# The Waning of the Middle Ages/Chapter 10

CHAPTER X
THE IDYLLIC VISION OF LIFE
The lasting vogue of the pastoral genre towards the end of the Middle Ages implies a reaction against the ideal of courtesy. Weary of the complicated formalism of chivalrous love, the aristocratic soul renounces the overstrung pretension of heroism in love, and praises rural life as the escape from it. The new, or rather revived, bucolic ideal remains essentially an erotic one. Still there is a strain of bucolic sentiment, the inspiration of which is rather ethical than erotic. We may perhaps distinguish it from the pastoral proper by calling it the idea of the simple life, or of aurea mediocritas. It is continually merging into the other.
The negation of the chivalric ideal arises among the nobles themselves. It is in court literature that sarcastic or sentimental criticism of it springs up. The burghers, on the other hand, are always striving to imitate the forms of the noble life. Nothing could be falser than to picture the third estate in the Middle Ages as animated by class hatred, or scorning chivalry. On the contrary, the splendour of the life of the nobility dazzles and seduces them. The rich burghers take pains to adopt the forms and the tone of the nobility. Philip of Artevelde, the leader of the Flemish insurgents, whom one would like to picture as a simple, sober revolutionary, kept state like a prince’s. His going in to dinner is announced by music. His meals are served up on silver plate like that of a count of Flanders; he goes about dressed in scarlet and miniver, preceded by his unfurled pennon showing a sable scutcheon with three silver hats. The great financier, Jacques Cœur, whom one instinctively thinks of as a modern, took a lively interest, according to Jacques de Lalaing’s biographer, in the fantastic and useless projects of that anachronistic knight-errant.
Among those who freed themselves from the chivalric ​illusion, seeing the misery and the falsehood of it, we must begin with those practical and frigid minds which were, so to say, opposed to it by temperament. Such were Philippe de Commines and his master, Louis XI. In describing the battle of Montlhéry, Commines abstains from all heroic fiction: no fine exploits, no dramatic turns; he only gives us a realistic picture of comings and goings, of hesitations and fears. He takes pleasure in telling of flights and noting how courage returned with security. He rejects all chivalrous terminology and scarcely mentions honour, which he treats almost as an inevitable evil.
The ideal of chivalry tallies with the spirit of a primitive age, susceptible of gross delusion and little accessible to the corrections of experience. Sooner or later intellectual progress demands a revision of this ideal. It does not disappear, however, it only sheds its too fantastic tendencies. Chivalry, far from being completely disavowed, drops its affectation of a quasi-religious perfection, and will be henceforth only a model of social life. The knight is transformed into the cavalier, who, though still keeping up a very severe code of honour and of glory, will no longer claim to be a defender of the Faith or a protector of the oppressed. The modern gentleman is still ideally linked with the medieval conception of chivalry.
The requirements of moral, æsthetic and social perfection weighed too heavily on the knight. This highly praised chivalry, considered from any point of view whatever, could not conceal its inherent falsity. It was a ridiculous anachronism, a piece of factitious making up. No social utility, no moral value, everywhere vanity and sin. Even as an æsthetic game, the courtly life ended by boring the players. So they turn to another ideal, that of simplicity and of repose. Does this mean that the disillusioned nobles turned to a spiritual life? Sometimes they did. At all times the lives of many courtiers and soldiers have ended in renunciation of the world. More often, however, they are content themselves to seek elsewhere the sublime life which chivalry failed to give. From the days of antiquity a promise had been held out of an earthly felicity to be found in rural life. Here true peace seemed attainable without strife, simply by flight. Here was a sure refuge from envy and hatred, from the ​vanity of honours, from oppressive luxury and cruel war.
Medieval literature inherited from the classic authors the theme of the praise of the simple life, which may be called the negative side of the bucolic sentiment. Court life and aristocratic pretension are disavowed in favour of solitude, work and study. In the fourteenth century this theme had found its typical expression in France in Le Dit de Franc Gontier of Philippe de Vitri, bishop of Meaux, musician and poet, and a friend of Petrarch.
"Soubz feuille vert, sur herbe delitable Lez ru bruiant et prez clere fontaine Trouvay fichee une borde portable, Ilec mengeoit Gontier o dame Helayne Fromage frais, laict, burre fromaigee, Craime, matton, pomme, nois, prune, poire, Aulx et oignons, escaillongne froyee Sur crouste bise, au gros sel, pour mieux boire."
After the meal they kiss "both the mouth and the nose, the soft and the shaggy," then Gontier goes off to fell a tree, while Helayne goes to do the washing.
"J'oy Gontier en abatant son arbre Dieu mercier de sa vie seüre: 'Ne'sçay', dit-il, 'que sont pilliers de marbre, Pommeaux luisans, murs vestus de paincture; Je n'ay paour de traïson tissue Soubz beau semblant, ne qu'empoisonné soye kin vaisseau d'or. Je n'ay la teste nue Devant thirant, ne genoil qui's'i ploye.
'Verge d'uissier jamais ne me deboute, Car jusques la ne m'esprent convoitise, Ambicion, ne lescherie gloute. Labour me paist en joieuse franchise; Moult j'ame Helayne et elle moy sans faille, Et c'est assez. De tombel n'avons cure.' Lors je dy: 'Las! serf de court ne vault maille, Mais Franc Gontier vault en or jame pure.'"
​We observe how here already the motif of the simple life is coupled with that of natural love.
For later generations the poem of Philippe de Vitri remained the classic expression of the bucolic sentiment and of the happiness procured by security and independence, frugality and health, useful labour and conjugal love, without complications.
Eustache Deschamps imitated him in a number of ballads, of which one follows its model very closely.
"En retournant d'une court souveraine Ou j'avoie longuement sejourné, En un bosquet, dessus une fontaine Trouvay Robin le franc, enchapelé; Chapeauls de flours avoit cilz afublé Dessus son chief, et Marion sa drue . . ." etc.
He has enlarged the motif in adding to it an indictment of a knight's or a soldier's life; there is no worse condition than that of a warrior; he commits the seven deadly sins every day; avarice and vainglory are the essence of warfare.
". . . Je vueil mener d'or en avant Estat moien, c'est mon opinion, Guerre laissier et vivre en labourant: Guerre mener n'est que dampnacion."
Generally, however, he simply praises the golden mean.
"Je ne requier à Dieu fors qu'il me doint En ce monde de lui servir et loer, Vivre pour moy, cote entiere ou pourpoint, Aucun cheval pour mon labour porter.
Et que je puisse mon estat gouverner Moiennement, en grace, sanz envie, Sanz trop avoir et sanz pain demander, Car au jour d'ui est la plus seure vie."
The quest of glory or of gain does but entail misery; only the poor man is happy, he lives tranquilly and long.
". . . Un ouvrier et uns povres chartons Va mauvestuz, deschirez et deschaulx Mais en ouvrant prant en gré ses travaulx Et liement fait son euvre fenir. Par nuit dort bien; pour ce uns tels cueurs loiaulx Voit quatre roys et leur regne fenir."
The picture of a working man surviving four kings pleased him so much that he used it several times.
The editor of Deschamps' works, Monsieur Gaston Raynaud, supposes that the poems of this tendency all date from the last period of his life, when, deprived of his functions, forsaken and disappointed, he has at last learned to understand the vanity of court affairs. This is perhaps going too far; these poems would seem rather to be the expression of sentiments, more or less conventional, current among the nobility itself in the midst of court life.
The theme of contempt for a courtier's life enjoyed great favour with a group of scholars who, towards the end of the fourteenth century, mark the beginning of French humanism, and whose circle was connected with that of the leaders of the great councils of the Church. Pierre d'Ailly himself is the author of a poem forming a companion piece with that of Franc Gontier: the tyrant, in contrast with the happy rustic, leading the life of a slave in continuous fear. The theme was admirably fit to be treated in the epistolary style, after the model of Petrarch. Jean de Montreuil tried his hand ​at it; so did Nicolas de Clemanges, three times over. A secretary to the duke of Orleans, the Milanese Ambrose de Mihis, addressed to Gontier Col a Latin letter, in which a courtier dissuades his friend from entering into court service. Translated into French, this letter figures among the works of Alain Chartier, under the title Le Curial, and afterwards Robert Gaguin translated it back into Latin.
The theme was even worked out by a certain Charles Rochefort in a long-winded allegorical poem, L’Abuzé en Court, afterwards attributed to King René. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Jean Meschinot still rhymes as follows:
“La cour est une mer, dont sourt Vagues d’orgueil, d’envie orages.… Ire esmeut debats et outrages, Qui les nefs jettent souvent bas: Traison y fait son personnage. Nage aultre part pour tes ebats.”
In the sixteenth century the old motif had lost nothing of its freshness.
For the most part the praises of a frugal life and of hard work in the fields are not based on the delights of simplicity and labour in themselves, nor on the security and independence they seemed to confer; the positive content of the ideal is the longing for natural love. The pastoral is the idyllic form assumed by erotic thought. Just like the dream of heroism which is at the bottom of the ideas of chivalry, the bucolic dream is somewhat more than a literary genre. It is a craving to reform life itself. It does not stop at describing the life of shepherds with its innocent and natural pleasures. People want to imitate it, if not in real life, at least in the illusion of a graceful game. Weary of factitious conceptions of love, the aristocracy sought a remedy for them in the pastoral ideal. Facile and innocent love amid the delights of nature seemed to be the lot of country people, theirs to be the truly enviable form of happiness. The villein, in his turn, becomes an ideal type.
​The antique form of bucolic life still satisfied the aspirations of the waning Middle Ages. No need is felt to correct the pastoral fiction in accordance with real life. The new enthusiasm for nature does not mean a truly deep sense of reality, not even a sincere admiration for work; it is only an attempt to adorn courteous manners by an array of artificial flowers, playing at shepherd and shepherdess just as people had played at Lancelot and Guinevere.
In the Pastourelle, the short poem relating the facile adventure of the knight with the country girl, pastoral fancy is still in touch with reality. In the pastoral proper, however, the lover or poet thinks himself a shepherd too, all contact with reality is lost, all things are transferred to a sunlit landscape full of the singing of birds and playing of reed-pipes, where even sadness assumes a sweet sound. The faithful shepherd continues to resemble the faithful knight only too closely; after all, it is courtly love transposed into another key.
However artificial it might be, pastoral fancy still tended to bring the loving soul into touch with nature and its beauties. The pastoral genre was the school where a keener perception and a stronger affection towards nature were learned. The literary expression of the sentiment of nature was a byproduct of the pastoral. Out of the simple words of exultation at the joys caused by sunshine and shade, birds and flowers, the loving description of scenery and rural life gradually develops. A poem like Le Dit de la Pastoure of Christine de Pisan marks the transition of the pastoral to a new genre.
“J’ay un roi de Cécille Vu devenir berger Et sa femme gentille De ce mesme mestier, Portant la pannetière, La houlette et chappeau, Logeans sur la bruyère Auprès de leur trouppeau.”
On another occasion, pastoral fancy had to supply a literary form for political satire. It is hard to imagine a more bizarre product than Le Pastoralet, a very long poem by a partisan of Burgundy, who, in this pretty disguise, relates the murder of Louis of Orleans for the purpose of exculpating Jean sans Peur and of venting his spleen on the house of Orleans. The two hostile dukes represented by Tristifer and Léonet in an environment of country dances and ornaments of flowers, Tristifer-Orleans robbing the shepherds of their bread and cheese, apples and nuts, shepherd’s reeds and bells, and threatening them with his large crook, even the battle of Agincourt described in pastoral guise ... one would be inclined to think this style rather flamboyant, if we did not remember that Ariosto uses the same machinery for exculpating his patron, the Cardinal d’Este, who was hardly less guilty than Jean sans Peur.
The pastoral element is never absent from court festivities. It was admirably fitted both for masquerades and for political allegories. Here the bucolic conception coalesced with another of Scriptural origin: the prince and his people symbolized by the shepherd and his sheep, the duties of the ruler compared to those of the shepherd. Meschinot sings:
“Seigneur, tu es de Dieu bergier; Garde ses bestes loyaument, Mets les en champ ou en vergier, Mais ne les perds aucunement, Pour ta peine auras bon paiement En bien le gardant, et se non, A male heure reçus ce nom.”
As the Roman de la Rose had done, because of its contrast with the chivalric ideal, so the bucolic ideal in its turn gave rise to an elegant quarrel. A number of variations had been made on the theme of Franc Gontier: every one had declared that he was sighing for a diet of cheese, apples, onions, brown bread and fresh water, for a woodcutter’s work with its liberty and carelessness. But aristocratic life still looked very little like it and sceptics were aware of the inherent falsity of the factitious ideal. Villon unmasked it. In Les contrediz Franc Gontier he opposed to the idealized country man and his love under the roses, the fat canon, free from care, tasting good wines and the joys of love in a comfortable room, supplied with an ample hearth and a soft bed. The brown bread and the water of Frano Gontier?
“Tous les oyseaulx d’ici en Babiloine A tel escot une seule journée Ne me tiendroient, non une matinée.”
* ↑ Under green leaves, on delightful grass Near a noisy brook and a clear fountain I found a portable board, There Gontier took his meal with dame Helayne On fresh cheese, milk, cream and cheese, curds, apple, nut, plum, peer, Garlic and onions, chopped shallots On a brown crust, with coarse salt, to drink the better.
* ↑ I heard Gontier in felling his tree Thank God for his life of security: "I do not know," he said, "what are pillars of marble, Shining pommels, walls decorated with paintings; I have no fear of treason hidden Under fine appearances, nor that I shall be poisoned In a gold cup. I do not bare my head Before a tyrant, nor bend my knee. "No usher's rod ever turns me away, For no covetousness, Ambition, nor lechery entice me (to court). Labour holds me in joyous liberty; I love Helayne dearly, and she loves me without fail, And that is enough. We are not afraid of the grave." Then I said: "Alas! a serf of the court is not worth a doit, But Franc Gontier is worth a sure gem set in gold."
* ↑ Returning from a sovereign's court Where I had long sojourned, In a bush, near a fountain I found Robin the free, his head crowned; With chaplets of flowers had he adorned His head, and Marion, his beloved . . .
* ↑ Henceforth I will take up a Middle station, so I am resolved To leave off fighting and to live by labour; Waging war is but damnation.
* ↑ I only ask of God to give me That I may serve and praise him in this world, Live for myself, my coat or doublet whole, One horse to carry my labour, And that I may govern my estate In mediocre style, in grace, without envy, Without having too much and without begging my bread, For this day is the safest life.
* ↑ A working man and a poor waggoner, Go about ill dressed, in torn clothes and ill shod, But, labouring, he takes pleasure in his work And merrily finishes it. At night he sleeps well; and therefore such a loyal heart Sees four kings and their reigns end.
* ↑ The court is a sea, whence come Waves of pride, thunderstorms of envy. Wrath stirs up quarrels and outrages, Which often cause the ships to sink; Treason plays its part there, Swim elsewhere for your amusement.
* ↑ I have seen a king of Sicily Turn shepherd And his gentle wife Take to the same trade, Carrying the shepherd's pouch, The crook and hat, Dwelling on the heath Near their flock.
* ↑ Lord, you are God’s shepherd; Guard his animals loyally, Lead them to the field or the orchard, But lose them by no means, You will have good payment for your trouble Of guarding them well, and if you do not, You received this name in an evil hour.
* ↑ All the birds from here to Babylon With such a fare a single day Would not keep me, no not one morning.