Nearly one hundred and fifty years before the supposed date of Roswitha’s birth, the hitherto untamed and warlike Saxons had been finally defeated by the mercenaries of Charlemagne, and, as one of the signs of submission, forced to embrace Christianity. But having submitted, they forthwith, and with an aptitude suggestive of the spirit of the modern Japanese, set themselves to appropriate, assimilate, and remodel for their own use, the rudiments of the civilisation with which they found themselves brought into contact. So speedy and so thorough was the transformation, that scarce a century passed ere the once powerful Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne bowed down before the strenuous Saxons, to whom the supreme power was transferred. Their Chief was elected king of the Germans, and some fifty years later their king, Otho the Great, after being crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, the former centre of Frankish rule, received the Imperial Crown from the Pope in Rome. This displacement of the political centre was naturally followed by a complete displacement of artistic centres. Both these sides of life were fostered by Otho with a keen personal interest—the building up of his empire and the encouragement of art going hand in hand. Moreover, owing to his close ties with Italy and the East, and the element of classic tradition inevitably induced by such ties, art received an added stimulus and grace. Oriental monks were to be found in the monasteries. Learned men and artists were summoned from Italy and Constantinople. The number and influence of these were increased when Otho’s son, afterwards Otho the Second, married Theophano, a Greek princess, who, bringing many compatriots in her train, sought to reflect in her German home something of the learning and splendour of the Byzantine Court. The ivory, shown in illustration, commemorating this marriage, is an example of the work of some Byzantine craftsman in her employ, whilst the jewelled and gold-wrought cover of the Gospels of St. Emmeran (now at Munich) shows to how high a level the goldsmith’s art of the time had been raised by the influences alluded to.

Perhaps the one place which retains in the most varied and concentrated form the traces of this wave of artistic development then passing over Germany, is Hildesheim. This is of interest here because the bishops of Hildesheim were specially appointed to perform the office of consecration of nuns at Gandersheim. It seems hardly possible that Roswitha could have seen its gifted bishop Bernward, himself a painter, and a worker in mosaic and metals, though owing to the uncertainty of the date of her death—one chronicler making it as late as 1002—it is just possible that she may have done so. Bernward’s learning and artistic nature attracted the attention of the princess Theophano, who appointed him tutor to her son, the boy-emperor Otho the Third. Brought thus into touch with the many gifts presented on special occasions to the young Emperor by Greek and Oriental princes, as well as by “Scots” (i.e. Irish missionaries and emigrants settled in Germany), he, by taking with him to Court, from the School of Art established in his palace at Hildesheim, apt and talented youths, made use of these rare and beautiful offerings for the encouragement of the study of divers arts. Students also accompanied him when he went farther afield for study, for it is said of him that there was no art which he did not attempt, even if he failed to attain perfection.[7] Hildesheim thus became famous as a working-centre of fine art, especially in metals, and remained so down to the end of the Middle Ages. After a lapse of nearly a thousand years, the result of the labours of this artistic prelate and his pupils may still be seen in situ as it were. Besides jewelled service-books, there are chalices, incense burners, a gold candelabrum, and a jewelled crucifix, fashioned, if not in part by him, at least under his supervision. The entrance to the Cathedral is beautified with delicately wrought bronze doors, modelled, it may be, from those of Sta. Sabina, Rome, themselves considered to be of Oriental origin,[8] and in the transept rises a column adorned with bronze reliefs from the life of Christ, probably designed by the bishop either after his pilgrimage to Rome in 1001, when he had seen Trajan’s column, or, as a recent writer suggests, from the “Juppiter and giant columns” of Roman Rhineland.[9]

We are tempted to recall other princesses whose marriages, and even more whose personalities, have influenced art and letters, but two must suffice us—the one, the beautiful and cultivated Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard the Second, whose bridal retinue was in reality a small Court of literary and artistic personages; the other, the brilliant Valentine Visconti of Milan, sister-in-law of King Charles the Sixth of France, whose influence in matters of art and literature alone, at a time when England and France were so intimately associated, makes her of special interest to us.

But what bearing, it may be asked, had Court life on the life of the nun Roswitha in the convent of Gandersheim? To answer this question we must recall briefly the position of the early religious houses, and especially those of Saxony. Many of the foundations were royal, and, in return for certain privileges, were obliged to entertain the king and his retinue whenever he journeyed. Such sojourns naturally brought a store of political, intellectual, and other information to the favoured house. Added to this, the abbess of such a house, generally a high-born and influential woman, was, in her position as a ruler of lands as well as of communities, brought into direct contact with the Court and with politics. To her rights of over-lordship were attached the same privileges and duties as in the case of any feudal baron. She issued summonses for attendance at her Courts, at which she was represented by a proctor, and, when war was declared, she had to provide the prescribed number of knights. In some cases her influence was supreme, even in imperial affairs, extending also to matters social and literary. Roswitha tells us how much she herself owed to the two successive abbesses under whose rule she lived, for suggestion, information, and encouragement in her literary work.

The convents of Saxony, as many elsewhere in the tenth and eleventh centuries, were centres of culture in the nature of endowed colleges. In some of them women resided permanently, and besides their religious exercises, devoted themselves to learning and the arts, for the Church of the Middle Ages took thought for the intellect as well as for the soul. In others, no irrevocable vows were made, and if desire or necessity arose, the student inmate was free to return to the world. In others again, though residence was permanent, short leave of absence from time to time was granted by the abbess, and the nun was able to sojourn with her friends, or to visit some sister community. But at Gandersheim the rule was strict, and a nun, her vows once taken, had to remain within the convent walls. Yet even so, life there was perhaps far less circumscribed than in many a castle, where the men gave themselves up to war and the chase, and the women perforce spun and embroidered and gossiped, since to venture without the walls was fraught with difficulty and sometimes with danger. Even if there were some who cared to read, and who would fain go in imagination to other scenes and times, MSS. were difficult to come by, and costly withal. Wholly different was it in the religious houses. In these, women associated with their equals, with whom they could interchange ideas, and the library was well furnished with MSS. of classical and Christian writers. One of the first cares of St. Benedict, in the case of every newly founded house, was the formation of the library. So held in honour did this tradition become, and so assiduously was it pursued, that the status of a monastery or a convent, as a centre of learning, came to be estimated by its wealth in MSS. Besides the mass of transcribing which such rivalry occasioned, there was illuminating to be done, musical notation to be studied and prepared for the services of the Church, chants and choir-singing to be practised, and the needful time to be devoted to weaving and embroidery—a part of every woman’s education. Weaving had of necessity to be done in every convent in order to provide the requisite clothing for its inmates, and the large and often elaborate hangings used for covering the walls. Embroidery, on the other hand, was no mere occupation, or even a craft, but in truth a fine art. The few specimens still preserved give some idea of the quality of the work, whilst old inventories attest the quantity. Illuminated MSS. of the Gospels and the Apocalypse were lent from royal treasuries, and their miniatures were copied, with needle and silk, to adorn vestments and altar hangings. Then at Gandersheim, as we have already said, the occasional visits of princely travellers brought interest and diversion from the outside world. It was in an atmosphere such as this that Roswitha passed her days.

Of her work, the metrical legends seem her earliest effort. In these, though they are mainly based on well-known themes, Roswitha shows much originality in description. Whilst they need not detain us, passing reference may be made to two of them—the Passion of St. Pelagius of Cordova, and the Fall and Conversion of Theophilus—since their subject matter is of value to us to-day. The one interests us because, in relating that the story was told her by an eye-witness of the martyrdom in A.D. 925 (Acta SS. Jun. V.), she shows that communication existed between that great intellectual centre, Cordova, and Germany, a fact that must have had considerable influence on art and literature; the other as being the story out of which the Faust legend was developed.

After these legends, we turn to her panegyric on the Emperor Otho. This she opens by acknowledging her debt to the Abbess Gerberg, niece of Otho the Great, for aiding her in her literary work with her superior knowledge, and for giving her the necessary information concerning the royal doings. Then by humbly likening her mental perplexity and fear on entering upon so vast a subject to the feelings of one who has to cross a forest in winter when snow has obliterated the track, she in a few words pictures for us the natural wooded surroundings of the convent. Her poem—for such it really is—then sets forth the personal history of this monarch and his predecessors, rather than public events, and is thus of value more on account of its poetical than its historical quality. But one episode, picturesque in its quaint setting, and interesting historically because its stirring details are not to be found elsewhere, is worthy of record. It centres round Adelheid, the young and beautiful widow of Lothair, a Lombard king. Taken prisoner by his successor, the tyrant Berengarius, she is immured in a castle on the Lago di Garda, and threatened with a forced marriage with the son of her oppressor. This threat seems to endow her with superhuman power. Bidding defiance to all difficulty and danger, she contrives gradually to dig a secret way through the soft earth, and suddenly finds herself free. Dawn is just breaking. But how can she make use of her freedom before her guards awake and discover her escape? Quickly is her mind made up. But let Roswitha herself tell the story:—

From the sheltering corn Adelheid effects her escape, and after weary wandering, reaches the Castle of Canossa, the stronghold of the Counts of Tuscany. Any one who has visited this now ruined castle, some twenty miles from Parma, will remember the threadlike way between rocks covered with brambles, by which its eyrie height is approached. Up this steep track the queen, fearful of any pause, hastens, and finds a welcome and ready help. The Count becomes her champion, and appeals on her behalf to the Emperor Otho. The latter, glad of an excuse to further his cause in Italy, descends with his troops into the Lombard plain, weds the beautiful Adelheid, and receives the formal cession of the so-called kingdom of Italy from Berengarius and his son, whose power had ebbed away in their futile attempts to control their feudatories.

Roswitha’s thrilling narrative is amplified by the graphic account recorded by St. Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, Queen Adelheid’s friend and one-time confessor. In this he tells us that during Adelheid’s imprisonment in a castle on the Lago di Garda, her chaplain Martin succeeds in making a hole in the wall, through which the queen and her maidservant, disguised as men, creep. He does not recount the episode of the hiding in the corn, but relates another equally stirring adventure. He tells us that, in fleeing from their persecutor to the safety of Canossa, the fugitives become involved in a swamp. After two days, they are rescued from their perilous position by a fisherman who, passing near by, and hearing sounds of distress, goes to their aid. Their deliverer, finding them faint with hunger and cold, lights a fire with the flint he carries in his wallet, and cooks some small fish, the only food he has to offer them. Once more they start on their way, and eventually reach Canossa. But hardly do they gain admittance, ere the castle is surrounded by the soldiery of the outwitted and wrathful Berengarius. A knight, carrying a message from the Emperor Otho of promised deliverance, essays to enter the castle, but finding this impossible owing to the hostile troops encamped around, he fastens the letter to an arrow, and shoots it over the wall. A strong force sent by Otho is near at hand, and speedily puts the enemy to flight. Adelheid is rescued, and is brought with rejoicing to Pavia, her dower city, which had already opened its gates to the Emperor, and she and the Emperor enter the city together in triumph. Much has been written of the illustrious Adelheid, but perhaps she would best like to be remembered by the eulogy of her confessor—the saintly Odilo—that she never forgot a kindness, or remembered an injury.

It is in a spirit far different from that of her panegyric on the emperor Otho that Roswitha writes her dramas. Fear and mental perplexity no longer possess her. Though humbly begging the reader not to “despise these strains drawn from a fragile reed,” she has no misgiving, for she feels that herein lies her mission. She explains her reason for using the dramatic form, and for taking Terence as her model. There are many, she says,—and she does not entirely exonerate herself,—who, beguiled by the elegant diction of the Classics, prefer them to religious writings, whilst there are others who, though generally condemning heathen works, eagerly peruse the poetic creations of Terence because of the special beauty of his language. She further expresses the hope that by trying to imitate his manner, and by at the same time dramatising legends calculated to edify, she may induce readers to turn from the “godless contents of his works” to the contemplation of virtuous living. Emboldened by this pious hope, Roswitha shrinks from no difficulties or details, details which might well have made her hesitate, and which, betraying a knowledge of the world, have raised the question as to whether she made her profession as early as was customary. This solicitude of Roswitha for the welfare of frail and all too human mankind recalls St. Bernard’s condemnation, some hundred and fifty years later, of all carving in church or cloister, when he says, “one reads with more pleasure what is carven in stones than what is written in books, and would rather gaze all day upon these singular creations than meditate upon the Divine Word.”

It has been maintained that the classic theatre decayed and disappeared as Christianity became all-powerful in Europe, and that the modern theatre seemingly arose in the twelfth century out of the services of the Church, and owed no debt to the past. But neither Nature nor Art works in this way except to our own unperceiving minds. After the fall of the Roman Empire, and the consequent disruption of society, classic civilisation gradually withdrew into the security of the religious communities, seeking, like distraught humanity, shelter and protection. It was in such tranquil atmosphere as this that Latin drama, though condemned in substance, was fostered and favoured as an education in style. Roswitha’s plays may, as has been said, have been the last ray of classical antiquity, but if so, it was a ray, like the pillar of fire, bright enough to guide through the dark night of feudalism to the coming day.

Whether her dramatic efforts were an isolated phenomenon or not, must remain undecided, but it is reasonable to assume that any work surviving to the present day is but a sample of much else of the same sort that has disappeared in the course of time. Still all we would claim for them, apart from their intrinsic value and interest, is that they helped to keep up continuity in the tradition of drama. The gradual movement in the Church towards elaboration in its services which began in the ninth century,—a movement which led to the dramatising of the Mass, out of which the liturgical drama, and eventually the miracle-play, were evolved,—was a popular movement. To a people ignorant of Latin, yet fond of shows, it provided instruction and diversion alike. Roswitha, on the other hand, avowedly wrote for the literary world, and with a special end in view as regards that world. To attain this end, she set before her, as her master in style, Terence, who himself had aimed at a high ideal of artistic perfection, and of whom it has been said that he perpetuated the art and genius of Menander just as a master engraver perpetuates the designs of a great painter whose works have since perished. Still, in spite of the glamour of the style to which she aspires, and poetess though she is by nature, her plays reflect the handiwork of the moralist rather than that of the artist, for though beauty charms her by the way, her goal is moral truth, and to this all else must yield. If we would see the beauty of holiness as she saw it, we must enter in spirit within the shrine of her thought and feeling, just as the traveller, standing without the simple brick exterior of the tomb of Galla Placidia, at Ravenna, must penetrate within if he would know of the beauty there enshrined. “Il faut être saint, pour comprendre la sainteté.”

The subject which dominates her horizon is that of Chastity. Treated by her with didactic intent, this really resolves itself into a conflict between Christianity and Paganism,—in other words, between Chastity and Passion,—in which Christianity triumphs through the virtue of Woman. But at the same time Roswitha neither contemns marriage nor generally advocates celibacy. She merely counsels, as the more blessed, the unmarried state. Yet even so, we feel that beneath her nun’s garb there beats the heart of a sympathetic woman, whose emotional self-expression is but tempered by the ideals of her time and her surroundings.

Another important element to be taken into account in her plays is the part she assigns to the supernatural. It is impossible to develop character with any continuity when the supernatural, like some sword of Damocles, hovers continually overhead, ready to descend at any moment and sever cause from effect. Such a sword was the Divine Presence to Roswitha. When her plot requires it, she introduces a miracle, converting a character, at a moment’s notice, and in a way that no evolution could possibly effect, into one of a totally different kind. Still to her audience such a dénouement would be quite satisfactory. With her, sudden changes and conversions but reflect the ideas which possessed the minds of her contemporaries, who realised God more in deviations from, than in manifestations of, law and order.

Were her plays ever performed? To this question no certain answer can be given, since no record has yet been found of their performance, and the best critics are at variance on the subject. But judging from analogy, there seems to be no reason why they should not have been. We know that as early as the fifth and sixth centuries the monks played Terence, probably on some fête-day, or before their scholars as a means of instruction, and doubtless Roswitha’s plays were also acted on special occasions, such as when the Emperor sojourned at Gandersheim, or the Bishop made a visitation. As they were written in Latin, the literary language of the time, this in itself, even if their themes had appealed to the people, would have prevented them from being performed save before the educated few. So if we would picture to ourselves a performance of one of them by her companion nuns in the Chapter House, or it may be in the refectory, it must be before the Bishop and his clergy, and perhaps also some members of the Imperial family, and lords and ladies of the Court. How refreshing must such an entertainment have been to this distinguished company as it found itself carried away into an atmosphere of poetry and passion, of movement and colour, in place of the sobriety induced by the stiff liturgical dramas that probably formed the usual diversion! Such a drama was that of The Wise and Foolish Virgins, a specially favourite old-world dramatic exercise, dispensed as a sort of religious tonic to womankind, calculated to arouse slumbering souls, or to quicken to still further effort those that did not slumber. For us, its chief interest lies in the antiphonic arrangement of the dialogue, in which we may trace the first germs of characterisation, and in the music, the refrains of which contain the first suggestions, as far as we know, of the principle of the leitmotiv, a principle carried to its most complete development by Wagner. Although the earliest known MS. of it is of the eleventh century, so finished, yet so simple, are its dialogues and refrains, that it seems not unreasonable to infer that the form of the play was well known, either through some earlier MS. or through oral tradition. It is only a slight development of the elegy in dialogue which was performed in A.D. 874, at the funeral of Hathumoda, the first abbess of Gandersheim. This dialogue takes place between the sorrow-stricken nuns, who speak in chorus of their loss, and the monk Wichbert, who acts as consoler. Although its form is liturgical, its subject entitles it to be considered the earliest known mediæval dramatic work extant.

Of Roswitha’s dramas, three seem to stand out as of special interest—Abraham, Callimachus, and Paphnutius. All of these are more or less patchwork adaptations from the legendary débris of antiquity. The first appears to have been taken by Roswitha from a Latin translation of a fourth-century Greek legend.[10] Whilst she does not display any originality in elaborating the story, but keeps carefully to the text—so much so that at times she merely transcribes—she reveals her artistic as well as her psychological instinct by concentrating the essentials, thereby transforming a rather discursive composition into a poignant picture. The subtle touches, the sentiment, and the dialogue so pathetic and so true to nature, make this drama verily her masterpiece, and one worthy of a place beside the delicate and dramatic miniatures of the time. In a few words, here is the story. A holy man, by name Abraham, has abandoned a life of solitude in order to take care of his young orphaned niece. After a few years, she is tempted to a house of ill fame. Some two years later, her uncle, having discovered her whereabouts, determines to exchange his hermit garb for that of a man of the world, and go to the house in the guise of a lover, so as to get an opportunity of speaking with his niece alone. Of course she does not recognise him in his change of costume, and when he asks for a kiss, she puts her arms round his neck, and suddenly detects a strange perfume. Instantly a change comes over her. The scent recalls to her her former unsullied life, and tears fill her eyes. At the fitting moment the uncle makes himself known, and showing her with sweet words of sympathy and encouragement that sin is natural to humanity, and that what is evil is to continue in it, takes her back with him to begin afresh the simple good life.

The second play recounts an incident taken from the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, supposed to take place in the first century. A young heathen, Callimachus, falls in love with a young married woman, a Christian. She dies, and is buried the same day. That night Callimachus goes to the grave, and with the help of a slave disinters the body. Holding it in his arms, and triumphing in the embrace denied to him in life, he suddenly falls dead. In the morning the husband and St. John, coming to the cemetery to pray for her soul, see the rifled grave and the two dead bodies. St. John, at the command of Christ, who appears for but a moment, restores them both to life, and brings to repentance the young man, who, in further amendment of his ways, becomes a Christian. This mere outline of the play is given to suggest points of resemblance between it—the first sketch of this kind of drama of passion, the frenzy of the soul and senses—and the masterpiece of this type, Romeo and Juliet.

Many passages in the plays of Roswitha remind us of Shakespeare, but it is not possible to deal adequately with them here, nor does it seem material to do so. There is no reason why Shakespeare should not have seen a printed collection of her dramas. He, like Dante, seems to have had the power of attracting material from every possible source, and it should not be forgotten what a sensation was caused by Celtes printing in 1501 Roswitha’s MS. But, on the other hand, the similarities we notice may be a mere coincidence, or, as is much more likely, the details in each case may have been common property handed down from one generation to another.

In her play of Paphnutius, Roswitha made use of a story taken from the Historia Monachorum of Rufinus, a contemporary of St. Jerome, who had journeyed through Palestine and Egypt to visit the Hermits of the Desert. The mention, too, at the beginning of Rufinus’s account, of a musician who tells of his retirement to a hermitage in order to change the harmony of music into that of the spirit, evidently suggested to her a discussion on music and harmony, probably adapted from Boëthius’s De Musica. In this discussion lies the chief interest of the play as giving us some idea of the sort of intellectual exercises probably practised by women in convents in the tenth century. The play opens with a truly mediæval scene,—a disputation between a hermit and his disciples on the question of harmony between soul and body, suggested by the want of it in the life of the courtesan Thais. Such harmony should exist, says the holy man, for though the soul is not mortal like the body, nor the body spiritual like the soul, we shall, if we follow the method of the dialecticians, find that such differences do not necessarily render the two inharmonious. Harmony cannot be produced from like elements or like sounds, but only by the right adjustment of those which are dissimilar. This discussion on harmony naturally leads to one on music, which is divided, according to the then received writers on the subject, into three kinds—celestial, human, and instrumental. Music, in the Middle Ages, was, for dialectical purposes, treated in accordance with the Pythagorean theory as interpreted by Cicero in his Somnium Scipionis, who represented the eight revolving spheres of heaven—the Earth being fixed—as forming a complete musical octave. Such celestial music forms the subject of the argument in Roswitha’s play, the music of Earth being merely touched upon. Why, it is asked, do we not hear this music of the spheres if it exists? To this comes the answer that some think it is because of its continuity, others because of the density of the atmosphere, and others again because the volume of sound cannot penetrate the narrow passage of the human ear. And so with subtle argument, the music of Heaven was often drowned in the din of Earth. Dante, in the Paradiso, lifted the idea once more from Earth to Heaven, and clothed it in a wealth of gorgeous imagery. But it is Shakespeare who, with the magic of a few words, has given the thought immortality.

In judging of Roswitha’s dramatic work it must be remembered that, in true mediæval spirit fearing to profane what she venerates, she allows herself but little licence with the legends she dramatises. Nevertheless, as has been said, she from time to time shows, in psychological touches, a capacity for originality quite phenomenal for her time and for the literature of the cloister. Still her plays express but a very small part of the whole gamut of human emotions and experiences, just as her life was lived in an intellectual world narrow from the point of view of to-day or of the great intellectual age of antiquity. Many causes contributed to this. Intellectually, the Christian world shrank as Paganism was superseded by Christianity, a supersession by no means complete in Roswitha’s day. Of course this nascent Christianity was inconsistent with much of the intellectual life of the ancient world, which was either inextricably interwoven with Paganism, or essentially anti-religious. With its task of laying afresh the foundations of education, politics, and morality, it had to take root and become established in a relatively narrow intellectual field, the boundaries of which had gradually to be broken down, sometimes with violence.

Time, like some lens which clears our vision, makes it an easy task to criticise and condemn a phase of religious life which, having essayed to tranquillise and sweeten existence, was, under altered conditions of civilisation, bound to pass away. We of to-day pride ourselves on a wider view of life, on a higher conception of duty, expressed in lives dedicated to public work as a necessary complement to private virtue. Still, if we would judge fairly this age of contemplation and faith within the convent walls, and all that, even if done mistakenly and imperfectly, it aspired to do, we must realise, as best we can, the world without those walls. One of our poets has vividly reflected it for us when he speaks of man’s life as made up of “whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin.” So bitter was life then and even later, that by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when mysticism had claimed many votaries, eternal rest, even at the cost of personal annihilation, was the whispered desire of many devout souls.

“A Simple Stillness.” “An Eternal Silence.” These are the words that float across the centuries to us, like echoes from troubled, longing hearts. These are the words that give us the key to the understanding of the choice of vocation of the mediæval woman. The spiritual need for harmony and peace may have been great; the practical need was perhaps even greater; for in its accomplishment the spiritual found its consummation.

A TWELFTH-CENTURY ROMANCE-WRITER,
MARIE DE FRANCE

But who was this modest writer, and why does her work interest us to-day? Around Marie de France there must always remain an atmosphere of doubt and mystery, since she is only mentioned by an anonymous thirteenth-century poet, and by one of her contemporaries—an Anglo-Norman poet, Denys Pyramus by name—who speaks of her in the most flattering terms, and from whom we learn that her lays were much appreciated by the noblesse, especially the ladies. That these should take rare delight in them may well be, seeing how monotonous life must have been to many a woman shut up with her maidens and her needlework in a dismal castle, or perhaps in but one tower of it, whilst her lord went forth to the chase or to war, his home-coming meaning merely the wine-cup and war-songs, or tedious epic. Many a one must have read or listened to Marie’s love idylls, and longed, and perhaps even hoped, as in the story of “Yonec,” that a fair and gentle knight, in the form of some beautiful bird, might fly in at her window and bring her some diversion from the outside world. With nothing before us but her own poems and the scant recognition of Denys Pyramus, she seems like some old portrait in which the delicate pigments that once glowed in the face and made it live have, owing to their very delicacy, long since faded away, leaving behind only the stronger and less volatile colours of the dark background from which we in vain try to wrest more than one or two fragments of the secret it holds.

Judging from internal evidence, it would seem that Marie was born in Normandy, about the middle of the twelfth century, but settled in England, where since the Conquest, and indeed since the time of Edward the Confessor, many Norman families had made their home. Not only does she make occasional use of English words, and translate from English into French the fables known as Æsop’s, but in the prologue to her Lays, which she dedicates to “the noble King,” generally considered to be Henry the Second, she expresses fear lest her work should not find favour in a foreign land. In this prologue she also gives her reason for abandoning classical translation, which, as a Latin scholar, she had contemplated making, not only for the use of the less learned, but also, as she tells us, for personal discipline, since “he who would keep himself from sin, should study and learn and undertake difficult tasks. In suchwise he may the more withdraw him and save himself from much sorrow.” The twelfth century was a time of extraordinary intellectual activity, and Marie tells us that she suffered from what we are apt to regard as a special evil of our own day—the overcrowding of the literary market. So she wisely turned aside from the Classics and the crowd, and set herself to give literary expression to the old Celtic folk-lore, hitherto perhaps unrecorded save in song.

Of Marie’s work that has come down to us we have The Fables, already mentioned, dedicated to Count William, surnamed Longsword, and son of Henry the Second and Fair Rosamond;[11] The Lays, dedicated to the king, Henry the Second, and doubtless read by Fair Rosamond in her retreat at Woodstock; and The Purgatory of St. Patrick, translated from the Latin at the request of an anonymous benefactor. Of these only The Lays need here concern us, as it is in them that our interest lies, since they are perhaps among the first stories, given literary form, which tell of love “for love’s sake only,”—love unqualified and unquestioning. They form, perhaps, the only collection of lays now extant, and it is to them, therefore, that we must turn to get some idea of the style of narration that gradually replaced the taste for the epic as Norman influence grew and spread in England. Beside the sensualism of the Chansons de Geste, the sentiment expressed in them may seem naïve; beside the gallantry of the Provençal poetry, it may seem primitive; but nevertheless it is, in its very simplicity, the profoundest note that can be struck in this world of men and women. Marie makes no pretence to originality, but even if she did not possess the supreme gift of creating beauty, she at least possessed the lesser gift of perceiving it where it existed and of making it her own, and her stories glow with colour, and enchant by their simple yet dramatic appeal to the imagination. She declares that The Lays were made “for remembrance” by “Le ancien Bretun curteis,” and that “Folks tell them to the harp and the rote, and the music is sweet to hear.” Doubtless it was this sweet music which both soothed and thrilled even before the words were understood, for on sad and festive days alike, the sweet lays of Brittany were always to be heard.

Whether Marie was connected with the Court of Henry the Second and his brilliant and artistic queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, where learned men and poets congregated, we do not know, but it seems a very fair conjecture that she was. Not only does she dedicate her principal work to the king and his son, Count William, but her stories are coloured with the courtly life and ideas of her time, notwithstanding the simplicity of the fundamental theme. It is doubtful whether any one unacquainted with the teaching of the Courts of Love, such as they were in the twelfth century, would have made the compulsory quest of love the keynote of a story, as, for instance, Marie does in the “Lay of Guigemar.” These Courts of Love, though not so elaborate, yet seemingly as imperious, as those of the fourteenth century, formed one of the semi-serious pastimes of the Middle Ages, and although it may be that they were often mere forms of entertainment, no self-respecting person could afford to disregard their rules or decisions. The cardinal doctrine was that love was necessary to a man’s moral, social, and æsthetic training. Hence if it did not arise of itself, it must be sought for, and, like its counterpart in the spiritual world, come at, if needs be, through much tribulation.

Owing to Henry’s possessions in France through inheritance, marriage, and the many ties of relationship which united the royal families of both countries, England and France were never more closely allied than they were at that time. French was established by them as the speech of the cultured and the high-born. The Norman Conquest had made us more cosmopolitan in both manners and ideas. May we not look on the victory at Hastings as a symbol as well as a reality? Did it not mean for us a spiritual as well as a material conquest, since, mingled with the clashing of battle-axes, was to be heard the chanting of the Chanson de Roland? Moreover, through a desire to bring about uniformity of sentiment and service, the Church, though perhaps unconsciously, aided this good work of general enlargement of outlook by appointing outsiders to control our abbeys and religious foundations. Thus, in the latter half of the twelfth century, the romantic movement which characterised late mediæval literature stirred in England and France alike, and Marie was one of its truest and daintiest exponents. Although what she relates may be fiction intermingled with myth and magic, she all the same pictures on her somewhat small canvases the ideas of her time, and so helps to make history.

Marie’s readers and hearers were naturally to be found amongst castle-folk. That these were many we may conclude from the fact that the number of castles had already come to be regarded as a menace to the central government, and a royal command had gone forth for the demolition of many of them. That her stories were read and prized for at least a century and more is evident from the manuscripts—five in number, and all of the thirteenth, or the beginning of the fourteenth, century—which still exist. Her renown, too, had travelled even beyond the seas, for in about A.D. 1245 a translation of her lays into Norse was made by order of the king, Haakon the Fourth. The fact that their popularity began to wane after a hundred years or so is in no wise an adverse criticism of their intrinsic worth, for in the fourteenth century English was, in high places, beginning to take the place of French, and naturally the demand created a supply. But even if this had not been so, Marie’s work had served its purpose, and of necessity passed into the crucible of human thought and expression, to be resolved into matter suited to other needs and conditions. As has been well said, “les siècles se succèdent, et chacun porte son fruit, qui n’est pas celui du siècle précédent: les livres sont les fruits des mœurs.”

Of the five manuscripts still extant, two are in the British Museum. One of these is the most complete that has come down to us, seeing that, in addition to its including the largest number of lays—twelve in all,—it alone contains the prologue, in which for a moment the illusive Marie lifts, as it were, her all-enshrouding veil. It is a small manuscript, beautifully inscribed, and even after its seven hundred years of existence, as fresh as is the love enshrined in its parchment pages. How strange a feeling possesses us as we turn over its leaves, leaves across which the shadows of readers of bygone days still seem to flit! Could these pages speak, of what would they tell? Of desires that die not, of longings that are immortal, of love enthroned.

When first read, these stories, so simply are they told, may seem somewhat slight and superficial. But this is the general characteristic of mediæval literature, which, for the most part, recognised things in outline only, and sought, and perhaps possessed, but little knowledge of the hidden springs of motive. The writers of those times troubled as little about moral, as the early painters did about physical, anatomy. Still, in spite of this indifference to what has become almost a craze in our own day, Marie’s lays are so full of charming detail, deftly handled, that they give much the same sense of delight as do delicate ivories or dainty embroidery. Sometimes, it is true, she scarcely, despite all this outward charm, seems to touch the world of fact. Yet in this ideal atmosphere which she so essentially made her own, she contrives to convey such a sense of reality, that for the moment we are wholly possessed by it and carried away, without questioning, into her fairyland. And a beautiful fairyland it is, where love triumphs for the most part, not in heedless ecstasy along flower-bestrewn ways, but through self-sacrifice and suffering mutually accepted and mutually endured. Listen to the words spoken to the knight Guigemar, wounded by a chance arrow as he rides through a wood. “Never shalt thou be healed of thy wound, not even by herb, or root, or leach, or potion, until thou art healed by her who, for love of thee, shall suffer such great pain and sorrow as never woman has suffered before: and thou shalt bear as much for her.” Equality in love! Such is the vital note struck amid the artificial and soul-enfeebling atmosphere of mediæval love-poetry! This is the note which Marie set ringing down the centuries whilst her manuscripts lay unused on library shelves. This is Marie’s gift to the world, and this it is that gives her stories immortality. Not only do they possess this immortality in themselves, but they have also been immortalised by poets and writers both in days long past and in those more within our ken. All who know her stories will recall Chaucer’s indebtedness to incidents and descriptions in them, and coming to our own time, we find Sir Walter Scott taking his ballad of “Lord Thomas and Fair Annie” from the lay of “The Ash Tree,” although it is possible, as has been suggested,[12] that his ballad may have been founded on some Scotch folk-song having a common origin with Marie’s lay. When her lays were first published in Germany in 1820, Goethe wrote thus: “The mist of years that mysteriously envelops Marie de France makes her poems more exquisite and precious to us.” Yes, it is this all-pervading mystery which, though so tantalising, is yet so attractive. It is in vain that, in studying them, we try to penetrate somewhat beyond our normal atmosphere, for we only find ourselves lost in vague possibilities and hazy distances. Brittany has kept her secret concerning such of these lays as were hers just as jealously as she has kept her secret of the long avenues of great lichened stones which make Carnac look like the burial-place of some giant host. Marie’s lays are stories of deep meaning, which each reader must interpret for himself.

It is impossible to do more here than just touch upon Marie’s ideal conception of love, for to realise it fully it is necessary to read the stories themselves.[13] Allusion has been made to the wounded knight in the “Lay of Guigemar,” who can only be healed through mutual love sanctified by mutual suffering. In the lay of “The Ash Tree” a maiden of noble birth, abandoned in infancy and brought up in a convent, is loved by a lord, and returns his love, and goes with him to his castle. After a time the knights who owe him fealty complain that as through his love for his mistress he has neither wife nor child, he does them wrong, and protest that if he does not wed some noble lady, they will no longer serve him or hold him for lord. The knight has to yield to their demands and to consent to accept in marriage the daughter of a neighbouring noble who had made it known that he desired him for son-in-law. Neither lover utters any complaint or reproach, and the needful sacrifice is about to be made. But fortune, sometimes kind, intervenes ere it is too late, and reveals the noble birth of the loved one. The knight weds her with great joy, and to complete this happy picture we read that the other lady returned with her parents to her own domain, and was there well bestowed in marriage.

This idea of mutual sympathy and sacrifice gives meaning also to the lay of “The Two Lovers,” and to that of “Yonec,” but perhaps it is most simply, yet forcibly, summed up in the lay of “The Honeysuckle,” an episode taken from the Tristan story. Tristan, hearing that Isolde is to ride through a certain wood on her way to Tintagel to attend the Pentecostal Court held by the King, hides in the wood. Here he cuts a branch of hazel round which honeysuckle has twined, and carving his name and certain letters on it, he lays it in the way by which the Queen must pass, knowing that she will recognise it as a sign that her lover is near, since they have met before in suchwise. The import of the writing is that he has long been waiting to see her, since without her he cannot live, and that they two are like the hazel branch with the encircling honeysuckle, the which, as long as they are intertwined, thrive, but as soon as they are separated, both perish. Says Tristan, “Sweet Love, so is it with us—nor you without me, nor I without you.”

But besides this conception of love which Marie had simply found awaiting expression, when we turn to examine the stories somewhat in detail, we find legend and poetry, Eastern magic and Christian symbolism, mingled with strange ingenuity. Whence came all these divers threads which Marie has so dexterously interwoven? It is very difficult to tell whether we are wholly in a world of romance, accepted by her without question, or whether she had some understanding of the divers matters she touches upon, and shaped them into a new form to suit new hearers. The answer to this question seems to depend on whether Marie recounted the lays from hearsay, or whether they had been already written down, and were merely retold by her, she colouring them with the atmosphere of her time, which was charged with strange incongruities of religion and magic. To this we can give no certain answer, since Marie herself gives no hint, and only tells us that the ancient Bretons made the lays. But whatever may have been her contribution, Christian or otherwise, to the original matter she worked upon, we cannot help feeling that we have before us the remains of some primitive mythology overlaid and interpenetrated with Eastern lore, especially that of India, which, in the Middle Ages, was spread broadcast in the West. This Indian thought, itself borrowed in a measure from Egypt, had also been tempered by the Hellenism which, after the conquests of Alexander the Great in Asia, had filtered through India, and had on the way become tinged with its colour and its mystery. It was from the matter of these Indian stories that so much was learnt, for whilst, in the West, the national epic and the chivalrous romance had been alone considered worthy of record, in the Indian stories all social conditions were revealed, and poets thus learnt little by little to observe and portray the manners and sentiments of the people generally, changing social conditions also acting in the same direction. All such influences must be taken into consideration in studying mediæval literature generally, but particularly the occult element in Oriental thought which presents such difficulties to the less meditative Western mind, and has in consequence given rise to much misconception.

In the “Lay of Guigemar,” which we take first because it is the first in the manuscript, we find Marie making use of a subject, in gorgeous setting, of Christian symbolism, but using it apparently so unconsciously that it is only from one or two details that we realise what is really lurking in disguise. Guigemar, the wounded knight already referred to, to whom naught but love, and sorrow endured for love, can bring any alleviation, sets forth for his healing. He comes across a ship into which he enters, and which by unseen means carries him to the desired haven. As we read the description of the ship, our thoughts at once revert to the picture of the barge in which Cleopatra goes to meet Antony. Marie tells us that the fittings are of ebony, and the unfurled sail of silk. Amid the vessel is a bed on to which the wounded knight sinks in anguish. This is of cypress and white ivory inlaid with gold, the quilt of silk and gold tissue, and the coverlet of sable lined with Alexandrian purple.[14] All this we might regard as merely a poet’s fancy were it not that we go on to read that there were set two candlesticks of fine gold with lighted tapers. Here we have the clue. Doubtless the ship, a favourite theme of Christian symbolism, and one which delighted poets and painters and workers in mosaic alike, represented the Church. It is not to be necessarily inferred that Marie, when giving her hero so rare a means of transit, had in her mind all the elaborate symbolism connected with it; but she had probably read or heard tell of it, and made use of it simply for the enhancement of her story. It is in such ways that we find mysteries embedded, the real significance of them being lost or misunderstood or unheeded, just as the Renaissance painters, without any knowledge of Arabic characters, and solely on account of the ornamental quality of the lettering, used texts from the Koran, and distorted into mere design the sayings of Mahomet.

In the lay of “The Two Lovers” we again find Christian symbolism in disguise. Here is the old theme of a difficult task to be accomplished by the lover before he can win his lady.[15] The undertaking imposed is the carrying of the loved one to the top of a hill, and our interest in it is enhanced by the fact that the trial was to be made near Pitres, a few miles from Rouen, where there is a green hill, still known as “La Côte des Deux Amans.” In Rouen there lived a king who had an only daughter, very fair and beautiful, whose hand was sought in marriage of many. Loath to part with her, he bethought him how he could thwart her suitors. To this end he caused it to be proclaimed far and wide that he would have for son-in-law only him who could carry his daughter to the top of the hill without pausing to rest. Many came, but each in turn failed, greatly to the content of the princess, since secretly she loved, and was loved by, a young knight who frequented her father’s Court. At last, constrained by love, the knight, though with much misgiving, determines to undertake the adventure. Before allowing him to do this, the maiden, in order to ensure his success, and herself fasting meanwhile, bids him go to Salerno,[16] near Naples, a school of medicine famous in the Middle Ages, and ask of her kinswoman there, who was well practised in medicine, a draught to give him the needful strength for his task. Returned with this potion, he makes the attempt, but so great is his desire to reach the goal quickly, that he will not slacken his speed to drink from the phial carried by his Love, but hastens forward, only to fall dead as he reaches the summit of the hill.

In this strength-giving potion we may perhaps see the expression of a Christian, and the survival of a pre-Christian belief, where the getting of strength and life is only possible through a direct act of communion, either material or spiritual, with the god. Such world-old beliefs, in which the supernatural intervenes to help the natural, are also intimately connected, even if they are not identical, with the magic of philtres and charms.

We pass from Christian symbolism to magic in the lay of “Yonec.” The delightful ease with which mediæval folk turned from magic to religion, or vice versa, shows how simply they accepted what they did not understand. At the same time it proves how intermingled the two were, and that what some are inclined to separate now, were once regarded as one and the same thing, the eccentricities and impositions which have developed in both being of mere external growth, and to be treated accordingly. In the lay of “Yonec” a young wife, passing fair, is shut up by her jealous old husband in a great paved chamber in a tower of his castle, to which no one save an ancient dame and a priest has admittance. After seven years of this isolation and uncongenial company, the lady remembers that she has heard tell that means have been found to rescue the unhappy, and she wishes with all her heart that deliverance may come to her. Suddenly a shadow comes across the window, and into her chamber there flies a falcon, which forthwith changes into a knight. As soon as the lady has recovered from her surprise, the knight tells her that he has long loved her, but could not come until she wished for him. Here we have an incident, borrowed direct from Oriental magic, in which a modern believer in psychical phenomena might find an element of telepathy. The will, as in all magic, is the motive power which acts sympathetically on the object of desire, that object being in a receptive condition. Quickly we turn from magic, and the story goes on to tell that the lady, before accepting the knight as her lover, makes it a condition that he believes in God, and the knight offers to prove his belief by taking the Sacrament. This demand is evidently in the nature of a protective test. It was very usual to try some means of discovering whether a person was in league with the powers of evil or not; for if any one unworthy touched holy things, retribution came at once, either by death or some dire visitation. But how is the priest to administer the Sacrament without seeing the knight? The latter tells her that he will make himself like her in appearance; in other words, that he will hypnotise the priest, and make him see what he, the knight, wishes him to. The ruse succeeds, and for a time all goes well; then comes discovery, despair, and death. The whole story is a most extraordinary medley of fairy-lore, religion, and magic, and most characteristic of the mediæval mind.

The lay of “Eliduc,” the last in the manuscript, is also the longest and most elaborate. Marie unfolds her story with so certain yet so subtle a hand, that the reading of it is like the unwinding of some finely illuminated parchment-roll where miniature follows miniature, each perfect in itself, yet all needful to the whole. To the charm of its pictures of mediæval life, with the fine scene between the two women, and their final reunion in the same convent, there is added an incident which gives special interest and importance to the story, since it brings us into touch with one of the oldest and most widespread of traditions—the restoration to life, from apparent death, by means of a flower. There are few pursuits more fascinating than the tracing of traditions, except, it may be, that of symbols, with which they have so much in common. We find the same traditions, just as we find the same symbolic figures, common to the most widely separated peoples, and the real interest in the case of each lies in trying to discover how and why in the course of their migrations their form and their significance have been varied or modified. But before considering the tradition, let us first hear the story.