CHAPTER IX.

VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS THE TROUBADOUR.

Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus was a man not satisfied with four names. In jest or earnest he assumed another, Theodosius. In point of time he had an interesting position; in regard to residence his story becomes really valuable; and when we add that he gave to the Church several of her best-known hymns, he appears before us as a person unfamiliar, but highly attractive.

If, as we have reason to think, he came into France in 566 or 567, at the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, we must suppose him to have been born about 531. He was an Italian of Treviso, which is not far northwest of Venice and northeast of Padua. Of his parentage and early education (except the fact that he was trained at Ravenna) we are ignorant; but he is said to have been acquainted with Boethius, a thing hard to believe, for the philosopher perished in 524. We are left in some doubt whether he had set forth from Italy because the Lombards were about to invade his part of it, or whether religious motives were at the bottom of this “exile,” as he is very ready to call it.

Judging his unknown past by his better-known later history, he was a man of affable and genial character, who could pay for all favors in the small coin of panegyric, and whose pen filled his pocket and procured him the hospitality of the rich and the great of the earth. We know he could sing, for he says so himself; and he could also turn verses so sweet and mellow that even the poorest of them were learned by his admirers and recited again with much delight. Now it happened that his eyes were affected, and his friend Gregory of Tours sent him some of the blessed St. Martin’s holy lamp-oil. When this was rubbed upon them—and it was doubtless good oil, and therefore not an objectionable ointment—he was greatly helped. He consequently showed his gratitude in two ways: by making a pilgrimage to the blessed St. Martin’s own town, and by writing the blessed St. Martin’s biography. This last he accomplished to the extent of four books of verse, employing, without any apparent scruple, the much more classic and elaborate treatise of Sulpicius Severus as the groundwork of his own. It was this journey which raises the question whether he was avoiding the Lombards or performing a pious vow when he entered France. Perhaps in this, as in other events of his life, the religious garment covered the secular desire.

From his native country, then, he made his way into another and less cultivated region. There was a Gallo-Roman society at the time, very much as there now are groups of educated persons in Siberia, or in the seaboard cities of China. A certain freemasonry of intelligence passed a literary man along from castle to cloister and from cloister to court. It was a period when classic learning was at its lowest ebb, and when the Romance tongues, like the second growth of a forest, were thickly clustering in upon the few survivors of the ancient groves of literature. The sixth century was removed from the past, but had not attained to much on its own account.

Yet we must not think that this century was barren of beginnings. The Merving kings—Clovis, and Childebert, and Clotaire the First, and Charibert—had now given place to Chilperic on the throne of France. Indeed, some writers are inclined to make this sixth century the true commencement of the Middle Ages, and it is very certain that we can see a great deal in the story of Fortunatus which is mediaeval. Moreover, Mohammed was born in 570, at Mecca, while our future bishop was traversing Gaul. And nearly contemporary with our author’s birth—that is, in 533—comes the announcement of the supremacy of the Roman bishop, which culminated in 590 in the strong administration of Gregory the Great. Fortunatus lived, therefore, in days when Latin Christianity was taking shape, and when the most aggressive of false religions was springing up. We have indeed said, in effect, that the Western Empire was at an end, and that the Monarchy of France had begun in 476.

Thus, as he looked backward, the Italian refugee could recall the successive blows of barbarian swords—the swords of Alaric, and Genseric, and Attila, and Odoacer—under which Rome had fallen. When Alboin started his raid from Pannonia in 568, with Lombards (Longobardi) and Gepidae and twenty thousand Saxons, it was surely enough to make a troubadour take refuge at Tours.

Our materials for the biography of Fortunatus from this point in the story become more available. He kept an itinerary, which was lost; but he wrote often to Gregory of Tours, and this seems to be the only correspondence which he conducted in a natural and ordinary manner. From it we learn that he crossed the mountains in a “snowy July,” and had written either “on horseback or half asleep.” He passed some time at Metz and Rheims. His days and nights were spent in travelling and feasting and in preparing songs and odes, to the consternation of his modern biographer, Luchi, who does not find much evidence of piety in these proceedings.

Fortunatus is his own exponent, and his language, literally translated, gives us a vivid picture of the way in which he made friends with everybody. “Travelling among the barbarians” (he writes to Gregory), “on a long journey, either weary of the way or drunk beneath the icy chill, at the exhortation of the muse (I know not whether more cold or sober), a new Orpheus I gave voices to the wood, and the wood replied.” The sentence illustrates not merely his experience but also his style of composition, which is turgid and frequently obscure. His panegyrics, for example, abound in the most fulsome flattery, arrayed bombastically in a string of nouns, verbs, and adjectives half a page long. The real idea walks within much of his Latin, like a pigmy in a great court train, ridiculously small and ridiculously pretentious.

Sometimes these same expressions of our poet betoken a convivial familiarity with his friend Gregory of Tours, which is not precisely canonical. Many post-classical words appear, and phrases which no grammarian would easily justify. The man is full of sly hints of good eating and drinking, and has a high-flown style of compliment, as when he writes to Lupus, “As often as I put together the parts of your discourse, I thought that I reclined upon ambrosial roses.” To Sigismund and Aregesles, two brothers, he declares that, “This sweet letter reveals to me the names of friends. Here is the brilliant Sigismund, and here is the modest Aregesles. After Italy, O Rhine, thou givest me parents, and by the coming of these brothers I shall be no longer a stranger.” In fact, he picked up “brothers” and “parents” with charming facility, and had a dexterity in drawing a corner of the mantle of royal favor over him which any courtier might covet.

Thus he went—we cannot well detect in what order or by what method, but pretty conclusively as a troubadour might have done—all through France. Like Chamisso, he proposed to

“Take his harp in his hand And wander the wide world over, Singing from land to land.”

With Sigebert, King of Austrasia, he contracted quite a friendship, and being at Poitiers when Gelesuintha was put to death, he lamented her in verses which pleased Sigebert, her brother-in-law and avenger, greatly. He also became well acquainted with Euphronius of Tours, nephew of St. Gregory, the bishop, and thus laid a good foundation for ecclesiastical preferment. But it was to Poitiers that he gradually drifted, and there circumstances fixed him for the most of his life.

We may safely conclude that Tours, which is not a great distance off, first attracted his wandering feet. He had a duty to the blessed St. Martin’s holy lamp and to the blessed St. Martin’s holy memory, and these devout proceedings were more than sufficient to commend him to a hospitable bishop. Contemporary accounts of him are lacking, if we except the brief notice of Paul the Deacon, which cannot properly be called contemporary, as it is in his history of the Lombards, which was prepared in the first half of the eighth century. But Fortunatus again comes to our rescue with quite a goodly supply of verses and with some epistles which show that the life of that period was a curious resultant between the Roman and barbarian ideas. It ought in honesty to be added that Brunehilda was no saint, and that the court of the Merovingians was so barbaric that it stood by and saw her torn to death, at eighty, at the heels of a wild horse; and this was later even than Fortunatus’s day.

By this time Treviso (Trevisium) had been regularly attacked by the Lombards, and the pilgrimage, which had changed to a pleasure-trip, changed again to a residence. He speaks of himself later as having been “for nine years an exile from Italy,” and his only reference to his family that is discoverable is when he tells the Abbess Agnes that she is as dear to him as his own sister Titiana. He is a poet driven like a leaf before the storm, and he is whirled first into Tours and then into the safe eddy of Poitiers, which he celebrates reverently in song as the home of the great Hilary.

His royal friendships are made apparent by _epithalamia_—especially that on the marriage of Sigebert and Brunehilda—and by various odes. But now comes the real romance of our poet’s life. Clotaire the First had married a fair woman named Radegunda, whose piety gave him not a little trouble. She was determined to keep all her vigils and fasts and to exert herself in works of charity, even to the scrubbing of the base of the altar with her own hands. It was one of her greatest pleasures to take leprous women in her arms and kiss them, and when one of the lepers said to her, “Who will kiss you after you embrace us?” she “answered benevolently, that if others will not kiss me, it is truly no affair of mine.”

It would be beneath the dignity of this narrative, if it were not a portion of her own life in the Latin, for us to record the incident which helped to cause her separation from her husband. She had arisen at night and came back thoroughly chilled, and with her feet properly cold. Clotaire growled out that he would sooner have a nun for a wife (_jugalem monacham_) than such a queen. So she took him at his word, founded a convent at Poitiers, and distinguished herself to later generations by many noble works.

Over this convent she placed her maid Agnes, and served her former servant with profound humility and obedience, albeit she must always have been herself the ruling spirit of the place. With Fortunatus she formed a close friendship. And as this is the beginning of the conventual and ecclesiastical side of his career, we may as well bring the story up to its parallel point in current history.

Gregory, Archbishop of Tours and historian of France, always addresses his friend Fortunatus as _presbyter Italicus_. That Fortunatus embraced the monastic life at Aquileia (about 558-59) has been maintained, and the opinion is also fairly defended that he was enrolled as a “cleric” at Poitiers, although he was _novus_, or a “new-comer,” there. He had evidently some _quasi_ ecclesiastical connection, and those were days when the celibacy of the clergy was much mooted, but when the wandering monks had not yet been held to the stringencies of the monastic orders. If we ask Fortunatus why he remained in Gaul, he replies that Radegunda retained him there “by her prayers and vows.” It is conjectural that he was first chaplain to the convent, and it is certain that then he was elevated to the rank of Bishop of Poitiers.

To this daughter of Berthar, King of the Thuringi, our troubadour now paid his devoirs. Often at “the convivial banquets of the barbarians” he had “poured forth his verses.” He was now to become the devoted cavalier of a queen and an abbess, and to furnish literature with some very unique specimens of religio-amatory verse.

The life of Radegunda, written by Fortunatus and amplified by the nun Bandonivia, furnishes many interesting facts about this holy woman. She took her final resolution to separate from her husband after he had unjustly put her brother to death. On this she went to St. Medard and declared her intention of celibacy, and thence to the church of St. Martin, at Tours, where she made her formal vows. From this she retired to her villa called Suedas, near Poitiers, which she turned into a convent. Thither in 569 the Emperor Justinus (Justin II.) sent rich presents, one being a portion of the true cross. This inspired Fortunatus with a new song, and he broke out in the _Vexilla Regis_, which is surely one of the most stirring strains in our hymnology.

The following version expresses literally and without modification the ideas set forth in the Latin:

“VEXILLA REGIS PRODEUNT.”

The royal banners forward fly; The cross upon them cheers the sky; That cross whereon our Maker hung, In human form, by anguish wrung.

For he was wounded bitterly By that dread spear-thrust on the tree, And there, to set us free from guilt, His very life in blood he spilt.

Accomplished now is what was told By David in his psalm of old, Who saith,[5] “The heathen world shall see God as their King upon the tree.”

O tree, renowned and shining high, Thy crimson is a royal dye! Elect from such a worthy root To bear those holy limbs, thy fruit.

Blessèd upon whose branches then Hung the great gift of God to men; Whose price, of human life and breath, Redeemed us from the thrall of death.

Thy bark exhales a perfume sweet With which no nectar may compete; And, joyful in thine ample fruit, A noble triumph crowns thy root.

Hail, altar! and thou, Victim, hail! Thy glorious passion shall not fail; Whereby our life no death might lack, And life from death be rendered back.

O Cross, our only hope, all hail! In this the time when woes assail, To all the pious grant thy grace, And all the sinners’ sins efface!

At this time Fortunatus also composed a long poem of thanks to Justin and Sophia for gifts sent to himself, by which it would appear that he was tolerably well identified with the interests of Radegunda and her convent.

From this date onward his friendship with Agnes and Radegunda exposed both him and them to very considerable comment. He even refers to it in one of his poems, addressed to the abbess, in which he protests the purity of his conduct. But it is not hard to see how his expressions might be misunderstood. They are frequently fervid beyond the courtesies of compliment, and they remind us all the while of those singers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries who begin with William, Count of this very city of Poitiers (1071-1127), and who have made the name of “troubadour” synonymous with the praise of love and beauty. Fortunatus calls on Christ, and Peter, and Paul, and Mary to witness the entire propriety of his love for Agnes and Radegunda, but he follows it with lines which Bertrand de Born or Alain Chartier might have composed.

Really there is a great deal of this exuberant poetry in the worthy chaplain. He wrote every sort of odd acrostic on the holy cross, reminding us in more ways than one of Damasus, or of the later cavalier poets of England. He tells Radegunda, who seems his principal star, that everything is alike when he does not see her; that although the sky is cloudless, yet, if she is absent, “the day stands without a sun.” He excuses himself in other verses for sending her violets instead of lilies and roses. Any incident in which Radegunda plays a part is enough to turn the poetic stream upon the mill-wheel of his verse. If there are flowers on the altar; if there are flowers sent by her to himself; if she has retired from the world to perform her vows; if she has returned again to the public gaze, and especially if he has been at a little dinner or has received some agreeable little dishes—then the bard strings his harp!

It is quite amusing to read some of these effusions. He advises Radegunda, as Paul did Timothy, to drink wine on occasion. And when the queen and the abbess conspire to make his life pleasant he has plenty of metrical gratitude to offer. They send him butter (_butyr_) in a lordly dish; they furnish chestnuts in baskets woven by their own hands; they provide milk, and prunelles, and olives, and eggs. For all these he renders thanks in kind. Never were eggs and butter sung in a loftier strain! But sometimes the poet descends a trifle from his elevated phrases. He says pathetically in one of these effusions that they sent him “various delicacies for his full stomach” (_tumido ventre_), and that he got asleep after it and failed to furnish the appropriate verses. He laments this in proper metre, declaring that he had opened his mouth and shut his eyes (the old gormandizer!) and had eaten on, regardless of his duty. And for this he craves forgiveness from his _beata domnia_ [it ought to be _domina_] _filia_—his blessed queen-daughter. But be good enough to observe that his own gifts in return are very small, and that he is always apologizing and hoping that they may not be rejected. Truly this was such a man as Sir Walter Scott has sung, for

“The best of good cheer and the seat by the fire Was the undenied right of the barefooted friar.”

Only it may be safely questioned whether our Fortunatus was any more of an ascetic than Damasus himself. One almost wishes for an historical picture—and it should be a good theme, by the way—in which Fortunatus and his two friends appear. It should be that celebrated feast which he describes [J. P. Migne: _Patrologia_; _Opera Fortunati_, Lib. xi., cap. ii.], where Agnes had adorned the tables and the apartment with “every species of blossoming plant;” where the rich wines, and the generous fare, and the crystal, and the gold, and the flowers should brighten the fine hall of the chateau; and where, perhaps, the ecclesiastic should take his small harp and strike its strings with a delicate hand, while the fair face of Agnes and the darker beauty of Radegunda should inspire his song.

One traces to this mellow undercurrent of human life the swing of his best lyrics—the _Pange lingua gloriosi praelium certaminis_ and those hymns to the Virgin of which he was the earliest promoter. No ene can doubt the influence of these women upon the _Ave maris stella_ or the _Quem terra pontus aethera_. Say what we please about his piety, he has written what will live with the best. And to compare him to the melancholy Cowper, as Mrs. Charles has done, can only be characterized as a most amusing misconception.

We know nothing of him as bishop further than the fact that the office became vacant in 599, and he was an available as well as distinguished candidate. Surviving Radegunda, who passed away in 587, he died about 609, full of years and honors—the last of the classics and the first of the troubadours; the connecting link between Prudentius and the Middle Ages; the biographer of some of the saints and the interested collector of many legends of their miracles; and, finally, the first of Christian poets to begin that worship of the Virgin Mary which rose to a passion and sank to an idolatry. Venantius Fortunatus was neither a bad man nor, in the highest sense, a holy man. But he was a poet in spite of his barbaric Latin, and a writer of hymns which live to-day, long after the particulars of his career are forgotten.