Mysteries of the Middle Ages

by Thomas Cahill

  It is a tragedy of history that Kamil and Francis were unable to talk longer, to coordinate their strengths, and to form an alliance. Had they been able to do so, “the clash of civilizations” might not even be a phrase in our world. Francis went back to the crusader camp on the Egyptian shore and desperately tried to convince Cardinal Pelagio, whom the pope had put in charge of the crusade, that he should make peace with the sultan, who, though with far greater force on his side, was all too ready to make peace. But the cardinal had dreams of military glory and would not listen. His eventual failure, amid terrible loss of life, brought the age of the crusades to its inglorious end.o

  Saint Francis by Cimabue, almost certainly a likeness. The stigmata, or wounds of Christ in his Passion, are shown on the saint’s body, but, despite pious legend, it is unlikely that he was so afflicted. The bald circlet on the top of his head is his tonsure, which all clerics had to submit to. Francis did not wish to be made a cleric, but Innocent III insisted on it and personally tonsured Francis. (Photo Credit 2.6)

  Francis, whom Spoto rightly calls “the first person from the West to travel to another continent with the revolutionary idea of peacemaking,” now saw himself as a failure. He had failed in his mission of peace; he had failed in keeping the Lesser Brothers propertyless, rule-less, and dependent only on God. Now that there were several thousand such Brothers (and smaller communities of Sisters) spread across Europe, the official church stepped in, demanding all the organizational appurtenances that Francis in his spontaneity had fought. He was old before his time; his fasts and his uncaring abuse of his own body left him frail, blind, and covered in sores. His malaria returned; and it is possible that he had contracted leprosy from his affectionate ministrations to the poorest of the poor. In his last days, he endured exquisite tortures at the hands of medieval physicians who applied sizzling irons to the flesh around his eyes in a crackpot attempt to restore his sight.

  (Photo Credit 2.5a)

  But even in this condition he was able to leave us some of his finest words, a poem of profound reverence in the gladsome spirit of the troubadours, “The Canticle of the Creatures,” the first poem written in the emerging Italian vernacular and the founding document of Italian literature:

  Altissimu, omnipotente, bonsignore,

  tue sono le laude,

  la gloria elhonore

  et omne benedictione.

  Most High, all-powerful, good Lord:

  yours are the praises,

  the glory and the honor,

  and all blessing.

  Ad te solo, Altissimo, se konfano

  et nullu homo enne dignu

  te mentovare.

  To you alone, Most High, do they belong,

  and no human is worthy

  to speak your name.

  Laudato sie, misignore, cum tucte le tue creature,

  spetialmente messor lo frate sole,

  loquale iorno et allumini noi par loi.

  Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures,

  especially Sir Brother Sun,

  who is the day and through whom you give us light.

  Et ellu ebellu eradiante cum grande splendore:

  de te, Altissimo, porta significatione.

  And he is beautiful and radiant in great splendor:

  and carries your meaning, Most High.

  Laudato si, misignore, per sora luna ele stele:

  in celu lai formate clarite

  et pretiose et belle.

  Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister

  Moon and the stars:

  in Heaven you formed them, clear

  and precious and beautiful.

  Laudato si, misignore, per frate vento

  et per aere et nubilo

  et sereno et omne tempo

  per loquale a le tue creature

  da sustentamento.

  Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Wind,

  and through the air, both cloudy

  and serene, and every kind of weather,

  through whom to your creatures

  you give sustenance.

  Laudato si, misignore, per sor aqua,

  laquale et multo utile et humile

  et pretiose et casta.

  Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Water,

  who is very useful and humble,

  precious and pure.

  Laudato si, misignore, per frate focu,

  per loquale ennalumini la nocte:

  edello ebello et iocundo

  et robusto et forte.

  Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Fire,

  through whom you light the night

  and he is beautiful and playful,

  and robust and strong.

  Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra matre terra,

  laquale ne sustenta et governa,

  et produce diversi fructi

  con coloriti flori et herba.

  Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth,

  who sustains and governs us

  and produces diverse fruits

  with colored flowers and herbs.

  Such a free, anarchic soul was Francis. How he went against the grain of his hierarchical, ordered, aggressive, divisive society. Even here he bursts the seams of troubadour convention: no regularly metrical lines, no expectable pattern of rhyme. What an improviser the man is. What a sexual democrat, dividing the cosmos equally between male and female. What a lover. His whole life was a gesture, a gesture of renunciation and attachment, a gesture by which the lover shows his refusal to become obsessed with single things—glittering finery or stacks of gold—but loves the Creator in all his creatures.

  (Photo Credit 2.6b)

  The man who hymned his gratitude for the sun could no longer see, and even dim light was painful to his blind eyes. The man who called the fire “Brother” was tortured by fire’s effect in the form of sizzling irons. “My brother Fire,” said Francis on that occasion, “you are noble and useful among all the creatures the Most High has created. Be courteous to me in this hour. For a long time I have loved you. I pray our Creator who made you, to temper your heat now, so that I may bear it.” He bore it and worse—the subsequent cutting of the veins in his temples—while, as one brotherly witness admitted, “we who were with him all ran away, and he remained alone with the doctor.” If, as he thought, his life was a failure, his was the failure of Christ, abandoned by his disciples, racked by pain, calling out to his Father from the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” yet living forever as the heavenly standard by which all our own earthly actions are judged.

  (Photo Credit 2.6a)

  Francis had two gestures yet to perform, which gave him two last chances to add verses to his canticle of love. Assisi was beset by a fresh wave of violence on account of a murderous dispute between Bishop Guido and Oportulo de Bernardo, the podestà, or mayor. In the course of the dispute, Guido had (what else?) excommunicated Bernardo. Now Bernardo was threatening to clap into chains anyone who had any further dealings with the bishop. The dying saint asked to meet the two before the bishop’s palace, to which he was carried on a stretcher. Neither could refuse the saint’s invitation, nor could the citizens of Assisi miss out on such an encounter. Francis lifted himself up and sang to the bishop, the mayor, and all of Assisi:

  Laudate si, misignore, per quelli ke perdonano,

  per lo tuo amore

  et sostengo infirmitate et tribulatione.

  Praised be you, my Lord, through those who forgive

  for the sake of your love

  and bear up under weakness and tribulation.

  Beati quelli kel sosterranno in pace,

  ka da te, Altissimo,

  sirano incoronati.

  Blessed are those who maintain peace,

  for by you, Most High,

  shall they be crowned.

  The two men asked forgiveness of each other; and peace, however uneasy, was restored to Assisi. Back in his empty cell, Franci
s prepared for his own death by adding one last verse to his canticle:

  Laudato si, misignore, per sora nostra, morte corporale,

  da laquale nullu homo vivente poskappare.

  Gai acqueli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali!

  Beati quelli ke trovarane le tue sanctissime voluntati,

  ka la morte secunda nol farra male.

  Laudate et benedicite misignore,

  et rengratiate et serviate li cum grande humilitate.

  Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,

  from whom no one living can escape.

  Woe to those who die in mortal sin!

  Blessed are those whom death will find in your most holy will,

  for the Second Death shall not harm them.

  Praise and bless my Lord

  and thank and serve him with great humility.

  At the end he asked to be stripped of everything, even the bed on which he lay, and to be laid naked on the floor. “I have done what is mine,” were his last whispered words to his companions. “May Christ teach you what is yours to do.” Larks sang and flew in circles above the house where he died. As Francis had always noticed, they are the birds who “are friends of the light.”

  And that is how romance became prayer.

  Click here to a view a larger image.

  a Though feud and fief are medieval words, feudalism is a modern term, which has in recent years come to be seen as a conceptual over-simplification of the actual medieval situation—it was, for instance, possible to own freehold property not deeded by the sovereign—but it serves us well enough here.

  b Some later Norman keeps did have a closet off the lord’s bedchamber containing a holed seat atop a descending shaft—accessible at ground level to those whose honor it was to muck out and bury the lord’s donations. But I have found no evidence of this improvement prior to the fifteenth century.

  c Langue d’oc may be contrasted with langue d’oïl, the Old French of the north, which became normative. Oc and oïl are “yes” in each of the two dialects. Oïl would eventually be compressed to oui.

  d The doctrine of Limbo, the happy yet sad “borderland” of Heaven (limbo being early Italian for “hem” or “border”) where the souls of unbaptized infants must stay forever, never having been washed clean enough to enjoy the sight of God himself, will not be introduced as a possible alternative to the Augustinian damnation of unbaptized infants till the teaching of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, when eternity in Limbo will be grasped at as a vast improvement over going to Hell. The modern Catholic Church, embarrassed by its own teaching, has been mum about Limbo since 1951, when Pius XII, perhaps already a bit dotty, referred to it in an inane address to midwives. The doctrine (which presupposes a cruel God, though not one as cruel as the pre-Thomistic model) has become quietly inoperative. It was lately referred by the current pope to a committee, where it is no doubt meant to suffer the final theological indignity—death by committee.

  e This was why Henry VIII of England in the sixteenth century felt so put upon when a pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon on the grounds of incest-by-marriage (Catherine having been previously married to Henry’s since-deceased brother). After all, he wasn’t even demanding special treatment.

  f The “Salic law” may have been only a latter-day concoction by jurists, determined to keep a woman from ruling them, but it was widely believed to be inviolable.

  g It was Henry’s father, Geoffrey the Fair, son of Fulk the Quarrelsome, who was responsible for giving the name Plantagenet to his line on account of a broom flower (planta genista in Latin), that he wore jauntily in his hatband.

  h Matthew Paris, though generally reliable, is hardly inerrant. His Chronica Majora contains the harrowing narrative of the murder of Little Hugh of Lincoln by his Jewish neighbors, one of the first literary instances of the medieval “blood libel” against the Jews.

  i Louis also sent deputies touring throughout his realm to investigate complaints of injustice, their bias always being in favor of the poor over the rich, women (widows in particular) over men, and children (orphans in particular) over adults. At the judgment of these investigators, substantial amounts of money and property were returned to the defrauded. Harassed Jews, however, and, more especially, heretics had little reason to be grateful to Louis. Moreover, Louis had a brother, Charles of Anjou, who cut a frightening figure through Spain, Italy, and the Middle East, plotting with popes to limit the reach of the German emperor and effecting large-scale slaughters in many regions. Though Louis, always preferring a political settlement to war, didn’t care for his brother’s incursions, he never stopped him (and probably couldn’t have, because of Charles’s considerable independent resources).

  j In its first half the prayer combines the salutation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary in Luke 1:28 with the salutation of her cousin Elizabeth in Luke 1:42 and is taken from Jerome’s Vulgate. Though medieval theologians thought that gratia plena (“full of grace”) meant that Mary was awarded the “fullness of grace” by God, the Greek original means simply “well-favored one.” The second half of the prayer (“Holy Mary …”) is not directly scriptural but arises out of medieval piety.

  k Merlin, King Arthur’s court wizard, was believed to have left a series of prophecies, some of which were interpreted as referring to Henry II and his family. In Merlin’s language, Henry was “King of the North Wind” and Eleanor “the Eagle of the Broken Alliance” who “shall rejoice in her third nesting,” the birth of Richard, her third child by Henry. There was also a prophecy of the rise of Henry’s bellicose sons: “The cubs shall awake and shall roar loud, and, leaving the woods, shall seek their prey within the walls of the cities. Among those who shall be in their way they shall make great carnage, and shall tear out the tongues of bulls.” At Henry’s direction, the Isle of Avalon, where Arthur was said to have died—Glastonbury in southwest England—was searched for Arthur’s grave, which was duly found by the local monks beside the grave of a blond-haired queen, obviously Guinevere. With Arthur’s bones was a leaden cross inscribed in rhyming Latin: “Hic jacet Arturus / Rex quondam rexque futurus” (Here lies Arthur, / Once and future king). The graves, in all likelihood a monkish ploy to raise the status of Glastonbury Abbey, were destroyed at the Reformation.

  l Philip II, son of the handsome but ineffectual Louis VII, Eleanor’s first husband, was most unlike his father. Hunchbacked and ugly, he was an admirable warrior and wily politician who annexed to France most of Henry II and Eleanor’s continental lands, for which achievement he was hailed as Philip Augustus.

  m There was no way, in an age in which unescorted women were seen simply as candidates for rape, that the Poor Clares, as the sisterhood came to be called, could wander as freely as the Brothers. They were confined to cloister.

  n The Angelus, a verse-and-response prayer originally said in monasteries, is a dramatic evocation of the moment of the Incarnation, the Infleshing of the Word of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. It takes its name from its opening versicle: “Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae” (The angel of the Lord brought the news to Mary). As church bells sounded at dawn, noon, and sunset, people throughout Europe stopped in their tracks, no matter what they had been doing, crossed themselves, and recited the prayer with bowed heads. Likewise, the rosary, its invention attributed to the Spaniard Dominic de Guzmán, Francis’s contemporary and founder of the Dominicans, actually came to Christian Europe from the Eastern practice of using prayer beads.

  o There were five major crusades against Islam and the lands of the Middle East. All but the fourth of these have been mentioned so far. The Fourth Crusade was in one respect the most notorious, for it captured Constantinople, a Christian city, giving abysmal depth to the rift between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. After the Fifth Crusade, the crusading ideal, such as it was, was corrupted even further as popes began to call for “crusades” against heretics in France and Spain. As late as the fifteenth century, the be
lligerent and avaricious Teutonic Knights continued to mount cruel “crusades” against the Orthodox of Eastern Europe. There is no evidence that the so-called Children’s Crusade ever took place. The stories of such an event are probably based on a feckless, quickly extinguished crusading movement of poor people, who were called pueri (boys, children).

  INTERMEZZO

  Entrances to Other Worlds

  The Mediterranean, the Orient, and the Atlantic

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