No. 109. The Mote and the Beam.
Nevertheless, these old German, Flemish, and Dutch artists were still much influenced by the mediæval spirit, which they displayed in their coarse and clumsy imagination, in their neglect of everything like congruity in their treatment of the subject with regard to time and place, and their naïve exaggerations and blunders. Extreme examples of these characteristics are spoken of, in which the Israelites crossing the Red Sea are armed with muskets, and all the other accoutrements of modern soldiers, and in which Abraham is preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac by shooting him with a matchlock. In delineating scriptural subjects, an attempt is generally made to clothe the figures in an imaginary ancient oriental costume, but the landscapes are filled with the modern castles and mansion houses, churches, and monasteries of western Europe. These half-mediæval artists, too, like their more ancient predecessors, often fall into unintentional caricature by the exaggeration or simplicity with which they treat their subjects. There was one subject which the artists of this period of regeneration of art seemed to have agreed to treat in a very unimaginative manner. In the beautiful Sermon on the Mount, our Saviour, in condemning hasty judgments of other people’s actions, says (Matt. vii. 3-5), “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye, and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Whatever be the exact nature of the beam which the man was expected to overlook in his “own eye,” it certainly was not a large beam of timber. Yet such was the conception of it by artists of the sixteenth century. One of them, named Solomon Bernard, designed a series of woodcuts illustrating the New Testament, which were published at Lyons in 1553; and the manner in which he treated the subject will be seen in our cut No. 109, taken from one of the illustrations to that book. The individual seated is the man who has a mote in his eye, which the other, approaching him, points out; and he retorts by pointing to the “beam,” which is certainly such a massive object as could not easily have been overlooked. About thirteen years before this, an artist of Augsburg, named Daniel Hopfer, had published a large copper-plate engraving of this same subject, a reduced copy of which is given in the cut No. 110. The individual who sees the mote in his brother’s eye, is evidently treating it in the character of a physician or surgeon. It is only necessary to add that the beam in his own eye is of still more extraordinary dimensions than the former, and that, though it seems to escape the notice both of himself and his patient, it is evident that the group in the distance contemplate it with astonishment. The building accompanying this scene appears to be a church, with paintings of saints in the windows.
No. 110. The Mote and the Beam—Another Treatment.
CHAPTER X.
SATIRICAL LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—JOHN DE HAUTEVILLE AND ALAN DE LILLE.—GOLIAS AND THE GOLIARDS.—THE GOLIARDIC POETRY.—TASTE FOR PARODY.—PARODIES ON RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS.—POLITICAL CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—THE JEWS OF NORWICH.—CARICATURE REPRESENTATIONS OF COUNTRIES.—LOCAL SATIRE.—POLITICAL SONGS AND POEMS.
In a previous chapter I have spoken of a class of satirical literature which was entirely popular in its character. Not that on this account it was original among the peoples who composed mediæval society, for the intellectual development of the middle ages came almost all from Rome through one medium or other, although we know so little of the details of the popular literature of the Romans that we cannot always trace it. The mediæval literature of western Europe was mostly modelled upon that of France, which was received, like its language, from Rome. But when the great university system became established, towards the end of the eleventh century, the scholars of western Europe became more directly acquainted with the models of literature which antiquity had left them; and during the twelfth century these found imitators so skilful that some of them almost deceive us into accepting them for classical writers themselves. Among the first of these models to attract the attention of mediæval scholars, were the Roman satirists, and the study of them produced, during the twelfth century, a number of satirical writers in Latin prose and verse, who are remarkable not only for their boldness and poignancy, but for the elegance of their style. I may mention among those of English birth, John of Salisbury, Walter Mapes, and Giraldus Cambrensis, who all wrote in prose, and Nigellus Wireker, already mentioned in a former chapter, and John de Hauteville, who wrote in verse. The first of these, in his “Polycraticus,” Walter Mapes, in his book “De Nugis Curialium,” and Giraldus, in his “Speculum Ecclesiæ,” and several other of his writings, lay the lash on the corruptions and vices of their contemporaries with no tender hand. The two most remarkable English satirists of the twelfth century were John de Hauteville and Nigellus Wireker. The former wrote, in the year 1184, a poem in nine books of Latin hexameters, entitled, after the name of its hero, “Architrenius,” or the Arch-mourner. Architrenius is represented as a youth, arrived at years of maturity, who sorrows over the spectacle of human vices and weaknesses, until he resolves to go on a pilgrimage to Dame Nature, in order to expostulate with her for having made him feeble to resist the temptations of the world, and to entreat her assistance. On his way, he arrives successively at the court of Venus and at the abode of Gluttony, which give him the occasion to dwell at considerable length on the license and luxury which prevailed among his contemporaries. He next reaches Paris, and visits the famous mediæval university, and his satire on the manners of the students and the fruitlessness of their studies, forms a remarkable and interesting picture of the age. The pilgrim next arrives at the Mount of Ambition, tempting by its beauty and by the stately palace with which it was crowned, and here we are presented with a satire on the manners and corruptions of the court. Near to this was the Hill of Presumption, which was inhabited by ecclesiastics of all classes, great scholastic doctors and professors, monks, and the like. It is a satire on the manners of the clergy. As Architrenius turns from this painful spectacle, he encounters a gigantic and hideous monster named Cupidity, is led into a series of reflections upon the greediness and avarice of the prelates, from which he is roused by the uproar caused by a fierce combat between the prodigals and the misers. He is subsequently carried to the island of far-distant Thule, which he finds to be the resting-place of the philosophers of ancient Greece, and he listens to their declamations against the vices of mankind. After this visit, Architrenius reaches the end of his pilgrimage. He finds Nature in the form of a beautiful woman, dwelling with a host of attendants in the midst of a flowery plain, and meats with a courteous reception, but she begins by giving him a long lecture on natural philosophy. After this is concluded, Dame Nature listens to his complaints, and, to console him, gives him a handsome woman, named Moderation, for a wife, and dismisses him with a chapter of good counsels on the duties of married life. The general moral intended to be inculcated appears to be that the retirement of domestic happiness is to be preferred to the vain and heartless turmoils of active life in all its phases. It will be seen that the kind of allegory which subsequently produced the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” had already made its appearance in mediæval literature.
Another of the celebrated satirists of the scholastic ages was named Alanus de Insulis, or Alan of Lille, because he is understood to have been born at Lille in Flanders. He occupied the chair of theology for many years in the university of Paris with great distinction, and his learning was so extensive that he gained the name of doctor universalis, the universal doctor. In one of his books, which is an imitation of that favourite book in the middle ages “Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ,” Dame Nature, in the place of Philosophy—not, as in John de Hauteville, as the referee, but as the complainant—is introduced bitterly lamenting over the deep depravity of the thirteenth century, especially displayed in the prevalence of vices of a revolting character. This work, which, like Boethius, consists of alternate chapters in verse and prose, is entitled “De Planctu Naturæ,” the lamentation of nature. I will not, however, go on here to give a list of the graver satirical writers, but we will proceed to another class of satirists which sprang up among the mediæval scholars, more remarkable and more peculiar in their character—I mean peculiar to the middle ages.
The satires of the time show us that the students in the universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who enjoyed a great amount of independence from authority, were generally wild and riotous, and, among the vast number of youths who then devoted themselves to a scholastic life, we can have no doubt that the habit of dissipation became permanent. Among these wild students there existed, probably, far more wit and satirical talent than among their steadier and more laborious brethren, and this wit, and the manner in which it was displayed, made its possessors welcome guests at the luxurious tables of the higher and richer clergy, at which Latin seems to have been the language in ordinary use. In all probability it was from this circumstance (in allusion to the Latin word gula, as intimating their love of the table) that these merry scholars, who displayed in Latin some of the accomplishments which the jougleurs professed in the vulgar tongue, took or received the name of goliards (in the Latin of that time, goliardi, or goliardenses).[42] The name at least appears to have been adopted towards the end of the twelfth century. In the year 1229, during the minority of Louis IX., and while the government of France was in the hands of the queen-mother, troubles arose in the university of Paris through the intrigues of the papal legate, and the turbulence of the scholars led to their dispersion and to the temporary closing of the schools; and the contemporary historian, Matthew Paris, tells us how “some of the servants of the departing scholars, or those whom we used to call goliardenses,” composed an indecent epigram on the rumoured familiarities between the legate and the queen. But this is not the first mention of the goliards, for a statute of the council of Treves, in 1227, forbade “all priests to permit truants, or other wandering scholars, or goliards, to sing verses or Sanctus and Angelus Dei in the service of the mass.”[43] This probably refers to parodies on the religious service, such as those of which I shall soon have to speak. From this time the goliards are frequently mentioned. In ecclesiastical statutes published in the year 1289, it is ordered that the clerks or clergy (clerici, that is, men who had their education in the university) “should not be jougleurs, goliards, or buffoons;”[44] and the same statute proclaims a heavy penalty against those clerici “who persist in the practice of goliardy or stage performance during a year,”[45] which shows that they exercised more of the functions of the jougleur than the mere singing of songs.