XIII
In the castles of the fourteenth century, the men no less than the women were religious. The middle class, and especially the respectable bourgeois man of letters, affected a certain freedom of thought: he was already the father of Voltaire and the grandfather of the speech-making Jacobins of the French Revolution. But all that was changed among the nobility. There it was essential (even as it is among the nobles of France to-day), however light of life, to be grave of thought. The education of every knight made him instinctively religious. Even the scapegrace Louis of Orleans would pass weeks together in the Convent of the Celestines, praying, fasting with the monks before the altar. And a perfect knight was habitually not only pious, but austere.
The Livre des Faiz de Messire Jehan Bouciquaut gives us an admirable picture of a pattern of chivalry. The great Governor of Genoa (whom the documents of the Florentine archives reveal to us as an insupportable martinet, dogmatic, obstinate, and tyrannical, despite his virtues) appears in these pages in the inner splendour of a noble soul. Every morning he rose at dawn, “that the first-fruits of his day might be consecrate to God,” and we learn with some surprise that this poet of courtly ballads, this soldier, this statesman, gave every morning of his life three consecutive hours to his “œuvre d’oraison,” as infallibly renewed at night. At table, while his household were served in gold and silver, he ate and drank from pewter, glass, or wood; however rich the banquet, he partook but of one dish, the first served, with one glass of wine and water.
“He loves to read the fair books of God, the lives of the saints, the deeds of the Romans, and ancient history; but he talks little and will listen to no slander.... Marvellously hateth he liars and flatterers, and driveth them from him.... Marvellously hateth he also all games of chance and fortune, and never consenteth to them.... Those virtues which be contrary to lubricity are steadfast in him.... He is stern and to the point in justice, yet faileth he not in mercy and compassion.... He is very piteous to the ancient men-at-arms who can no longer help themselves, who have been good blades in their time, but have laid by nothing, and so are sore distressed in their old age.... And with all his heart loveth he those who are of good life, fearing and serving our Lord Jesus Christ.... He oweth no debts.... He never lies; and all that he promiseth, so much doth he perform.”
We are content to end our studies with the portrait of so true a knight.
THE END
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Flour de Brousso,” par Arsène Vermenouze. [Imprimerie Moderne. Aurillac. 1896.]
[2] Pages Libres, No. 103.
[3] See the Comptes des Frères Bonis, merchants at Montauban during the second half of the fourteenth century, published (1890) by M. Ed. Forestier. Bonis himself possessed in the vicinity of Montauban lands and houses to the value of sixty or seventy thousand pounds sterling, modern value;—which did not prevent his selling his goods with his own hands, down to the smallest detail.
[4] See Bonis, ccviii. Among Bonis’ servants the swineherd, Jean Chaussenoire, bought a vineyard; the neatherd, Salona, two houses in town; another neatherd, a house on the banks of the Aveyron. In 1366, under the English, a shepherdess comes to Bonis and entrusts him with her savings: three and thirty pounds! Bonis’s valet, a man at wages of five pounds a year, possessed enough land to take 430 litres (two septiers) of wheat at the sowing: from six to eight acres of land.
[5] Léopold Delisle, L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age. See pp. 8-17, an account of the position of the hospites, who, often burghers in the town, were little better than serfs in the country.
[6] For example, the Marmosets of Charles V.; but this king also knighted numerous burghers of Paris.
[7] For the full description of the origin and class of vavassours, we refer our reader to L. Delisle, L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age.
[8] Bonis.
[9] Thorold Rogers, i. 16.
[10] History of Prices, loc. cit., and p. 66.
[11] See especially the treatise on gardening in the Menagier de Paris. There is also a valuable chapter on the kitchen-garden in M. L. Delisle’s L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age. Most of the plants quoted were already grown in the gardens of Charlemagne.
[12] Delisle, p. 221.
[13] Delisle, p. 616.
[14] Thorold Rogers, i. 54.
[15] Delisle, p. 583.
[16] Régistres du Châtelet, i. p. 3; and ii. pp. 100, 351, 370, 460, and 461.
[17] Bonis, cxcvii.
[18] Régistres du Châtelet: varlet thatcher, one sol and his keep (i. 393). Joubert, Vie privée en Anjou: hedgers paid per day, one sol and their food (p. 98). Thorold Rogers: for mowing an acre, 8½d.; harvesters for carting corn, one sol two deniers, and their food (i. 255).
[19] Régistres du Châtelet, i. 427, 448, 558, et passim; and ii. 497.
[20] Bonis, p. cxciii.
[21] See the farm inventory in Joubert’s Vie Privée en Anjou au XVme. siêcle.
[22] Joubert.
[23] Comptes des Frères Bonis, Marchands de Montauban, publié par M. Edouard M. Forestier, 1890, p. ccx.
[24] Châtelet, ii. 509: “They took the bed, pulled the straw out of it, threw it in the chimney, and set fire to it.”
[25] Thorold Rogers, History, i. 13.
[26] See Vaissière, Gentilshommes Campagnards de l’Ancienne France; see also Thorold Rogers, History of Prices, i. 13. See ibid., inventory of John Senekworth’s effects, for the furniture of a Cambridgeshire manor in 1314. We notice six sheets, a mattress, a coverlet, a counterpane, a “banker” or stuffed cushion for a bench, three cushions, three table-cloths and two napkins, two drinking glasses, four silver spoons, basin and ewer, two silver seals, and three books of romance!
[27] Douët d’Arcq, ii. 139. 6.
[28] Joubert, La Vie Privée en Anjou.
[29] Léopold Delisle, L’Agriculture Normande, p. 189.
[30] Régistres du Châtelet for 1392, i. 174.
[31] Ibid., 427.
[32] Ibid., 526.
[33] Delisle, L’Agriculture Normande, 189.
[34] L’Agriculture Normande.
[35] Ibid., 190.
[36] L’Agriculture Normande, 190.
[37] Joubert, Vie Privée en Anjou, p. 94.
[38] Joubert, Vie Privée en Anjou, p. 60.
[39] Bonis, cxxi.
[40] All these remedies are taken from the Accounts of Bonis, loc. cit., et seq.
[41] Henri de Parville, “Revue des Sciences,” in the Journal des Débats, 23rd January, 1890.
[42] Thorold Rogers, i. 399.
[43] Bonis.
[44] Joubert, p. 60. But see especially for this subject the masterly passage of M. Léopold Delisle, L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age, p. 175, et seq.
[45] It will be remembered that in the Third Order of St. Francis special provision is made for laymen who can read, evidently a considerable class.
[46] Registres du Châtelet, ii. 103.
[47] See D. Bessin, Concilia, part i., p. 78, quoted by Delisle, p. 116.
[48] Eustache Deschamps, Ballades, édition du Marquis de Queux de St. Hilaire. Ballade 835.
[49] In the disastrous years immediately preceding the accession of Charles V., the price of corn doubled.
[50] Eustache Deschamps, ii.
[51] Voyage du Seigneur de Caumont, quoted by Viollet-le-Duc, op. cit., v. p. 83.
[52] See, for instance, Douët d’Arcq, Comptes de l’Hotel des Rois de France.
[53] Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V.
[54] The “chamber” generally consisted of bed-curtains, a baldaquin, counterpane and covering for the couch or sofa, hangings for the wall, doors, and windows, cushions for the benches and chairs.
[55] The Knight of La Tour makes a mock of certain eccentric “Gallois” who strew their floors and deck their hearths, in winter, “comme en esté,” with herbs and holly.—p. 242.
[56] Labarte, Mobilier de Charles V.
[57] Le Livre du Chevalier de La Tour Landry.
[58] “Après mengier al miédi, et lors tout nuz il se couçoit, dormir deux heures, puis levoit” (Philippe Mouskes: Chronique).
[59] Quoted by Herr Alwin Schultz, op. cit., i. 362.
[60] See, for instance, the Comptes de la Trémoille and the Comptes de l’Hotel des Rois.
[61] “Les Lais de France,” par J. Bédier: Revue des Deux Mondes, Oct. 15, 1891.
[62] Guillaume de Dole. Quoted by Herr Alwin Schultz, t. i. p. 470.
[63] Douët d’Arcq, Comptes de l’Hotel du Roy Charles V.
[64] Le Victorial, Chronique de Don Pedro Niño, Comte de Buelna, par Gutierre Diaz de Gomez, son Alferez, 1379-1449. Traduit de l’Espagnol d’après le manuscrit, avec une introduction et des notes, par le Comte Albert de Circourt et le Comte de Puymaigre.
[65] Les Amours de Ponthus et de la belle Sidonie is the name of a once famous romance of chivalry.
[66] Le Petit Jehan de Saintré, édition Guichard.
[67] Quoted from Herr Alwin Schultz, op. cit., t. i. p. 215.
[68] Ballades d’Eustache Deschamps, in five volumes. Edited by the Marquis de Queux de St. Hilaire.