Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres E-Book

Henry Adams

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The deepest value of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, its importance as a revelation of the eternal glory of mediaeval art and the elements that brought it into being is not lightly to be expressed. To every artist, whatever his chosen form of expression, it must appear unique and invaluable, and to none more than the architect, who, familiar at last with its beauties, its power, and its teaching force, can only applaud the action of the American Institute of Architects in making Mr. Adams an Honorary Member, as one who has rendered distinguished services to the art, and voice his gratitude that it has brought the book within his reach and given it publicity before the world.

Leseprobe

Henry Adams

Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

By Henry Adams

SAINT MICHIEL

The Archangel loved heights. Standing on the summit of the tower that crowned his church, wings upspread, sword uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of his own in heaven and on earth which seems, in the eleventh century, to leave hardly room for the Virgin of the Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The Archangel stands for Church and State, and both militant. He is the conqueror of Satan, the mightiest of all created spirits, the nearest to God. His place was where the danger was greatest; therefore you find him here. For the same reason he was, while the pagan danger lasted, the patron saint of France. So the Normans, when they were converted to Christianity, put themselves under his powerful protection. So he stood for centuries on his Mount in Peril of the Sea, watching across the tremor of the immense ocean,-immensi tremor oceani,-as Louis XI, inspired for once to poetry, inscribed on the collar of the Order of Saint Michael which he created. So soldiers, nobles, and monarchs went on pilgrimage to his shrine; so the common people followed, and still follow, like ourselves.

The church stands high on the summit of this granite rock, and on its west front is the platform, to which the tourist ought first to climb. From the edge of this platform, the eye plunges down, two hundred and thirty-five feet, to the wide sands or the wider ocean, as the tides recede or advance, under an infinite sky, over a restless sea, which even we tourists can understand and feel without books or guides; but when we turn from the western view, and look at the church door, thirty or forty yards from the parapet where we stand, one needs to be eight centuries old to know what this mass of encrusted architecture meant to its builders, and even then one must still learn to feel it. The man who wanders into the twelfth century is lost, unless he can grow prematurely young.

One can do it, as one can play with children. Wordsworth, whose practical sense equalled his intuitive genius, carefully limited us to "a season of calm weather," which is certainly best; but granting a fair frame of mind, one can still "have sight of that immortal sea" which brought us hither from the twelfth century; one can even travel thither and see the children sporting on the shore. Our sense is partially atrophied from disuse, but it is still alive, at least in old people, who alone, as a class, have the time to be young.

One needs only to be old enough in order to be as young as one will. From the top of this Abbey Church one looks across the bay to Avranches, and towards Coutances and the Cotentin,—the Constantinus pagus,—whose shore, facing us, recalls the coast of New England. The relation between the granite of one coast and that of the other may be fanciful, but the relation between the people who live on each is as hard and practical a fact as the granite itself. When one enters the church, one notes first the four great triumphal piers or columns, at the intersection of the nave and transepts, and on looking into M. Corroyer's architectural study which is the chief source of all one's acquaintance with the Mount, one learns that these piers were constructed in 1058. Four out of five American tourists will instantly recall the only date of mediaeval history they ever knew, the date of the Norman Conquest. Eight years after these piers were built, in 1066, Duke William of Normandy raised an army of forty thousand men in these parts, and in northern France, whom he took to England, where they mostly stayed. For a hundred and fifty years, until 1204, Normandy and England were united; the Norman peasant went freely to England with his lord, spiritual or temporal; the Norman woman, a very capable person, followed her husband or her parents; Normans held nearly all the English fiefs; filled the English Church; crowded the English Court; created the English law; and we know that French was still currently spoken in England as late as 1400, or thereabouts, "After the scole of Stratford atte bowe." The aristocratic Norman names still survive in part, and if we look up their origin here we shall generally find them in villages so remote and insignificant that their place can hardly be found on any ordinary map; but the common people had no surnames, and cannot be traced, although for every noble whose name or blood survived in England or in Normandy, we must reckon hundreds of peasants. Since the generation which followed William to England in 1066, we can reckon twenty-eight or thirty from father to son, and, if you care to figure up the sum, you will find that you had about two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors living in the middle of the eleventh century. The whole population of England and northern France may then have numbered five million, but if it were fifty it would not much affect the certainty that, if you have any English blood at all, you have also Norman. If we could go back and live again in all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors of the eleventh century, we should find ourselves doing many surprising things, but among the rest we should pretty certainly be ploughing most of the fields of the Cotentin and Calvados; going to mass in every parish church in Normandy; rendering military service to every lord, spiritual or temporal, in all this region; and helping to build the Abbey Church at Mont- Saint-Michel. From the roof of the Cathedral of Coutances over yonder, one may look away over the hills and woods, the farms and fields of Normandy, and so familiar, so homelike are they, one can almost take oath that in this, or the other, or in all, one knew life once and has never so fully known it since.

Never so fully known it since! For we of the eleventh century, hard- headed, close-fisted, grasping, shrewd, as we were, and as Normans are still said to be, stood more fully in the centre of the world's movement than our English descendants ever did. We were a part, and a great part, of the Church, of France, and of Europe. The Leos and Gregories of the tenth and eleventh centuries leaned on us in their great struggle for reform. Our Duke Richard-Sans-Peur, in 966, turned the old canons out of the Mount in order to bring here the highest influence of the time, the Benedictine monks of Monte Cassino. Richard II, grandfather of William the Conqueror, began this Abbey Church in 1020, and helped Abbot Hildebert to build it. When William the Conqueror in 1066 set out to conquer England, Pope Alexander II stood behind him and blessed his banner. From that moment our Norman Dukes cast the Kings of France into the shade. Our activity was not limited to northern Europe, or even confined by Anjou and Gascony. When we stop at Coutances, we will drive out to Hauteville to see where Tancred came from, whose sons Robert and Roger were conquering Naples and Sicily at the time when the Abbey Church was building on the Mount. Normans were everywhere in 1066, and everywhere in the lead of their age. We were a serious race. If you want other proof of it, besides our record in war and in politics, you have only to look at our art. Religious art is the measure of human depth and sincerity; any triviality, any weakness, cries aloud. If this church on the Mount is not proof enough of Norman character, we will stop at Coutances for a wider view. Then we will go to Caen and Bayeux. From there, it would almost be worth our while to leap at once to Palermo. It was in the year 1131 or thereabouts that Roger began the Cathedral at Cefalu and the Chapel Royal at Palermo; it was about the year 1174 that his grandson William began the Cathedral of Monreale. No art—either Greek or Byzantine, Italian or Arab—has ever created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so impressive, and yet so different, as Mont- Saint-Michel watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, looking down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Palermo and the Sicilian seas.

Down nearly to the end of the twelfth century the Norman was fairly master of the world in architecture as in arms, although the thirteenth century belonged to France, and we must look for its glories on the Seine and Marne and Loire; but for the present we are in the eleventh century,—tenants of the Duke or of the Church or of small feudal lords who take their names from the neighbourhood,— Beaumont, Carteret, Greville, Percy, Pierpont,—who, at the Duke's bidding, will each call out his tenants, perhaps ten men-at-arms with their attendants, to fight in Brittany, or in the Vexin toward Paris, or on the great campaign for the conquest of England which is to come within ten years,—the greatest military effort that has been made in western Europe since Charlemagne and Roland were defeated at Roncesvalles three hundred years ago. For the moment, we are helping to quarry granite for the Abbey Church, and to haul it to the Mount, or load it on our boat. We never fail to make our annual pilgrimage to the Mount on the Archangel's Day, October 16. We expect to be called out for a new campaign which Duke William threatens against Brittany, and we hear stories that Harold the Saxon, the powerful Earl of Wessex in England, is a guest, or, as some say, a prisoner or a hostage, at the Duke's Court, and will go with us on the campaign. The year is 1058.

All this time we have been standing on the parvis, looking out over the sea and sands which are as good eleventh-century landscape as they ever were; or turning at times towards the church door which is the pons seclorum, the bridge of ages, between us and our ancestors. Now that we have made an attempt, such as it is, to get our minds into a condition to cross the bridge without breaking down in the effort, we enter the church and stand face to face with eleventh- century architecture; a ground-plan which dates from 1020; a central tower, or its piers, dating from 1058; and a church completed in 1135. France can offer few buildings of this importance equally old, with dates so exact. Perhaps the closest parallel to Mont-Saint- Michel is Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, above Orleans, which seems to have been a shrine almost as popular as the Mount, at the same time. Chartres was also a famous shrine, but of the Virgin, and the west porch of Chartres, which is to be our peculiar pilgrimage, was a hundred years later than the ground-plan of Mont-Saint-Michel, although Chartres porch is the usual starting-point of northern French art. Queen Matilda's Abbaye-aux-Dames, now the Church of the Trinity, at Caen, dates from 1066. Saint Sernin at Toulouse, the porch of the Abbey Church at Moissac, Notre-Dame-du-Port at Clermont, the Abbey Church at Vezelay, are all said to be twelfth- century. Even San Marco at Venice was new in 1020.

Yet in 1020 Norman art was already too ambitious. Certainly nine hundred years leave their traces on granite as well as on other material, but the granite of Abbot Hildebert would have stood securely enough, if the Abbot had not asked too much from it. Perhaps he asked too much from the Archangel, for the thought of the Archangel's superiority was clearly the inspiration of his plan. The apex of the granite rock rose like a sugar-loaf two hundred and forty feet (73.6 metres) above mean sea-level. Instead of cutting the summit away to give his church a secure rock foundation, which would have sacrificed about thirty feet of height, the Abbot took the apex of the rock for his level, and on all sides built out foundations of masonry to support the walls of his church. The apex of the rock is the floor of the croisee, the intersection of nave and transept. On this solid foundation the Abbot rested the chief weight of the church, which was the central tower, supported by the four great piers which still stand; but from the croisee in the centre westward to the parapet of the platform, the Abbot filled the whole space with masonry, and his successors built out still farther, until some two hundred feet of stonework ends now in a perpendicular wall of eighty feet or more. In this space are several ranges of chambers, but the structure might perhaps have proved strong enough to support the light Romanesque front which was usual in the eleventh century, had not fashions in architecture changed in the great epoch of building, a hundred and fifty years later, when Abbot Robert de Torigny thought proper to reconstruct the west front, and build out two towers on its flanks. The towers were no doubt beautiful, if one may judge from the towers of Bayeux and Coutances, but their weight broke down the vaulting beneath, and one of them fell in 1300. In 1618 the whole facade began to give way, and in 1776 not only the facade but also three of the seven spans of the nave were pulled down. Of Abbot Hildebert's nave, only four arches remain.

Still, the overmastering strength of the eleventh century is stamped on a great scale here, not only in the four spans of the nave, and in the transepts, but chiefly in the triumphal columns of the croisee. No one is likely to forget what Norman architecture was, who takes the trouble to pass once through this fragment of its earliest bloom. The dimensions are not great, though greater than safe construction warranted. Abbot Hildebert's whole church did not exceed two hundred and thirty feet in length in the interior, and the span of the triumphal arch was only about twenty-three feet, if the books can be trusted. The nave of the Abbaye-aux-Dames appears to have about the same width, and probably neither of them was meant to be vaulted. The roof was of timber, and about sixty-three feet high at its apex. Compared with the great churches of the thirteenth century, this building is modest, but its size is not what matters to us. Its style is the starting-point of all our future travels. Here is your first eleventh-century church! How does it affect you?

Serious and simple to excess! is it not? Young people rarely enjoy it. They prefer the Gothic, even as you see it here, looking at us from the choir, through the great Norman arch. No doubt they are right, since they are young: but men and women who have lived long and are tired,—who want rest,—who have done with aspirations and ambition,—whose life has been a broken arch,—feel this repose and self-restraint as they feel nothing else. The quiet strength of these curved lines, the solid support of these heavy columns, the moderate proportions, even the modified lights, the absence of display, of effort, of self-consciousness, satisfy them as no other art does. They come back to it to rest, after a long circle of pilgrimage,—the cradle of rest from which their ancestors started. Even here they find the repose none too deep.

Indeed, when you look longer at it, you begin to doubt whether there is any repose in it at all,—whether it is not the most unreposeful thought ever put into architectural form. Perched on the extreme point of this abrupt rock, the Church Militant with its aspirant Archangel stands high above the world, and seems to threaten heaven itself. The idea is the stronger and more restless because the Church of Saint Michael is surrounded and protected by the world and the society over which it rises, as Duke William rested on his barons and their men. Neither the Saint nor the Duke was troubled by doubts about his mission. Church and State, Soul and Body, God and Man, are all one at Mont-Saint-Michel, and the business of all is to fight, each in his own way, or to stand guard for each other. Neither Church nor State is intellectual, or learned, or even strict in dogma. Here we do not feel the Trinity at all; the Virgin but little; Christ hardly more; we feel only the Archangel and the Unity of God. We have little logic here, and simple faith, but we have energy. We cannot do many things which are done in the centre of civilization, at Byzantium, but we can fight, and we can build a church. No doubt we think first of the church, and next of our temporal lord; only in the last instance do we think of our private affairs, and our private affairs sometimes suffer for it; but we reckon the affairs of Church and State to be ours, too, and we carry this idea very far. Our church on the Mount is ambitious, restless, striving for effect; our conquest of England, with which the Duke is infatuated, is more ambitious still; but all this is a trifle to the outburst which is coming in the next generation; and Saint Michael on his Mount expresses it all.

Taking architecture as an expression of energy, we can some day compare Mont-Saint-Michel with Beauvais, and draw from the comparison whatever moral suits our frame of mind; but you should first note that here, in the eleventh century, the Church, however simple-minded or unschooled, was not cheap. Its self-respect is worth noticing, because it was short-lived in its art. Mont-Saint- Michel, throughout, even up to the delicate and intricate stonework of its cloisters, is built of granite. The crypts and substructures are as well constructed as the surfaces most exposed to view. When we get to Chartres, which is largely a twelfth-century work, you will see that the cathedral there, too, is superbly built, of the hardest and heaviest stone within reach, which has nowhere settled or given way; while, beneath, you will find a crypt that rivals the church above. The thirteenth century did not build so. The great cathedrals after 1200 show economy, and sometimes worse. The world grew cheap, as worlds must.

You may like it all the better for being less serious, less heroic, less militant, and more what the French call bourgeois, just as you may like the style of Louis XV better than that of Louis XIV,— Madame du Barry better than Madame de Montespan,—for taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse; but since we are now beginning with the earliest, in order to step down gracefully to the stage, whatever it is, where you prefer to stop, we must try to understand a little of the kind of energy which Norman art expressed, or would have expressed if it had thought in our modes. The only word which describes the Norman style is the French word naif. Littre says that naif comes from natif, as vulgar comes from vulgus, as though native traits must be simple, and commonness must be vulgar. Both these derivative meanings were strange to the eleventh century. Naivete was simply natural and vulgarity was merely coarse. Norman naivete was not different in kind from the naivete of Burgundy or Gascony or Lombardy, but it was slightly different in expression, as you will see when you travel south. Here at Mont-Saint-Michel we have only a mutilated trunk of an eleventh-century church to judge by. We have not even a facade, and shall have to stop at some Norman village—at Thaon or Ouistreham—to find a west front which might suit the Abbey here, but wherever we find it we shall find something a little more serious, more military, and more practical than you will meet in other Romanesque work, farther south. So, too, the central tower or lantern—the most striking feature of Norman churches—has fallen here at Mont-Saint-Michel, and we shall have to replace it from Cerisy-la-Foret, and Lessay, and Falaise. We shall find much to say about the value of the lantern on a Norman church, and the singular power it expresses. We shall have still more to say of the towers which flank the west front of Norman churches, but these are mostly twelfth-century, and will lead us far beyond Coutances and Bayeux, from fleche to fleche, till we come to the fleche of all fleches, at Chartres.

We shall have a whole chapter of study, too, over the eleventh- century apse, but here at Mont-Saint-Michel, Abbot Hildebert's choir went the way of his nave and tower. He built out even more boldly to the east than to the west, and although the choir stood for some four hundred years, which is a sufficient life for most architecture, the foundations gave way at last, and it fell in 1421, in the midst of the English wars, and remained a ruin until 1450. Then it was rebuilt, a monument of the last days of the Gothic, so that now, standing at the western door, you can look down the church, and see the two limits of mediaeval architecture married together,—the earliest Norman and the latest French. Through the Romanesque arches of 1058, you look into the exuberant choir of latest Gothic, finished in 1521. Although the two structures are some five hundred years apart, they live pleasantly together. The Gothic died gracefully in France. The choir is charming,—far more charming than the nave, as the beautiful woman is more charming than the elderly man. One need not quarrel about styles of beauty, as long as the man and woman are evidently satisfied and love and admire each other still, with all the solidity of faith to hold them up; but, at least, one cannot help seeing, as one looks from the older to the younger style, that whatever the woman's sixteenth- century charm may be, it is not the man's eleventh-century trait of naivete;—far from it! The simple, serious, silent dignity and energy of the eleventh century have gone. Something more complicated stands in their place; graceful, self-conscious, rhetorical, and beautiful as perfect rhetoric, with its clearness, light, and line, and the wealth of tracery that verges on the florid.

The crypt of the same period, beneath, is almost finer still, and even in seriousness stands up boldly by the side of the Romanesque; but we have no time to run off into the sixteenth century: we have still to learn the alphabet of art in France. One must live deep into the eleventh century in order to understand the twelfth, and even after passing years in the twelfth, we shall find the thirteenth in many ways a world of its own, with a beauty not always inherited, and sometimes not bequeathed. At the Mount we can go no farther into the eleventh as far as concerns architecture. We shall have to follow the Romanesque to Caen and so up the Seine to the Ile de France, and across to the Loire and the Rhone, far to the South where its home lay. All the other eleventh-century work has been destroyed here or built over, except at one point, on the level of the splendid crypt we just turned from, called the Gros Piliers, beneath the choir.

There, according to M. Corroyer, in a corner between great constructions of the twelfth century and the vast Merveille of the thirteenth, the old refectory of the eleventh was left as a passage from one group of buildings to the other. Below it is the kitchen of Hildebert. Above, on the level of the church, was the dormitory. These eleventh-century abbatial buildings faced north and west, and are close to the present parvis, opposite the last arch of the nave. The lower levels of Hildebert's plan served as supports or buttresses to the church above, and must therefore be older than the nave; probably older than the triumphal piers of 1058.

Hildebert planned them in 1020, and died after carrying his plans out so far that they could be completed by Abbot Ralph de Beaumont, who was especially selected by Duke William in 1048, "more for his high birth than for his merits." Ralph de Beaumont died in 1060, and was succeeded by Abbot Ranulph, an especial favourite of Duchess Matilda, and held in high esteem by Duke William. The list of names shows how much social importance was attributed to the place. The Abbot's duties included that of entertainment on a great scale. The Mount was one of the most famous shrines of northern Europe. We are free to take for granted that all the great people of Normandy slept at the Mount and, supposing M. Corroyer to be right, that they dined in this room, between 1050, when the building must have been in use, down to 1122 when the new abbatial quarters were built.

How far the monastic rules restricted social habits is a matter for antiquaries to settle if they can, and how far those rules were observed in the case of great secular princes; but the eleventh century was not very strict, and the rule of the Benedictines was always mild, until the Cistercians and Saint Bernard stiffened its discipline toward 1120. Even then the Church showed strong leanings toward secular poetry and popular tastes. The drama belonged to it almost exclusively, and the Mysteries and Miracle plays which were acted under its patronage often contained nothing of religion except the miracle. The greatest poem of the eleventh century was the "Chanson de Roland," and of that the Church took a sort of possession. At Chartres we shall find Charlemagne and Roland dear to the Virgin, and at about the same time, as far away as at Assisi in the Perugian country, Saint Francis himself—the nearest approach the Western world ever made to an Oriental incarnation of the divine essence—loved the French romans, and typified himself in the "Chanson de Roland." With Mont-Saint-Michel, the "Chanson de Roland" is almost one. The "Chanson" is in poetry what the Mount is in architecture. Without the "Chanson," one cannot approach the feeling which the eleventh century built into the Archangel's church. Probably there was never a day, certainly never a week, during several centuries, when portions of the "Chanson" were not sung, or recited, at the Mount, and if there was one room where it was most at home, this one, supposing it to be the old refectory, claims to be the place.

LA CHANSON DE ROLAND

Molz pelerins qui vunt al Munt

Enquierent molt e grant dreit unt

Comment l'igliese fut fundee

Premierement et estoree.

Cil qui lor dient de l'estoire

Que cil demandent en memoire

Ne l'unt pas bien ainz vunt faillant

En plusors leus e mespernant.

Por faire la apertement

Entendre a cels qui escient

N'unt de clerzie l'a tornee

De latin tote et ordenee

Pars veirs romieus novelement

Molt en segrei por son convent

Uns jovencels moine est del Munt

Deus en son reigne part li dunt.

Guillaume a non de Saint Paier

Cen vei escrit en cest quaier.

El tens Robeirt de Torignie

Fut cil romanz fait e trove.

Most pilgrims who come to the Mount

Enquire much and are quite right,

How the church was founded

At first, and established.

Those who tell them the story

That they ask, in memory

Have it not well, but fall in error

In many places, and misapprehension.

In order to make it clearly

Intelligible to those who have

No knowledge of letters, it has been turned

From the Latin, and wholly rendered

In Romanesque verses, newly,

Much in secret, for his convent,

By a youth; a monk he is of the Mount.

God in his kingdom grant him part!

William is his name, of Saint Pair

As is seen written in this book.

In the time of Robert of Torigny

Was this roman made and invented.

These verses begin the "Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel," and if the spelling is corrected, they still read almost as easily as Voltaire; more easily than Verlaine; and much like a nursery rhyme; but as tourists cannot stop to clear their path, or smooth away the pebbles, they must be lifted over the rough spots, even when roughness is beauty. Translation is an evil, chiefly because every one who cares for mediaeval architecture cares for mediaeval French, and ought to care still more for mediaeval English. The language of this "Roman" was the literary language of England. William of Saint- Pair was a subject of Henry II, King of England and Normandy; his verses, like those of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, are monuments of English literature. To this day their ballad measure is better suited to English than to French; even the words and idioms are more English than French. Any one who attacks them boldly will find that the "vers romieus" run along like a ballad, singing their own meaning, and troubling themselves very little whether the meaning is exact or not. One's translation is sure to be full of gross blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling. If translate one must, we had best begin by trying to be literal, under protest that it matters not a straw whether we succeed. Twelfth-century art was not precise; still less "precieuse," like Moliere's famous seventeenth-century prudes.

The verses of the young monk, William, who came from the little Norman village of Saint-Pair, near Granville, within sight of the Mount, were verses not meant to be brilliant. Simple human beings like rhyme better than prose, though both may say the same thing, as they like a curved line better than a straight one, or a blue better than a grey; but, apart from the sensual appetite, they chose rhyme in creating their literature for the practical reason that they remembered it better than prose. Men had to carry their libraries in their heads.

These lines of William, beginning his story, are valuable because for once they give a name and a date. Abbot Robert of Torigny ruled at the Mount from 1154 to 1186. We have got to travel again and again between Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres during these years, but for the moment we must hurry to get back to William the Conqueror and the "Chanson de Roland." William of Saint-Pair comes in here, out of place, only on account of a pretty description he gave of the annual pilgrimage to the Mount, which is commonly taken to be more or less like what he saw every year on the Archangel's Day, and what had existed ever since the Normans became Christian in 912:—

Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent.

Les meschines e les vallez

Chascuns d'els dist verz ou sonnez.

Neis li viellart revunt chantant

De leece funt tuit semblant.

Qui plus ne seit si chante outree

E Dex aie u Asusee.

Cil jugleor la u il vunt

Tuit lor vieles traites unt

Laiz et sonnez vunt vielant.

Li tens est beals la joie est grant.

Cil palefrei e cil destrier

E cil roncin e cil sommier

Qui errouent par le chemin

Que menouent cil pelerin

De totes parz henissant vunt

Por la grant joie que il unt.

Neis par les bois chantouent tuit

Li oiselet grant et petit.

Li buef les vaches vunt muant

Par les forez e repaissant.

Cors e boisines e fresteals

E fleutes e chalemeals

Sonnoent si que les montaignes

En retintoent et les pleignes.

Que esteit dont les plaiseiz

E des forez e des larriz.

En cels par a tel sonneiz

Com si ce fust cers acolliz.

Entor le mont el bois follu

Cil travetier unt tres tendu

Rues unt fait par les chemins.

Plentei i out de divers vins

Pain e pastez fruit e poissons

Oisels obleies veneisons

De totes parz aveit a vendre

Assez en out qui ad que tendre.

The day was clear, without much wind.

The maidens and the varlets

Each of them said verse or song;

Even the old people go singing;

All have a look of joy.

Who knows no more sings HURRAH,

Or GOD HELP, or UP AND ON!

The minstrels there where they go

Have all brought their viols;

Lays and songs playing as they go.

The weather is fine; the joy is great;

The palfreys and the chargers,

And the hackneys and the packhorses

Which wander along the road

That the pilgrims follow,

On all sides neighing go,

For the great joy they feel.

Even in the woods sing all

The little birds, big and small.

The oxen and the cows go lowing

Through the forests as they feed.

Horns and trumpets and shepherd's pipes

And flutes and pipes of reed

Sound so that the mountains

Echo to them, and the plains.

How was it then with the glades

And with the forests and the pastures?

In these there was such sound

As though it were a stag at bay.

About the Mount, in the leafy wood,

The workmen have tents set up;

Streets have made along the roads.

Plenty there was of divers wines,

Bread and pasties, fruit and fish,

Birds, cakes, venison,

Everywhere there was for sale.

Enough he had who has the means to pay.

If you are not satisfied with this translation, any scholar of French will easily help to make a better, for we are not studying grammar or archaeology, and would rather be inaccurate in such matters than not, if, at that price, a freer feeling of the art could be caught. Better still, you can turn to Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Pilgrimage two hundred years afterwards:—

Whanne that April with his shoures sote

The droughte of March hath perced to the rote…

Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken strange strondes…

And especially, from every shires ende

Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende

The holy blisful martyr for to seke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.

The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was their chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: but, just now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much as the minstrel who sang to amuse him,—the jugleor or jongleur,— who was at home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at every shrine. The jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the street-juggler; the minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a word of abuse, equivalent to blackguard; and from the beginning the profession seems to have been socially decried, like that of a music-hall singer or dancer in later times; but in the eleventh century, or perhaps earlier still, the jongleur seems to have been a poet, and to have composed the songs he sang. The immense mass of poetry known as the "Chansons de Geste" seems to have been composed as well as sung by the unnamed Homers of France, and of all spots in the many provinces where the French language in its many dialects prevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should have been the favourite with the jongleur, not only because the swarms of pilgrims assured him food and an occasional small piece of silver, but also because Saint Michael was the saint militant of all the warriors whose exploits in war were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste." William of Saint- Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his "Roman" was not a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but the "Chanson de Roland" was a different affair.

So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals or predecessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. Wace, whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the "Roman de Rou," or "Rollo," is an English classic of the first rank, was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing at Mont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famous chronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not a singer. In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prose did not yet exist; but the elegancies of poetry in the twelfth century were as different, in kind, from the grand style of the eleventh, as Virgil was different from Homer.

William of Saint-Pair introduces us to the pilgrimage and to the jongleur, as they had existed at least two hundred years before his time, and were to exist two hundred years after him. Of all our two hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors who were going on pilgrimages in the middle of the eleventh century, the two who would probably most interest every one, after eight hundred years have passed, would be William the Norman and Harold the Saxon. Through William of Saint-Pair and Wace and Benoist, and the most charming literary monument of all, the Bayeux tapestry of Queen Matilda, we can build up the story of such a pilgrimage which shall be as historically exact as the battle of Hastings, and as artistically true as the Abbey Church.

According to Wace's "Roman de Rou," when Harold's father, Earl Godwin, died, April 15, 1053, Harold wished to obtain the release of certain hostages, a brother and a cousin, whom Godwin had given to Edward the Confessor as security for his good behaviour, and whom Edward had sent to Duke William for safe-keeping. Wace took the story from other and older sources, and its accuracy is much disputed, but the fact that Harold went to Normandy seems to be certain, and you will see at Bayeux the picture of Harold asking permission of King Edward to make the journey, and departing on horseback, with his hawk and hounds and followers, to take ship at Bosham, near Chichester and Portsmouth. The date alone is doubtful. Common sense seems to suggest that the earliest possible date could not be too early to explain the rash youth of the aspirant to a throne who put himself in the power of a rival in the eleventh century. When that rival chanced to be William the Bastard, not even boyhood could excuse the folly; but Mr. Freeman, the chief authority on this delicate subject, inclined to think that Harold was forty years old when he committed his blunder, and that the year was about 1064. Between 1054 and 1064 the historian is free to choose what year he likes, and the tourist is still freer. To save trouble for the memory, the year 1058 will serve, since this is the date of the triumphal arches of the Abbey Church on the Mount. Harold, in sailing from the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, must have been bound for Caen or Rouen, but the usual west winds drove him eastward till he was thrown ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, between Abbeville and Boulogne, where he fell into the hands of the Count of Ponthieu, from whom he was rescued or ransomed by Duke William of Normandy and taken to Rouen. According to Wace and the "Roman de Rou":—

Guillaume tint Heraut maint jour

Si com il dut a grant enor.

A maint riche torneiement

Le fist aller mult noblement.

Chevals e armes li dona

Et en Bretaigne le mena

Ne sai de veir treiz faiz ou quatre

Quant as Bretons se dut combattre.

William kept Harold many a day,

As was his due in great honour.

To many a rich tournament

Made him go very nobly.

Horses and arms gave him

And into Brittany led him

I know not truly whether three or four times

When he had to make war on the Bretons.

Perhaps the allusion to rich tournaments belongs to the time of Wace rather than to that of Harold a century earlier, before the first crusade, but certainly Harold did go with William on at least one raid into Brittany, and the charming tapestry of Bayeux, which tradition calls by the name of Queen Matilda, shows William's men- at-arms crossing the sands beneath Mont-Saint-Michel, with the Latin legend:—"Et venerunt ad Montem Michaelis. Hic Harold dux trahebat eos de arena. Venerunt ad flumen Cononis." They came to Mont-Saint- Michel, and Harold dragged them out of the quicksands.

They came to the river Couesnon. Harold must have got great fame by saving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair of historians. Tourists note only that Harold and William came to the Mount:—"Venerunt ad Montem." They would never have dared to pass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of Saint Michael.

If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for them. Where Duke William was, his jongleur—jugleor—was not far, and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who this favourite was,—his name, his character, and his song. To him Wace owed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault at Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance against the English lines:—

Taillefer qui mult bien chantout

Sor un cheval qui tost alout

Devant le duc alout chantant

De Karlemaigne e de Rollant

E d'Oliver e des vassals

Qui morurent en Rencevals.

Quant il orent chevalchie tant

Qu'as Engleis vindrent apreismant:

"Sire," dist Taillefer, "merci!

Io vos ai longuement servi.

Tot mon servise me devez.

Hui se vos plaist le me rendez.

Por tot guerredon vos require

E si vos veil forment preier

Otreiez mei que io ni faille

Le premier colp de la bataille."

Li dus respondi: "Io l'otrei."

Taillefer who was famed for song,

Mounted on a charger strong,

Rode on before the Duke, and sang

Of Roland and of Charlemagne,

Oliver and the vassals all

Who fell in fight at Roncesvals.

When they had ridden till they saw

The English battle close before:

"Sire," said Taillefer, "a grace!

I have served you long and well;

All reward you owe me still;

To-day repay me if you please.

For all guerdon I require,

And ask of you in formal prayer,

Grant to me as mine of right

The first blow struck in the fight."

The Duke answered: "I grant."

Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt everything. They maintain that the "Chanson de Roland" was not as old as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient proof of it. Poetry was not usually written to prove facts. Wace wrote a hundred years after the battle of Hastings. One is not morally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than Wace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious a monument as Mont-Saint-Michel, is annoying. The "Chanson de Roland" ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art. One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about the starting-point of American genealogy. Taillefer and the song rest on the same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itself rest upon, and to doubt the "Chanson" is to call the very roll of Battle Abbey in question. The whole fabric of society totters; the British peerage turns pale.

Wace did not invent all his facts. William of Malmesbury is supposed to have written his prose chronicle about 1120 when many of the men who fought at Hastings must have been alive, and William expressly said: "Tune cantilena Rollandi inchoata ut martium viri exemplum pugnaturos accenderet, inclamatoque dei auxilio, praelium consertum." Starting the "Chanson de Roland" to inflame the fighting temper of the men, battle was joined. This seems enough proof to satisfy any sceptic, yet critics still suggest that the "cantilena Rollandi" must have been a Norman "Chanson de Rou," or "Rollo," or at best an earlier version of the "Chanson de Roland"; but no Norman chanson would have inflamed the martial spirit of William's army, which was largely French; and as for the age of the version, it is quite immaterial for Mont-Saint-Michel; the actual version is old enough.

Taillefer himself is more vital to the interest of the dinner in the refectory, and his name was not mentioned by William of Malmesbury. If the song was started by the Duke's order, it was certainly started by the Duke's jongleur, and the name of this jongleur happens to be known on still better authority than that of William of Malmesbury. Guy of Amiens went to England in 1068 as almoner of Queen Matilda, and there wrote a Latin poem on the battle of Hastings which must have been complete within ten years after the battle was fought, for Guy died in 1076. Taillefer, he said, led the Duke's battle:—

Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus.

"Taillefer, a jongleur known by that name." A mime was a singer, but

Taillefer was also an actor:—

Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat.

"A jongleur whom a very brave heart ennobled." The jongleur was not noble by birth, but was ennobled by his bravery.

Hortatur Gallos verbis et territat Anglos

Alte projiciens ludit et ense suo.

Like a drum-major with his staff, he threw his sword high in the air and caught it, while he chanted his song to the French, and terrified the English. The rhymed chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimer who wrote about 1150, and that of Benoist who was Wace's rival, added the story that Taillefer died in the melee.

The most unlikely part of the tale was, after all, not the singing of the "Chanson," but the prayer of Taillefer to the Duke:—

"Otreiez mei que io ni faille

Le premier colp de la bataille."

Legally translated, Taillefer asked to be ennobled, and offered to pay for it with his life. The request of a jongleur to lead the Duke's battle seems incredible. In early French "bataille" meant battalion,—the column of attack. The Duke's grant: "Io l'otrei!" seems still more fanciful. Yet Guy of Amiens distinctly confirmed the story: "Histrio cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat"; a stage- player—a juggler—the Duke's singer—whose bravery ennobled him. The Duke granted him—octroya—his patent of nobility on the field.

All this preamble leads only to unite the "Chanson" with the architecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton campaign of 1058. The poem and the church are akin; they go together, and explain each other. Their common trait is their military character, peculiar to the eleventh century. The round arch is masculine. The "Chanson" is so masculine that, in all its four thousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned was Alda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one stanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward the end. Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to such heroism as to sustain itself without a heroine. Even Dante attempted no such feat.

Duke William's party, then, is to be considered as assembled at supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphal piers of the church above are rising. The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side "a grant enor"; the Duke's brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the other chief vassals, are present; and the Duke's jongleur Taillefer is at his elbow. The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but all are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing. As soon as dinner is over, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins:—

Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes

Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne

Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne

Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne

Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre.

Charles the king, our emperor, the great,

Seven years complete has been in Spain,

Conquered the land as far as the high seas,

Nor is there castle that holds against him,

Nor wall or city left to capture.

The "Chanson" opened with these lines, which had such a direct and personal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound like prophecy. Within ten years William was to stand in England where Charlemagne stood in Spain. His mind was full of it, and of the means to attain it; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by the anxiety of the position. Harold had been obliged to take oath that he would support William's claim to the English throne, but he was still undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much confidence in an oath. As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of Ganelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval society. No feudal lord was without a Ganelon. Duke William saw them all about him.

He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Harold should choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretold that his own brother, Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on the plunder of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous as to require a prison for life. When Taillefer reached the battle- scenes, there was no further need of imagination to realize them. They were scenes of yesterday and to-morrow. For that matter, Charlemagne or his successor was still at Aix, and the Moors were still in Spain. Archbishop Turpin of Rheims had fought with sword and mace in Spain, while Bishop Odo of Bayeux was to marshal his men at Hastings, like a modern general, with a staff, but both were equally at home on the field of battle. Verse by verse, the song was a literal mirror of the Mount. The battle of Hastings was to be fought on the Archangel's Day. What happened to Roland at Roncesvalles was to happen to Harold at Hastings, and Harold, as he was dying like Roland, was to see his brother Gyrth die like Oliver. Even Taillefer was to be a part, and a distinguished part, of his chanson. Sooner or later, all were to die in the large and simple way of the eleventh century. Duke William himself, twenty years later, was to meet a violent death at Mantes in the same spirit, and if Bishop Odo did not die in battle, he died, at least, like an eleventh-century hero, on the first crusade. First or last, the whole company died in fight, or in prison, or on crusade, while the monks shrived them and prayed.

Then Taillefer certainly sang the great death-scenes. Even to this day every French school-boy, if he knows no other poetry, knows these verses by heart. In the eleventh century they wrung the heart of every man-at-arms in Europe, whose school was the field of battle and the hand-to-hand fight. No modern singer ever enjoys such power over an audience as Taillefer exercised over these men who were actors as well as listeners. In the melee at Roncesvalles, overborne by innumerable Saracens, Oliver at last calls for help:—

Munjoie escriet e haltement e cler.

Rollant apelet sun ami e sun per;

"Sire compainz a mei kar vus justez.

A grant dulur ermes hoi deserveret." Aoi.

"Montjoie!" he cries, loud and clear,

Roland he calls, his friend and peer;

"Sir Friend! ride now to help me here!

Parted today, great pity were."

Of course the full value of the verse cannot be regained. One knows neither how it was sung nor even how it was pronounced. The assonances are beyond recovering; the "laisse" or leash of verses or assonances with the concluding cry, "Aoi," has long ago vanished from verse or song. The sense is as simple as the "Ballad of Chevy Chase," but one must imagine the voice and acting. Doubtless Taillefer acted each motive; when Oliver called loud and clear, Taillefer's voice rose; when Roland spoke "doulcement et suef," the singer must have sung gently and soft; and when the two friends, with the singular courtesy of knighthood and dignity of soldiers, bowed to each other in parting and turned to face their deaths, Taillefer may have indicated the movement as he sang. The verses gave room for great acting. Hearing Oliver's cry for help, Roland rode up, and at sight of the desperate field, lost for a moment his consciousness:—

As vus Rollant sur sun cheval pasmet

E Olivier ki est a mort nafrez!

Tant ad sainiet li oil li sunt trublet

Ne luinz ne pres ne poet veeir si cler

Que reconuisset nisun hume mortel.

Sun cumpaignun cum il l'ad encuntret

Sil fiert amunt sur l'elme a or gemmet

Tut li detrenchet d'ici que al nasel

Mais en la teste ne l'ad mie adeset.

A icel colp l'ad Rollanz reguardet

Si li demandet dulcement et suef

"Sire cumpainz, faites le vus de gred?

Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer.

Par nule guise ne m'aviez desfiet,"

Dist Oliviers: "Or vus oi jo parler

Io ne vus vei. Veied vus damnedeus!

Ferut vus ai. Kar le me pardunez!"

Rollanz respunt: "Jo n'ai nient de mel.

Jol vus parduins ici e devant deu."

A icel mot l'uns al altre ad clinet.

Par tel amur as les vus desevrez!

There Roland sits unconscious on his horse,

And Oliver who wounded is to death,

So much has bled, his eyes grow dark to him,

Nor far nor near can see so clear

As to recognize any mortal man.

His friend, when he has encountered him,

He strikes upon the helmet of gemmed gold,

splits it from the crown to the nose-piece,

But to the head he has not reached at all.

At this blow Roland looks at him,

Asks him gently and softly:

"Sir Friend, do you it in earnest?

You know 't is Roland who has so loved you.

In no way have you sent to me defiance."

Says Oliver: "Indeed I hear you speak,

I do not see you. May God see and save you!

Strike you I did. I pray you pardon me."

Roland replies: "I have no harm at all.

I pardon you here and before God!"

At this word, one to the other bends himself.

With such affection, there they separate.

No one should try to render this into English—or, indeed, into modern French—verse, but any one who will take the trouble to catch the metre and will remember that each verse in the "leash" ends in the same sound,—aimer, parler, cler, mortel, damnede, mel, deu, suef, nasel,—however the terminal syllables may be spelled, can follow the feeling of the poetry as well as though it were Greek hexameter. He will feel the simple force of the words and action, as he feels Homer. It is the grand style,—the eleventh century:—

Ferut vus ai! Kar le me pardunez!

Not a syllable is lost, and always the strongest syllable is chosen.

Even the sentiment is monosyllabic and curt:—

Ja est co Rollanz ki tant vus soelt amer!

Taillefer had, in such a libretto, the means of producing dramatic effects that the French comedy or the grand opera never approached, and such as made Bayreuth seem thin and feeble. Duke William's barons must have clung to his voice and action as though they were in the very melee, striking at the helmets of gemmed gold. They had all been there, and were to be there again. As the climax approached, they saw the scene itself; probably they had seen it every year, more or less, since they could swing a sword. Taillefer chanted the death of Oliver and of Archbishop Turpin and all the other barons of the rear guard, except Roland, who was left for dead by the Saracens when they fled on hearing the horns of Charlemagne's returning host. Roland came back to consciousness on feeling a Saracen marauder tugging at his sword Durendal. With a blow of his ivory horn—oliphant—he killed the pagan; then feeling death near, he prepared for it. His first thought was for Durendal, his sword, which he could not leave to infidels. In the singular triple repetition which gives more of the same solidity and architectural weight to the verse, he made three attempts to break the sword, with a lament—a plaint—for each. Three times he struck with all his force against the rock; each time the sword rebounded without breaking. The third time—

Rollanz ferit en une pierre bise

Plus en abat que jo ne vus sai dire.

L'espee cruist ne fruisset ne ne briset

Cuntre le ciel amunt est resortie.

Quant veit li quens que ne la fraindrat mie

Mult dulcement la plainst a sei meisme.

"E! Durendal cum ies bele e saintisme!

En l'oret punt asez i ad reliques.

La dent saint Pierre e del sanc seint Basilie

E des chevels mun seignur seint Denisie

Del vestment i ad seinte Marie.

Il nen est dreiz que paien te baillisent.

De chrestiens devez estre servie.

Ne vus ait hum ki facet cuardie!

Mult larges terres de vus averai cunquises

Que Carles tient ki la barbe ad flurie.

E li emperere en est e ber e riches."

Roland strikes on a grey stone,

More of it cuts off than I can tell you.

The sword grinds, but shatters not nor breaks,

Upward against the sky it rebounds.

When the Count sees that he can never break it,

Very gently he mourns it to himself:

"Ah, Durendal, how fair you are and sacred!

In your golden guard are many relics,

The tooth of Saint Peter and blood of Saint Basil,

And hair of my seigneur Saint-Denis,

Of the garment too of Saint Mary.

It is not right that pagans should own you.

By Christians you should be served,

Nor should man have you who does cowardice.

Many wide lands by you I have conquered

That Charles holds, who has the white beard,

And emperor of them is noble and rich."

This "laisse" is even more eleventh-century than the other, but it appealed no longer to the warriors; it spoke rather to the monks. To the warriors, the sword itself was the religion, and the relics were details of ornament or strength. To the priest, the list of relics was more eloquent than the Regent diamond on the hilt and the Kohinoor on the scabbard. Even to us it is interesting if it is understood. Roland had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He had stopped at Rome and won the friendship of Saint Peter, as the tooth proved; he had passed through Constantinople and secured the help of Saint Basil; he had reached Jerusalem and gained the affection of the Virgin; he had come home to France and secured the support of his "seigneur" Saint Denis; for Roland, like Hugh Capet, was a liege-man of Saint Denis and French to the heart. France, to him, was Saint Denis, and at most the Ile de France, but not Anjou or even Maine. These were countries he had conquered with Durendal:—

Jo l'en cunquis e Anjou e Bretaigne

Si l'en cunquis e Peitou e le Maine

Jo l'en cunquis Normendie la franche

Si l'en cunquis Provence e Equitaigne.

He had conquered these for his emperor Charlemagne with the help of his immediate spiritual lord or seigneur Saint Denis, but the monks knew that he could never have done these feats without the help of Saint Peter, Saint Basil, and Saint Mary the Blessed Virgin, whose relics, in the hilt of his sword, were worth more than any king's ransom. To this day a tunic of the Virgin is the most precious property of the cathedral at Chartres. Either one of Roland's relics would have made the glory of any shrine in Europe, and every monk knew their enormous value and power better than he knew the value of Roland's conquests.

Yet even the religion is martial, as though it were meant for the fighting Archangel and Odo of Bayeux. The relics serve the sword; the sword is not in service of the relics. As the death-scene approaches, the song becomes even more military:—

Co sent Rollanz que la mort le tresprent

Devers la teste sur le quer li descent.

Desuz un pin i est alez curanz

Sur l'erbe verte si est culchiez adenz

Desuz lui met s'espee e l'olifant

Turnat sa teste vers la paiene gent.

Pur co l'ad fait que il voelt veirement

Que Carles diet et trestute sa gent

Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz.

Then Roland feels that death is taking him;

Down from the head upon the heart it falls.

Beneath a pine he hastens running;

On the green grass he throws himself down;

Beneath him puts his sword and oliphant,

Turns his face toward the pagan army.

For this he does it, that he wishes greatly

That Charles should say and all his men,

The gentle Count has died a conqueror.

Thus far, not a thought or a word strays from the field of war. With a childlike intensity, every syllable bends toward the single idea—

Li gentils quens quil fut morz cunqueranz.

Only then the singer allowed the Church to assert some of its rights:-

Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus

Devers Espaigne gist en un pui agut

A l'une main si ad sun piz batut.

"Deus meie culpe vers les tues vertuz

De mes pecchiez des granz e des menuz

Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui

Tresqu'a cest jur que ci sui consouz."

Sun destre guant en ad vers deu tendut

Angle del ciel i descendent a lui. Aoi.

Then Roland feels that his last hour has come

Facing toward Spain he lies on a steep hill,

While with one hand he beats upon his breast:

"Mea culpa, God! through force of thy miracles

Pardon my sins, the great as well as small,

That I have done from the hour I was born

Down to this day that I have now attained."

His right glove toward God he lifted up.

Angels from heaven descend on him. Aoi.

Li quens Rollanz se jut desuz un pin

Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis

De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist

De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist

De dulce France des humes de sun lign

De Carlemagne sun seignur kil nurrit

Ne poet muer men plurt e ne suspirt

Mais lui meisme ne voelt metre en ubli

Claimet sa culpe si priet deu mercit.

"Veire paterne ki unkes ne mentis

Seint Lazarun de mort resurrexis

E Daniel des liuns guaresis

Guaris de mei l'anme de tuz perils

Pur les pecchiez que en ma vie fis."

Sun destre guant a deu en puroffrit

E de sa main seinz Gabriel lad pris

Desur sun braz teneit le chief enclin

Juintes ses mains est alez a sa fin.

Deus li tramist sun angle cherubin

E Seint Michiel de la mer del peril

Ensemble od els Seinz Gabriels i vint

L' anme del cunte portent en pareis.

Count Roland throws himself beneath a pine

And toward Spain has turned his face away.

Of many things he called the memory back,

Of many lands that he, the brave, had conquered,

Of gentle France, the men of his lineage,

Of Charlemagne his lord, who nurtured him;

He cannot help but weep and sigh for these,

But for himself will not forget to care;

He cries his Culpe, he prays to God for grace.

"O God the Father who has never lied,

Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death,

And Daniel from the lions saved,

Save my soul from all the perils

For the sins that in my life I did!"

His right-hand glove to God he proffered;

Saint Gabriel from his hand took it;

Upon his arm he held his head inclined,

Folding his hands he passed to his end.

God sent to him his angel cherubim

And Saint Michael of the Sea in Peril,

Together with them came Saint Gabriel.

The soul of the Count they bear to Paradise.

Our age has lost much of its ear for poetry, as it has its eye for colour and line, and its taste for war and worship, wine and women. Not one man in a hundred thousand could now feel what the eleventh century felt in these verses of the "Chanson," and there is no reason for trying to do so, but there is a certain use in trying for once to understand not so much the feeling as the meaning. The naivete of the poetry is that of the society. God the Father was the feudal seigneur, who raised Lazarus—his baron or vassal—from the grave, and freed Daniel, as an evidence of his power and loyalty; a seigneur who never lied, or was false to his word. God the Father, as feudal seigneur, absorbs the Trinity, and, what is more significant, absorbs or excludes also the Virgin, who is not mentioned in the prayer. To this seigneur, Roland in dying, proffered (puroffrit) his right-hand gauntlet. Death was an act of homage. God sent down his Archangel Gabriel as his representative to accept the homage and receive the glove. To Duke William and his barons nothing could seem more natural and correct. God was not farther away than Charlemagne.

Correct as the law may have been, the religion even at that time must have seemed to the monks to need professional advice. Roland's life was not exemplary. The "Chanson" had taken pains to show that the disaster at Roncesvalles was due to Roland's headstrong folly and temper. In dying, Roland had not once thought of these faults, or repented of his worldly ambitions, or mentioned the name of Alda, his betrothed. He had clung to the memory of his wars and conquests, his lineage, his earthly seigneur Charlemagne, and of "douce France." He had forgotten to give so much as an allusion to Christ. The poet regarded all these matters as the affair of the Church; all the warrior cared for was courage, loyalty, and prowess.

The interest of these details lies not in the scholarship or the historical truth or even the local colour, so much as in the art. The naivete of the thought is repeated by the simplicity of the verse. Word and thought are equally monosyllabic. Nothing ever matched it. The words bubble like a stream in the woods:—

Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus.

Try and put them into modern French, and see what will happen:—

Que jo ai fait des l'ure que nez fui.

The words may remain exactly the same, but the poetry will have gone out of them. Five hundred years later, even the English critics had so far lost their sense for military poetry that they professed to be shocked by Milton's monosyllables:—