Apart from their special virtues, the medicines of the Middle Ages had a very high hygienic value. They were unusually powerful prophylactics. In an article on the “Workmen of Paris,” published some years ago in the Fortnightly Review, I quoted from the Annales of the Institut-Pasteur a series of experiments made by MM. Cadiac and Meunier establishing the microbicide effect of Cingalese cinnamon; while the oil of pinks, the essences of valerian, thyme, citron, rose, etc., employed in almost every mediæval recipe, are each and all more hostile to the microbe than the iodoform treatment employed against typhoid fever in the Paris hospitals to-day. I advance this assertion with all due discretion, since I have never made any single experiment, and am not in a position to control the opinion of experts; but since the vanguard of science admits so high a value in the drugs employed by our benighted ancestors, we may allow that the pleasantries in vogue on the subject are possibly overstated or misplaced.
VII
If the fourteenth-century village was less ill off than we are apt to imagine it in regard to the medicines of the body, it appears that the training of the mind was less absolutely non-existent in the rural class than it has been our habit to assert. Many of the labourers on the farms of Bonis could sign their names, though probably their science in writing ended there. But every tenant-farmer, in an age when the accounts of tenant and landlord were peculiarly complicated, was obliged to know a certain amount of book-keeping: doubtless the steward was often more learned than his lord. Hedge-schools were common;[44] in every considerable village, if not in every hamlet, there was a schoolmaster, appointed generally by the patron of the village living. There was a certain regulated number of parish schools in every county, and this number might not be exceeded: our ancestors never could be brought to recognize the advantages of competition. Certain texts, however, prove the existence of unauthorized hedge-schools, promptly quashed as soon as they came to the knowledge of the authorities.
The Great Plague, which so changed the face of Europe, diminished education by carrying off the schoolmasters. The Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis remarks that, after the epidemic of 1348, there were not enough teachers for the requirements of the houses, hamlets, and castles of his country. Thus the sons of the men who fought at Crecy grew up, though richer, more ignorant than their fathers.
The schools of the fourteenth century were not entirely free; and as a certain proportion of their profits went to the patron, he filled up the gaps as soon as possible. The village priest was often the schoolmaster, and the instruction was always chiefly religious; but the boys were also taught the rudiments of Latin grammar. The ideal of every peasant was to have a son in the Church—a son who might become abbot, bishop, chancellor, cardinal. It was their one great chance of rising in the world. But in the kingdom of the Mind, many are called, few chosen. Of the dozen or so boys who went to every village school (each with a dim idea that perhaps by-and-by he might become a parish priest, or enter some religious order) a fair proportion grew up as stewards or labourers.[45] Some, no doubt, persevered in their original intention; some went to the town, or, tiring of grammar, ‘listed for a soldier; but, alas! we meet with a good many of them in the Registers of the Châtelet. Perhaps—who knows?—these ne’er-do-wells were the most useful of them all, for their depositions in the Court of Justice throw many curious lights on mediæval education. Thus, for example, one Jehannin de la Montaigne, a wandering mason accused of horse-stealing, invokes the privilege of clergy, asserting that he was tonsured at the age of eight years old when he went to school and learned his psalter—“car auparavant qu’il aprenist son dit métier de maçon, il avait esté avec plusieurs enfans d’icelle ville de Château Regnault à l’escole de la dite ville et avoit aprins jusqu’à son Donnet et Catonnet; et lors il savait bien lire.”[46] This Donnet or Donat was the grammatical treatise of the learned Ælius Donatus, that glory of the fourth century, whose vigilant elucubrations were very popular throughout a thousand years. Catonnet, a school-book equally universal, was one century older: it was a paraphrase of the distiches of Dionysius Cato, once a famous philologist. These were both great doctors. To-day, as you see, we scarcely know their names.
The names of these two guides to knowledge were known to Jehannin de la Montaigne, but his science went no further. After a judicious course of torture, he was taken to the kitchen (as was the custom of that guileful age), placed in a comfortable chair before a cosy fire, with a warm mantle round his shoulders and a glass of wine in his hand. Many criminals, obstinate to screw and pulley, succumbed to these more deceiving influences, especially as they succeeded the chill and dismal hour of execution (the torture of the fourteenth century was far less diabolic than that of ages more refined, but it was uncomfortable and rheumatic—pails of icy water being dashed from time to time upon the dislocated patient). Well, to return to Jehannin, whom we choose as an example from a crowd of fellow-sinners—he confessed, as he sat by the kitchen fire, that he was no more a priest than the cook. “But,” added he, “a tonsure is convenient in judicial circumstances. Many of my companion masons had tonsures, and it was they who advised me to get one also, which they said I could do without prejudice, as I have really been to school and could read and write well enough when I left it. Therefore I went to the village and had myself tonsured par un barbier, et non aultrement.” That confession was the end of friend Jehannin; having no longer any claim to the jurisdiction of the Church, he swung forthwith from the neighbouring gallows. “Il n’avoit aucuns biens.”
The courts of the Châtelet were literally encumbered with these sham clerks, who impeded the course of justice by asserting a non-existent benefit of clergy. Not one of them when confronted in the courts of justice with a psalter and a primer could read, write, spell a Pater, or say by heart a Latin prayer. This, however, proves nothing against the system of education, which was probably excellent. The School Board manager of the present day, in an age of unexampled science, knows how easily a boy may pass through half a dozen years of reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, botany, physics, chemistry, Biblical exegesis, and all the other necessaries that no modern ploughboy is complete without; and he emerges no less ignorant than he went in. Yet the boys nowadays stay at school till twelve, or sometimes till fourteen; in those days they left at eight or ten. It is probable that Donnet and Catonnet did not penetrate far into the average inner consciousness. But all were not as ignorant as the good-for-nothings who came before the courts of law for purse-slitting and horse-lifting; these we may probably take as a natural selection of the unfittest. M. Delisle, in his Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age, gives some delicious examples of the demi-Latinity of the learned peasant, which unfortunately I have not got by heart.
VIII
The population of the rural districts of fourteenth-century France varied terribly according to the progress of the Hundred Years’ War. It is difficult to frame a clear idea of then and now. But from the size of the churches remaining from the thirteenth century, which are almost always in accordance with the actual population, we may suppose that the inhabitants have not increased by more than half: we must allow about that proportion, since mediæval churches, built for sanctuary, were obliged to be large enough to shelter not only all the villagers, but also their valuables, in war time. The villages which have come down to us are not immensely larger, but numerous new communes have arisen on land that was covered then by bog or forest.
On the other hand, many villages called into life by the plenty and peace that followed the last Crusade of Saint Louis disappeared utterly in the long disaster of the Hundred Years’ War. The King’s tax-gatherers jolted through the country collecting the hearth-tax; again and again they found, beside the ruined steeple, a few tumbling beams, an empty stock-yard still paven; nothing more. Another village had vanished. The ordonnances of the Kings of France during the first twenty years of Charles V. are painfully eloquent of this continuous depopulation of the country. The wars against the English on the frontiers of Normandy and Gascony accomplished the same end as the cruel repression of the Peasants’ Revolt in the centre, or the sackings and plunderings of the Captains of Adventure round Rheims, round Orleans, and on the borders of Provence. I have dismissed many tragedies in a single phrase; but how in a few lines shall I indicate the terrible position of the peasants? Their grandfathers had dwelt in little hamlets almost under shelter of the town, to whose palisaded suburbs every winter they, with their families, their harvest and their furniture, thronged for asylum. Moreover, in that earlier age, ruled by firm principles still confidently trusted, the peasant was little less sacred than the priest. All classes recognized the holiness, the authority, of him who sows and reaps the grain that is the life of all. No usurer might take in pledge the ploughshare, the beasts that draw it, nor the corn as yet unthrashed. Four days a week, in war time as in peace time, from every Wednesday night till Monday at sunrise, the Truce of God forbade the men-at-arms to traverse field or sheep-walk; moreover, at any time the peasant, threatened by marauders, was safe if he fled to his plough and laid his hand upon it; the man who touched the iron that furrowed the earth was inviolable, and the plough was as sure a sanctuary as the church.[47] But in the thirteenth century the rural populations, overcrowded round their district towns, pushed further and yet further out into the outlying area of moor and forest, till their clearings, far afield, were beyond reach of their earlier centre. In their new home they clustered all year long round the church which they had raised, under protection of the nearest manor. And the years of peace continued and the population swelled. Thus from each Châtellerie sprang new off-shoots; distant hamlets that had forgotten the necessity of a sword-arm to shelter them, paying tribute to their feudal lord, but too far from his fortress to receive any efficient aid in wartime. When the great English war broke out and the long years of invasion, these peasants learned to feel their loneliness. True, their neighbours round the manor-house were little better off; for after Crecy, and after Poictiers, the greater part of the Seigneurs of France were either dead or in the hands of the English. The ransom they had to raise was all their tenants knew of them; bitter songs and proverbs began to fly from mouth to mouth. “Ten of our Seigneurs will cry surrender to the sound of an Englishman’s voice a mile away!” cried Hodge, indignant. Poor Hodge, other miseries were in store for him! The Great Plague, which had emptied the country after Crecy (“la tierce partie du monde mourust”), came again, following Poictiers. When at last the epidemic passed away (having doubled the rate of wage in less than ten years), when the farmer prepared himself to face new economic conditions, he found himself confronted with new dangers. The truce that had followed Poictiers had brought indeed a momentary peace, so that hope began to flourish with the primroses. But the peace that came in the wake of the battles of the fourteenth century was crueller than battle.... The engagements were no longer fought solely by the armed chivalry of a kingdom; the system of regular armies was as yet unknown. In this bitter time of transition, war was chiefly made by mercenary Captains, who led their troops of adventurers in the pay of the highest bidder.