From a standpoint of historic social life this irreverence to ancient bridge chapels cannot be anything less than horrible, because the earlier England owed all her best qualities to that faith which preceded Protestantism, and which passed without much injury through the terrible alembics of mediæval war and of social egotism. In Shakespeare himself we find a product of the spectacular display which the old Church had encouraged by her festivals; and it is certain also that Shakespeare could not have been a dramatic poet if the Puritanism of his time had been a leading motive-power of public life, and not merely a writer of unpopular books. No pontist should fail to read the early Puritan scribblers, who give in a frenzy of caricature much valuable social history, without a knowledge of which the sixteenth century cannot be understood. Their language is graphic, and so violent that it takes one’s breath away; but in all reprints, as in those of the New Shakespeare Society, it is kept away from the general reader by the dismal pedantry which copies the freakish spelling of sixteenth-century books.
Let me give, with modernised spelling, an abridged extract from an Elizabethan Puritan, Phillip Stubbes, whose “Anatomy of Abuses” has come at last into the history of historians. My aim is to show three things: a spirit of fierce intolerance not yet popular enough to close the theatres of London, but foolish enough to wreck shrines and to take pride in a very bad system of supposed moral teaching. It was the earlier Cromwell who appointed Sir William Bassett, Knight, to the holy office of shrine destroyer and image breaker; and Bassett, whose humour was killed by zealotry, regarded as sinful things even the baths at Buxton, for he locked them up and sealed them, “that none shall enter to wash ... until your lordship’s pleasure be further known.” Into this novel sanctity Phillip Stubbes poured his abundant venom. Being at heart a thorough Puritan, it never occurred to him that it would be better to educate human nature than to take away from it the discipline of temptation. As in earlier times the better minds and characters had sneaked away from life into nunneries and monasteries, so Phillip Stubbes wished mankind to be a recluse, a hermit, separated by stern laws from everything that folly could abuse. Because minstrels and mimics sang many a lewd song, as do fools to-day, Stubbes raged against all itinerant clowns, buffoons, and singers, and demanded that they should be put down; by no other means could men be taught to value a little decency and self-respect. His language runs thus:—
“Such drunken sockets and bawdy parasites range the country, rhyming and singing unclean, corrupt and filthy songs, in taverns, ale-houses, inns, and other public assemblies.... Every town, city, and country is full of these minstrels to pipe up a dance to the devil.... But some of them will reply, and say, ‘What, sir! we have licences from justices of the peace to pipe and use our minstrelsy to our best commodity.’ Cursed be those licences which license any man to get his living with the destruction of many thousands! But have you a licence from the archjustice of peace, Christ Jesus? If you have not ... then may you, as rogues, extravagants, and stragglers from the heavenly country, be arrested of the high justice of peace, Christ Jesus, and be punished with eternal death, notwithstanding your pretended licences from earthly men....”
Briefly, the people had degraded their singers, just as to-day they degrade those Sunday newspapers which have the widest circulation; yet Stubbes believed that the people could be saved from themselves if their victims were condemned to everlasting punishment by “the high justice of peace, Christ Jesus.” In like manner the people were to be improved somehow by the destruction of old votive shrines, or by the desecration of the bridge chapels in which for ages the pilgrims of England had solaced their long journeys. Henry VIII himself, in 1510, is said to have made a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, barefooted, and carrying a rich necklace—a light but expensive gift that did not add to his fatigue. Erasmus visited the same great shrine and kissed the relics, and all at once the Virgin nodded at him, owing to the indiscretion of a priest who pulled some strings. In the fourteenth century thirty-eight shrines drew pilgrims to Norfolk; for illness rambled from place to place, feeding a superstitious piety, and praying for that relief which doctors in their wild ignorance could not give. The shrines of Europe were the only physicians that the sick dared to trust.
GOTHIC BRIDGE WITH SHRINES AT ELCHE IN SPAIN
Many a pilgrim visited the Pont St. Bénézet at Avignon, and legend speaks also of miracles; the good friar was buried in his bridge chapel, and during his life he healed the sick and the maimed. I know not why legend should say these things, since Bénézet did quite enough good work by building his noble structure over the Rhône, a terrible river. A Roman bridge had occupied the same spot, so that Bénézet may have used some of the Roman foundations. His work, in any case, was done with unusual rapidity, being finished in eight years (1177-1185).[98] In Brangwyn’s glorious picture of the Pont St. Bénézet one romantic feature is the friar-architect’s tomb, the venerable Chapel of St. Nicholas; and historians dwell upon the fact that never once has the chapel been injured by floods or by wars. All has been wrecked except the four arches dominated by the shrine of St. Bénézet. Pope Clement VI (1342-1352) had to rebuild four arches; in 1395, during a fierce attack on the palace of the Popes, the bridge was cut by the Catalans and Aragonese, who destroyed an arch; and this breach was not repaired with stone till the year 1418. The masonry was not good, for in 1602 the arch gave way and caused the loss of three others. Disaster followed disaster, two arches falling in 1633 and two in the winter of 1670. Turn to the Sieur Tassin’s “Plans et Profils des principales Villes et Lieux considérables de France,” issued in 1652, and you will find a view of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge, with two arches missing on Barthelasse Island, and three on the great arm of the Rhône. As a rule such gaps were bridged with timber, because a French bridge cut in war could not be repaired until permission had been gained from the foe who had done the damage. This curious fact in mediæval history I take from Viollet-le-Duc; and it may help to explain why the masterpiece of St. Bénézet was allowed to perish.
Bénézet constructed twenty-one[99] arches, and the line of his bridge made an elbow pointing upstream, beyond Barthelasse Island, on the Villeneuve branch of the Rhône. Two ideas governed this angular disposition: first, to thrust into the river a tremendous wedge of arcaded stonework to resist floods; next to thwart an attack by cavalry and infantry; since a bridge with a bend in it would be more difficult to storm than a level and straight footway. In Spain there are several bridges of this angular sort, notably a very long one over the Pisuerga at Torquemada; and in Corsica also there is a fine example, but in caricature, the bridge over the Tavignano being shaped like a Z. Bénézet made another concession to tactical defence: his bridge was only 4 metres 90 wide, including the thickness of the parapets, so it was very narrow in proportion to the nine hundred metres of its length. Just a few soldiers in a line could have walked along it from end to end; and wheeled traffic must have been hindered, for at one point—face to face with the chapel—the roadway dwindled to half its breadth. Even in times when carts and chariots were long and narrow, a journey across this bridge on a market day must have been an adventure.
This cramped road over the Rhône was the only permanent way connecting the Papal territory of Avignon and the French territory of Languedoc. Many troubles arose on this account, and France never rested till she had gained control over the Pont Saint-Bénézet and Avignon. A century after Bénézet’s death the King of France put up a bullying fortress on the right bank, and closed the Villeneuve entrance whenever he liked. For about fifty years Avignon took no steps to counterbalance this attack on her liberties; then a Bastille was built on her side of the river, and now the Pont Saint-Bénézet was nearly as martial as the Bridge of Saintes ([p. 300]) or as the Pont d’Orléans, which from October 12, 1428, to the arrival of Jeanne d’Arc on April 29, 1429, aided Gaucour to baffle the earls of Salisbury and Suffolk. In the eighth year of the fifteenth century the contention between France and Avignon reached a crisis, not at all an infrequent thing in their history; but this crisis of 1408 unseated the Papacy at Avignon, and expelled Benedict XIII, bringing to an end a religious domination which had lasted in the city for ninety-nine years.