Here it is related that Ser Jacomo—to give him his worldly title—was passionately devoted to his young wife, who was ascetic at heart, yet to please her husband wore the rich clothes he gave her, and took part in all the gaieties of the town. A tragic ending to Ser Jacomo's happiness was brought about when, on the occasion of a marriage festival, his beautiful Vanna was killed by the fall of a balcony.
"And when" (says the Vita) "they took off those garments of vanity which she had upon her in order to make her ready for the grave they found at last, next to her bare flesh, a harsh shirt of hair."
The legend goes on to relate that the shock of his wife's death, together with the discovery of her pious fraud, led first to madness and then to the conversion of Jacopone. Nowhere in his subsequent poems is there to be found a reference to his marriage. But this in itself is no proof of the falsity of the story, for, as with most mediæval penitents, the casting off of his old life meant to him the abjuration of earthly ties and memories. Jacopone the saint remains nevertheless Ser Jacomo the passionate lover. No songs in praise of an adored wife or mistress could be more fervid, more palpitating with emotion than those addressed to his Saviour.
It is by means of these religious poems—laude, as they were called—that the successive stages in the progress of the mystic may be traced. But leaving the mystic aside, we may feel grateful to Miss Underhill for having placed the poet before us. Many of his laude, in the English translation of Mrs. Theodore Beck, are given at length in this book, and very beautiful they are. To forget their theme and to consider only their form and imagery is to be reminded of secular Italy of the thirteenth century—its troubadours, its Court poets, its Courts of Love. For nearly forty years after all Jacopone had lived in the world, enjoying its laughter, its gaiety, its sunshine, and the poems of the saint, indicate that he had not forgotten all he learnt as a sinner—that is as an ordinary man of the class to which he originally belonged. "O Queen of all Courtesy," he begins in an address to the Blessed Virgin—and we are immediately transported in thought to a fair garden and a lover with his lute.
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
THE RIDDLE OF THE RUTHVENS AND OTHER STUDIES. By William Roughead. With thirteen Illustrations. William Green & Son Ltd., Edinburgh. 25s. net.
Whether we may consider the reading of criminal annals a profitable occupation or otherwise, it is an unquestionable fact that they often possess a human interest, for the imaginative person at all events, far in excess of the records of the intrigues and policies of kings, statesmen, generals, and priests. And there is a well-nigh unique and special interest attaching to Scottish causes célèbres which places them in importance far above the general run of the great trials of all the other nations of Europe. This is accounted for by the strangely complex psychology of the average and typical Scotsman. He is a being in whom the emotions are strictly subordinated to the government of his reason. He is deeply metaphysical, and there is a powerful forensic strain in his composition. It is seldom indeed that a Scotsman pleads guilty to any charge, even when he has been caught red-handed. To do so would simply spoil for him all the pleasure of the trial, and there is probably no one in court who follows the evidence and pleadings more carefully or with greater zest than the prisoner himself. Were it possible for him to be closeted with the jury, it is quite conceivable that he should be found arguing the pros and cons of the case as forcibly and with as great detachment as any "good man and true" among them. But there is a fatal flaw in the character of the Scot which detracts to a large extent from the interest that one feels in his other traits, namely, the theological tendency which in persons of evil life at last degenerates into pure cant. The condemned prisoner on the scaffold exhorting the multitude "to avoid the heinous crime of disobedience to parents, inattention to Holy Scriptures, of being idle and disorderly, and especially of Sabbath-breaking," is by no means an edifying spectacle. The existence and prevalence of this trait is all the more curious when one considers that the Scot generally is not lacking in a keen sense of humour.
The special value of this collection of historic criminal trials and other juridical studies by Mr. Roughead, however, lies in the fresh light he has been able to throw upon the respective characters of King James the Sixth of Scotland (First of England), the most despicable poltroon that ever disgraced a British throne; and of Lord Braxfield, the prototype of Robert Louis Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston. An old Edinburgh University Professor of Constitutional Law and History used to say that Charles II. was the most iniquitous ruler that England ever had, but James II. was still worse. It was badly expressed, but there was something in it. Its special application was Constitutional, however, although it might easily be extended to apply universally if we allow the addition of the proviso that James I. was the worst of all. He was a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite, full of pedantry and cant. This is conclusively demonstrated in The Riddle Of the Ruthvens, and in other sketches that deal with the witchcraft prosecutions that were conducted with such a degree of vindictiveness and fury throughout the whole of his reign. But perhaps the greatest service of all that Mr. Roughead has done in the cause of truth and justice is his vindication of the respective characters of the much-maligned Lord Braxfield and Robert Fergusson the poet from so many of the absurd eccentricities which have been attributed to them by incompetent biographers and unscrupulous scandalmongers, and have in course of time, by constant repetition, become traditional. It is a far cry from the Gowrie Conspiracy to "Antique" Smith, the forger of the autograph letters of great literary and historical personages, who is still well remembered in Edinburgh, but these are Mr. Roughead's limits, and between them there is such a mass of history and criminal psychology as the student of either will delight in, while the curious, or merely general, reader will find it very good entertainment.