From the time of that old third-century hymn ascribed to Clement of Alexandria,[115] hymns to Christ had been filled with symbolism, the symbolism of loving personification of His attributes, as well as with the more formal symbolism of His Old Testament prefigurements. Adam’s symbolism is of both kinds. It has feeling even when dogmatic,[116] and throbs with devotion as its theme approaches the Gospel Christ. Prevailing modes of thought and feeling may prescribe topics for verse which a succeeding age will find curiously unpoetic. Yet if the later time have a sympathetic understanding for the past, it will recognize how fervid and how songful was that bygone verse—the verse of Adam’s hymns, for instance. In one for Christmas Day, beginning:

a stanza touches on the reason why the Creator thus became creature. It would be impossible to render its feeling in English, and much circumlocution would be needed to express even its literal meaning in any language but mediaeval Latin. This stanza has twelve lines:

These lines are scholastic. In the next four, the feeling begins to rise, yet the phrases repel rather than attract us:

The feeling touches its climax with the four concluding lines, in which the parable of the Good Samaritan is invested with the special allegorical significance set forth in the sermon of Honorius:[118]

Two stanzas from another of Adam’s Christmas hymns will show how curiously intricate could be his symbolism. Having spoken of the ineffable wonder of the Incarnation, he proceeds:

One observes that here the symbolism first touches Christ’s birth, the dry rod and the fleece representing the Virgin. Then the leafage, flower, nut and dew typify His qualities. The remaining stanzas of this hymn carry out in further detail the symbolism of the nut.

Besides the hymns devoted to the Saviour, the greater part of Adam’s hymns are symbolical throughout. Those written for the dedication of churches are among the most interesting. One beginning “Quam dilecta tabernacula”[123] sketches the Old Testament facts which prefigure Christ’s holy Church. The keynote is in the lines:

The shadow is the Old Testament, and these three lines sum up the teaching of Hugo as to the sacramental nature of the Old Testament narratives. Throughout this hymn Adam follows Hugo closely.[124] In another dedicatory hymn[125] Adam gives the prefigurative meaning of the parts of Solomon’s temple. There is likewise much symbolism in the grand hymns addressed to the Virgin. One for the festival of the Assumption[126] gives the figures of the Virgin in the Old Testament—the throne of Solomon, the fleece of Gideon, the burning bush. Then with more feeling the metaphorical epithets pour forth, voicing the heart’s gratitude to the Virgin’s saving aid to man. A still more splendid example of like symbolism and ardent metaphor is the great hymn beginning:

which won the Virgin’s greeting for the poet.[127]

The lives of Honorius, of Hugo, of Adam, from whose works we have been drawing illustrations of mediaeval symbolism, vie with each other in obscurity; and properly enough since they were monks, for whom self-effacement is becoming. This personal obscurity culminates with one last example to be drawn from monastic sources. The man himself was an impressive figure in his time; a sight of him was not to be forgotten: he was called magnus and doctor universalis. Nevertheless it has been questioned whether he lived in the twelfth or the thirteenth century, and whether one man or two bore the name of Alanus de Insulis.

There was in fact but one, and he belongs to the twelfth century, dying almost a centenarian, in the year 1202. The cognomen de Insulis has also been an enigma. From it he has been dubbed a Sicilian, and then a Scot, born on the island of Mona. But the name in reality refers to the chief town of Flanders, which is called Lisle; and Alanus doubtless was a Fleming.

He became a learned man, and lectured at Paris. That he was possessed with no small opinion of his talents would appear from the legend told of him as well as of St. Augustine. He had announced that on a certain day in a single lecture he would set forth the complete doctrine of the mystery of the most Holy Trinity. The afternoon before the day appointed, he walked by the river, thinking how he should arrange his subject so as to include it all. He chanced upon a child who was dipping up the river water with a snail shell and dropping it into a little trench. Smiling, he asked what should be the object of this; and the child told him that he was putting the whole river into his trench. As the great scholar was explaining that this could not be done, he suddenly felt himself chidden and taught—how much less might he perform what he had set for the next morning. He stood speechless at his presumption, and burst into tears. The next day ascending the platform he said to the crowd of auditors, “Let it suffice you to have seen Alanus”;[128] and with that he left them all astonished, and himself hastily set out for Citeaux. On arrival he asked to be admitted as a conversus, and was given charge of the monastery’s sheep. Patient and unknown, he long plied this humble vocation. But at length it chanced that the abbot took him to a council at Rome, in the capacity of hostler. And there he beat down the arrogance of a heretic with such arguments that the latter cried out that he was disputing either with the devil or Alanus, and would say no more.

Such is one story. By another he is made to seek the monastery of Clairvaux, and there become a monk under St. Bernard. It is also written that he became an abbot, and then a bishop, but afterwards resigned his bishopric. However all this may have been, he died and was buried, and was subjected to many epitaphs. On what purports to be an old copy of his tomb at Citeaux, he is shown with St. Bernard, and called Alanus Magnus. The title Doctor universalis has always clung to his memory, which will not altogether fade. For if Adam of Saint-Victor was the greatest of Latin mediaeval hymn-writers, Alanus has good claim to be called the greatest of mediaeval Latin poets in the field of didactic and narrative poetry.[129]

The many works ascribed to Alanus include an allegorical Commentary on Canticles, a treatise on the art of preaching, a book of sententiae, another of theologicae regulae, sundry sermons, and a lengthy work “contra haereticos”; also a large dictionary of Biblical allegorical interpretations, entitled Liber in distinctionibus dictionum theologicalium.[130] All these are prose. He composed besides his Liber de planctu naturae,[131] and his Anticlaudianus, a learned and profound, and likewise highly imaginative allegorical poem upon man.[132] Its Preface in prose casts a curious light upon the author’s enigmatical personality, which combined the wonted or conventional humility of a monk with the towering self-consciousness of a man of genius.

More sentences of turgid deprecation follow, and the author begs the reader not to approach his book with disgust and irritation, but with pleasant anticipations of novelty (not all a monk speaks here!).

This Preface of strained sentence and laboured metaphor, of forced humility and overweening self-consciousness, hardly augurs well for the poem of which it is the prelude. But prefaces are authors’ pitfalls, and, moreover, many writers have floundered in one medium of speech while in another they have moved with ease. From the ungainly prose of the Persones Tale, no one would expect the ease and force of Chaucer’s verse. And the reader of Alanus’s Preface need not be discouraged from entering upon his poem. Its subject is man; its philosophic or religious purpose is to expound the functions of God, of Nature, of Fortune, of Virtue and Vice, in making man and shaping his career. The poem is an allegory, original in its general scheme of composition, but in many of its parts following earlier allegorical writings.

The opening lines tell of Nature’s solicitude to bestow her gifts so that the finished work may present a fair harmony: as a patient workman she forges, trims and files, and fashions with reason’s chisel. But when she seeks to invest her work with qualities beyond her giving, she is obliged to call on the Celestial Council of her Sisters. Responding, pilgrim-like the Crown of Heaven’s soldiery comes from on high, brightens the earth with its light, and clothes the ground with blessed footprints.

Leading this galaxy, Concord advances, foster-child of Peace; then Plenty comes, and Favour, and Youth with favour anointed, and Laughter, banisher of mental mists; then Shame and Modesty, and Reason the measure of good, and Honesty, Reason’s happy comrade; then Dignity (decus) and Prudence balancing her scales, and Piety and true Faith, and Virtue. Last of all Nobility (nobilitas), in grace not quite the others’ equal.[133]

In the midst of a great wood blessed with fountains and multitudinous bird-song, a cloud-kissing mountain rose with level top. Nature’s palace was erected here, gemmed and golden; and within was a great hall hung upon bronze columns. Here the painter’s art had rendered the ways of men, and inscriptions made plain the pictured story. “O new wonders of painting,” exclaims the poet; “what cannot be, comes into being; and painting, the ape of truth, deluding with novel art, turns shadows to realities, and transforms particular falsehood into (general) truth.”[134] There might be seen the power of logic pressing its arguments and conquering sophistry. There Aristotle was preparing his arms, and, more divinely, Plato mused on heaven’s secrets. There Seneca moralized, and Ptolemy explained the stars in their times and courses. There spoke the word of Tully, while Virgil’s muse painted many lies, and put truth’s garb on falsehood. There was also shown the might of Alcides and Ulysses’ wisdom, Turnus’s valour prodigal of life, and Hippolytus’s shame, undone by Venus’s reins.[135] Such and many other tropes of things and dreams of truth, this royal art set forth.

Here, standing in the midst of her Council, Nature, with bowed head, spoke her solemn words: “Painfully I remake what my hand’s solicitude has wrought. But the hand’s penitence does not wipe out the flaws. The shortcomings of our works must be repaired by some perfect model, some man divine, not smelling of the earth and earthly, but whose mind shall hold to heaven while his body walks the earth. Let him be the mirror in which we may see what our faith, our potency, and virtue ought to be. As it is, our shame is over all the earth.”

When the Council had approved these words, Prudence arose in all her beauty.[136] She discoursed upon man’s dual nature, spirit and body. Nature and her helpers may be the artificers of his mortal body, but the soul demands its heavenly Artificer, and laughs at our rude arts. God’s wisdom alone can create the soul, as Prudence shows by an exposition of its qualities.

Now Reason raised his reverend form, holding his triple glass in which appear the causes and effects and qualities of things. He humbly disclaimed the power to instruct Minerva,[137] and applauded the plan by which a new Lucifer should sojourn in the world. May he unite all the gifts which they can bestow, and be their champion against the Vices. Now let their suppliant vows be sped to Him who alone can create the divine mind. A legate should be despatched above, bearing their request. For this office none is so fit as Prudence, to whom the secrets of Heaven are known, and whose energy and wisdom will surmount the difficulties of the way.

Prudence at first refuses; but Concordia rises, the inspirer of chaste loves, she who knit the souls of David and Jonathan, Pirithous and Theseus, Nisus and Euryalus, Orestes and Pylades. Persuasively she speaks, and points out all the ills the world had suffered by disobedience to her behests. Prudence is won over to the task, and now wills only as her sisters will. She thinks upon the means and way. Wisdom orders a chariot to be made, in which the sea, the stars, the heavens may be traversed. Its artificers are her seven daughters, wise and fair, who unite the skill and knowledge of all those wise ancients who had excelled in any Art. First Grammar (her functions and great writers being told) forms the pole which goes before the axle-tree (temo praeambulus axis). Then Logic makes the axle-tree; and Rhetoric adorns the pole with gems and the axle with flowers. Arithmetic constructs one wheel of the chariot, and Music the second, Geometry the third, and the fourth wheel is made by Astronomy.[138]

Now Reason, at Nature’s nod, yokes to the chariot the five horses, to wit, the Senses disciplined and controlled, Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch. He himself mounts as charioteer, and bids Prudence follow. Amid the farewells and plaudits of all, the chariot soars aloft. As it speeds along, Prudence investigates atmospheric phenomena, and then the spirits of evil who wander through the air. They passed on through the upper ether, reached the citadel and fount of light, where the Sun holds sway; next was reached the region where Venus and the star of Mercury sing together and Lucifer exults, the herald of the day. Then to their rapid flight appeared Mars’ flaming palace, seething with fire and wrath. Onward they passed to the glad light and unhurtful flames of Jupiter, and then to Saturn’s sphere. At length they ascended the stellar region where the Pole stars contend in brightness, where are seen Hercules and Orion, Leda’s twins, the fiery Crab, the Lion, and the rest of the Zodiac’s constellations.[139]

Here at heaven’s entrance the chariot halted. Those five horses of the Senses, charioteered by Reason, could ascend no farther. But a damsel was seen, seated upon the summit of the Pole. She scrutinizes the hidden Cause and End of all things, holding scales in her right hand and in her left a sceptre. On her vestments a subtile point traces God’s secrets, and the formless is figured in form. Reverently Phronesis, that is Prudence, saluted this Queen of the Pole, and set forth the purpose of her journey, telling of Nature’s desire and her limitations. In reply Theology, for it is she,[140] offered herself as a companion, and bade Prudence leave her chariot, but keep the second courser (Hearing) to bear her on. Prudence now surmounted the starry citadels, and marvelled at heaven’s nodes, where the four ways begin and the crystalline waters flow, shot with agreeing fires; for here, in universal harmony transcending Nature’s laws and Reason’s power, Concord unites those elements which war below. Onward leads the way among those joys celestial which know no tears, where there is peace without hate, and light above all brightness. Here dwell the angel bands, the Thunderer’s princes, regulators of the world; here glow the seraphim, and cherubim drain draughts from the mind of God; and here are the Thrones whereon God balances His weighed decrees, and with His band of Powers conquers the tyrants.[141] Here also rest the saints, freed from earth’s dross and passion, clothed in virgin white or martyr’s purple, or wearing the Doctor’s laurel. Joyful alike are they, yet diverse in merit, shining with unequal splendour.[142] Here finally, in honour surpassing all, is the Virgin Mother, clad in the garb of our salvation—Star of the Sea, Way of Life, Port of Salvation, Limit of Piety, Mother of Pity, Garden closed, Sealed Font, Fruitful Olive, Sweet Paradise, Rose without Thorn, Guiltless Grace, Way of the Wanderer, Light of the Blind, Rest of the Tired—untold, unnumbered, and unspeakable are her praises.[143]

Phronesis cannot bear the sight. Queen Theology calls to her sister Faith to aid the fainting one. Faith comes and holds her Mirror before the eyes of Phronesis; and in this glass her eyes can endure the shaded glory of the overpowering vision. She staggers on, her trembling steps supported by Faith and Theology. In the glass she sees the eternal and divine, the enduring, moveless, sure; species unborn, celestial ideas, the forms of men and principles of things, causes of causes and the course of fate, the Thunderer’s mind; why God condemns some, predestines others, prepares that one for life and from this one withdraws His rewards; why poverty presses upon some and want is filled only with tears; why riches pour on others, why one is wise, another lacking, and why the worthies of the past have been endowed each with his several gifts.[144]

Marvelling at all these sights, Prudence, supported by the sisters, reached at last the palace of the King, and fell prostrate before God himself. He bade her rise, and speak. Humbly she set forth Nature’s plight and the evil upon earth, and presented her petition. God accedes benignantly. He will not destroy the earth again, but will send a human spirit endowed with heavenly gifts, a pilgrim to the earth, a medicine for the world. Prudence worships. God summons Mind, and orders him to fashion the type-form, the idea of the human mind. Mind searches among existing beings for the traces of this new idea or type.[145] His difficult search succeeds at last, and in the Mirror which he constructs, every grace takes its abode: Joseph’s form, the intelligence of Judith, the patience of righteous Job, the modesty of Moses, Jacob’s simplicity, Abraham’s faith, Tobias’s piety. He presents this pattern-type to God, who sets an accordant soul therein, and then entrusts the new-made being to Phronesis, while Mind anoints it with an unguent against the attacks of the Vices. Phronesis, with her prize, turned to the way by which she had ascended, regained her chariot and Reason her charioteer. Together they sped back to the congratulations of Nature and her Council.

For this perfect soul Nature now forms a beautiful body. Concord unites the two, and a new man is formed, perfect and free from flaw. Chastity and guardian Modesty endow him with their gifts; Reason adds his, and Honesty. These Logic follows, with her gift of skill in argument; Rhetoric brings her stores, then Arithmetic, next Music, next Geometry, next Astronomy;[146] while Theology and Piety are not behind with theirs; and to these Faith joins her gifts of fidelity and truth. Last of all comes Nobility, Fortune’s daughter. But because she has nothing of her own to give, and must receive all from her mother, she betakes herself to Fortune’s house of splendid mutability. What will Fortune give? The two return to Nature’s palace, and Fortune’s magnificence is proffered by her daughter; but Reason, standing by, will allow only a measured acceptance.[147]

The report of this richly endowed creature reached Alecto. Raging she summoned her pests, the chiefs of Tartarus, doers of ill, masters of every sin—Injury, Fraud, Perjury, Theft, Rapine, Fury and Anger, Hate, Discord, Strife, Disease and Melancholy, Lust, Wantonness and Need, Fear and Old Age. She roused them with a harangue: their rule is threatened by this upstart Creature, whom Parent Nature has prepared for war; but what can his untried imbecility do against them in arms?

All clamour assent, and in a tumult of rage make ready for the strife. The hostile ranks approach. The first attack is made by Folly (Stultitia) and her comrades, Sloth, Gaming, Idle Jesting, Ease and Sleep. But faithful Virtues protect the constant youth against these foes. Next Discord leads its mutinous band, but only to defeat. Onslaughts follow from Poverty, next from Ill-Repute, from Old Age and Disease. Then Grieving advances, and is overthrown by Laughter. More deadly still are the attacks of Venus and Lust; then Excess and Wantonness take up the fray; and at the end Impiety and Fraud and Avarice. But still the man conquers with the aid of his Virtues ever true.

The fight is over. The Virtues triumph and receive their Kingdoms; Vice succumbs; Love reigns instead of Discord; the man is blessed; and the earth, adorned with flowers in a new spring of youth, brings forth abundance. The Poet sums up his poem’s teaching: From God must everything begin and in Him end. But our genius may not stand inert; ours is the strife as well, according to our strength and faculty. Let the mind attach itself to the things which are and do not pass, even as Plato sings, from things of sense reaching on ever to the grades Angelic and Olympus’s steeps. Then it shall behold the universal praise of God and the true ascription of all good to Him. He in himself is perfect, Part and likewise Whole, and everywhere uncircumscribed. Nothing has power in itself, but all would fall to nothing, did He close the flux of hidden power.

Alanus, a good Christian Doctor, is also an eclectic in his thought. A consistent system is hardly to be drawn from his poem. It suggests Christ. But its hero is not the God-man of the Incarnation. Its figures are semi-pagan. The virtue Faith, for example, is the Fides, the Good Faith, of the antique Roman, though it is the Christian virtue Faith as well. In language the poem is antique; its verse has vigorous flow; its imagery lacks neither beauty nor sublimity. It is in fact a poem, a creation, having a scheme and unity of its own, although the author borrows continually. Martianus Capella is there and Dionysius the Areopagite; there also is the Psychomachia of Prudentius and its progeny of symbolic battles between the Virtues and the Vices.[148] Yet Alanus has achieved; for he has woven his material into a real poem and has reared his own lofty allegory. His work is another grand example of mediaeval symbolism.

Thus we see the ceaseless sweep of allegory through men’s minds. They felt and thought and dreamed in allegories; and also spent their dry ingenuity on allegorical constructions. It was reserved for one supreme poet to create, out of this atmosphere, a supreme poem which is as complete an allegory as the Anticlaudianus. But the Divina Commedia has also the power of its human realities of actually experienced pain and joy, and hate and love. Compared with it, the Anticlaudianus betrays the vapourings of monk and doctor, imaginative indeed, but thin. The author’s feet were not planted on the earth of human life.

But the Middle Ages did not demand that allegory should have its feet planted on the earth, so long as its head nodded high among the clouds—or its sentiments wandered sweetly in fancy’s gardens. In one of these dwelt that lovely Rose, whose Roman once had vogue. In structure the Roman de la rose is an allegory from the beginning of the first part by De Lorris to the very end of that encyclopaedic sequel added by De Meun. The story is well known.[149] One may recall the fact that in De Lorris’s poem and De Meun’s sequel every quality and circumstance of Love’s sentiment and fortunes are figured in allegorical personifications—all the lover’s hopes and fears and the wavering chances of his quest.

In this respect the poem is the courtly and romantic counterpart of such a philosophical or religious allegory as the Anticlaudianus. Personifications of the arts and sciences, the vices and virtues, current since the time of Prudentius’s Psychomachia and Capella’s Nuptials of Philology, were all in the Anticlaudianus, while in the Roman de la rose figure their secular and romantic kin: in De Lorris’s part, Love, Fair-Welcome, Danger, Reason, Franchise, Pity, Courtesy, Shame, Fear, Idleness, Jealousy, Wicked-Tongue; then, with De Meun, others besides: Richesse, False-Seeming, Hypocrisy, Nature, and Genius.[150] The figures of the Roman de la rose have diverse antecedents scattered through the entire store of knowledge and classic literature possessed by the Middle Ages; perhaps their immediate source of inspiration was the scheme of courtly love which the mediaeval imagination elaborated and revelled in.[151] The poem of De Lorris was a veritable romantic allegory. De Meun, in his sequel, rather plays with the allegorical form, which he continues; it has become a frame for his stores of learning, his knowledge of the world, his views of life, his wit and satire, and his great literary and poetic gifts. Yet it ends in a regular Psychomachia, in which Love’s barons are hard beset by all the foes of Love’s delight, though Love has its will at last.

BOOK VI
LATINITY AND LAW

CHAPTER XXX

Both north and south of the Alps another and obviously enduring cause fostered the habit of regarding the Classics as storehouses of knowledge: the fact that they were such for all the mediaeval centuries. They included not only poetry and eloquence, but also history, philosophy, natural knowledge, law and polity. The knowledge contained in them exceeded what the men of western Europe otherwise possessed. As century after century passed, mediaeval men learned more for themselves, and also drew more largely on the classic store. Yet it remained unexhausted. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries constitute the great mediaeval epoch. Men were then opening their eyes a little to observe the natural world, and were thinking a little for themselves. Nevertheless the chief increase in knowledge issued from the gradual discovery and mastering of the works of Aristotle. These centuries, like their predecessors, make clear that men who inherit from a greater past a universal literature containing the best they can conceive and more knowledge than they can otherwise attain, will be likely to regard every part of this literature as in some way a source of knowledge, physical or metaphysical, historical or ethical. And the Classics merited such regard; for where they did not instruct in science, they imparted knowledge of life, and norms and instances of conduct, from which men still may draw guidance. We have outlearned the physics, and perhaps the metaphysics of the Greeks; their knowledge of nature, in comparison with ours, was but as a genial beginning; their polities and their formal ethics we have tried and tested; but we have not risen above the power and inspiration of the story of Greece and Rome, and the exemplifications of life in the Greek and Latin Classics. It has not ceased to be true that he who best loves the Classics, and most deeply feels and glories in their unique excellence as literature, is he who still draws life from them, and discipline and knowledge. Their true lovers, like the true lovers of all noble literature, are always in a state of pupilage to the poems and the histories they love.

Obviously then no final word lies in the statement that through the Middle Ages men turned to the Classics for instruction. They did indeed turn to them for all kinds of knowledge, and for discipline. Often they looked for instruction from Ovid or Virgil in a way to make us smile. Often they were like schoolboys, dully conning words which they did not feel and so did not understand. But in the tenth century, and in the twelfth, some men admired and loved the Latin Classics, and drew from them, as we may, lessons which are learned only by those who love aright.

It would be hard to say what the men of the Middle Ages did not thus gain. The pagan classical literature was one of humanity in its full range of interests. This was true of the Greek; and from the Greek, the universal human passed to the Latin, which the Middle Ages were to know. In both literatures, man was a denizen of earth. The laws of mortality and fate were held before his eyes; and the action of the higher powers bore upon mortal happiness, rather than upon any life to come. When reflecting upon the use and influence of the Classics through the Middle Ages, it is always to be kept in mind that the antique literature was the literature of this life and of this world; that it was universal in its humanity, and still in the Middle Ages might touch every human love and human interest not directly connected with the hopes and terrors of the Judgment Day.

So whenever educated mediaeval men were drawn by the ambitions or moved by the finer joys of human life, it lay in their path to seek instruction or satisfaction from some antique source. If a man wished the common education of a clerk, he drew it from antique text-books and their commentaries. Grammar and rhetoric meant Latin grammar and Latin rhetoric; dialectic also was Latin and antique. Likewise the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, could be studied only in Latin. These ordinary branches of education having been mastered, if then the man’s tastes or ambitions turned to the interests of earth (and who except the saintly recluse was not so drawn?) he would still look to the antique. A civilian or an ecclesiastic would need some knowledge of law, which for the most part was Roman, even when disguised as Canon law.[152] Did a man incline toward philosophy, and the scrutiny of life’s deeper problems, again the source was the antique; and when he lifted his mind to theology, he would still find himself reasoning in categories of antique dialectic. Finally, and this was a broad field of humane inclination, if a clerkly educated man loved poetry, eloquence, and history, for their own sakes, he also would turn to the antique.

There is scarcely need to revert again to the use of the Classics in the earlier Middle Ages. We have seen that in Italy they never ceased to form the conscious background to all intellectual life; and that in the north, letters came a handmaid in the train of Latin Christianity—a handmaid that was apt to assert her own value, and also charm the minds of men. From the first, it was the orthodox view that Latin letters should provide the education enabling men to understand the Christian religion adequately. This is the object set forth in Charlemagne’s Capitularies upon education.[153] Three hundred years later Honorius of Autun says in his sermonizing way: