The Normans, or the men of the north, were as fond of these brilliant standards as the nations of the Mediterranean. When they sailed on a warlike expedition, or when they celebrated a victory over pirates, they covered their vessels with flags. The poet Benoît de Sainte-More tells us that it was in this fashion, covered with seven hundred banners of different colours, that Rollo brought his fleet back up the Seine to Meulan. The Middle Ages made use of all kinds of fanciful decorations for their vessels; during the Renaissance, this taste was renewed and was an improvement both upon the customs of antiquity, whence it drew its inspirations, and on those of the thirteenth century, which it seemed anxious to forget (Fig. 95). “A galley,” says the learned M. Jal, “was in those days a species of jewel, and was handed over for embellishment to the hands of genius as a piece of metal was given to Benvenuto Cellini.” Sculptors, painters, and poets combined their talents to adorn a ship’s stern. No more striking example of this artistic refinement in naval ornamentation could be well quoted than that of the Spanish galley which was constructed in 1568 by order of Philip II. for his brother, Don Juan of Austria, to whom he had confided the command of the fleet intended to fight the barbarous Moorish States of Africa. The vessel’s cutwater was painted white and emblazoned with the royal arms of Spain, and with the personal ones of Don Juan. The prince being a Knight of the Golden Fleece, and the adventurous expedition on which he was bound being likely to be attended with as many perils as that of the Argonauts, the history of Jason and of the good ship Argo was represented in coloured sculpture on the stern above the rudder. This pictured poem was accompanied with four symbolical statues—Prudence, Temperance, Power, and Justice, above which floated angels carrying the symbols of the theological virtues. On one side of the poop might be seen Mars the Avenger, Mercury the Eloquent, and Ulysses stopping his ears against the seductions of the Sirens; on the other, Pallas, Alexander the Great, Argus, and Diana. Between these were inserted pictures, which conveyed either a moral lesson for the benefit of the young admiral, or a delicate eulogium on Charles V., his father, or on Philip II., his brother. All these emblems were chefs-d’œuvre of drawing and sculpture, which the brilliancy of their gold, azure, and vermilion settings tended to enhance.
Fig. 95.—Man-of-War of the Sixteenth Century.—Drawn by William Barendsz and engraved by Visscher, from the Collection of Engravings in the National Library of Paris.
A noticeable incident in the above description is its incongruous mixture of Christian and Pagan allegories. It bears witness to the anti-religious tendency of the school of thought of the Renaissance, and is a faithful reflection of the alteration in custom and belief. In the Middle Ages, sailors, and indeed all classes of society, were imbued with a strong spirit of faith, tinged, however, with a great deal of superstition. As in our day, they had a sincere belief in Providence, and professed great devotion to the Virgin; in seasons of peril they invoked those saints who were supposed to take special interests in ships and sailors; but, in spite of their natural reverence for religion, they allowed themselves to be influenced by childish superstition, and confused the promptings of their orthodox faith with all kinds of vain imaginings. Sailors have ever been superstitious; their credulous brains are the parents of all the fantastic beings and animals that they persuade themselves they have seen in their wanderings, and with which they have peopled the mysterious depths of the ocean. The sirens of antiquity, the monsters of Scylla and Charybdis, have been far surpassed by modern legendary creations, such as the kraken, a gigantic mass of pulp, which attacked and dragged down the largest ships; the bishop fish, which, mitre on head, blessed and then devoured shipwrecked mariners; the black hand, which, even in the days of Columbus, was depicted on the map as marking the entrance to the sunless ocean; and the numerous troops of hideous demons, one of whom, in the sight of the whole French fleet of Crusaders on their way to attack the island of Mitylene, in the reign of Louis XII., clutched and swallowed up a profligate sailor, who, over his dice, had “blasphemed and defied the Holy Virgin.”
Blasphemy was by no means uncommon among seamen; in spite of the laws of the Church and the regulations of the Admiralty, they insisted on using the most frightful oaths; they swore continually by bread, by wine, and by salt, meaning thereby the very principles of life itself, and by their soul—an oath which was forbidden on pain of the severest punishment. Yet the mariners of the Middle Ages had strong reasons for avoiding open blasphemy, for, an offence against Heaven being considered far more criminal than any injury to mankind, a blasphemer was liable to fine, to the cat, and to death itself. Even in the thirteenth century the Danish code inflicted a comparatively moderate punishment on a thief; it shaved his head, tarred and feathered him, and made him run the gauntlet of the whole crew, after which it contented itself with dismissing him from his ship.
Fig. 96.—Seal of La Rochelle (1437).
THE CRUSADES.
Arab Conquest of the Holy Land.—Swarm of Pilgrims in the Year 1000.—Turkish Invasion of Judea.—Persecution of the Christians.—Pope Silvester II.—Expedition of the Pisans and the Genoese.—Peter the Hermit.—Letter from Simeon the Patriarch to Pope Urban II.—First Crusade.—Expedition of “Gautier sans Avoir.”—Godefroy de Bouillon.—The Kingdom of Jerusalem.—Second Crusade.—St. Bernard.—Third Crusade: Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion.—Fourth Crusade.—Fifth and Sixth Crusades.—Louis IX. turns Crusader.—Seventh Crusade.—St. Louis taken Prisoner.—Eighth and last Crusade.—Death of St. Louis.—Results of the Crusades.
