European society, slowly emerging from the mire of Roman manners, at length found itself hungry for beauty, and capable of intelligent use of pearls. The ballet masque was evolved, and long remained the supremely brilliant feature of noble festivities. Polite society, headed by a king, was the founder of the ballet as it is now known. But this was in modern times. The institution that had conserved choreography through the brutishness of the Dark Ages was the Church.
To one Father Menestrier is owed a compilation of data about dancing, especially in relation to religion. The good father was a Jesuit living in the seventeenth century, his book having been written about 1682. While his own comments are not always contributory to exact knowledge of choreographic detail, the facts he collected from a great variety of sources are important and interesting. In the following passage he definitely attaches dancing to the ritual:
“Divine service was composed of psalms, hymns and canticles, because men sang and danced the praises of God, as they read His oracles in those extracts of the Old and New Testaments which we still know under the name of Lessons. The place in which these acts of worship were offered to God was called the choir, just as those portions of comedies and tragedies in which dancing and singing combined to make up the interludes were called choruses. Prelates were called in the Latin tongue, Præsules a Præsiliendo, because in the choir they took that part in the praises of God which he who led the dances, and was called by the Greeks Choregus, took in the public games.”
The word “præsul” was the designation of the chief priest of the Salii, of early Rome.
Quoting from St. Basil’s Epistle to St. Gregory, Menestrier writes further: “What could be more blessed than to imitate on earth the rhythm of angels?” (“Quid itaque beatius esse poterit quam in terra tripudia Angelorum imitari?”) To this he adds: “Philosophers have also existed who believed that these spirits had no other means of communication among themselves but signs and movements arranged after the manner of dances. After this we need not be surprised that Virgil, in the sixth book of the Æneid, makes the spirits dance in the Elysian fields.”
The Emperor Julian was reproved by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, not for dancing, but for the kind of dances with which he occupied himself. “If you are fond of dancing,” said the saint, “if your inclination leads you to these festivals that you appear to love so passionately, dance as much as you will; I consent. But why revive before our eyes the dissolute dances of the barbarous Herodias and the Pagans? Rather perform the dances of King David before the Ark; dance to the honour of God. Such exercises of peace and piety are worthy of an emperor and a Christian.”
No more need be quoted to explain the adoption of dancing by the Church, and the regard in which it was held by the reverend fathers. By some of them, that is. Others held it in different estimation. Odon, Bishop of Paris, proscribed dancing in the twelfth century. Notwithstanding, the fifteenth and sixteenth see in Spain the so-called Villancicos de Navidad (a choreographic celebration of the birth of Christ) and the dances of the Seises, then as now performed in the Cathedral of Seville. The latter were authorised in 1439 by a Bull of Pope Eugenius IV. Their discontinuance was ordered by Don Jayme de Palafox, Archbishop of Seville. To settle the matter the Seises were taken to Rome and their dances shown to the Pope, who as a consequence approved their continuance.
France, too, declined to take the proscription seriously, as almost numberless documents and images attest. In 1584 the Canon of Langres, by name Jehan Tabourot, otherwise Thoinet Arbeau, wrote (in his seventieth year) his work called Orchesographie. He refers cheerfully to opposition: “We practice such merrymaking on days of wedding celebrations, and of the solemnities of the feasts of our Church, even though the reformers abhor such things; but in this matter they deserve to be treated like some hind-quarter of goat put into dough without lard.” (“Mais ils mériteroient d’y être traictez de quelque gigot de bouc mis en paste sans lard.”) Not an infelicitous metaphor, after inquiry reveals that dough without lard bakes to the hardness of concrete, so that the aid of a hammer is necessary to crack the shell. What more satisfying disposal of dissenters from one’s own opinions?
Proofs of the dance’s tenacious inclination to embody itself in the worship of the vital new religion are many. Records of efforts to establish it are mingled with those of counter-efforts to expel it; on the one side a belief that worship is an emotional expression, on the other a leaning toward logic. Whether religious uplift is a matter of emotion or of reason is a question perhaps not wholly settled yet. Certainly the mediæval writers recorded little to reflect a spirit of compromise—no concession that ritual or logic might advantageously be chosen with some reference to the psychology of the individual. At the suggestion of the Council of Toledo, a ritual rich in sacred choreography was composed by Saint Isidore, archbishop of Seville in the seventh century. Another century produced two occurrences of choreographic importance at about the same moment: from Pope Zacharias, a prohibition of dancing; from the Moorish invasion, preservation of the seven churches of Toledo. Of the two influences, the latter was deemed paramount. In the seven churches a mass known as the Mozarabe was established, continued in all of them through the generations of Moorish occupancy of the city, and is still celebrated daily in the cathedral. In the other six churches it was discontinued toward the middle of the nineteenth century. With accompaniment of the tambourine, whose resonance Saint Isidore characterised as “the half of melody,” the service included solemn dancing of the style of the Saraband and the Pavane. Whether or not the choreographic features are still retained, the authors are unable to say.
Writing in 1731 a Discourse on Comedy, Father Pierre le Brun contributes the information: “ ... that while the preachers were saying their mass, buffoons, histrions, players of instruments and different other farceurs were made to come; this disorder is severely forbidden, as well as dances and the presentation of spectacles in the churches and cemeteries. The same prohibition is found in the synodic statutes of the diocese of Soissons, printed in that city in 1561. Dances were sometimes performed before the church, and there was not less objection made against the practice at that time.... Meanwhile it is disgracefully tolerated in some of the country parishes.”