MADAME DU CHASTEL
ANTOINE DE LA SALE, a Provençal knight of the late feudal type, soldier, court official, tutor of princes, authority on heraldry and tournaments, was born about 1390 and died after 1461. For the greater part of his life he was in the service of the Anjous, who fought until about 1440 for their Kingdom of Naples but who also held extensive possessions in France. He left them in 1448 to become the tutor of the sons of Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol, who played a significant part in the vicissitudinous relations between the French kings and the dukes of Burgundy. In his youth Antoine de la Sale took part in a Portuguese expedition to North Africa; he was often in Italy with the Anjous; he knew the courts of France and Burgundy. It seems that he began his writing career with compilations for his princely charges—an activity which may have revealed to him a talent and inclination for narrative. His best-known work is at once a pedagogical novel and a love story, l’Hystoyre et plaisante Cronique du Petit Jehan de Saintré, probably the most vivid literary document of the late feudal period in France. For a time other works were also ascribed to him: the Quinze Joyes de Mariage and the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, although neither shows any of his very distinctive and unmistakable characteristics. Recently—especially since W. Söderjhelm’s book on the French novella of the fifteenth century (Paris, 1910)—most students seem inclined to reject these ascriptions.
He was some seventy years of age when he wrote a consolatory treatise for a lady who had lost her first child. This piece, le Réconfort de Madame du Fresne, was published by J. Nève in his book on Antoine de la Sale (Paris and Brussels, 1903, pp. 101-155). It begins with a very warmhearted introduction, which—in addition to pious exhortations—contains quotations from the Bible, Seneca, and Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as the folktale of the shroud and a passage in praise of a recently dead saint. Then follow two stories of brave mothers. Of these stories the first is by far the more important. It relates—although with numerous errors and mistaken identities—an episode from the Hundred Years’ War.
The English under the Black Prince are besieging the fortress of Brest. The commander of the fortress, the Seigneur du Chastel, is finally forced to conclude an agreement by the terms of which he is to surrender the fortress to the Black Prince at a specified date if no help arrives before then; as hostage he gives his only son, a boy of thirteen; upon these conditions the Black Prince grants a truce. Four days before the specified period runs out, a ship with provisions arrives at the port. There is great rejoicing, and the commander sends a herald to the Prince with the request that he return the hostage, since help has arrived. At the same time, in accordance with the customs of chivalry, he asks the Prince to help himself to whatever provisions he may wish. The Prince, angry at seeing the long-coveted prize, of which he had thought himself sure, escaping him, refuses to consider the arrival of provisions as help in the sense of the agreement, and demands that the fortress be surrendered on the specified day, otherwise the hostage will be forfeited. The various stages of this train of events are narrated very effectively, with precise, if somewhat too circumstantial descriptions of the ceremonious appearances of the heralds with their several messages. We are told how the Prince first sends a negative though not completely unambiguous answer; how the Seigneur du Chastel, filled with somber premonitions, summons his relatives and friends to counsel him; how at first they merely look at one another in silence; none wants to speak first; none is ready to believe that the Prince is serious; none has anything to advise if such should prove to be the case: Toutteffoiz, conclurent que rendre la place, sans entier deshonneur, à loyalement conseillier, n’en veoient point la fachon. Then we are told how during the night the commander’s wife observes his trouble and finally gets the truth from him; how she swoons; how the day before the truce expires the Prince’s heralds appear with a clear demand that the agreement be carried out; how they are received and dismissed with a ceremony and courtesy in sharp contrast with the hostile content of the words spoken; how the Seigneur du Chastel shows his friends and relatives a serene and determined countenance; and how, during the night, when he is alone with his wife, he breaks down and completely abandons himself to his despair. This is the climax of the narrative:
Madame, qui de l’autre lez son très grand dueil faisoit, voyant perdre de son seigneur l’onneur ou son très bel et gracieux filz, que au dist de chascun, de l’aaije de XIII ans ne s’en trouvoit ung tel, doubta que son seigneur n’en preist la mort. Lors en son cuer se appensa et en soy meismes dist: Helasse moy dollente! se il se muert, or as-tu bien tout perdu. Et en ce penssement elle l’appella. Mais il riens n’entendit. Alors elle, en s’escriant, lui dist: “Ha! Monseigneur, pour Dieu, aiez pitié de moy, vostre povre femme, qui sans nul service reprouchier, vous ay sy loyalment amé, servy et honnouré, vous à jointes mains priant que ne vueillez pas vous, nostre filz et moy perdre a ung seul cop ainssy.” Et quant le sire entend de Madame son parler, à chief de pièce luy respondit: “Helasse, m’amye, et que est cecy? Où est le cuer qui plus ne amast la mort que vivre ainssi où je me voy en ce très dur party?” Alors, Madame, comme très saige et prudente, pour le resconfforter, tout-à-cop changa son cruel dueil en très vertueulx parler et lui dist: “Monseigneur, je ne diz pas que vous ne ayez raison, mais puisque ainssi est le voulloir de Dieu, il vuelt et commande que de tous les malvaiz partis le mains pire en soit prins.” Alors, le seigneur lui dist: “Doncques, m’amye, conseilliez moy de tous deux le mains pire à vostre advis.”—“A! Monseigneur, dist-elle, il y a bien grant choiz. Mais de ceste chose, à jointes mains vous supplie, pardonnez moy, car telles choses doivent partir des nobles cuers des vertueulx hommes et non pas des femelins cuers des femmes qui, par l’ordonnance de Dieu, sommes à vous, hommes, subgettes, especialement les espouseez et qui sont meres des enffants, ainssi que je vous suis et à nostre filz. Sy vous supplie, Monseigneur, que de ce la congnoissance ne s’estende point à moy.”—“Ha, m’amye, dist-il, amour et devoir vuellent que de tous mes principaulx affaires, comme ung cuer selon Dieu en deux corps, vous en doye deppartir, ainssi que j’ay toujours fait, pour les biens que j’ay trouvez en vous. Car vous dictes qu’il y a bien choiz. Vous estes la mere et je suis vostre mary. Pourquoy vous prie à peu de parolles que le choiz m’en declairiez.” Alors, la très desconffortee dame, pour obeir luy dit: “Monseigneur, puisque tant vouliez que le chois vous en die”—alors renfforca la prudence de son cuer par la très grande amour que elle à lui avoit, et lui dist: “Monseigneur, quoy que je dye, il me soit pardonné; des deux consaulx que je vous vueil donner, Dieux avant, Nostre Dame et monseigneur saint Michiel, que soient en ma pensee et en mon parler. Dont le premier est que vous laissiez tous vos dueilz, vos desplaisirs et vos penssers, et ainssy feray-je. Et les remettons tous ès mains de nostre vray Dieu, qui fait tout pour le mieulx. Le IIme et derrain est que vous, Monseigneur, et chascun homme et femme vivant, savez que, selon droit de nature et experience des yeulx, est chose plus apparante que les enffans sont filz ou filles de leurs meres qui en leurs flans les ont portez et enffantez que ne sont de leurs maris, ne de ceulx à qui ont les donne. Laquelle chose, Monseigneur, je dis pour ce que ainssi nostre filz est plus apparant mon vray filz qu’il n’est le vostre, nonobstant que vous en soyez le vray pere naturel. Et de ce j’en appelle nostre vray Dieu à tesmoing au très espouventable jour du jugement. Et car pour ce il est mon vray filz, qui moult chier m’a cousté à porter l’espasse de IX mois en mes flans, dont en ay receu maintes dures angoisses et par mains jours, et puis comme morte à l’enffanter, lequel j’ay sy chierement nourry, amé et tenu chier jusques au jour et heure que il fut livré. Touttefoiz ores, pour toujours mais, je l’abandonne ès mains de Dieu et vueil que jamais il ne me soit plus riens, ainssi que se jamais je ne le avoye veu, ains liberalement de cuer et franchement, sans force, contrainte, ne viollence aucune, vous donne, cede et transporte toute la naturelle amour, l’affection et le droit que mere puelt et doit avoir à son seul et très amé filz. Et de ce j’en appelle à tesmoing le trestout vray et puissant Dieu, qui le nous a presté le espasse de XIII ans, pour la tincion et garde de vostre seul honneur, à tous jours mais perdu se aultrement est. Vous ne avez que ung honneur lequel après Dieu, sur femme, sur enffans et sur toutes choses devez plus amer. Et sy ne avez que ung seul filz. Or advisez duquel vous avez la plus grande perte. Et vrayement, Monseigneur, il y a grant choiz. Nous sommes assez en aaige pour en avoir, se à Dieu plaist; mais vostre honneur une foiz perdu, lasse, jamais plus ne le recouvrerez. Et quant mon conseil vous tendrez, les gens diront de vous, mort ou vif que soiez: C’est le preudomme et très loyal chevallier. Et pour ce, Monseigneur, sy très humblement que je scay, vous supplie, fetes comme moy, et en lui plus ne penssés que se ne l’euissiez jamaiz eu; ains vous resconffortez, et remerciez Dieu de tout, qui le vous a donné pour votre honneur rachetter.”
Et quant le cappitaine oist Madame si haultement parler, avec un contemplatif souspir, remercia Jhesus-Crist, le très hault et puissant Dieu, quant du cuer de une femeline et piteuse creature partoient sy haultes et sy vertueuses parolles comme celles que Madame disoit, ayant ainssy du tout abandonné la grant amour de son seul et très aimé filz, et tout pour l’amour de lui. Lors en briefves parolles luy dist: “M’amye, tant que l’amour de mon cuer se puelt estendre, plus que oncques mais vous remercie du très hault et piteux don que m’avez maintenant fait. J’ay ores oy la guette du jour corner, et ja soit que ne dormissions à nuit, sy me fault-il lever; et vous aucum peu reposerez.”—“Reposer, dist-elle, hellas, Monseigneur, je n’ay cuer, œul, ne membre sur mon corps qui en soit d’accord. Mais je me leveray et yrons à messe tous deux remerchier Nostre Seigneur de tout.”
(Madame, who on the other side made great moan, seeing either her lord’s honor lost or her beautiful and gracious son, whose equal at the age of thirteen, as everyone said, could not be found, feared that her lord might die of it. Then she thought in her heart and spoke within herself: “Alas, how wretched I am! If he dies, then you have lost everything.” And in this thought she called to him. But he heard nothing. Then, raising her voice, she said to him: “Ah, my lord, for the sake of God, have pity upon me, your poor wife, who has loved and served and honored you loyally without complaint about any service, and who begs you with clasped hands, do not ruin thus at once yourself, your son, and me.” And when the lord heard Madame’s words, he finally answered her: “Alas, my dear, what is all this? Where is the heart that would not rather love death than live as I see myself, in these very dire straits?” Thereupon Madame, who was very wise and prudent, to comfort him, suddenly changed her bitter meaning to brave counsel and said to him: “My lord, I do not say that you are not right, but since such is God’s will, he wills and commands that of all bad things the least evil be taken.” Then the lord said to her: “Then, my dear, advise me which of the two is the less evil in your opinion.”—“Oh, my lord,” she said, “that is a hard choice. But of this, I beg you with clasped hands, relieve me, for such things must issue from the noble hearts of brave men and not from the female hearts of women who, by God’s command, are subject to you men, especially wives and mothers of children as I am to you and our son. Therefore I implore you, my lord, that the decision of this be not given to me.”—“Ah, my dear,” he said, “love and duty require that in all my important affairs—as one heart in two bodies according to God—I should let you share as I have always done because of the good that I have found in you. Now you said that there is here a choice. You are the mother and I am your husband. Therefore I ask you that in few words you set forth the choice to me.” Then the most disconsolate woman said, obeying: “My Lord, since you so wish that I tell you the choice,”—and here she strengthened the prudence of her heart by the great love she bore to him and said: “My lord, whatever I say, may it be forgiven me. Two counsels I would give you, and in them may first God and our Lady and my lord Saint Michael be present in my thought and speech. The first is that you leave all your mourning, your sorrow, and your thoughts, and so too shall I. And let us put them all in the hands of our true God who does all for the best. The second and last is that you, my lord, and every man and woman alive, know that by natural right and the experience of our eyes it is more apparent that children are sons and daughters of their mothers who have carried them in their loins and given birth to them than they are of their husbands or of any others (?) to whom they are given. And this I say, my lord, for thus it is more apparent that our son is my true son than that he is yours although you are his true natural father. And of this I call our true God to bear witness on the very terrible day of judgment. And for this then he is my true son, who cost me very dear to carry nine months in my loins while I suffered throughout many a day many a great anxiety, and to give birth to whom I almost died, whom I so dearly fed and loved and cherished down to the day and the hour when he was given over. But now and for ever more I abandon him into the hands of God and it is my will that he shall never more be anything to me, as though I had never seen him, but of my own free will, without force, constraint, or violence whatever, I give, cede, and transfer to you all the natural love, affection, and right which a mother can and must have for her only and dearly loved son. Of this I call to witness the most true and powerful God who lent him to us for the space of thirteen years, for the maintenance and safeguarding of your sole honor which will be lost for ever more if it is to be otherwise. You have but one honor which, after God, you must love more than wife, child, and all things. And likewise you have but one son. Consider now which would be the greater loss to you. And truly, my lord, here is a great choice. We are still of an age to have sons, if it pleases God. But your honor, once lost, alas, you can never recover. And if you follow my counsel, people will say of you, whether you are dead or alive: That is a man of honor and a very loyal knight. And therefore, my lord, as humbly as I know how, I beg you, do as I do, and think no more of him than if you had never had him. But take courage and thank God for everything, for He has given him to you to redeem your honor.”
And when the commander heard Madame speak so valiantly, with a thoughtful sigh he thanked Jesus Christ, the most high and powerful God, that from the heart of a female and weak creature could come such high and virtuous words as those Madame spoke, having thus entirely abandoned the love of her only and most beloved son and all for the love of him. Then in brief words he said to her: “My dear, as far as the love of my heart can reach, more than ever I now thank you for the high and grievous gift you have now given me. I have just heard the watch sound daybreak, and although we have not slept this night, I must arise; but you rest a little.”—“Rest,” she said, “alas, my lord, I have neither heart nor eye nor limb to my body which agrees to that. But I shall rise and we shall go to mass together to thank Our Lord for everything.”)
After this scene the narrative continues at great length. Again the Prince’s heralds appear, to demand the surrender and threaten the boy’s execution. They are dismissed. Then the commander decides to try a sortie to save the boy by force. At this point the narrative shifts to the enemy’s camp, where the Prince has the boy led out to execution in chains and forces the Seigneur du Chastel’s herald (whose name is also Chastel) to join the procession, despite his resistance. Then we are taken back inside the fortress and told how the commander’s wife tries to make him give up the projected sortie and how she swoons, while the guards see the enemy’s men returning from the execution, which means that it is too late for the sortie; how the commander has his wife put to bed and how he consoles her; and how the herald Chastel returns to the fortress and reports the events to the commander, repeating numerous details which had already been presented in another form. However, I will here quote the description of the boy’s death as the herald tells it:
Mais l’enffant qui, au resconffort des gardes, cuidoit que on le menast vers le chastel, quand il vist que vers le mont Reont alloient, lors s’esbahist plus que oncques mais. Lors tant se prist à plourer et desconfforter, disant à Thomas, le chief des gardes: “Ha! Thomas, mon amy, vous me menez morir, vous me menez morir; hellas! vous me menez morir! Thomas, vous me menez morir! hellas! monsieur mon pere, je vois morir! hellas! madame ma mere, je vois morir, je vois morir! hellas, hellas, hellas, je vois morir, morir, morir, morir!” Dont en criant et en plourant, regardant devant et derrière et entour lui, à vostre coste d’arme que je portoye, lasse my! et il me vist, et quant il me vist, à haute voix s’escria, tant qu’il peust. Et lors me dist: “Ha! Chastel, mon amy, je voiz morir! hellas! mon ami, je voiz morir!” Et quant je ainssi le oys crier, alors, comme mort, à terre je cheys. Et convint, par l’ordonnance, que je fusse emporté après luy, et là, à force de gens, tant soustenu que il eust prins fin. Et quant il fust sur le mont descendu, là fust un frere qui, par belles parolles esperant en la grâce de Dieu, peu à peu le eust confessé et donné l’absolucion de ses menus pechiez. Et car il ne povoit prendre la mort en gré, lui convint tenir le chief, les bras et les jambes lyez, tant se estoit jusques aux os des fers les jambes eschiees, ainsi que depuis tout me fut dit. Et quand ceste sy très cruelle justice fut faitte, et à chief de piece que je fus de pasmoison revenu, lors je despouillay vostre coste d’armes, et sur son corps la mis. …
(But the child, who thought, after the guards’ consoling words, that he was being taken toward the fortress, when he saw that they were going toward Mont Réont, was frightened more than ever. He now began to weep and despair and said to Thomas, the leader of the guards: “Oh, Thomas, my friend, you take me away to die, you take me away to die. Alas, you take me away to die, Thomas, you take me away to die. Alas, my lord father, I shall die. Alas, my lady mother, I shall die. I shall die! Alas, alas, alas, I shall die, die, die, die!” And crying thus and weeping, looking before and behind and around him, he saw me, woe unto me!, with your coat of arms which I wore, and when he saw me, he called aloud, as loud as he could. And he said to me: “Ah, Chastel, my friend, I shall die! Alas! My friend, I shall die!” And when I heard him cry thus, then like dead I fell to the ground. And according to orders I was carried after him and there by many men was held until he met his end. And when he was set down on the mount, there was there a friar who, by beautiful words of hope in the grace of God, little by little confessed him and absolved him from his little sins. And because he could not take death willingly, they had to hold his head and bind his arms and legs so that the legs were bruised by the iron down to the bones, as it was all told to me afterward. And when this very cruel sentence was executed and I had at last revived from my faint, I took off your coat of arms and put it on his body. …)
The herald concludes his report with the bitter words which passed between himself and the Prince when he asked for and received the boy’s dead body. Then we are told how the Seigneur, having heard all this, speaks a prayer:
Beaux sires Dieux, qui le me avez jusques à aujourd’uy presté, vueillez en avoir l’âme et lui pardonner de ce que il a la mort mal prinse en gré, et à moi aussi, quant pour bien faire l’ay mis en ce party. Hellasse! povre mere, que diras-tu quant tu saras la piteuse mort de ton chier filz, combien que pour moy tu le avoyes de tous poins abandonné pour acquittier mon honneur. Et, beau sires Dieux, soiez en ma bouche pour l’en resconforter.
(Fair Lord God, who until this day hast lent him to me, deign now to receive his soul and forgive him that he took death unwillingly, and forgive me too that to do right I brought him to this pass. Alas, poor mother, what will you say when you learn the pitiful death of your beloved son, although for me you had given him up entirely to save my honor. Oh, fair Lord God, be in my mouth to comfort her for it.)
Then follows the solemn burial and the scene at table when, in the presence of a great gathering, the commander tells his wife of the boy’s death, which he has so far kept from her. She remains calm. A few days later the Prince is obliged to raise the siege. The commander has an opportunity to launch a successful surprise attack, in which a considerable number of the enemy are taken prisoner. The twelve of highest rank, who offer large sums of ransom money, he causes to be hanged on a high gallows, which can be seen from far off. The others have their right eyes pierced and their right hands and right ears cut off; after which he sends them back:
Allez à vostre seigneur Herodes, et luy dittes de par vous grant mercis des autres yeulx, oreilles et poings senestres que je vous laisse, pour ce que il donna le corps mort et innocent de mon filz à Chastel mon herault.
(Go to your master Herod and thank him for your left eyes, ears, and hands, which I let you keep because he gave the dead and innocent body of my son to Chastel, my herald.)
This text, which I have presented in somewhat greater detail (in part because its circumstantiality is one of its significant characteristics and in part because to most readers it is less readily accessible than those already discussed), is more than a century younger than Boccaccio’s Decameron. But the impression it produces is incomparably more medieval and un-modern. This general impression is spontaneous and very strong. I shall try to clarify the various elements which produce it.
In regard to form, neither the structure of individual sentences nor the composition of the story as a whole displays any of the humanists’ antiquity-inspired plasticity, versatility, clarity, and order. The sentences are not, it is true, predominantly paratactic in structure, but the hypotaxes are often clumsy, full of heavy emphasis, and at times unclear in their connectives. A sentence like this (from the wife’s speech): Et car pour ce il est mon vray filz, qui moult chier m’a cousté à porter l’espasse de IX mois en mes flans, dont en ay receu maintes dures angoisses et par maints jours, et puis comme morte à l’enffanter, lequel j’ay si chierement nourry, amé et tenu chier jusques au jour et heure que il fut livré—exhibits in the sequence of its relative subordinations a certain lack of clarity as to what belongs with what. The words et puis comme morte à l’enffanter fall completely outside the syntactic order, although the entire passage is not at all intended as an emotionally disordered outburst but as a careful and solemn discourse. The elaborate solemnity, the pompous ceremony of this style are certainly, in the last analysis, based upon the rhetorical traditions of antiquity—but wholly upon its pedantic medieval transformation, not upon the humanistic renewal of its original character. This also accounts for the solemnly invocational accumulation of pleonastic or quasi-pleonastic expressions like nourry, amé et tenu chier, which occur constantly—for instance again in the very next sentence: liberalement de cuer et franchement, sans force, contrainte ne viollence aucune, vous donne, cede et transporte toute la naturelle amour, l’affection et le droit. … This is reminiscent of the pompous style of legal and diplomatic documents, and the numerous invocations of God, the Virgin, and the saints are perfectly in place in the same style. As in such solemn documents, the matter at issue is frequently introduced by an array of formulas, apostrophes, adverbial phrases, and sometimes even by a whole procession of preparatory clauses, so that it makes its appearance like a prince or king who is preceded by heralds, bodyguards, court officials, and flag-bearers. The night conversation offers a wealth of pertinent illustrations; and so do the scenes of the heralds arriving with their messages. And although in these latter instances the procedure necessarily results from the subject matter itself, it is impossible to miss the relish with which La Sale exploits it to the full whenever he sees an opportunity. When we read: Monseigneur le cappitaine de ceste place, nous, comme officiers d’armes et personnes publicques, de par le prince de Galles, nostre très redoubté seigneur, ceste foiz pour toutes à vous nous mande, de par sa clemence de prince, vous signiffier, adviser et sommer …, it is unmistakable that, even at a moment when he is deeply moved and horrified by the Prince’s cruelty, La Sale derives supreme pleasure from getting this emphatic but syntactically confused display of class pomp down on paper. And there we have it in a nutshell; his language is a class language; and everything determined by class is non-humanist. The stable class-determined order of life, in which everything has and keeps its place and its form, is reflected in this solemn and circumstantial rhetoric, with its abundance of formulas, its superabundance of conventional gestures and invocations. Every person has a proper form of address. Madame du Chastel calls her husband Monseigneur, he says m’amye to her. Every person makes the gesture which befits his rank and the circumstances, as though in accordance with an eternal model established once and for all (à jointes mains vous supplie). When the Prince forces the commander’s herald to witness the boy’s execution (the scene is described twice), we hear this: … alors, en genoulx et mains jointes je me mis et lui dis: “A! très redouté prince, pour Dieu, souffrez que la clarté de mes malheureux yeux ne portent pas à mon très dollent cuer la très piteuse nouvelle de la mort de l’innocent filz de mon maistre et seigneur; il souffist bien trop se ma langue, au rapport de mes oreilles, le fait à icelui monseigneur vrayement.” Lors dist le prince: “Vous yrez, veuilliez ou non.” The tradition which we have here reentered is most strikingly to be felt in outstandingly solemn passages where, as we said, the matter at issue is surrounded by a defense in depth of solemnly introductory formulas. From such passages it becomes clear that we are dealing with formations of the late antique period of decadence, formations which, from the early Middle Ages onward, were absorbed and developed by class-determined cultures. In the vernaculars this tradition extends from the compact and magnificent rhetoric of the Strasbourg Oaths to the preambles of royal edicts (Louis par la grâce de Dieu, etc.). As for the structure of the narrative as a whole, it is hardly possible to speak of any conscious organization. The attempt to proceed chronologically leads to much confusion and repetition. And even though we may wish to make allowances because the author was an old man (there is something of senile circumstantiality in the style of the work), the same paratactic and slightly confused kind of composition is already to be found in the novel of little Jehan de Saintré, which was written some years earlier. It is the style of the chronicles, which enumerates events one after the other with frequent and somewhat abrupt shifts from one scene to another. The naive quality of this procedure is further emphasized by the formula with which every such shift is introduced: and now let us stop telling this and let us turn to that. … The mixture of heavily pompous language with the naïveté of enumeration in composition produces an impression of dragging and ponderous monotony in tempo which is not without its peculiar magnificence. It is a variety of the elevated style; but it is class-determined, it is nonhumanist, nonclassical, and entirely medieval.
The same impression of the class-determined medieval approach is also produced by the content of the story, and here I wish to point out especially how striking a thing it is to a modern reader that a political and military occurrence, which belongs in a historical context well known to us, is viewed exclusively as a problem in the ethos of class. Nothing is ever said about the actual importance of the fortress, about the unfortunate consequences which its fall would have for the cause of France and her king. On the contrary, the entire concern is with the knightly honor of the Seigneur du Chastel, with a pledged word and its interpretation, with the fealty of a vassal, with an oath, with personal responsibility. The commander once even offers to meet the Prince in knightly single combat to settle the differences of opinion which have arisen in regard to the interpretation of the agreement. Everything factual is smothered under a luxuriant growth of solemn knightly ceremony; but this does not preclude the prevalence of a brutal cruelty, which is not yet modern, purposeful, and as it were rationalized, but is still entirely personal and emotional. The execution of the boy is a completely senseless act of barbarism, and equally senseless is the commander’s revenge upon more than a hundred innocent victims, who are hanged or mutilated—and who otherwise, but for the commander’s personal lust for vengeance, would have been sent back for ransom. The impression all this makes is as if the political and military direction of war were still completely unrationalized, as if any effective control of operations did not exist, so that the measures taken depend largely upon the personal relations, the emotional reactions, and the concepts of knightly honor of the commanders who happen to be facing each other in any particular encounter. As a matter of fact, this may well have still been the case during the Hundred Years’ War. Even much later, in the very period of full-fledged absolutism, there are still to be found—especially in military life, where the conventions of the knightly spirit were longest preserved—unmistakable traces of a relationship between friends and foes which is wholly of the personal and knightly type. Still, it is precisely during the fifteenth century, the time when La Sale lived, that a change begins to make itself felt. The political and military methods of knighthood meet with failure, its ethos shows signs of breaking down, and its functions begin to be more and more exclusively decorative. La Sale’s novel of little Jehan de Saintré is eloquent though unintentional testimony to the ostentatious and parasitic senselessness of knightly feats of arms at this epoch. But of the impending change, La Sale refuses to take notice. He lives enveloped in a class-determined atmosphere with its distinctive conception of honor, its ceremonies, and its heraldic pomp. Even his learning, which is more strongly apparent in his other works than in the Réconfort, is a mosaic of moral quotations in the late scholastic spirit; it is specifically a scholastic compilation serving the ends of feudal and knightly class education.
La Sale, then, remains unaffected by the movement which led the great Italian authors of the fourteenth century to extend their domain over all of contemporary reality. His language and his art in general are class-determined; his horizon is narrow, although he has traveled so widely. Wherever he went, he saw many notable things, but all he ever noted in them was their courtly and knightly aspect. The Réconfort too is written in this spirit. But in the midst of its late feudal and already somewhat brittle stylistic pomp, there appears—as the text quoted above shows—a truly tragic occurrence of the highest dignity, which is narrated a little ceremoniously and circumstantially, it may be, but yet with great warmth and simplicity of feeling, as the subject deserves. In medieval literature there is hardly another instance of so simple, so extremely real, so exemplarily tragic a conflict, and I have often wondered why this beautiful passage is so little known. The conflict is completely unschematized; it has nothing to do with any of the traditional motifs of courtly literature. It involves a woman, but a mother and not a mistress. It is not romantically moving, like the story of Griselda, but a piece of practical, graspable reality. The background of knightly ceremonial does not interfere with its simple grandeur, for one is ready to grant without argument that a woman, especially in this era, conforms to prevailing conditions. Indeed, Madame du Chastel’s submissiveness, her humility, her obedient bowing to her husband’s will, show only the more impressively the sterling force and freedom of her nature as it awakes in a time of need. In the last analysis the conflict concerns her alone; for although he shows himself undecided and complains, there is no doubt as to what decision he must make. But it depends on her attitude whether and how he can withstand the shock. And in a quick and clear acceptance of the situation she regains control over herself through the argument: se il se muert, or as-tu bien tout perdu. And she forthwith resolves to extricate him from his useless self-torture, to show him the road she knows he must take, by taking it before him. As soon as she has succeeded in attracting his attention, she first gives him what he most urgently needs, that is, order in his thoughts, consciousness of the problem he must solve: there is a decision to be made between two evils, and he must choose the lesser. When, still helpless, he asks which is the lesser, she at first avoids answering the question: that, she says, is not to be decided by a frail woman but by a man’s virtue and courage. She thus puts him under the necessity of as it were ordering her to express her views, which means that she reinstates him, albeit only outwardly, in his accustomed position of leadership and responsibility. By this very fact she has extricated him from the state of spineless querulousness which was undermining his strength and his self-respect. And then she sets the example he must follow. Children, she says, are more the children of their mothers, who carried them and gave birth to them and suckled them, than of their fathers. Our son is more my son than yours; and yet I now renounce all my love of him as though I had never had him; I sacrifice my love for him; for we can have other children, but if your honor is lost, it cannot be recovered. And if you follow my advice, people will praise you: c’est le preudomme et très loyal chevalier. … It is hard to decide what is most praiseworthy in this speech, its self-effacement or its self-control, its goodness or its clarity. That a woman under such a trial does not abandon herself to her grief but sees the situation clearly as it really is; that she understands there can be no question of surrendering the fortress and that hence the boy is lost in any case if the Prince is in earnest; that she manages by her intervention to restore her husband’s inner poise, by her example to give him the courage to make a decision, and even, by her reference to the fame he will gain, to offer him some measure of consolation and most certainly to give him back the pride and self-respect which will make it easier for him to play the part assigned to him—all this has a simple beauty and grandeur which can vie with any classical text. Very beautiful too is the conclusion when, released from his tension, he can pray again, and thank her, and even ask her to rest a little longer: Reposer, dist-elle, hellas, Monseigneur, je n’ay cuer, oeul, ne membre sur mon corps qui en soit d’accord. …
It is apparent that the late-feudal epideictic style is able to produce a visual representation of such a genuinely tragic and genuinely real scene. However superficial this style may be in political and military matters, whose true relations and causal connections it no longer grasps, it stands the test in a perfectly simple, directly human action. This is the more remarkable since in our case the place of the action is extremely everyday and domestic, the personages are a married couple, talking over their troubles at night in bed. In the classical conception of the ancients this is no proper setting for a tragic action in the elevated style. Here the tragic, the grave, the problematic appears in the everyday life of a family. And although the people involved belong to the high nobility and are steeped in feudal forms and traditions, the situation in which we find them—in bed at night, not as lovers but as man and wife, grieving under dire stress, and intent upon helping one another—is of a kind that impresses us more as middle-class, or rather as generally human, than as feudal. Despite the solemn and ceremonious language, what takes place is very simple and very naive. A few simple thoughts and emotions appear, in harmony or in conflict. There is no question of any stylistic separation between the tragic and everyday realism. During its heyday, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, French courtly literature produced nothing so real and “creatural.”1 A married couple in bed—that might at least have occurred in a popular farce. And what can we say about the representation of the weeping and lamenting boy as he is led to his death! I shall not praise it. It is unnecessary, either for the reader or for the unfortunate father (to whom the herald’s report is addressed), that the minute details of the occurrence should be depicted with so much sensory evidence. The more striking is it that so large a measure of unconcealed creatural realism can be united with a tragic event in this style of heraldic ostentation. Everything is calculated to bring out in visual clarity the contrast between the innocence of the boy and the gruesome execution, between the protected life he has so far led and the merciless reality which suddenly breaks in on it: the pity of the guards, who have made friends with the boy during his brief detention as a hostage; his childish, uncomprehending outpouring of lamentation, twice heard, in which, saying the same words over and over, he clings to every present and absent source of help; his struggling against death to the very last moment, despite the consoling words of the monk who hears his confession, until his desperate resistance makes the fetters wear the flesh of his legs to the bone. … The Seigneur du Chastel is spared nothing, nor is the reader.
What we have observed here, this interplay between the epideictic style of knightly ceremony and a starkly creatural realism which does not shun but actually savors crass effects, is not a new discovery of ours. From the romantic period on, this combination has been an integral part of the current concept of the Middle Ages. More exact research has established that it was at the end of the Middle Ages—during the fourteenth and especially the fifteenth century—that the combination evolved and became strikingly and characteristically apparent. For more than thirty years now, we have had an excellent and widely-known study of this epoch, Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, in which the phenomenon is repeatedly analyzed in various contexts. What is common to the two elements and holds them together is certain factors in the sensory taste of the period: ponderousness and somberness, dragging tempo, strongly charged coloration. As a result its epideictic style often has a somewhat exaggerated sensory impressiveness; its realism often has a certain ponderousness of form and at the same time something directly creatural and fraught with tradition. Many realistic forms—the Dance of Death for example—have the character of processions or parades. The traditionalism of the serious, creatural realism of this period is explained by its origin. It stems from Christian figuralism and takes almost all its intellectual and artistic motifs from the Christian tradition. The suffering creature is present to it in the Passion of Christ, the portrayal of which becomes more and more brutal while its sensory and mystic power of suggestion grows stronger, or in the passions of the martyrs. Domestic intimacy and “serious” intérieur (“serious” in comparison with the intérieur of the farces) it derives from the Annunciation and other domestic scenes which were to be found in Scripture. In the fifteenth century the embedding of the events of the story of salvation in the contemporary daily life of the people had reached such a pitch, and their minutest details had become so penetrated with typology, that religious realism exhibits symptoms of excess and crude degeneracy. We have mentioned this fact in an earlier passage (pp. 158ff.); it has often been observed, very clearly and with great penetration by Huizinga for example, so that we need not go into it further. Yet in our context some other points must be made in regard to the realism of the closing Middle Ages. And the first is that the picture of man living in reality which the Christian mixture of styles had produced—that is, the creatural picture—begins likewise to appear outside of the Christian sphere in its more restricted sense. We find it in our narrative, which relates a feudal and military occurrence. Then we must point out that the representation of real contemporary life now turns with particular care and great art to the intimate, domestic, and everyday detail of family life. This too, as we have just observed, results from the Christian mixture of styles; it is a development for which the conceptual patterns are to be found in the motifs connected with the Virgin Mary’s and Christ’s birth. It exhibits, especially in the domain of the visual arts, far more allusions of a typological nature than was assumed until recently.
But the development was also furthered by the rise of the upper-bourgeois culture which made itself strongly felt toward the end of the Middle Ages especially in northern France and Burgundy. This culture was not, it is true, quite conscious of itself (it was a long time before the “third estate” was given a place in theory which corresponded with the actual situation); in its attitudes and its style of life it long remained, despite its considerable wealth and growing power, a lower rather than an upper bourgeoisie. But it supplied motifs for the mimetic arts, motifs which were precisely of the intimately domestic variety—both as picturesque intérieur and as representing domestic and economic conditions and problems. The domestic, intimate, and everyday aspects of personal life sometimes come through even in cases involving members of the feudal nobility or of the princely class. Here too we find that intimate occurrences are represented much more often, in greater detail, and more plainly than before—as is the case in our text and frequently also in the writings of the chroniclers (Froissart, Chastellain, etc.). Hence literature and art, despite their predilection for feudal and heraldic display, have on the whole a much more bourgeois character than was true in the earlier Middle Ages. And finally a third point must be stressed as being of essential importance for late medieval realism—the very point which induced me to employ in this chapter the new term “creatural.” It is characteristic of Christian anthropology from its beginnings that it emphasizes man’s subjection to suffering and transitoriness. This was a necessary concomitant of the idea of Christ’s Passion as part of the story of salvation. Yet during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the corresponding devaluation and denigration of earthly existence had not reached the extreme which characterizes the era here under discussion. During the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages the idea that life on earth has value and purpose was still very much alive. Human society had specific tasks to accomplish; it had to realize a specific ideal form on earth in order to prepare men for the Kingdom of God. Within the confines of the present study, Dante is an example of a man for whom (as for many of his contemporaries) secular planning and political endeavor on the part of individuals and human society at large was highly significant, ethically relevant, and decisive for eternal salvation. It may be that the social ideals of those early centuries had lost in power and prestige because events so stubbornly gave them the lie and that new developments were initiated which were in no way compatible with them. It may be that people did not know how to interpret and organize the new political and economic forms of life which were being initiated, or again that the will to a theoretical comprehension of practical earthly life was paralyzed by the various trends toward a popular ecstaticism, by the ever more emotionally realistic mysticism of the Passion, and the prevailing form of piety which was increasingly degenerating into superstition and fetishism. Certain it is that during the last centuries of the Middle Ages there are to be observed symptoms of fatigue and barrenness in constructive-theoretical thinking, especially insofar as it is concerned with the practical organization of life on earth, with the result that the “creatural” aspect of Christian anthropology—life’s subjection to suffering and transitoriness—comes out in crass and unmitigated relief. The peculiar feature of this radically creatural picture of man, which is in particularly sharp contrast to the classico-humanistic picture, lies in the fact that it combines the highest respect for man’s class insignia with no respect whatever for man himself as soon as he is divested of them. Beneath them there is nothing but the flesh, which age and illness will ravage until death and putrefaction destroy it. It is, if you like, a radical theory of the equality of all men, not in an active and political sense but as a direct devaluation of life which affects every man individually. Whatever he does and attempts is vain. Although his instincts oblige him to act and to cling to life on earth, that life has neither worth nor dignity. It is not in their relation to one another or even “before the law” that all men are equal; on the contrary: God has appointed that there be inequality between them in their lives on earth. But they are equal before death, before creatural decay, before God. True enough, even at this early period we find individual instances (in England especially of a very forceful kind) where politico-economic conclusions are drawn from this doctrine of equality. But by far the more prevailing attitude is that which, in the creatural character of man, reads only the fruitlessness and vanity of all earthly endeavor. For many in the countries north of the Alps, consciousness of their own predestined decay with that of all their works has a paralyzing effect upon intellectual endeavor insofar as its purpose is to make practical plans concerned with life on earth. All action aimed at the future of life in this world seems to them without value and without dignity, a mere play of instincts and passions. Their relation to earthly reality combines acceptance of its existing forms as an intensely expressive pageantry and radical unmasking of it as transitory and vain. The most extreme means are employed to elaborate this contrast between life and death, youth and age, health and sickness, idle and triumphant boastfulness in regard to one’s earthly role and miserable and plaintive rebellion against inexorable destruction. These simple themes are subjected to ever new variations—morose or passionately complaining, pious or cynical or again both at once—and often with gripping power. Average everyday life, with its sensual pleasures, its sorrows, its decline with age and illness, its end, has seldom been so impressively represented as during this epoch; and stylistically these representations are of a character which is clearly differentiated not only from the realistic art of the ancients—which goes without saying—but also from that of the earlier Middle Ages.
We have from this period a number of literary representations of a night conversation between a married couple. Of those which I know, a particularly characteristic one is the scene from the first of the Quinze Joyes de Mariage, in which the wife wants a new dress. I quote it from the Bibliothèque elzévirienne edition (2nd ed., Paris, 1857, pp. 9ff.):
Lors regarde lieu et temps et heure de parler de la matière à son mary; et voulentiers elles devroient parler de leurs choses especialles là où leurs mariz sont plus subjets et doivent estre plus enclins pour octrier: c’est ou lit, ouquel le compagnon dont j’ay parlé veult atendre à ses délitz et plaisirs, et lui semble qu’il n’a aultre chouse à faire. Lors commence et dit ainsi la Dame: “Mon amy, lessezmoy, car je suis à grand mal-aise.—M’amie, dit-il, et de quoy?—Certes, fait-elle, je le doy bien estre, mais je ne vous en diray jà rien, car vous ne faites compte de chose que je vous dye.—M’amie, fait-il, dites-moy pour quoy vous me dites telles paroles?—Par Dieu, fait-elle, sire, il n’est jà mestier que je le vous dye: car c’est une chose, puis que je la vous auroye dite, vous n’en feriez compte, et il vous sembleroit que je le feisse pour autre chose.—Vrayement, fait-il, vous me le direz.” Lors elle dit: “Puis qu’il vous plest, je le vous diray: Mon amy, fait-elle, vous savez que je fuz l’autre jour à telle feste, où vous m’envoiastes, qui ne me plaisoit gueres mais quand je fus là, je croy qu’il n’y avoit femme (tant fust-elle de petit estat) qui fust si mal abillée comme je estoye: combien que je ne le dy pas pour moy louer, mais, Dieu merci, je suis d’aussi bon lieu comme dame, damoiselle ou bourgeoise qui y fust; je m’en rapporte à ceulx qui scevent les lignes. Je ne le dy pas pour mon estat, car il ne m’en chaut comme je soye; mais je en ay honte pour l’amour de vous et de mes amis.—Avoy! distil, m’amie, quel estat avoient-elles à ceste feste?—Par ma foy, fait-elle, il n’y avoit si petite de l’estat dont je suis qui n’eust robe d’écarlate, ou de Malignes, ou de fin vert, fourrée de bon gris ou de menu-ver, à grands manches, et chaperon à l’avenant, à grant cruche, avecques un tessu de soye rouge ou vert, traynant jusques à terre, et tout fait à la nouvelle guise. Et avoie encor la robe de mes nopces, laquelle est bien usée et bien courte, pour ce que je suis creue depuis qu’elle fut faite; car je estoie encore jeune fille quand je vous fus donnée, et si suy desja si gastée, tant ay eu de peine, que je sembleroye bien estre mere de telle à qui je seroye bien fille. Et certes je avoye si grant honte quand je estoye entre elles, que je n’ousoie ne savoye faire contenance. Et encore me fit plus grand mal que la Dame de tel lieu, et la femme de tel, me disrent devant tous que c’estoit grand’honte que je n’estoye mielx abillée. Et par ma foy, elles n’ont garde de m’y trouver mès en pièce—Avoy! m’amie, fait le proudomme, je vous diray: vous savez bien, m’amie, que nous avons assez affaire, et savez, m’amie, que quant nous entrames en nostre menage nous n’avions gueres de meubles, et nous a convenu achapter liz, couchez, chambres, et moult d’autres choses, et n’avons pas grant argent à present; et savez bien qu’il fault achapter deux beufs pour notre mestoier de tel lieu. Et encore chaist l’autre jour le pignon de nostre grange par faulte de couverture, qu’il faut reffaire la premiere chouse. Et si me fault aller à l’assise de tel lieu, pour le plait que j’ay de vostre terre mesme de tel lieu, dont je n’ay riens eu ou au moins bien petit, et m’y fault faire grand despence.—Haa! sire, je savoye bien que vous ne me sauriez aultre chose retraire que ma terre.” Lors elle se tourne de l’aultre part, et dit: “Pour Dieu, lessés moi ester, car je n’en parleray ja mais.—Quoy dea, dit le proudomme, vous vous courroucez sans cause.—Non fais, sire, fait-elle: car si vous n’en avez rien eu, ou peu, je n’en puis mais. Car vous savez bien que j’estoye parlée de marier à tel, ou à tel, et en plus de vingt aultres lieux, qui ne demendoyent seullement que mon corps; et savez bien que vous alliez et veniez si souvent que je ne vouloie que vous; dont je fu bien mal de Monseigneur mon père, et suis encor, dont je me doy bien haïr; car je croy que je suy la plus maleurée femme qui fust oncques. Et je vous demande, sire, fait-elle, si les femmes de tel et de tel, qui me cuidèrent bien avoir, sont en tel estat comme je suy. Si ne sont-elles pas du lieu dont je suy. Par Sainct Jehan, mieulx vallent les robes que elles lessent à leurs chamberieres que celles que je porte aux dimanches. Ne je ne scey que c’est à dire dont il meurt tant de bonnes gens, dont c’est grand dommage: à Dieu plaise que je ne vive gueres! Au moins fussés vous quite de moy, et n’eussés plus de desplesir de moy.—Par ma foy, fait-il, m’amie, ce n’est pas bien dit, car il n’est chose que je ne feisse pour-vous; mais vous devez regarder à nostre fait: tournez vous vers moy, et je feray ce que vous vouldrez.—Pour Dieu, fait-elle, lessés moi ester, car, par ma foy, il ne m’en tient point. Pleust à Dieu qu’il ne vous en tenist jamès plus que il fait à moy; par ma foy vous ne me toucheriez jamès—Non? fait-il.—Certes, fait-elle, non.” Lors, pour l’essaier bien, ce lui semble, il lui dit: “Si je estoie trespassé, vous seriez tantoust mariée à ung aultre—Seroye! fait-elle: ce seroit pour le plaisir que g’y ay eu! Par le sacrement Dieu, jamès bouche de homme ne toucheroit à la moye; et si je savoye que je deusse demourer après vous, je feroye chouse que je m’en iroye la premiere.” Et commence à plorer. …
(Then she considers time and place and hour to talk of the matter to her husband. And prone they are to talk of their personal matters where their husbands are most submissive and inclined to grant; that is in bed where the companion I have mentioned wants to attend to his joys and pleasures, and he thinks there is nothing else for him to do. Then the lady begins and says: “My dear, leave me alone, for I am greatly troubled.” “My dearest,” says he, “but why?” “Indeed,” says she, “I have good reason to be, but I will not tell you of it, for you pay no attention to anything I say.” “My dear,” says he, “tell me why you say such words to me?” “By God,” says she, “it is useless to tell you; for it is a thing that, after I had told you about it, you would not bother about it, and you would think that I did it for another reason.” “Now truly,” says he, “you shall tell me.” Then she says: “Since you wish it, I will tell you. My dear,” says she, “you know that the other day I was at that party where you had sent me, although I didn’t like it at all. But when I was there, I think there wasn’t a woman, no matter how low in rank, who was dressed as poorly as I was. I don’t say it to boast, but, thank God, I come from as good a place as any lady, damsel, or townswoman who was there. I appeal to those who know something about lineage. I don’t say it for my sake, for it makes no difference to me how I look, but I am ashamed for your sake and the sake of my friends.” “Indeed!” says he. “My dear, what did the women wear at that party?” “Faith,” says she, “not one of any condition, not even the least, who did not have a dress of scarlet or Malines or fin vert trimmed with bon gris or menu-ver, with big sleeves and a hat to match … with a red or green veil down to the floor and quite in the newest style. But I still had my wedding dress which is all worn and much too short because I have grown since it was made. For I was still a young girl when I was married to you, and yet I am already so run down with all the worry I have had that I look like the mother of many a woman whose daughter I could be. And truly, I was so ashamed when I was among them that I lost heart and did not know how to behave. And it troubled me still more when Lady Soandso, and Soandso’s wife, told me before all the others that it was a great shame that I was not better dressed. But I swear they won’t lay eyes on me in that place again.” “Come, come, my dear,” says the good man, “I’ll tell you: You know very well, my dear, that we have enough on our hands, and you know, my dear, that when we set up housekeeping we had hardly any furniture, and we had to buy beds, bedding, and many other things, and now we have not much cash. And you know well that we must buy a team of oxen for our tenant at Soandso. And the other day the gable of our barn came down because it was not roofed and that will have to be fixed the first thing. And then I have to go to court at Soandso because of the suit I have on account of your land in Soandso which has not brought me in a thing or at least very little, and that again will be a great expense.” “Ah, I knew you would not think of anything to come back at me with but my land.” Then she turns the other way and says: “For God’s sake, leave me in peace, I won’t ever mention it again.” “Now, now,” says the good man, “you get all excited without cause.” “I do not,” says she, “for if the land brought you nothing, or little, that isn’t my fault. For you know very well that I could have married Soandso and Suchandsuch and twenty others, all of whom asked for nothing but my body. And you know that you came to the house so often that I finally wanted no one but you, and because of that I quarreled with my father, and we haven’t made up yet, which is a heavy burden on my conscience. I think I am the most miserable woman who ever lived. And I ask you,” she says, “if the wives of Soandso and Suchandsuch, who were so eager to get me, are in such a state as I. Yet they don’t come from as good a family as I. By Saint John, the dresses they give their maids are better than my Sunday best. I don’t know why so many good people die, which is a great pity; please God I shall not live much longer! At least then you would be rid of me and would have no further trouble from me.” “Faith,” says he, “my dear, you must not talk that way, for there is nothing I would not do for you. But you must consider our affairs. Turn around now, and I will do what you ask.” “Oh God,” says she, “leave me in peace, for I don’t feel like it. Might it please God that you never felt any more like it than I do; faith, you would never touch me again.” “Wouldn’t I?” says he. “Certainly not,” says she. Then, to put her to the test, as he thinks, he says to her: “If I were dead, you would soon be married to another,” “Would I?” says she, “I suppose because of the fun I got from it! By God, never again would a man’s mouth touch mine, and if I knew I had to live beyond your time, I would do something to pass on before you.” And she falls to weeping. …)
This text, probably composed a few decades before the Réconfort, is obviously from an entirely different sphere of events and is consequently written on a level of style entirely different from that of the scene between the Seigneur du Chastel and his wife. In the latter, the issue is the life of an only child; in the Quinze Joyes it is a new dress. In the Réconfort there is true accord, a real partnership between man and wife; in the Quinze Joyes there is no trust between them, but each follows his own instincts, each observes the instincts of the other, not in order to understand them and meet them halfway but merely to exploit them for selfish purposes. The woman proceeds with great though childishly ingenuous skill; the man is cruder and less aware of what he is doing. But he too lacks the feeling which is an essential element in genuine love: the feeling for what can gladden the partner’s heart. The way he reacts to her concern over clothes might well irritate a less foolish woman, however much he may be in the right so far as the facts go. Finally, in the story of the du Chastels, the wife is the heroine. In the Quinze Joyes she is too, but not through the greatness and purity of her heart but through the superiority of her deceitfulness and energy in the eternal struggle which marriage is represented to be. The level of style differs correspondingly: the Quinze Joyes lacks any claim to an elevated tone; the dialogue between man and wife does not seek to render anything but the tone of an everyday conversation, and it is only in the introductory statements that an element of moral didacticism is present, which, however, derives much more from practical psychology and concrete experience than is usual in medieval moralizing. The ceremonious and ostentatious elevation which constitutes the class character of the Réconfort is in marked contrast to the frankly intermediate, bourgeois forms of expression and behavior in the conversation on the subject of the new dress.
And yet the historical approach shows that here two kinds of style are coming together. We said above that feudal literature in its heyday has nothing to show which is comparable in realism and domestic intimacy with the scene between the Seigneur du Chastel and his wife. A tragic problem, presented in a conversation at night between husband and wife, is something so direct that the old-fashioned ostentatious ornateness of the class-determined language, rather than lessen the impression of the human and the creatural, touchingly enhances it. On the other hand the subject which is treated in our scene from the Quinze Joyes—a woman who, at night in bed, talks her husband into a new dress—is really material for farce. But here the theme is taken seriously; and not merely in its crudity and generality, by way of illustration and example, but in a concrete representation which is precise in its rendering of the nuances and details of the material and psychological situation. For although the author gave his work the form of a collection of exempla, it yet has nothing to do with the earlier, wholly unrealistic, purely didactic collections of exempla in the manner of the Seven Wise Masters or the Disciplina Clericalis; it is much too concrete for that. Nor has it anything to do with the farces; for that, it is much too serious. The little work, whose author is not known to us, is a very significant document in the history of the antecedents of modern realism. It renders everyday life or at least one of its most important spheres, that of marriage and family life, in all its sensory reality, and it takes this everyday subject seriously and indeed problematically. This seriousness, to be sure, is of a special type. In earlier times the misogynous and anticonnubial tendencies of clerical ethics had produced a kind of realistic literature which, with sullen and morose didacticism, enumerated all the miseries and dangers of marriage, family life, bringing up children, etc., tricking out its presentation with allegories and examples. These themes had been handled especially impressively, and at times most concretely, by Eustache Deschamps, who died at the beginning of the fifteenth century. From this tradition the author of the Quinze Joyes derived not only almost all the individual motifs of his work but also his half-moralizing, satirical, and more sullenly carping than tragically serious attitude toward his subject.
However, even Eustache Deschamps (see, for example, numbers 15, 17, 19, 38, or 40 of his Miroir de Mariage) never succeeded in evoking a real scene involving husband and wife in that emmeshing dual play of all levels of consciousness, which is what a marriage is. With him the elements of realism remain superficial, something in the style of what the nineteenth century called genre scenes. The motifs contained in the passage quoted above are almost all represented in Deschamps too. With him too the wife wants new clothes, appeals to the fact that others are better dressed although they do not come from families as good as hers. But the whole thing does not take place at night and in bed; it is not connected with the play of sexual relations, the motif of remarriage after the husband’s death, or all the allusions to how the marriage came about and to the property which she brought with her and which so far has yielded hardly any revenue but instead has been the cause of costly litigation. Deschamps enumerates his motifs, at times vividly, more often all too prolixly. The author of the Quinze Joyes knows what marriage is, he knows the bad of it, and the good too, for in the Quatorziesme Joye (p. 116) he has the sentence: car ilz sont deux en une chose, et nature y a ouvré tant par la douceur de sa forse, que si l’un avoit mal, l’autre le sentiroit. He has the married couple really live together; he combines his motifs in such a way that the “deux en une chose” becomes palpable, chiefly, it is true, in its evil implications, as a situation which enables husband and wife to hurt each other deeply, as the eternal struggle of two creatures fettered to each other, as deceit and betrayal in their partnership. This gives his book a tragic character. It is not very lofty tragedy, nor is it unintermittent. The individual problems are too narrow and petty for that; above all, the character of the victim, that is, the husband, is not free enough. He has neither goodness nor dignity, neither humor nor self-control. He is nothing but a harassed paterfamilias, and his love of his wife is entirely egotistical, without any understanding of her individual nature. He thinks of himself simply as her proprietor and feels that his proprietary rights are constantly in danger. If, then, anyone prefers to eschew the word tragic, he must nevertheless acknowledge that the practical vicissitudes of a human being in his everyday existence have here been given a literary expression which did not exist earlier. And there is in fact a convergence of the stylistic levels of the Réconfort, which is written in the feudal tradition, and the Quinze Joyes, whose motifs are drawn from the farces and from popular clerical moralizing. There comes into being a level of style which considers the everyday scene of current life worthy of detailed and serious portrayal; which at times, reaching upward, attains the realm of tragedy, at times touches the realm of satire and moral didacticism below; which deals much more penetratingly than before with the immediacy of human existence, its physical actualities, its domestic aspects, everyday enjoyments, the decline of life, and its end; and which, in all this, has no fear of harsh effects.
The sensory present which is thus made manifest remains within the class-determined forms of the time yet nonetheless everywhere reveals itself as a general reality which binds all men together through their common creatural conditions of life (la condition de l’homme, as it would later be called). From as early as the fourteenth century, we find instances of this more immediate, more sensory, more detailed realism. They are numerous in Eustache Deschamps, and Froissart relates episodes involving questions of life and death with a sensory circumstantiality which is not so very different from the manner in which La Sale relates the death of the young du Chastel. When the six leading burghers of Calais, clad only in shirt and trousers, a rope around their necks, the key to the city in their hands, kneel before the English king, who wants to have them executed, we hear him gnash his teeth; the queen, who throws herself at his feet begging for grace for the prisoners, is in the last stages of pregnancy, and he, fearing that in her condition she may come to harm if he does not grant her request, does so with the words: “Ha! dame, j’aimasse trop mieux que vous fussiez autre part que ci!” (Chroniques, 1, 321). Still more marked in their detailed realism are the episodes of book 3 which treat of the death of young Gaston de Foix. Huizinga grants them “an almost tragic power.” The subject is a family tragedy at a princely court in southern France, and it is reported in a series of extremely clear and graphic scenes, all the details of which are delineated. The terrible proceedings between father and son achieve complete directness in these sketches of courtly mores (the two princes gaming and fighting, the prince with his Italian greyhound at table, and so forth). During the fifteenth century realism becomes even more sensory, the colors become even more glaring. Yet the representation always remains within the bounds of medieval class-determination and of Christianity. The utmost perfection of a creatural realism which remains completely within the sensory and, for all its radicalism of emotion and expression, shows no trace of intellectually categorizing power, or even of revolutionary power, shows indeed no will whatever to make this world any different from what it is, is to be found in François Villon.
We are still—as is clearly to be seen precisely in Villon—dealing with the effects of the Christian mixture of styles. Without it, the type of realism we have called creatural would not be conceivable. But by now it has freed itself from serving the concept of a Christian universal order; indeed, it no longer serves any concept of order whatever. It is fully independent; it has become an end in itself. Once before in the course of this study we encountered a married couple: Adam and Eve in the Mystère d’Adam. In that instance the direct imitation of contemporary reality served a timeless and universal purpose, that is, the graphic portrayal of the story of salvation, and beyond this it did not go. Now too the link between here and there, between this world and eternal salvation, remains unsevered. “Creaturality” necessarily implies such a relation to the divine order; it is constantly referred to; furthermore, the fifteenth century is precisely the great epoch of the passion play, is under the influence of a mysticism which revels in creatural-realistic imagery. However, there has been a shift of emphasis, it now falls much more strongly upon life on earth. And this life on earth is contrasted far more strikingly and far more effectively with earthly decay and earthly death than with eternal salvation. Graphic portrayal is now much more immediately in the service of earthly events; it enters into their sensory content, it seeks their sap and their savor, it seeks the joy and torment which flow directly from life on earth itself. This realistic art has conquered an unlimited cycle of themes and much subtler means of expression. But its growth during this period is restricted to the sensory domain. While the old order declines, there is nothing in Franco-Burgundian realism to announce the rise of a new one. This realism is poor in ideas; it lacks constructive principles and even the will to attain them. It drains the reality of that which exists and, in its very existence, falls to decay; it drains it to the dregs, so that the senses, and the emotions aroused by them, get the flavor of immediate life; and, having done that, it seeks nothing further. Indeed, the sensory itself, for all the intensity of the expression, is narrow; its horizon is restricted. Not one of the writers of this cultural sphere surveys and masters the totality of the earthly reality of his time as did Dante or even Boccaccio. Each knows only his own sphere, and it is a narrow sphere even in the case of men who, like Antoine de la Sale, have traveled widely in the course of their lives. Only through a disposition, an active will, to give the world a form does the gift of understanding and rendering the phenomena of life acquire the power to transcend the narrow confines of one’s own life. The death of the du Chastel boy or of Prince Gaston de Foix gives us nothing beyond the very concrete experience of youth, enmeshment, and excruciating death; when it is all over, the reader is left with nothing but a sensory, an almost physical, horror from the experience of life’s transitoriness. Beyond that the writers give us nothing: no judgment which might have weight, no perspective, no conviction, no principles. Indeed, even their psychology, which is often extremely striking in its concern with the immediate and the particular (the conversation between man and wife in the Quinze Joyes may be recalled in this connection) is far more creatural than individual.
It is evident that these writers needed the sensory experience which their spheres of life afforded them, but that on the other hand they did not strive to go further because each such sphere provides sufficient material in the way of creatural contingency. Boccaccio was known in France—especially through the translation by Laurent de Premierfait (1414); and more or less contemporaneously with the Réconfort, a collection of stories after the model of the Decameron made its appearance in Burgundy, the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (edition by T. Wright, Paris, 1857-58). But what constitutes the very essence of Boccaccio is not imitated, indeed is apparently not even recognized. The Cent Nouvelles is a collection of robust stories which are served up at a gathering of men, and these men, although representing courtly and high feudal society and in part even the princely ruling class, feel perfectly at ease in the atmosphere of the popular farcical style. Nothing is left of Boccaccio’s elegantly humanistic “intermediate style,” of his doctrine of love, his service of women, of the human, critical, and embracing perspective of the Decameron, of the multiplicity of its scenes and its reports of life. It goes without saying that the language too, though flavorful and expressive, shows no sign of having been penetrated by humanism and is anything but literary. The prose of Alain Chartier, who had died two decades earlier, is much more refined and rhythmically studied. Among the stories there are not a few which treat motifs also represented in the Decameron. The motif of the angel Gabriel occurs (in the fourteenth nouvelle) in the variant of a hermit who, by the aid of a hollow stick which he passes through the wall of her house, conveys to a pious widow the “divine command” to bring him her daughter because from her union with the hermit will be born a child destined to ascend the Papal throne and to reform the Church. Mother and daughter obey the command; the hermit finally lets them wring a reluctant consent from him. But after he enjoys the daughter for a time, she becomes pregnant, and gives birth to a girl! The nouvelle is very crudely composed (the “divine” visitation and command are repeated three times; the girl and her mother go to see the hermit three times); the characterization of mother, daughter, and hermit, compared with that of Frate Alberto and Madonna Lisetta, is purely “creatural,” that is to say, not at all without life, and indeed quite true to life, but without any individualization. As a sensory rendering of a comic incident the whole story is quite effective. There is much popular and colloquial humor in it (la vieille, de joy emprise, cuidant Dieu tenir par les piez), but it is incomparably cruder, narrower, and on a lower level of attitude and form than Boccaccio.
The realism of the Franco-Burgundian culture of the fifteenth century is, then, narrow and medieval. It has no new attitudes which might reshape the world of earthly realities and it is hardly aware that the medieval categories are losing their power. It hardly notices what decisive changes are taking place in the structure of life; and in breadth of vision, refinement of language, and formative power it is far inferior to what the Italian late medieval and early humanist flowering had produced a full century earlier in Dante and Boccaccio. In it, however, a deeper penetration of the sensory and the creatural asserted itself, and this Christian heritage it preserved and passed on to the Renaissance. In Italy, Boccaccio and the early humanists no longer felt this creatural seriousness in the experience of life. In France itself, and north of the Alps in general, every kind of serious realism was in danger of being choked to death by the vines of allegory. But the spontaneous vigor of the sensory was stronger, and thus the creatural realism of the Middle Ages came to be passed on to the sixteenth century. It supplied the Renaissance with a strongly counterbalancing factor against the forces working toward a separation of styles which grew out of the humanists’ emulation of antiquity.
1 Kreatürliches. The word, a neologism of the 1920’s, implies the suffering to which man is subject as a mortal creature. (Translator’s note.)