Let this suffice. With the language of sweetness and monastic love we are soon surfeited. Were it not that the crescendo of erotic exaltation ends at last in a jubilee of incomprehensible passion, blending the incoherence of delirium with fragments of theosophy which might have been imported from old Alexandrian sources or from dim regions of the East, a student of our century would shrink aghast from some of these hermaphroditic hymns, as though he had been witness of wild acts of nympholepsy in a girl he reckoned sane.
Through the two centuries which followed Jacopone's death (1306?) the Lauds of the Confraternities continued to form a special branch of popular poetry; and in the fifteenth century they were written in considerable quantities by men of polite education. Like all hymns, these spiritual songs are less remarkable for literary quality than devoutness. It is difficult to find one rising to the height of Jacopone's inspiration. Many of the later compositions even lack religious feeling, and seem to have been written as taskwork. Those, for example, by Lorenzo de' Medici bear the same relation to his Canti Carnascialeschi as Pontano's odes to the Saints bear to his elegies and Baian lyrics. This was inevitable in an age saturated with the adverse ideals of the classical Revival, when Platonic theism threatened to supplant Christianity, and society was clogged with frigid cynicism. Yet even in the sixteenth century, those hymns which came directly from the people's heart, thrilling with the strong vibrations of Savonarola's preaching, are still remarkable for almost frantic piety. Among the many Florentine hymn-writers who felt that influence, Girolamo Benivieni holds the most distinguished place, both for the purity of his style and for the sincerity of his religious feeling. I will set side by side two versions from his book of Lauds, illustrating the extreme limits of devout emotion—the calmness of a meditative piety and the spasms of passionate enthusiasm. The first is a little hymn to Jesus, profoundly felt and expressed with exquisite simplicity[383]:
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Jesus, whoso with Thee Hangs not in pain and loss Pierced on the cruel cross, At peace shall never be. Lord, unto me be kind: Give me that peace of mind, Which in this world so blind And false dwells but with Thee. Give me that strife and pain, Apart from which 'twere vain Thy love on earth to gain Or seek a share in Thee. If, Lord, with Thee alone Heart's peace and love be known, My heart shall be Thine own, Ever to rest with Thee. Here in my heart be lit Thy fire, to feed on it, Till burning bit by bit It dies to live with Thee. Jesus, whoso with Thee Hangs not in pain or loss, Pierced on the cruel cross, At peace shall never be. |
The second is an echo of Jacopone's eulogy of madness, prolonged and developed with amorous extravagance[384]:
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Never was there so sweet a gladness, Joy of so pure and strong a fashion, As with zeal and love and passion Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness. They who are mad in Jesus, slight All that the wise man seeks and prizes; Wealth and place, pomp, pride, delight, Pleasure and fame, their soul despises: Sorrow and tears and sacrifices, Poverty, pain, and low estate, All that the wise men loathe and hate, Are sought by the Christian in his madness. They who are fools for Christ in heaven, Should they be praised peradventure, mourn, Seeing the praise that to them is given Was taken from God; but hate and scorn With joy and gladness of soul are borne: The Christian listens and smiles for glee When he hears the taunt of his foe, for he Glories and triumphs in holy madness. |
Many collections of Lauds were early committed to the press; and of these we have an excellent modern reprint in the Laude spirituali di Feo Belcari e di altri, which includes hymns by Castellano Castellani, Bernardo Giambullari, Francesco Albizzi, Lorenzo de' Medici, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, and the Pulci brothers.[385] Studying this miscellany, we perceive that between the Laude and Ballate of the people there is often little but a formal difference. Large numbers are parodies of amatory or obscene songs, beginning with nearly the same words and intended to be sung to the same tunes. Thus the famous ballad, O vaghe montanine e pastorelle becomes O vaghe di Gesù, o verginelle.[386] The direction for singing Crucifisso a capo chino is Cantasi come—Una donna di fino amore, which was a coarse street song in vogue among the common folk.[387] Vergine, alta regina, is modeled upon Galantina, morosina; I' son quella pecorella upon I' son quella villanella; Giù per la mala via l'anima mia ne va on Giù per la villa lunga la bella se ne va.[388] Others are imitations of carnival choruses noted for their grossness and lewd innuendoes.[389] It is clear that the Laudesi, long before the days of Rowland Hill, discerned the advantage of not letting the devil have all the good tunes. Other parallels between the Florentine Lauds and the revival hymns of the present century might be pointed out. Yet in proportion as the Italian religious sentiment is more sensuous and erotic than that of the Teutonic nations, so are the Lauds more unreservedly emotional than the most audacious utterances of American or English Evangelicalism. As an excellent Italian critic has recently observed, the amorous and religious poems of the people were only distinguished by the difference of their object. Expression, versification, melody, pitch of sentiment, remained unaltered. "Men sang the same strambotti to the Virgin and the lady of their love, to the rose of Jericho and the red rose of the balcony."[390] No notion of impropriety seems to have been suggested by this confusion of divergent feelings. Otherwise, Savonarola would hardly have suffered his proselytes to roam the streets chanting stanzas which are little better than echoes from the brothel or travesties of Poliziano's chorus of the Mænads. The Italians have never been pious in the same sense as the Northern nations. Their popular religious poetry is the lyric of emotion, the lyric of the senses losing self-restraint in an outpouring of voluptuous ecstasy. With them "music is a love-lament or a prayer addressed to God;" and both constituents of music blend and mingle indistinguishably in their hymns. As they lack the sublime Chorales of the Reformation period in Germany, so they lack the grave and meditative psalms for which Bach made his melodies.
The origins of the Italian theater were closely connected with the services of the Laudesi. And here it has to be distinctly pointed out that the evolution of the Sacred Drama in Italy followed a different course from that with which we are familiar in France and England. Miracle-plays and Mysteries, properly so called, do not appear to have been common among the Italians in the early middle ages. There is, indeed, one exception to this general statement which warns us to be cautious, and which proves that the cyclical sacred play had been exhibited at least in one place at a very early date. At Cividale, in the district of Friuli, a Ludus Christi, embracing the principal events of Christian history from the Passion to the Second Advent, was twice acted, in 1298 and 1303. From the scanty notices concerning it, we are able to form an opinion that it lasted over three days, that it was recited by the clergy, almost certainly in Latin, and that the representation did not take place in church.[391] The Friulian Ludi Christi were, in fact, a Mystery of the more primitive type, corresponding to Greban's Mystère de la Passion and to our Coventry or Widkirk Miracles. But, so far as present knowledge goes, this sacred play was an isolated phenomenon, and proved unfruitful of results. We are only able to infer from it, what the close intercourse of the Italians with the French would otherwise make evident, that Mysteries were not entirely unknown in the Peninsula. Yet it seems clear, upon the other hand, that the two forms of the sacred drama specific to Italy, the Umbrian Divozione and the Florentine Sacra Rappresentazione, were not a direct outgrowth from the Mystery. We have to trace their origin in the religious practices of the Laudesi, from which a species of dramatic performance was developed, and which placed the sacred drama in the hands of these lay confraternities.
At first the Disciplinati di Gesù intoned their Lauds in the hall of the Company, standing before the crucifix or tabernacle of a saint, as they are represented in old wood-cuts.[392] From simple singing they passed to antiphonal chanting, and thence made a natural transition to dialogue, and lastly to dramatic action. To trace the steps of this progress is by no means easy; nor must we imagine that it was effected wholly within the meeting-places of the confraternities without external influence. Though the Italians may not have brought the Miracle-play to the perfection it attained among the Northern nations, they were, as we have seen, undoubtedly aware of its existence. Furthermore, they were familiar with ecclesiastical shows but little removed in character from that form of medieval art. Representations of the manger at Bethlehem made part of Christmas ceremonies in Umbria, as we learn from a passage in the works of S. Bonaventura referring to the year 1223.[393] Nor were occasions wanting when pageants enlivened the ritual of the Church. Among liturgical dramas, enacted by priests and choristers at service time, may be mentioned the descent of the Angel Gabriel at the feast of the Annunciation, the procession of the Magi at Epiphany, the descent of the dove at Pentecost, and the Easter representation of a sepulcher from which the body of Christ had been removed. Thus the Laudesi found precedents in the Liturgy itself for introducing a dramatic element into their offices.
Having assumed a more or less dramatic form, the Laud acquired the name of Divozione as early as the middle of the fourteenth century. It was written in various lyric meters, beginning with six-lined stanzas in ottonari, passing through hendecasyllabic sesta rima, and finally settling down into ottava rima, which became the common stanza for all forms of popular poetry in the fifteenth century.[394] The passion of our Lord formed the principal theme of the Divozioni; for the Laudesi were bound by their original constitution to a special contemplation of His suffering upon the cross for sinners. The Perugian Chronicles refer to compositions of this type under the name of Corrotto, or song of mourning. In its highest form it was the passionate outpouring of Mary's anguish over her crucified Son—the counterpart in poetry to the Pietà of painting, for which the Giottesque masters, the Umbrian school, Crivelli, and afterwards Mantegna, reserved the strongest exhibition of their powers as dramatists. We have already seen with what a noble and dramatic dialogue Jacopone da Todi initiated this species of composition.[395] At the same time, the Divozioni and the Lauds from which they sprang, embraced a wide variety of subjects, following the passages of Scripture appointed to be read in church on festivals and Sundays. Thus the Laud for Advent dramatized the Apocalypse and introduced the episode of Antichrist. The story of the Prodigal furnished a theme for the vigil when that parable was used. It was customary to sing these compositions in the oratories after the discipline of the confraternity had been duly performed; and that they were sung, is a fact of importance which must never be forgotten. Every Company had its own collection of dramatic Lauds, forming a cycle of sacred melodramas, composed with no literary end and no theatrical effect in view, but with the simple purpose of expressing by dialogue the substance of a Scripture narrative.