Part 5
Perhaps, after receiving the children’s children of his loyal subjects, who may have crossed a certain wide ocean unknown to him to attend the great Court of History that William the Norman holds at Caen, the Shades of the Conqueror growing more familiar might conduct the musing cortége into the beautiful abbey near-by, which he built in expiation of the love-match he made in defiance of the church.
I wonder here if the old king might not laughingly recall the story of his first meeting with Lanfranc.
Like other forceful men, William married upon his own responsibility. Accordingly, the Pope not only excommunicated him, but laid various bans upon his realm. Such bans were once marvelously inconvenient, to say the least. William fought the church valiantly for six years. It may have been then that he got his measure of the uses and abuses of that institution, which, in the long run, proved most valuable to England. Among others, Lanfranc, Prior of Bec, became a target for William’s displeasure and was ordered to leave his monastery. Lanfranc started forth forlornly enough on a lame horse. Thus caparisoned, he met the furious Duke William. Lanfranc had but one weapon at his command—tact. He approached the great duke, saying, “I am obeying your command as quickly as I can. I will obey faster if you will give me a better horse.” William was blessed with humor. He impressed Lanfranc into his service then and there, and made him his friend forever: the Conqueror could make good friends. Then he sent Lanfranc to make his peace with the Holy See. Understanding William’s passion for building, Lanfranc, the peacemaker, arranged that William and Mathilda should each build an abbey in expiation of their marriage. And William and Mathilda performed their contract so royally that France has lately restored their abbeys, line for line, as national monuments.[3] Thus a tableau of Caen, as the Conqueror saw it, actually lies before twentieth century eyes.
Ah, put yourself in his place! I never knew a traveler to leave this old town without becoming attached to its founder. The strong, orderly, noble and logical Norman buildings express the old Conqueror at his best; at Caen one prefers his older, gentler, more unique title of William, the builder, for, indeed, many have conquered in England, but William I built up his conquest.
In this interesting old Norman church, with its suspicion of the pointed arch (probably the earliest instance) pointing toward the unparalleled Gothic that developed in Normandy, one feels like congratulating the old Conqueror, both as lover and architect, and reinstating his old claim to romance, even though modern research has discovered that he was not a very gentle knight.
William I was no saint; but why should he have been one? Professional saints were only too common in his day: he was but a strong, direct man in a most superstitious, childish and indirect age. Is not the position of one who can stand alone through his age heroic enough?
What a curious world the old Conqueror lived in! A world of professional marauders and their soldiers, of professional saints and their serfs; with a confusion of fighting barons, lay and ecclesiastic, some or the most interesting bishops being no mean warriors; and worst of all, a lot of begging friars producing little but corruption. To the day of his death, the Conqueror makes no apology for his wars in Normandy. There he was simply holding his own. The behavior of the wild and worldly barons was not all he had to contend with; there were also the visions and the notions of the unworldly clergy, who, with intent, more or less good, more or less self-seeking, interfered absolutely with good government, and William’s tact and breadth with them, considered at a time when it is easy to be wise, nearly one thousand years after the event, is astonishing. It fell to his lot to deal with that peculiarly well-intentioned pope, Gregory VII, who, by his ability to conceive and carry out his well-intentioned policy, worked such incalculable evil. Spain is struggling with his Shades today.
What a problem the mystics of the eleventh century, with their tremendous following and their curious allegorical interpretations of everything great or small in heaven or on earth, must have been to a statesman! Listen to this eleventh century letter of thanks from Saint Ivo to Gerard of Ham, for “an instrument of the whiteness of snow for combing the hair.” This comb is agreeable to him in and of itself, like other objects of beauty; but above all, it pleases him because of the elevation of ideas, which it so beautifully symbolizes: he is quite sure that thy prudence (_ta prudence_) has wished hereby to give a suggestion to his vigilance to seek constantly by all sorts of exhortations to reform the disorderly manners of his people, whom he compares to a disarranged head of hair. And yet Saint Ivo was in his day a strictly practical person, not to be fooled as Savonarola was four hundred years later by the ordeal of fire. Saint Ivo forbids a husband to condemn his wife even when the man he has accused could be burned by hot irons; and when the martial old bishop of Le Mans, who is accused of having treacherously surrendered that town, offers to walk on hot irons to prove his innocence, Saint Ivo writes him that ordeals are uncanonical and that he must not submit to them. But then no reader of his correspondence can fail to see that Saint Ivo was very timid. How he did dread the Channel! He entreats the holiest men of his acquaintance to pray unceasingly for him while he is on the water.
But let us turn to the Conqueror’s own review of his life, as he discussed it on his death-bed. Two of his clergy took it down. Thus, as he would speak to his sons, he speaks to history. Here we have his perplexities at first hand. That we may put ourselves in his place as literally as possible, let us repair with the document to the beautiful Abbey aux Dames, so tenderly connected with the Conqueror’s queen. There, it is said, she made her thank-offering for her lord’s safe deliverance, alike from the perils of war and the perils of the Channel. This abbey was consecrated the year of the Conquest, eleven years before the Abbey aux Hommes (ladies first). Many of the Conqueror’s followers supplied their own ships, but Mathilda herself fitted out the Conqueror’s,—the regal _Mora_—so splendidly stocked with wine. Her good ship bore him safely to England and victory, and brought him back, as ever, true to his queen. To this abbey they dedicated their daughter Cicely, when she was a child, and she became a great and powerful abbess. Here we may picture her praying, as a woman in the intense Age of Faith could pray, for the souls of her parents.
Eight hundred and twenty-five years after its original construction we found another high-bred cloistered Lady of the Trinity in passionate prayer at the tomb of Mathilda. Was this pretty young nun a legitimate part of the restoration? Though the cloisters of France were supposed to have been abolished, this one had been passed by, for the Conqueror holds Caen, and some iron hand of the past seems to have retained this spiritual young girl in prayer at the tomb of his queen. A strange sight it was, one of the curious tragedies of conservatism; but like many every-day tragedies imperceptible to its actors.
To the eye all seemed beauty. From a fine old garden we stepped into a majestic aisle of a great abbey. As we walked down in its dim half-light, a curtain was drawn displaying a brass grill impassable in the eyes of the church. Impassable it had been, in fact, for nearly eight hundred and fifty years, but now to climb over it would be a minor athletic feat. It separated the chapel of the foundress and the nuns of the order of the Trinity from the whole outside world. The entire central space of this chapel was occupied by Queen Mathilda’s enormous cream-colored sarcophagus (restored). One might read the inscription in eleventh-century characters, fresh from a modern chisel. The chapel walls were lined with dark, carved wooden stalls, freshly oiled, and new-born sunbeams peered decorously through rich-colored glass on two kneeling nuns clad in the old-time flowing ivory-colored robes of the Ladies of the Trinity.
One was a fleshy, middle-aged woman, mechanically counting her beads, the other was young and beautiful. She was looking up, and, though she was as motionless as the tomb beside her, her attitude expressed action as sculpture may. What was she thinking of? Is the life of today any less inscrutable than that of one thousand years ago? Here, in the charity of the church, let us consider the Conqueror’s apology (_apologia_); we are translating the word too literally, but the spirit of the document is humble and explanatory and, withal, very winning.
In this _apologia_ William considers that he has done his duty to the church, and history endorses him; in general, when he was at variance with it he was in the right. But of his expedition to England—every move of which is justified upon the Bayeux Tapistry—he repents, although, fortunately, not fanatically enough to try and undo the deed. He only makes what reparation he can to certain victims. Though on his death-bed he liberated Harold’s son and nephew, he seems to overlook a curious persecution, cruel in intent but easily repaired, that, in the confidence and fury of his power, he had directed against the soul of the defeated king. The Conqueror carried Harold’s body from the battlefield (he wrapt it in the purple, it is true), but he had insisted upon burying it in unhallowed ground, although for it Harold’s mother had offered the weight in gold,—both parties firmly believing that to lie in unconsecrated ground would militate against the repose of the spirit. Though he tried to undo many a deed, the Conqueror ignores entirely his arrogant revenge upon a soul. Facing death matures our sense of value.
Though but one century removed from a forebear whose God was Odin, whose Valhalla was a place where heroes cut each other to pieces daily in fair fight, but where the blest are perpetually restored to life at meal-time that they may eat of the wild boar and fight again and forever,[4] at least the Conqueror came to shudder at his massacres at Hastings and York, to truly repent and to die humbly commending his soul to Mary.
The spirit of the nineteenth century was iconoclastic; it demolished alike old heroes, old superstitions and old faiths. But the twentieth century would call them back, not as realities, but as heroes, superstitions and faiths, treating them philosophically, as great moving forces, or poetically, as starting points for new ideals. The hard, rational doubt which emancipated thought in the nineteenth century develops into the sympathetic doubt of the twentieth. The nineteenth century laughed at barbaric old heroes, while the twentieth century smiles at them. Who wants to live in a world without heroes? All men are not equal; but by reverent appreciation the small man may become brother to the genius.
Every place, every document connected with the Conqueror bears his strong individuality. Read of him where you may, between the lines of the Domesday Book (that conscientious effort to tax all that the traffic will bear), or in the broken lays of the troubadours, or by the light or the density of contemporary chroniclers, Norman or Saxon, you find before you a man great in himself and a forerunner of greater things: a great builder, building better than he knew; a great ruler, ruling farther than he knew—a true hero of the strenuous life.
Following the chance records from which the Conqueror’s biography is put together, one is amazed by the integrity of his political instinct. William the Norman is an instance for the poet who said, “The world is what a few great men have made it.” The Conqueror seems such a typical Englishman, alike in his love of the forests and the “high deer,” of which the old Saxon chronicler complains, and in his appreciation of justice and stability, for which the same chronicler gives thanks on the spot. The Conqueror’s appeal is a very wide one. Even the economists, who hold that the world is what demand and supply have made it, write with an enthusiasm peculiarly their own of the Domesday Book and its wisely self-seeking, avaricious author.
It cannot be argued that the Conqueror was a popular king, but sinners, like saints, may be proven by their influence after death—the Conqueror’s was strong and manly. His spirit entered widely into mediæval legend. He is the Arthur, the ideal ruler, whom Malory commends for manly purity, justice and probity; also for “open manslaughter.” We may take Malory’s word for it, it was better than the savage treachery known even four hundred years later, when that old _raconteur_ was mixing probabilities, improbabilities and impossibilities so picturesquely, and we have our old hero back. Although we must alter Malory’s ideal, we can add to it as well as subtract from it. We have the splendid barbarian who brought order out of chaos both in England and Normandy, who loved and trusted his wife, who loved nature and had an instinct for art, whose intelligent attitude toward religion and learning left the Dark Ages behind, and whose loyal leadership opened the romantic days of chivalry.
Near Caen is a lovelier town, “Dinan, where the Conqueror slept.” Here history’s scroll seems to loosen, displaying an enchanting pastoral of the ages; there lies the simple, old hamlet by the river, just as it might have looked when William the Norman and Harold, son of Goodwin, camped there together, a little less than one thousand years ago. Then, back of the river on the bluff, later a securely walled town appeared, but now the old fortifications have turned into charming parks and playgrounds, girding the loveliest of French villages; and on a summer day in fair France one can feel sure that though much of life is at cross-purposes, all is not vanity: old moats may make the loveliest of gardens; old warriors, the gentlest of heroes.
_The Grandniece of the Grand Inquisitor_
I have a fair daughter formed like a golden flower.—_Sappho._
The Spanish Inquisitor is one character of the past who has been spared the mockish attentions of writers of historical romance. But he, too, has suffered from the _on dit_ of history, history as she is taught. However, he had his day. Once as the impersonation of “correct sentiment,” he dealt his decrees from a palace and had the double honor of representing Church as well as State. As times grew gentler, the Inquisition was directed against books rather than men. Now, certainly, something may be accorded to those who dispose of polemic literature, even though they be as innocent as earthworms of their ultimate use to humanity; therefore, let us try to look upon the Grand Inquisitor, Miguel de Carpio, as a Spanish gentleman of an exceedingly old school—as a man perhaps much less bloodthirsty than some of the good and perfect knights, though abominably technical regarding certain points. As theatre-goers we are in the gentleman’s debt, for it was he who educated his nephew, Lope de Vega de Carpio, who in his turn was a positive factor in the development of the modern drama.
Lope Felix de Vega de Carpio was of a mental mixture that has more than passed away; it has been relegated to the incomprehensible,—at once a graceful poet and a soldier, a past master of euphuism and a coarse dramatist; an officer of the Church; “a servant of the Inquisition” or a “familiar of the holy office,” as he fluently termed it (an honorary escort of the victim to the stake); finally, chaplain of the monastic order into which he retired; and, unquestionably, the most voluminous of writers.
But his most poetic gift to the world was his love-child, Sister Marcela de Felix of the Convent of the Ladies of the Trinity at Alcala. Of all his children, legitimate or illegitimate, this daughter, by the lady who inspired the best of his sonnets, was to him dearest. He takes little Marcela to live with him as soon as ever his wife dies, and dedicates a drama to the little girl; so does another poet. She seems to be her father’s comrade, for when she is only eleven years old he uses her to get back some letters that he has written to one of his various mistresses; but when a relative of the husband of this mistress makes improper overtures to Little Marcela, Lope de Vega rises like a man “in spite of his age and holy orders,” and chastises the villain.
At sixteen, to the little maid comes a craving for an exalted purity, a reaction of her beautiful soul from its coarse, immoral surroundings. Being a woman, her ideal also calls for a lover, but he must be pure and more beautiful than any one she has ever known, and he must love her as she will him, “better than life.” It is the Age of Faith. Her bridegroom awaits; she leaves her father to join him.
Of course, there are braver, fuller, happier lives than a nun’s, and there always have been. But during the Age of Faith, in a religious house, there was always a haven of rest for the idealist, while now it sometimes seems he has not where to lay his head.
It was not in the Middle Ages that the king said, “If poets will be poets, why, let them starve.” Then, on the contrary, the public fed a vagabond population of vagabond singers who sang a certain grace into the Romance languages; for the devotees of various abstractions there was the refuge of holy orders. After taking up the religious life, if they had force enough to arrange the conditions around them to fit their desires, they might safely follow their various bents, for good or ill, undisturbed by care for the future, their bodies being insured against want, their souls against punishment. In Spain, particularly, really great men and successful ones continued to take holy orders even up to the eighteenth century.
In his prime, Calderon exchanged the position of superintendent of the royal theatre for royal chaplain, but after a few qualms on the point he continued to write plays on much the same order as before, only they were performed by priests. Since Calderon was really orthodox the arrangement seems natural enough; as a playwright he had baffled with the public till he was fifty-one years old; in the church at least he was relieved from the dictates of public tastes. There it was that he probably wrote his beautiful “Magic Magician.”
I am not a Ruskinite. I would not, if I conveniently could, domesticate the thirteenth century in the nineteenth; but I do believe in a sympathetic attitude toward history, as toward present life, and for the same reasons I would not turn the light of the twentieth century in upon the gloom of the sixteenth, with the idea of getting a clear picture. I for one do not feel that a convent was the saddest place for Sister Marcela. That power which decrees the fall of nations had its hand upon Spain. Wars, the Americas, the religious houses and the Inquisition, had fed on the flower of the nation too long. The times were out of joint. It seemed beautiful to little Marcela to lose such a world and gain a soul. Being a poet, the heroic side of the church appealed to her; in her intensity she joined the barefooted order of the Trinity. How did her father part from her? He was a poet, too—did he give her up with holy joy and homely sorrow?
In his way, Lope de Vega was a really religious man, for he lived in close touch with his God—the literal, limited, jealous god of a fanatic, it is true. Would you see its exact image, as shown on the Market Place? Then read “The Marriage of the Soul to Divine Love,” a broadly realistic drama, in which Lope de Vega supposes the bridegroom to be the Savior. It was acted on the great Square of Valencia on the occasion of the marriage of Philip III, the dramatist himself being the clown in the cast.
But, too, this vulgar “familiar of the holy office” can be tender. Listen to these lines, dedicated to his little dead son:—
“Holy angels and blest, Through these palms as ye sweep, Hold their branches at rest, For my babe is asleep.
“And ye Bethlehem palm trees, As stormy winds rush In tempest and fury, Your angry noise hush;— Move gently, move gently, Restrain your wild sweep; Hold your branches at rest,— My babe is asleep.
“My babe all divine, With earth’s sorrows oppressed, Seeks in slumber an instant His grieving to rest; He slumbers,—he slumbers,— Oh hush, then, and keep Your branches all still,— My babe is asleep!
“Cold blasts wheel about him,— A rigorous storm,— And ye see how, in vain, I would shelter his form;— Holy angels and blest, As above me ye sweep, Hold these branches at rest,— My babe is asleep!”
What did he whisper to this living child as she parted from him? “Heard melodies are sweet; but those unheard are sweeter.”
When, in the confident phrase of her father, Marcela de Carpio “espoused the eldest son of God,” her mystic nuptials called forth the truest “song-feast” ever held. The herald of old might bid the poets appear and compete for a monarch’s pleasure. Order a tournament of song, indeed! Mahomet was profound enough to go to the mountain. When the beautiful love-child of Lope de Vega and Micaela de Luzan took the veil, the ceremony was graced by all the dignity and circumstance which the Church could lavish in outward expression of the passion and fervor of the forceful old days of her power.
All the poets of the day, great and small, seemed to have been summoned to this marriage feast, and all the poets of the day, great and small, vainly tried to transcribe the living poem their eyes beheld when that fair bride of Christ passed before them in a transport of ecstasy.
At that time many great ladies were taking the veil with equal pomp and state, but no such tribute was paid them. What an absolutely inexplicable power is personality! Marcela de Carpio never published a line, and at this time had probably never written one. How did these minor poets recognize this fair daughter of Sappho? Was she “formed like a golden flower”? What a wonderful people are poets! But listen, for Sister Marcela’s bridal song is with us yet, she pipes so clear and sweet:
I. “Let them say to my lover That here I lie! The thing of his pleasure, His slave am I.
II. “Say that I seek him Only for love, And welcome are tortures My passion to prove.
III. “Love giving gifts Is suspicious and cold; I have all, my Beloved, When Thee I hold.
IV. “Hope and devotion The good may gain, I am but worthy Of passion and pain.
V. “So noble a Lord None serves in vain— For the pay of my love Is my love’s sweet pain.
VI. “I love thee, to love thee, No more I desire; By faith is nourished My love’s strong fire.
VII. “I kiss Thy hands When I feel their blows; In place of caresses Thou givest me woes.
VIII. “But in Thy chastening Is joy and peace; O Master and Love, Let not Thy blows cease!
IX. “Thy beauty, Beloved, With scorn is rife! But I know that Thou lovest me Better than life.
X. “And because Thou lovest me, Lover of mine, Death can but make me Utterly Thine.