Amenities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac

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СКАЧАТЬ minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and some other remains, for the greater part have been formed by so many metrical narratives and fugitive effusions.

There were periods in which the minstrels were so highly favoured that they were more amply rewarded than the clergy—a circumstance which induced Warton to observe with more truth than acuteness, that “in this age, as in more enlightened times, the people loved better to be pleased than to be instructed.”6 Such was their fascination and their passion for “Largesse!” that they were reproached with draining the treasury of a prince. It is certain that this thoughtless race have suffered from the evil eye of the monkish chroniclers, who looked on the minstrels as their rivals in sharing the prodigality of the great; yet even their monkish censors relented whenever these revellers appeared. It was a festive day among so many joyless ones when the minstrel band approached the lone monastery. Then the sweet-toned Vielle, or the merry Rebeck, echoed in the hermit-hearts of the slumbering inmates; vaulters came tumbling about, jugglers bewitched their eyes, and the grotesque Mime, who would not be outdone by his tutored ape. Then came the stately minstrel, with his harp borne before him by his smiling page, usually called “The Minstrel’s Boy.” One of the brotherhood has described the strolling troop, who

Walken fer and wyde, Her, and ther, in every syde, In many a diverse londe.

      The easy life of these ambulatory musicians, their ample gratuities, and certain privileges which the minstrels enjoyed both here and among our neighbours, corrupted their manners, and induced the dissipated and the reckless to claim those privileges by assuming their title. A disorderly rabble of minstrels crowded every public assembly, and haunted the private abode. At different periods the minstrels were banished the kingdom, in England and in France; but their return was rarely delayed. The people could not be made to abandon these versatile dispensers of solace, amid their own monotonous cares.

At different periods minstrels appear to have been persons of great wealth—a circumstance which we discover by their votive religious acts in the spirit and custom of those days. The Priory of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, in 1102, was founded by “Rahere,” the king’s minstrel, who is described as “a pleasant-witted gentleman,” such as we may imagine a wealthy minstrel, and moreover “the king’s,” ever to have been.7 In St. Mary’s Church at Beverley, in Yorkshire, stands a noble column covered with figures of minstrels, inscribed, “This Pillar made the Minstrels;” and at Paris, a chapel dedicated to St. Julian of the Minstrels, was erected by them, covered with figures of minstrels bearing all the instruments of music used in the middle ages, where the violin or fiddle is minutely sculptured.8

If in these ages of romance and romancers the fair sex were rarely approached without the devotion of idolatry, whenever “the course of true love” altered—when the frail spirit loved too late and should not have loved, the punishment became more criminal than the crime; for there was more of selfish revenge and terrific malignity than of justice, when autocratical man became the executioner of his own decree. The domestic chronicles of these times exhibit such harrowing incidents as those of La Châtelaine de Vergy, where suddenly a scene of immolation struck through the devoted household; or that of “La Dame du Fayel,”9 who was made to eat her lover’s heart. And those who had not to punish, but to put to trial, the affections of women who were in their power, had their terrible caprices, a ferocity in their barbarous loves. Year after year the Gothic lord failed to subdue the immortalised patience of Griselda, and such was our “Childe Waters,” who put to such trials of passion, physical and mental, the maiden almost a mother. In the fourteenth century, one century later than the histories of the “Châtelaine” and the “Dame,” either the female character was sometimes utterly dissolute, or the tyranny of husbands utterly reckless, when we find that it was no uncommon circumstance that women were strangled by masked assassins, or walking by the riverside were plunged into it. This drowning of women gave rise to a popular proverb—“It is nothing! only a woman being drowned.” La Fontaine, probably without being aware of this allusion to a practice of the fourteenth century, has preserved the proverbial phrase in his “La Femme noyée,” beginning,

Je ne suis pas de ceux qui disent ce n’est rien, C’est une Femme qui se noye!10

      The personages and the manners here imperfectly sketched, constituted the domestic life of our chivalric society from the twelfth century to the first civil wars of England. In this long interval few could read; even bishops could not always write; and the Gothic baron pleaded the privilege of a layman for not doing the one nor the other.

      The intellectual character of the nation can only be traced in the wandering minstrel and the haughty ecclesiastic. The minstrel mingling with all the classes of society reflected all their sympathies, and in reality was one of the people themselves; but the ecclesiastic stood apart, too sacred to be touched, while his very language was not that either of the noble or of the people.

      

A dense superstition overshadowed the land from the time of the first crusade to the last. It may be doubtful whether there was a single Christian in all Christendom, for a new sort of idolatry was introduced in shrines, and relics, and masses; holy wells, awful exorcisms, saintly vigils, month’s minds, pilgrimages afar and penances at home; lamp-lighting before shrines decked with golden images, and hung with votive arms and legs of cripples who recovered from their rheumatic ails. The enthusiasm for the figure of the cross conferred a less pure sanctity on that memorial of pious tribulation. Everywhere it was placed before them. The crusader wore that sign on his right shoulder, and when his image lay extended on his tomb, the crossed legs were reverently contemplated. They made the sign of the cross by the motion of their hand, in peril or in pleasure, in sorrow and in sin, and expected no happy issue in an adventure without frequently signing themselves with the cross. The cross was placed at the beginning and at the end of their writings and inscriptions, and it opened and closed the alphabet. The mystical virtues of the cross were the incessant theme of the Monachal Orders, and it was kissed in rapture on the venal indulgence expedited by the papal Hierophant. As even in sacred things novelty and fashion will perversely put in their claim, we find the writers and sculptors varying the appearance of the cross; its simple form

became inclosed in a circle , and again varied by dots .11 The guardian cross protected a locality; and in England, at the origin of parishes, the cross stood as the hallowed witness which marked the boundaries, and which it had been sacrilege to disturb. It was no unusual practice to place the sign at the head of private letters, however trivial the contents, as we find it in charters and other public documents. In one of the Paston letters, the piety of the writer at a much later period could not detail the ordinary occurrences of the week without inserting the sacred letters I.H.S.; and similar invocations are found in others.12

The material symbol of Christianity had thus been indiscriminately adopted without conveying with it the virtues of the Gospel. The cross was a myth—the cross was the Fetish13 of an idolatrous Christianity—they bowed before it, they knelt to it, they kissed it, they kissed a palpable and visible deity; never was the Divinity rendered more familiar to the gross understandings of the vulgar; and in these ages of unchristian Christianity, the cross was degraded even to a vulgar mark, which СКАЧАТЬ