Life in a Medieval City

by Frances Gies

  Works are seldom composed on parchment. Authors usually write on wax tablets and have their productions copied by scribes. If the work is written in the vernacular, it may be dictated to a scribe, who writes first on wax and copies over on parchment.

  Even the most luxurious of the illuminated manuscripts show minor defects. The illuminator does not always leave space for the picture caption, which must be crowded in somehow, often impinging on the text. Against such a contingency, the captions may be lettered in red. Sometimes the illuminator leaves space for a caption which the copyist overlooks. Blank sections of columns—most books are lettered in double column—show where a copyist finished his assigned section in less space than had been allowed. Now and then words skipped by a careless copyist are inserted in the margin. Sometimes the artist turns such an error into a joke. A verse omitted from the text is added at the top of the page, and the figure of a scribe in the margin tugs at a rope tied to the first letter of the misplaced line, while a second man leans out from the proper space on the page, ready to receive the rope and pull the line into place.

  The style of lettering has undergone an important series of changes through the Middle Ages. At the end of the Roman period, Roman square capitals developed into the more casual “rustic” style, out of which slowly grew a small-letter alphabet. The “Caroline minuscule,” evolved during Charlemagne’s reign at Alcuin’s school at Tours, crowned this achievement with an alphabet that clearly differentiated between capitals and small letters, not only in size but in form. At the present moment a new, more elaborate style is sweeping northern Europe: Gothic or black-letter, with stiff, narrow angular letters executed with heavy lines that look black on the page.

  Many kinds of books are available from thirteenth-century booksellers,1 and wealthy individuals, as well as universities, are acquiring libraries.2 Among the Latin classics there are the antique poets and the more recent didactic poets, the new scientific writings and translations, books of law, such as Justinian’s Code and Digest and the Decretum of Gratian; medical books—Galen and Hippocrates, works of theology and philosophy, “vocabularies” (dictionaries of important terms), books of “sentences” (aphorisms), chronicles, encyclopedias, and compilations.

  Manuscript copyists employed ingenious and sometimes humorous devices to correct omissions. A page from an illuminated Book of Hours shows a figure hauling an omitted line into place. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore)

  But these weighty volumes in Latin are getting serious competition in French. More and more people want something to read, or especially something to read aloud—and can afford to pay for it. Saints’ lives, biographies, dits (poems on such everyday subjects as the cries of Paris street peddlers), paraphrases of the stories of antique writers, moralizing poems—all these are popular. The rather tedious Roman de la Rose is in great vogue—an allegory by Guillaume de Lorris in which a Lover strives to win his Lady, encouraged and frustrated by various personifications, such as Welcome, Shame, Danger, Reason, Pity. Many works are written more to amuse than correct—such as the Bible of Guiot, by a jongleur from Provins, or the Lamentations of Matthew.

  A series of verse tales known as the Roman de Renard has been popular through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, not only in France, but in Flanders and Rhenish Germany. They are copied over and over by scribes and clerks, in numerous variations. The main characters are Renard the fox, Ysengrin the wolf, Tybert the cat, and King Noble the lion. In a favorite Renard story the fox, stealing chickens from a monastery farmyard, looks into a well and, seeing his own reflection, takes it for his wife Hermeline. Climbing into one of the two buckets that serve the well, he descends, to find nothing but water and stones at the bottom. He struggles in vain to escape. Meanwhile Ysengrin the wolf happens on the well, looks in, and sees his reflection, which he takes for his own wife, Lady Hersent, with Renard at her side. Renard tells him that he is dead, and the well is Paradise. If Ysengrin will confess his sins and climb into the other bucket, he can also achieve the celestial realm, where there are barns full of cows and sheep and goats, and yards full of fat chickens and geese, and woods abounding in game. When Ysengrin jumps into the bucket at the top, he descends while clever Renard ascends and escapes. In the morning when the monks come to draw water, they pull the wolf out and beat him. There is no moral; in the Renard stories wickedness more often triumphs than justice.

  Most popular of all are the fabliaux,3 the humorous short stories in verse, sometimes written, sometimes recited. These stories, the product of authors of various social classes, are enjoyed by all kinds of audiences. Some have folk tale origins, some are drawn directly from life. Their common ingredient is humor, often bawdy. Certain characters recur: the merchant, usually older than his wife, cuckolded, swindled, beaten; the young man, often a student, who outwits the husband; the lecherous priest who is his rival. The women, treacherous, lustful, and faithless, may be beaten by their husbands but always manage to get the better of them.

  Finally, there are the romances, normally in verse, but sometimes in a combination of verse and prose, or even entirely in prose. Best known of the composers of these courtly tales, after Chrétien de Troyes, is Marie de France, who composed many of her romances (which she called “lays”) on Arthurian themes. The authors of many thirteenth-century romances are unknown, but their work is characterized by a high degree of sophistication and realistic detail. Love stories like Galeran or The Kite deal with star-crossed lovers, united in a happy ending; picaresque tales like Joufroi carry a knightly hero through various adventures amorous and military, none of which is treated very seriously.

  One of the best is the Provençal romance Flamenca. At her wedding feast, Flamenca’s husband, Archimbaud of Bourbon, sees the king, as he leads her from a tourney, familiarly embrace her, accidentally touching her breast. Archimbaud misinterprets the gesture and is devoured by jealousy. He tears his hair and beard, bites his lips and grits his teeth, eschews society, can finish nothing he starts, understands nothing that is spoken to him, babbles nonsense, and watches his wife all the time. Word spreads about his affliction, and soon all Auvergne is resounding with songs, satires, and sayings on the subject. He grows worse. He ceases to bathe. His beard resembles a badly mowed wheat field; he tears it out in tufts and puts them in his mouth. In short, he is like a mad dog. A jealous man is not wholly sane.

  Flamenca’s life becomes cruel. Archimbaud has her shut up in a tower with two young servants, Alis and Marguerite, and spies on them by a peephole in the kitchen wall. They are only allowed to leave this prison to go to church on Sundays and feast days, and then Archimbaud forces them to sit in a dark corner, closed off by a thick screen as high as Flamenca’s chin. Only when they stand for the reading of the Scripture can they be seen, and instead of letting them go to the altar for communion, Archimbaud has the priest come to them. Flamenca is not permitted to take off her veil or gloves. Only the little clerk who brings her the book for the Kiss of Peace can see her face.

  Two years pass. As it happens, next door to Archimbaud’s house is a bathing establishment4 where he takes his wife on occasion to distract her, always searching the premises first and then standing guard outside. When Flamenca is ready to leave, she rings a bell and her husband opens the door, as usual overwhelming her with reproaches: “Will you be ready to leave this year or the next? I was going to give you some of the wine the host sent me, but I’ve changed my mind. I won’t let you go to the baths again for a year, I assure you, if you drag it out like today.” The servants insist that it is their fault; they bathed after Madame. “You like water better than geese,” declares the jealous one, biting his nails.

  Enter the hero of this piece, a knight named Guillaume de Nevers, handsome, with curly blond hair, a high and broad white forehead, black arched eyebrows, laughing dark eyes, a nose as straight as an arrow shaft, well-made ears, a fine and amorous mouth, a slightly cleft chin, straight neck, broad shoulders and chest, powerful muscles, straight knees, ar
ched and graceful feet. This fine fellow has studied in Paris and is so learned that he could run a school anywhere. He can read and sing better than any clerk; he can fence; he is so agile that he can put out a candle with his foot when the candle is stuck in the wall over his head. Furthermore, he is rich, and he has the tastes of a gentleman—tourneys, dances, games, dogs, and birds. He is generous, too, and always pays more than the asking-price, gives away his profits from tourneys, is liberal with his men. He is more expert at making songs than the cleverest jongleur.

  This paragon has never been in love, but he has read the best authors and knows that he must soon have this experience. Hearing of Flamenca’s beauty and her misfortunes, he decides that she shall be his lady, and goes to Bourbon full of delicious hopes.

  He puts up at the bathing establishment, so that from his window he can gaze up at the tower where Flamenca is imprisoned. He goes to church and impresses everyone by reciting a prayer in which he says the sixty-two names of God, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Flamenca arrives, and when she uncovers her head to receive the holy water, he has a glimpse of her hair; at the reading of the Gospel, when she rises to cross herself, he sees her bare hand and is seized by emotion. A moment later, when the acolyte brings her the breviary to kiss, he sees her mouth. Asking for the book when the service is over, he kisses the same page.

  That night in a dream Guillaume discovers what he must do. The next day he rents the entire bathing establishment, explaining that he needs solitude. Everyone else moves out; then he orders workers to dig a tunnel between his apartments and the room where Flamenca bathes. Next he flatters the priest into sending his clerk to Paris to study, and undertakes to serve in his place. Now, Sunday after Sunday, a dialogue takes place. When Guillaume brings Flamenca the breviary to kiss, he sighs, “Alas!” The following week she replies, “Why do you sigh?” The next week, Guillaume tells her, “I am dying.”

  During that week the tunnel is finished. On Sunday she answers, “Of what?” On Rogation Day, he says, “Of love” the following Sunday she asks, “For whom?” On Pentecost he replies, “For you.” She replies a week later with an ambiguous, “What can I do about it?”

  He admires her cleverness and promises “fair Lord God” that he will give all his income in France to the Church and the bridge-building brotherhood if He will let him have Flamenca—he will even give up his place in Paradise.

  The dialogue continues. “Cure me,” Guillaume demands; on St.-Jean’s Day she ripostes, “How?” and, in taking the book, brushes his fingers with hers. On Sunday he answers, “I know a way.” Flamenca’s servants advise her to reply, “Take it”—though she is not sure it is honorable to give in so quickly.

  The next day Guillaume tells the host and hostess that they may move back to their bathing establishment. In church Guillaume and Flamenca regard each other tenderly, and he says, “I have taken it.” Another month is occupied by the following exchange: “How then?” “You will go.” “Where?” “To the baths.” “When?” “Soon.” She hesitates, in spite of the urgings of her maidens. At last she announces to them, “I will answer yes, for I see that otherwise I could not go on living.” Then she faints. Archimbaud runs in with cold water and throws it in her face, and she persuades him that she is ill and needs to visit the baths. The following Sunday, she says a single word: “Yes.”

  As usual, Archimbaud conducts the three women to the baths and they bar the door after him. At that moment Guillaume raises the stone at the end of the tunnel and appears, candle in hand. He invites the ladies to pass into his apartments through the tunnel. With characteristic thought-fulness, he has brought two friends, Ot and Clari, for the maidens Alis and Marguerite. For four whole months the six lovers continue to meet. They live in perfect happiness.

  Flamenca is now self-confident. She approaches her husband and demands that he restore her liberty on condition that she promises to behave as well as she has up to the present moment. He agrees, washes his head, forgets his functions as turnkey, and becomes once more the man of the world. As a result Flamenca is soon surrounded by ladies and knights, and finds it impossible to visit the baths without at least seven ladies accompanying her. She sends Guillaume away…5

  13.

  The New Theater

  Paradise is to be made in a raised spot, with curtains and cloths of silk hung round it…Then must come the Saviour clothed in a dalmatic, and Adam and Eve be brought before him. Adam is to wear a red tunic and Eve a woman’s robe of white, with a white silk cloak; and they are both to stand before the Figure…And the Adam must be well trained to speak composedly, and to fit gesture to the matter of speech. Nor must they foist in a syllable or clip one of the verse, but must enounce firmly and repeat what is set down for them in due order.

  —Stage directions for LE MYSTÈRE D’ADAM

  City people are enjoying a revival in the theater as well as in books. The theater of Greece and Rome was lost with the Dark Ages, but an entirely new drama is growing up in, of all places, the church. With many of its thirty-odd holidays retaining a festive touch of paganism—the Yule log, the pranks and garlands of May Day, the schoolboy games of Shrove Tuesday—the Church has long tolerated a variety of irreverent customs. On the Feast of the Holy Innocents choirboys change places with bishop, dean and other cathedral officials, conduct services, and lead a torchlight procession. The Feast of the Circumcision sees even more unlikely sights as the minor clergy lead an ass into church, drink wine and munch sausages before the altar, wear their vestments inside out and hold their books upside down, while they punctuate the service with heehaws. They sing and dance in the streets, often choosing songs that shock elderly parishioners.

  A celebration of holidays in a different spirit has led to the rebirth of the theater. “Troping”—embroidering parts of the service with added words and melodies—especially at Easter and Christmas, is the source of this development. In the ninth century a trope was added to the opening of the Easter service in the form of a dialogue between the three Marys and the angel at the tomb, sung by two halves of the choir, or a soloist and the choir. Soon this trope, which begins Quem quaeritis in sepulchro? (“Whom do you seek in the sepulchre?”) was transferred to the end of the Easter matin service, and dramatic action was added, with costumes and properties. Next an older ceremony was incorporated; a cross was wrapped in cloth on Good Friday and laid in a small stone sepulchre constructed near the altar, sometimes over the tomb of a wealthy burgher or a noble who provided for it in his will. A lamp was placed and vigil kept until Easter morning, when the cross was removed during matins and laid upon the altar, symbolizing the Resurrection. The Quem quaeritis was used at the end of this ceremony, as a climax. New scenes were added, with the apostles Peter and John and Mary Magdalen.

  In its present form, in the thirteenth century, the play is presented at the end of the Easter matin service. A priest representing the angel at the tomb, dressed in white vestments and holding a palm in his hand, quietly approaches the sepulchre. Then the three Marys, also played by priests, two dressed in white and one (Magdalen) in red, their heads veiled, come bearing thuribles with incense, walking sadly and hesitantly, as if looking for something. A dialogue begins, chanted in Latin:

  The Angel (gently): Whom do you seek in the sepulchre, O followers of Christ?

  The Three Marys: Jesus of Nazareth.

  The Angel: He is not here, He has risen as He prophesied. Go, announce that He is risen from the dead.

  The Three Marys (turning to the choir): Hallelujah, the Lord is risen today!

  The Angel (calling them back): Come and see the place. (He rises and lifts the veil which hides the sepulchre, showing that the cross that represents Christ’s body is gone.)

  Now the apostles Peter and John appear, Peter dressed in red and carrying keys, John in white, holding a palm. In accordance with the Gospel, John reaches the sepulchre before Peter, but Peter enters first. He holds up the gravecloth in which the cross was wrapped during the vigi
l, and a dialogue ensues between the apostles and the three Marys, ending with the antiphon, “The Lord is risen from the tomb,” and the placing of the gravecloth upon the altar.

  Two of the Marys depart, leaving Mary Magdalen behind at the tomb. The risen Christ appears to her. At first she mistakes him for a gardener, and approaches him weeping; but he warns her, “Touch me not!” With a cry of recognition, she prostrates herself at his feet—a moment of true theater.

  The performance ends with the triumphant hymn Te Deum Laudamus (“We praise Thee, God”), at the conclusion of which all the bells ring out together.

  A Christmas play has evolved in a similar way, starting with another trope, Quem quaeritis in praesepe? (“Whom do you seek in the manger?”) First it was merely sung by two parts of the choir; then it was dramatized; an Epiphany play of the visit of the Magi was added; and finally a meeting with Herod, the first individualized role in medieval drama. Herod’s is a star role, his violent personality suggesting histrionic potential. Episodes of the Slaughter of the Innocents and the lament of Rachel complete the cycle.

  Another play sometimes presented during the Christmas season is The Prophets. Its origin is not a chant, like that of the Easter and Christmas plays, but a sermon said to have been delivered by St. Augustine, part of which is often used as a lesson for the Christmas offices. In this sermon the lector calls upon the Jews to bear witness to the Christ out of the mouths of their own prophets. He summons Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Moses, David, Habakkuk, Simeon, Zacharias, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist, and bids each to speak in turn. The reading of the sermon develops into a dramatic dialogue between the priest and the prophets, to which is added a miniature drama of Balaam and the ass. Balaam addresses the ass, “Why do you loiter, obstinate beast? My spurs are splitting your ribs and your belly.” The ass, played by a choirboy in a donkey’s skin, replies, “I see an angel with a sword before me, forbidding me to pass, and I fear that I will be lost.” Sometimes this play about the prophets is tacked on the end of the basic Christmas play. One version brings St. Augustine himself onto the stage, plus a Boy-Bishop, a devil, and a comic Archsynagogus, satirizing the Jewish faith.