Studies in Mediæval Life and Literature

by Edward T. McLaughlin

"Could I answer love like thine,
All earth to me were heaven anew;
But were thy heart, dear child, as mine,
What place for love between us two?
Bright things for tired eyes vainly shine:
A grief the pure heaven's simple blue.
Alas, for lips past joy of wine,
That find no blessing in God's dew!
From dawning summits crystalline
Thou lookest down; thou makest sign
Toward this bleak vale I wander through.
I cannot answer; that pure shrine
Of childhood, though my love be true,
Is hidden from my dim confine:
I must not hope for clearer view.
The sky, the earth, the wrinkled brine
Would wear to me a fresher hue,
And all once more be half-divine,
Could I answer love like thine."

The spiritual subtlety of such a mood certainly is beyond the mediæval poets, yet we find pleasant proofs of sensibility to the tender, unselfish nature of a loving child. Nowhere in such detail, perhaps, as in the most familiar of Middle High German poems, the Poor Henry, of Hartmann von Aue. The story is known in Longfellow's Golden Legend. This is not the place to discuss that poem, which contains some charming passages. The poet's treatment may be far from satisfactory, yet when he calls his original the most beautiful of mediæval legends, he certainly shows a more satisfactory side of extreme estimate than does Goethe, in his curious fling at the poem (which we may notice he read in a modernized form). He says it gave him a "physico-æsthetic pain," and adds that the notion of a fine girl sacrificing herself for a leper, affected him so that he felt himself poisoned by the book. This judgment was pronounced in Goethe's later life, and is consistent with his habitual want of sympathy with mediæval romantic literature. It shows, moreover, a lack of historical adjustment, for the dreadful disease was so common in the twelfth century that its repulsiveness was blurred for Hartmann; yet he mentions it with the greatest reserve, though a description of its appearance could hardly be more painful than the famous conclusion of the De Rerum Natura. We are reminded of Goethe's visit to Assisi, interesting to him only as the situation of some remains of classical architecture.[10]

Hartmann von Aue ranks below his two great companions in German narrative poetry, for he is more of a translator than either Gottfried or Wolfram. His distinction is in his style; he has a very agreeable way of telling a story, and there is a quiet charm about his diction. "How clear and pure his crystal words are and always must be," is Gottfried's tribute. We come to feel a personal liking for him, through his unaffected interest in his characters, his unassuming ways and the tact by which he lightens or deepens his accentuation. We feel that he was a gentleman, and we do not wonder at the kind regard in which all his fellow poets held him. We like his refined moral seriousness and that calm temperament of which he speaks in Gregorius. The original for the Arme Heinrich is lost, but though his introduction claims for himself no merit beyond a careful selection out of the many books that he takes pains to tell us he was learned enough to read for himself, we are probably justified in feeling that he took his heart into partnership when he made the version, receiving from it touches that he did not find in the earlier treatment. To appreciate the poem we have to put ourselves into harmony with the wonder-loving, credulous, and mystically religious world of seven hundred years ago. Hartmann's simple earnestness and unobtrusive tenderness and piety constitute an ideal manner for the legend, and that ease of his soul which he hoped would come through the prayers of those who read the poem after his death, is perhaps equally well secured if he knows how some of his verses touch the sophisticated sense of to-day. He said that he was actuated in writing by the desire to soften hard hours in a way that would be to the honor of God, and by which he might make himself dear to others. He has succeeded. It is to the honor of God, and it wins the affection of others, when a poet leads his readers to a little well of pure unselfish love, hedged about by a child's religious faith.

The hero of the legend is a gentleman of position and feudal possessions, whose free and generous career is cut short by an incurable leprosy. It is in vain that he consults masters at Montpelier and Salerno, the famous seats of medicine; and the honor and affection in which a genial life had established him among his friends cannot save him from becoming a social outcast. He disposes of his wealth between the poor and the church, and retires to a fief whose tenant is willing to receive his suzerain as a guest. Here, on a little estate, away from all contact with the world, the gay lord resigns himself to the companionship of the farmer and his wife, whose gratitude for his kindness in the past distinguishes them among the multitude to whom his amiable disposition had made him a benefactor and friend. There were children in the family, the eldest a girl eight years old, when Henry came. It was because their hearts were loyal that her parents were kind, but she kept close by him because she loved to be there. She was always to be found at his feet, and his affectionate nature liked her companionship. He bought her a hand mirror, a riband for her hair, a belt and finger ring, and whatever children care for. These gifts attached her to him, yet the main secret of her love was the sweet spirit that God had given her. After three years, as the family were sitting together one day with their high-born guest, the farmer asked him why it was that he had given himself up so hopelessly to his disease, and Henry laid aside his reserve, and told for the first time about his visit to the great physician at Salerno. The only remedy was an impossible one. He might indeed be healed, but not unless a virgin made a voluntary offering of her life. Alas, God was his only physician.

The little girl, who was so inseparable a companion that he jestingly called her his bride, listened as she was holding her sick lord's feet in her lap. She could not get it out of her head (the old German idiom is better, "out of her heart") the rest of the day, and when at night she lay in her usual place at her father's and mother's feet, she felt so sorry for her dear lord that she cried, and the warm tears fell on her parents' feet, and woke them. When they asked her what was the matter, she said that she thought they ought to be sorry, too; for what would happen to them all if their lord should die? Some one else would own the farm, and no one could ever be as kind to them as he had been. They told her that was all true, but it could do no good to lament. "Dear child, do not grieve. We feel as badly as you do, but alas, we cannot help him." So they hushed her, but all the night and the next day she continued to be unhappy, and whatever else she was doing, she kept thinking of this. When she went to bed, she cried again, till finally she resolved to herself that if she lived till morning she would surely give her life for her lord. Straightway from that thought, she became light-hearted and happy, and felt free of all her cares, until it occurred to her that perhaps Henry and her parents would not permit her to make the sacrifice; whereupon the poor little girl burst out crying again, and wakened her parents, as she had done the night before. It was only with difficulty that they drew from her this simple speech: "My lord might get well in the way that he told us, and if you will only let me, I am what he needs for being cured. I am a maid, and rather than see him pass away, I will die for him." A long dialogue follows, in which the parents remonstrate with the daughter, who replies in a strain of spiritual elation. She appeals not only to her parents' worldly dependence on their master's goodness, but also to their desire for her own highest welfare. How much better for her to pass to eternal life in unstained childhood, only anticipating the death that must come some time, no less unwelcome late than soon. Her parents ceased to remonstrate, for they felt that the Holy Ghost was speaking through her, as they listened to the visionary cry. Instead of taking, two or three years hence, some neighbor for her husband, she will choose

"the Franklin, who is wooing me to a home where the plough runs easily, where there is all abundance, where horses and cattle never are lost, where no wailing children suffer, where it is neither too warm nor too cold, where the old will grow young, where is nor frost nor hunger, no kind of pain, but all joy without toil; thither will I haste me, and forsake a farm whose tillage, fire, hail, and flood destroy, so that one half-day ruins the labor of a year. Then let me go to our Lord Jesus Christ, whose grace is sure, and who loves me, poor as I am, like a queen."

Unlike our modern analysts of character, Hartmann does not stop to comment on the art of his delineation, and it is possible to miss the tact with which he keeps his heroine's renunciation consistent with a child's nature. Hartmann is not treating this character inartistically, as a mere instrument for religious culture. Earnest speech of a thoughtful parish priest; or phrases caught from the conversation of her lord touched by his sorrows, with the age's feeling de contemptu mundi, might have supplied her with some sentiments that seem beyond a child's invention, and children's emotions are sometimes precocious, especially in what seems a morbid religious development.

Those are the years of faith, credulous belief that burns with the white light of knowledge; a child's faith is a man's superstition. The peasant maid's imagination sees heaven and salvation a fact so infinitely desirable, that all dread of death was eliminated from the path of her love. The joyousness of her sacrifice, too, instead of being a romantic exaggeration, is far truer to life than a willingness touched with pain and hesitation could have been. In a noble dread, austerely controlled, lies Calvary's dignity and pathos. But her gratitude and impetuous love for what seems to her simple mind a superior and infinitely deserving object, reached that finest pitch of selfishness, where self-sacrifice becomes the demand of impulsive egotism. To an enthusiastic temperament love's passionate altruism may be consummate self-will. As the little maid came away from her deliverance, though she was happy in her lord's restoration, she was less happy than as she went.

For she did not have to die. In the tyranny of undeniable love, she broke down the opposition of her parents, and although Henry indeed hesitated, she pleaded so anxiously and drew such an eloquent sketch of the advantage and gladness death would be to her, and the value of his life compared with hers, that at last, genial and affectionate as he was, the temptation to live by the sacrifice of a mere child's life (and the feudal sense of possession ought not to be overlooked) was too strong to be resisted. Compare the scene with the one in Philaster, where Bellario wishes to offer herself for the man whom she loves with a hopeless earthly sentiment:

"'Tis not a life,
'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."