Burgundy: The Splendid Duchy. Stories and Sketches in South Burgundy

by Percy Allen

This, the most vivid historian of his time, was a wild, unbalanced, eccentric visionary, whom one of his uncles, himself a monk, had dedicated to the same vocation, in the hope that monkish discipline would cure his natural perversities. The hope was not fulfilled, for Raoul the Bald, always restless and dissatisfied, wandered, in turn, from monastery to monastery, appearing successively at St. Bénigne de Dijon, Moutier St. Jean, St. Germain d'Auxerre, Béze, and Cluny, finding only in St. Guillaume and St. Odilon, at the first and last named houses, masters of calibre enough to calm his troubled spirit, and encourage his literary bent.

But, wherever he might be dwelling, Raoul remained an unhappy man, a victim of a disordered and powerful imagination. He himself tells us of the frequent visions to which he was subject; visions not without interest as throwing light upon the mental condition of the time. At Moutier appeared to him Guillaume de St. Bénigne, who, laying his hand upon the bald head, said gently; "Do not forget me, I beg of you, if it be true that I have sincerely loved you; accomplish rather, such is my desire, the work you have promised to me."[132]

Not all his visions were so consoling. Conscience often brought the devil to his dreams. He saw one night, standing at the foot of his bed, "A hideous little monster. He was of middle height, with a thin neck, a skinny figure, eyes very black, a narrow and wrinkled forehead, a flat nose, a wide mouth, swollen lips, chin short and tapering, a goat's beard, straight ears, hair dirty and stiff, dog's teeth, the back of his head pointed, a protruding belly, a hump on the back, hanging buttocks and dirty clothing. His whole body appeared to be animated by a convulsive and desperate activity. He seated himself on the edge of my bed and proceeded to say to me; 'You will not remain here much longer,' then ground his teeth and repeated; 'You shall not stay here any longer.' I jumped out of bed; I ran to prostrate myself at the foot of the altar of Father Benedict; I recapitulated all the sins I had committed since my childhood, whether by negligence or perversity."

This strange work of his, which recounts in a chaotic, tortured manner, without order and without literary grace, though with extraordinary vividness and effect, the chief social, political, and religious events of the period dating from 900 to 1046, is the most highly coloured, yet, at the same time, the most sincere and the most valuable document we possess concerning the first half of the eleventh century in Burgundy. The book deals only briefly with the political events of his time, but is extraordinarily prolix concerning monks and marvels, which are a source of constant bewilderment to his troubled brain.

For poor Raoul never attained the calm assurance of the established Christianity of his day, nor came near to realizing the monkish ideals of Cluny and Citeaux. His book is full of dreadful visions, such as the one we have already described. He sees the powers of evil lurking and prowling after men, as lions that lie in wait for their prey. No Christian charity is found in him, no tenderness, no hope; only the spirit of revolt, of discontent, of disgust; superstitious fear and hallucinations chasing one another through his tortured mind, until, at last, with despairing appeals to the Divine pity, he falls into nervous crises which paralyse his mental and physical action.

Nor was so terrible a state of mind then unnatural to any timid ones, whose temperament forbade them to shelter soul, as well as body, within the safe fold of the church. The events which Raoul himself describes as happening, within his own experience, here, in this district round Tournus, are such as might well wreck all but the strongest minds, or those fortified by an incorruptible faith in the good providence of God. Look at his picture of the famine of 1031, and you will cease to wonder that, in those days, men dreamed strange dreams.

"Famine commenced to desolate the universe, and the human race was threatened with imminent destruction. The temperature (seasons) became so contrary that no fitting time was found to sow the land, none favourable to the harvest, chiefly on account of the water with which the fields were flooded. One would have said that the elements, enraged, had declared war on one another, when, they were, in fact, but obeying Divine vengeance in punishing the insolence of men.... This avenging scourge had first begun in the East; after having ravaged Greece, it passed to Italy, spread among the Gauls and spared not even the people of England. All men equally felt its attacks. The great, those of middle estate and the poor, all had their mouths equally famished, the same pallor was upon their foreheads; for even the violence of the great had given way at last to the common dearth. When they had fed on beasts and birds, that resource once exhausted, hunger was no less keenly felt, and, to appease it, men must needs resort to devouring corpses, or even, to escape death, uproot the trees in the woods, pluck the grass in the streams; but all was useless, for against the wrath of God there is no refuge save God Himself. Alas! must we believe it? Fury of hunger renewed those examples of atrocity so rare in history, and men devoured the flesh of men. The traveller, assaulted on the road, succumbed to the blows of his aggressors. His limbs were torn, grilled on the fire, and devoured. Others, flying their country to escape famine, received hospitality on the road, and their hosts slew them in the night that they might furnish food. Others lured children away with the offer of an egg or an apple, and immolated them to their hunger. In many a place corpses were unearthed to serve for these sad repasts. One wretch dared even to carry human flesh to the market of Tournus, to sell it cooked for that of animals. He was arrested and did not attempt to deny his crime; he was garrotted, then thrown to the flames. Another, during the night, stole this flesh that they had buried in the earth; he ate it, and was also burned.

"Three miles from Mâcon, in the forest of Châtigny, is an isolated church consecrated to St. John. Not far from there, a scoundrel built a cabin, where he cut the throats of any passers-by, or travellers who stopped with him. The monster then fed upon their bodies. One day, a man came there with his wife, to ask for hospitality, and rested a few moments. But, throwing his glance round all the corners of the cabin he saw the heads of men, women and children. Immediately he is troubled, he grows pale, he would leave; but his cruel host endeavours to keep him there by force. The fear of death doubles the traveller's strength; at last he escapes with his wife, and runs with all haste to the town. There he hastens to communicate this frightful discovery to Count Otho and all the other inhabitants. They send instantly a large number of men to verify the fact; they press forward, and on their arrival find the wild beast in his haunt, with forty-eight heads of men whom he had butchered, and whose flesh he had already devoured. They take him to the town, hang him up to a beam in a cellar, then throw him to the flames. We, ourselves, were present at his execution."

"They tried, in the same province, a means which was not, we believe, adopted elsewhere. Many persons mixed a white earth, like clay, with any bran or flour they might have, and made loaves therewith to satisfy their cruel hunger. The faces of all were pale and emaciated, the skin drawn tight and swollen, the voice shrill and resembling the plaintive cry of dying birds. The great number of the dead forbade any thought of their burial, and the wolves, attracted for a long time past by the odour of corpses, came to tear their prey. As they could not give separate burial to all the dead, because of their great number, men full of the Grace of God, dug, in many places, ditches, commonly called "Charniers," into which they would throw five hundred bodies, and sometimes more when they would hold more; they lay there mixed pell mell, half naked, often without any clothing. The cross-ways, the ditches in the fields, served as burial places.