III.

For where science flourishes, and the sources of study spring up, sooner or later instruction is disseminated among the crowd. So, to dissipate the shadows of ignorance which shamefully envelop the face of royalty, the king should encourage letters by a favorable attention. Still more, if he refuses the necessary encouragement, and does not wish his subjects instructed, he ceases to be a king—he becomes a tyrant."

To finish the picture of the ideas of this time, let us quote again these words of a sermon of the gentle and seraphic Bonaventura: "We find today great scandals in governments; for while an inexperienced pilot would not be placed on a ship to manage the rudder, we put at the head of nations those who ignore the art of governing them. When the right of succession places children on a throne, woe to empires!"

The doctrines of the thirteenth century on the formation of public power, on the duties of supreme authority, on the rights of people, on sedition, etc., are so rigorous that they appear bold, even in our time, when the defect is not precisely an excess of reserve and respect. Truth alone can free the human mind from every prejudice, develop character, and inspire a language at once so proud and so simple. What reflections it provokes when one has listened to the magnificent platitudes of so many men of our time, who believe they think freely because they are not Christians.

When Innocent IV., Celestin IV., St. Thomas, the B. Egide Colonna, and St. Bonaventura spoke thus, the Caesarism of the middle ages was decidedly vanquished for several centuries. This is one of the grandest facts of history since the incarnation of the Word.

The emperors of the house of Swabia, assuming with greater power and more science the despotic plans of the Saxon emperors, had the monstrous pretension to realize to the letter these texts ofThe Digest: "The will of the prince is law," (Ulp.;) "The prince is above all laws," (Paul.) By virtue of these texts the prince commanding would have been the absolute sovereign of the world, the proprietor of the Christian universe, and not only of the royalties of the earth, but also of private property. Interpreters taught without blushing the Caesarian theory of thedominium mundi.Le Recueil des Loisof Sicily, revised by Pierre de Vigne for Frederic II., and promulgated by this autocrat in the kingdom of Naples, is a model of this abominable legislation that progressists of our day sometimes dream of restoring.

The Roman Church alone resisted these false principles, these monstrous politics, and, thanks be to God, she triumphed.

The ruler of modern times has become what he was in the age of pretorian law, corrupted by the Caesarian jurors of the empire, of the middle ages, and particularly the Renaissance, that is to say,thepeople, who by a so-called "royal law" would have relinquished their rights into the hands of the Roman emperors. But if the sovereign people could not but be a majority purely numerical, arrogating in its turn the pretended laws of Caesar, the struggles of the middle age between the clergy and the empire would certainly be renewed.

This indissoluble alliance between Christian truth and civil liberty is one of the most striking facts to those who study history without prejudice; one of the best apologetic arguments I know.In the east, Caesarism has only been able to succeed through the corruption of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and through schism; and we know only too well what has become of the countries where Homer sang, where Plato wrote, and where Saint Gregory of Nazianzen and St. Basil preached. Europe has had to suffer frequently from an excess of power in individuals in the church; but they must not be confounded with the church itself, which has introduced into the world the distinction of two powers: this salutary distinction was not known of old, and is only menaced in our day by rationalism in the state.

The people have understood this augustrôleof the church, and do not cease to invoke with the poet: "Hail, mighty parent." In the midst of ruin accumulated by the ambition of princes, the corruption of governments, human passions, or time that has no respect for truth, there remains today nothing but the good old pope, and young nations ask the benediction of the aged man. In modern democracies there will soon exist but one historical institution, the papacy. The old religions of paganism have left us but cold and gigantic pyramids of stone inclosing the ashes of their priests. Christianity, on the contrary, has transmitted us the living stone of the church, which will outlive the dust of ages.

In all these struggles against heresies, schism, materialism, Caesarism, the Roman Church had from the tenth to the thirteenth century its allies, the communes, who were the masses of those days. Civil liberty was, so to say, the fruit of the preachings of the church. It was from this epoch we datethe Mass against tyrants, which can be found in the old missals. It was at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries, under the pontificates of Alexander III. and Innocent III., two of the noblest successors of St. Peter, that this alliance, so natural, so necessary, between the church that represents the human conscience, and the communes who represent the liberty and independence of the citizen, produced the most happy and considerable results. In 1183 was signedthe peace of Constance, which assured definitively the liberty of the Lombard people. In the final clause of the petition of the citizens of Plaisance, the preliminary of this celebrated peace, the deputies of the Lombard League had expressly stipulated "that it would be permitted to the cities of the society to remain always in unity with the church." The great charter of the liberties of England dates from 1215. At the head of the signatures of this memorable act for the English people is found, for the church and for liberty, a disciple of the pope, the learned Cardinal Stephen Langton, whose statue has recently been introduced into Westminster Palace, where it will be a significant witness of the past, and of the salutary breath which is passing to-day over old England. And not only in England, but in Spain and Hungary, had the church surrounded the cradle of modern representative rule with its maternal cares, by its celebrated "Golden Bull" establishing the law of peoples and communities on the basis which to-day it enjoys in thisapostolical kingdom.

But in the Italian cities particularly is best observed the fecundity of this salutary alliance between the sentiments of the citizen and those of the Christian.

I have spoken of the scientific and religiousrôleof the Mendicant friars; it would be better to call them citizen-monks. At Bologna, it was one of them who fulfilled the function ofinspector-generalto the people.Ezelin le Féroce, tyrant of the marshes of Verona, and the terror of the Lombard cities, was only afraid of the Franciscans, especially Saint Antony of Padua.

After ten years of penitence, Saint Francis, having prayed and watched for forty nights, ordered Brother Leonard to take a pen and write what he should dictate; and this angelic man, entranced by the ravishments of divine love, improvised the following beautiful canticle:

"Most high, most powerful and graciousLord, to thee belong praise, glory, andevery blessing. All is due to thee; andthy creatures are not worthy so much as tocall thy name."Praised be God my Lord for all creatures,and for our brother the sun, who givesus the day and the light. Beautiful andradiating in all his splendor, he does homageto thee, O my God!"And praised be thou, my Lord, for oursister the moon, and for the stars. Thouhast formed them in the heavens, clear andbeautiful."Praised be thou, my God, for my brotherthe wind, for the air and the clouds, and forgood and bad weather, whatever it may be!for by these thou sustainest thy creatures."Praised be my Lord for our sister thewater, which is so useful, humble, precious,and chaste."Praised be thou, my God, for our brotherthe fire! By him, thou illuminest the night;beautiful and pleasant to see, untamableand strong."Praised be my God for our mother theearth, which sustains us, nourishes us, andproduces every sort of fruit, of various flowers,and herbs!"

A few days after this admirable scene, there occurred between the Bishop of Assisi and the magistrates of the people one of those quarrels so frequent in the Italian cities of the thirteenth century. Saint Francis, distressed at such discord, added to his canticle the following verse:

"Praised be thou, my Lord, for those who forgive for the love of thee, and who patiently bear infirmity and tribulation. Happy those who persevere in peace; for it is the Most High who will crown them at last."

Then he ordered the minor brothers to hasten to the magistrates and go with them to the bishop, before whom they were to chant the new verse of the canticle of the sun. The adversaries present could not resist the chanting of themineurs, and they were reconciled.

Since I have mentioned the canticle of the sun, one of the models of Franciscan poetry of this age, I cannot forego the pleasure of relating the end of it. After the pacification of Assisi, Saint Francis, who suffered terribly from his stigmata, had gone, to recruit his health, to Foligno, where it was revealed to him he would die in two years. He then composed the last verse:

"Be praised, my God, for our sister, corporal death, from which no man living may escape! Woe to him who dies in mortal sin! Happy he who at the hour of death is found conformable to thy most holy will! for death cannot injure him.

"Praise and bless my God, render him thanks, and serve him with great humility."

The spirit of party had become truly a moral malady in the Italian cities of the thirteenth century. If among my readers there are those who abuse their own time because the spirit of party condemns them to the struggle, I will tell them that in Italy, in the time of Saint Francis and Saint Louis, they saluted each other "in Ghibelline style" and cut their bread "à la Guelph," and for a trifle parties attacked each other in the cross-streets and in the public places. We have certainly progressed since then.

In 1233, the nobles and the people of Plaisance were in open warfare; the Franciscan Leon, selected as arbiter, published a law, and divided equally all the employments of state between the two inimical factions; he exacted, besides, a confirmation of the sentence through the kiss of peace. In the same year the brother Gerard, of the same order, reconciled the parties at Modena. At Parma, he reformed the statutes of the people and recalled the proscriptions. In 1257, the Dominican Eberhard caused to be set at liberty the Guelphs imprisoned at Brescia. One of his companions had the same success at Parma. But the most interesting example of the powerful influence of religion on civil life was the mission of the brother John of Vicenza, in the Lombard towns.

Inspired by an apostolic zeal, the aged Pope Gregory IX. charged the Dominican, John of Vicenza, (Fra Giovanni Chio,) to go preach peace to the inimical factions, and re-establish everywhere among the people union and concord. Brother John, endowed with winning eloquence, commenced his mission at Bologna. He obtained immense and unhoped-for success in the city where Saint Francis and Saint Anthony had already achieved extraordinary triumphs; nobles and people, professors and students, all laid down their enmities at the feet of the brother preacher; the magistrates handed him the statutes of the people, in order that he might correct all that could give rise to new discussions. The Paduans, informed that he was coming to them, went to meet him, preceded by their magistrates and thecarroccio, to Monselice, four or five miles from the city; Brother John, seated on the patriotic car, made a triumphal entry among the people; the success in Padua surpassed that of Bologna; the people assembled at the Place de la Valle, applauded him with joy, and begged him to reform the statutes. The same triumphs at Trevise, Feltre, Belluna, and Vicenza. At Verona, Ezelin and the Montecchi promised him under oath to do everything the pope might order. The eloquent monk again visited such places as Camino, Conegliano, Saint Boniface, Mantua, Brescia, preaching everywhere universal peace, reconciling factions, and setting prisoners at liberty. At last, he appointed the 28th of August, the feast of Saint Augustine, for a general assembly to be held on the plain of Pacquara, on the borders of the Adige, about three miles from Verona. On the day determined, the entire populations of Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Padua, Vicenza, with their magistrates andcarroccio, arrived at the appointed place; a multitude of people from Trevise, Feltre, Venice, Ferrara, Modena, Reggio, Parma, Bologna, and most of them barefooted in sign of penitence; the bishops of Verona, Brescia, Mantua, Bologna, Modena, Reggio, Trevise, Vicenza, and Padua; the patriarch of Aquila; the margrave of Este, Ezelin and Alberic de Romano, the Signers de Camino, and all of Venetia. Parisio de Cereta, a contemporary author, in his Veronese chronicle, enumerates his auditory at four hundred thousand persons. The Dominican took for his text: "My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you." Never had Christians witnessed a more august spectacle. The enthusiasm was carried even to excess. It was a delirium of peace and union. Brother John ordained, in the name of God and the church, a general pacification, and devoted those who infringed upon it to excommunication and eternal malediction. He proposed the marriage of Renaud, son of the margrave of Este, with Adelaide, daughter of Alberic of Romano, and obtained also from the brothers Romano the promise they would sell to the town of Padua for fifteen hundred livres the possessions they had in the territory of this city. The act embraced divers clauses, and contained promises of pacification.

Sixty years after the assassination of Pope Lucius II. by the Arnoldites, the spiritual power of the papacy was, so to say, omnipotent in Italy, if not in the whole of Europe. And it is precisely about this epoch that in proportion as the civil power of the Roman Church determined, limited, and fortified itself, in Italy the ecclesiastical principalities were extinguished; while for centuries they have been maintained in other countries, less submissive to the Holy See. This fact will not astonish us, if we follow with attention the progression of ideas propagated by Christianity, and taking such deep root in the thirteenth century.

Thus the sap of Christianity mounts in all the branches of this immense tree called humanity, and produces abundant fruit. The Gothic art is displayed while developing the Roman; the ogive comes out from the arch by a natural elevation toward the summit or the roof. Elliptical forms, wiser and more perfect than circular ones, (the circle is an ellipsis in which the focuses are blended,) transform the architecture, and give to the monuments an apparent flight to heaven, just as the study of the ellipsis in analytical geometry conducts to the infinite. The austere energy of St. Bernard had no time for art. He needed the science of Roger Bacon and the poetry of St. Francis. The Roman basilica gives place to the Gothic cathedral, and throws its gracious shadows on the mansions of the neighboring town. The whole of Europe is covered with a vegetation of admirable monuments, epic poems of stone—as the church of Assisi, the cathedral of Florence, the cathedral of Cologne—poetry of the highest order, not for rich idlers, or delicate minds, but for the peopleen masse. Art agrees with the epoch of which it is the emanation—it is for the people themselves. "The more I see of these Gothic monuments," wrote M. David, (d' Angers,) "the more I experience the happiness of reading these beautiful religious pages so piously sculptured on the secular walls of the churches. They were the archives of an ignorant people; it was therefore necessary the handwriting should be legible. The saints sculptured in Gothic art have an expression of serenity and calmness, full of confidence and faith. This evening, as I write, the setting sun gilds the façade of the cathedral of Amiens: the calm faces of the saints in stone diffuse a radiant light."

Mysterious power of truth! M. David was attracted to it by art; M. Pugin was converted, it is said, by studying the cathedral of York. In truth, there are few languages more perfect than that of the symbolism, so deep and complete, of the thirteenth century. "The men of the middle age," said one whose works and remembrances are very dear to me—"the men of the middle age were not satisfied to simply raise stone upon stone; these stones were to speak, and speak a language of painting, equally understood by rich and poor; heaven itself must be visible, and the angels and saints remain present by their images, to console and preach to the people. The vaults of the two basilicas of Assisi were covered with a field of blue, strewn with stars of gold. On the walls were displayed the mysteries of the two Testaments, and the life of St. Francis formed the sequel to the book of divine revelations.But, as if it were impossible to approach with impunity the miraculous tomb, the painters who ornamented in fresco seemed inspired with a new spirit; they conceived an ideal more pure, more animated, than the old Byzantine types which had had their day, but which for eight hundred years had continued to degenerate. The basilica of Assisi became the cradle of a renaissance in art, and evidenced its progress. There Guido of Sienna and Giunta of Pisa detached themselves more and more from the Greek masters whose aridity they softened and whose immobility they shattered. Then came Cimabue. He represented all the sacred writings in a series of paintings which decorated the principal part of the church, and which time has mutilated. But six hundred years have not tarnished the splendor of the heads of Christ, of the Virgin, and of St. John, painted at the top of the vaults; nor the images of the four great doctors, where a Byzantine majesty still carries with it an air of life and immortal youth. At last Giotto appeared, and one of his works was the triumph of St. Francis, painted in four compartments under the vault which crowns the altar of the chapel. Nothing is more celebrated than these beautiful frescoes; but I know nothing more touching than one in which is figured the betrothal of the servant of God to holy poverty. Poverty, under the appearance of a lady perfectly beautiful, but the face attenuated, the clothing torn; a dog barks at her, two children throw stones at her, and put thorns in her way. She, however, calm and joyous, holds out her hand to St. Francis; Christ himself unites the two spouses; and in the midst of clouds appears the Eternal Father accompanied by angels, as if too much of heaven and earth could not be given to assist at the wedding of these two mendicants. Here, nothing suggests the painting of the Grecian school; all is new, free, and inspired. Progress did not cease with the disciples of Giotto appointed to continue his work: Cavalini, Taddeo Gaddi, Puccio Capana. In the midst of the variety of their compositions, we recognize the unity of the faith shed so lustrously through their works. When one pauses before these chaste representations of the Virgin, the Annunciation, the Nativity, before the crucified Christ, with the saddened angels weeping around the cross, or collecting in cups the divine blood, it would require a very hardened heart not to feel the tears flow, and not to bend the humbled knee and strike the breast with the shepherds and poor women who pray at the feet of such images."

And this is the art of the thirteenth century; it caused to weep under the same vault, and caused to pray on the same slab with poor peasants, one of the purest-minded intelligences, one of the noblest hearts of our time, one that the thirteenth century would have styled "the seraphic Ozanam."

And let us again remark this attraction, at once logical and living with facts produced by the germination of Christian thought in civil society. St. Francis and St. Dominic no longer preach as the disciples of St. Benedict to the few members of a military oligarchy, or to a flock of serfs; they address themselves to a civilized society, living in the midst of the benefits of Christianity, without having to give an account of the origin of these benefits; in the midst of a society aggrandized by the progress of Christian equality, and still desirous of enlargement. There is no longer a fierce Licambre, but haughty jurists.No more cruel Anglo-Saxons, but emperors, elegant, educated, poetical, seductive, who hide their despotic projects under titles the most pompous and the most fallacious. No more pagan kings martyrizing the Christian; but Catholic kings more or less sincere, who, in the name of social and state interests, seek to torture consciences. There are no more lords whose brutality scandalizes the coarsest minds; but there are rich citizens, softened and blinded by selfishness, who weary under the Christian yoke, and who hide their sensualism under the interest they profess for Caesar or the prince. It is, then, from the time of St. Francis the chanter of poverty, from the time of St. Dominic the descendant of the Guzman, of the race of Cid, that is born in Italy, by the side of the citizens, a new class which completes the political emancipation of the Christian people. After having grown up, the people disappeared under the Renaissance when Protestantism triumphed, not to appear again until modern times, in our own age, when the sap of Christianity forces the church to remount into the branches of the tree of which I spoke. Art has resented this moral revolution of the thirteenth century, and literature also. The grand writer whom I have already quoted, I was going to say the poet who has founded the society of St. Vincent de Paul, makes somewhere a reflection which has struck me forcibly. Have you remarked, with him, that the church has put poetry into the choir, while she has banished reasoning into the pulpit—into the grand nave? I do not say reason, for true poetry is the chant of reason. Poetry that I call real and practical, that which elevates the soul toward its end, which balances the sighs of humanity, and clothes itself in spoken or written form, rhythmical or not, the sentiment which attracts us toward the infinite, and which St. Francis designates love, such poetry is simply prayer. A poet is naturally sacerdotal. He is really thevatesof antiquity. David and Solomon prayed with lyre in hand, and their prayers became the hymns of Christianity. Isaiah chanted the coming of the Messiah.

So in the thirteenth century, poetry was everywhere, a consequence of the Christian sentiment, spread in every direction through the moral life. To Innocent III., who under the name of the Count de Signa was considered one of the most learned men of his time, is attributed theDies Ire. He has composed other spiritual songs. St. Thomas has left us thePange Lingua. St. Francis is the chief of the poetic Franciscan school, in which shone St. Bonaventura, St. Antony, and the blessed Jacopone de Todi, of whom every one knows the beautiful stanzasStabat Mater Dolorosa, etc. Then comes Dante, who governs Christian ages as Homer did the olden time. And lastly in the same age in Italy, at Vercelli, it is said, lived and died the great unknown who has left us the most beautiful book from the hand of man,The Imitation, the true poem of humanity redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. The fall, the redemption, the grand drama of the moral history of the world, the battle of life, the art of vanquishing passion and matter, the effort of man to reach his ideal on the wings of simplicity and purity —where are those things better chanted than inThe Imitation?

The thirteenth century, then, merits to be cited among the grandest epochs of history. However, it would be a false idea to imagine society elevated to a high degree of perfection.Many Christians of our day, charmed by the recital of the life and works of these great saints, and by the sight of the magnificent monuments of the first era of ogival style, become almost melancholy, and have a disposition to blame everything new in the world, and defy their contemporaries or future generations even to imitate the virtues of the age of Innocent III. I think this tendency all wrong, and Christians who permit themselves to be so carried away, lack firmness and faith; for Christianity cannot decay, and the more the saints of the past, the greater the protectors of the church for the future. Besides, it is so easy to regard only the virtues of the thirteenth century, and ignore the vices. We must remember St. Anthony was the neighbor and the contemporary of Ezelin the Ferocious, the type of the tyrant of the modern world. Frederick II. lived in the same age as St. Louis.The Sicilian Codewas revised fifty years after the peace of Constance, at the same time as theMagna Chartaof England. St. Thomas d'Aquin and Roger Bacon are contemporaries of the Albigenses. You cannot point out in our age an error or a calamity that has not its equal, or rather its precursor, in the thirteenth century.

Caesarism, vanquished in politics, was protected by the literary men and the jurists. Dante in his old days wrote the Caesarian treatise,De Monarchico. It was in the beginning of the fourteenth century, a hundred years after Innocent III., that the popes, chased from Rome and Italy, set out for the exile of Avignon, which lasted seventy-five years.

A reasonable study of such grandeur and such fall, the review of which must demonstrate human liberty, should make us better know our own age, and love it the more.

We possess more elements of material prosperity and material progress, and we jealously preserve the depository of all the moral truths. We enjoy greater political security, and the sentiment of right is more general in our day than in any other.

What we want, what has given an expansive power and grandeur and beauty to the thirteenth century, is a moral unity in the general direction of civil society. Our epoch feels its instinct, it seeks it, it desires it. People submit to the heaviest sacrifices, and agitate themselves to obtain what they call their unity. It is a false, factious, exterior unity, I know, but after all, it is unity.

But a true, living, and moral unity can only be found in efforts such as I have tried to depict; and moral unity, which should be the only legitimate aim of a people, is not established by force, nor even by the splendor of industrial production, nor the attractions of an economical well-being. It will only grow as the people liberally accept the direction of the Christian law. Expelled from political constitutions, I see this unity reconstitute itself in the masses. The neighboring democracies should be Christian. Recently we have met a battalion of crusaders, going to Rome, and coming from North America, which will soon add to the number of its bishops as many as presided at the Council of Nice. To manifest with newéclatthe fact of Christianity, and advance so salutary a movement, which will perhaps produce moral splendors unknown to the thirteenth century, we must arm ourselves, under the buckler of faith, with the science and rights of the citizen, as did the great doctors of the thirteenth century.

This struggle, I know, is to-day more difficult, but therefore more meritorious, more glorious. Nowhere have we the support of governments. I do not complain—I state a fact; and perhaps this very support is a defect because it has been so much abused. The purity of the moral struggle of the thirteenth century is tarnished by the religious persecutions. I know the adversaries of the church have exaggerated their intensity; but I know also that never has the church, as a church, persecuted, nor given or proclaimed the right to persecute. Besides, we must not lose sight of the fact that the alliance of church and state was such that a heresy was considered above everything a crime against the state. For example, we are astonished to see a Saint Louis condemn severely the blasphemers of God as state criminals; but we do not consider it extraordinary nowadays to see the blasphemers of a sovereign or minister condemned to prison, exile, or transportation. It is necessary to remark that the greater part of the sects of the middle ages proclaimed principles the realization of which would have consequences of great civil and political importance. I defy our contemporary societies, so proud of their religious tolerance, to support the worship of the Mormons, those pests of our age. Only Christian societies are strong enough to resist such currents of corruption, to preserve their integrity, to endure and develop by the side of such sects. Christians alone can be tolerant with impunity, because tolerance for them is not a social necessity, but a virtue. Only they can repeat with Saint Augustine: "Let us convert the heretics, but let them not be sacrificed." So when we think of the universal blame of which St. Ambrose and St. Martin made themselves interpreters, against the condemnation to death of the Priscillians, those Mormons of the fourteenth century, we are justly astonished at the rigors exercised in the thirteenth century against the Albigenses and other sectarians. To-day, thanks be to God, a religious persecution could not be possible in countries where the Catholic religion predominates. Persecutions are only prevalent among the Mussulmans of Asia Minor or the schismatics of Poland; and if the Protestants of Ireland or the liberal anti-Catholics of the Continent have such tendencies, they devise some form which to them alone appears as progress.

For the contest, then, we must act as citizens, and use the pen and the word, and without truce or relaxation. When St. Francis Xavier made in the Indies his great and admirable spiritual conquests, destroyed by the Holland Protestants and the English, he asked for reinforcements from the superior of his order. "Especially," said he, "send me from Belgium those robust and broad-shouldered men." With such, this great saint believed himself able to encounter every difficulty. Their race is not extinct, thank God; and it seems to me Europeans are easier conquered than Asiatics.

Progress is the order of the day; the very watchword of the nineteenth century. Our times are possessed by an ever-active, restless spirit. Here and there only, in this surging sea, sheltered havens are found, where the quiet waters can reflect the fair forms and hues of heaven, floating above them in the deep and far-off blue. Here and there, out of the beaten track of the world's highways, lie rich and fertile retreats, among whose hills and fountains, woods and mossy stones, the spirit of the past, with music on her lips, poetry in her soul, and the cross clear and bright on her brow, still loves to dwell.

In scarcely another corner of Europe is the influence of this spirit so tenacious, so pervading, as in Brittany. Nor to those among us who may be descended from, or linked with, the original inhabitants of the British island, can Europe furnish many more interesting studies than this granite promontory—the bulwark of France against the wild Atlantic—and the Celtic tribes there, who guard, even to-day, their old Armorica from invasion of the novelties of Paris in manners and in thought.

Brittany preserves the same characteristic relations with regard to France as Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland preserve toward England. Its geographical position, its mountains, and the sea, have continued to protect it in a great degree from foreign influences. Indeed, this isolation is observable throughout its history. Almost from the first, the Breton Celts were the sole occupants of their own corner of the earth. The Gauls, the original inhabitants of the country, were outnumbered and absorbed by the influx of British emigrants; who, of the same original stock with themselves, speedily became the dominant sept, and possessors of the country.

The first extensive emigration of the insular Britons from what is now Great Britain into Armorica, took place about the year 383, by order of the tyrant Maximin. It was not, however, undertaken by compulsion, but was a willing adventure. The second took place when they fled in great numbers from the Saxon domination, after A.D. 450, when Ambrose and the great Arthur had fought so bravely and so long, in vain. This time they weredrivenfrom their land, and as they crossed the sea to find a home with their brethren in Armorica, they sorrowfully chanted the psalm which their Christian bards had translated into their native tongue, "Thou hast given us, O Lord, as sheep for the slaughter; and thou hast scattered us among the nations." A terrible pestilence with which, about this time, various parts of Britain were visited, is said to have done more than anything else toward confirming the sway of the Saxons in England, and diminishing the old Britons to a mere remnant in the island. They themselves regarded it as a sign that the kingdom was taken from them, and given by God to their enemies. The emigrations thenceforward became so frequent and so numerous that the British isle was almost depopulated of its ancient inhabitants; and King Ina, of Wessex, who was also Bretwalda, coming to the throne in A.D. 689, grieved to lose so many of his subjects, sent to entreat the emigrants to return.At that period, they more than equalled the indigenous population of Armorica, upon whom they had imposed their own laws and form of government. Thus, in the fifth century, Armorica was, like Cambria, divided into small independent states: those of Vannes; Kerne, or Cornouaille; Leon; and Tréguier—all Celtic in language, customs, and laws, and each division having its own bishop and its own chief. Among the chiefs, one often obtained a predominating power over the rest, with the title ofkonan, or crowned chief. Hence, all the earlier kings of Armorica of whom we hear in history, Meriadek, Gradlon, Budik, Houel, and others, were Britons from the Island. Their bards, who formed an essential part of every noble family among the Cambrians, accompanied them into their adopted country. Of this number was Taliessin, "the prince of the bards, the prophets, and the Druids of the West." He took up his abode in the land of the Venetes, (Vannes,) near to his friend and brother bard, Gildas, who had emigrated thither, and who is said to have converted Taliessin to the Christian faith. Three other celebrated bards of the same period were Saint Sulio, Hyvarnion, and Kian Gwench'lan.

Tradition gives the following account of the manner in which St. Sulio received his vocation. When very young, he was one day playing with his brothers near the castle of their father, the lord of Powys, when a procession of monks passed by, led by their abbot, and chanting, to the sound of his harp, the praise of God. The sweetness of their hymns so delighted the child, that, bidding his brothers return to their sports, he followed the monks, "in order to learn of them how he might compose beautiful songs." His brothers hastened to tell their father of his flight, who sent thirty armed men, with a charge to kill the abbot and to bring back Sulio. He had, however, been sent at once to a monastery in Armorica, of which in due time he became prior. The Welsh, who call him Saint Y Sulio, possess a collection of his poems.

The Christian faith won its way more slowly in Armorica than it had done in Britain. They who had inherited the harp of the ancient Druids, with the mysteries of their religion and the secrets of their knowledge, were often reluctant to submit to the belief which despoiled them of their priesthood. "If Taliessin," says M. de la Villemarqué, "consecrated to Christ the fruits of a mysterious science, perfected under the shadow of proscribed altars; if the monks, taking the harp in hand, attracted to the cloister the children of the chiefs; if the Christian mother taught her little one in the cradle to sing of him who died upon the cross, …. there were, at the same time, in the depth of the woods, dispersed members of the Druidic colleges, wandering from hut to hut, like the fugitive Druids of the Isle of Britain, who continued to give to the children of Armorica lessons on the divinity, as their fathers had been taught; and they did so with sufficient success to alarm the Christian teachers, and oblige them to combat them skilfully with their own weapons."

Even after paganism had fallen before the cross, we find curious traces of the Druidic element scattered here and there in the early poems of Brittany. Her bishops of that period are spoken of as "Christian Druids, who grafted the faith of Christ on the Druid oak;" and of her poets it is said, "They did notbreakthe harp of the ancient bards; they only changed some of its chords."

The most ancient poems preserved in Brittany which bear evidences of being the scientific compositions of the bards, are:The Series, or the Druid and the Child; The Prediction of Gwench'lan; The Submersion of the City of Ys; The Changeling; The Wine of the Gauls; The March of Arthur;andAlain the Fox. These are the last breathings of thelearnedpoetry of the Bretons of Armorica.

But, besides the scientific poems of the descendants of the Druids, there grew up, at the same time, a large amount of popular poetry, both in Wales and in Armorica. As early as the sixth century, this divided itself into three distinct kinds: theological, heroic, and historical poems; domestic poems and love-songs; and poems on religious subjects, including the versified histories of saints. This whole class of poetry sprang from the people; it was the expression of their heart, the echo of their thoughts, the depository of their history and of their belief.

Upon this poetry of the people, both in the British island and in Brittany, the bards made war. And when, among the Bretons, the popular minstrels overcame the bards, the Welsh triads put the Armoricans in the number of "the three peoples which have corrupted the primitive bardism by mixing with it heterogeneous principles."

"It is only thekler, (scholar-poets,) the vagabonds, and the beggars," says Taliessin, "who give themselves no trouble."

"Bark not against instruction in the art of verse. Silence! miserable pretenders, who usurp the name of bards! You know not how to judge between truth and fables! … As for me, I am diviner and general-in-chief of the bards of the west!"

Gildas is equally energetic in protesting against all "who take pleasure in listening to the vociferations" of the popular poets of his time.

Reality and good faith are the two principal qualities inherent in popular poetry in its primitive state. The poet's aim is always to paint faithfully something which actually occurred, or which hebelieveddid occur.

Chronicler and novelist, legendary and sacred psalmodist, the poet of Brittany is all this to the mass of the Breton population—to twelve hundred thousand uneducated persons, without any other learning than that which they gain from the oral instruction of their clergy. A thoughtful and imaginative people, full of poetic instinct, and of the desire of knowledge; and to whom every event, possessing a moderate share of interest, furnishes subject-matter for a song.

We will now attempt translations of a portion of thebardicpoems which remain to us. We omit the first, entitledAr Rannoce, orThe Series:a dialogue between a Druid and a child who is one of his disciples. Its length would unduly prolong the present article; but, inasmuch as it conveys an interesting sketch of the cosmogony and theology of the bardic system, we may find for it a place in some future page.

To come, then, to the second poem on our list,The Prophecy of Gwench'lan. The bard Kian, surnamed Gwench'lan, or "Pure Race" was born in Armorica at the beginning of the fifth century, and was never won to the Christian faith. His enmity to it, indeed, was embittered by the treatment he received at the hands of a foreign prince, calling himself a Christian; who threw the bard into a dungeon, and, after depriving him of sight, left him there to die.During his hard captivity he composed the following poem, calledDiougan Gwench'lan, orThe Prophecy of Gwench'lan, in which he predicts the fate of his captor, who was shortly afterward slain in battle fighting against the Bretons.

The composition of this poem is exactly after the pattern of the ancient Welsh bards. Like Taliessin, Gwench'lan believes in thethree cycles of beingof the Druidic theology, and in the doctrine of metempsychosis. "I have been born three times," says Taliessin. … "I have been dead; I have been alive; I am that which I was. … I have been a wild goat upon the mountains; I have been a spotted cock; I have been a fallow-deer; now I am Taliessin."

Like Lywarc'h-Hen, he mourns over his old age and decrepitude. He is melancholy, and a fatalist.

Like Aneurin, who had been made prisoner after the battle of Kattracz, and in his captivity composedThe Song of Gododin, Gwench'lan sings in his chains and in the darkness of his dungeon.

It was not unusual among the bards to compare the leader of the enemy to the wild boar of the woods, and the champion who withstood him to the war-horse, or the white horse of the sea.

Gwench'lan is said to have composed many songs in praise of the warriors of his country—those who marched to battle invoking the Sun-god, and, on returning victorious, danced in his honor to the "Sword, King of Battle." A collection of his poems and prophecies was preserved until the French revolution, in the abbey of Landevenec; but the ferocious joy with which, in some fragments that remain, he contemplates the slaughter of the Christians in the Menez Bré, and the extermination of their faith, makes their destruction small matter of regret to any but the antiquary.

Gwench'lan, however, continues to be famous throughout Brittany, where the remnants of his compositions still are sung; especiallyThe Prophecy, of which a part has been translated by M. de Villemarqué fromBarzaz Breiz, (Breton Ballads.)

Diougan Gwench'lan.Prophecy Of Gwench'lan.I.When the sun is setting,When the sea is swelling,I sit upon the threshold of my door.I sang when I was young,And still, grown old, I sing,By night, by day, though with sad heart and sore.If my head is bent low,If my trouble presses;It is not causeless care that weighs me down.It is not that I fear;I fear not to be slain:For long enough my life has lingered on.When they seek not Gwench'lan,Gwench'lan, they will find him:But find they shall not, when they seek for me.Yet, whatsoe'er betide,To me it matters notThat alone whichoughtto be, willbe.Thrice all must die, ere rest at last they see.II.Wild boar, I behold him,From the wood forth comes he;Much he drinks; he hath a wounded foot:His hair is white with age;Round him his hungry youngAre howling. Bloodstained is his gaping throat.White horse of the sea, lo!Comes to the encounter.The shore for terror trembles 'neath his tread.Bright and dazzling he,Bright as the sparkling snow;And silver horns are gleaming on his head.Foams the water 'neath him,At the thunder-fireOf those fierce nostrils. Sea-horses aroundPress, thick and close as grassUpon a lakelet's bank.Horse of the sea! strike well! Strike—strike him to the ground!…III.As I was sweetly sleeping, in my cold, cold tomb.I heard the eagle calling, at midnight calling, "Come!Rise on your wings, O eaglets! and all ye birds of heaven.To you, nor flesh of dogs, nor sheep, butChristians, shall be given!""Old raven of the sea,What hold'st thou?—say to me.""The chieftain's head I bear away:His two red eyes shall be my prey,For taking thy two eyes away.""And thou too, what hast thou, O Reynard sly?""His heart, which was as false as mine, have I;It sought thy death, and long hath made thee die.""What dost thou by the corner of his mouth, O toad?""I wait to seize his soul upon her road,Long as I live must I be her abode."Thus he meeteth his rewardFor his crime against the bardWho dwells no more between Roch-allaz and Porz-Gwen'n.

Back to Index Next