[Footnote 246: In a memoir addressed to the queen in 1334 and composed of one hundred and six articles, the unknown author gives the king's daily rule of life as follows: "Rise at six all the year round—Mass at seven—business till ten—supper at six—to bed at ten—to have his son taught several languages, even Latin, to fit him to travel.">[
But were these enlightened, well-informed, and even learned monarchs satisfied with their own attainments, and did they live in their courts among brutal, ignorant, and coarse warriors who could only talk of combats and gallantry? No; it is well known that their principal vassals, the minor sovereigns, especially those of Southern France, where the learning of Rome was diffused, were not wholly unlettered. In the ninth century, there was the son of a Count (Maguelonne) St. Benedict of Amiane, who was at the head of all the monasteries in France, and who compared, modified, and wrote commentaries on the rules of the various religious orders—Greek as well as Latin; Foulques, Count of Anjou, in the tenth century—yes, in the tenth century, that darkest period of the middle ages—understood Aristotle and Cicero, as has been proved, and in the following century, when the leaders of the crusades assembled at Jerusalem to draw up a code of laws—a civil and political code—charter of citizenship, etc., they evidently understood not only the general customs, but Roman law; and several of them (Iselin, etc.) were no less proficients in the law than valiant knights; [Footnote 247] finally, if the muse of France would trace its ancestry back to former times, it would find two princes, William of Poitiers and Thibaut of Champagne. It is right, then, to leave out the testimony of sovereigns.
[Footnote 247: Robertson, in his introduction to the History of Charles V., is mistaken when he says the middle ages were ignorant of Roman law until the twelfth century. Roman law was not revived by the discovery of a copy of the Pandects at Amalfi: it was always known and practised: it was cited at the tribunals, and generally known during all the middle ages, as demonstrated by Savigny, Histoire du Droit romain au Moyen Age. See also Fauriel, Histoire des Populations méridionales.]
History also certifies a very singular fact: the leaders, the leudes, under the Merovingians, sent their children to the school at the palace "to be initiated in palatial learning." There they underwent examinations, studied the fathers, history, law, religious dogmas, received degrees, etc. This fact is thus explained: these young men were hostages that the king kept at court to insure the fealty of their fathers, no doubt; and the consequence of this truly barbarous idea was to convert a prison into a school and an academy! There was another custom almost as singular: these young men are represented as travelling, even in the earliest ages, in the various countries of Europe—France, Spain, and Italy—and in the East. Yes, notwithstanding the insecurity of the routes, it was the fashion in the seventh century to send young Englishmen to France to be reared, and even in many cases across the Alps to Rome, Padua, etc. Some went to complete their education in Greece, and, after the establishment of the Latin Empire, at Constantinople. These young men apparently belonged to wealthy and noble families. And we would recall the fact that in the schools directed by Clement, a Scotchman, Charlemagne assembled—strange idea!—"a great number of children of all classes from the highest to the lowest rank;" [Footnote 248] that among the pupils of Lanfranc, at the abbey of Bec, were a great number of the children of lords and barons, and, among others, William, Duke of Normandy, and that son of an Italian nobleman who, later, was known as Pope Alexander II. It would appear that these young men did not allow the faculties they had developed to remain unproductive and useless, from the fact that the earliest poets were princes and nobles. But then, poetry is the offspring of the imagination and of genius, and the French race, particularly in the South, are so richly gifted therewith!
[Footnote 248: The monk of St. Gall, mentioned by Phil. le Bas, ibid.]
What is more surprising, the first French historians were two lords: Villehardoin in the twelfth century, and Joinville in the thirteenth—historians not without culture. There are in their language elegance, distinction, and Attic wit. They mention, en passant, and without affectation, names and facts that attest varied knowledge, and their style is so perfect that competent writers have concluded that the nobility moulded the French language to history and poetry—the ideal and the practical! [Footnote 249] It is probably to these studious habits and this inclination for intellectual pursuits, perpetuated for ages like a tradition, is due the delicate and correct taste peculiar to the French nobility of the last two centuries, and the noble ambition of the great lords who have not been satisfied with protecting the arts, but have deemed it an honor to have their historical names inscribed on the list of the academies, have striven to acquire a knowledge of letters, to excel in it, and to add to the lustre of their descent brilliancy of talent and the glory reserved for intellectual labors.
[Footnote 249: Villemain, ibid., Léop. Delisle, A. de la Borderie, Marchegay. See also Audé, Mémoires de la Société d'Emulation de la Vendée, and the works already mentioned of Boutaric, Littré, Pierre Clémnent, etc.]
Finally—for we must collect testimony for the acquittal of the accused—since the judgment has been so severe, the most conscientious and erudite men of modern times, having traversed the middle ages and returned laden with documents, declare that, among the numberless titles that passed through their hands, they never met this formula, so often mentioned: this one, being a nobleman, attests his inability to sign his name.
Yet in spite of these proofs, these attestations, and the authority of the witnesses, there is one fact beyond doubt, the absolute ignorance of the nobility of the middle ages, and we are forced, to our great regret, to conclude that this opinion must be accepted as a historical fact of the same class, and as clearly proved, as the so well authenticated facts of Sixtus V. throwing away his crutches as soon as he was elected Pope, Gilles de Raiz slaughtering his wives like Bluebeard, Charles V. participating in his own funeral rites at St. Just, Marie de Medicis dying of hunger in a garret at Cologne, and Galileo imprisoned in a dungeon of the Inquisition!