Heretic’s Tragedy, The; A Middle-Age Interlude. (Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.) “It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg Molay, at Paris, A.D. 1314; as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain during the course of a couple of centuries.” [The History.] Molay was Grand Master of the order of the Knights Templars, suppressed by a decree of Pope Clement V. and the general council of Vienne, in 1312. The Knights Templars were instituted by seven gentlemen at Jerusalem, in 1118, to defend the holy places and pilgrims from the insults of the Saracens, and to keep the passes free for such as undertook the voyage to the Holy Land. They took their name from the first house, which was given them by King Baldwin II., situated near the place where anciently the temple of Solomon stood. By the liberality of princes, immense riches suddenly flowed to this Order, by which the knights were puffed up to a degree of insolence which rendered them insupportable even to the kings who had been their protectors; and Philip the Fair, king of France, resolved to compass their ruin. They were accused of treasons and conspiracies with the infidels, and of other enormous crimes, which occasioned the suppression of the Order. The year following, the Grand Master, who was a Frenchman, was burnt at Paris, and several others suffered death, though they all with their last breath protested their innocence as to the crimes that were laid to their charge. These were certainly much exaggerated by their enemies, and doubtless many innocent men were involved with the guilty. A great part of their estates was given to the Knights of Rhodes or Malta. (Butler’s Lives of the Saints—sub May 5.) For half a century before the suppression of the Order, horrible stories about various unholy rites practised at its midnight assemblies had been in circulation. It was said that every member on his initiation was compelled to deny the Lord Jesus Christ, to spit upon and trample under foot a crucifix, and submit to certain indecent ceremonies. It was charged against them that hideous four-footed idols were worshipped, and other things too terrible to narrate were said to be done at these assemblies. Whether these things were true or not, has been hotly disputed ever since the accusations were made. The spitting on the cross seems, at any rate in France, to have been admitted by the accused; many of the worst things confessed were admitted under the most cruel tortures, and are consequently more likely to have been false than true. In Carlyle’s essay on the “Life and Writings of Werner” (Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. i., p. 66: 1888), the whole story of these mysterious rites is discussed. After several pages of quotations from Werner’s drama The Templars in Cyprus, Carlyle says, “One might take this trampling on the Cross, which is said to have been actually enjoined on every Templar at his initiation, to be a type of his secret behest to undermine that institution (the Catholic Church) and redeem the spirit of religion from the state of thraldom and distortion under which it was there held. It is known at least, and was well known to Werner, that the heads of the Templars entertained views, both on religion and politics, which they did not think meet for communicating to their age, and only imparted by degrees, and under mysterious adumbrations, to the wiser of their own order. They had even publicly resisted, and succeeded in thwarting, some iniquitous measure of Philippe Auguste, the French king, in regard to his coinage; and this, while it secured them the love of the people, was one great cause, perhaps second only to their wealth, of the hatred which that sovereign bore them, and of the savage doom which he at last executed on the whole body.”
[The Poem.] The Abbot Deodaet and his monks are singing in the choir of their church about the burning alive of the Master of the Temple two hundred years before. He has sinned the unknown sin, and sold the influence of the Order to the Mohammedan. In a graphic and lurid manner they picture the details of the execution. They have no pity for the victim, and seem to be gloating over his sufferings. They imagine that the victim calls in his agony on the Saviour whom he forsook and traitorously sold; he cries now “Saviour, save Thou me!” The Face upon which he had spat, the Face on the crucifix which he trampled upon, is revealed to the burning man feature by feature; he now sees his awful Judge, his voice dies, and John’s soul flares into the dark. Said the Abbot, “God help all poor souls lost in the dark!”
Notes.—i., Organ: plagal cadence. The cadence formed when a subdominant chord immediately precedes the final tonic chord. ii., Emperor Aldabrod, probably the family name of one of the Greek emperors, but I can find nothing about him. Sultan Saladin, of Egypt and Syria, whose portrait is so faithfully drawn by Sir Walter Scott, in The Talisman. Pope Clement V. (1305-14). Platina, in his life of this Pope, says only a few words on the Templars: “He took off the Templars, who were fallen into very great errors (as denying Christ, etc.), and gave their goods to the Knights of Jerusalem”; clavicithern: an upright musical instrument like a harpsichord. iv., Laudes: a Catholic service associated with Matins. It consists, amongst other devotions, of five Psalms. vi., Salvâ reverentiâ: “saving reverence,” like the “saving your presence” of the Irishman. vii., Sharon’s Rose: Solomon’s Song, ii. 1. The rose was the symbol of secrecy. viii., leman: a sweetheart of either sex.
Hervé Riel. (Published in the Cornhill Magazine, March 1871. Browning received £100 for it, which sum he gave to the Paris Relief Fund, to provide food for the starving people after the siege of Paris. Published in the Pacchiarotto volume in 1876.) The story told in the poem is strictly historical. Hervé Riel was a Breton sailor of Le Croisic, who, after the great naval battle of La Hogue in 1692, saved the remains of the French fleet by skilfully piloting the ships through the shallows of the Rance, and thereby preventing their capture by the English. For this splendid service he was permitted to ask whatever reward he chose to name. The brave Breton asked merely for a whole day’s holiday, that he might visit his wife, the Belle Aurore. Dr. Furnivall says: “The facts of the story had been forgotten, and were denied at St. Malo, but the reports of the French Admiralty were looked up, and the facts established. The war between Louis XIV. and William III. was undertaken by the former with the object of restoring James II. to the English throne. Admiral Turnville engaged the English fleet off Cape La Hogue, and thereby wrecked the French fleet and the cause of James. Apropos of Hervé Riel, Mr. Kenneth Grahame says (Browning Society’s Papers, March 30th, 1883, p. 68*): ‘In Rabelais’ Pantagruel, lib. IV., cap. xxi., Panurge says, ‘... quelque fille de roy ... me fera exiger quelque magnificque cenotaphe, comme feit Dido à son mary Sychee; ... Germain de Brie à Hervé, le nauctrier Breton,’ etc. Then a note says, ‘En 1515, dans un combat naval, le Breton Hervé Primoguet, qui commandoit la Cordelière, attacha son navire en feu au vaisseau amiral ennemi la Regente d’Angleterre, et se fit sauter avec lui. Germain de Brie ou Brice (Brixius) qui celebra ce trait heroique dans un poeme latin, etoit un des amis de Rabelais.’ This was a forerunner of Browning’s hero. The coincidence of names, etc., is curious.”
Hippolytos. (See [Artemis Prologizes].) The Hippolytus of Euripides is the chaste worshipper of Diana (Artemis), who will give no heed to Venus. His step-mother Phædra loves him, and kills herself when she discovers he will not succumb to her attentions.
Hohenstiel-Schwangau. See [Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau].
Holy-Cross Day [On which the Jews were forced to attend an annual Christian Sermon in Rome]. (Men and Women, 1855; Romances, 1863; Dramatic Romances, 1868.)—[The History.] Holy Cross Day, or the Festival of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, falls on September 14th annually. It is kept in commemoration of the alleged miraculous appearance of the Cross to Constantine in the sky at midday. The discovery of the True Cross by St. Helen gave the first occasion of the festival, which was celebrated under the title of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14th, both by the Latins and Greeks, as early as in the fifth or sixth centuries at Jerusalem, from the year 335. (See for the history of the festival Butler’s Lives of the Saints, under September 14th.) The particular details of this poem are not historical, but it is quite true that such a sermon was preached to Jews from time to time, and that they were driven to church to listen to it. A papal bull, issued in 1584, formerly compelled the Jews to hear sermons at the church of St. Angelo in Pescheria, close to the Jewish quarter. The Pescheria or fish market adjoins the Ghetto, the quarter allotted to the Jews by Paul IV. This pope compelled the Jews to wear yellow head-gear; and, among other oppressive exactions, they had to provide the prizes for the horse-races at the Carnival. In a note at the end of the poem Mr. Browning says, “The late Pope abolished this bad business of the Sermon.” The conduct of the popes towards the Jews varied according to the policy or humanity in the character of the pontiff. “In 1442 Eugenius IV. deprived them of one of their most valuable privileges, and endeavoured to interrupt their amicable relations with the Christians: they were prohibited from eating and drinking together. Jews were excluded from almost every profession, were forced to wear a badge, to pay tithes; and Christians were forbidden to bequeath legacies to Jews. The succeeding popes were more wise or more humane. In Naples the celebrated Abarbanel became the confidential adviser of Ferdinand the Bastard and Alphonso II.; they experienced a reverse, and were expelled from that city by Charles V. The stern and haughty Pope Paul IV. renewed the hostile edicts; he endeavoured to embarrass their traffic by regulations which prohibited them from disposing of their pledges under eighteen months; deprived them of the trade in corn and in every other necessary of life, but left them the privilege of dealing in old clothes. Paul first shut them up in their Ghetto, a confined quarter of the city, out of which they were prohibited from appearing after sunset. Pius IV. relaxed the severity of his predecessor. He enlarged the Ghetto, and removed the restriction on their commerce. Pius V. expelled them from every city in the papal territory except Rome and Ancona; he endured them in those cities with the avowed design of preserving their commerce with the East. Gregory XIII. pursued the same course: a bull was published, and suspended at the gate of the Jews’ quarter, prohibiting the reading of the Talmud, blasphemies against Christ, or ridicule against the ceremonies of the Church. All Jews above twelve years old were bound to appear at the regular sermons delivered for their conversion; where it does not seem, notwithstanding the authority of the pope and the eloquence of the cardinals, that their behaviour was very edifying. At length the bold and statesmanlike Sextus V. annulled at once all the persecuting or vexatious regulations of his predecessors, opened the gates of every city in the ecclesiastical dominions to these enterprising traders, secured and enlarged their privileges, proclaimed toleration of their religion, subjected them to the ordinary tribunals, and enforced a general and equal taxation.” (Milman’s History of the Jews, book xxvii.)
[The Poem.] Part of the satire of the poem is in the fictitious extract from the Diary by the Bishop’s Secretary, 1600, prefixed to it. The Bishop looks upon the matter as though he were compelling the Jews to come in and partake of the gospel feast; he flatters himself that many conversions have taken place in consequence of the enforcement of this law, and that the Church was conferring a great blessing on the Jews by permitting them to partake of the heavenly grace. What the Jews themselves thought of the business is told in the poem. The speaker describes the crowding of the church by the Israelites, packed like rats in a hamper or pigs in a stye; to the life the poet hits off the behaviour of the wretched audience, compelled to listen to that which they abhorred, and to pretend to be converted, and to affect compunction and interest in doctrines which they detested. Then the most serious part of the poem begins: the speaker complains that the hand which gutted his purse would throttle his creed, and for reward the men whom he has helped to their sins would help him to their God; then the pathos deepens, and while the pretended converts are going through the farce of acknowledging their conversion in the sacristy, the speaker meditates on Rabbi Ben Ezra’s Song of Death. The night the Jewish saint died he called his family round him and said their nation in one point only had sinned, and he invokes Christ if indeed He really were the Messiah, and they had given Him the cross when they should have bestowed the crown, to have pity on them and protect them from the followers of His teaching, whose life laughs through and spits at their creed. Perhaps, indeed, they withstood Christ then: it is at least Barabbas they withstand now! Let Rome make amends for Calvary. Let Him remember their age-long torture, the infamy, the Ghetto, the garb, the badge, the branding tool and scourge, and this summons to conversion; by withstanding this they are but trying to wrest Christ’s name from the devil’s crew.
Home, D. D.: the Spiritualist medium. See [Mr. Sludge the Medium].