JOVINIAN THE PROUD EMPEROR.
In the days of old, when the empire of the world was in the hands of the lord of Rome, Jovinian was emperor. Oft as he lay on his couch, and mused upon his power and his wealth, his heart was elated beyond measure, and he said within himself: “Verily, there is no other god than me.”
It happened one morning after he had thus said unto himself, that the emperor arose, and summoning his huntsmen and his friends, hastened to chase the wild deer of the forest. The chase was long and swift, and the sun was high in the heavens, when Jovinian reined up his horse on the bank of a clear bright stream that ran through the fertile country on which his palace stood. Allured by the refreshing appearance of the stream, he bade his attendants abide still, whilst he sought a secluded pool beneath some willows, where he might bathe unseen.
The emperor hastened to the pool, cast off his garments, and revelled in the refreshing coolness of the waters. But whilst he thus bathed, a person like to him in form, in feature, and in voice, approached the river’s bank, arrayed himself unperceived in the imperial garments, and then sprang on Jovinian’s horse, and rode to meet the huntsmen, who, deceived by the likeness and the dress, obeyed his commands, and followed their new emperor to the palace gates.
Jovinian at length quitted the water, and sought in every direction for his apparel and his horse, but could not find them. He called aloud upon his attendants, but they heard him not, being already in attendance on the false emperor. And Jovinian regarded his nakedness and said: “Miserable man that I am! to what a state am I reduced! Whither shall I go? Who will receive me in this plight? I bethink me there is a knight hereabout whom I have advanced to great honor; I will seek him, and with his assistance regain my palace, and punish the person who has done me this wrong.”
Naked and ashamed, Jovinian sought the gate of the knight’s castle, and knocked loudly at the wicket.
“Who art thou, and what dost thou seek?” asked the porter, without unclosing the gate.
“Open, open, sirrah!” replied the emperor, with redoubled knocks on the wicket.
“In the name of wonder, friend, who art thou?” said the old porter as he opened the gate, and saw the strange figure of the emperor before the threshold.
“Who am I, askest thou, sirrah? I am thy emperor. Go, tell thy master, Jovinian is at his gate, and bid him bring forth a horse and some garments, to supply those that I have been deprived of.”
“Rascal,” rejoined the porter—“thou the emperor! Why, the emperor but just now rode up to the castle, with all his attendants, and honored my master by sitting with him at meat in the great hall. Thou the emperor! a very pretty emperor indeed; faugh, I’ll tell my master what you say, and he will soon find out whether you are mad, drunk, or a thief.”
The porter, greatly enraged, went and told his lord how that a naked fellow stood at the gate, calling himself the emperor, and demanding clothes and a good steed.
“Bring the fellow in,” said the knight.
So they brought in Jovinian, and he stood before the lord of the castle, and again declared himself to be the emperor Jovinian. Loud laughed the knight to the emperor.
“What, thou my lord the emperor! art mad, good fellow? Come, give him my old cloak; it will keep him from the flies.”
“Yes, sir knight,” replied Jovinian, “I am thy emperor, who advanced thee to great honor and wealth, and will shortly punish thee for thy present conduct.”
“Scoundrel!” said the knight, now enraged beyond all bounds, “traitor! thou the emperor! ay, of beggars and fools. Why, did not my lord but lately sit with me in my hall, and taste of my poor cheer? and did not he bid me ride with him to his palace gate, whence I am but now returned? Fool, I pitied thee before; now I see thy villany. Go, turn the fellow out, and flog him from the castle-ditch to the river-side.”
And the people did as the knight commanded them. So when they ceased from flogging the emperor, he sat him down on the grass, and covered him with the tattered robe, and communed on his own wretchedness.
“Oh, my God!” said Jovinian,—for he now thought of other gods but himself,—“is it possible that I have come to such a state of misery, and that, through the ingratitude of one whom I have raised so high!” And as he thus spake, he thought not of his own ingratitude to his God, through whom alone all princes reign and live. And now he brooded over vengeance—“Ay,” said he, as he felt the sore weals on his back from the scourging; “ay, I will be avenged. When he next sees me, he shall know that he who gives can also take away. Come, I will seek the good duke, my ablest counsellor; he will know his sovereign, and gladly aid him in his calamity.” And with these thoughts he wrapped his cloak round him, and sought the house of the good duke.
Jovinian knocked at the gate of the duke’s palace, and the porter opened the wicket, and seeing a half-naked man, asked him why he knocked, and who he was.
“Friend,” replied the emperor, “I am Jovinian. I have been robbed of my clothes whilst bathing, and am now with no apparel, save this ragged cloak, and no horse; so tell the duke the emperor is here.”
The porter, more and more astonished at the emperor’s words, sought his master, and delivered Jovinian’s message to him.
“Bring in the poor man,” said the duke; “peradventure he is mad.”
So they brought Jovinian unto the duke’s great hall, and the duke looked on him, but knew him not. And when Jovinian reiterated his story, and spoke angrily unto the duke, he pitied him. “Poor mad fellow,” said the good duke, “I have but just now returned from the palace, where I left the very emperor thou assumest to be. Take him to the guard-house. Perhaps a few days’ close confinement on bread and water may cool his heated brain. Go, poor fellow; I pity thee!”
So the servants did as their lord commanded, and they fed Jovinian on bread and water, and after a time turned him out of the castle; for he still said he was the emperor.
Sorely and bitterly did the emperor weep and bewail his miserable fate when the servants drove him from the castle gate. “Alas, alas!” he exclaimed in his misery, “what shall I do, and whither shall I resort? Even the good duke knew me not, but regarded me as a poor madman. Come, I will seek my own palace, and discover myself to my wife. Surely she will know me at least.”
“Who art thou, poor man?” asked the king’s porter of him when he stood before the palace gate and would have entered in.
“Thou oughtest to know me,” replied Jovinian, “seeing thou hast served me these fifteen years.”
“Served you, you dirty fellow,” rejoined the porter. “I serve the emperor. Serve you, indeed!”
“I am the emperor. Dost thou not know me? Come, my good fellow, seek the empress, and bid her, by the sign of the three moles on the emperor’s breast, send me hither the imperial robes, which some fellow stole whilst I was bathing.”
“Ha! ha! fellow; well, you are royally mad. Why, the emperor is at dinner with his wife. Well, well, I’ll do thy bidding, if it be but to have the whipping of thee afterwards for an impudent madman. Three moles on the emperor’s breast! how royally thou shalt be beaten, my friend.”
When the porter told the empress what the poor madman at the gate had said, she held down her head, and said, with a sorrowful voice, unto her lord: “My good lord and king, here is a fellow at the palace gate that hath sent unto me, and bids me, by those secret signs known only to thee and me, to send him the imperial robes, and welcome him as my husband and my sovereign.”
When the fictitious emperor heard this, he bade the attendants bring in Jovinian. And lo, as he entered the hall, the great wolf-hound, that had slept at his feet for years, sprang from his lair, and would have pulled him down, had not the attendants prevented him; whilst the falcon, that had sat on his wrist in many a fair day’s hawking, broke her jesses, and flew out of the hall: so changed was Jovinian the emperor.
“Nobles and friends,” said the new emperor, “hear ye what I will ask of this man.”
And the nobles bowed assent, whilst the emperor asked Jovinian his name, and his business with the empress.
“Askest thou me who I am, and wherefore I am come?” rejoined Jovinian. “Am not I thy emperor, and the lord of this house and this realm?”
“These our nobles shall decide,” replied the new king. “Tell me now, which of us twain is your emperor?”
And the nobles answered with one accord: “Thou dost trifle with us, sire. Can we doubt that thou art our emperor, whom we have known from his childhood? As for this base fellow, we know not who he is.”
And with one accord the people cried out against Jovinian that he should be punished.
On this the usurper turned to the empress of Jovinian—“Tell me,” said he, “on thy true faith, knowest thou this man who calls himself emperor of this realm?”
And the empress answered: “Good my lord, have not thirty years passed since I first knew thee, and became the mother of our children? Why askest thou me of this fellow? and yet it doth surprise me how he should know what none save you and I can know?”
Then the usurper turned to Jovinian, and with a harsh countenance rebuked his presumption, and ordered the executioners to drag him by the feet by horses until he died. This said he before all his court; but he sent his servant to the tailor, and commanded him to scourge Jovinian; and for this once to set him free.
The deposed emperor desired death. “Why,” said he to himself, “should I now live? my friends, my dependents, yea, even the partner of my bed shuns me, and I am desolate among those whom my bounties have raised. Come, I will seek the good priest, to whom I so often have laid open my most secret faults: of a surety, he will remember me.”
Now the good priest lived in a small cell, nigh to a chapel about a stone’s-cast from the palace gate; and when Jovinian knocked, the priest, being engaged in reading, answered from within: “Who is there? why troublest thou me?”
“I am the emperor Jovinian; open the window, I would speak to thee,” replied the fugitive.
Immediately the narrow window of the cell was opened, and the priest, looking out, saw no one save the poor half-clothed Jovinian. “Depart from me, thou accursed thing!” cried the priest; “thou art not our good lord the emperor, but the foul fiend himself, the great tempter.”
“Alas, alas!” cried Jovinian, “to what fate am I reserved, that even my own good priest despises me! Ah me, I bethink me—in the arrogance of my heart, I called myself a god: the weight of my sin is grievous unto me. Father, good father, hear the sins of a miserable penitent.”
Gladly did the priest listen to Jovinian; and when he had told him all his sins, the good priest comforted the penitent, and assured him of God’s mercy, if his repentance was sincere. And so it happened that on this a cloud seemed to fall from before the eyes of the priest; and when he again looked on Jovinian he knew him to be the emperor, and he pitied him, clothing him with such poor garments as he had, and went with him to the palace gate.
The porter stood in the gateway, and as Jovinian and the priest drew near he made a lowly obeisance, and opened the gate for the emperor. “Dost thou know me?” asked the emperor.
“Very well, my lord,” replied the servant; “but I wish that you had not left the palace.”
So Jovinian passed on to the hall of his palace; and as he went, all the nobles rose and bowed to the emperor; for the usurper was in another apartment, and the nobles knew again the face of Jovinian.
But a certain knight passed into the presence of the false emperor. “My lord,” said he, “there is one in the great hall to whom all men bow, for he so much resembleth you that we know not which is the emperor.”
Then said the usurper to the empress: “Go and see if you know this man.”
“Oh, my good lord,” said the empress, when she returned from the hall, “whom can I believe? are there, then, two Jovinians?”
“I will myself go and determine,” rejoined the usurper, as he took the empress by her hand, and, leading her into the great hall, placed her on the throne beside himself.
“Kinsfolk and nobles,” said the usurper, “by the oaths ye have sworn, determine between me and this man.”
And the empress answered: “Let me, as in duty bound, speak first. Heaven be my witness, I know not which is my lord and husband.”
And all the nobles said the same.
Thereupon the feigned Jovinian rose and spake: “Nobles and friends, hearken! that man is your emperor and your master; hear ye him; know that he did exalt himself above that which was right, and make himself equal unto God. Verily he hath been rewarded; he hath suffered much indignity and wrong, and, of God’s will, ye knew him not; he hath repented him of his grievous sin, and the scourge is now removed; he has made such satisfaction as man can make. Hear ye him, know him, obey him.”
As the feigned emperor thus addressed the astonished nobles, his features seemed illumined with a fair and spiritual light, his imperial robes fell from off him, and he stood confessed before the assembly an angel of God, clothed in white raiment. And, as he ended his speech, he bowed his head, and vanished from their sight.
Jovinian returned to his throne, and for three years reigned with so much mercy and justice, that his subjects had no cause to regret the change of their emperor. And it came to pass, after the space of three years, the same angel appeared to him in a dream, and warned him of his death. So Jovinian dictated his troublous life to his secretaries, that it might remain as a warning unto all men against worldly pride, and an incitement to the performance of our religious duties. And when he had so done, he meekly resigned himself, and fell asleep in death.
“So much for the story, as a story; now for the moral, with all that eccentric spirit of refinement and abstraction with which the age was characterized,” said Herbert.
“The moral in this case is less eccentric than in many to which I hope we shall come before Christmas is over.”
“Jovinian was but the picture of the proud, worldly-minded man, entirely given up to vanity and folly. The first knight whose castle he visited was True Wisdom, ever disdainful of the pomps and vanities of the world. The next knight was Conscience. The dog that turned against his old master, was the lusts of the flesh, our own evil desires, which will ever in the end turn against those who have pampered them. The falcon is God’s grace; the empress, man’s soul; and the clothes in which the good priest clothed the half-frozen emperor, are those kingly virtues which he had thrown off, when he gave loose rein to the vanities of the world.”
“It must be admitted,” remarked Herbert, “that from very early times a secondary meaning was commonly attached to every important work; it progressed from the sacred writings through the poetic fictions of the classics, to compositions professedly allegorical. The want of discrimination, which in our eyes assumes much of the appearance of profane levity, with which the fictions of the classics were interpreted to signify the great truths and mysteries of religion, was, perhaps, hardly reprehensible in the simple state of knowledge which prevailed at the time when these attempts at secondary interpretation were made.”
“And hence it was,” said Lathom, “that in the early ages it might seem to partake of little levity to prefigure our Saviour’s birth in that of Bacchus; his sufferings and death in that of Actæon, or his resurrection in the legend of Hercules, as related by Lycophron; as late as the thirteenth century the Franciscan Walleys wrote a moral and theological exposition of the Metamorphoses of Ovid.”
“But surely the writers of that age did not stop there,” said Thompson; “was it not the case, that to these expositions succeeded compositions professedly allegorical, and which the spirit of refinement of that age resolved into further allegories, for which they were never intended?”
“Undoubtedly so!” replied Lathom; “it was not enough that the writer of the ‘Romaunt of the Rose’ had allegorized the difficulties of an ardent lover in the accomplishment of his object, under the mystery of the rose which was to be gathered in a fair but almost inaccessible garden. Every profession saw in this allegory the great mystery of their craft. To the theologian it was the rose of Jericho, the New Jerusalem, the Blessed Virgin, or any other mystery to which obstinate heretics were unable to attain; to the chemist it was the philosopher’s stone; to the lawyer it was the most consummate point of equity; to the physician the infallible panacea, the water of life; and does not this spirit of allegory extend to the present day, only in a somewhat different form?”
“Not unlike the present system of commentating,” remarked Henry Herbert. “As soon as a poet has attained to any great reputation, and death has sealed up his writings, then comes the host of annotators and critics, each one more intent than his predecessor to develop the mind of the writer, to discover with what hidden intentions, with what feelings, this or that passage was written, and to build on some stray expression a mighty theory, for some more clever writer to overthrow, and raise a new fabric on its ruins. And in these attempts it is not the old author whose glory is sought to be heightened, but the new man who would ascend the ladder of reputation on the labors of the ‘man of old.’”
“Far different,” rejoined Lathom, “was the spirit which prompted the fashion of resolving every thing into allegories in the middle ages; nor, indeed, is it to be solely charged to an unmeaning and wanton spirit of refinement. ‘The same apology,’ says Wharton, ‘may be offered for cabalistic interpreters, both of the classics and of the old romances. The former, not willing that those books should be quite exploded which contained the ancient mythology, labored to reconcile the apparent absurdities of the pagan system with the Christian mysteries, by demonstrating a figurative resemblance. The latter, as true learning began to dawn, with a view of supporting for a time the expiring credit of giants and magicians, were compelled to palliate those monstrous incredibilities, by a bold attempt to unravel the mystic web which had been woven by fairy hands, and by showing that truth was hid under the gorgeous veil of gothic invention.’ And now, Thompson, we must adjourn, you to your real Greeks and Romans, Herbert and I to Aristotle’s Summum Bonum.”
