A vivid picture of a wedding banquet of the times is afforded in a scene from the earlier career of Hereward, the last of patriotic leaders of the Saxons. The daughter of a Cornish chief had been affianced to one of her countrymen, who was notoriously wicked and tyrannical; but she herself had pledged her affections to an Irish prince. Hereward, who was a guest in the country of Cornwall, became an object of hatred to the Cornish bully, who picked a quarrel with him and in the encounter was slain. This awakened a spirit of vengeance among his fellows, and it was only through the assistance of the young princess that Hereward was enabled to escape from the prison where he had been confined and to flee the country. He carried with him a tender message from the lady to her Irish suitor. In the latter's absence she was again betrothed by her father, and sent a messenger to notify her lover of the near approach of the wedding. He sent forty messengers to her father to demand his daughter's hand by virtue of a promise one time made to him. These were put in prison. Hereward doubted the success of the lover's embassage; and having dyed his skin and colored his hair, he made his way, with three companions, to the young lady's home, arriving there the day of the nuptial feast. The next day, when she was to be conducted to her husband's dwelling, Hereward and his companions entered the hall, and, as strangers, came under especial observation. He saw the eyes of the princess fixed upon him as though she penetrated his disguise; and as if moved by the recollections his presence awakened, she burst into tears.
As was the custom of the times, the bride, in her wedding costume, assisted by her maidens, served the cup to the guests before she left her father's home; and the harper, following, played before each guest as he was served. Hereward had registered an oath not to receiveanything at the hands of a lady until it was proffered by the princess herself. So, when the cup was offered to him by a maiden, he refused it with abruptness, and declined to listen to the harper. His rude conduct raised a tumult of excitement and indignation, whereupon the princess herself approached him and offered the cup, which he received with courtesy. The princess, entirely confirmed in her suspicions as to his identity, threw a ring into his bosom, and, turning to the company, craved indulgence for the stranger, who was not acquainted with their customs. The minstrel remained sullen, whereupon Hereward seized his harp and played with such exquisite skill as to awaken the astonishment of the company. As he played and sang, his companions, "after the manner of the Saxons," joined in at intervals; whereupon the princess, to help him in his assumed character, presented him the rich cloak which was the reward of the minstrel. Suspicions as to his real character were not, however, entirely allayed; and these were increased by his request to the father of the bride for the release of the Irish messengers.
Finding that he had endangered his safety and the success of his plans by his indiscretion, Hereward slipped away unobserved, and, with his companions, lay in ambush the next day along the road by which he knew the bride would be conducted by her father to her new home. As the bridal procession passed, and with it the Irish prisoners, Hereward rushed out upon the unsuspecting company; and while his companions released the prisoners, he seized the lady and bore her away in true knightly fashion. It may well be believed that the bride was soon united in wedlock to the husband of her choice.
One other circumstance in the history of this man, whose life was a series of bold undertakings, serves toillustrate the superstitions of the times. When King William had besieged the island of Ely, which was the headquarters of Hereward and his large following of Saxon warriors, and had failed to subdue them, he gave heed to the counsel of one of his courtiers, to have recourse to a celebrated witch for aid in the destruction of his foes. Hereward, to spy upon his adversary and discover his plans, disguised himself as a potter, and stopped at the house of the old woman whose magic was to be used against him; that night he followed her and another crone out into the fields, where they engaged in their curious rites. From their conversation he learned of the scheme against him, which was to have a platform erected in the marshes surrounding the island; the hag was to repeat thrice her charm, when he and his followers would be destroyed. Accordingly, when the platform was erected and the besiegers drew as near as they could, expectantly awaiting Hereward's destruction, he and his companions, under the cover of the brush, crept close to the platform and, taking advantage of the favorable direction of the wind, set fire to the reeds. The witch, who was about to repeat her charm for the third time, leaped from the platform in terror, and was killed, while in the panic many of the soldiers lost their lives by fire or by water. The scene here depicted bears a remarkable similarity to the weird rites of the ancient British Druidesses, and doubtless represents a continuance of the mysteries of that order, which came down in forms of magic and witchcraft through many centuries.
This glimpse of the witchcraft that was to become more prominent, or at least with which we become more familiar at a later period, will suffice to show that the plane of general intelligence was not yet high. Education was limited to subjects that have no special interest for usto-day. Such as it was, it was accessible to the lower classes as well as to the upper. There were schools connected with the churches and the monasteries. Apparently, there was no distinction in the subjects pursued by the sexes, excepting in the case of the nobility, whose sons were trained for the positions they were to occupy. It would appear that some priests were so zealous for the prosperity of their schools that they sought to entice scholars from other schools to their own. A law to correct the practice provided "that no priest receive another's scholar without leave of him whom he had previously followed." Latin was in the list of the studies pursued by the ladies, but few could read in the vernacular.
At that day there was the same tendency that is familiar to-day,—to cast alleged feminine inconsistencies into the form of adages. One of these proverbs is found in the instructions of a baron who was counselling his son on his going out from the paternal roof: "If you should know anything that you would wish to conceal," says this generalizer from a personal experience, "tell it by no means to your wife, if you have one; for if you let her know it, you will repent of it the first time you displease her."
The amusements that were popular in the Anglo-Saxon days continued during the Norman period, but hunting and hawking, by reason of the stringent game laws, were sports practically limited to the upper class. The lady kept her falcons and knew well how to set them on the quarry, and with the men she could ride in the hunt to the baying of the hounds. It is interesting to note that with women the usual method of riding was on a side-saddle; seldom are they found seated otherwise in the representations of riding scenes. Among all classes dancing seems to have been in favor. The exercise was more graceful and intricate than the dance of the Saxons.Among the young people of the lower classes it was the chief amusement, and was attended by much mirth and boisterousness. Games of chance were popular among both sexes, and chess was a favorite pastime.
The art of the Anglo-Saxon gleemen and maidens under the Normans was represented by two classes of public entertainers, the minstrels and the jongleurs. The minstrels confined themselves for the most part to music and poetry; while the jongleurs were the jugglers, tricksters, and exhibitors of trained animals. But the distinction was not sharply drawn, although in general the minstrels were considered to afford a higher form of entertainment than did the jongleurs. Both sexes were represented in these bands of itinerant amusement purveyors. Companies of them were more or less permanently attached to the retinues of the great barons, for the whiling away of the long evenings and the entertainment of the guests. The sentiments of the songs and stories of these people were full of suggestiveness and coarseness. The merry and licentious lives of the disreputable traffickers in amusement brought them under moral reprobation, even in that rude age. They drew into their ranks many persons of depraved life, who, when the times improved, contributed, by their abandon, to create sentiment against all profligate strollers. Yet these minstrels represented the beginnings of music and of vernacular literature after the conquest of England.
In the matter of dress there was a marked departure from the Anglo-Saxon costume, which varied little. Just as long as England was not in touch with continental ideas and customs, the women of the country wore the costumes of their ancestors. That dress is cosmopolitan never entered into their conceptions, any more than it does into those of any of the Eastern nations who in modern timeshave been brought suddenly into the stream of European customs and manners. But with the coming of the Normans, national conservatism yielded to comparison with the fashions of other peoples, and fashion assumed the sceptre that it has continued to wield over the English woman. The changes in dress were at first slight, but by the end of the twelfth century they had become sufficiently marked to be the target of witticism and the subject of satire. The foibles of the women were little regarded by the writers of the time. The dress of the men was not passed over in like silence, however; it drew from the censors of the day the severest strictures on account of its flaunting meagreness and its improprieties in the eyes of its monkish critics. The same condemnation was visited upon the practice of the men of dyeing their hair or otherwise coloring it, wearing flowing locks, and painting their faces. Such fashions were styled reprehensible and effeminate. It would have been instructive to subsequent generations if these censorious critics had not been so gallant toward women, and had given to us the spicy descriptions of feminine attire that, in their indignation, they have afforded us of that of the men. Had they but realized that it was the sex whose sins of dress they passed over so lightly, with charity or indifference, that was to follow the inconsequential wake of fashion into the wildest vagaries of costume and adornment, they would have let the men have their brief day, and massed their strictures against those who were to elevate fashion to an art and make of its following a devotion. As it is, for our knowledge of the dress of the weaker sex we are dependent upon the illuminations, whose brilliant coloring and faithfulness of detail left little for the text to elucidate. That the new styles were not received with approbation by the clerical artists is clear enough from the caricatures andexaggerations of them that appear in their drawings. The inordinate length of the sleeves, reaching as they did, in a long, mandolin-shaped pocket, to the knees of the wearer, made them surely hideous enough to draw out the indignation of those who had artistic sensibilities to be shocked.
That the notion of fashionable dress as Satanic is very old is shown by one of the representations of his infernal majesty, where he is portrayed dressed in the height of feminine fashion. One of the sleeves of his gown is short and full, while the other, in caricature of the style of the day, is so long that it has to be tied in a knot to get it out of the way. The gown, also, being of impossible length and fulness, is disposed of by the simple expedient of knotting.
In the dress of Satan, as an exponent of the iniquity of feminine attire, there also appears unmistakable evidence of a tight bodice of stays, the lacing of which, after drawing his majesty's waist into approved dimensions, hangs carelessly down to view and terminates in a tag. As stays were not commonly worn, and as a writer at a little later time is found vehemently inveighing against them, it is fair to conclude that their presence on Satan is to indicate, in the eyes of the better element of the day, the indelicacy and impropriety of their use. Ridiculous and unsightly as were the long sleeves and other novelties of dress, the particular displeasure with which they were regarded by the element whose views the ecclesiastics reflected must be attributed somewhat to their foreign origin. Although they were introduced into the country by the Normans, the long sleeves, at least, appear to have originated in Italy. Down to the twelfth century, there was sufficient conservatism remaining to deprecate the introduction of foreign novelties, just as in Elizabeth's days the economists strongly protested against bringing into the country "foreign gewgaws."
The girdle remained a part of the dress of the women, although it was not so much in evidence as in the Anglo-Saxon time. It was probably worn under the gown, and in some cases may have been dispensed with. That queens and princesses, however, wore very fine girdles, ornamented with pearls and precious stones, is abundantly attested by the contemporary writers.
The mantle was the most changeful article of dress at this period. Sometimes it was worn in the old way, being put on by passing the head through an aperture made for that purpose; but more often it was worn opening down the front and fastened at the throat by an embroidered collar clasped by a brooch. Again, it was fastened in a similar way at the throat, but covered only one side of the form, falling coquettishly over the shoulder and hanging down the side. A particularly pleasing effect was obtained by having it fasten at the throat by a collar, whose rich, gold-embroidered border continued down the front to the waist. Sometimes the garment was sleeveless, and again it was worn with short sleeves, or sleeves long and full. For winter wear, it covered the form entirely and terminated in a hood. These mantles were often of the finest imported textiles, embroidered in elegant figures and with richly wrought borders, and were lined throughout with costly furs.
The kerchief, like the mantle, quite lost its conventional style in the period we are describing, and was often omitted altogether. It was usually worn over the head, and hanging down to the right breast, while the end on the left side was gathered about the neck and thrown over the right shoulder. Sometimes it was gathered in fulness upon the head and bound there by a diadem, though otherwise worn as just described. Toward the end of the twelfth century it became much smaller, and was tied under the chin,looking very much like an infant's cap. The women's shoes were very much the same as those worn by the Anglo-Saxons. It is quite likely that the stockings were close-fitting and short, as was the style among the men.
There were different ways of wearing the hair, but the most usual was to have it parted in front and flowing loosely down the back, with a lock on either side falling over the shoulders and upon the breast; this was the style for young girls especially. Another fashion was to have it fall down the back in two masses, where it was wrapped by ribbons and so bound into tails. Young girls never wore a headdress of any sort. On reaching maturity, it was usual for the women to enclose their hair in a net, with a kerchief cap drawn tightly over it.
The ornaments in use need no particular description, because of their similarity to those worn during the Anglo-Saxon period. Crowns were, of course, the chief adornments of queens on state occasions; circlets of gold, elegantly patterned, formed the diadems of the noble ladies; and half-circlets of gold, connected behind, constituted the distinctive headdress of women of wealth. Rings, armlets, and necklaces, as well as the generally serviceable brooch, were in use.
Turning from the fashions of the wealthy to the condition of the poor, what a difference appears! The age was one of sharp contrasts; for while gayety reigned in the high circles of court and castle, wretchedness was more usual in the hovels with their mud walls and thatched roofs, to which nature may have added the gracious garniture of herbs, mosses, and lichens. But it would be too much to assume that the persons of humble estate were not happy in their own way. Lacking the luxuries of the table and the fine attire of the ladies of the castles, life still had for them many elements of pure joy. But whilethe women of the lower ranks would have contrasted well in the matter of morals with the women of the nobility, yet no more then than now was virtue the exclusive possession of any class.
The monasteries were not only centres of culture, but were also the great distributing centres of charity, the nuns being looked upon as the especial friends of the poor. We hear little of complaint against the character of these houses at this time, and it is clear that the rules for their direction had become efficacious for the establishing of a discipline sufficiently rigid, on the whole, to ensure exemplary character. Many penances and mortifications were imposed on the nuns, besides others which were voluntarily assumed. In a book of rules published at this time appears the following, which seems to indicate that even sunshine savored too much of worldliness for the occupants of the religious houses: "My dear sisters, love your windows as little as you may, and let them be small, and the parlor's the narrowest; let the cloth in them be twofold, black cloth, the cross white within and without." It may be, however, that it was not too much sunlight that was to be avoided, but men, who sought to converse with the nuns at their windows. This indeed appears to be the true meaning of the recommendation, as is indicated by another enjoinment: "If any man become so mad and unreasonable that he put forth his hand toward the window cloth, shut the window quickly and leave him."
Besides the nuns, whose office dedicated them to acts of charity, many of the noble ladies found pleasure in alleviating the afflictions of the poor. In their care of the distressed they were incited to acts of humility by the very high value that the Church placed upon the performance of such deeds. Matilda, the good wife of Henry I., had the training of the monastery in developing her benevolentinstincts, and set an example to the ladies of her court by establishing the leper hospital of Saint Giles; there she herself washed the feet of lepers, esteeming such lowly service as done unto Christ. In a hard and cruel age, the gentler sentiments common to womanly nature, especially when under the influence of Christian feeling, poured themselves out in a wealth of affection upon those who were stricken and left helpless by the hardness of the times.
There was an almost total lack of central authority or of legal restraint throughout the land during the long conflict between Stephen and Matilda, wife of the Count of Anjou, whom the feudal party, in violation of their vows to Henry I., refused to accept as queen; and to the other terrors of war were added the depredations of a host of mercenary soldiers brought over from the continent. To quote the chronicler William of Newburgh: "In the olden days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did that which was right in his own eyes; but in England now it was worse; for there was a king, but impotent, and every man did what was wrong in his own eyes." The Petersborough continuation of theEnglish Chroniclegives as dark a picture of the state of affairs: "They filled the land full of castles and filled the castles full of devils. They took all those they deemed had any goods, men and women, and tortured them with tortures unspeakable; many thousands they slew with hunger—they robbed and burned all the villages, so that thou mightest fare a day's journey nor ever find a man dwelling in a village nor land tilled. Corn, flesh, and cheese there was none in the land. The bishops were ever cursing them, but they cared naught therefor, for they were all forcursed and forsworn and forlorn.... Men said openly that Christ slept andHis saints. Such and more than we can say we suffered for our sins," Such grim experiences of unlicensed feudalism did much for the social education of the English people, and similar lawlessness was never repeated in the history of the country. Out of the furnace through which England passed, the English character emerged, purified of some of its dross of Anglo-Saxon sluggishness and Norman arrogance, and finely representative of the tempered elements of both peoples. A sense of solidarity was awakened.
The feudal system found its expression in various forms of homage and of fealty, upon which it was founded. It embraced, among many services and liabilities, some that related to women. On the death of a tenant leaving an heiress under fourteen years of age, the lord upon whose lands the tenant had dwelt, and to whom he owed the military and other services of his lower position, became the guardian in chivalry to the maiden, and had charge of her person and her lands until she was twenty-one—unless, on reaching the age of sixteen, she availed herself of her right to "sue out her livery" by the payment of a half-year's income of her estate. Moreover, he was entitled to dispose of her in marriage to any person of rank equal to her own. In case the young lady did not approve of the selection made for her, and rejected her guardian's choice or married without his consent, she had to forfeit to him a sum of money equal to what was called the value of her marriage—a sum equal to what the lord might have expected to receive if the marriage as planned by him had taken place. During her wardship the lord had the right to her land, and might assign or sell his guardianship over her. These rights which the lord held over the person and possessions of his ward applied, in the later feudal period, equally to male and female.
Such was the relationship of the ward to her lord, and the same system of knight service which gave him these rights in orphaned minors gave him, as well, the right to collect a fee upon the marriage of the daughters of any of his tenants. Such a system, while it deprived the young woman of absolute freedom in her selection of a husband, did not of necessity work great hardship, as each fair young woman had her knight dedicated to her by the solemn vows of chivalry, from whom her troth, once given, was not apt to be easily wrested. Upon the merits of the system itself we are not called upon to pass judgment; but certainly chivalry, which was its finest product, was responsible for the introduction into the English character of splendid ideals of womanhood, which found expression in a deference amounting almost to worship.
Yet the picture has a reverse side as well, and it is only by considering both aspects of the age that its real meaning as regards its effect upon the womanhood of the time becomes clear. This other side of chivalry is well expressed by Freeman, than whom no one is better qualified to speak. He says: "The chivalrous spirit is, above all things, a class spirit. The good knight is bound to endless fantastic courtesies towards men and still more towards women of a certain rank; he may treat all below that rank with any degree of scorn or cruelty.... Chivalry is short in its morals very much what feudalism is in law: each substitutes purely personal obligations, obligations devised in the interest of an exclusive class, for the more homely duties of an honest man and a good citizen."
The extravagant reverence and regard paid to women of the higher ranks of society did not have a firm basis in inherent moral principle either in them or in their worshippers, so that it was an easy passage from idealized woman to materialized woman. Life cannot long subsist on theperfervid products of a social imagination. As a revulsion of noble minds from coarseness and as a protest against tyranny and vice, chivalry fulfilled a high mission; but, unfortunately, its exalted admiration of woman fell to a physical appreciation of its subject. Not her womanhood, but her graces of person came to evoke the passionate devotion of the knight. An admiration fantastic and romantic, expressing itself in all sorts of extravagance, a worship of mere physical beauty—such was the nature of chivalry in its later expression. Instead of an idol, woman became but a toy.
In no respect was this sentimentality better illustrated than in the nature of the knightly devotion of the time. When not in the camp, the life of the knight was an idle one, and was spent for the most part in sentimental attendance upon ladies at court or castle. It was there that his deeds of prowess won rewards rather more generously than discreetly given by the lady to whom he had pledged his devotion; so that, with all the circumstances of outward respect for women, surpassing in ostentatious display that shown by any other age, it is a painful fact that in no other age was there such license in the association of the sexes. It is a striking comment upon the manners of the times that "gallantry" should have come to signify both bravery and illicit love. Chastity was not one of the ornaments of the age of chivalry.
In curious contrast to the attitude of chivalry—a product of the Church—toward women was that of the Church in its official character and expression. The knight elevated woman to the plane of angels, while the priest went to the other extreme. Saint Chrysostom's definition of woman as "a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill," continued to be the orthodox view of theChurch, Woman was to be avoided as a temptation by all those who valued the security of their souls; and yet it was the Church, more than any other social force, which gave to woman the dignity and worth that she achieved.
The Church stood for order and even for progress; it summed up in itself all the knowledge and the culture of the times. In the midst of the turmoil and dangers of war and strife, it afforded to women the one haven to which they might flee for security. But its protection was bought at the price of authority over the lives and consciences of its adherents. The lives of women were spent in a round of narrow experience and of duty, and the feasts of the Church, with their processions and ceremonials, furnished to them merely an agreeable break in the monotony of their existence. This was especially true of the lower classes. In an age when belief in supernatural appearances and interferences formed part of the common credence of the masses, the emotional sensibilities of the women were easily appealed to by the priests. By taking advantage of this ignorance, the Church was enabled to hold in absolute control the lives of the simple and credulous women. Women did not hesitate to yield to the Church their freedom of thought and of action, their minds and consciences alike being at the disposal of their ecclesiastical directors; but when the Church taught men to respect their wives, and raised its voice and exerted its influence against the tyranny which placed women in subjection to their male relatives, it was indeed befriending them in a way that hastened the acquirement by them of the real equality which they now enjoy with the other sex.
The relation of women and the Church was not without its anomalies. This is shown curiously in the contrast between the Mariolatry of the age and the attitude of the Church toward the sex of which Mary was the exaltedtype The women were not esteemed fit to receive the Eucharist with uncovered hands; they were forbidden to approach the altar; their married state was yet, in theory at least considered a condition of sin, for, even among the women of the laity, virginity and celibacy were regarded as almost a state of especial sanctity. But the Church was entirely consistent in its attitude toward women in that it made no distinctions as to class or condition. Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., while on a visit to Durham Cathedral, after having supped with the king, retired to rest in the priory. The scandalized monks sought an interview with the king and made vigorous protests, so that the queen was obliged to rise, and, clad only in her night apparel, sought accommodations in the castle, beseeching Saint Cuthbert's pardon for having polluted the holy confines with her presence.
Ecclesiastical law operated disastrously against women in declaring for a celibate priesthood. In Anglo-Saxon times the priests married; but the Council of Winchester, in 1076, took a stand against the marriage of the clergy, and forbade priests to take to themselves wives, although it permitted the parish clergy who were already married to continue in the marital state. In 1102, however, it was declared that no married priest should celebrate mass, and in 1215 the Lateran Council definitely pronounced against marriage of priests. Many of the clergy had by no means shown a docile spirit in relation to this invasion of what they considered the domain of their personal rights; when forced into submission, they evaded the ordinances by taking concubines. Even in the fifteenth century, it was not uncommon to find married priests. In the document entitledInstructions for Parish Priests, those who were too weak to live uprightly in the celibate state were counselled to take wives. Concubinage, as a substitute for theinterdicted marriage, continued to be practised down to the sixteenth century, nor was this form of illicit living the worst vice of the clergy. Debauchery spread throughout the country, until in the sixteenth century it is said that as many as one hundred thousand women fell under the seductions of the priests, for whose particular pleasures houses of ill fame were kept. From the laity, complaints became general that their wives and daughters were not safe from the advances of the priests. In 1536 the clergy of the diocese of Bangor sent to Cromwell the following remarkable plea against taking away their women from them: "We ourselves shall be driven to seek our living at all houses and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, and knowing our frailty and accustomed liberty, they will in no wise board us in their houses." All the literature of the Middle Ages leads to but one conclusion—that the clergy were the great corrupters of domestic virtue among the burgher and agricultural classes. The morals of the lords and ladies of the upper strata of the aristocratic class were of no higher grade; the offenders, however, were seldom the priests, but the gallants of that privileged circle. The lower rank of the aristocracy,—the knights and lesser landholders,—which, with the decline of feudalism, came to be more strongly defined as a separate class, appears to have preserved the best moral tone of any of the classes of mediæval society.
A great deal of light is thrown upon the manners and thought of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by a body of literature which arose during those centuries. The estimation in which the classes of society were held is indicated by one of thesefabliaux. A party of knights passed through a pleasant and shady meadow, in the midstof exquisite scenery; they were enchanted by the spot, and wished for meat and wine that they might tarry there and dine on the grass. There followed them a party of clerks, whose feelings were also aroused by the beauty of the place; and, in accord with the frivolous character given them throughout thefabliaux, they exclaimed: "Had we fair maidens here, how pleasant a spot for play!" After they had passed on, there came a party of villains, who, with their grosser ideas, thought not of the beauty of the place at all, but proceeded to indulge themselves in carnal pleasures and to use it for mean purposes.
Thesefabliauxshow us that Cupid disdained conventional restraint then as now; for in them the marriage of persons in different classes often furnishes a theme for the story—this, too, notwithstanding the sharp caste distinctions which existed. Usually, the maiden is possessed of more beauty than wealth and belongs to the poor-knight class; she is wedded to a peasant or villain who has become wealthy. The husband turns out to be a brute; the lady is crafty and cunning. He beats and abuses her, according to the instincts of his boorish nature; she, on the other hand, proves faithless as often as opportunity presents. The writers never visit condemnation upon her, for her husband is considered as undeserving of the possession of such a prize. It is a curious commentary on the manner of the times that upon the same manuscript, written by the same person, appearfabliauxof this sort and stories of holy women dying in defence of their chastity. This contradiction runs throughout the literature of the period—the praise of virtue and the narration of gross immorality without an effort to condemn it. One of the most peculiar facts of the age is the extreme to which was carried the adoration of the Virgin and the strange things she is made to do and to countenance, in the mythology of the MiddleAges—for so we must class most of the mediæval stories of the saints and of the Virgin—to ardent and imaginative temperaments the Virgin took the character of Venus, and is frequently represented as the patroness of love. One of the religious stories tells us that some young men, while playing ball in front of a church, approached the porch of the edifice, upon which was a beautiful statue of Our Lady. One of them laid down his ring, which he had received from his lady-love. Then, to his amazement, he saw the image, which was "fresh and new," fix its eyes upon the ring. He became enamored of it, and, after due obeisance, he addressed Our Lady thus:
"I promise duly,That all my life I'll serve thee truly;For never saw I maiden fairWhose beauty could with thine compare,So courtly and so debonaire:And she who gave this ring to me,Though fair and sweet herself, than theeA hundred times less fair, I trow,Shall yield to thee her empire now.'Tis true I've loved her long and well,As many a fond caress can tell;But now, forgotten and neglected,Her meaner charms for thine rejected,I give her ring—a lasting tokenOf faith which never shall be broken,Nor shared with maid or wife shall beThe love I proffer unto thee.'"
"I promise duly,That all my life I'll serve thee truly;For never saw I maiden fairWhose beauty could with thine compare,So courtly and so debonaire:And she who gave this ring to me,Though fair and sweet herself, than theeA hundred times less fair, I trow,Shall yield to thee her empire now.'Tis true I've loved her long and well,As many a fond caress can tell;But now, forgotten and neglected,Her meaner charms for thine rejected,I give her ring—a lasting tokenOf faith which never shall be broken,Nor shared with maid or wife shall beThe love I proffer unto thee.'"
"I promise duly,
That all my life I'll serve thee truly;
For never saw I maiden fair
Whose beauty could with thine compare,
So courtly and so debonaire:
And she who gave this ring to me,
Though fair and sweet herself, than thee
A hundred times less fair, I trow,
Shall yield to thee her empire now.
'Tis true I've loved her long and well,
As many a fond caress can tell;
But now, forgotten and neglected,
Her meaner charms for thine rejected,
I give her ring—a lasting token
Of faith which never shall be broken,
Nor shared with maid or wife shall be
The love I proffer unto thee.'"
With this address, he placed the ring upon the finger of the image. Our Lady appeared flattered by the conquest she had made, and bent the finger on which the ring had been placed in order that it might not be withdrawn. The lover was astounded by the miracle, and was advised by his friends to retire from the world and to devote himself to the adoration and service of the Blessed Virgin.Neglecting this advice, he allowed love to resume its place and led to the altar the maiden who had given him the ring. But Our Lady was not to be deprived of her adorer, and when he laid himself upon the nuptial couch she immediately threw him into a profound slumber, and when he awoke he found her lying between him and his bride:
"She showed him straight her finger, whereWas still the ring he'd given her;And well became her hand that ringUpon her soft skin glittering.'Instead of love, thou'st shown,' said she,'But falseness and disloyalty.And ill hast kept thy faith to me.Behold the ring thou gavest, for tokenAnd pledge of love fore'er unbroken,And call'd me a hundred times more fairThan ever earthly maidens were.I have been ever true, but thouHast taken a meaner leman now;Hast left for stinking nettle the rose,Sweet eglantine for flower more gross.'"
"She showed him straight her finger, whereWas still the ring he'd given her;And well became her hand that ringUpon her soft skin glittering.'Instead of love, thou'st shown,' said she,'But falseness and disloyalty.And ill hast kept thy faith to me.Behold the ring thou gavest, for tokenAnd pledge of love fore'er unbroken,And call'd me a hundred times more fairThan ever earthly maidens were.I have been ever true, but thouHast taken a meaner leman now;Hast left for stinking nettle the rose,Sweet eglantine for flower more gross.'"
"She showed him straight her finger, where
Was still the ring he'd given her;
And well became her hand that ring
Upon her soft skin glittering.
'Instead of love, thou'st shown,' said she,
'But falseness and disloyalty.
And ill hast kept thy faith to me.
Behold the ring thou gavest, for token
And pledge of love fore'er unbroken,
And call'd me a hundred times more fair
Than ever earthly maidens were.
I have been ever true, but thou
Hast taken a meaner leman now;
Hast left for stinking nettle the rose,
Sweet eglantine for flower more gross.'"
In the end, Our Lady forces him to leave his wife that he may dedicate himself entirely to her service. In otherfabliauxand in the chronicles, Mary is represented under the guise of the Lady Venus, who often appears in these romances. In this adoration of the Virgin as a maiden impelled by the same loves and hates as any mortal woman, it is not difficult to see the spirit of chivalry in its sensual expression. Surely, if every lady had her knight, the Blessed Virgin, also, must have her devoted admirers; and by the height of her position and greater worthiness as the Queen of Heaven, by so much should she rise above any other woman in her right to command such adorers.
When we pass from the status of woman in the Middle Ages to her occupations, the subject becomes narrowed, not only by the lesser importance of the facts whichmerely illustrate rather than demonstrate her position, but also because we shall exclude from our general consideration the women of the manors, the nuns, and, in their industrial capacities, the women of the guilds. These important classes demand separate treatment.
After the middle of the twelfth century, it is easier to study the domestic manners of the people. We can, for instance, obtain very precise information as to the style of the dwellings in which they lived. There was a general uniformity in the houses, however they might vary in particulars. In the twelfth century, the hall continued to be the main part of the dwelling. Adjoining it at one end was the chamber, while at the other end might be found the stable. The whole building stood in an enclosure consisting of a yard in front and a garden in the rear, surrounded by a hedge and ditch. The house had a door in the front, and within, one door led to the chamber, and another to the stable. The chamber, also, frequently had a door leading out to the garden. There were usually windows in the hall, the stable and the chamber being lighted by openings in the partitions between them and the hall, as well as by slits in the outer walls. The windows themselves were commonly merely openings, which might be closed by wooden shutters. There was usually one such window in the chamber, besides those in the hall, so that it was better lighted than the stable.
From thefabliauxwe can obtain very precise ideas of the distribution of the rooms in the houses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thus, in one of thefabliaux, an old woman of mean condition of life is represented as visiting a burgher's wife, who, from a feeling of vanity, takes her into the chamber to show her the new bed, a very handsome affair. Afterward, when this lady takes refuge with the old dame, the latter conducts her from the hall tothe chamber adjoining. The outer door of the chamber, by which egress could be had from the house without going through the hall, often figures in the stories as aiding the escape of the lovers of guilty wives, on the unexpected entrance of the husbands into the hall. It was in the chamber that fireplaces and chimneys were first introduced into mediæval houses.
As the grouping of the rooms upon the ground floor made the house less compact and more susceptible to successful attack, the custom arose of having upper chambers. The upper room was called the solar, because it received much light from the sun. At first it was but a small chamber, approached from the outside. These outer stairs are often referred to in thefabliaux, as in thefabliauof D'Estourmi, where a burgher and his wife deceive three monks of a neighboring abbey, who make love to the lady; she conceals her husband in the upper chamber, to which he goes by an outer staircase. The monks enter the hall, and the husband sees from the upper room, through a lattice, all that happens. In anotherfabliau, a lady uses the solar as a hiding place for her husband, who has disguised himself as a gallant in order to test his wife's faithfulness. She penetrates his disguise, and, after closing the door of the solar upon him, sends a servant to give him a good beating, as an importunate suitor whom she desires to cure of his annoying passion. The husband, too mortified to reveal his identity and disclose his doubts as to his wife, has no redress but to sustain his assumed character and to escape down the outer stairs, pursued by the servants. The chamber soon came to be the most important part of the house, and frequently its name was given to the whole dwelling, a house with a solar being called an upper-storied chamber. The more considerable manors and castles differed from the ordinary houses onlyin having a greater assemblage of rooms and more details than were found in the smaller dwellings.
Toward the fourteenth century, the rooms of houses generally began to be numerous, and the houses were often built around a court, the additions being chiefly to the number of offices and chambers. Wood continued to be the usual material for their construction. A new apartment was added to the house—the parlor, so called because it was the talking room. It was derived from the religious houses, in which the parlor was the reception room. As furniture was scanty, the rooms of the mediæval house were almost bare. Chairs were very few, and seats in the masonry of the wall continued for centuries to be the principal accommodation of the kind; benches for seats and places of deposit of personal or household articles were usually made of a few boards laid across trestles. In the thirteenth century, the beds in the chamber came to be partitioned off by curtains, which showed an advance in modesty, as it was customary to sleep wholly undressed. Throughout the Middle Ages, the comforts of the houses were quite primitive; even the houses themselves were generally without architectural grace and frequently very unsubstantial. When watchmen were appointed in the towns, they were provided with a "hook" with which to pull down a house when on fire, if its proximity to others threatened their destruction. As there was an absence of luxury in the houses and their furnishings, much value was placed on plate, which came to be a sign of wealth and social distinction. Dress, also, aided in marking distinctions between the wealthy and those in less fortunate circumstances, as did the luxuries found upon the tables of the former.
This fact of the general character of the discomforts of living, without regard to rank or condition, gave occasionfor sumptuary laws—"the toe of the peasant pressed closely on the heel of the lord, and the gulf that parted them was the number of dishes upon their table, the quality of the cloth they put on, and the kind of fur they might wear to keep off the cold."
Glass began to be introduced into dwelling houses in the time of Henry III., but was regarded as a great luxury. Pipes for carrying the refuse water and slops from the houses to sewers or cesspools were one of the great sanitary reforms of the reign of Edward I. The same able monarch made the use of baths popular among his people. The floors of the houses continued to be covered with an armful of hay, or a bundle of birch boughs or of rushes, although during the fourteenth century some of the wealthier farmers and persons of the trading classes and the nobility had begun to use imported carpets and hangings. Table linen and napkins were also coming into service. The use of forks was confined to royalty.
When the fine ladies went abroad in their vehicles or were carried in their chairs, they had to plow through streets deep with mire and filth; so much so, that it was not unusual for coaches to stick fast and depend upon the aid of some friendly teamster to extricate them. The sanitation of the dwellings was little better than that of the streets. The stench of the houses of the poor was so great that the priests made it an excuse for failure to pay parochial visits to them. The better class of houses were, of course, kept much cleaner.
The impression that food in the Middle Ages was coarse and not elaborate is not borne out, as we have seen, by the facts; for, from Anglo-Saxon times down, the people were very fond of the table, and in the higher circles elaborate banquets stood as one of the most usual resources of a hospitality which had to make up for itsbarrenness in other ways by the bounties of elaborate feasts, so that we are quite prepared for Alexander Neckam's list of kitchen requisites. This ecclesiastic of the latter half of the twelfth century has left us a list of the things to be found in a well-ordered kitchen. Besides his list, we have the testimony of cookbooks of the time, which give directions for making dishes that are both complicated and toothsome. Indeed, the position of cook was one of importance, and upon him often rested, in great houses, the honor of the establishment.
In this connection may be given some of the curious injunctions of the Anglo-Saxon penitentials, which continued to be quoted throughout the Middle Ages, becoming superstitious beliefs after they had lost their ecclesiastical character and undergone the changes which, with the lapse of time, develop folklore. One of the oddest prescribed that in case a "mouse fall into liquor, let it be taken out, and sprinkle the liquor with holy-water, and if it be alive, the liquor may be used, but if it be dead, throw the liquor out and cleanse the vessel." Another said: "He who uses anything a dog or mouse has eaten of, or a weasel polluted, if he do it knowingly, let him sing a hundred psalms; and if he knew it not, let him sing fifty psalms." These are but samples of many superstitions with which the thought of the Middle Ages was tinctured.
A considerable treatise might be written upon the superstitions of the English women; it would contain astonishing disclosures as to the effect of the unreal world of fairies, goblins, and the like upon woman's development and status during the Middle Ages. She was undoubtedly influenced in her daily life, in almost all her duties and undertakings, by the terrors with which her superstitions filled her. The legacy of a pagan system was slowly thrown off, and, with all the credulity of the religion ofthe times, it is to the credit of the Church that, by its proscriptions as well as by its healthier teaching, superstition in many of its forms lessened its hold upon the minds of the people. And yet it was needful, if historical fact denotes a social necessity, that these superstitions should culminate in a belief in witchcraft, and woman, because of her credulity, become the scapegoat of the gnomes and witches which existed in her simple faith. Even so cultured a person as Augustine, one of the most prominent of the Church Fathers of his time, declared it to be insolent to doubt the existence of fauns, satyrs, and suchlike demoniac beings, which lie in wait for women and have intercourse with them and children by them. It was this belief which extended into a labyrinth of darkness and superstition throughout the Middle Ages. The reasoning of the Church was perfectly simple: if the miracles of the Apostles and of Christ were of divine agency, then the marvels performed by magicians before the astonished eyes of the heathen were to be accredited to Satan. The Church never doubted the existence of malignant spirits, but bent its endeavors toward persuading the people to give up converse with them. If a woman gave herself over to Satan or any of his minions, the only resource was to put her to death. Horrible as were the witch burnings of the Middle Ages, the Church sincerely believed that it was exorcising the Devil from the lives of the people; and by the terrible examples it made of those who were accounted as having sold themselves to the Evil One, it believed it was placing a deterrent upon others who might be minded to yield themselves to diabolical possession. The Church was but sharing the universal belief of the times, and, as the guardian of the spiritual interests of mankind, it sought the purification of society by severe measures which, it felt, were alone suited tothe gravity of the subject. From this belief in devil possession arose a veritable system of Christian magic; charms, amulets, exorcisms, abounded; thus, white magic was opposed to black magic.
But when the belief in witchcraft led to papal promulgations against it and against all who dared entertain doubts upon the subject, and when it led also to the appointment of tribunals for the trying of "witches," there was placed in the hands of malice and ignorance a power from which no woman, however exalted in rank or pure in character, was secure, provided only she incurred the enmity of someone bent upon effecting her ruin.
The genesis of the belief lies even back of the prevailing superstitions of the times, and is to be found in the lower regard in which the female sex was held. As we have said, chivalry did not cover with its ægis all women, but only those of a certain class; in the Middle Ages, the opinion held of women in general was not flattering to the sex. The descriptions of witch trials and the processes for the extortion of confessions; the indignities of many sorts to which women were subjected; the horrors of a system which virtually made one become an informer upon her neighbor, lest she be anticipated by charges preferred against herself; the whole dreary round of the subject and its literature: all these are too uninviting to permit of detail. It is sufficient for our purpose to say that throughout Europe—for the delusion was so widespread—certainly not less than a million persons were burned, or otherwise put to death, as witches during the Middle Ages. So great a holocaust had to be offered up by women as a sin offering for their sex!
The state of education had much to do with the manners and opinions of the Middle Ages. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was a feeling of the necessityfor extending and improving education. There was spread abroad a degree of popular instruction. It was not an uncommon thing for ladies to be able to read and write. Among the amusements of their leisure hours, reading began to have a very much larger place than formerly. Yet, popular literature—the tales, ballads, and songs—was still communicated orally rather than in writing, though books were more extensively circulated. Often persons of wealth and culture had extensive libraries. Excepting in the case of those who followed or desired to follow the career of scholars, the women were less illiterate than the men.
In considering the dress of the women of England during the Middle Ages, the sumptuary laws passed for its regulation are of interest in themselves as affording a view of the dress of the several classes of society, and they also serve to illustrate upon what simple lines the distinctions of society were drawn.
In the thirty-seventh year of the reign of Edward III., a curious complaint was submitted to Parliament by the Commons against general extravagance in the use of apparel; whereupon an act was passed in regulation of the matter. One of the provisions of this act, as it related to women, prescribed that the wives and children of the grooms and servants of the lords and of tradesmen and artificers should not wear veils costing more than twelvepence each. The wives and children of the tradesmen and artificers themselves should wear no veils excepting those made with thread and manufactured in the kingdom; nor any kind of furs excepting those of lambs, rabbits, cats, and foxes. The cloth for their dresses was also to be of a prescribed kind. The wives and children of esquires—gentlemen under the estate of knighthood—might not wear cloth of gold, of silk, or of silver; nor anyornaments of precious stones, nor furs of any kind; nor any purfling or facings upon their garments; neither should they useesclaires,crinales, ortrosles—certain forms of hairpins, and suchlike ornaments.
In the case of knights of a certain income, their wives and children were prohibited from wearing miniver or ermine as linings for their garments or trimming for their sleeves. The lower classes were restricted to blankets and russets for their attire, and these were not to cost more than twelvepence per yard, unless the income of the man was above forty shillings. It is not probable that these enactments were rigidly enforced, and when Henry IV. came to the throne he found it necessary to revive the prohibiting statutes of his predecessor. A number of such sumptuary laws were passed during succeeding reigns, but it is not probable that they were ever really effective. Nor were the satires and witticisms of the poets and other writers of the day more effectual than legislation in correcting the extravagances and vices of dress. Whether the poet or the moralist pointed their shafts against them, the dames and the dandies of the time continued to dress as pleased them.
Some of these criticisms so sum up the dress of the day, that to quote them is to see the fine lady attired in all her bewildering array of beautiful stuffs. William de Lorris, in his celebrated poem, theRomance of the Rose, has drawn the character of Jealousy, and represents him as reproaching his wife for her insatiable love of finery, which, he tells her, is solely to make her attractive in the eyes of her gallants. He then enumerates the parts of her dress, consisting of mantles lined with sable, surcoats, neck linens, wimples, petticoats, shifts, pelices, jewels, chaplets of fresh flowers, buckles of gold, rings, robes, and rich furs. Then he adds: "You carry the worth of one hundredpounds in gold and silver upon your head—such garlands, such coiffures with gilt ribbons, such mirrors framed in gold, so fair, so beautifully polished; such tissues and girdles, with expensive fastenings of gold, set with precious stones of smaller size; and your feet shod so primly, that the robe must be often lifted up to show them." And in a subsequent part of the poem the ladies are advised, satirically, if their ankles be not handsome and their feet small and delicate, to hide them by wearing long robes, trailing upon the pavement. Those, on the contrary, who were more favored in this respect were advised to elevate their robes, as if it were to give access to air, that the passer-by might see and admire their trim feet and ankles.
Such were some of the adornments of the fine ladies of the thirteenth century. It is instructive to turn to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and study the costumes of some of the characters as they are interpreted by Strutt. This will afford a view of the dress of typical persons in the ordinary ranks of life. The Wife of Bath is drawn by Chaucer at full length as a shameless woman, pert, loquacious, and bold, whose favorite occupation is gossiping and rambling abroad in search of fashionable diversions, in the absence of her husband. She had the art of making fine cloth. Her dress materials were expensive, for she had kerchiefs, or head linen, which she wore on Sunday, so fine that they were equal in value to ten pounds; and her stockings were made of fine red scarlet cloth, and "straightway gartered upon her legs"; her shoes were also new, and to them she had a pair of spurs attached, because she was to ride upon horseback; she wore a hat as broad as a buckler or a target; and she herself informs us that upon holidays she was accustomed to wear gay scarlet gowns.