Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

ADAM AND EVE

… Adam vero veniet ad Evam, moleste ferens quod cum ea locutus sit Diabolus, et dicet ei:

Di moi, muiller, que te querroit

Li mal Satan? que te voleit?

Eva Il me parla de nostre honor.

280 Adam Ne creire ja le traïtor!

Il est traïtre, bien le sai.

Eva Et tu coment?

Adam Car l’esaiai!

Eva De ço que chalt me del veer?

Il te fera changer saver.

Adam Nel fera pas, car nel crerai

De nule rien tant que l’asai.

Nel laisser mais venir sor toi

Car il est mult de pute foi.

Il volt traïr ja son seignor,

290 E soi poser al des halzor.

Tel paltonier qui ço ad fait

Ne voil vers vus ait nul retrait.

Tunc serpens artificiose compositus ascendet juxta stipitem arboris vetite. Cui Eva propius adhibebit aurem, quasi ipsius ascultans consilium. Dehinc accipiet Eva pomum, porriget Ade. Ipse vero nondum eum accipiet, et Eva dicet ei:

Manjue, Adam, ne sez que est;

Pernum ço bien que nus est prest.

Adam Est il tant bon?

Eva Tu le saveras;

Nel poez saver sin gusteras.

Adam J’en duit!

Eva Fai le!

Adam Nen frai pas.

Eva Del demorer fai tu que las.

Adam Et jo le prendrai.

Eva Manjue, ten!

300 Par ço saveras e mal e bien.

Jo en manjerai premirement.

Adam E jo aprés.

Eva Seurement.

Tunc commedet Eva partem pomi, et dicet Ade:

Gusté en ai. Deus! quele savor!

Unc ne tastai d’itel dolçor,

D’itel savor est ceste pome!

Adam De quel?

Eva D’itel nen gusta home.

Or sunt mes oil tant cler veant,

Jo semble Deu le tuit puissant.

Quanque fu, quanque doit estre

310 Sai jo trestut, bien en sui maistre.

Manjue, Adam, ne faz demore;

Tu le prendras en mult bon’ore.

Tunc accipiet Adam pomum de manu Eve, dicens:

Jo t’en crerrai, tu es ma per.

Eva Manjue, nen poez doter.

Tunc commedat Adam partem pomi. …

(Then Adam shall go to Eve, vexed because the Devil has talked to her, and shall say to her:

Tell me, woman, what did the evil Satan want from you? What was he looking for?

Eve He spoke about our weal.

Adam Don’t you believe that traitor. He is a traitor, I well know.

Eve But how do you know?

Adam I have tried it out.

Eve Why should I care about that and not see him again?

He will make you change your mind.

Adam He won’t, for I won’t believe him in anything I have not tried out. Don’t let him come near you again, for he is a fellow of very bad faith. He wanted to betray his Lord and set himself in His height. I don’t want a scoundrel who has done that to have anything to do with you.

Then a skilfully fashioned serpent shall climb up along the trunk of the tree. Eve shall turn her ear toward it as though listening to its advice. Then Eve shall take the apple and offer it to Adam. He shall not yet accept it, and Eve shall say to him:

Eat, Adam, you don’t know what it is. Let us take this good thing which is ready for us.

Adam Is it so good?

Eve You will find out. You cannot find out if you do not taste it.

Adam I am afraid of it.

Eve Do it.

Adam I won’t do it.

Eve You hesitate because you are cowardly.

Adam So I shall take it.

Eve Eat, I tell you! By it you shall know evil and good. I will eat first.

Adam And I afterwards.

Eve Certainly.

Here Eve shall eat a piece of the apple and say to Adam:

I have tasted it. God, what a savor! Never have I tasted such sweetness. Of such savor is this apple!

Adam Of what savor?

Eve No man ever tasted the like. Now my eyes are so clearsighted, I seem like God, the Almighty. All that was, all that will be, I know entirely and am master of it. Eat, Adam, do not hesitate. You will take it in a fortunate hour.

Then Adam shall take the apple from the hand of Eve and shall say:

I shall believe you. You are my equal.

Eve Eat, you have nothing to fear.

Then Adam shall eat part of the apple. …)

This piece of dialogue occurs in the Mystère d’Adam, a Christmas play from the latter part of the twelfth century, which is extant in a single manuscript. Very little has come down to us from the earliest period of the liturgical drama (or the drama that grew out of the liturgy) in the vernacular, and of that little, the Mystère d’Adam is one of the oldest specimens. The Fall, which occupies the greater part of it (after which there is still room for the murder of Abel and the procession of the prophets announcing Christ’s coming), begins with an unsuccessful attempt by the Devil to lead Adam astray. The Devil then approaches Eve, and this time has better luck. Immediately afterward, he runs off (to Hell), but as he does so, Adam gets a glimpse of him. The scene reprinted above begins after his disappearance. No such scene in the form of a dialogue occurs in Genesis, nor does any preceding attempt on the Devil’s part to lead Adam astray. In dialogue form, Genesis gives only the scene between Eve and the serpent, which, according to a very old tradition, is identical with the Devil (see Rev. 12: 9); the passage that follows is entirely narrative: vidit igitur mulier quod bonum esset lignum ad vescendum, et pulchrum oculis, aspectuque delectabile; et tulit de fructu illius, et comedit; deditque viro suo, qui comedit. It is from these last words that our scene developed.

It is divided into two parts. The first contains a conversation between Adam and Eve concerning the desirability of dealing with the Devil; here the apple is not mentioned. In the second, Eve takes the apple from the tree and tempts Adam into eating of it. The two parts are separated by the intervention of the serpent—the serpens artificiose compositus—which whispers something into Eve’s ear. What it is we are not told, but we can imagine it, for immediately afterward Eve reaches for the apple, offers it to the reluctant Adam, and utters what will be her principal motif, often repeated: Manjue, Adam! Thus she breaks off the first conversation, concerning dealing with the Devil, before it is finished; she does not reply to Adam’s last speech, but brings about a completely new situation, a fait accompli which cannot but surprise Adam the more since so far there has been no mention of the apple in his conversation with her. She appears to be acting upon the serpent’s advice and this also explains the serpent’s intervention at this precise juncture: for to win Eve over to itself and for its purpose would no longer be necessary; that had already been accomplished in the preceding scene between Eve and the Devil, which had concluded with Eve’s decision to taste the apple and give Adam some of it too. The serpent’s intervention in the middle of the conversation between Adam and Eve can serve no other purpose than to give Eve a directive which is needed at this precise moment: namely, that she should break off the discussion, which from the Devil’s point of view was becoming dangerous and useless, and should instead proceed to action. But the reason the discussion is dangerous and useless from the Devil’s viewpoint is the evident fact that it fails to convince Adam, while there is even a risk that Eve herself may again begin to hesitate.

Now let us examine the first part of the scene, that is, the conversation concerning the desirability of dealing with the Devil. Adam calls his wife to account as a French farmer or burgher might have done when, upon returning home, he saw something that he did not like: his wife talking to a fellow with whom he has already had unpleasant experiences and with whom he does not want to have anything to do. Woman, muiller, he says to her, what was that fellow doing around here? What did he want with you? Eve answers in a way that is meant to impress him: “He talked of how we could better ourselves!” (for “weal, advantage, betterment” would seem to be the sense of honor here; even in the chansons de geste the word has a strongly materialistic value). “Don’t you believe him,” says Adam emphatically, “he is a traitor, I know all about him!” Eve knows all about him too, but it has never occurred to her that such a thing could be called treason. There is no moral consciousness in her as there is in Adam; in its place she has a naive, childishly hardy, and unreflectingly sinful curiosity. Adam’s clear appraisal and condemnation of the Devil and his schemes disconcerts her. She falls back on an insincere and impertinent but embarrassed question, the sort of question which has been asked a thousand times in similar situations by naive, impetuous people who are governed by their instincts: “How do you know?” The question does her no good. Adam is too sure of his ground. “I have found out by experience!” These words cannot be Eve’s, as a textual critic has recently assumed (we shall have more to say about this); for only Adam has consciously had such an experience, and it is the tone of his voice which we hear in this energetic reply. Eve on the other hand has in nowise interpreted her conversation with the Devil as an experience of his treachery; her playful curiosity failed to grasp the ethical problem. Even now she does not grasp it, for she does not want to. She has made up her mind to give the other side (the Devil) a try for once. But she senses that she cannot contradict Adam seriously when he says that the Devil is a traitor. So she abandons the course she had taken with the question “How do you know?”, and instead comes out—half frightened and half brazen—with her real thoughts: “Why should that prevent me from seeing him. He will change your mind for you too!” (changer saver refers to bien le sai, the knowledge of the Devil’s treachery which only Adam has). But this was a wrong move, for now Adam grows seriously angry: “He won’t do that, because I shall never trust him!” And with the authority of a man who knows himself master of his house and fully in the right as to the facts, he now clearly states the reasons for his view and forbids Eve to have any dealings with the Devil (“with a scoundrel who did a thing like that you can have nothing to do”), for he remembers the part which God bade him play in relation to the woman: Tu la governe par raison (l. 21). At this point the Devil senses that his plan is miscarrying and so he intervenes.

I have discussed this passage in detail because the text of the manuscript is somewhat confused in respect to the distribution of lines between the two speakers and especially because S. Etienne (Romania, 1922, pp. 592-595) proposed a reading for lines 280-287 which was adopted in Chamard’s edition (Paris, 1925) but which I do not find convincing. It is as follows:

280 Adam Ne creire ja le traitor!

Il est traitre.

Eva Bien le sai.

Adam Et tu coment?

Eva Car l’asaiai.

De ço que chalt me del veer?

Adam Il te ferra changer saver.

Eva Nel fera pas, car nel crerai

De nule rien tant que l’asai.

Adam Nel laisser mais. …

I consider this impossible. The very different tone of the two characters is completely confused. It is not possible for Eve to say bien le sai, nor for Adam to ask how she knows, nor for Eve to refer to her previous experience. And to expunge Adam’s emphatic answer “the Devil will never succeed in that” from the conversation by interpreting it as a reassuring remark which Eve offers to calm Adam’s apprehensions, strikes me as completely misguided. In support of his proposal, Etienne contends that Eve’s answer, de ço que chalt me del veer? to Adam’s assertion, “I know from experience” (as the earlier editors, and I too, have understood it), would be d’une maladresse inconcevable; she would be admitting to Adam that she was in league with the Devil: ayant ainsi convaincu Adam de sa complicité avec le tentateur elle réussirait dès la scène suivante à le persuader d’accepter d’elle ce qu’il avait refusé de son compère! This, Etienne insists, would be against all verisimilitude, as it would be that Eve should say: Satan will make you change your mind—for Satan n’intervient plus, and after all it is Eve who leads Adam astray! It is evident that Etienne conceives of Eve as an extremely skillful and diplomatic person, whose object is to soothe Adam and make him forget the tempter Satan against whom he is prejudiced, or at least to make him understand that she does not blindly rely on Satan but intends to wait and see whether his promises come true.

Such speeches are hardly calculated to soothe Adam, and the fact that Satan does not reappear is in no way an argument against Eve’s remarking that he may make Adam change his mind. Aside from these minor flaws, Etienne’s view proves that he has failed to understand the significance of the serpent’s intervention and the tremendous effect produced on Adam by Eve’s compliance with the serpent’s advice (that is, her picking the apple from the tree), although these points furnish the key to the entire scene. Why does the serpent intervene? Because it senses that things are going badly for it. Eve, in fact, is clumsy, very clumsy, even though her clumsiness is not hard to understand. For without the Devil’s special help she is but a weak—though curious and hence sinful—creature, far inferior to her husband and easily guided by him. That is how God created her from Adam’s rib. And God explicitly ordered Adam to guide her, and Eve to obey and serve him. Confronted with Adam, Eve is fearful, submissive, self-conscious. She feels she cannot cope with his clear and reasonable and manly will. The serpent alone changes all this. It upsets the order of things established by God, it makes the woman the man’s master, and so leads both to ruin.

The serpent accomplishes this by advising Eve to break off the theoretical discussion and to confront Adam with a wholly unexpected fait accompli. Earlier, when the Devil had talked to Eve, he had given her the directive: primes le pren, Adam le done! (take it—the apple—first, then give it to Adam). It is of this directive that the serpent now reminds her. Adam must not be approached where he is strong but where he is weak. He is a good man, a French peasant or burgher. In the normal course of life he is reliable and sure of himself. He knows what he is supposed to do and what not. God’s orders were clear, and his honest decency is rooted in this unambiguous certainty which guards him against dubious entanglements. He also knows that he has his wife under his thumb. He is not afraid of her occasional whims, which he regards as childish and not at all dangerous. Suddenly something unprecedented happens, something that upsets his whole system of life. The woman who a moment ago was chattering away with childish thoughtlessness, without rhyme or reason, whom but a moment ago he had caught up sharp with a few determined words which permitted no rejoinder—the same woman suddenly displays a will of her own, completely independent of his will; she reveals it through an act which to him seems a monstrous portent. She picks the apple from the tree as though it were the easiest and most natural thing in the world to do, and then presses him hard with her manjue, Adam! four times repeated. His horrified refusal, which the Latin stage direction expresses in the words Ipse autem nondum eum accipiet, cannot possibly be exaggerated. But his earlier calm assurance has vanished completely. The shock has been too severe; the roles are exchanged; Eve is master of the situation. The few words which he still manages to stammer out show that he is in a state of utter confusion. He vacillates between fear and desire—not actually a desire for the apple but rather a desire to prove and assert himself: is he, as a man, to be afraid of doing what the woman has just successfully done? And when he finally overcomes his fear and takes the apple, he does it with a most touching movement of feeling: what his wife does, he will do too; he will trust her: jo t’en crerrai, tu es ma per. Perniciose misericors, as Bernard of Clairvaux once described it (Pat. Lat. 183, 460). Here we see how wrongly Etienne formulates the situation (see above), when he thinks it surprising that Eve, as the Devil’s ally, should succeed in leading Adam astray although the Devil himself could not do so. Actually no one but she could succeed here (with the Devil’s help), for only she is connected with Adam in so special a relationship that her actions affect him spontaneously and deeply. She is sa per, the Devil is not—quite apart from the fact that an essential element in Adam’s seduction is the fait accompli of the apple picked from the tree and offered to him, and that the apple had to be picked by a human being, not by the Devil. Now, while in this second part of the scene Adam appears to be disconcerted and confused, Eve—to use the language of sport—is in great form. The Devil has taught her how to get the better of her man; he has showed her where her strength is greater than his: in unconsidered action, in her lack of any innate moral sense, so that she transgresses the restriction with the foolhardiness of a child as soon as the man loses his hold (sa discipline) upon her (l. 36). There she stands, seductive, the apple in her hand, and plays with poor, confused, uprooted Adam. Urging him, holding out promises, ridiculing his fears, she leads him on, and finally she has an inspired idea: she will take the first bite herself! And so she does. And then, when, praising the flavor and the effect of the fruit ecstatically, she approaches him once again with her manjue, Adam, there is no escape left for him. He takes the apple, with the touching phrase we quoted above. Again she says, for the last time, “Come, eat it! Don’t be afraid!” And it is all over.

The episode which is here presented to us in dramatic form is the starting point of the Christian drama of redemption, and hence is a subject of the utmost importance and the utmost sublimity from the point of view of the author and his audience. However, the presentation aims to be popular. The ancient and sublime occurrence is to become immediate and present; it is to be a current event which could happen any time, which every listener can imagine and is familiar with; it is to strike deep roots in the mind and the emotions of any random French contemporary. Adam talks and acts in a manner any member of the audience is accustomed to from his own or his neighbor’s house; things would go exactly the same way in any townsman’s home or on any farm where an upright but not very brillant husband was tempted into a foolish and fateful act by his vain and ambitious wife who had been deceived by an unscrupulous swindler. The dialogue between Adam and Eve—this first man-woman dialogue of universal historical import—is turned into a scene of simplest everyday reality. Sublime as it is, it becomes a scene in simple, low style.

In antique theory, the sublime and elevated style was called sermo gravis or sublimis; the low style was sermo remissus or humilis; the two had to be kept strictly separated. In the world of Christianity, on the other hand, the two are merged, especially in Christ’s Incarnation and Passion, which realize and combine sublimitas and humilitas in overwhelming measure.

This is a very old Christian motif (see above, especially pp. 72f.). It comes to life again in the theological and particularly the mystic literature of the twelfth century. In Bernard of Clairvaux and the Victorines it occurs frequently, with both humilitas and sublimitas being employed, in relation to Christ as well as absolutely, in antithetic contrast. Humilitas virtutum magistra, singularis filia summi regis (says Bernard, Epist. 469, 2, Pat. Lat. 182, 674), a summo coelo cum coelorum domino descendens. … Sola est humilitas quae virtutes beatificat et perennat, quae vim facit regno coelorum (Matt. 11: 12), quae dominum majestatis humiliavit usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis (Phil. 2: 8). Verbum enim Dei in sublimi constitutum ut ad nos descenderet, prior humilitas invitavit.

(Humility is the mistress of the virtues, the excellent daughter of the highest King, descending from the highest heaven with the Lord of the heavens. … It is humility alone which makes the virtues blessed and everlasting, which forces the kingdom of heaven, which humbled the Lord of Majesty unto death, even the death of the cross. For that the Word of God, dwelling in the Sublime, should descend to us, was first prompted by humility.)

In his sermons too the antithesis humilitas-sublimitas appears time and again: both in reference to Christ’s Incarnation, when he exclaims, prompted by Luke 3: 23, “being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph,” O humilitas virtus Christi! o humilitatis sublimitas! quantum confundis superbiam nostrae vanitatis! (In epiph. Domini sermo, 1, 7; Pat. Lat. 183, 146), as also in regard to the Passion and Christ’s mission in general, considered as an object of emulation: Propterea, dilectissimi, perseverate in disciplina quam suscepistis, ut per humilitatem ad sublimitatem ascendatis, quia haec est via et non est alia praeter ipsam. Qui aliter vadit, cadit potius quam ascendit, quia sola est humilitas quae exaltat, sola quae ducit ad vitam. Christus enim, cum per naturam divinitatis non haberet quo cresceret vel ascenderet, quia ultra deum nihil est, per descensum quomodo cresceret invenit, veniens incarnari, pati, mori, ne moreremur in aeternum. … (In ascens. Dom. 2, 6; Pat. Lat. 183, 304.)

(Therefore, dearly beloved, persevere in the discipline which you have taken upon you, so that by humility you may ascend to sublimity, for this is the way and there is none other. Who walks otherwise falls rather than rises, for it is humility alone which exalts, humility alone which leads to life. For Christ, having, by his divine nature, nowhither to grow or to ascend, because beyond God there is nothing, found by descending a way to grow, coming to be made flesh, to suffer, to die, that we should not die in eternity. …)

But the most beautiful passage of this kind—and at the same time one that is most characteristic of the style of Bernard the mystic—may well be the following, from his commentary on the Song of Songs: O humilitas, o sublimitas! Et tabernaculum Cedar (Cant. 1: 5), et sanctuarium Dei; et terrenum habitaculum, et coeleste palatium; et domus lutea, et aula regia; et corpus mortis, et templum lucis; et despectio denique superbis, et sponsa Christi. Nigra est, sed formosa, filiae Jerusalem (Cant. 1: 5-6): quam etsi labor et dolor longi exilii decolorat, species tamen coelestis exornat, exornant pelles Salomonis (Cant. 1: 5). Si horretis nigram, miremini et formosam; si despicitis humilem, sublimem suspicite. Hoc ipsum quam cautum, quam plenum consilii, plenum discretionis et congruentiae est, quod in sponsa dejectio ista, et ista celsitudo secundum tempus quidem eo moderamine sibi pariter contemperantur, ut inter mundi huius varietates et sublimitas erigat humilem, ne deficiat in adversis; et sublimem humilitas reprimat, ne evanescat in prosperis? Pulchre omnino ambae res, cum ad invicem contrariae sint, sponsae tamen pariter cooperantur in bonum, subserviunt in salutem.

(O humility, O sublimity! [Thou art] the tents of Kedar, and the sanctuary of God; an earthly habitation, and a heavenly palace; a house of clay, and a kingly court; a body of death, and a temple of light; lastly, a scorn to the proud, and the bride of Christ. She is black but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem: though the toil and pain of a long exile discolor her, yet a heavenly beauty adorns her, the curtains of Solomon adorn her. If you shudder at her blackness, admire too her beauty; if you despise her humbleness, behold her sublimity. How provident it is, how full of discretion and congruence, that this very degradation and this very exaltation of the bride compensate each other in this temporal world, so that amid its many changes sublimity raises up the humble man so that he does not fail in adversity, and humility restrains the proud man so that he does not grow vain in prosperity! Most beautiful, then, are they both, forasmuch as, though they are contraries, they work together alike for the good of the bride and serve her salvation.)

These significant passages are concerned with the thing itself, not with its literary treatment. Sublimitas and humilitas are here wholly ethico-theological categories, not aesthetico-stylistic ones. Yet in this latter sense too, that is in terms of style, the antithetical fusion of the two was emphasized, so early as the patristic period, as a characteristic of Holy Scripture—especially by Augustine (see above, pp. 72f.). The point of departure was the Scripture text that God had hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes (Matt. 11: 25; Luke 10: 21), as well as the fact that Christ had chosen fishermen and publicans and such humble people as his first disciples (see also I Cor. 1: 26ff.) rather than men of rank or learning. But the question of style became really acute when the spread of Christianity exposed Holy Scripture, and Christian literature in general, to the aesthetic criticism of highly educated pagans. They were horrified at the claim that the highest truths were contained in writings composed in a language to their minds impossibly uncivilized and in total ignorance of the stylistic categories. This criticism did not go unheeded, and the Fathers were generally far more concerned with the traditional standards of classical style than were the earliest Christian documents. But the same criticism also opened their eyes to the true and distinctive greatness of Holy Scripture—namely, that it had created an entirely new kind of sublimity, in which the everyday and the low were included, not excluded, so that, in style as in content, it directly connected the lowest with the highest. With this yet another train of thought was associated, based on the occult character of many passages in the Bible and the great difficulty in interpreting them: while on the one hand Scripture speaks very simply, as if to children, on the other hand it contains secrets and riddles which are revealed to very few; but even these passages are not written in a pretentious and erudite style, so that they can be understood only by the highly educated, proud in their knowledge, they can be understood by all who are humble and filled with faith. Augustine—who described his own advance to a comprehension of Holy Scripture in his Confessions (especially 3, 5 and 6, 5)—expresses this in a letter to Volusianus (137, 18) in the following terms: ea vero quae (sacra scriptura) in mysteriis occultat, nec ipsa eloquio superbo erigit, quo non audeat accedere mens tardiuscula et inerudita quasi pauper ad divitem; sed invitat omnes humili sermone, quos non solum manifesta pascat, sed etiam secreta exerceat veritate, hoc in promptis quod in reconditis habens. Or in the first chapter of De trinitate: Sacra scriptura parvulis congruens nullius generis rerum verba vitavit [clearly an allusion to the antique separation of styles], ex quibus quasi gradatim ad divina atque sublimia noster intellectus velut nutritus assurgeret. Among the numerous similar passages in Augustine which vary this theme in many ways, I will mention one more, because it describes the type of comprehension which is open to the humble and simple. It occurs in the Enarrationes in Psalmos and refers to the words, suscipiens mansuetos Dominus, in Psalm 146: Conticescant humanae voces, requiescant humanae cogitationes; ad incomprehensibilia non se extendant quasi comprehensuri, sed tamquam participaturi—a passage in which we see a most beautiful fusion of mystic elements and the concretely sensuous desire to share in possession (in opposition, of course, to the “proud” intellectual arrogance of those who insist on understanding). Peter Lombard, the Magister sententiarum, virtually copied the passage in his commentary on the Psalms, composed about the middle of the twelfth century. And the complete transformation into mysticism is to be found in Bernard, who bases comprehension entirely upon meditation on Christ’s life and Passion: Beati qui noverunt gustu felicis experientiae, quam dulciter, quam mirabiliter in oratione et meditatione scripturas dignetur Dominus revelare (in feria 2 Paschatis sermo, 20).

Several thoughts in complex interdependence are expressed in these passages: that Holy Scripture favors those whose hearts are simple and filled with faith; that such a heart is a prerequisite to “sharing” in it, for sharing and not a purely rational understanding is what it seeks to offer; that the occult and obscure elements it contains are likewise not couched in an “elevated style” (eloquio superbo) but in simple words, so that anyone can ascend quasi gradatim from the simple to the sublime and divine, or, as Augustine puts it in the Confessions, that one must read it as a child would: verum tamen illa erat, quae cresceret cum parvulis. And the idea that it differs in all these respects from the great secular writers of antiquity is likewise one that survived all through the Middle Ages. As late as the second half of the fourteenth century, Benvenuto da Imola, commenting on the line in Dante in which Beatrice’s manner of speaking is described (Inf. 2, 56: e comminciommi a dir soave e piana), writes: et bene dicit, quia sermo divinus est suavis et planus, non altus et superbus sicut sermo Virgilii et poetarum—although Beatrice as a mouthpiece of divine wisdom has to say much that is dark and difficult.

The medieval Christian drama falls perfectly within this tradition. Being a living representation of Biblical episodes as contained, with their innately dramatic elements, in the liturgy, it opens its arms invitingly to receive the simple and untutored and to lead them from the concrete, the everyday, to the hidden and the true—precisely as did that great plastic art of the medieval churches which, according to E. Mâle’s well-known theory, is supposed to have received decisive stimuli from the mysteries, that is, from the religious drama. The purpose of the liturgical or more generally the Christian theater is attested from a very early period. In the tenth century Saint Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, describes a dramatized Easter ceremony used by some priests ad fidem indocti vulgi ac neofitorum corroborandam and recommends it as worthy of imitation (quoted after E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2, 308). And in the twelfth century Suger of Saint-Denis puts it more profoundly and more generally in his frequently-quoted verse: Mens hebes ad verum per materialia surgit.

Let us now return to our text, the scene between Adam and Eve. It speaks humili sermone to the simple and pure in spirit. It situates the sublime event within their everyday lives, so that it is spontaneously present to them. Yet it does not forget that the subject is a sublime one; it leads from the simplest reality directly to the highest, most secret, and divine truth. The Mystère d’Adam is introduced by a liturgical reading of Scripture from Genesis, with lector and responding chorus. Then come the dramatized events of the Fall, with God Himself appearing among the dramatis personae. The story is carried on to the murder of Abel. And the conclusion of the whole is a procession of the Old Testament prophets announcing the coming of Christ. The scenes which render everyday contemporary life (the finest are the one between the Devil and Eve and the one here under discussion—two masterly pieces of incomparable purity, truly peers of the most perfect sculptures in Chartres, Reims, Paris, or Amiens) are, then, fitted into a Biblical and world-historical frame by whose spirit they are pervaded. And the spirit of the frame which encompasses them is the spirit of the figural interpretation of history. This implies that every occurrence, in all its everyday reality, is simultaneously a part in a world-historical context through which each part is related to every other, and thus is likewise to be regarded as being of all times or above all time. Let us begin with God Himself, who appears after the creation of the world and man to lead Adam and Eve into Paradise and make his will known to them. He is called figura. This term can be interpreted as referring simply to the priest who was to act—that is to say, be the figure for—the part and whom one hesitated to call Deus as one called the other actors Adam, Eve, etc. But a truly figural interpretation here seems likelier; for although God’s role in what actually takes place in the Mystère d’Adam is merely that of the lawgiver and the judge who punishes transgression, yet the redeeming Saviour is already figurally present in him. The stage direction announcing his appearance reads as follows: Tunc veniet Salvator indutus dalmatica, et statuantur choram eo Adam et Eva. … Et stent ambo coram Figura. … God, then, is first called Salvator and only afterward Figura, which would seem to justify the explanation: figura salvatoris. This supratemporal figural conception is taken up again later on. When Adam has eaten of the apple, he is immediately overcome by the most profound remorse. He breaks out into desperate self-accusations, which finally turn against Eve too, and which conclude as follows:

375 Par ton conseil sui mis a mal,

De grant haltesce sui mis a val.

N’en serrai trait por home né,

Si Deu nen est de majesté.

Que di jo, las? por quoi le nomai?

380 Il me aidera? Corocé l’ai.

Ne me ferat ja nul aïe,

For le filz qu’ istra de Marie.

Ne sai de nus prendre conroi,

Quant a Deu ne portames foi.

385 Or en soit tot a Deu plaisir!

N’i ad conseil que del morir.

(Through your advice I have been brought to evil, from a great height I have fallen into great depth. I shall not be raised from it by man born of woman, unless it be God in His Majesty. What am I saying, alas? Why did I name Him? He help me? I have angered Him. No one will help me now except the Son who will come forth from Mary. To no one can I turn for protection, since in God we kept no faith. Now then let everything be according to God’s will! There is no council but to die.)

From this text—especially from the phrase, for le filz qu’ istra de Marie—it is clear that Adam has advance knowledge of all of Christian world history, or at least of Christ’s coming and the redemption from that original sin which he, Adam, has just committed. In the very depth of his despair he already knows of the grace which will be fulfilled in its time. That grace—albeit a thing of the future, and even of a specific historically identifiable part of the future—is nevertheless included in the present knowledge of any and all times. For in God there is no distinction of times since for him everything is a simultaneous present, so that—as Augustine once put it—he does not possess foreknowledge but simply knowledge. One must, then, be very much on one’s guard against taking such violations of chronology, where the future seems to reach back into the present, as nothing more than evidence of a kind of medieval naïveté. Naturally, such an interpretation is not wrong, for what these violations of chronology afford is in fact an extremely simplified overall view adapted to the simplest comprehension—but this simultaneous overall view is at the same time the expression of a unique, exalted, and hidden truth, the very truth of the figural structure of universal history. Everything in the dramatic play which grew out of the liturgy during the Middle Ages is part of one—and always of the same—context: of one great drama whose beginning is God’s creation of the world, whose climax is Christ’s Incarnation and Passion, and whose expected conclusion will be Christ’s second coming and the Last Judgment. The intervals between the poles of the action are filled partly by figuration, partly by imitation, of Christ. Before his appearance there are the characters and events of the Old Testament—of the age of the Law—in which the coming of the Saviour is figurally revealed; this is the meaning of the procession of prophets. After Christ’s Incarnation and Passion there are the saints, intent upon following in his footsteps, and Christianity in general—Christ’s promised bride—awaiting the return of the Bridegroom. In principle, this great drama contains everything that occurs in world history. In it all the heights and depths of human conduct and all the heights and depths of stylistic expression find their morally or aesthetically established right to exist; and hence there is no basis for a separation of the sublime from the low and everyday, for they are indissolubly connected in Christ’s very life and suffering. Nor is there any basis for concern with the unities of time, place, or action, for there is but one place—the world; and but one action—man’s fall and redemption. To be sure, the entire course of world history is not represented each time. In the early periods we have only separate fragments, most frequently Easter and Christmas plays which arose from the liturgy. But the whole is always borne in mind and figurally represented. From the fourteenth century on, the full cycle appears in the mystery plays.

The everyday and real is thus an essential element of medieval Christian art and especially of the Christian drama. In contrast to the feudal literature of the courtly romance, which leads away from the reality of the life of its class into a world of heroic fable and adventure, here there is a movement in the opposite direction, from distant legend and its figural interpretation into everyday contemporary reality. In our text the realistic is still within the frame of the actualization of domestic episodes, of a conversation between the wife and the flattering seducer and another between husband and wife. There are as yet no coarsely realistic or farcical elements; at most the scurrying about of the devils (interea Demones discurrant per plateas, gestum facientes competentem) may have given occasion for some crude jokes. But later it is different: realism of a coarser grain begins to thrive, and varieties of mixed style, of the blunt juxtaposition of Passion and crude farce, develop, which to us appear strange and unseemly. When this development actually began cannot be clearly ascertained. But it was probably much earlier than the surviving dramatic texts make it appear. For complaints about the growing coarseness of the liturgical plays (not to be confused with their outright condemnation: that is another problem, which cannot be taken up in our context) occur as early as the twelfth century—for example in Herrad of Landsberg. It is most likely that a good deal of this sort of thing was already in evidence at that period, for, in general, it is the period of a reawakening popular realism. The subliterary survival of the tradition of the antique mime and the more conscious, more strongly critical, and more forceful observation of life, which, beginning with the twelfth century, seems to have set in among the lower classes too, led at that time to a flourishing development of the popular farce, whose spirit may well be assumed to have soon found its way into the religious drama as well. The audience was exactly the same; and it seems that even the lower clergy often shared the taste of the people in these matters. In any case, the extant documents of Christian dramatic literature indicate that the realistic and in particular the grotesque and farcical element became increasingly current, that it reached a climax in the fifteenth century, and thus afforded a sufficiency of arguments to the ultimately successful attacks of the countermovement which, inspired by humanist taste and (from Wycliffe on) by the sterner attitudes of the Reformation, considered the Christian mysteries tasteless and unseemly.

Then too the transfer—anachronistic to our way of feeling—of the events into a contemporary setting and into contemporary forms of life is equally unexceptionable. This again is something which, in the Mystère d’Adam, is only indicated to the extent that Adam and Eve speak like simple people of twelfth-century France (tel paltonier qui ço ad fait). Elsewhere and later, this is much more striking. In the fragment of a French Easter play which belongs to the beginning of the thirteenth century and which likewise survives in only one manuscript (I use the text in Förster-Koschwitz, Altfranzösisches Übungsbuch, 6th edition, 1921, pp. 214ff.), the subject matter is the scene with Joseph of Arimathaea and the scene with the blind Longinus who is healed by Christ’s blood; here Pilate’s soldiers are referred to as chivalers or addressed as vaissal; and the whole tone of social intercourse—in the conversations between Pilate and Joseph, for example, or between Joseph and Nicodemus—is quite unmistakably and touchingly the tone of thirteenth-century France. At the same time the figural “omnitemporalness” of the events works most harmoniously and effectively toward the end of embedding them in the familiar setting of popular everyday life. To be sure, some quite modest and naive attempts in the direction of a separation of styles are also to be found. They occur in the earliest liturgical drama, and indeed even in the sequence which is of such great importance as its precursor, the Victimae paschali, when the more dogmatic introductory verses are almost immediately followed by the dialogue: Dic nobis Maria. … Something corresponding is to be seen in the alternate use of Latin and Old French in several plays from the beginning of the twelfth century, as for example the Sponsus (Romania 22, 177ff.). Our Mystère d’Adam puts some particularly solemn passages into rhymed decasyllabic quatrains, which are weightier in tone than the octosyllabic rhymed couplets otherwise employed. From a much later period we have in the Mystère du vieil Testament some passages (quoted by Ferdinand Brunot in his Histoire de la langue française, 1, 526ff.) in which God and the angels speak a strongly Latinized French while workmen and thieves, and especially Balaam in conversation with his ass, express themselves in decidedly spicy colloquial language. But in all these cases the approximation is too close to give the impression of a real separation of styles. On the contrary their effect is to bring the two spheres together. This style-mingling approximation of the two spheres is not limited to Christian dramatic literature; it is found everywhere in Christian literature throughout the Middle Ages (in some countries, especially Spain, in later periods too), as soon as that literature is addressed to a wider circle. This must have been especially apparent in the realm of the popular sermon, of which, however, we possess a fair number of examples only from a very late period. In these the juxtaposition of a figural use of Scripture and of drastic realism appears in a way which impresses the taste of later ages as grotesque. In this connection the reader may consult E. Gilson’s very informative essay “La Technique du sermon médiéval” (in the collection of his papers, Les Idées et les Lettres, Paris, 1932, pp. 93ff.).

At the beginning of the thirteenth century there appears in Italy a man who embodies, in exemplary fashion, the mixture we are discussing of sublimitas and humilitas, of ecstatically sublime immersion in God and humbly concrete everydayness—with a resulting irresolvable fusion of action and expression, of content and form. He is Saint Francis of Assisi. The core of his being and the impact of his life are centered upon the will to a radical and practical imitation of Christ. In Europe, after the age of the martyrs had ended, this had come to assume a predominantly mystico-contemplative form; he gave it a turn toward the practical, the everyday, the public, and the popular. Self-surrendering and meditative mystic though he himself was, the decisive thing for him and his companions was living among the people, living among the lowliest as the lowliest and most despised of them all: sint minores et subditi omnibus. He was no theologian, and his knowledge, though respectable in itself and ennobled by his poetic powers, was essentially popular, direct, and concretely accessible. His humility was not at all of the sort which fears public contacts or even public display. He forced his inner impulse into outer forms; his being and his life became public events; from the day when, to signify his relinquishment of the things of this world, he gave back his clothes to his upbraiding father before the eyes of the bishop and the whole town of Assisi, down to the day when, dying, he had himself laid naked on the naked earth so that, as Thomas of Celano put it (Legenda secunda, 214), in his last hour, when the archfiend might still rage, he could fight naked with a naked enemy (ut hora illa extrema, in qua poterat adhuc hostis irasci, nudus luctaretur cum nudo), everything he did was a scene. And his scenes were of such power that he carried away with him all who saw them or only heard of them. The great saint of the twelfth century, Bernard of Clairvaux, was also a fisher of men, and his eloquence was irresistible. He too was an enemy of human wisdom (sapienta secundum carnem), and yet how much more aristocratic, how much more rhetorically erudite is his style. I should like to show this by an example, and I choose two letters of similar content for the purpose. In his Epistle 322 (Pat. Lat. 182, 527-528) Bernard congratulates a young nobleman upon forsaking the world of his own free will and entering a monastery. Bernard praises his wisdom, which is from above; he thanks God for having given it to him; he encourages him and fortifies him against future trials by referring to the help of Christ:

… Si tentationis sentis aculeos, exaltatum in ligno serpentem aeneum intuere (Num. 21, 8; Ioan. 3, 14); et suge non tam vulnera quam ubera Crucifixi. Ipse tibi erit in matrem, et tu eris ei in filium; nec pariter Crucifixum laedere aliquatenus poterunt clavi, quin per manus eius et pedes ad tuos usque perveniant. Sed inimici hominis domestici eius (Mich. 7, 6). Ipsi sunt qui non te diligunt, sed gaudium suum ex te. Alioquin audiant ex puero nostro: si diligeretis me, gauderetis utique, quia vado ad patrem (Ioan. 14, 28). “Si prostratus,” ait beatus Hieronymus, “jaceat in limine pater, si nudato sinu, quibus te lactavit, ubera mater ostendat, si parvulus a colle pendeat nepos, per calcatum transi patrem, per calcatam transi matrem, et siccis oculis ad vexillum crucis evola. Summum pietatis est genus, in hac parte pro Christo esse crudelem.” Phreneticorum lacrymis ne movearis, qui te plangunt de gehennae filio factum filium Dei. Heu! Quaenam miseris tam dira cupido (Verg. Aen. 6, 721)? Quis tam crudelis amor, quae tam iniqua dilectio? Corrumpunt bonos mores colloquia mala (I Cor. 15, 33). Propterea, quantum poteris, fili, confabulationem hospitum declinato, quae, dum aures implent, evacuant mentem. Disce orare Deum, disce levare cor cum manibus; disce oculos supplices in caelum erigere, et Patri misericordiarum miserabilem faciem repraesentare in omni necessitate tua. Impium est sentire de Deo, quod continere possit super te viscera sua, et avertere aurem a singultu tuo vel clamore. De caetero spiritualium patrum consiliis haud secus quam majestatis divinae praeceptis acquiescendum in omnibus esse memento. Hoc fac, et vives; hoc fac, et veniet super te benedictio, ut pro singulis quae reliquisti centuplum recipias, etiam in praesenti vita. Nec vero credas spiritui suadenti nimis id festinatum, et in maturiorem aetatem differendum fuisse. Ei potius crede qui dixit: Bonum est homini, cum portaverit iugum ab adolescentia sua. Sedebit solitarius, levavit enim se supra se (Thren. 3, 27/8). Bene vale, studeto perseverantiae, quae sola coronatur.

(If you feel the prickings of temptation, consider the brazen serpent raised on the wood; and suck not the wounds but rather the breasts of the Crucified. He shall be as a mother to you, and you as a son to Him; nor could the nails hurt the Crucified save as they passed through his hands and feet to yours. But a man’s enemies are the men of his own house. They it is who love not you but their own joy that comes from you. Otherwise they would hear the words of our youth: If ye loved me ye would rejoice because I go unto the Father. “Did thy father,” says St. Jerome, “lie prostrate on the threshold, did thy mother, her bosom bared, show thee the breasts at which she gave thee suck, did thy little nephew hang on thy neck, walk roughshod over thy father, walk roughshod over thy mother, and hasten dry-eyed to the banner of the cross. In such case the highest mercy is to be cruel for Christ.” Be not moved by the tears of the fools who mourn because, from a son of Gehenna, you are become a son of God. Alas! What a mad desire these wretches have! What a cruel love! What an iniquitous delight! Evil communications corrupt good manners. Wherefore, as much as you are able, my son, avoid the conversation of your hosts, who, while they fill your ears, empty your mind. Learn to pray to God, learn to lift up your heart when you lift up your hands; learn to raise eyes of supplication to heaven, and in every need that befalls you, to show your pitiful face to the Father of pity. It is impious to think that God could close his heart to you and turn his ear from your sobs and cries. For the rest, remember in all things to follow the counsel of your spiritual father no less closely than the commandment of the Divine Majesty. Do this, and you shall live; do this, and blessing shall come upon you, so that for one thing you have given up you shall receive a hundred, even in this present life. Nor believe the counsel of him who would persuade you that this is overhasty and can be deferred until you have reached riper years. Rather believe him who said: It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone, because he hath borne it upon him. Fare well, strive after perseverance, which alone gains the crown.)

This is certainly a living and inspiring text, and some of its thoughts and formulations—for instance, that of the relatives who do not love you but gaudium suum ex te, or the assurance that the hundredfold reward will come even in this life—are, if I am not mistaken, typically Bernardian. But how conscious the composition of the whole is; how many the prerequisites for understanding it, how many rhetorical devices it contains! To be sure, we must take into consideration that in Cistercian circles anyone would immediately catch the figural import of the allusions to Scripture (the brazen serpent as a figure of Christ; the blood from Christ’s wounds as nourishing milk; participation in the torture of the cross, in the nails which pierce Christ’s hands and feet, as the ecstatic consolation of love in the unio passionalis). This type of interpretation and of thinking must have struck root even among the common people, for all the sermons are full of it. But the abundance of Bible texts, the way they are pieced together, the quotation from Jerome and that from Virgil, give this personal letter a highly literary appearance; and in the use of rhetorical questions, of antitheses and anaphoras, Bernard is quite on a par with Jerome, from whom he quotes a highly characteristic passage (possibly even increasing its rhetorical polish). Let me enumerate the most striking antitheses and anaphoras. As for antitheses, we have: non tam vulnera quam ubera; ipse tibi in matrem, tu ei in filium; his and your hands and feet; non te, sed gaudium suum ex te; in the Jerome passage, pietas—crudelis; then, filius gehennae, filius Dei; crudelis amor, iniqua dilectio; dum aures implent, evacuant mentem. As for anaphoras, they begin in the Jerome passage, which in its way is magnificent: si prostratus, si nudato, si parvulus—per calcatum, per calcatam, et siccis oculis …; then comes Bernard himself: quis tam crudelis amor, quae …; disce orare, disce levare, disce erigere; hoc fac et vives, hoc fac et veniet. And in addition there are plays on words, like patri misericordiarum miserabilem faciem repraesentare.

And now let us hear Francis of Assisi. There are only two personal letters which can be ascribed to him with any certainty: one ad quendam ministrum of the year 1223, the other to the favorite disciple of his last years, Brother Leo (Pecorella) of Assisi. Thus both belong to the end of his life, for Francis died in 1225. I choose the first, which is concerned with a difference of opinion within the order in regard to the treatment of brothers who had committed a mortal sin, and I quote only the first, and more general, part of the letter (after the Analekten zur Geschichte des Franciscus von Assisi, edited by H. Boehmer, Tübingen and Leipzig, 1904, p. 28):

Fratri N. ministro. Dominus te benedicat. Dico tibi sicut possum de facto anime tue, quod ea, que te impediunt amare Dominum Deum, et quicumque tibi impedimentum fecerint sive fratres sive alii, etiamsi te verberarent, omnia debes habere pro gratia. Et ita velis et non aliud. Et hoc sit tibi per veram obedientiam Domini Dei et meam, quia firmiter scio, quod illa est vera obedientia. Et dilige eos, qui ista faciunt tibi, et non velis aliud de eis, nisi quantum Dominus dederit tibi. Et in hoc dilige eos et non velis quod [pro te? only in one of the six extant Mss.] sint meliores christiani. Et istud sit tibi plus quam heremitorium. Et in hoc volo cognoscere, si diligis Deum et me servum suum et tuum, si feceris istud, scilicet quod non sit aliquis frater in mundo, qui peccaverit, quantumcumque potuerit peccare, quod, postquam viderit occulos tuos, unquam recedat sine misericordia tua, si querit misericordiam, et si non quereret misericordiam, tu queras ab eo, si vult misericordiam. Et, si millies postea appareret coram occulis tuis, dilige eum plus quam me ad hoc, ut trahas eum ad Dominum, et semper miserearis talibus. …

(To Brother N., Minister [of the Order]. God bless you. I speak to you as best I can concerning your soul. All the things that would hinder you in your love of the Lord God, and all persons who obstruct your path—be they brethren or others—even if they beat you, you must consider it all a grace. And will it thus and not otherwise. And that you must consider your true obedience toward the Lord God and me, for I know for certain that it is the true obedience. And love those who do these things to you, and do not desire anything else from them but what God may give to you. And love them for this and do not desire that they be better Christians. And let this be more for you than the hermitage. And herein will I know whether you love God and me, his and your servant, in whether you do this, that is, if there be no brother in the world who, having sinned as much as he can sin, when he has come to see your countenance, shall ever go away from you without your charity if he seeks charity, and if he does not seek charity, that you try with him whether he wishes charity. And if afterwards he appears a thousand times before your countenance, love him more than you now love me, that you draw him toward the Lord, and always have charity for such. …)

In this passage we have no exegesis of Scripture and no figures of speech. The sentence structure is hurried, awkward, and uncalculated. All the sentences begin with et. But the person who writes these hurried lines is obviously so inspired by his theme, it fills him so completely, and the desire to communicate himself and to be understood is so overwhelming, that parataxis becomes a weapon of eloquence. Like the ever-gathering waves of a strong surf, these et-constructions strike from the heart of the saint to that of the recipient, as is expressed at the very beginning in sicut possum and de facto anime tue. For the sicut possum expresses, together with humility (as best I can), the most complete dedication of powers, and de facto anime tue implies that the factual question under discussion carries with it the spiritual salvation of him who has to decide it. And that it is a matter “between me and you” is a point Francis does not lose sight of throughout the entire letter. He knows that the other loves and admires him, and he makes use of this love at every moment to draw him toward the right path (ut trahat eum ad Dominum): et in hoc volo cognoscere si diligis Deum et me servum suum et tuum, so he implores him. He commands him to love the backsliding sinner, even if he comes to see him a thousand times, more than “you love me at this moment.” The contents of the letter is the doctrine, carried to its utmost limit, that evil must be neither avoided nor opposed. It is an exhortation—not to leave the world behind—but to mingle with its torment and to endure evil with passionate devotion. Indeed, he is to wish for nothing else: et ita velis et non aliud. And Francis reaches an extreme which begins to look almost suspicious from the viewpoint of moral theology when he writes: et in hoc dilige eos et non velis quod sint meliores Christiani—for is it permissible, for the sake of one’s own trial through suffering, to repress the wish that one’s fellow be a better Christian? Only through submission to evil is it possible, according to Francis’ conviction, for the power of love and obedience to prove themselves: quia firmiter scio quod illa est vera obedienta. This is more than solitary meditation far from the world: et istud sit tibi plus quam heremitorium. The extreme character of this view is reflected in the language: in the numerous demonstratives which signify “precisely this and nothing else”; or in the clauses introduced by quicumque, etiamsi, quantumcumque, et si millies, all of which mean, “and even if …”

The wholly unliterary directness of expression, then, so closely related to the spoken language, supports a very radical content. To be sure, it is nothing new, for from the beginning suffering within the world and submission to evil are among the major Christian motifs; but the stresses are placed differently. Suffering and submission are no longer a passive form of martyrdom but an unremitting self-humiliation in the everyday course of things. While Bernard dealt with secular affairs as a great politician of the Church and withdrew from them into the solitude of contemplation to attain the experience of imitatio Christi, Francis considers secular affairs the proper setting for imitatio, although, to be sure, in his case secular affairs are not the great political events in which Bernard played a leading part, but the everyday doings of random persons, whether within the Order or out among the people. The entire structure of the mendicant orders, and especially that of the Franciscan organization, drove the friars into everyday public life, among the people, and even though it is certainly true that solitary meditation lost its great religious importance neither for Francis of Assisi nor for his successors, it yet could not rob the order of its pronouncedly popular character.

Now, the saint’s public appearances, as we said above, are always impressive, graphic, and indeed scenic. The anecdotes which relate them are very numerous, and among them there are some which strike later taste as almost grotesque or even farcical; as when we are told that, celebrating Christmas in the stable at Greccio, with ox and ass and praesepium, both in singing and preaching he pronounced the word Bethlehem in imitation of a bleating lamb; or that after an illness in the course of which he had taken some choicer food, upon his return to Assisi he ordered one of the brothers to lead him through the town on a rope, as though he were a criminal, shouting: Behold the glutton who crammed his belly full of chicken behind your backs! But in their time and place such scenes did not produce a farcical effect. Their arrestingness, exaggeration, vividness did not appear shocking, but as a graphic, exemplary revelation of a saintly life, directly illuminating, comprehensible to all, and inspiring all to examine themselves in comparison and to share in the experience. Together with such arresting and persuasively effective scenes, there are other anecdotes which bear witness to great delicacy and gentleness and reveal a considerable, purely instinctive psychological gift. At crucial moments Francis always knows what is going on in others’ hearts, and hence his intervention usually strikes the crucial spot; it arouses emotion, it staggers. Everywhere it is the startling and graphic directness of his character which produces such strong, such exemplary, and such unforgettable effects. Here I should like to quote one more anecdote which (although the occasion is comparatively insignificant and ordinary) gives an excellent description of one of his characteristic appearances. It is taken from the Legenda secunda by Thomas of Celano (S. Francisci Assisiensis vita et miracula … auctore Fr. Thoma de Celano … recensuit P. Eduardus Alenconiensis. Romae, 1906, pp. 217-218).

Factum est quodam die Paschae, ut fratres in eremo Graecii mensam accuratius solito albis et vitreis praepararent. Descendens autem pater de cella venit ad mensam, conspicit alto sitam vaneque ornatam; sed ridenti mensae nequaquam arridet. Furtim et pedetentim retrahit gressum, capellum cuiusdam pauperis qui tunc aderat capiti suo imponit, et baculum gestans egreditur foras. Exspectat foris ad ostium donec incipiant fratres; siquidem soliti erant non exspectare ipsum, quando non veniret ad signum. Illis incipientibus manducare, clamat verus pauper ad ostium: Amore domini Dei, facite, inquit, eleemosynam isti peregrino pauperi et infirmo. Respondent fratres: Intra huc, homo, illius amore quem invocasti. Repente igitur ingreditur, et sese comedentibus offert. Sed quantum stuporem credis peregrinum civibus intulisse? Datur petenti scutella, et solo solus recumbens discum ponit in cinere. Modo sedeo, ait, ut frater Minor. …

(It happened one Easter Day that the brothers at the hermitage of Greccio set the table more lavishly than usual with linen and glassware. When the father comes down from his cell to go to the table, he sees it with its vain decoration. But the pleasing table no way pleases him. Furtively and quietly he retraces his steps, puts on his head the hat of a pauper who happened to be there, takes his staff in his hand, and leaves the house. Outside he waits until the brothers begin, for they were accustomed not to wait for him when he did not come at the signal. When they begin their meal, this true pauper calls out at the door: For the love of God, give this poor sick pilgrim an alms. The brothers answer: Come in, man, for the love of Him whom you have invoked. So he quickly enters and appears before the diners. But what surprise do you think seized the household at sight of this stranger! At his request he is given a bowl, and alone he sits down on the floor and sets his plate in the ashes. “Now,” he says, “I am seated like a Minorite. …”)

The occasion, as I have said, is insignificant, but what an inspired scenic idea to take a pauper’s hat and staff and go begging of beggars! We can well imagine the brothers’ confusion and humiliation when he sits down in the ashes with his bowl and says: Now I am seated like a Minorite. …

The saint’s manner of life and expression was taken over by the Order and produced a very peculiar atmosphere. In both the good and bad sense, it became extremely popular. The excess of drastic vigor of expression made of the friars the creators, and soon too the subject, of dramatic, witty, and frequently coarse and obscene anecdotes. The coarser realism of the later Middle Ages is often linked to the activity and appearances of the Franciscans. Their influence in this direction can be traced down to the Renaissance. This too was clearly demonstrated, a few years ago, in an essay by Etienne Gilson (“Rabelais franciscain,” in the volume previously mentioned, Les Idées et les Lettres, pp. 197ff.). We shall have to return to this point in a later chapter. On the other hand, Franciscan power of expression led to a still more direct and intense representation of human events; it asserts itself in popular religious poetry, which, during the thirteenth century, under the influence of the Franciscan and other popular ecstatic movements, treated the Passion scene especially (Mary at the cross) as a livingly dramatic and human episode. The most famous piece, one that is included in many anthologies, is by Jacopone da Todi (b. 1230), a very expressive mystic and poet of the period immediately before Dante. In his later years he was a member of the Franciscan Order, specifically of its radical wing, the Spirituals. His Passion poem is in the form of a dialogue. The speakers are a messenger, the Virgin Mary, the “crowd,” and finally Christ himself. I quote the beginning of it after E. Monaci’s Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli (Citta di Castello, 1912, p. 479):

Nunzio Donna del paradiso

lo tuo figliolo è priso / Jesu Christo beato.

Accurre, donna e vide / che la gente l’allide,

credo che Ilo s’occide / tanto l’on flagellato.

Vergine Como essere purria, / che non fe mai follia

Christo la spene mia, / hom l’avesse pilgliato?

Nunzio Madonna, ell’è traduto, / Juda sì l’à venduto,

Trenta dinar n’à ’uto, / facto n’à gran mercato.

Vergine Succurri, Magdalena; / jonta m’è adosso pena;

Christo figlio se mena / como m’è annuntiato.

Nunzio Succurri, donna, ajuta, / ch’al tuo figlio se sputa

e la gente llo muta, / onlo dato a Pilato.

Vergine O Pilato, non fare / l figlio mio tormentare;

ch’io te posso mostrare / como a torto è accusato.

Turba Crucifi, crucifige / homo che si fa rege

secondo nostra lege / contradice al senato.

Vergine Prego che m’entennate, / nel mio dolor pensate,

forsa mo ve mutate / da quel ch’ete parlato.

Nunzio Tragon fuor li ladroni, / che sian sui compagnoni.

Turba De spine si coroni, / ché rege s’è chiamato!

Vergine O filglio, filglio, filglio! / filglio, amoroso gilglio,

filglio, chi dà consilglio / al cor mio angustiato?

O filglio, occhi jocundi, / filglio, co non respundi?

filglio, perché t’ascundi / dal pecto o se’ lactato?

Nunzio Madonna, ecco la croce / che la gente l’aduce,

ove la vera luce / dej’ essere levato. …

(Messenger Lady of Paradise,

Thy son is taken / Jesus Christ the blessed.

Hasten, Lady, and see / how the people maltreat him.

I think he will die, / so much have they flailed him.

Virgin How could it be, / for never did wrong

Christ, my hope, / that they have taken him?

Messenger Lady, he was betrayed, / Judas sold him,

Thirty denarii he got for it, / he made a great bargain of it.

Virgin Help me, Magdalene; / misfortune has befallen me;

Christ my son is being led away / as has been told me.

Messenger Help, Lady, assist us, / they spit at your son

and the people take him away, / they have handed him over to Pilate.

Virgin O Pilate, do not do it, / do not torture my son;

for I can show you / how he is wrongly accused.

Crowd Crucify, crucify / the man who makes himself king;

according to our law / he rebels against the Senate.

Virgin I beg you, listen to me, / think of my pain,

Perhaps you will soon change / what you have said.

Messenger They are bringing the thieves / who are to be his companions.

Crowd Crown him with thorns, / him who has called himself king.

Virgin O son, son, son! / son, beloved lily,

son, who will advise / my anguished heart?

O son, eyes of joy, / son, why do you not answer?

son, why do you hide / from the breast which gave you milk?

Messenger Lady, here is the cross / which the people bring whereon the true light / is to be raised. …)

This text, like the Old French text discussed at the beginning of this chapter, presents a complete embedding of the sublime and sacred event in a reality which is simultaneously contemporary Italian and omnitemporal. Its popular character is apparent in the first place in matters of language, by which I mean not only the dialectal forms but also “popularity” of expression in the sociological sense (for example, jonta m’è adosso pena, in the mouth of the Holy Virgin). It is further shown in the freedom with which the Biblical episode is rendered, giving Mary a much more important and active part than even the Gospel according to Saint John does, so that the opportunity arises for dramatic development of her anxiety, her pain, and her mourning. Closely connected with this is the crowding together of scenes and characters, so that Mary can address Pilate directly and the picture yet admit the carrying in of the cross. Magdalene, who is called upon to help, and John, to whom Christ later entrusts his mother, appear together with Mary like a group of friends and neighbors. And finally the popular element also appears in the illogical anachronism of the conception—a subject which we discussed in detail in connection with the Old French treatment of the Fall. On the one hand Mary is an anxious and helplessly lamenting mother, who sees no way out, and falls back on pleading; on the other hand the messenger calls her donna del paradiso, and everything has been foretold to her.

In all these respects—that is, so far as the embedding of the action in the popular and everyday is concerned—the two texts, though about a century apart, are closely related. Yet it is apparent that there is also an important and fundamental stylistic difference between them. Jacopone’s poem preserves but little of the enchanting and transparent candor of the Adam play. On the other hand, it is more intense, more direct, more tragic. This is not due to the difference in subject matter, to the fact that Jacopone’s theme is the lament of a mother. Or rather, it is no coincidence that Italian religious folk poetry of the thirteenth century produces its most beautiful works in treatments of this scene. Such a free flow and indeed dramatic outburst of pain, anxiety, and pleading as is achieved in Jacopone’s accumulated vocatives, imperatives, and urgent questions, would not, I believe, have been possible in the thirteenth century in any other European vernacular. It reveals a freedom from self-conscious restraint, a sweetly passionate abandonment to feeling, a release from all timidity in public expression, compared with which the earlier and most of the contemporary works of the Middle Ages seem awkward and impeded. Even Provençal, which almost from the beginning, from Guilhem de Peitieu on, possesses great freedom of expression, is outdone by such a text, if only because its repertoire contains no such great tragic theme. It would perhaps be rash to maintain that Italian literature owed this freedom of dramatic expression to Saint Francis, for it was doubtless implicit in the character of the people; but it cannot be denied that, a great poet, an instinctive master of the art of acting out his own being, he was the first to awaken the dramatic powers of Italian feeling and of the Italian language.