding Saint Denis
as others had done in a hundred. The in-
fluence of his school of architecture still
lives. It was one of our earliest instances
of systematic training for the laity, and
those who would trace the Italian Renais-
sance to French and classic sources, attach
especial importance to the imagiers of Saint
Denis.
An immense number of statues, varying
greatly in excellence, were made during the
Middle Ages to decorate the churches. In
our meagre records of the period, we even
come across instances of peasants traveling
far and spending their all to secure an es-
pecially beautiful Madonna, and we are
assured of miraculous rewards, spiritual and
temporal, coming to them from it. Actu-
ally, through the enthusiasm and liberality
of these rude people, miracles of art have
wrought their magical effect upon the imag-
ination of generations and generations of
[42]
In the Sixteenth Century the
French Academy Changed the Name of the
Jmagjtrf Guild to the Sculptors'.
Abbe of Saint Denis and the Imagiers
men. These imagiers became so numerous
that they formed a powerful guild in which
a race of sculptors was born and bred.
While Sculpture was merely the hand-
maiden and scribe of Architecture, her
craftsmen were called imagiers. But the
imagiers became so expert that in the sev-
enteenth century the French Academy
changed the name of their order to the
"Sculptor's Guild."
That the imagier loved the cathedral
which he was dowering with what talent he
possessed is most likely ; for, added to the
simple conscientiousness, alike in all ages,
of the worker who loves his craft and
respects himself, was the intensity of the
Age of Faith.
Gothic art may have been lived more
generally even than Grecian, for it was the
only intellectual outlet of its age. Much
of its symbolism is now a dead language.
We guess at the meaning of the gargoyles
and grotesques, and draw liberal interpre-
tations from the lips of the smiling angels
who spoke more familiarly to a childish
people; but when we count the decorative
kings and bishops ranged in rows upon the
grand fa9ades, their supremacy over the
souls, bodies and estates of men, of which
[43]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
we know so well, seems the myth of myths.
However, we can read some of the old
carvings, which had nothing in particular
to say at the time they were made, like a
book. Hybrid designs on pillars, capitals
and cornices speak of the chivalrous meet-
ing of the east and the west on the broad
field of art. They bring up pictures of the
rude crusaders overpowered by their first
view of oriental elaboration, and we smile
to see how it set them imitating, or, better
still, adapting, and how the arts of war may
bring about the arts of peace; for, in the
fulness of time, those who strive, achieve,
if not for themselves and their cause, for
others and perhaps for a better cause.
Another art made great strides during
the rebuilding of Saint Denis, the glass-
maker's. We read about Vitrearii as far
back as Charlemagne's time. The windows
they made were glass mosaics, held together
with lead instead of stucco, forming little
gem-like pictures above the holy altars,
which told sacred stories beautifully, for in
this way many scenes could be connected
on one window; besides, color, like music,
takes the emotions captive. One must ex-
amine a statue to realize it, but, in the
phrase of the studio, color "sings." A child-
[44]
Cp
Abbe of Saint Denis and the Imagiers
ish old chronicler relates that the retainers
of Godfrey of Bouillon were obliged almost
to tear him away from the churches, so
absorbed was he in gazing on the windows.
Was it through beautiful windows that the
mystic aspiration of the mute minor poets
of the cloister was finally reflected upon the
man of action who took the first step, all
unconsciously, toward the deliverance of
his age from its dark, narrow bondage?
As a soldier, Godfrey de Bouillon had
answered the call of the pilgrims who de-
manded protection; as a soldier, he had
kept the peace (when there was any to
keep). He was the one early crusader
of whom we have record, who seems to
have had the slightest idea of the fitness of
things ; indeed, in feeling, he was as truly
a poet as a soldier. " So, day after day, in
silence and in peace, with equal measure
and just sale, did the Duke and the people
pass through the realms of Hungary,"
writes an astonished old chronicler, for
Godfrey de Bouillon had paid the way of
his army to the Holy City an unheard
of idea in warfare ! How quixotic he must
have seemed !
Language has changed since those win-
dows spoke to Godfrey of Bouillon. But
[45]
Flowers From Medieval History
when a general stops on his line of march
for higher council and then steers so true
through the darkest day toward a faint, far-
distant light, must he not have seen
through the glass darkly ?
It was but a few years after this "parfit
gentil " knight passed away before he was
as dear a hero of romance as King Arthur
had become after many centuries, so little
was there in his life for men to forget, so
much that was sweet to dream upon. I sup-
pose his story must have been related many
times in beautiful glass, though as the
panes grew larger and finer they told their
stories less personally ; but gallant knights
on windows far and near are still reflecting
an ideal that came to the First Baron of
Jerusalem through the old church's win-
dows. Might it not be said of these old
church builders, who builds from the heart
feeds three : himself, his hungry neighbor,
and Me?
To make windows like those of Saint
Denis, an orderly, organized factory was
necessary, and organization was the crying
need of that age. Another astonished old
chronicler repeats, that in those days of
serfdom Suger paid his glass-workers. But
the men learned their rights more readily
[46]
Abbe of Saint Denis and the Imagiers
than the chroniclers. Thereafter we con-
stantly run upon the records of powerful
workmen's unions or guilds. In fact, we
read of them later on the glass itself. These
splendid church windows were, of course,
very costly, and then, as now, they were
usually presented to the churches. We find
the guilds are the proud donors of many
of them; two fine old church windows come
down to us proudly representing some
imagiers and glass-makers at their work,
those guilds having thus elected to "with
the angels stand."
Complaints of the luxury of the church
also come down. Saint Bernard declares
"their stones were gilded with the money
of the needy and wretched to charm the
eyes of the rich" (but had the poor no
eyes?). Being against the government
by temperament, Saint Bernard especially
abominated the royal Abbey of Saint Denis.
He complained of the "unclean apes and
befowled tigers" upon which Suger's imag-
iers developed their skill, and it is written
(how the writer arrived at the scene he
does not explain) that as Suger's confessor,
Bernard commanded him to divest his
mind of mundane cares and to dream only
of the heavenly Jerusalem.
[47]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
But the world weighed on Suger as long
as he remained in it: his dream was of two
splendid powers, England and France, sep-
arated, but living in peace ! Suger was not
in favor of crusades. He was the one eccle-
siastic who would subject the clergy as well
as the laity to royal authority, rendering
unto Caesar that which was Caesar's. Though
a priest, in his political methods Suger was
a broad, true and practical patriot, and if,
unlike Saint Bernard, he was not adapted
for canonization, he was a hero to his pri-
vate secretary and to his king ; and he still
is a hero to the modern student of archi-
tecture, or of economics.
Into the very walls of his big and simple
old church the "little old Abbe" built his
big and simple sermon. It read: " Let us
have good, honest, beautiful work, doing
honor alike to God and man. Let us train
our craftsmen, pay them and respect them."
Though Saint Denis may lack the mys-
tical beauty of the best Gothic, so noble
and satisfactory is its design that the nine-
teenth century could do no better than to
restore it.
Though Suger's economics were very
simple, the twentieth century has found no
better platform : " Pay your workmen vol-
[48]
Abbe of Saint Denis and the Imagiers
untarily, and summon all, from the king
down, into their respective fields of labor ;
only when they all respond, we shall have
a lovelier church than the old Abbey of
Saint Denis."
[49]
The Mystic Cathedral of
Chartres
THE Episcopal Church recognizes three
distinct divisions: the High Church,
or mystical element that, words failing,
would speak by symbols ; the Low Church,
that would say what it means and mean
what it says; and the Broad Church, that
would set aside details and seek in religion
a general harmony.
Though they are not so formally defined,
these same divisions, being based on hu-
man temperaments, exist in other sects so
literally that the same symbols have met
with the identical adoption and objection.
About 205, Tertullian ridiculed the use of
candles on the altars of the early church,
and Lactance took up the subject some
hundred years later. Thereafter Saint Je-
rome laid these still troublesome candles at
the door of the laity, especially of the
women. However, the symbol and the
women conquered.
\5]
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
In this desultory search of ours for hints
of the social history of the old French ca-
thedral builders, we meet with the high and
low church elements which seem, though
this idea may be fanciful, to have influenced
the appearance even of their respective
churches. There is the grandly simple and
direct architecture, the Cathedral of Laon,
which inclined to Low Church, allowing
its votaries considerable latitude, and the
symbolically ornate cathedral at Chartres,
which from remote ages has been a noted
shrine of mysticism. Its site was holy
ground to the early Christian and perhaps
to the Druids before him. Tradition has it
that even to them on this hallowed spot
came a prophecy of the Messiah. (If it
did, it probably came from some Jewish
source in the days of the Romans.)
There is a charming story, more than
legend, if less than history, of " Notre
Dame Sous Terre" of Chartres. While
most of the early Christians, in a spirit of
hatred, were destroying false gods and their
shrines, some pioneers of Christianity found
in a grotto at Chartres a figure which had
been worshiped by the Druids, resembling
their own Madonna, whereby, to these
gentle priests, she seemed doubly hallowed.
Flowers From Mtdiaval History
Accepting her grotto as already consecrate,
they located their high altar there, upon it
reinstated the old Madonna of the Druids,
and in a humble spirit, along with their
simple converts, they bowed down before
her, for upon them had descended that
sovereign reverence which appreciates an-
other man's god.
From the time this old druidic figure
was raised upon a Christian altar to this
day, first honors have been accorded to her
shrine. Before her or her representative
have bowed, weary and footsore, every one
of the French kings, from Clovis to Louis
XV, as well as innumerable other pilgrims,
rich or poor, gathered from every land of
Christendom by the democracy of the
church.
Even the revolutionists recognized this
" First Lady of Chartres," for while they
lumped other relics together in general
destruction they paid Notre Dame Sous
Terre the back-handed compliment of a
special bonfire at the cathedral door.
The sansculottes have passed away with-
out individual record, but a charmingly
carved representative of the old Notre
Dame Sous Terre still occupies the most
venerated shrine of Chartres; while its
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
old-time spirit of church hospitality yet
pervades the noble cathedral that has de-
veloped above her grotto, her clergy still
smile kindly upon the pilgrim and the
stranger, even though his interest in their
church be solely artistic. They seem to
say : " Take from our old cathedral what
you may, surely her beauty is pure and
holy."
True religious art can but lead to some
phase of piety, as August Rodin declares
that all true art must. It may be but a
chance title; however, the latest book on
French Gothic speaks of " Chartres, the
House of Prayer"; but certainly the feeling
which has been lavished on this spot, the
passionate generosity of devotees through
long ages, has brought forth one of the
most sacredly beautiful churches in the
world.
Now let us investigate literally the claims
of Notre Dame Sous Terre. Recent ex-
cavations prove that the present Cathedral
of Chartres is built over a grotto, where
the Druids probably held their services.
In excavating under and around the choir
of the cathedral, vestiges of ancient altars
and idols were unearthed which prove con-
clusively that the symbols of the heathen
[53]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
were not cleared away violently. The pol-
icy of Rome tended toward religious tol-
erance; the gods of the Romans often
mixed peaceably in the temples with the
gods of the people Rome conquered, hence
the cult of the Virgin might have existed
along with that of the pagan gods.
In the early days of Christianity the
Virgin was not given the prominence she
acquired after the eighth century ; this fig-
ure known as the druidic Madonna may
even have represented some sweet, moth-
erly goddess of another name. Symbols
are elastic, therein lies their supreme value;
they may be all things to all men. Words
always have brought division to the church;
symbols, unity. The wisest and kindest of
the early bishops had the most grace in
translating the old symbols of their con-
verts into the picturesque language of their
new church. For instance, Gregory the
Great changed the pagan memorial custom
of putting food on graves on a certain fete-
day to bringing flowers for the graves and
praying for the dead on All Souls Day.
The early Christian missionaries at Char-
tres may have believed this figure to be a
Madonna or they may have translated it
into one. Indeed, it is not the genuineness
[54]
Saint Martin, Saint Jerome
and Saint Gregory, at They Stand Forth on
a Pillar at CAartrei.
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
of the figure itself that is the point of this
story ; it is the attitude of the Chartrians
toward it.
From the character of the Gallo-Romaine
substructure of the Chapel of Saint Lubin in
the crypt of Chartres, the list of the early
bishops of that diocese and the general
history of the evangelization of Gaul, it is
inferred that ever since the beginning of
the fourth century a bishop's church has
stood on the site of the present cathedral.
Mingled with all the superstition of its
age there was a certain tolerant broad-
church element maintained at Chartres from
the first. Perhaps that made the church
so peculiarly dear to the people of France,
for though the French kings were crowned
at Rheims and buried at Saint Denis,
Chartres seems the most intimately asso-
ciated with their lives. It is written that
after his conversion Clovis stopped there
for further instruction, and Gibbon ob-
serves his measures were sometimes mod-
erated by the milder genius of Rome and
Christianity. The Carlovingian kings were
very partial to Chartres. Charles the Bald,
who comes down to us familiarly as a
church builder through an old picture in
which he holds a cast of a cathedral in his
[55]
Flowers From Medieval History
hand, conferred the most precious of relics
upon Chartres the Sanfta Camisia of the
Virgin! Robert the Pious contributed a
sapphire. Within her mystic walls sensible
Louis the Fat pardoned his enemies ; there
Philippe le Bel, Charles le Bel and Philippe
de Valois gave thanks for their victories,
childishly presenting their armor and their
beloved war-horses to this Church, their
Mother. Saint Louis marched barefooted
about twenty-one miles to endow Chartres
with her beautiful Portail Septentrionale.
And when Henry IV changed his religion,
let us believe with the really good inten-
tion of bringing about a little peace on
earth to Frenchmen, he elected to be con-
secrated at Chartres, " by reason of the pe-
culiar devotion of his ancestors, the Dukes
of Vendome, to the old cathedral, the most
ancient in Christendom." There were rea-
sons why he could not conveniently have
been crowned at Rheims like other French
kings, that city being hostile to him. But
Henry IV always had a clever and suffi-
cient answer.
To return to the material story of the
old bishops' church near the well of Saint
Lubin, our first dated record takes us back
into a feudal war. In 743, Hanald due
[56]
A View Through the Portail
of CAartres, -which Louis IX Walked Barefooted
Twenty-one Miles to Present, in a Lowly
Sfirit, to the Church.
"The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
d'Aquitaine, fighting the Comte de Char-
tres, burned the town cathedral ; but when
he realized what he had done he retired to
a monastery to do penance all the rest of
his days. Was it in superstition? Was
it in true repentance? Did he burn the
church by accident? That might have
been. The simple piety of the Dark Ages
that would build "The House of God"
for all time rendered the churches the
strongest of buildings, and defensive armies
often resorted to them; then, too, there
were spiritual objections to attacking a
church. This factor was sometimes over-
estimated.
The Cathedral of Chartres was rebuilt,
only to be burned down one hundred and
fifteen years after by the Normans. Dur-
ing this siege the non-combatants of the
town confidently took refuge in the cathe-
dral with their bishop instead of buying off
the pirates with gold from the Holy Altar
as the people of Rheims had done (they
are all gone now and God knows which
did best). Unexpectedly, neither church
nor bishop impressed the Normans, who
overturned the city walls, burned the build-
ings, massacred the bishop, and every one
else who came in their way; but after the
[57]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
Normans left, the Chartrians had the cold
comfort of gathering their dead and laying
them away beside the Well of Saint Lubin
and " through the merits of those there re-
posing a crowd of miracles were wrought."
About this period the disease we now know
as erysipelas came to be highly respected.
In France it was called le mal des ardents ;
in England, the "sacred fire"; for, one
thousand years ago processions like those
that now visit Lourdes were pressing on
to Chartres to drink of the holy spring.
The world moves, but somewhat in a
groove. At this Lourdes of the Dark Ages
the afflicted were tended by nuns, but we
find a certain telltale regulation: after
nine days (ample time for blood poisoning
to develop unmistakably) the sick must go
home, " cured or not."
Was medical practice then so much
worse than ours during the Rebellion,
when old rags of the nation were collected
and all sorts and conditions of women
scraped them into lint full of germs for
the wounded soldiers ? But if the church
was a crazy physician, she was a gentle
nurse. She established a chivalry toward
the sick that no Cervantes would laugh
away. It lives in medical ethics, and the
[58]
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
quixotic obligation of the do<5tor to leave
no stone unturned for his patient has been
the foundation of medical science. Some
of the old Hotels-Dieu of blessed name
and memory have developed into up-to-
date hospitals and medical schools, like
Charing Cross Hospital, London, which
still enjoys its mediaeval benefice, while
modern hospitals, in general, are moral de-
scendants of the old ideal.
Again the old Church of Chartres was
rebuilt, again to stand for a little over a
century. This building had the satisfaction
( may we not use the figure, for the medi-
aeval church was very human) of seeing
the Normans, under Rollo, defeated by an
army marching under its blessed standard,
the San 51 a Camisia of the Virgin borne
aloft as a banner. But later, Rollo married
the daughter of Charles the Simple, settled
down in Normandy, presented his castle
to the see of the Bishop of Chartres and
adopted the Christian religion. A double
victory for the church! Many of the first
Norman converts were baptized a dozen
times, for the sake of excitement or for the
white garment given them at the ceremony.
Thereafter the funeral of Rollo was ren-
dered doubly memorable by the slaughter
[59]
Flowers From Medieval History
of one hundred captives and rich gifts to
the monasteries.
In spite of the Santta Camisia^ in spite
of all the remains of all of the martyrs that
had been aggregating in the martyrmm un-
der the church for seven hundred years,
in 962 Richard of Normandy burned the
cathedral with the town. But the relics had
not been powerless, for this was the last
pagan outbreak. The church had the holy
triumph of Christianizing her adversaries,
and the martyrium^ between the excellence
of its building material, the water of the
spring of Saint Lubin near by, and "the
merits of those there reposing," remained
intact and was found in the excavations of
1901 ; but the spring is gone; it was prob-
ably diverted by the foundations of the
present cathedral.
Though a paralyzing conviction had
come upon the people, Bishop Vulpard
immediately started to rebuild. It had
somehow been very generally decided that
the world would come to an end in the
year 1000, so near at hand.
How did this private information re-
garding the future affect the multitude?
They probably took it riotously, at least,
such has been the experience in times of
[60]
A Detail of the Portail Septentrional.
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
plague and horror, when it seemed that
the race was about to be wiped out. In-
deed, it is only for others that the saner,
better life is led best of all, unconsciously
led.
We do know that at that time church
building flagged. Ah, be it credited to
these old builders, they worked for others
rather than themselves ! Nevertheless, the
latter part of the tenth century is the day
of vast and massive crypts of which Char-
tres is one of the noblest examples. Let
us hope that brave old Vulpard lived to
see it under way.
History has very little to say of the de-
lusion regarding the year 1000, except that
it shows that the church gained ground
therefrom. Many persons thought it well
to present their goods to the churches since
they could not use them much longer them-
selves. Scarce as records are, we have one
instance of the church helping the world
out of one of the dilemmas arising from
this misunderstanding. We do know posi-
tively that the valuables of the Church of
Saint Benignus of Dijon were all sold to
relieve the famine of the year 1001. Prob-
ably the ground had not been sown the
previous autumn.
[61]
Flowers From Medieval History
However often it has fallen from grace,
in the main the Christian Church has won
its way by service. However often its ser-
vices have been mistaken, it has maintained
the ideal that the Christian should serve
the world.
Instead of the world's coming to an end
according to their schedule, to the aston-
ishment of the Chartrians, lightning singled
out their holy church and burned it to the
ground. Some of the more or less logically
inclined suggested that some of the pil-
grims might have been guilty of indiscre-
tions within its consecrated walls and thus
have brought down this celestial disaster.
The church had a particularly charming
bishop at that time who arose to the as-
tonishing occasion and called for help from
the whole religious world regardless of
nationality. He might be known as the
successful correspondent of history. We
still have some of his letters. The one to
Cnut, King of England and Denmark, is
certainly a flower of history, showing, as
it does, the sympathy of a great king with
a great scholar (as the times went) and a
great movement. Fulbert writes, in ac-
knowledgment of Cnut's donation to his
building fund: "When we saw the offer-
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
ing which you deigned to send us, we
admired at once your astonishing wisdom
and religious spirit; your wisdom, in that
you, a prince, divided from us by language
and by sea, are zealously concerned not
only with the things around you but also
with things that touch us ; in your religious
spirit, in that you, of whom we have heard
speak as a pagan king, show yourself a
very Christian and generous benefactor of
churches and servants of God. We render
lively thanks to the King of kings through
whose mercy your gifts have descended
upon us, and we beseech Him to make
your reign happy and prosperous, to de-
liver your soul from all sin." The result
of Fulbert's appeals proves that Chris-
tianity had established a brotherhood on
earth. Though much of Fulbert's struc-
ture was burned within ten years the church
inherits both spiritually and materially
from him; his crypt is left and it gives
lines to the splendid church we know.
Saint Thierry rebuilt the upper church,
and it grew in beauty under Saint Ivo, who
succeeded in getting the ear of Mathilda
of England. Not that Saint Ivo was a
snob, for in his time we may see among
the records timely rebukes to royalty and
[63]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
dignified acknowledgment of the services
of individual -workmen upon the mighty
edifice. After all, there is nothing sweeter
than the "widow's mite." A great deal is
said by social historians about the tax
upon the communities for these splendid
churches, but they overlook the joy of
public giving, which also moulds and
unites a people.
And now this wonderful old church,
which echoes from tower to crypt with the
human story, commences to speak pic-
turesquely of the wild Holy Wars. The
heavy Dark Ages developed its crypt.
The body of the church passed through
many metamorphoses in the time inter-
vening until a period of the greatest reli-
gious enthusiasm crowned the cathedral
with its marvelous towers.
In all history is there a movement more
extraordinary, more far-reaching, more cu-
rious than the crusades? They are about
as surprising to a reader today as they were
to the Emperor of Constantinople when
the first disorderly army appeared at his
gates. The monk, Guibert, who, at least,
seemed to have more grasp of the subject
than any other contemporary writer, ingeni-
ously suggested that " God invented the
[64]
A Thirteenth Century Statement
of the Liability of Pride to Have a Fall
Solemnly Proclaimed on the South
Portal of Chartres.
"The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
crusades as a new way for his laity to atone
for their sins and merit salvation." Cer-
tainly they thus atoned for the great sin of
inertia. No army, I suppose, was ever more
confident, more surprised or more disap-
pointed than that of the crusaders. How-
ever, this much is to be said in favor of
Guibert's hypothesis. From that time forth
the laity took their place in the march of
civilization. They arose and left the Dark
Ages behind. New views were forced upon
them at the point of the sword, most
needed of all, new civic ideals.
Separation and longing and the sweet
sorrow of parting awoke the spirit of poetry,
the craving for beauty; and all this new
thought and feeling was soon to blossom
forth in the one art, whose mefierthe people
had already learned, architecture.
Through a long admixture of races, by
the twelfth century ( hardly before it ) there
had arisen in Gaul genuine Frenchmen,
who from the beginning were most artistic
artisans and most enthusiastic partisans.
They spent more on their crusades and on
their churches than their neighbors, and
they were to reap the rewards of extrava-
gance, always more imposing than those of
economy. Money poured into the church
[65]
Flowers From Medieval History
alike from those who went to the Holy
Land, and from those who thus excused
themselves from going. Incidentally the
Holy Wars diverted a disorderly element
of nobles and serfs from France to Pales-
tine. During the period of the crusades
the Cathedral of Chartres suffered from
two fires just sixty years apart; thus in re-
building, the overflowing religious excite-
ment of the era came to be lavished upon
the very stones of the cathedral.
In 1134 a great fire in the town of
Chartres damaged the cathedral so far as
to make it necessary to restore the fa9ade.
In spite of their own losses the Chartrians
decided that their church should be finer
than ever. She should have two connected
towers, instead of one separated from the
building as before. And the design they
here evolved has become standard.
To effect these grand restorations the
workmen formed themselves into perma-
nent guilds. One especially which devoted
itself to working on the cathedral was hon-
orably known as the "Logeurs du Eon Dieu."
And the nobles who had watched the work-
men growing in grace and in skill, raising
themselves as they raised the temple, were
finally seized with a strange and humble
[66]
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
enthusiasm which can only be convincingly
described by eye-witnesses.
"In this same year" (i 144), writes Rob-
ert Du Mont, "at Chartre men began to
harness themselves to carts laden with
stones, wood and other things, and drag
them to the site of the church, the towers
of which were then a-building."
Says Abbe Haimon: "Who has ever
seen or heard in all the ages of the past
that kings, princes and lords, mighty in
their generation, swollen with riches and
honor, that men and women, I say, of noble
birth, have bowed their haughty necks to
the yoke and harnessed themselves to carts
like beasts of burden, and drawn them laden
with wine, corn, oil, stone or wood and
other things needful for the maintenance
of life or the construction of the church,
even to the doors of the asylum of Christ."
" Mighty are the works of the Lord,"
exclaims Hugh of Rouen (ready to use
the example). "At Chartres men have
begun, in all humility, to drag carts and
vehicles of all sorts to aid the building of
the cathedral, and their humility has been
rewarded by miracles. The fame of these
events has been heard everywhere and at
last roused this Normandy of ours. Our
[67]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
countrymen, therefore, after receiving our
blessing, have set out for that place and
then fulfilled their vows. They return
with the resolution to imitate these Char-
trians, and a great number of the faithful
of our diocese and the dioceses of our
province have begun to work at the Cathe-
dral, their Mother."
But since it is the spirit that makes the
action fine, the services of these builders
were accepted only under the triple con-
dition of confession, penitence and recon-
ciliation with their enemies ; they delivered
their offerings in tears, while disciplining
themselves with blows.
George Eliot speaks of a common feel-
ing of good-will among a mass of men
affecting her like music; to such music
the incomparable tower of Chartres was
built, and a later age sees tears transformed
to pearls when another great fire destroyed
the old part of the cathedral, and they had,
in rebuilding, to live up to their splendid
new fa9ade.
The cardinal assembled the people of
Chartres around the smoking ruins of their
dear old church and persuaded them to
forget their personal losses and to think
only of rebuilding the House of God; and
[68]
A Page from the
Sculptured ''Bible of the Laity
Chartrei.
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
the people,united by the strongest of bonds,
a common disaster, arose again to work for
the common good, and again Christians
from far and near sent in their donations.
The old chroniclers say that the very Holy
Virgin multiplied her miracles. One of
them we still have before us. It was then
and there that an architect, whose name is
forgotten but whose genius is immortal,
perfected the cathedral type of thirteenth
century Gothic. All designers of Gothic
churches still do him homage ; all lovers of
Gothic architecture still sing his praise.
And the old church at Chartres grew on,
gently developing her people on many
lines. She watched her imagiers grow into
sculptors, her glass-workers into painters,
the more or less serfs of the soil develop
into workmen, then guildsmen and free
burghers of the town ; of this they them-
selves have written upon her very walls.
About half of the windows of the cathe-
dral we find were presented by the guilds ;
the other half by kings, princes and sei-
gneurs, lay and ecclesiastic. The glass of
Chartres, by the way, is considered the
finest in the world.
The eighteenth century was a bad day
for churches in France; the general con-
[69]
Flowers From Medieval History
tempt in the air for the past led them to
destroy the " barbarians' art," which was
good, to make way for their own, which
happened to be bad. The Cathedral of
Chartres, as ever so truly in touch with
the times, suffered from the artists in the
early part of the century, while in 1793
the revolutionists invaded it. They buried
the relics and appraised the barbarians'
statues at 100 francs. Then the next idea
was to knock down the cathedral, which
they found was not so easy ; so they con-
cluded to transform it into a Temple of
Reason, wherein they behaved most un-
reasonably. Somebody started to destroy
the immense group of the Assumption on
the grand altar. It represents the Virgin
on an embankment of clouds with her
arms extended and her figure coming
toward the congregation. Her "pied-a-
terre" of clouds (excuse the hibernicism)
is upheld by angels and every face and at-
titude in the group is full of aspiration and
action. Although as sculpture, this group
is not of the first order, as allegory, it is
perfect. A bright idea occurred to an archi-
tect present; he put the Phrygian cap up-
on the head of the Virgin and a lance in
her hand, and the old symbol became the
[70]
Altar-piece at Chartres.
The Virgin who once Wort a Liberty Cap
The Mystic Cathedral of Chartres
new ; with her arms open to the world and
her eyes turned a little above it, the Virgin
of Chartres became a beautiful emblem of
liberty. I wonder if she impressed any of
the wild congregation before her; not long
thereafter Napoleon observed that " Char-
tres was no place for an atheist."
In about six months the church managed
to reinstate itself in its old stronghold,
though the Revolutionary Commission of
public works (or rather the commission
for the destruction of public works) had
had the impertinence to strip the lead from
the cathedral roof to make its ammunition.
But the old church was built to weather
all storms, and so was the French nation.
The revolutionists besieged the Louvre
and turned it into a public art gallery. The
republic has quietly advanced much farther
in its right of eminent domain and taken
under its enlightened protection all the
great monuments of architecture in all fair
France. Nothing is more charming than the
enthusiasm throughout the land, extend-
ing even to the simplest people, over these
"national monuments." As the building
of them long ago formed a bond of union
with the communes, so the love of them
now forms a bond of union with the na-
[71]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
tion. Fostered in their shadows, French
genius was able to bring forth at need
architects capable of restoring them almost
to their pristine beauty, a beauty which,
growing out of mystic relics, seems fraught
with a relic's power through love and awe
to lead men on. May its magic transform
these Roman Catholic cathedrals of the
Age of Faith into Holy Catholic churches
of the Age of Doubt !
In the nineteenth century James Rus-
sell Lowell wrote a poem containing some
lovely lines on the Cathedral of Chartres,
but if a twentieth century poet approach
the theme he will treat it in a more Cath-
olic spirit, for the messages of these ven-
erable fanes must grow broader and gentler
as time goes on. A greater poet than Lowell
said: "I never can feel sure of any truth
but from a clear perception of its beauty."
From this idea he framed his invocation
to beauty, which applies alike to a Grecian
urn and to the Cathedral of Chartres:
"Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend* to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
* As our train passed Chartres an exceedingly coarse conversation
between drummers broke into a paean to the beauty of the cathedral.
[72]
Caen :
An Eleventh Century
Tableau
Two hours from Cherbourg, as the mo-
tor flies, lies the old town of Caen,
founded by William the Conqueror.
A curious peace reigns in this old for-
tress, with the drawbridge down, and the
moat a bower of trees and flowers: the
peace of consummated action ; the returns
are all in, and you may receive them ac-
cording to your humor, for the burning
questions of other days have faded into
dreamy generalities.
Were all those wild centuries of struggle
and warfare vain? Or is the old Greek
battle-cry, " Now let us go forward, whether
we shall give glory to other men, or other
men to us," the normal note of primitive
manhood ? Were Rollo the Norseman and
William the Norman, following the war-
gods fiercer than they, commissioned by
fate to lead great armies across the great
[73]
Flowers From Medieval History
waters, and, sailing under sealed orders, to
found two great nations and one great
language ? Or are all things vanity ?
Perhaps, after receiving the children's
children of his loyal subjects, who may
have crossed a certain wide ocean unknown
to him to attend the great Court of His-
tory that William the Norman holds at
Caen, the Shades of the Conqueror grow-
ing more familiar might conduct the mus-
ing cortege into the beautiful abbey near-by,
which he built in expiation of the love-
match he made in defiance of the church.
I wonder here if the old king might not
laughingly recall the story of his first meet-
ing with Lan franc.
Like other forceful men, William mar-
ried upon his own responsibility. Accord-
ingly, the Pope not only excommunicated
him, but laid various bans upon his realm.
Such bans were once marvelously incon-
venient, to say the least. William fought
the church valiantly for six years. It may
have been then that he got his measure of
the uses and abuses of that institution,
which, in the long run, proved most valu-
able to England. Among others, Lanfranc,
Prior of Bee, became a target for William's
displeasure and was ordered to leave his
[74]
William the Conqueror**
Old Fortress ; the Chains are said to be
the Originalt.
Caen : An Eleventh Century Tableau
monastery. Lanfranc started forth forlornly
enough on a lame horse. Thus caparisoned,
he met the furious Duke William. Lanfranc
had but one weapon at his command
tact. He approached the great duke, say-
ing, " I am obeying your command as
quickly as I can. I will obey faster if you
will give me a better horse." William was
blessed with humor. He impressed Lan-
franc into his service then and there, and
made him his friend forever : the Conqueror
could make good friends. Then he sent
Lanfranc to make his peace with the Holy
See. Understanding William's passion for
building, Lanfranc, the peacemaker, ar-
ranged that William and Mathilda should
each build an abbey in expiation of their
marriage. And William and Mathilda per-
formed their contract so royally that France
has lately restored their abbeys, line for
line, as national monuments.* Thus a tab-
leau of Caen, as the Conqueror saw it, actu-
ally lies before twentieth century eyes.
Ah, put yourself in his place ! I never
knew a traveler to leave this old town with-
out becoming attached to its founder. The
* I do not make myself responsible for the statement that these
restorations are photographically exadl, but at least on the old lines it
has been possible to eredt perfect examples of Norman archite&ure.
[75]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
strong, orderly, noble and logical Norman
buildings express the old Conqueror at his
best; at Caen one prefers his older, gentler,
more unique title of William, the builder,
for, indeed, many have conquered in Eng-
land, but William I built up his conquest.
In this interesting old Norman church,
with its suspicion of the pointed arch
(probably the earliest instance) pointing
toward the unparalleled Gothic that devel-
oped in Normandy, one feels like congrat-
ulating the old Conqueror, both as lover
and architect, and reinstating his old claim
to romance, even though modern research
has discovered that he was not a very
gentle knight.
William I was no saint; but why should
he have been one ? Professional saints were
only too common in his day : he was but
a strong, direct man in a most superstitious,
childish and indirect age. Is not the posi-
tion of one who can stand alone through
his age heroic enough ?
What a curious world the old Conqueror
lived in ! A world of professional maraud-
ers and their soldiers, of professional saints
and their serfs ; with a confusion of fight-
ing barons, lay and ecclesiastic, some of the
most interesting bishops being no mean
[76]
Caen : An Eleventh Century Tableau
warriors ; and worst of all, a lot of begging
friars producing little but corruption. To
the day of his death, the Conqueror makes
no apology for his wars in Normandy.
There he was simply holding his own.
The behavior of the wild and worldly
barons was not all he had to contend with ;
there were also the visions and the notions
of the unworldly clergy, who, with intent,
more or less good, more or less self-seek-
ing, interfered absolutely with good gov-
ernment, and William's tact and breadth
with them, considered at a time when it is
easy to be wise, nearly one thousand years
after the event, is astonishing. It fell to
his lot to deal with that peculiarly well-in-
tentioned pope, Gregory VII, who, by his
ability to conceive and carry out his well-
intentioned policy, worked such incalcu-
lable evil. Spain is struggling with his
Shades today.
What a problem the mystics of the
eleventh century, with their tremendous
following and their curious allegorical in-
terpretations of everything great or small
in heaven or on earth, must have been to
a statesman ! Listen to this eleventh cen-
tury letter of thanks from Saint Ivo to
Gerard of Ham, for " an instrument of the
[77]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
whiteness of snow for combing the hair."
This comb is agreeable to him in and of
itself, like other objects of beauty; but
above all, it pleases him because of the ele-
vation of ideas, which it so beautifully sym-
bolizes : he is quite sure that thy prudence
( ta prudence ) has wished hereby to give a
suggestion to his vigilance to seek con-
stantly by all sorts of exhortations to re-
form the disorderly manners of his people,
whom he compares to a disarranged head
of hair. And yet Saint Ivo was in his day a
strictly practical person, not to be fooled
as Savonarola was four hundred years later
by the ordeal of fire. Saint Ivo forbids a
husband to condemn his wife even when
the man he has accused could be burned
by hot irons; and when the martial old
bishop of Le Mans, who is accused of hav-
ing treacherously surrendered that town,
offers to walk on hot irons to prove
his innocence, Saint Ivo writes him that
ordeals are uncanonical and that he must
not submit to them. But then no reader
of his correspondence can fail to see that
Saint Ivo was very timid. How he did
dread the Channel ! He entreats the holi-
est men of his acquaintance to pray un-
ceasingly for him while he is on the water.
[78]
Caen: An Eleventh Century Tableau
But let us turn to the Conqueror's own
review of his life, as he discussed it on his
death-bed. Two of his clergy took it down.
Thus, as he would speak to his sons, he
speaks to history. Here we have his per-
plexities at first hand. That we may put
ourselves in his place as literally as pos-
sible, let us repair with the document to
the beautiful Abbey aux Dames, so ten-
derly connected with the Conqueror's
queen. There, it is said, she made her
thank-offering for her lord's safe deliver-
ance, alike from the perils of war and the
perils of the Channel. This abbey was
consecrated the year of the Conquest,
eleven years before the Abbey aux Hom-
mes (ladies first). Many of the Conquer-
or's followers supplied their own ships,
but Mathilda herself fitted out the Con-
queror's, the regal Mora so splendidly
stocked with wine. Her good ship bore
him safely to England and victory, and
brought him back, as ever, true to his
queen. To this abbey they dedicated their
daughter Cicely, when she was a child,
and she became a great and powerful ab-
bess. Here we may picture her praying,
as a woman in the intense Age of Faith
could pray, for the souls of her parents.
[79]
Flowers From Medieval History
Eight hundred and twenty-five years
after its original construction we found an-
other high-bred cloistered Lady of the
Trinity in passionate prayer at the tomb
of Mathilda. Was this pretty young nun a
legitimate part of the restoration ? Though
the cloisters of France were supposed to
have been abolished, this one had been
passed by, for the Conqueror holds Caen,
and some iron hand of the past seems
to have retained this spiritual young girl
in prayer at the tomb of his queen. A
strange sight it was, one of the curious
tragedies of conservatism ; but like many
every-day tragedies imperceptible to its
adlors.
To the eye all seemed beauty. From a
fine old garden we stepped into a majestic
aisle of a great abbey. As we walked down
in its dim half-light, a curtain was drawn
displaying a brass grill impassable in the
eyes of the church. Impassable it had been,
in fa6t, for nearly eight hundred and fifty
years, but now to climb over it would be a
minor athletic feat. It separated the chapel
of the foundress and the nuns of the order
of the Trinity from the whole outside
world. The entire central space of this
chapel was occupied by Queen Mathilda's
[80]
Caen : An Eleventh Century Tableau
enormous cream-colored sarcophagus (re-
stored). One might read the inscription
in eleventh-century characters, fresh from a
modern chisel. The chapel walls were lined
with dark, carved wooden stalls, freshly
oiled, and new-born sunbeams peered deco-
rously through rich-colored glass on two
kneeling nuns clad in the old-time flowing
ivory-colored robes of the Ladies of the
Trinity.
One was a fleshy, middle-aged woman,
mechanically counting her beads, the other
was young and beautiful. She was looking
up, and, though she was as motionless as
the tomb beside her, her attitude expressed
action as sculpture may. What was she
thinking of? Is the life of today any less
inscrutable than that of one thousand years
ago ? Here, in the charity of the church,
let us consider the Conqueror's apology
( apologia ) ; we are translating the word too
literally, but the spirit of the document is
humble and explanatory and, withal, very
winning.
In this apologia William considers that
he has done his duty to the church, and
history endorses him ; in general, when he
was at variance with it he was in the right.
But of his expedition to England every
[81]
Flowers From Medieval History
move of which is justified upon the Bayeux
Tapistry he repents, although, fortu-
nately, not fanatically enough to try and
undo the deed. He only makes what rep-
aration he can to certain victims. Though
on his death-bed he liberated Harold's
son and nephew, he seems to overlook a
curious persecution, cruel in intent but eas-
ily repaired, that, in the confidence and fury
of his power, he had directed against the
soul of the defeated king. The Conqueror
carried Harold's body from the battlefield
(he wrapt it in the purple, it is true), but
he had insisted upon burying it in unhal-
lowed ground, although for it Harold's
mother had offered the weight in gold,
both parties firmly believing that to lie
in unconsecrated ground would militate
against the repose of the spirit. Though
he tried to undo many a deed, the Con-
queror ignores entirely his arrogant revenge
upon a soul. Facing death matures our
sense of value.
Though but one century removed from
a forebear whose God was Odin, whose
Valhalla was a place where heroes cut each
other to pieces daily in fair fight, but where
the blest are perpetually restored to life at
meal-time that they may eat of the wild
[82]
Caen : An Eleventh Century Tableau
boar and fight again and forever,* at least
the Conqueror came to shudder at his
massacres at Hastings and York, to truly
repent and to die humbly commending his
soul to Mary.
The spirit of the nineteenth century
was iconoclastic; it demolished alike old
heroes, old superstitions and old faiths.
But the twentieth century would call them
back, not as realities, but as heroes, super-
stitions and faiths, treating them philo-
sophically, as great moving forces, or poeti-
cally, as starting points for new ideals. The
hard, rational doubt which emancipated
thought in the nineteenth century develops
into the sympathetic doubt of the twen-
tieth. The nineteenth century laughed at
barbaric old heroes, while the twentieth
century smiles at them. Who wants to
live in a world without heroes? All men
are not equal ; but by reverent appreciation
the small man may become brother to the
genius.
Every place, every document connected
with the Conqueror bears his strong indi-
viduality. Read of him where you may,
between the lines of the Domesday Book
* The gentler element in Norse mythology enters into it long after
the eleventh century and is probably a refledlion from Christianity.
[83]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
(that conscientious effort to tax all that
the traffic will bear), or in the broken lays
of the troubadours, or by the light or the
density of contemporary chroniclers, Nor-
man or Saxon, you find before you a man
great in himself and a forerunner of greater
things: a great builder, building better
than he knew ; a great ruler, ruling farther
than he knew a true hero of the strenu-
ous life.
Following the chance records from which
the Conqueror's biography is put together,
one is amazed by the integrity of his po-
litical instinct. William the Norman is an
instance for the poet who said, "The world
is what a few great men have made it."
The Conqueror seems such a typical Eng-
lishman, alike in his love of the forests and
the " high deer," of which the old Saxon
chronicler complains, and in his apprecia-
tion of justice and stability, for which the
same chronicler gives thanks on the spot.
The Conqueror's appeal is a very wide
one. Even the economists, who hold that
the world is what demand and supply have
made it, write with an enthusiasm peculiarly
their own of the Domesday Book and its
wisely self-seeking, avaricious author.
It cannot be argued that the Conqueror
[84]
Caen : An Eleventh Century Tableau
was a popular king, but sinners, like saints,
may be proven by their influence after
death the Conqueror's was strong and
manly. His spirit entered widely into me-
diaeval legend. He is the Arthur, the ideal
ruler, whom Malory commends for manly
purity, justice and probity; also for "open
manslaughter." We may take Malory's
word for it, it was better than the savage
treachery known even four hundred years
later, when that old raconteur was mixing
probabilities, improbabilities and impossi-
bilities so picturesquely, and we have our
old hero back. Although we must alter
Malory's ideal, we can add to it as well as
subtract from it. We have the splendid
barbarian who brought order out of chaos
both in England and Normandy, who loved
and trusted his wife, who loved nature and
had an instinct for art, whose intelligent
attitude toward religion and learning left
the Dark Ages behind, and whose loyal
leadership opened the romantic days of
chivalry.
Near Caen is a lovelier town, " Dinan,
where the Conqueror slept." Here his-
tory's scroll seems to loosen, displaying an
enchanting pastoral of the ages ; there lies
the simple, old hamlet by the river, just as
[85]
Flowers From MfJurual History
it might have looked when William the
Norman and Harold, son of Goodwin,
camped there together, a little less than one
thousand years ago. Then, back of the
river on the bluff, later a securely walled
town appeared, but now the old fortifica-
tions have turned into charming parks
and playgrounds, girding the loveliest of
French villages; and on a summer day in
fair France one can feel sure that though
much of life is at cross-purposes, all is not
vanity: old moats may make the loveliest
of gardens; old warriors, the gentlest of
heroes.
[86]
The
Grandniece of the Grand
Inquisitor
I have a fair daughter formed like a
golden flower. Sappho.
THE Spanish Inquisitor is one character
of the past who has been spared the
mockish attentions of writers of historical
romance. But he, too, has suffered from
the on dit of history, history as she is
taught. However, he had his day. Once
as the impersonation of "correct senti-
ment," he dealt his decrees from a palace
and had the double honor of representing
Church as well as State. As times grew
gentler, the Inquisition was directed against
books rather than men. Now, certainly,
something may be accorded to those who
dispose of polemic literature, even though
they be as innocent as earthworms of their
ultimate use to humanity ; therefore, let us
try to look upon the Grand Inquisitor,
Miguel de Carpio, as a Spanish gentleman
[87]
Flowers From Medieval History
of an exceedingly old school as a man
perhaps much less bloodthirsty than some
of the good and perfect knights, though
abominably technical regarding certain
points. As theatre-goers we are in the
gentleman's debt, for it was he who edu-
cated his nephew, Lope de Vega de Carpio,
who in his turn was a positive factor in the
development of the modern drama.
Lope Felix de Vega de Carpio was of a
mental mixture that has more than passed
away ; it has been relegated to the incom-
prehensible, at once a graceful poet and
a soldier, a past master of euphuism and a
coarse dramatist; an officer of the Church ;
"a servant of the Inquisition" or a "fa-
miliar of the holy office," as he fluently
termed it (an honorary escort of the victim
to the stake); finally, chaplain of the mo-
nastic order into which he retired; and,
unquestionably, the most voluminous of
writers.
But his most poetic gift to the world
was his love-child, Sister Marcela de Felix
of the Convent of the Ladies of the Trin-
ity at Alcala. Of all his children, legiti-
mate or illegitimate, this daughter, by the
lady who inspired the best of his sonnets,
was to him dearest. He takes little Mar-
[88]
The Grandnlece of the Grand Inquisitor
cela to live with him as soon as ever his
wife dies, and dedicates a drama to the
little girl ; so does another poet. She seems
to be her father's comrade, for when she
is only eleven years old he uses her to get
back some letters that he has written to
one of his various mistresses; but when a
relative of the husband of this mistress
makes improper overtures to Little Mar-
cela, Lope de Vega rises like a man "in
spite of his age and holy orders," and
chastises the villain.
At sixteen, to the little maid comes a
craving for an exalted purity, a reaction of
her beautiful soul from its coarse, immoral
surroundings. Being a woman, her ideal
also calls for a lover, but he must be pure
and more beautiful than any one she has
ever known, and he must love her as she
will him, "better than life." It is the Age of
Faith. Her bridegroom awaits; she leaves
her father to join him.
Of course, there are braver, fuller, hap-
pier lives than a nun's, and there always
have been. But during the Age of Faith,
in a religious house, there was always a
haven of rest for the idealist, while now it
sometimes seems he has not where to lay
his head.
[89]
Flowers From Medieval History
It was not in the Middle Ages that the
king said, " If poets will be poets, why, let
them starve." Then, on the contrary, the
public fed a vagabond population of vaga-
bond singers who sang a certain grace into
the Romance languages ; for the devotees
of various abstractions there was the refuge
of holy orders. After taking up the re-
ligious life, if they had force enough to
arrange the conditions around them to fit
their desires, they might safely follow their
various bents, for good or ill, undisturbed
by care for the future, their bodies being
insured against want, their souls against
punishment. In Spain, particularly, really
great men and successful ones continued
to take holy orders even up to the eight-
eenth century.
In his prime, Calderon exchanged the
position of superintendent of the royal
theatre for royal chaplain, but after a few
qualms on the point he continued to write
plays on much the same order as before,
only they were performed by priests. Since
Calderon was really orthodox the arrange-
ment seems natural enough; as a play-
wright he had baffled with the public till
he was fifty-one years old ; in the church
at least he was relieved from the dictates
The Grandnieceofthe Grand Inquisitor
of public tastes. There it was that he prob-
ably wrote his beautiful " Magic Magician."
I am not a Ruskinite. I would not, if
I conveniently could, domesticate the thir-
teenth century in the nineteenth ; but I do
believe in a sympathetic attitude toward
history, as toward present life, and for the
same reasons I would not turn the light
of the twentieth century in upon the gloom
of the sixteenth, with the idea of getting
a clear picture. I for one do not feel that
a convent was the saddest place for Sister
Marcela. That power which decrees the
fall of nations had its hand upon Spain.
Wars, the Americas, the religious houses
and the Inquisition, had fed on the flower
of the nation too long. The times were
out of joint. It seemed beautiful to little
Marcela to lose such a world and gain a
soul. Being a poet, the heroic side of the
church appealed to her; in her intensity
she joined the barefooted order of the
Trinity. How did her father part from
her? He was a poet, too did he give
her up with holy joy and homely sorrow ?
In his way, Lope de Vega was a really
religious man, for he lived in close touch
with his God the literal, limited, jealous
god of a fanatic, it is true. Would you see
[91]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
its exact image, as shown on the Market
Place? Then read "The Marriage of the
Soul to Divine Love," a broadly realistic
drama, in which Lope de Vega supposes
the bridegroom to be the Savior. It was
acted on the great Square of Valencia on
the occasion of the marriage of Philip III,
the dramatist himself being the clown in
the cast.
But, too, this vulgar "familiar of the
holy office " can be tender. Listen to these
lines, dedicated to his little dead son:
' Holy angels and blest,
Through these palms as ye sweep,
Hold their branches at rest,
For my babe is asleep.
"And ye Bethlehem palm trees,
As stormy winds rush
In tempest and fury,
Your angry noise hush ;
Move gently, move gently,
Restrain your wild sweep ;
Hold your branches at rest,
My babe is asleep.
'* My babe all divine,
With earth's sorrows oppressed,
Seeks in slumber an instant
His grieving to rest ;
He slumbers, he slumbers,
[92]
The Grandniece of the Grand Inquisitor
Oh hush, then, and keep
Your branches all still,
My babe is asleep !
" Cold blasts wheel about him,
A rigorous storm,
And ye see how, in vain,
I would shelter his form;
Holy angels and blest,
As above me ye sweep,
Hold these branches at rest,
My babe is asleep ! ' '
What did he whisper to this living child
as she parted from him ? " Heard melodies
are sweet; but those unheard are sweeter."
When, in the confident phrase of her
father, Marcela de Carpio " espoused the
eldest son of God," her mystic nuptials
called forth the truest "song-feast" ever
held. The herald of old might bid the
poets appear and compete for a monarch's
pleasure. Order a tournament of song, in-
deed! Mahomet was profound enough to
go to the mountain. When the beautiful
love-child of Lope de Vega and Micaela
de Luzan took the veil, the ceremony was
graced by all the dignity and circumstance
which the Church could lavish in outward
expression of the passion and fervor of the
forceful old days of her power.
[93]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
All the poets of the day, great and small,
seemed to have been summoned to this
marriage feast, and all the poets of the day,
great and small, vainly tried to transcribe
the living poem their eyes beheld when
that fair bride of Christ passed before them
in a transport of ecstasy.
At that time many great ladies were
taking the veil with equal pomp and state,
but no such tribute was paid them. What
an absolutely inexplicable power is person-
ality ! Marcela de Carpio never published
a line, and at this time had probably never
written one. How did these minor poets
recognize this fair daughter of Sappho?
Was she "formed like a golden flower"?
What a wonderful people are poets ! But
listen, for Sister Marcela's bridal song is
with us yet, she pipes so clear and sweet:
I.
" Let them say to my lover
That here I lie !
The thing of his pleasure,
His slave am I.
II.
Say that I seek him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
[94]
The Grandnieceofthe Grand Inquisitor
III.
" Love giving gifts
Is suspicious and cold ;
I have all, my Beloved,
When Thee I hold.
IV.
" Hope and devotion
The good may gain,
I am but worthy
Of passion and pain.
V.
"So noble a Lord
None serves in vain
For the pay of my love
Is my love's sweet pain.
VI.
"I love thee, to love thee,
No more I desire ;
By faith is nourished
My love's strong fire.
VII.
"I kiss Thy hands
When I feel their blows ;
In place of caresses
Thou givest me woes.
VIII.
"But in Thy chastening
Is joy and peace ;
O Master and Love,
Let not Thy blows cease !
[95]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
IX.
" Thy beauty, Beloved,
With scorn is rife !
But I know that Thou lovest me
Better than life.
X.
"And because Thou lovest me,
Lover of mine,
Death can but make me
Utterly Thine.
XI.
"I die with longing
Thy face to see ;
Ah, sweet is the anguish
Of Death tome!"
MarceladeCarpio retired from the world
in 1 62 1 . It was not till 1870 that the ladies
of the Convent of the Trinity at Alcala
called the attention of the director of the
Spanish Academy to a manuscript so dear
to that sisterhood, the love-songs of a
nun, the poems of Sister Marcela de Felix.
Such a delay in publication would be disas-
trous to a worldling of the pen, but oblivion
cannot bury a soul. Besides, Sister Marcela
was dreaming of heaven, not of print ; her
thought incidentally overflows and she in-
herited her father's facility with the pen.
Thus, from the depths of the old cloister
[96]
The Grandnieceofthe Grand Inquisitor
swells a love-song so clear and sweet, so
humanly divine that it almost reconciles
the ages. The times were out of joint in
Spain, but I am glad that this mystical
daughter of Sappho was not ordained, like
poor little Charlotte Corday, another ideal-
ist, with the blood of a great poet in her
veins, to try to set them right. I am glad
that the doors of the convent were open to
this spiritual young dreamer of beautiful
dreams, who sings the " Swan Song of the
Age of Faith." You say the convent doors
are open yet; yes, but in another way
perhaps a better way. Women enter to
dedicate a broken life to all that is good.
The peace is there, but the rapture is no
more. We " cannot sing the old songs now
nor dream those dreams again."
No woman is fairer to muse upon than
Marcela de Carpio. We get out of life
what we put into it. From the repose of
the cloister Sister Marcela contributes a
dream. She is the poetess of the passionate
reverence of the Age of Faith. In her
verse "the tender grace of a day that is
dead" is immortal. We must never for a
moment overlook a Spanish lady's pedi-
gree. Senorita Marcela de Carpio was the
grandniece of a Grand Inquisitor of Spain.
[97]
A
Stray Leaves From Old,
Old Books
BIBLIOPHILE is expected to enter with
an apology, he is generally called a
bibliomaniac, but let your foreboded hom-
age check your tongue ; remember, if you
prefer your mother's Bible to the one left
by the tract: society, or the one left by
the tract society to your mother's (biblio-
philes are liable to any preference), you
are open to the infection and the mania is
incurable.
But do not books become ours by what
we, individually, get from them ? What
does it matter whether it lies in the cover
or the text or between the lines? "Piece
out our imperfection with your thought,"
implores the greatest poet. Though it is
dwelt upon with some truth that biblio-
philes do not read their books (must we
therefore infer that other people have the
contents of their libraries at their tongue's
ends), they have their own attitude toward
[98]
them an attitude which has proved of
the profoundest service to letters.
The professional critic enters the library
in state, receiving and dismissing new books
with sovereign assurance : so uniformly has
he erred that the dictum has gone forth
that no age can pass on its writers.
The gentle reader enters the library
modestly; although he may read the new
books that perish, he does not neglect the
new books that live, as any one who makes
a study of editions will discover; he buys
the good works of his own day. The pub-
lisher of the first edition of Shakespeare
remarked that purchase "best commends
a book," on the strength of which idea he
collected the stray plays of the Bard of the
Avon. The preface which he wrote for
his edition stands forth as the modest ad-
vertisement of history ; but absurdly con-
descending as it is, it shows that he fore-
saw a good, immediate sale ; also that he
foresaw no farther.
The bibliophile enters the library ab-
stractedly, there to muse upon volumes
true and tried; and through the ages his
reverent, disinterested spirit has builded
better than it knew. Indeed, it alone tided
books across the Dark Ages; for even
[99]
Flowers From Medieval History
when they could not read, some there were
who had wit enough to appreciate letters
in the abstract. Contrast their attitude with
that of the executive Caliph Omar, who
burned a great library at Alexandria in 635,
declaring that if the books were orthodox
(Mohammedan orthodoxy, of course) they
were unnecessary; if heterodox, pernicious.
That is what it means to have mere prac-
tical people around among books.
I can conceive of no human relic more
touching than a Bible copied with con-
scientious care during this unsympathetic
era. Hence the Book of Kells,* which is
destitute of one touch of the native artist,
however immature, is often spoken of as
the most beautiful book in the world.
It is supposed to have been executed about
the eighth century, since its illuminators
had advanced from the mere red capitals
adorned with twisted dragons to pictures
relating to the text. The symbols of the
apostles, especially the bird-like lion of
Saint Mark, appear repeatedly on the mar-
gins; also, there is a representation of Saint
Matthew with hands growing from his
shoulders, holding up to the world two
* Property of Trinity College, Dublin.
[100]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
copies of" The Book." Among its illustra-
tions are the Arrest of Jesus, the Agony
of the Garden, and, most interesting of all,
four angels and a Virgin and Child appear
on the old pages, for, crude as these figures
are, they may be reckoned among the
direct ancestors of those beautiful Holy
Families born on Italian and Flemish can-
vases eight or nine hundred years later,
whose sweet faces still sway the world.
Christian art began as illustration on
the pages of holy books, and as illustration
it expanded onto wood and canvas, bronze
and marble. The peculiar grace of picto-
rial art crept into it incidentally, by acci-
dent of genius. That famous Giotto of the
Louvre showing " Saint Francis receiving
the Stigmata" is simply a direct explanation
of the subject, far more beautiful in idea
than in execution. There are the figures
of Jesus and of Saint Francis; Christ is
flying toward "the most Christ-like of
men," and gilt lines from every wound in
our Savior piercing Saint Francis in the
same parts of the body bind that sympa-
thetic saint to his Redeemer, while un-
known to the holy brother a halo appears
back of his head.
This idea of illustration made beautiful
[10!]
Flowers From Medieval History
that it might be worthy of the subject which
it treated, that arose in the old scriptoriums,
reached its perfection on Ghiberti's doors
to the Baptistry at Florence. Michael An-
gelo called them the Gates of Paradise.
Illuminated books of a later date display
equally noble, artistic connections. I have
seen little Madonnas in Books of Hours
in the British Museum that seem like im-
perfect copies of Raphael, whereas they
precede him by nearly a century.
Mediaeval story is full of the visits of
angels to despairing illuminators and scribes
who found themselves unable to execute
books worthy in their material beauty to
convey the word of God. Our Lady her-
self sometimes came down to console them.
Did forecasts of the beautiful pictures yet
to come sometimes appear to the humble
dreamers of the cloister as they worked
away on the margins of holy books? Not
literally, of course, for taste was too crude
to conceive of a developed art. But may
not some old artist have conceived in his
cell of a pictured Madonna, so beautiful
that pilgrims came from afar to do her
honor, so sweet that she could uplift them
from sin? And perhaps the soul of that
humble old scribe finds its paradise in the
[102]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
better part of some inscrutable genius whose
Madonnas perpetually uplift the world,
for the soul of a saint is active forever.
But from the vantage-ground of the Old
Book of Kells it is as pretty to look back-
ward as to look forward, so sweetly does
it recall a certain monastery on the Island
of lona which casts its ray in history like
a good deed in a naughty world. This old
book speaks eloquently of the lonely Irish
cloisters where, in perhaps the darkest
hour of written history, the seeds of occi-
dental civilization were laid away until a
more favorable season dawned in which to
sow them broadcast.
About a hundred years after the blessed
Saint Patrick converted Ireland, in which
time many had fallen from grace, Saint
Columba appeared on the scene, made a
second conversion of that region and found-
ed the old Scotch Kirk (very indirectly ).
When Saint Columba appealed to the canny
Scots and the thrifty northern Irishmen
for a situation for his monastery,they hos-
pitably turned over to his use the rocky
Island of lona. Though agriculturally it
was not much, through long ages it had
borne the fruits of the spirit until even its
stones did duty as amulets. In its bosom
Flowers From Mediaeval History
slept the Scottish kings, King Macbeth
being the last of the royal line to lie there,
lona was hallowed ground to the Druid,
and is, to this day, a haven of superstition.
There Saint Columba, the scribe, located
his lonely monastery wherein books were
made, wondrous in their day and genera-
tion, and there or at some Columbian mon-
astery in the neighborhood, perhaps at
Kells, the Book of Kells was executed.
One of its big pages, which is covered
by a great cross wherein eight circles are
incorporated in a network of infinitely in-
volved interlacements, especially illustrates
one phase of early art its reverent pa-
tience. Study that cross as you may you
will find no false line, no irregular inter-
lacement, for all this was done in the olden
time when the ways of holy men were
made so clear unto them. That none might
disturb the holy calm of the silent scribes
as they multiplied the precious "Word"
Saint Jerome had taken down from the
direct dictation of the angels, a code of
signs was in use in the scriptoriums of the
monasteries. The sign of the cross indi-
cated a missal, the sign of the crown, King
David's psalms, while a contemptuous
scratching of the ear, in the manner of a
[104]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
dog, was an order for a mere pagan volume ;
for then "the world was very wicked," as
the good monks droned ; or at least very
rude, cruel, lazy and barbarous, as history
affirms, and gentle spirits were only too
prone to recoil from it.
The early Christians in general were
filled with contempt for this life and proud
certainty of reward in the next: those
whose practice was no higher than their
theory withdrew from the world to secure
to themselves particularly high seats in
heaven. The composite story of their lives
emphasizes the barrenness of the scoffer,
the futility of the contemptuous. But the
story of the scribe, though he may have
seen through the glass just as darkly as
the anchorite did, is the living story of
Christian brotherhood.
One of the first of these scribes, old Cas-
siodorus of Ravenna, writes: "All who sing
form but a single voice, and we may mingle
our notes with those of the angels, though
we may not hear them." I am sure that
was the sentiment which finally turned this
old statesman from the world, even though
he did not retire till after the death of
Theodoric, his patron. Perhaps the career
of a statesman prepared him to be a states-
Flowers From Medieval History
man of the world of letters ; at any rate,
when he repaired to the cloister he gath-
ered together, according to his lights, the
best books of his world, and especially en-
joined upon the monks the noble duty of
multiplying them.
All this was some hundred years before
Saint Columba's time, but angel voices
carry, and I do believe in their highest
moments the ignorant, undeveloped scribes
of the old Irish monasteries vaguely echoed
ideals like those of Cassiodorus.
These scribes came to feel a certain own-
ership in the great Bibles on which they
worked. At the end of each section of the
old Book of Durrow its scribe smuggled
in his petition that all who take the book
in hand might pray for him. I have known
a merry old scribe to insert a jingle in very
bad Latin at the end of a chapter, indicat-
ing that after so much good work he should
be rewarded with a drink. The jolly old
monk has always appealed to me most un-
reasonably.
Within the century of the making of the
old Book of Kells in Ireland, stirring old
Charlemagne brought a semblance of order
to the land of the Gaul and the Frank and,
"that requests should not be made to God
[106]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
in bad language," he regulated copists and
reproductions by law; he ordered holy
books elaborately adorned, and collected,
to the best of his ability, artists for that
purpose, thereby leaving his mark on the
books of his time and of some generations
following, which are technically known as
Carlovingians. Indeed, as a bibliophile
Charlemagne shows the most charming
side of his character. In his enthusiasm he
went to work and learned to read, but he
never could succeed in learning to write.
As might be expected, Carlovingians are
mechanically decorated. They show By-
zantine importation rather than the loving
development of an early and original art.
We still have a couple of pages of the
Amiens copy of a work written by the Ab-
bot of Fulda during Charlemagne's reign.
One page is covered by a lone figure, with-
out ground or background, of Louis the
Pious with text printed all over it. ( Not
that in the Dark Ages anybody read be-
tween the lines; that they failed to do so
was their greatest difficulty.) Then other
Carlovingians are examples of the dyers'
art, being written in gold on purple vellum,
like the "Golden Gospels" which one
thousand one hundred years later proved
[107]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
such an excellent speculation on Wall
street. But that is unquestionably "an-
other story."
There is a certain book in the Bodleian
not quite so old which I should value
more highly. With considerably more evi-
dence than usual in such cases, it is identi-
fied as the book of mass of Queen Mar-
garet of Scotland. I wonder if the lovely
Saxon princess had it with her when she
fled to Scotland after the Norman Con-
quest to implore the protection of Mai-
comb Canmore who made her his Queen ?
But, better still, his people afterwards made
her their patron saint, realizing that she
had done more to refine them than any
other early ruler. Tradition tells how the
King, though he could not read, loved to
handle the Queen's precious books per-
haps he gave this little volume adorned
with gold and jewels to the lady of his
reverent love.
The thirteenth century has great at-
tractions for a bibliophile. Never were the
embellishments on books more liberal and
amusing. Nowadays illuminators consider
the fitness of things, but in the thirteenth
century they just designed. I know of a
most charming psalter of the late thirteenth
[108]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
century with the capitals filled with the
spirited knights and the margins with all-
colored dragons whose attenuated tails
form circles, sometimes not more than an
eighth of an inch in diameter, that separate
tiny butting goats or strutting cocks, or
Darwinian monkeys or other irrelevant
matter from the text.
Did these dragons creep in from the
Norse mythologies, I wonder, or were they
just creatures of adaptive anatomy for dec-
orative purposes ? The early illuminators
did not turn to nature; simple people
never do. This illustrator's mind certainly
wandered; whether it started with the
psalms I cannot determine, but he displays
two tiny gilded stops one-eighth of an inch
by two inches that the seriously inclined
might take as sermons. One represents a
jester, with cap and bells and wand, and
little other raiment, successfully charging
a fully armed knight ; and the other, Ve-
nus, attended by a blue dragon, pursuing
a cross between a man and a devil.
The fourteenth and fifteenth century il-
luminators and illustrators begin to think:
o
indeed, they are among the best historians
we find of that period : modern illustration
is fast returning to their methods.
[109]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
At the commencement of the fourteenth
century, miniatures of the noble owners of
elaborate volumes began to be inserted in
their books. Thus a consecutive history
of two hundred years of French portraiture
is safely folded away in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, where we may watch the stiff
early miniatures gradually develop into
charming little genre pictures. Though the
consideration of atmosphere was passed
over at that time, many of them are models
of composition.
Some of these little illustrations show
the conceptions as well as the manners of
the age. In one of these old Bibles is a
picture of six seigneurs ( two famous biblio-
philes among them), in full regalia (no
grave clothes for them), cordially received
by Saint Peter at the Gothic Gates of Para-
dise in the courteous days of the old re-
gime. There is that magnificent jeweled
Bible of Jean Sans Peur, Due de Bour-
goyne, decorated with his armorial bear-
ings, which was given to him by some
monks of his domain when he deigned to
honor them with a visit; it contains a
charming little picture of the presentation
scene.
Those were royal days for bibliophiles ;
[no]
ucfflr vhitart i tut Imroii mviitt n iirdu icuiu
cUi M^viiitnurcinilc tflaHi*nu. ^I'tUitnn'
Di, / :^w l ^BSsnMMKMV >UKIUU '""" le o" 1 " lumnwt (Tfinumrv Wtui.
? ' u,'j| lainmooM iii*isionn) Ittuulriuoulrfitui (raniDufinitruntiv
is out Iroire qui trlnuuruOitinbln^ jlnfitsloDna.ttmanit uui
it>nf uu.iouu <nniunft6/iui\Rlmi9]iriiiiinn]|[r iii.ionicru
Page from the Bible of Jean Sans Pear.
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
but a change was to come over the spirit
of their dreams. Printing was invented and
the democracy of letters' set in, jeweled
bindings made way for calf, and collectors
are diverted from painting to presses.
Bibliophiles develop individual tastes and
such a plebeian variety of them ; it is akin
to free speech one doting on prayer-
books, another on cook-books; one on
pamphlets, another on palimpsests ; one on
school-books, another on Virgils; one on
curiosities of literature, execrably illustrat-
ed books of travel irl impossible lands and
comedies of error generally; another on
distant glimpses of dawning light, until
within the order arises the confusion of
Babel, one no longer understanding the
language of another.
But there is an early Episcopal prayer-
book in the British Museum before which
all the brotherhood right gallantly might
bow. It was Lady Jane Grey's companion
in distress; she is said to have taken it
with her to the scaffold, where she certainly
carried its lessons. In it she wrote her last
message to her father: "The Lord com-
fort Your Grace in this world wherein all
creatures are only to be comforted." Her
story is almost too harrowing to recall.
[HI]
Flowers From Medieval History
This studious young girl, just seventeen,
is offered the English crown. Her common
sense tells her to decline it. " His Grace,"
always harsh, even for his day and genera-
tion, forces her to accept. In consequence,
after a ten days' reign, she is imprisoned
in the Tower. While she is held there
" His Grace " makes another false move ;
as a result of his idiocy Lady Jane and her
young husband are condemned to death.
Could we believe this gentle message on
hearsay? We should probably argue, the
age was so narrow, the girl was so young,
the expression is too condensed, too ma-
ture. The rational doubt would blur one
of the loveliest pictures in Time's gallery
of fair women. A martyr without the spur,
or the blemish of fanaticism ! A Queen of
ten days but a Defender of the Faith for-
ever. The crown jewels pale before this
illuminated prayer-book of Her Most
Christian Majesty. This dear little Prot-
estant called forth the one tender letter
extant from the highly practical Diana of
Poitiers. "I have just been hearing the
account of the poor young Queen Jane,
and I could not keep myself from weeping
at the sweet, resigned words she spoke to
them on the scaffold; surely never was
[112]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
such a sweet and accomplished princess."
Indeed, the best thing in the world of
books, as well as in the world of men, " is
something out of it," and it is the appre-
ciation of this " something," manifest to
sympathetic souls, which makes us biblio-
philes. If unknown to history a tender
touch of hands long dead lurks in an old
edition, is it not beyond price ?
Although there are priceless books like
this little prayer-book of Queen Jane, every
good bibliophile is a bit of a speculator;
to bet on an author is as loyal an excite-
ment as to bet on a racer; and to feel a
beloved volume appreciating upon one's
shelves is like watching the development
of a promising child.
Robert Browning, who was brought up
in the fold, his father being a collector,
writes :
Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss
P the air, and catch again, and twirl about
By the crumpled vellum covers, pure crude fa6l
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high blooded, ticked two centuries
since ?
Examine it yourselves! I found this book,
Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just.
Opening lines of
"The Ring and the Book."
Flowers From Mediaeval History
That eightpence has the regular biblio-
maniacal ring. Next to giving fifty prices
for a book, the genuine collector delights
in paying an improperly low one a tour
deforce either of wit or of purse.
Just think of getting material for the
longest poem of the century for eightpence !
and material so unique ! with the inspira-
tion of the old tome thrown in !
But now, when books are so cheap they
are almost free, when exact reproductions of
wonderful editions might flood the market
at any day, when venders of old books have
become too expert for book hunters, we are
assured that bibliophiles, grasping the tan-
gible in the hope of realizing the intangible,
are the absurdities of a rational age.
Remember our record in the past and
trust us a little in the present. In blind
reverence we saved books and inaugurated
Christian art. Historians suddenly began
to demand documents and they grow more
and more insistent on that point. Well, we
can come to their aid and they can come
to ours; many a pretty bargain has been
struck in the exchange. Along with its old
books and letters we have especially pre-
served the gentler, though none too gentle,
side of the past.
["4]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
We can introduce you to men of other
days in their libraries : a very good place
to study them sympathetically.
Among other charming facts, we can as-
sure you that even during the confusion
of a period of infinite intrigue complicated
by religious wars and the Fronde, Richelieu
and Mazarin found time to play at biblio-
mania, and perhaps we can persuade you
that of all their games it was the most
profitable. The executive Mazarin got
hold of an invaluable expert, Naude, who
brought him bargains by the yard. What
fun they must have had out of it, Naude
literally taking a measuring-stick with him
when he went "book-hunting," and "the
stalls where he had passed were like the
towns through which Attila or the Tartars
had swept!" But the result was different.
Deserving books were sumptuously decked
out in red and olive morocco with gold-
tooled cardinal hats thereon, and took their
rightful place in Mazarin's palace, that
Earthly Paradise of the bibliophile graced
by beautiful books and gentle readers, for
Mazarin's library was cordially free, the
first really free library in France.
It is true that Saint Louis, always open
to a beautiful idea, hearing of a sultan who
Flowers From Meditzval History
had had copies made of the manuscripts
of his realm for the benefit of the savants,
endeavored to follow the example of the
Moslem. Accordingly he made a beauti-
ful collection of copies which were kept in
the royal chapel hardly a convenient
place for the reading public ; but then there
was no reading public.
However humble a Christian, however
gentle a knight Saint Louis may have been,
he was destitute of one instinct of the dem-
ocrat. After his death his collection was
broken up, but his idea descended to
Charles the Wise, who practically started
the Royal Library which, joined to the
Mazarin, developed into the present Bib-
liotheque Nationale.
As the oldest branch of the Public Li-
brary, the Bibliotheque Nationale occupies
the ancestral home, the Palais Mazarin at
Paris, where Mazarin's motto, "Time and
I," rings forth in the majesty of accom-
plishment.
As "Ever since the days of Captain
Kidd, the Yankees think there's money
hid," so ever since the disappearance of
Moliere's library the bibliophiles think
there 's treasure hid. Only one book which
belonged to that prince of bibliophiles has
[116]
Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books
turned up so far, a little Elzevir of 1651,
in which he obligingly wrote his name and
the price, i livre y 10 sous. But think of his
two hundred and forty odd comedies which
he handled so deftly both in the letter and
in the spirit, "taking his property wherever
he found it!" What pearls of price if one
could only trace them !
We know this collection was broken up ;
it cannot be that every single book has
perished. One is almost justified in count-
ing such chickens before they are hatched.
Moliere was not only one of the greatest but
one of the most lovable of authors that
quality we collectors value so highly! Why
a book of his would be like a relic of a saint
(there is a bit of medievalism in every good
bibliophile) ; a saint, a bibliophile of other
days, an actor, a gentle reader and a genius!
What might not any one of them bring?
Ah, there is still a golden fleece for the
quest of the Romantic Modern.
Romance will always deal in talismans.
We bibliophiles make ours a thing of the
mind, which we lay away between the lines
of some gentle old volume, hoping that
some day, somewhere in the vague realm
of Books, it may work its pleasant magic
upon some unknown comrade.
["7]
The
Romantic Twentieth Century:
A Deduction
THE simple story-tellers of old, singing
away before History was born, long,
long before she became contradictory and
disrespectful, chose the past as a setting
for certain beatitudes love, beauty, valor,
fidelity and justice. Theirs was not the
harsh justice of the common law, for
there was no common law, but true, or,
as the world terms it, poetic justice. They
strengthened the warp of their story
with the noblest deeds done, or almost
done, around them, for human beings so
often fall just short of great things ;
this it is the gentle and honorable duty
of story to remedy, for " What we would
be, that we are for one transcendent mo-
ment."
When they only recorded the prowess
of the victor, History and Romance were
one and at peace, and the glorious days of
[118]
The Romantic Twentieth Century
which together they sung were known as
the Golden Age.
Then History began to feel the heroism
of the vanquished. To give them their
meed she conceived the idea of recording
impartially the good and evil around her,
whereat childish Romance turned from her
in disgust.
But each claimed the Golden Age : Ro-
mance declaring that golden tales that live
and grow were hers for all time ; History de-
claring that the facl that a great poet imag-
ined an event to have happened counted
for more in the human record than any
other given occurrence. And History and
Romance quarreled on until it seemed as
though the Golden Age would be lost to
both of them.
Then Romance, always enterprising to
the point of flightiness, suggested that, as
the Golden Age had no chronology, it
might safely be recast in the future, in
which period she, at least, was quite as
much at home as in the past.
Politic Old Dame History smiled at
the idea of her dealing in futures, but she
did make herself responsible for the state-
ment that the real present is infinitely
more romantic than the real past. Then
Flowers From Medieval History
waxing bold she declared that, with some
trifling digression, she had all along been
leading men toward a purer justice more
mixed with love. Of this sweeping asser-
tion she calmly cast the burden of proof
upon "my most persuasive witness, my
dear old friend, Romance." And Romance,
who always begs the question, replies with
a smile, " Let me tell some stories. No, I
will not commence with the Greeks, they
are hardly my people. Great poets may
find other themes, but as for me, my
humble fancy must rest upon a woman
and she should be pure, sweet and gentle
and brave men should bow before her.
"The Grecian woman was in no way a
free agent. To assert herself at all, she
was obliged to be either deceitful or de-
fiant; both attitudes are so unbeautiful!
I commence with the days of chivalry, for
though women were not free then, it was
supposed that they ought to be, which is
enough for me."
" To me," says History, " the love sto-
ries of the days of chivalry, told as fact
or as old romance, are one of the saddest
issues of its universal tyranny a tyranny
of parent over child, of man over woman,
of lord over serf, of king over lord, of
[120]
The Romantic Twentieth Century
emperor over king, of pope over emper-
or a tyranny of crazy conventions and
mistaken ideals over all, with mortifica-
tions of spirit a thousand times harsher
than those of the flesh, which made life
hideous even to its ideals.
"Analyze the great love story of that
era and you find rather a tragedy of tyr-
anny. It runs thus: About the close of
the Dark Ages the parents of Pierre Abe-
lard decided, for the future repose of their
souls, to repress all their natural desires
and shift all mundane duties. Accordingly
they retired to separate convents, leaving
their son free to follow his natural bent.
Argument being his ruling passion, he wan-
dered through France challenging the local
theologians in debate, always drawing a
following, always making powerful enemies,
and, doubtless, very much enjoying the
life. At Laon he tackled the great Anselm,
and finding him a man 'of mean genius
and great fluency of words without sense,'
Abelard conceived the idea of reading the
Bible for himself. Then he made his way
to Paris to break a lance with the great
Canon Fulbert, where he met the Canon's
niece, Heloise. A love story ensued, like
other love stories in many ways, except
[121]
Flowers From Mediaeval History
that Heloise, against all self-interest, phys-
ical, social, spiritual, refused to marry her
lover, entreat as he might; she would do
anything else for him, except state her
true reason but yet a woman. We have
it finally in her correspondence, c What an
injury shall I do the Church if I rob it of
such a man ! '
"Is it a sacrifice on the altar of the
Church on her part, or is it a woman's
sacrifice for the interests of the man she
loves better than herself? Had her mother
made a like renunciation? No mother
appears in the story of this adopted niece
of an ecclesiastic. Here is Heloise's posi-
tion. In her time the only opening for a
clever man was the Church with its condi-
tions; a loving woman should not hamper
an ambitious man ; she should remember
she cannot be to him what he is to her,
which is a law of life known to woman,
that we find holds true here. Having first
given her all to the Church, she enters a
convent at Abelard's suggestion. But in
the twelfth century, or any other, the hope
of youth dies hard. Heloise does not take
the black veil. She cannot burn her ships.
"Thereafter this truly fair woman of
Romance figures as a stern disciplinarian
[122]
The Romantic Twentieth Century
reporting the weaker sisters. But she is
severe upon herself as well, and confesses
having unlawfully opened a letter in which
she was sure there was news of her Abe-
lard ; though, when in after years Abelard
wished to correspond with her, she begged
him not. This is the tragedy of Heloise.
"Abelard also entered a convent, but
there, as elsewhere, he had a wonderful
faculty for carrying his point, and probably
led, on the whole, a very congenial life.
However, he once overstepped himself,
and was summoned to appear before the
Council of Soissons and commanded to
burn his own book with his own hands.
He ungallantly admitted that this was the
saddest moment of his life. Here is Abe-
lard's tragedy. He felt that all was lost.
But it was Abelard that the world needed,
not his book.
" Brave as Socrates, Abelard returned to
the Abbey of Saint Denis, there to raise
the first historic doubt. He did not think
Saint Denis was the Areopagite of the
Scriptures, nor did he believe the saint was
ever in Paris. The horrified Abbot ac-
cordingly gave Abelard over to the civil
authorities f for reflections upon the king-
dom and the crown.'
[ I2 3]
Flowers From Medieval History
"Driven from Paris, he retired to a
cloistered order at Troy es, where he built
a church and had the pleasure of dedicat-
ing it to the Holy Ghost (there being a
law against dedicating a temple to the Par-
aclete). Arguing to the last, Abelard passed
away, and while his body was mouldering
in the ground, his soul went arguing on in
his intellectual descendants, the mediaeval
schoolmen who, in their poor way, managed
to awaken the mind of Europe, if only to
lead it by labyrinths into a cul-de-sac.
" I wonder if Heloise was able to follow
her true love's valiant career without earthly
pride ? Or by some strange austere resolve
did she deny herself that gentle pleasure ?
For Heloise belongs to the species, om-
nipotent woman, who carries out her de-
cisions by hook or by crook for the benefit
of self and others, never hampered by a
doubt of the ultimate excellence of her
arrangements.
" Did she do well not to rob the Church
of Abelard? Perhaps she builded better
than she knew, or she may have made a
sad mistake, but God knows, she did her
best. That was eight hundred years ago,
but her story is tragic today. As to Abe-
lard's, it is really very interesting.
The Romantic Twentieth Century
"And," continues History, "the favor-
ite romance of this sadly submissive age
was c The Patient Griselda.' It was an old,
old tale when Boccaccio told it, but, thank
fortune, it is dead at last, for we can-
not now conceive of the excellence of the
heroine.
"A marquis, whose only love is the chase,
is forced by his subjects to marry. He com-
promises on a little country girl, and re-
quires her to promise c to study to please
him and not to be uneasy at anything
whatever he may do or say.' (A man's
requirements, only this marquis was n't a
gentleman.) To test her patience, he amuses
himself by taking her children from her,
one by one, and leading her to suppose
that they have been killed, because his
people objected to the descendants of a
peasant. Griselda blesses her children as
she delivers them to his servitor, saying:
" { Take them; do what my lord and
thine has commanded; but, prithee, leave
them not to be devoured by fowls or wild
beasts unless that be his will.'
"Then the marquis tells her he must
annul their marriage.
" She replies, * For what I have been I
hold myself indebted to Providence and
[W]
Flowers From Medieval History
you. I consider it a favor lent me,' and
she acquiescingly returns to the house of
her father, who has prudently saved her
old garments, never supposing the marquis
would c keep her long as wife.' In good
time the marquis summons her to prepare
his home for a new wife. She affectionately
complies. The new wife proves to be her-
self, the marquis being quite persuaded that
her patience 'proceeds from no want of
understanding in her.' Her children are
restored. She weeps for joy, and they all
live happily ever after."
Romance replies, "The chivalry in your
instances is confined to the women, which
is always pathetic. As to the actual Gris-
elda of Aquitaine, whose name and story
grew into the heart of an age, she lived
just before the days of chivalry. Indeed,
Shades of women like Griselda and Helo-
ise may have inspired the chivalrous atti-
tude toward women.
"One should read Griselda's story in
Chaucer, not in shallow-hearted Boccaccio,
even though it was the purest and most
popular of his tales. Chaucer would make
you feel her kinship with women now, who
make sacrifices for love less open and rude
but not so different from hers.
[126]
The Romantic Twentieth Century
" Listen, History," continues Romance,
" to Chaucer's tale : You have commended
bloodier deeds than Griselda's. The mar-
quis says to Griselda, when he demands
the child, c In great lordship there is great
servitude. I may not do as every plough-
man may,' and Griselda, like a mother,
whose son is demanded as a sacrifice on
the altar of her country, first consecrates
him to God. She is as tender to her child
as she is loyal to her husband, but I will
say no more ; no one but Chaucer should
touch that scene.
" I have always suspected that the real
marquis in question intended to kill the
child for exactly the reasons he stated, and
the gentleness of the mother, who could
not possibly protect the child, saved it.
Life was held very loosely then. You see,
History, I tell more truth than I am sup-
posed to and you tell less, my idea being
to appear fanciful, yours, to appear truth-
ful. We are all poor sinners. However,"
continues Romance, "a sweeter day was
dawning. Out of the effort of the soldier
to protect the pilgrim grew the Holy
Wars, wherein the ideal that the strong
should serve the weak was born, and I
nursed it into chivalry."
[I2 7 ]
Flowers From Medieval History
"And a hideous and lawless state of
things you brought forth," remarked His-
tory ; for Romance and History, like other
old friends that have separated and come
together again, cannot collate long in ac-
cord.
"In some cases I taught men not to
need the law's control," retorted Romance.
K To make men gentle one must teach them
gently, so I sent my troubadours through
the land as trusty messengers of chivalry
and bid them sing the new ideal into the
very heart of the realm. And in song they
contended as lustily for the point of honor
as ever knight contended with his lance.
" To these simple troubadours that love
which is not physical, which begs to serve,
not to be served, and poetry, itself, were
one, and known by one term alone,
Love. But disputes arose regarding this
term for an ideal new under the sun, dis-
interested love in its highest and its fullest.
Therefore, where the shades of classic re-
finement lingered latest, in fair Provence,
I instituted tribunals before which my
troubadours might plead their subtle causes
in song, and styled them Courts of Love.
My judges were the gentlest of ladies and
poets bowed before them, saying :
[128]
The Romantic Twentieth Century
f For all my words here and every part
I speak them all under correction
Of you that feeling have in love's art,
And put it all in your discretion.' '
History interrupts: "Among my hu-
moresques, I happen to have a literal
account of one of those old Courts of Love.
It was convened by the Countess of Cham-
pagne ; she had fifteen more women on the
bench with her, all decked out in green
and gold. Monkey-fashion, those scented
ladies (precieuses ridicules} of old had the
proceedings of their toy court solemnly
recorded. Andre, their scribe, adds that
the perfumes on the fair judges kept him
sneezing continually while he was taking
testimony. At that time chivalry had most
absurdly exalted c my ladye/ also the
'beautiful unseen/ styled the * beautiful
unknown/ and see the things men were
expected to do!"
"Yes, and what is more, they did them,"
retorted Romance, " and at the bidding of
woman without other coercion, and the
spirit of her law still rules."
" I am confining myself to documentary
evidence," says History tartly. "This Chief
Justice of Love, Maria of Champagne,
was the daughter of that Queen Eleanor
[I2 9 ]
Flowers From Medieval History
of France, who would go on the Second
Crusade. Had she only behaved herself
in the East, she might have figured as the
first New Woman. However, that was not
to be. Formal action was brought before
the Court of the Chief Justice of Love in
the Province of Beauty by plaintiff, a
servitor of love, against defendant, a Fair
Lady likewise a married one. Plaintiff
had agreed to walk twice a week past de-
fendant's door, for which service defend-
ant agreed to throw him a bunch of violets.
As the weather was cold and the road
muddy, plaintiff tired of the job and claimed
in legal phraseology, as he did not always
get his violets, that breach of contract
should release him from further obliga-
tion.
" Defendant pleads ecstasy of love and
anguish of mind. She said that because of
Danger (Court term for husband) she
could not always perform her contract,since
she frequently had to profess that she was
asleep, although she was awake; that it
was highly ungallant in defendant to com-
plain of snow and mire. Love should ren-
der him invulnerable. She also added that
the man had the best of it, for he might
repeat his hours and orisons while he was
Head of Justice, from Flare's Group.
This Old Venetian Figure of Justice Still Presides
Over the Gallery of Early Painters at Venice.
Technically she is in ad-vance of the
Madonnas of Her Period.
The Romantic Twentieth Century
walking up and down before her door ; also,
he had the privilege of kissing her latch
as he passed, whereas ( feminine economy )
she was obliged to purchase thread to tie
up his violets.
"Judgment in favor of the lady.
"Among the celebrated cases recorded
in this court are two every-day disagree-
ments between man and woman. A gen-
tleman complains of the refusal of a lady
to dance with him, which rendered him
ridiculous. The court commanded the lady
to dance with him.
"Action was brought by a wife against
her husband for restraining her from wear-
ing a hat of the newest fashion.
"Judgment for the lady.
"I will close," continues History, "by
citing a few of the thirty-one rulings of
this Court of Maria of Champagne :
"i. Love and economy do not agree.
"2. Without good reason no one can
be forbidden to love.
"3. Love is not stationary. If it does
not diminish, it will increase.
"4. It is not loving to kiss and tell.
" 5. No man can love two women at
the same time.
"6. A woman should persist in her
Flowers From Medieval History
choice till all hope be abandoned ; like per-
sistence cannot be demanded from man."
" Maria de Champagne was a profound
jurist, but I doubt if she was a truly ro-
mantic woman," replies Romance. "Were
I not too chivalrous to expose to your
commonplace laughter the gentlest yearn-
ing of a rude age, their uncertain groping
for a vague ideal too noble for their actual
conception, I could a sweeter tale unfold
of Courts of Love of old.
" But if you will laugh at ideals of ro-
mantic love, laugh kindly with me over
its merriest comedy, written by the saddest
and most chivalrous lover of them all.
" Take down your files, Dame History,
and find, if you can, another servitor of
love as chivalrous to his lady as Moliere
was to his wife, a woman belonging to
other men; Moliere's patience, like Gris-
elda's, * proceeded from no lack of under-
standing.' '
"You have wandered far from the ro-
mance of the days of chivalry for your
chivalrous instance," sneers History.
" I was following up the seed that chiv-
alry sowed, the idea of the self-effacement
of the strong in favor of the weak. But let
us turn from the dramatist to the comedy,
The Romantic Twentieth Century
and by a short consideration of ' Les Pre-
cieuses Ridicules, I may be able to make
your point for you, that the actual present
is as romantic as the romance of the past.'
" At the beginning of this play, George-
bus, a provincial gentleman, has made ar-
rangements with two satisfactory persons
to marry respectively his daughter and
niece. The girls are brought to Paris,
where the candidates for their hands and
hearts appear and come to the point at
once. It seems the girls have been read-
ing the romances of Mile, de Scudery, who
has given them the idea that a lover should
fall in love at sight, seek out his lady, woo
her, and after gallantly surmounting many
obstacles, win her. Georgebus perceives
that the men depart in displeasure and in-
vestigates. He has observed that the girls
are aping the manners of the ladies of the
Court, which in Moliere's time were very
affected. Georgebus' daughter states her
platform. It is rather romantic, but there
are lovers nowadays that might fill the bill.
She closes by saying, ' But to plunge head-
long into a proposal of marriage, to make
love and marriage settlements go hand in
hand, is to begin the romance at the wrong
end. Once more, father, there is nothing
Flowers From Medieval History
more shopkeeper-like than such proceed-
ings.' Georgebus is unable f to make out
the meaning of her jargon/ while his niece
adds that those gentlemen 'have never
seen the map of the Country of Tender-
ness.' She is also dissatisfied with their
dress.
" Certainly, Moliere did know what
young girls crave, which Georgebus was
unable to understand.
" In the meantime the disconcerted lov-
ers have dressed their valets up and bid-
den them address the ladies in the most
exaggerated fashion. The young girls are
completely taken in, as girls often are by
pseudo noblemen. The comedy runs high.
Finally the masters appear, strip their
valets of their finery, whip them and send
them home.
"The bottom falls out of everything.
Georgebus cries, * Hide yourselves, you
idiots, hide yourselves forever,' and after
the girls' exit, adds, * The cause of all the
trouble lies in romances, verses, songs, son-
nets and lays.'
" But in the long run, romances, verses
and songs have won. Twentieth century
sentiment goes with the girls though they
were fooled once in the days of their youth.
['34]
An Idetl of the Gracious
Republic of Venice, Attended by Justice and Peace,
Expressed by Paul Veronese,
Sixteenth Century.
The Romantic Twentieth Century
Nowadays, my courts sit in secret session.
The novel is their organ, but, History,
your crude Courts of Love died out six
hundred years ago."
"Never have I called you into my
councils that I have not been belittled,"
observes History. " My romance is de-
mocracy not courtship and it commenced
with the inspiration of the Greeks. My
first votary taught that 'it is clear not in
one thing alone, but wherever you test
it, what a good thing is equality among
men.' He adds, 'A tyrant disturbs an-
cient laws, violates women, kills men with-
out trial. But a people ruling: first, the
very name of it is so beautiful Isonomie;
and secondly, a people does none of these
things.'
"And this beautiful 'equality among
men* I have followed in its ideal, in its
fruition and alas, sometimes, in its debase-
ment throughout the ages. I watched its
short and glorious days in Greece, its or-
derly development in Rome, its splendid
resurrection in Venice, which led the line
of free cities of the Middle Ages that
handed it down. I watched the American
and the French Republics rise in the eight-
eenth century, the French to totter, but to
[135]
Flowers From Medieval History
rise again, the American to live to fight
another chivalrous war for human rights;
and, the justice of republics proven, the
twentieth century built one in a day.
Then the distant continent, that drained
the bravest blood of Portugal in the six-
teenth century, wiped out its debt with
the * fruits of the spirit,' the romantic spirit
of the twentieth century.
" Herodotus placed his faith in the
people long ago, probably on more evi-
dence than he reported in support of what
to him seemed self-evident. Were he to
come back to his native town now he would
find his beautiful city of Halicarnassus re-
placed by a mean Turkish village, but
through it are ringing the words * Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity,' and the Father of
History might be less surprised than men
of today by the revolution that has sud-
denly established a constitution in Turkey.
Indeed, nowhere has the very name of
equality proved more beautiful. Since July
25, 1908, the lion and the lamb have ac-
tually lain down together on the once
bloody fields of the Turk. Over a little
Turkish shop two inscriptions appeared,
side by side, above the three beautiful
words: 'The fear of the Lord is the be-
The Romantic Twentieth Century
ginning of wisdom' and 'The beginning is
from God; so victory is sure.'
" And if the great traveler of old were
to push on westward across Europe, west-
ward across the Atlantic, he might be-
queath his visions to earth, and bidding us
hope on, go back well pleased to the Courts
of the Dead, his simple thesis proved
C A people does none of these things."
Romance aside, "In her self-satisfaction
she has forgotten all about the Golden
Age. It never was hers. It is mine, and
I will recast it safely in the future. There
will I hold Courts of Love to define all
new ideals, my pleaders shall be poets and
their words shall be spoken under correc-
tion of those that have feeling in the art
of this broader love, and my good knights
shall swear 'To defy power that seems
omnipotent, to love and bear, to hope till
Hope creates from its own wreck the
thing it contemplates."
Thus does the romantic twentieth cen-
tury realize the fruition of the ideals of
democrats of the past.
['37]
A W^ord Regarding
Bibliography
The original documents* consulted for this book have
been the works of art of which it treats. In the case
of old books, I have also availed myself of facsimiles,
which have this advantage over originals, they may
be freely handled. Most interesting among them are
THE BOOK OF KELLS, notes from copy of plates, with
remarks by Westwood and Digby Watts; and ILLU-
MINATED BOOKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES, by Humphrey
Jones. The authorities on Gothic architecture, which
I have accepted as final, are Viollet-le-Duc and Cor-
royer. I have drawn much of my material from modern
technical periodicals, most useful of which have been
LES ARTS, REVUE ARCHEOLOGIQUE, REVUE DES QUES-
TIONS HISTORIQUES and the AMERICAN HISTORICAL RE-
VIEW. Though I have had recourse to general historians
who treat of the Middle Ages, Duruy, Gibbon,
Guizot, Kitchin, Saint Martin, etc. ; to guide books of
accepted accuracy, Baedeker, Guerber, Guides Jo-
anne, and Dent's Mediaeval Town Series; to encyclo-
pedias, English and French, to the appended list of
authorities I acknowledge especial indebtedness. Even
when I have not borrowed statements from them I have
* A ' document ' * * * is an instrument on which is recorded,
by means of letters, figures, or marks, matter which may be eviden-
tially used. F. WHARTON, Law of Evidence.
[ J 39]
A Word Regarding Bibliography
been influenced by them in my interpretations of the
Middle Ages:
Blades, Wm., Books in Chains.
Boulting, Wm., Torquato Tasso and His Times.
Bruun, J. A., An Inquiry into the Arts of the
Middle Ages.
Bryce, James, Holy Roman Empire.
Chereul, Diftionnaire des Institutions Francaises.
Clerval, A., Guide Chartrain (Dofteur es-Lettres,
Laureat de 1' Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Let-
tres et Membre de la Societe Nationale des Antiquaires).
Cutts, Edward Lewes, Scenes and Characters of the
Middle Ages.
Dill, Samuel, Roman Society in the Last Century of
the Western Empire.
Fletcher (Prof. Bannister and Bannister F. Fletcher),
History of Architecture on the Comparative Method.
Gray, Geo. Zabriskie, The Children's Crusade.
Gould, Sabine Baring-, Myths of the Middle Ages.
Hawkins, John Sidney, History of the Origin and
Establishment of Gothic Architecture.
Hay, John, Castilian Days.
Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris.
Ivo, Letters of Ivo (reprint of original documents).
Jusserand, J. J., La Vie Nomade.
Lacroix, Paul, Military and Religious Life in the
Middle Ages.
Lang, Andrew, Books and Bookmen.
Lecoy-de-la Manche, Richard Albert: France under
St. Louis and Philip le Hardi ; Les Manuscripts et la
Miniature ; Le Troisieme Siecle Artistique ; Suger.
Mabillon (edited by), Life of Bishop Arnold of
Le Mans.
Maitland, Samuel Roffey, The Dark Ages.
[I 4 0]
A Word Regarding Bibliography
Mandan, Books in Manuscript.
Matthews, Story of Architecture.
Merlct, Eugene, Bulletin Monumental, Numoer 67,
of 1903.
Norton, Chas. Eliot, Church Building in the Middle
Ages.
Reber, Dr. Franz von, History of Mediaeval Art.
Reinach, Salomon, Apollo.
Rennert, Hugo Albert, Life of Lope de Vega.
Rowbotham, J. F., Troubadours and Courts of Love.
Stetson, F. M., William the Conqueror.
Ticknor, Geo., History of Spanish Literature.
Trumble, Alfred, Sword and Scimetar.
Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Painters (Blashfield's
edition).
Wiseman, Preface to Cardinal Wiseman's novel,
Fabiola.
[HI]
Index
Abbey aux Dames, 79.
Abbey aux Hommes, 79.
Abelard, 121.
Ambrose, 1 8.
Amiens, viii.
Amiens Copy, 107.
Angelo, xii, 102.
Bayeux, viii.
Beauvais, viii.
Bernard, Saint, 47.
Bibliotheque Nationale,
116.
Bologne sur Mer, viii.
Bouillon, Godfrey de, 45.
Bourg, viii.
Browning, 113.
Brunelleschi, 33.
Caen, viii, 73.
Calderon, 90.
Carpio (see de Vega), 88.
Cassiodorus, 105.
Charlemagne, 1 06.
Charles le Bel, 56.
Charles the Bald, 55.
Charles the Wise, 1 1 6.
Chartres, viii, 5 1 .
Chaucer, xiii, I 26.
Cherbourg, viii.
Cicely, 79.
Clovis, 26, 27, 28, 52,55.
Cnut, 62.
Coutances, viii.
Corday, 97.
Court of Love, 1 29.
Crusade of Children, xv.
Denis, Abbey de Saint, 3 8 .
Denis, Saint, 40.
Dieppe, viii.
Dinan, ix, 85.
Dinard, ix.
Dols, ix.
Durer, xiv.
Durrow, 106.
Ebbon, 29, 30.
Eleanor, Queen, 1 29.
Eloi, Saint, 40.
Francis, xvi.
Fulbert, 62, 121.
Fulda, Abbot of, 107.
[143]
Index
Georgebus, 133.
Ghiberti, 102.
Gibbon, 55.
Glass, 44, 69.
Gothic, 9, 12, 43.
Gothic, viii, 76.
Gothic, 69.
Gregory, 19, 22.
Grey, Lady Jane, ill.
Griselda, I 25.
Guibert, 64.
Haimon, Abbe, 67.
Halicarnassus, 136.
Harold, 82.
Heloise, 121.
Henry of Navarre, 56.
Herodotus, 136.
Hildebrand, 77.
Hugh of Rouen, 67.
Imagier, 34, 43, 47, 69.
lona, 103.
Ivo, Saint, 63, 77.
Jerome, Saint, 50, 1 04.
Keats, 72.
Kells, Book of, 100.
Laftance, 50.
Laon, viii, 6, 121.
Lanfranc, 74.
Le Mans, viii, 78.
Louis VI, 39.
Louis VII, 39.
Louis the Pious, 29, 30,
107.
Louis, Saint, 10, 56, 115.
Love, Court of, 1 29.
Lowell, 72.
Lubin, Well of Saint, 58.
Maclou, Saint, viii.
Madonna, 3 1 , 5 1 , 54, 70.
Maria of Champagne,
129.
Margaret, Saint, 108.
Mario, San, ix.
Martin, 17, 19, 20, 21,
22, 23, 24, 26.
Mathilda, 63, 79.
Mazarin, 115, 1 16.
Michele, Mt. San, viii.
Moliere, 1 16, 132.
Napoleon, 7 1 .
Naude, 115.
Norsemen, 30, 57, 59.
Ouen, Saint, viii, frontis-
piece.
Paris, viii, 5, 1 1 6.
Parthenon, 17.
Patiens de Lyons, 17.
Pavia, Certosa di, 23.
Philippe le Bel, 56.
Portugal, 136.
Provence, 128.
[H4]
Index
Ravenna, 24. Saint Denis, viii.
Remi, Saint, 26. Sebastian, Saint, 19.
Revolution, 52. Suger, 39, 46, 47, 48.
Rheims, viii, 7, 30.
Richard of Normandy, Tertullian, 50.
60. Thierry, Saint, 63.
Richelieu, 1 1 5. Valencia, 92.
Rodin, 12, 53. Vega, Lope de, 88.
Rollo, 59,73- Vega,Micaelade, 93 .
Rouen vm. Viollet-le-Duc, 1 2
Kumald, 30.
Ruskin, 12. William I, 74, 81, 82.
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