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THE CHANGING OUTLOOK
0F CHAUCERIAN’ ENGLAND

thesis for the Degree of Ph. 9.
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DAVIE) SOUTHARD GlLLESPlE

1971

 

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

THE CHANGING CUTLLOK
OF CHAUCEHIALM NGLAND

firesented by

David S. Gillespie

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in History

 

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ABSTRACT

THE CHANGING OUTLOOK
OF CHAUCERIAN ENGLAND

By

David Southard Gillespie

For Englishmen the fourteenth century was a period
of great upheaval with such features as the Hundred Years
War, the Great Schism, the Black Plague, and a declining
economy with unreast among the lower classes all posing
a constant threat to the peace and security of the land.
Although most historians agree that the disturbance of
old values was quite widespread, knowledge of this period
has scarcely passed beyond the study of these social and
political events.

An examination of the art and literature of the
fourteenth century indicates that a substantial change
in the outlook of fourteenth century Englishmen was taking
place in the generation immediately preceding the Plague
of 1349 and that this new view of the world was confirmed
in its popularity by the hardships of the period from
c. 1349 to c. 1385. This thesis attempts to examine and

describe this change in outlook.

David S. Gillespie

The idealistic vision of the thirteenth century
was no longer sufficient as an explanation of the world,
and fourteenth century men began to view their world with
a harsh, realistic vision which no other age has matched.
Much of the older way of life came under attack, partic-
ularly the Church and the romanticism of the upper classes
which so often had little resemblance to their actions.
Religious expression began to dwell on the pain and
suffering of Christ on the Cross. There was a sudden
interest in the horrible aspects of death and the decay
of the body which can only be described as macabre.

This changing weltanschauung is evident both in the
subject matter and in the tone of the art and literature
of the century. Men began to look at their world with a
harsher and more realistic eye then their predecessors
had done. This intense realism makes this century unique
both in terms of what these men were interested in and

in how they expressed their interests.

 

THE CHANGING OUTLOOK
OF CHAUCERIAN ENGLAND

By
David Southard Gillespie

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of History

1971

PREFACE

My special gratitude goes to Dr. Marjorie Gesner
who. as my friend and advisor. gave much of her time and
knowledge. reading and re-reading successive drafts of
this thesis. My thanks also to Dr. Richard Sullivan and
Dr. Robert Rough who offered many helpful suggestions at
various stages in the preparation of the manuscript. To
my Father and Mother went the laborious task of proof-
reading, for which I am deeply grateful. I can never
repay. nor even express, the debt owed to my parents and
to my wife, Ruth.

In the text of the thesis I have attempted to re-
produce quotations as close to the original as possible.
English translations of all foreign language quotations
will be found in the appropriate footnote. Middle English
letters such as the thorn have been rendered into modern
letters: the thorn,y , uniformly stands for "th"; 3
is used indiscriminately for “yh”. "gh", "z", and once
in a while for "th" if it follows a vowel. The most
common uses are as "yh" when it begins a word and as
"gh" when it follows a consonant. Where abbreviations
have existed in the original I have simply filled in

the abbreviated letters (”fi" is rendered as "nn", for

11

example). Modern substitutions and additions are used
as uniformly as possible without any special note
throughout the text.

I have used the Robinson edition of Chaucer's works
uniformly so that, unless otherwise noted. all footnotes
referring to one of Chaucer's works come from this standard
edition. The vast majority of the manuscript material
cited comes from the holdings of the British Museum which
has been abbreviated as "B.M." in the footnotes. With
these two exceptions all footnotes conform to standard
usage.

Albion. Michigan David S. Gillespie
April. 1971

111

Preface
Introduction
Chapter I:
Chapter II:
Chapter III:
Chapter IV:
Chapter V:
Chapter VI:
Chapter VII:
Chapter VIII:
Chapter IX:
Chapter X:

Appendix I:

Appendix II:

Bibliography:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Fourteenth Century in
English History

Changing Tone in Art
Changing Tone in Literature
Criticism of the Church

The Chivalric Ideal

Social Levellerism

Death

Fortune

Religious Mysticism

Conclusions

iv

Page
ii

17

36

92
122
155
180
203
239
261
279
286
288
289

LIST OF TABLES
Page

Table I: Subject Comparison of Art and Literature 9

Figure
Figure

Figure

Figure
Figure
Figure

Figure

Figure
Figure
Figure

Figure

Figure

Figure
Figure

Figure

Figure

Figure

II:

III:

IV:
V:
VI:
VII:

VIII:
IX:
X:

XI:

XII:

XIII:

XIV:

XV:

XVI:
XVII:

LIST OF FIGURES

West Facade, Wells Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral Nave

Plan of the choir vaults.
Lincoln Cathedral

The Evesham Psalter

Virgin and Child

The Queen Mary's Psalter

Tomb of Thomas de Apuldefeld,

Lenham, Kent
The Luttrell Psalter
The thug Psalter
The Bedford Hours

"The Annunciation." The
Beaufort Hours

Christ in Judgment. Detail of
the Doomsday Mural. North Cove,

Suffolk

St. George and the Dragon.
Troston. Suffolk

The Lovell Lectionary

The Executors of William of
Wykham. Detail of his tomb
in Winchester Cathedral

The Three Living

The Grave

vi

Page
to
41

1:2
5L:
56
59

66
67
73
75

77

83

81:
87

88
195
199

Figure

Figure

Figure

Figure

XVIII:
XIX:

XX:

XXI:

LIST OF FIGURES
(continued)

Tomb of Sir Oliver de Ingham

The Skeleton Niche, Feniton,
Devon

Fortune at her wheel

The Man of Sorrows

vii

Page
214

225
247
271

INTRODUCTION

The fourteenth century has long been considered a
period of decline sandwiched between the high point of
medieval culture in the thirteenth century and the
Renaissance of the late fifteenth and sixteenth cen—
turies. It has been a puzzle to historians, who tend
to see it as a century of decline or else try to mold
it to fit either the medieval or renaissance periods.

For English history, at least, none of these attempts
has proven very successful and the period was left pretty
much unstudied. General works such as Huizinga's
Waning of the Middle Ages and the more specific political
histories of McKisack, Wilkinson, and Jolliffe have all
tended to treat the century either as a unified whole
or as a part of a deveIOpment beginning with Edward I
and ending with Richard III. Other historians have
found the date of c. 1350 a handy point of division.
Frederick Heer's general history, The Medieval World,
finds that this is a logical terminus for his thesis.
Economic historians including Postan, Russell, Coulton,
and Bennett have been particularly fond of this date
because they find that the Plague years mark the
beginnings of a new kind of economy and therefore of a

new social order.

 

To my knowledge there are at present no attempts
to deal with the mood and tone of English life in the
fourteenth century and certainly there are none which
recognize the unique character of that life. To be
sure, certain aspects of fourteenth century English
life have been dealt with in great depth. Through the
pioneering work of G.R. Owst much of the sermon liter-
ature of the century came into view for the first time.1
Although neither of his great works dealt specifically
with the fourteenth century and both failed to make a
distinction between the moods of the thirteenth, four-
teenth, and fifteenth centuries, they did give great
insight into the thoughts and outlook of the clergy
in England.

Likewise, much of the painting and art work of
the period is known through the works of E.W. Tristram,
whose books on the wall-paintings of English country

churches are classics in the field.2 From the decade

 

1See G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval
England (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1961); andfi
Preachinggin Medieval England, An Introduction to Sermon
Manuscripts of the Period 1350-1950 (Cambridge: At the
University Press, 1926).

2See especially, E.W. Tristram, English Medieval Wall
Painting: The Thirteenth Century (Oxford: The Pilgrim
Trust, 19507; and English Wall Painting of the Fourteenth
Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955).

of the 1920's until the present day, however, the

only attempt to reach beyond straight political or
economic history has been Gervase Mathew's recently
published book.3 For all its many good points The

Court of Richard II is, by its very nature, dealing

with court life, which is to say that it leaves untouched
a vast segment of popular thought and expression.

I firmly believe that it is the authors and artists
who most truly mirror the age in which they live and it
is my intention here to scrutinize the works of such
men in order to discover what subjects most interested
them and what their mood and tone of expression can tell
us about the outlook of the period. Weeflmfll find that
the period between 1325 and 1900 was in a sense unified.
It was a period of reaction against the old ways of
expression; a period in which the predominant idealism
of the thirteenth century was replaced by a realism
which portrays both the beauty and the ugliness of the
world as they saw it. This changed attitude emerges
in the.generation immediately preceding the Plague
and thus the new realism cannot have been caused by
this catastrOphe alone. The troubles of mid-century

insured the success of this reaction, however, and the

 

3Gervase Mathew, The Court of Richard II (London:
John Murray, 1968).

remainder of the century was devoted to developing this
new school of art and literature.

My discussion of the period revolves around the
term "realism." The realism of fourteenth century
English art and literature has little to do with the
philOSOphical realist-nominalist schools of thought
prevalent a century earlier. In fact, the term realism,
as I apply it here, relates more closely to Ockham's
division of knowledge into two kinds--intuitive and
abstract. The former was concerned with the existence
of an object and its immediate impact on the sense,
while the latter involved thought processes which re-
flect on the realities brought to the mind by the senses.
Sensory experience was thus the sole criterion of
reality while abstracts were the result of a mental
process and may or may not have conformed to reality
but, in any case, they had no independent existence.“

The desire to reproduce things observed, imagined
or dreamed leads to the creation of art works. Sometimes
the emphasis is primarily on the depiction of what is
actually seen by the eyes and at other times the stress

is on recording impressions which come from the mind.

 

4A good discussion of Ockham and his impact on

scholasticism may be found in Gordon Leff, "The Four-
teenth Century and the Decline of Scholasticism," Past
and Present, No. 9 (April, 1956), pp. 30-44.

In the thirteenth century it was largely the latter.
For men of that century nothing was empty of sense.
There was something of God's creation in everything
and it merely fell to the artists to make this visible
and understandable. Their world was seen in terms of
symbols, idealistic constructs of the imagination.

This was not true of the fourteenth century artist.
Chaucer, for example, was interested in all the infinite
data of men acting, thinking, suffering, laughing,
making choices, deceiving or being deceived. Nothing
was unimportant and nothing too horrible or too comical
to write about. The realistic treatment is equally
striking in the whole range of fourteenth century
literature and art.

Much of my thesis is devoted to the manner in which
art and literature reflect this new concentration on
sensory experience. For the purposes of this thesis
"realism" may be taken to mean any type of verbal or
artistic expression which describes thingsseen by the
eyes as opposed to impressions which issue from the
mind or the subconscious.

As it develops in this century, realism is a reac-
tion to the idealism of the preceding century, and as
such it may be further divided into two types. The

first is a naturalism which seeks to describe everyday

things in a manner which is "realistic," as seen by the
eye. The second form, which is an extreme of realism,

can best be described as that which deals with matters

the hearer, or viewer, would rather not know about; the
decomposition of the body after death or the avarice

of the local priest are examples which stand out in

the fourteenth century.

In the fourteenth century English was gradually
gaining acceptance as the national language. As A.F.
Leach has pointed out, the standard of education in
the fourteenth century was by no means as low as was
once thought. Knowledge of Latin and French required
some degree of higher education, but most people above
the rank of common laborer had some knowledge of reading
and writing English.5 This language was more adaptable
to the oral tradition in England and hence was available
to a far wider public, a fact which was not lost upon
the authors of the period. One preacher, after describing
the ways of virtuous and sinful living, says:

And for man may not knowe in whiche of these two

weyes he goth ynne, ne whiderward he is but he knowe

what is virtu and what is synne. Therefore this
writyng is thus made for lewed and meniche lettered

men and symmen in suche tonge a thei can best
vnderstonde . . . .6

 

5A.F. Leach, "St. Paul's School before Colet,"
Archaeolggia, LXII (1910), p. 191.

6B.M., Harleian 45, fol. 1v.

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Another sermon in the same vein urges men and women
who want to flee sin lead clean lives to "taketh hede
of thys lytel tretyse that ys wryte yn englysche tunge
for lewed men that conneth nought vnderstonde Latyn

,..7

ne frensche . . Frequent employment of such
phrases as,

Now lat us ryde and herkneth what I seye,

And he bigan with right myrie cheere 8

His tale anon, and seyde as ye may heere,
indicates that the poets often meant their works to be
read aloud.

The use of English indicates that the literature
of the fourteenth century was meant to appeal to a
rather wide audience and probably reflected the atti-
tudes and outlooks of the pOpulation fairly well. The
art of this century also seems to reflect this general
outlook. If Gervase Mathew's hypothesis is correct,
and I think it is, much of the wall painting to be found
in English parish churches is a form of peasant art and
therefore it closely parallels the intention and spirit
9

of the stories and moral treatises written in English.

Realism did not entirely displace the literary and

 

7B.M., Harleian 2398, fol. l.

8Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "Gen. Prol.," 11. 855-859.

9Mathew, chap. X.

 

artistic forms of the preceding century. There were
still many knightly patrons whose tastes ran toward
the older, idealistic outlook on the world but from
the 1320's this idealism was gradually pushed into
the background.

The change from idealism to realism in the tone
of fourteenth century expression was paralleled by a
change in the subject matter, particularly of the
literary works of the period. Part III of this thesis
deals with topics which were new and important to men
living in the fourteenth century but were comparatively
unheard of in the thirteenth. These topics take on
two basic forms; criticism or satire, and occasionally
repudiation of old things which the thirteenth century
had held dear, and entirely new topics which were either
unknown or ignored by men of the thirteenth century.

I arrived at an identification of these topics by
the fairly simple method of comparing samples of art and
literature in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The sampling used here consists of about three hundred
sermons and an equal number of poems and stories from
each period (largely from the collections of the British
Museum). I have also compared the subjects of all the
wall-paintings and manuscript illustrations I could

find either existing or referred to in other works--

 

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.QSOpw zoom EH moanemxo

sop mono mwoa sud: moHQOp porno o>Hmuzppasp macaw dopoppmom one: moameoxo wwae

Ammv

Anny

Admv
Ammv
Andv
Acev

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Aoov

Ehohhmea HwHOOm .HOk dmmz ow

gofixfiuflozso on» no
pmfiaso go coammom one .5
moofl> one .o

ogdugom mo oaose .m
Snood mo oEose .:

scammomgoo dam
ooquod mo zuammoooz .m

sewage
on» do asouoa pom dooz .N

homommmm Hmazpmfihom
mo amHHonEmm can wadgmoz .H

 

Neapnoo sumoopasom

Aoav

Ammv

Aomv

Ammv
Aoev
Aflev

Amev

Aeev

epoom on» one commoane
.oEo2p ecu no macapmapo>

nomad mm gflmafi> esp
dam mafim mo pmaano no doc
”guano one Qo>mos zoozpon
QHSmGOHpmHoa Hodsom

Ham: on wqaom dam
Ha>oo on» mo Loom so

mooH> one
moSpLH> one

oEoSp gwmpfl>
oaoeoo Momaeno Homaoeoz

godmmohsoo one
consume mo hpammoooz

newsmmma Headpmfinom
mo Emaaonaam one mnfinmoz

 

wapsoo spnooppfize

tamomonpsouoa a“ moameoxo mo nonessv
manpoaopaa ego paw mo nomapmmsoo poonnzm

H

mam<6

.w

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.H

10

about sixty for the earlier period and three times

that number for the later.10

From this body of art and
literature I then isolated as nearly as possible the
subjects of each work and compared the numbers of

times a subject recurred within each period. The
dividing point was in time set at 1325 and manuscripts
whose dates were uncertain were left out of the sample.

Predictably, the most popular single subject in
both periods is the Scriptures. Expositions of Scrip-
tural passages abound in both the sermons and paintings
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Differences begin to appear in a group of subjects
which revolve around the need for penance and confession.
While the subject is the same in both periods the in-
ternal emphasis changes dramatically. Nearly all the
fourteenth century works stress the need for penance
to escape the clutches of the devil, vividly describing
the terrors of hell. In the thirteenth century, on the
other hand, the same theme is invoked, not so much to
avoid the devil, but to attain heaven and forgiveness.
As a corollary of this subject the nature of God changes
radically. The vengeful God or Christ is not common
in the thirteenth century when He is usually portrayed

 

loSee especially E.W. Tristram, The Thirteenth Century;

and Wall Paintinggof the Fourteenth Century. See also Joan
Evans, English Art, 1307-1461, vol. V of The Oxford History
of English Art, ed. T.S.R. Boase (Oxford: At the Clarendon
Press, 1949).

 

11

as a king, somewhat aloof from the world but always
merciful. In the fourteenth century the vengeful
nature of God is emphasized in twenty-one sermons in
my sample as compared with only five from the earlier
period and nearly all forty-six sermons which deal
with this problem in the fourteenth century dwell on
the terrors of hell. Artistic depictions of God or
Christ as King decrease and the majesty is found less
often in the fourteenth century, there being only five
examples, some now destroyed, in contrast with three
times as many in the thirteenth century.

In the fourteenth century the decline of the Church
and accompanying degeneracy of the clergy occupied the
thoughts of most of the prominent poets, moralists,
and preachers as well as the thoughts of the common
folk. Monks with faces of foxes are found in the cor-
bels in the chapter house at York, among other places.
The great success of the Franciscan and Dominican move-
ments had faded by the end of the thirteenth century and
they came under heavy attack. Reform in the Church was
much less important in the thirteenth century with only
fifteen sermons on the subject as Opposed to fifty-one
in the fourteenth century.

By way of contrast, the third most common theme in

the thirteenth century had been the mercy of Christ and

12

the Virgin. In wall painting histories of the Virgin
or other saints had been popular but from about 1330
there was a tendency to dr0p the general "history"
mural in favor of individual scenes. The Blessed
Virgin grows less popular as a theme for artists in
the fourteenth century. Where the Madonna and Child
scene had been much more popular than the crucifixion
in the thirteenth century, in the fourteenth century
the trend is reversed and crucifixions outnumber
paintings of the Virgin by thirty-five to twenty.

The pre-occupation with death is the most striking
new feature of the fourteenth century. This subject
had not been very important in the thirteenth century
when death was mentioned as an indication of the transi-
tory nature of life in order to stress the need for
penance and confession. In the later period death is
transformed to emphasize two new ideas; the death and
decay of the body rather than the afterlife of the soul,
and the capricious nature of fortune. The nature of
fortune occupies a large portion of Chaucer's works,
Troilus and Criseyde in particular, and is found closely
associated with death in most of the art and literature
of the period. The theme of the three young knights
or kings who meet three dead men in a forest is an

extremely pOpular subject. This topic had first

13

appeared in England in the 1320's and became general

after mid-century. The inevitability of death and its

horrendous effect on the body are usually made clear

by an inscription such as the one at Wemsley, Yorkshire,

which warns the viewer, "As we are nove thus sal the

be . . . be war wyt me." Such paintings and their

inscriptions seem to have provided preachers with vivid

illustrations for their sermons because there are

numerous examples of preachers referring to a painting

or a tomb within their church in the course of a sermon.11
The popular topic of the seven deadly sins is

closely related to death. Pride, the "head and fountain

of the Deadly Sins,” includes, by inference, an insis-

tence on the transitory nature of the world. Among the

remedies against pride is the contemplation of a dead

man's bones!12

In general, the vices occupied a more
prominent position in thirteenth century art and litera-

ture but the emphasis on pride was lacking and certainly

 

11Professor Tupper has also pointed out that the
"ubi sunt" formula which appears frequently in connection
wItH these inscriptions was not common in Anglo-Saxon
poetry or in English medieval poetry but only is found
frequently from about 1310 on. See Frederick Tupper,
“The 'Ubi Sunt' Formula," Modern Language Notes, VIII,
no. 8 (DeCo, 1893), pp. 253?“.

12John Myrc, Instructions forgarish Priests, ed.
E. Peacock (London: Early English Text Society orig.
Series 31, 1868), p. 51.

14

there was no allusion to the contemplation of the dead.

Another important topic in the fourteenth century
was the demand for change in the social order. The
gulf between the classes was constantly narrowed by
the increasing use of the English language, the commu-
tation of manorial dues, and a general economic revolu-
tion. There was considerable unrest in England and
complaints against the upper class were frequent. Such
criticism was nearly non-existent in the preceding cen-
tury and what little there was usually came in a rather
oblique manner-~the poor were glorified while the rich
were deemed very unlikely prospects for heaven. From
about 1325, however, the complaints became increasingly
frequent and their tone became ever more strident.

From the samples I have taken a basic change in
the topics which interested men is visible. Some sub-
jects were seemingly no longer of interest in the four-
teenth century while others, such as death and the need
for reform in the Church, were very much in the public
eye.

This re-alignment of interests is to some extent
measurable. The change in the mood and tone of the
century, which is the topic of chapters two and three,
is impossible to quantify even in such rough terms,

yet it is extremely important to any understanding of

15

the mind of fourteenth century England. From about

1325 the tone and mood of the century grew increasingly
melancholy. The pulpit in this period, says Owst,

"was not much given to the kindred emotions of love and
sweetness. It preferred generally the themes of denun-
ciation and terror."13 Beauty, sought after in the
thirteenth century, is now to be shunned, for "whersoever
Beauty shewes upon the face, there lurkes muche filth

beneth the shine."1“

This extreme realism, this con-
centration on the ugly or horrible in life, turned quite
often on kindred themes of death and sin, for, as John
of Tinmouth put it, "As to those what thynge kepes a
man in clennes, the ar vi thinges. One is assiduce
thoghte on the dethe . . . ."15 The medieval preacher
was realistic, often to a startling degree, one such
priest "suddenly displaying the skull of a dead man
which he had been carrying under his cloak."l6
These changes in tone and subject begin in the

generation before the Plague and become the dominant

 

13G.R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 48.

1”B.M., Harleian 4894, fol. 180.

15B.M., Harleian 1288, fol. 8v.

16B0Mo, Sloan 3102, f010 800 "o o o caput defunCti
quod sub capa ferebat subito ostendebat . . . ." A
similar scene is also mentioned by G.R. Owst, Preaching
in Medieval England, p. 351.

16

school of expression in the generation which followed
that great disaster. They form a reaction to the older,
idealistic approach to understanding the world for this
approach was insufficient to understand a world which
was changing so rapidly. It remains now to examine the

artistic and literary manifestations of this reaction.

CHAPTER I

The Fourteenth Century in English History

In the generation immediately preceding the Black
Plague England began to experience some serious and
unsettling problems. In these years there was a general
failure of morale which was closely linked to the inability
of the medieval world to cope with a series of unprecedented
disasters. The crown and the great nobles were continually
at odds and seemed unable or unwilling to solve the
problems of defense. The rising taxes required by the
crown aggravated the general economic instability and the
trend of growth and prosperity which had continued through-
out the thirteenth century was reversed by 1325. Finally,
the Church, far from being able to offer consolation,
was racked by an increasingly degenerate clergy and
internal strife of its own.

This generation of Englishmen began to see their
world in a coldly realistic light. The Black Plague of
1348-9 seemed to justify the general uneasiness and
in the generation which followed this catastrophic realism
came to dominate the outlook of Englishmen. Reverses
in the continental war, the declining vigour of the

monarch, a schism in the Church, and increasing economic

l7

18

hardship brought the nation to the point of revolt.

The crises experienced by the generation between the Plague
and the Peasants' Revolt solidified the tendency to see

the world in harsh, realistic terms but the realism itself
was something discovered by their fathers and brought on

by the general insecurity of the years before 1348 rather
than by any specific problem such as the Plague.

Perhaps the most important factor in the general
economic uncertainty of the period before the Plague was
the inability of the manorial system to accomodate the
economic needs of a growing p0pulation. This affected
the peasants' ability to survive and was also responsible
for a number of other problems.

By the 1320's the agricultural base of the manorial
system had ceased to expand. Until about 1325 land had
been available to the peasant farmer in England. During
the preceding century he had been gradually bringing
more and more land under cultivation and there was a
corresponding rise in population. By developing new land
the peasant could manage to feed himself and his family

fairly adequatelyl but by the 1320's the supply of available

 

v

1H.s. Bennett, Life on the English Manor, A Study
of Peasant Conditions, 1150-1400 (Cambridge: At The
University Press, 1938), pp. 78-89. Bennett maintains
that if a strip of land is used for 100 years and left
without manure for the first thirty the crop diminishes
rapidly but then reaches a plateau. By changing plots
and using newly cleared land the peasant could maintain
his standard of living as long as there was fresh land
to clear.

19

land had begun to run out and it became increasingly
difficult to secure permission to open up new acreage.
To preserve hunting areas the lords ceased to encourage
the clearing of new land and began to impose heavy penal-
ties on trespassers. At about this same time cyclical
changes in weather seem to have occurred which made
winters longer and harsher while the growing season
became shorter and colder.2
The general crop failure of 1315 produced England's
first serious famine in over a century. The population,
which had been growing steadily, began to drop off after
1315.“ Famines recurred throughout the first half of the
century with the effect of reducing the resistance of
the population to disease and, as this resistance fell,
outbreaks of disease occurred throughout England.
The prospect of death had already created a general
uneasiness by the time the Black Death struck England
in 1348. Its effect on the population was disastrous.
On the Taunton estates of the Bishop of Winchester,
for example, there were 707 deaths recorded in 1349
compared with 54 two years earlier.)4 In 1362 the plague

 

2Denys Hay, Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc..
1955). p. 32.

3Josiah Russell, "The Preplague Population of England,"
Journal of British Studies, V, no. 2 (May, 1966), p. 16.

uM.M. Postan and J. Titow, "England During the Plague,"
Economic History Review, ser. 2 (1959), table I.

 

20

returned to England in an epidemic nearly as serious as
that of 1349, and between 1362 and the end of the century
there were eleven more outbreaks. Between the years of
1347 and 1377, according to Russell's estimate, the
population of England declined by almost sixty percent
from three million seven hundred thousand to one and a
half million.5

The general apprehensiveness was increased, especially
in the North, by the inability of Edward II to defend the
realm. At his accession the Scottish problem was far
from settled. Only months after he was crowned his armies
were defeated. The national honor was further tarnished
in 1314 when the last English forces were driven from
Scotland following the battle of Bannockburn and Edward
was unable to stop the Scots raiders from crossing the
border during his entire reign.

The Scots raided at will until the middle of the
1330's burning crops and pillaging the countryside. The
mood of uncertainty and discontent in the North country
was deepened by both the constant fear of raids and
the resulting food shortages.

Edward III was able to end the Scottish wars with
the capture of the young Scottish king, David II, in

1347 but by this time he had created another problem.

 

5Russell, p. 16.

21

The Hundred Years War had gained momentum slowly. The
war itself, which was to be such an important factor

in the politics of the next five reigns, did not begin
in earnest until 1339, two years after Philip IV had de-
clared Gascony confiscated.

Depopulation and wars were causing England severe
economic problems by mid-century. The landowners soon
found labor hard to come by and as a result they began
to tighten their hold on their villein tenants and to
insist on maintenance of their servile status in an
effort to preserve their labor force. At the same time
there was every inducement for the laborer to leave one
lord for another in hope of receiving better wages or
working conditions. The scarcity of labor drove both
wages and prices up so that the landowner who had com-
muted his manorial dues found the money payments nearly
worthless: a shortage of labor could not be offset by
better use of machines as is the case today and his an-
swer was either to substitute for serfdom a free, hired
labor force which was more effective, or to change the
character of farming. Both these solutions were tried.

The hiring of free labor increased competitive
conditions and output but it also increased wages dras-

tically. In 1349-50 Edward issued the Statute of Laborers,

22

6 Such unreal-

hoping to hold down both prices and wages.
istic measures failed to solve the problem because they
were almost universally ignored. Peasants could now see
the advantages in belonging to a free work force and the
landowners found that in order to keep their labor force
and to have the ready cash to hire more labor they had
to commute their manorial dues into money payments.

A second solution took the form of "enclosures:"
landlords lacking a sufficient labor force often turned
their land to sheep pasture, which did not provide work
for laborers. Both solutions increased the discontent
of the farm laborers, who resented attempts to hold down
their wages and to put them off the land.

Besides the problem of the laborers, inflation was
affecting the landowners, who now saw their own economic
base threatened. To make matters worse the wars of
Edward III had caused a serious drain, made all the
worse by inflation, on the royal treasury. Already, in
1338, the king was appealing for money. The following
year the lords granted a tithe, i.e. the tenth sheaf,
fleece, and lamb from the demesne lands: but the Commons
offered instead a grant of 30,000 wool sacks on the

condition that Edward abolish the Maltolte on wool which

 

6May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century, Vol. v of the
Oxford History of England (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press,
1959): p0 3550

23

had been levied without the consent of Commons. Unable

to wait while Commons discussed the matter, Edward had
been forced to borrow money even before the first emergency
installment of 2,500 sacks reached him.

Edward had committed himself deeply to the Low
Countries and he now had no choice but to return home to
try to extract some taxes from his parliament. His credit
had sunk so low that he was obliged to leave the queen
and his children behind as hostages for the payment of
his debts. Parliament agreed to grant him a ninth for
the years 1340 and 1341 but they made the grant conditional
on his agreeing to end the collection of unparliamentary
aids and charges, to pardons for certain debts and fines,
and an end to the practice of "presentment of Englishry."7

The proceedings of these parliaments indicate the
general discontent of the populace but the king had gained
his immediate objective in the form of generous grants and
was oblivious to it. His unprecedented borrowing was
making the Lords wary and was stimulating the Commons
to protect themselves from his taxes. When a demand for
a loan of 20,000 pounds from the City of London yielded
only an offer of 5,000 marks it could be seen that the

nation was in a dangerous mood.8

 

7Ibid.. pp. 161-63.

8E. Déprez, Les préliminaires de la guerre de cent
ans (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1902)—p. 304.

24

The financial position of the crown contributed to
a decline in the national honor. Edward continued to
borrow and to exact forced loans. The Italian banking
houses were the principal victims of the king's reckless
dealings. When their own unpOpularity allowed the king
to default on his debts to them in 1343, the Peruzzi went
bankrupt, followed three years later by the Bardi. No
one else had the capital assets to loan the king the money
needed to carry out his war plans. Even the English Com-
pany of 1343, an organization of thirty-three merchants,
was not able to finance the long siege of Calais even
before the drastic interruption of trade brought on by
the Black Death.9

In fairness to the king, it must be pointed out that
his constant need for money was not the only cause of
his disputes in Parliament, for he had inherited some
very real problems from his father. Throughout his
reign Edward II had been plagued by a powerful group of
nobles attempting to subject the king to their will.
Although the defeat and execution of Lancaster in 1322
alleviated the situation, Edward II had been given to
favorites and his dependence on Gaveston and the Despenser
family had angered not only the other barons but the

Queen herself.

 

9G.0. Sayles, "The 'English Company' of 1343 and a
Merchant's Oath," Speculum, VI (1931). pp. 177-205.

25

England was no more stable politically than she was
economically in this generation before 1350. The whole
of Edward II's reign had been a struggle for power with
his barons and the ease with which he was toppled illus-
trates just how insecure his throne really was.

Edward III's resumption of the war with Scotland
and his struggle with France were popular enough to dis-
tract the baronial Opposition in Parliament but at the
same time the expense of these wars was creating a new
role of opposition for the Commons, which were called
fairly often to ratify war taxes. The need for taxes
made Edward more dependent on his subjects and there
was a noticeable constitutional change during his reign.
Commons: petitions could be ignored in 1339 but by the
end of his reign the Commons had established their right
to assent to taxes and they had a well-developed practice

of demanding certain concessions before assenting to them.10

 

10Richardson and Sayles point out that Commons had
achieved their position by the end of Richard II's reign
but I think that it is not unreasonable to argue as
Wilkinson does that the foundation of the rights of
Commons was laid in the reign of Edward, and in particular
between 1339 and 1362 (the date that Parliament succeeded
in extracting a promise from Edward that he would not
levy taxes on wool without the consent of Parliament).
See further: H.G. Richardson and G.0. Sayles, Parliaments

and Great Councils in Medieval En land (London: Stevens
and Sons, Ltd., 1961): and B. Wilkinson, Constitutional
History of Medieval England (London: Longman's Green
& Co., 1952).

26

While the upper class had been somewhat placated
by Edward's successful and popular war in France they
were still suffering from a basic insecurity brought on
by three major forces. The first and perhaps most impor-
tant was the deteriorating economic situation just discussed.
Their rents were worth less and less and at the same time
they were asked to pay more for labor, for goods, and
in taxes.

Politically, the position of the nobility was under-
mined by the very popularity of the king. Their position
as advisors to the king was decreasing in respect to
their ability to unite in order to contain a nascent,
centralized monarchy, and the failure of the civil dis-
turbances of the first thirty years of the century had
done nothing for their prestige.

Thirdly, the wars which were so popular with the
nobility were also a source of trouble. The continual
wars with Scotland and France brought the invention of
new weapons such as the Swiss pike and the longbow,
which put an end to the military dominance of this class.
As the English footsoldier took over many of the duties of
the warrior class, the monarchs began to use this new
military force against the power of the nobility which
began to see its military and social status, even its

values, seriously threatened. Even more importantly,

27

the English footsoldier learned, both in the Scottish
wars and at Crécy and Poitiers, that he could overcome
and kill a fully armed knight.ll

In addition to these political and economic upheavals
a great change was taking place in the religious life
of the country which contributed to the uncertainty of
the age. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had brought
renewed enthusiasm for reform. Great numbers of monks
and friars poured into England during the remainder of
the century but unfortunately their zeal and dedication
began to fall off as the years passed. By 1325 there were
signs of discontent as monks and friars were subjected
to an increasing flow of criticism both from within the
upper ranks of the clergy and from secular sources.12
The Babylonian Captivity, which lasted until 1377, had
strong repercussions in England, where it was assumed
that the Pope was controlled by the French monarch. This
was not, strictly speaking, the case, but Edward III
seized on this as a convenient excuse to confiscate tithes
which otherwise would have gone into the Papal coffers.
Edward's propaganda played on the national pride of his

people and a series of letters written to the Pope in

 

11Arthur B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English
Chivalry (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1960),
p. 3.

12See below, Chapter IV.

28

1343, 1344, and 1348 culminated in the first Statutes of
Provisors and Praemunire (1351 and 1353).13

The sojourn of the Papacy in France and the dis-
content raised by an army of greedy, immoral monks and
friars began to take their toll of the common people's
respect for the Church and her servants, adding to the
general tendency to reject old institutions and solutions.

The landed classes were affected (or repulsed) in
much the same way. The founding of chantries, for example,
reached a high point between 1330-39 and was already
declining rapidly by mid-century, reaching a low point

between l380—89.lu

It would seem, then, that the enthu-
siasm for chantries decreased with the waning authority
of the Church in spite of the proximity of death which
one might expect would have increased the numbers of such
foundations.

The Church was already losing its position in society
by 1350, and the greatest disillusionment came with the
Great Schism of 1378. It must have seemed to Englishmen
at this point that the Church was no longer capable of

reforming herself and a great deal of attention was turned

 

13McKisack, pp. 272-4, 280. Briefly, these statutes
were aimed at stemming the flow of cash out of England
and at prohibiting appeals outside of the king's courts.

14A1an Kreider, "The Historical setting of the
Dissolution of the Chantries" (Unpublished Ph.D. disser-
tation, Department of History, Harvard University, 1970),
Table I.

29

to the problem of the Church in the last half of the
century. Some men, Wycliffe for example, turned from
the Church in disgust and it became the object of a
whole flood of criticism. Others, however, attempted to
revive the old spirit of the Church. Men like Richard
Rolle attempted to bring the passion and humanity of
Christ back into their religious experience.

The intimacy in mystical religion, combined with

its dependence on the perceptual experience of the senses
points to yet another change which was occurring in the
generation before the Plague. The problems we have examined
thus far all point to subjects which were bound to interest
men of the period. Death had an obvious interest for men
living in an age of famine, pestilence and war as did
the reform of the Church when in this same age it was
unable to offer help and consolation to the troubled.
The direction which the expression of the uneasiness and
discontent was to take--the change from an idealistic to
a realistic view of the world--was due to changes going
on in the intellectual life of the country.

The Hundred Years War brought a change in the liter-
ary life of the country. The popular romances and love
poems which had been the dominant literary form of the
thirteenth century had all followed the French model.

The reaction against French culture, brought on by the

30

war, is part of the explanation for the change from the
more happy, idealistic French school of southern England
to a harsh, simple, realistic Northenischool.15

A second explanation for this shift is provided
by the change in philosophy. In the last years of the
thirteenth century the Aristotelian influence was being
felt in artistic and literary fields as well as in phil-
osophy. The Aristotelian philosophers showed an aversion
to the exact method of mathematical and syllogistic deduc-
tions which had dominated thirteenth century philosophy.
They showed, in fact, an "equally remarkable inclination
toward the practical, empirical, and observational method."16
Aristotelianism focused attention on the active and
variegated life of ordinary men which began to be expressed
in the art and literature of the early fourteenth century
in the form of a rich naturalism.

By the 1330's Aquinas' efforts to find a union
between faith and reason had been abandoned and between
1320 and 1350 scholasticism was transformed from a positive
effort to join the natural and supernatural into an

attitude of criticism and scepticism.l7 This is most

 

15Sisam, pp. xvii-xix: see also below, p.

16Walter Ullmann, The Individual and Society in the
Middle Ageg (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966),
p. 118.

17A good discussion of Ockham and his impact on
scholasticism may be found in Gordon Leff, "The Fourteenth
Century and the Decline of Scholasticism," Past and Present.
no. 9 (April, 1956), see especially pp. 30-34.

31

evident in the work of Ockham, who maintained that abstracts
are the result of mental processes and that sensory exper-
ience is the sole criterion of reality. The influence
'of the emphasis on the individual rather than the general
was reflected by the highly sensory, individual religion
of the mystics. More importantly, however, it was reflected
in an increasing penchant for realistic detail and a
predisposition to reject the ideals of thirteenth century
society in favor of the realities of the fourteenth century.
In the period between 1320 and the coming of the
Plague may be found the reasons for the abrupt change in
the tenor of life and thought in medieval England. It
was the following generation, however, which saw the
growth and fruition of the unrest and disappointments
of this period. The ills which had produced apprehension
in the generation before the Plague came to a climax in
the generation which followed.
Economic conditions did not improve greatly in this
generation. A second serious visitation of the plague
came in 1361, followed by a third in 1369. In this
same year farm livestock was stricken by disease and the
harvest was the worst in the century.18 The expense of

the wars and government brought continued taxation and

 

18Milton Briggs and Percy Jordan, Economic History
of England, 11th ed.. rev. (London: University Tutorial
Press, Ltd., 1964), p. 64.

32

the sporadic attempts at enforcement of the labor and

price laws, along with attempts by landlords to re-activate
old customary services, increased the discontent of the
peasants.

The feeling of decline in the national honor increased.
Edward III began to lose ground in France after 1360.
Scotland again became a problem when the first Stuart
king, Robert II, cemented an alliance with France in
1371. Edward's plan to build an alliance with Flanders
fell through when the heiress of Flanders, Burgundy, and
Artois married the French king's brother instead of
Edmund Langley, Edward's fifth son. Finally, Gascony
was driven into the arms of the French by the taxation
and mis-management of the Black Prince. After the English
fleet was destroyed off La Rochelle in 1372 only Calais
and a strip of coast from Bordeaux to Bayonne were still
firmly in Edward's hands.

The government grew progressively weaker and the
baronial opposition to the crown was revived. ‘The Black
Prince returned to England in 1371 in very poor health.
Edward had begun to lose interest in administration by
this time and the rest of his reign was given over to the
mis-governance of his favorites at court.

In the years after the Plague the discontent of the

lower classes grew rapidly. "What was new in the slump

33

conditions of the mid-fourteenth century was a bitterness
in the lord's relations with the villagers," says Hay.19
Instances of peasants refusing to do demesne work became
common. Men were fined for missing haymaking or for
reaping their own corn on the day they were supposed to
be working for the lord of the manor. One Robert Baker
upbraided the jury in full court for returning a false
verdict and Walter Breuer disturbed the court with scorn-
ful words and the steward could not make him calm down.
Another tenant was convicted of opening the lord's
sluices so that the hay was flooded.20

The decade of the 1370's was particularly harsh.
Economic conditions were as bad as they had ever been
and the maintenance of order had broken down due to the
mis-governance of the aging Edward and the pre-occupation
of his son, John of Gaunt, with his own Spanish projects.
The Peasants' Revolt, which broke out in 1381, was the
result of all the accumulated social and economic grievances
which had been building for half a century. .Even though
the revolt was hastily and brutally put down the fear and
discontent remained for many years after.

Against such a background it is not at all surprising

to find that the mood of England had changed. The generation

 

19Hay. p. 35.

20Numerous examples of such discontent are recorded
by McKisack, pp. 335-39.

34

before the Plague began to sense that their world was
changing and their uneasiness gave rise to new topics of
interest as well as to new ways of expressing these topics.
Intellectual changes pointed the way for the change from
idealism to realism in expression but it was the combination
of severe economic, political, and spiritual strains which
made the new realistic mode of expression popular. The
generation after the Plague witnessed the failure of the
medieval system to solve the economic, and political
problems, as well as the spiritual strains in England,
and it was in this generation that the new realistic mood
supplanted the older idealistic vision of the world.
Although the reign of Richard II was a period of
rebuilding in England the tensions of the preceding
thirty years continued to exist and no real solutions were
found. The pOpulation began to expand once again and trade
grew rapidly. This rebuilding was new to England and
was creating a new class of people who were not as pes-
simistic as their fathers had been. Nevertheless, the
old complaints continued and the basis of the expression
of this generation continued to be realistic.
The medieval system was still unable to solve the
pressing problems of the age. The economic situation slowly
improved in spite of itself. The Pope returned to Rome

in 1377 but the Church immediately broke into a seemingly

35

irreconcilable schism. In England the young king had
launched a policy aimed at restoring the power of the crown
but this provoked the opposition of the barons and of a
new political force, the Commons. None of these problems
which had made life so uncertain was solved in this century
and even the superficial revival of Richard's reign came

to an abrupt end in 1399.

The changing nature of the fourteenth century is
reflected in new ideas and the realism employed to express
these ideas. Although the causes of this shift in outlook
may be found in the many troubles of the century much may
be learned about the nature of English life in this
period by examining the realism which Englishmen began to
employ as a means of expressing their vision of the world

around them.

CHAPTER II

Changing Tone in Art

The changing tenor of fourteenth century life is
reflected in art by a reaction against the idealistic
mood of thirteenth century art. Late in the thirteenth
century there had been a new stress laid on sense per-
ception which engendered a form of naturalism in art.

The realism which followed in the next century owed

much to this naturalism. Visible as early as the 1320's,
realism was confirmed as the dominant mode of expression
by the generation which lived through the Plague because
it could better express the weltanschauung of an age

in which medieval institutions were breaking down.

To understand the magnitude and importance of the
change from idealism to realism in the fourteenth century
it is important to understand something of the intense
idealism which permeated medieval thought in the pre-
ceding century. Medieval art and architecture had always
been closely related to philosophy, and the new Gothic

form as it was introduced into England in the last decades

36

37

of the twelfth century was no exception.1 The contra-
dictions pointed out by Abelard and the subsequent influx
of Aristotelian thought into Europe brought problems to
philosophy. The field of man's own knowledge, or reason,
came into conflict with revelation. There was a need to
reconcile the contradictions in philosophy which was left
for the scholars of the thirteenth century.

Just as scholastics of the thirteenth century were
trying to clarify and define the limits of philosophy
and of revelation so, too, were artists attempting to
manifest the completeness and limits of the spheres of
logic and revelation. To do this, both used what Panofsky
calls a principle of "collective unity" which is made
up of three necessary parts: totality, arrangement
according to a system of homologous parts, and sufficient
interrelation.2 The fascination of the thirteenth century
scholastics or artists with this system did not mean that
they were attempting to glorify reason itself. Rather,
it meant that they hoped to make faith clearer through

reason by making everything clear and explicit to the

 

18cc especially Max Dvorak, Idealism and Naturalism
in Gothic Art, trans. Randolph Klawiter (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1967). Dvorak is not
alone in stressing the importance of philosophy to art.
See also Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholas-
ticism (New York: Meridian Books, 1957): and, to a lesser
extent, Robert Branner, Gothic Architecture (New York:
George Braziller, 1967).

2Panofsky, Gothic Architecture, p. 31.

38

intellect. The desire to combine scholasticism and
mysticism (what can be known through reason and what
through revelation) was very strong in the thirteenth
century.

Gothic builders set out with the purpose of creating
an edifice which would emphasize the logic of its struc-
ture but would at the same time emphasize its spiritual
content. The approach used was the principle of "collec-
tive unity." In such cathedrals as Salisbury and Wells
the principle of arrangement was achieved by a uniform
division and subdivision of the whole structure according
to a logical plan. The building itself was divided into
three main parts-~nave, transept, and chevet--and then
further subdivided into nave aisles and side aisles.3
The facades of most English cathedrals of the thirteenth
century, especially Salisbury, also illustrate this
systematic division of space into uniform, logical
groupings. Thus there is a system of progressive divis-
ibility or multiplicity which tends to suppress the
enormous variety of Romanesque in favor of standard

types which allow only for such variations as might be

 

3Hans Jantzen, High Gothic, trans. James Palmes
(New York: The Minerva Press, 1962), pp. 29-38.

39

expected to occur in nature between individuals of the
same species.u

This division according to species was necessary
to preserve the sufficient interrelation between the
individual parts of the building. Each individual part
must be distinct, yet all the elements must remain blended
into the whole. The ribs of the vault at Salisbury (figure
II), for example, must have both an individual identity
which separates each from its neighbor and at the same
time they must all blend harmoniously in the general
plan of the nave.

The most important of the three aspects of the
principle of "collective unity" is totality. The object

of this drive for totality in the Gothic cathedral was

 

“Paul Frankl, The Gothic, Literar Sources and
Inter retations Thro h Ei ht Centuries (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1960). Frankl distinguishes
Gothic from Romanesque by calling Gothic divisive while
Romanesque is additive. Romanesque is built up of sep-
arate, almost self-sufficient parts (chapels, ambulatory,
apse, choir) while Gothic is divided into parts (a chevet
containing ambulatory, radiating chapels, etc.). This is
a view with which I am in agreement. Frankl found the
proof of his thesis in the Gothic ribbed vault. The
choir vaults at Lincoln Cathedral seem to me to be par-
ticularly good examples of Frankl's contention that the
diagonality of the ribs spelled the difference between
the unity of the Romanesque spatial cell and the division
of the Gothic cell (see Figure III).

Although Branner (Robert Branner, "Review of Paul
Frankl's Gothic Architecture," Art Bulletin, L (1968),

p. 199) criticizes Frankl's extension of this thesis
into the areas of esthetics (calling some things 'less
Gothic') he agrees with the essential nature of the
Gothic style and speaks of the division of Gothic Space
into spatial cells. See also Branner, Gothic, p. 14.

40

 

 

FIGURE I

West Facade, Wells Cathedral

41

 

FIGURE II

Salisbury Cathedral Nave

42

 

 

 

 

FIGURE III

Plan of the choir vaults
Lincoln Cathedral
(c. 1192)

 

43

the removal of all the barriers between reason and revela-
tion. Panofsky remarks that
Pre-Scholasticism had insulated faith from reason
by an impervious barrier much as a Romanesque struc-
ture conveys the impression of a space determinate
and impenetrable, whether we find ourselves inside
or outside the edifice.
The exterior is meant to be logical but as the worshipper
enters the building the logic gives way to a boundless
interior space pierced at every point by the mystical
light pouring in through the many stained-glass windows.
This transformation of the gothic experience from
logical to mystical is not fortuitous. In the mysticism

of the Victorine tradition6

logic is useful for bringing
one to the threshold of the mystical experience and this
is the position of the exterior of the cathedral. Once
through the door, once having reached into the central
mystery of faith, reason is of no avail. Here the

worshipper is drenched in mystical light which was

thought of as the visual equivalent of divine illumination.

 

5Panofsky, Gothic Architecture, p. 43.

6One of the basic tenets of this school was that
man must first prepare himself through the use of logic
to understand the world and himself. Once this under-
standing has been achieved he may, through the grace of
God, pass on to a higher state of mystical experience
where logic is of no further use and all is learned
through divine revelation.

44

St. Augustine had developed the idea that intellec-
tual perception results from an act of illumination in
which the divine intellect enlightens the human mind.7
For the thinkers of the late Middle Ages light was the most
noble and natural phenomena, the closest approximation
of pure form. In Grosseteste's thought light actually
became the mediator between bodiless and bodily substances.
Abbot Suger, whose contribution to Gothic art cannot be
ignored, was fond of quoting passages from the mystical
pseudo-Dionysius who argued that our intellects are so
frail that they are incapable of perceiving God face to
face. Therefore God interposes images between Him and us.
The Holy Word, he says, is meant to be such a screen
since it presents us with images of God designed to be
imperfect, distorted, and even contradictory. The win-
dows in a Gothic cathedral, Suger adds, are also screens
between men and God, yet they also allow man to contem-
plate and partake of the divine light.9

Structurally, of course, the windows were all-important

in producing this luminous quality. At Salisbury Cathedral

 

7von Simson, p. 52.
8D.E. Sharp, Franciscan Philoso h in Oxford (Oxford:
At the Clarendon Press, 1930), pp. 20,23.

9Suger, Oeuvres completes de Sgger, ed. A Lecoy
de la Marche (Paris: n.p.. 1867), pp. 81-82.

 

45

(figure II) the illusion of weightlessness was also
created by breaking up every solid feature of the building
and placing the main emphasis upon the vertical rather
than the horizontal lines. Vaults were broken up by rib-
bing, arches by deep mouldings, and the solid, Romanesque
piers were divided by detached shafts. Sculpture, in
this context, was an adjunct of architecture meant to
dissolve the stone faces of the walls.

The Gothic experience was meant to be a total one,
drawing the soul out of the viewer and leading him to a
deeper other-worldly understanding.

In the entire visible world there is hardly a more

powerful mood-impression than that experienced

within one of the Gothic cathedrals just as the

sun is setting. Everything within the cathedral

interior shimmers indistinctly and the eye can see

nothing beyond those clear, glimmering figures which
hover overhead to the west in stern solemn rows or
in mystic combinations of lines as the evening sun
falls across them. There the sensation of fire

permeates all, and the colors sing out, rejoicing 10

and sobbing. In truth, this is a different world.
Gothic painting and sculpture was governed by the same
general desire to create a total experience which would
lead the faithful gently onward toward illumination.

The lines which Suger had engraved on the bronze doors

of his monastery church illustrate this point.

 

loJulius Lange, as quoted by Dvofék, p. 75.

46

Mens Hebes ad verum per materialia surgit,
Et, demersa prius, hac visa luce resurgit.ll

The thirteenth century artist, like the architect,
was most interested in creating an impression or sen-
sation in his viewer. The literal representation of
nature was not the object of his labors, not because he
could not, but because he did not wish to imitate nature.
For medieval man the nucleus of the artistic insight lay
in the teaching of God rather than in nature. These
teachings emphasized the Grace of God which allowed
men to transcend the relative values of nature to a
realization of the spiritual order, an understanding
which lay within the reflective soul and not within the
sense experience of man. Art could not attain its highest
goals simply by the imitation of nature and thus it sought
to exemplify ideal conceptions through natural forms.12

To the thirteenth century artist these natural features
were more important than ever before. Although the
emphasis did not rest primarily on the physical charac-
teristics of the subject, these characteristics were
important because they accentuated the spiritual pro-

11Adolphe N, Didron, Manuel d'icono ra hie chrétienne
(Paris: Imprimerie remains—mim—
lates this passage: "The untutored mind is able to rise
toward the truth when aided by material objects, and the

soul plunged in darkness is able to rise again by that
light which art causes to shine before his eyes."

 

12A good discussion of the "spiritualistic Weltan-
schauung" of Gothic art may be found in Dvorak, pp. 51-50.

47

perties which the artist was trying to depict: the
charm of the tenderly sensitive Virgin who was also a
woman: the will of a Christian champion who had perhaps
died on a crusade, strong in itself but yet resigned to
the stronger will of God: or the mild, illumined wisdom
of a scholar at the university.

In creating these impressions the Gothic figure avoids
the appearance of standing firmly on the ground. The
figures are firm and solid but at the same time are
meant to convey an impression of weightlessness, as if
the portrayal of the internal qualities of the soul rather
than the natural figure of the body are the objective of
the artist. A peculiarly English trait is the use of a
linear contour drawing which gives a firmness and clarity
to the figure itself. Yet the faces are often simple to
the point of emptiness and the bodies seem to sway in an
S-shaped curve counteracting the visual effect of the
heavy, linear design.

Examples of such traits are not hard to find.13 They
are particularly evident in the wall paintings at the
church in Black Bourton, Oxon, where the bodies have

a graceful, swaying movement but at the same time the

 

13Tristram points out that, "Legibility at a distance
seems to have remained a primary consideration in wall-
painting, for it is manifest that great care was devoted
to the design of the silhouette . . . ." E. W. Tristram,
The Thirteenth Century, p. 21.

48

hair and face of Christ are a series of stylized lines, and
the lips and eyes combined with the nose-eye-brow line
is extremely stylized.

The same care of design characterized manuscript
illumination. The figures in a book of hours from about
1246, for example, have much the same feeling and tech-

nique as the Black Bourton figures.1u

The angel with the
fifth vial in the Douce Apocalypse15 is shown in an uncom-
fortably distorted position. The chests, shoulders, and
arms of all the figures give the impression of volume,
as do the faces, and yet the contorted shapes of the
figures, and the affected positions of the hands, make the
whole composition lack conviction and lend to it a some-
what pedantic air. Yet when we observe the dry linear
techniques we may see that the reason for the raised,
twisted arm of the angel is to provide a rhythm to reverse
that of the raised arm of the blasphemer next to him.

The statues of the facade of Wells Cathedral provide
a similar linear feeling. The thin. hard ridges of the
drapery and the stylized lines of the hair give a feeling
of movement. The figures, as a whole, have an assured,
restful quality about them which is the combination of

this wavy movement of the lines, the easy stance, quiet

gestures, and the firm poise of the heads.

 

148.M., Harleian 928.

150xford, Bodleian Library, Douce Mss. 180, fol. 66.

49

This assurance and restful quality are the real
marks of the idealistic phase of English Gothic. The
figures usually have a quiet dignity and a solemnity which
gives a marked devotional feeling to the entire work.
This is a great change from the Romanesque for there is
now a new emotional atmosphere which conveys a feeling
of quiet nobility. The use of rich colors, of deep
reds, greens, and blues, as well as an extensive use of
gold makes painting radiate light just as the interior
of a Gothic cathedral is bathed in light. "The same
brightness and light," says Brieger, "emanate from the
Christ in majesty in whom the awful remoteness of the
earlier periods is replaced by a serene mildness."16
The nobility of Christ and the saints is emphasized and
yet He is endowed with human compassion: the theme of
Christ as a good king is carefully balanced with Christ
as a judge. The figure of Christ is clothed with majesty
as the Divine Son and the Virgin is the Queen of Heaven.
Gothic painting, like Gothic architecture, was dynamic,
full of life, light, and movement. It reproduced both
the shapes and forms of the object as well as the thought
which was embodied in it. Where they had once been dark

and severe they now became light and graceful. The painting

16Peter Brieger, English Art, 1216-1302, Vol. IV:
Oxford History of Art, ed. T.S.R. Boase 15 vols.: Oxford: At
The Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 83.

 

50

of this century, as Tristram points out, "is distinguished
by its freedom, and pervaded by a spirit of gaiety,
adventure, and discovery."17

The mood of the thirteenth century was idealistic.
The lower class was depicted as consisting of happy
peasants doing the jobs for which they were intended.

The upper classes were hunters, noble ladies in prayer
or knights fighting battles. The entire period was
suffused with a gaiety and serene confidence in the
future.

Perhaps the feature most illustrative of the new
mood of gaiety and most characteristic of the art of the
period is the development of the small grotesque. These
little figures romp and play in ideal backgrounds. They
are happy, seldom fearsome, constructs of the artists'
imaginations which often mock aspects of society but more
often are merely decorative in function. The terror-
inspiring devils of the Romanesque era are changed and
depicted in an often deliberately comic manner. The
devils in the church at Oddington, Gloucester, for example,
are much too fun loving to be fearsome. Done in the
first decade of the century, the donkey playing a harpixi

Harleian 5102 is certainly a light, happily-drawn figure

 

17Tristram, The Thirteenth Century, p. 21.

51

and he seems to laugh and enjoy himself immensely.18

The dragon which so frightens the little man on the left
of one of the miniatures in another Harleian manuscript19
has the head of a fierce-looking older woman and is no
doubt intended as a caricature of someone's wife or
mother-in-law. The introductory pages of the Bible of
ngllam of Devon from mid-century contains some extra-
ordinarily lively and humorous grotesque whimseys in the
margins.20

This happy, hearty mockery of the sins and horrors
of the world is offset or complemented by the feeling of
confidence exhibited by such works as the deacons on
the east buttresses of the north tower at Wells Cathedral
(0. 1220). There is an assured, restful mobility about
these figures. The quiet gestures and easy stance, the
firm poise of the heads combined with the serene expres-
sions of the faces give an impression of quiet confidence
in the world about them and a feeling of gentle, yet firm
motion.

In one of the earliest manuscripts from this period,
the Westminster Psalter of about 1200, the feeling is

much the same.21 The figures are marked by a firmness

 

18B.M.. Harleian 5102, fol. 13v (a Psalter, c. 1200).
19B.M., Harleian 928, fol. 73v (Book of Hours, 1246).
20B.M., Royal I D i.

218.M., Royal 2 A xxii.

52

and clarity of drawing which is one of the hallmarks of
English wall painting. There is an attempt at modelling
of the figures and they are of a solid, bulky type but the
draperies are flat and the contour is irregular. Still,
these figures have an unmistakable dignity and solemnity
about them. The Christ in Majesty (fol. 14) is one of
the better miniatures of this manuscript. The figure

of Christ is firm and heavy in proportions with strong
black contour lines which model the figure. The large.
solid head with its solemn expression seems to gaze out
quietly as if in a trance. The draperies are thick and
heavy but are arranged in simple, broad, rhythmic curves
which appear to roll up at the edges and lend a sense

of softly swirling motion to the entire composition.

The All Souls Psalggg in Oxford illustrates the
desire for a balance between symbolism and the human
emotion first attempted in the Bible of Robert de Bellg
(c. 1224-1250).22 The artist of the Psalter, one William
de Brailes, successfully balanced the rich linear pattern
and the strong contour drawing of the figures. They
are tall and slender and lack solidity. Their poses
and gestures are unnatural but are designed to express

intense emotion. The swaying Virgin half turns away

 

22See Margaret Rickert, Painting in Bgitain in the
Middle Ages, Vol. ZS of The Pelican History of A32, ed.
Nikolaus Pevsner (12 vols.: Harmonsworth, England: Penguin
Books, 1954).

53

away from Christ on the cross with her hands clasped

tightly and her head bowed in grief. The dead Christ

is emaciated and bleeding but sublime in features and form.23
The feeling of the work is of motion and emotion harmon-
iously mixed in an unreal setting.

This balance is upset slightly in the Evesham Psalter
(figure IV) done about the same time.24 The folds of the
draperies are done in a rich chiaroscuro pattern which
defies gravity and, especially on the Christ, give a feeling
of much more abrupt motion than is found in the All Souls
Psalter. Tremendous emotional tension is focused between
the drawn expression of the dying Christ and the staring,
sorrowful eyes of Mary and John. Yet despite the emotion
of the work there remains a certain nobility in the faces
and in the long, thin contours of the bodies.

The Virgin and Child by Matthew Paris (figure V)25
maintains the same tranquility although his work is very
different in style. The firm, heavy proportions of the
figures, the large, solid heads, and the heavy, thick
draperies are more characteristic of the Romanesque mon-

umental style than the lithe, early Gothic. One of

 

23B.M., Burney 3.
2”B.M., Additional 44874 (c. 1250).

253.M., Royal 14 C vii, fol. 6 (mid-century).

ywfidgmfi
. ( .t.,l, ;.1,

. iVVim,

In.

54

 

 

 

FIGURE IV

The Evesham Psalt er

55

Paris' assistants, Brother William the Englishman, uses
much the same style in his work in the Lives of the
Q££g§26 but his style is much more linear which, while
giving his portraits a monotonous sameness, also gives
a much greater sense of motion and action to the drawings
of battles and other scenes of intense action.

For the most part, the work of the first half of
the thirteenth century remained non-anatomical. Faces
were generally constructed with a set formula of lines
which varied according to the character type which the
artist was attempting to portray. This is especially
evident in the long, thin, sinuous fingers and limbs,
and the elongated bodies of the figures in the Oscott
Psalter.27 There seems to have been no attempt to construct
a portrait as we think of it today, for even the self-
portrait of Matthew Paris (figure V) is constructed as
a monk-type rather than as an individual.

By the 1270's there was already a growing trend
toward naturalism which was an important prerequisite
to the realism of the latter half of the next century.
The zenith of the attempt to harmonize faith and reason
had come in the middle years of the thirteenth century.

The cathedral builders and the philosophers had been

 

26B.M., Cotton Nero D I, see especially fol. 4
from mid-century.

27B.M., Additional 50,000 (0. 1270).

56

 

 

 

FIGURE V

Virgin and Child

57

able to make faith and reason, the mind and the senses
work together harmoniously. Yet the greatest of these
synthesizing philOSOphers, St. Thomas Aquinas, had fore-
shadowed the breakdown of this happy union of faith and
reason. He had argued that:
On the other hand, beauty relates to a cognitive
power, for those things are said to be beautiful
which please when seen. Hence beauty consists in
due proportion, for the senses delight in things
duly proportioned, as in what is like them--because
the sense too is a sort of reason, as is every
cognitive power.
The senses were important for what they saw was in some
way a reflection of God. "God rejoices absolutely in
all things because each one of them stands in actual
agreement with His being," said St. Thomas in another
passage.29
The increased attention to sense perception was
emphasized by the works of two great English scholars,
Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. The focus of thir-
teenth century art and philosophy had been on the totality,
the unity of faith and reason, rather than on the com-
plexity of the world, but this focus began to shift

along with the change in dominance from the realists to

the nominalists in philOSOphy in the closing years of

 

28Thomas Aquinas, Basic writin s of Saint Thomas
A uinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House,
1948), I, ques. 5, art. 4,

29As quoted in Dvorak, p. 161ff.

58

of the century. Ockham's critical nominalism denied

the existence of universals so that the universals dissolved
into an infinite number of particulars, and the principle
of totality, so important to the thirteenth century artist
and philosopher, was lost. Both mysticism and nominalism
threw the individual back on the experiences of the

senses as they both agreed that only the perceived is
real. Thus, the art of the period began to disintegrate
into a mass of individual parts which emphasized the
complexity rather than the totality of the world.

This concentration on detail and individual elements in
art and architecture tended to reduce everything to
ornament breaking up the intellectual, and sometimes the
artistic unity of the subject, leaving an underlying

sense of contradiction.

This focus on the individual elements of the total
work was first reflected in the naturalism which emerged
early in the fourteenth century. The Queen Mary's Psgiggg
(figure VI)30 is, I think, one of the best examples of
trend for it combines the elegance and nobility of expression
toward which the thirteenth century artist strove with
the naturalism and richness of decoration which arose out
of the changes in philosophy taking place at the turn of

of the century. The exquisite figures in this manuscript

 

308.M., Royal 2 B vii (c. 1300).

59

 

 

FIGURE VI

The Queen May's Psalter

60

are sketched in lightly but with firmness and great
precision of outline as opposed to the much harsher outline
style of the preceding century. The figures have a pro-
nounced modeled effect which is achieved by the lightest
and most refined use of shading in light browns. The
figures are admirably proportioned, seem to have none of
the awkwardness of pose which characterized the earlier
period, and they are unsurpassed in their supple ease,
refinement, and elegance of form. The draperies fall

in natural folds and are softly tinted in violet, green,
red, or brown. Even the borders are delicately shaded
to give a deep, molded effect.

Even though there is a considerable amount of natur-
alism evident in the little animals playing along the
bottom margins of the pages, the Queen Mary's Psalter
preserves an essentially idealistic outlook. The natur-
alistic animals play in idealized backgrounds mingling
on equal terms with griffins, unicorns, and grotesques.
The "many delightful pictures of contemporary life"
which Sir George Warner finds so prominent31 are usually
knights fighting or ladies in idealized court scenes:

probably not a very accurate picture of contemporary

 

3lsir George Warner, ueen Mar '8 Psalter (London:
The British Museum, 1912), p. .

61

life even for the nobility} The majority of the scenes
contain mythical beasts or are illustrations of myths,
not illustrations of "contemporary life" and the sense
of idealism is never lost.

Despite the great emphasis on naturalism both in the
decorative borders and in the figures themselves it would
be a mistake to find any attempt at portraiture at this
early date. The graciousness and dignified attitudes of
the figures reflect a general attitude toward the world
and a general type of person rather than a portrait.
The earliest attempt at portraiture I have seen is in an
apocalypse of somewhat uncertain date (probably about 1320).32
The face of Eve (folio 2) is the face of a middle-aged
woman with a long, sharp nose, squinting eyes, and a double
chin. It is possible that this figure was drawn with a
model in mind but the miniature itself is not meant as a
portrait of a person but rather as a general type of
Eve-as-shrew. According to medieval custom, Eve drove
Adam to eat the apple by her nagging. In general, however,
the figures are either grotesques of evil men, peasants
in ideal settings, or figures of upper class people with
the same solemn nobility and grace which the artists of
the thirteenth century had tried to impart. Even the

trend toward naturalism in portraits of nobility and

 

32B.M., Royal 15 D ii.

62

royalty was checked, until somewhat later in the four-
teenth century, by the wish to preserve the royal dignity
to the full by means of idealization of the features.33
The stiff-leafed formula which the thirteenth century
artists had settled on is abandoned in the beginning of
the fourteenth century when the increased emphasis on the
individual demanded that foliage also be more naturalistic.
Manuscripts from the first quarter of the century are
bordered with lush, green vegetation and the decoration
comes to take on an enhanced role in the design of the
page as a whole. The Queen Mary's Psalter manages to
balance the decoration on the page rather well but in the
Gorleston Psalter34 the decoration takes over the entire
page although it is confined to linear borders with
lively and interesting animal scenes. The focus is on
the liveliness and the lushness of the dream-like scene.
Wall painting of the period, though of necessity
much broader in composition with much heavier outline,
retained much of the style of the miniaturist. The
paintings of the Virgin series at Chalgrove, Oxon, and

those which once existed in the ceiling of the Chapter

 

33See especially the painting of Edward I on the
sedilia, Westminster Abbey.

34The Gorleston Psalter ("British Museum Facdmiie
559:" London: The Courtald Institute of Art, n.d.).
This manuscript was executed between 1310 and 1330.

63

House at York must have had much in common.35 The long,
thin figures are delicate in spite of the fact that they
were consciously designed and treated with a view to
securing maximum visibility. The borders are rich in
foliated ornament, with birds and a variety of grotesques
surrounding the scenes. In both tone and style they

seem to have much in common with the miniatures of the
period. The faces of the Virgin and Apostles are more
than a series of stylized lines and are carefully modeled.
The outline is heavy but delicately drawn and their shading
gives a sense of volume and naturalism not common to
earlier works.

The increasing desire for naturalism is particularly
evident in the development of tomb sculpture. In the
early years of the thirteenth century effigies were in
low relief sculpture and looked extremely flat. They lie
with arms close to their bodies and hands in attitudes
of piety, clasped in prayer, holding a book or crozier,
or raised in blessing. In all, the impression given is
one of immobility, an impression which is increased by
the shallow, highly stylized folds of the drapery.

This began to change, especially when the medium of

Purbeck marble came into common usage in the 1250's.

 

35See the description of York in E.W. Tristram,
Wall Painting of the Fourteenth Century. pp. 59-60.

 

64

The gradual shift in material enabled sculpture to take
on the same lithe movement, the grace, and the concentra-
tion on detail found in other forms of art. The Aristo-
telian doctrine of the ideal beauty of natural forms re-
minded man that death is only a step leading to a more
perfect life. The most common subject of tomb sculpture
in the thirteenth century was the ascent of the soul
into heaven. The confidence in the after-life was
translated into stone and the effigy usually had a peace-
ful, even happy visage. The journey of the soul to heaven
was an almost joyous affair. Borre up by angels, the
soul of Amer de Valence, on his tomb in Westminster
Abbey (1323), is enveloped by a shroud, perhaps symbolizing
the separation of the earthly and heavenly spheres. More
than anything else, says s'Jacob,
. . . this willing surrender to a superior power
illustrates the positive faith of the Middle Ages.
Only a pre-eminently idealistic epoch is cagable
of formulating conceptions of this nature.3
Naturalism, as it existed in the early years of
the fourteenth century, was no more than an outgrowth of
the thirteenth century Gothic style. Sense perception
had not yet overshadowed revelation as the primary source
of knowledge and naturalism was based on what Dvofék

calls a "transcendental-idealistic" presupposition: that

above the world of the senses, above nature or life

 

36Henriette s'Jacob, Idealism and RealismI A Study
of Sepulchral Symbolism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 195 , p. 118.

65

itself, stands God's revelation.37 Still, this naturalism
with its attention to detail and its close association
with the world of sense perception opened the door for
a reaction against the idealism upon which it was founded.
The harbingers of this reaction were already in evi-
dence early in the fourteenth century when the first
attempts to portray the real features of the body just
after death were made by tomb sculptors.38 This trend
was quite in keeping with the new emphasis on naturalism
in art as a whole except that, whereas previous sepulchral
monuments had dealt primarily with the life of the soul
after death, these monuments dealt with the life of the
body from the moment of its death until complete decom-
position had occurred. Death presented a more fearsome
visage and it was the horror rather than the expectation
of life in death which was of interest to these men. A
new form of sepulchral imagery began to replace the
commemorative effigy as early as 1320.39 In this form the
effigy is not meant to represent the body in its youthful

prime or even the body as it lies on a bed of state

 

37Dvofak, p. 94.

38There is some evidence that the effigy of Edward I
was made from a wax death-mask. See s'Jacob, p. 59.

39The example at Llantwit recorded by Boutell is

the earliest I have run across. See Charles Boutell,
Christian Monuments in England and Wales (London:
George Bell, 1849).

66

 

FIGURE VII

Tomb of Thomas de Apuldefeld
Lenham, Kent

 

Ql.lltrfl ..,.. V. .
up: . .
a fill.
-
L

67

iillll"‘||

“A;

 

 

FIGURE VIII
The Luttrell Psalter

68

before interment. Instead the viewer looks through holes
or openings in the coffin lid or sides and sees a body
decomposing in the grave.)+0 The tomb of William de.
Staunton dated 1326, and the tomb thought to be that of
Thomas de Apuldefelde (figure VII) of about fifty years
later are undoubtedly meant to be views of the body as
it lies in the tomb awaiting the Last Judgment. This sort
of tomb forms the basic type from which the horrifyingly
realistic effigies of the latter half of the century
were to come.

Realism and the reliance on sense perception were
also becoming more pronounced in other forms of art.
The Luttre;;;psg;£23 (figure VIII)41 illustrates well
the breakup of the decorative style of the beginning of
the century. There is, in this manuscript, an increasing
emphasis on the illustrative picture in the margin.
This tendency was, as we have seen, characteristic of

the Queen Mary's Psalter but in that work the illustrations

 

40383 Boutell, pp. 120-21. He distinguishes three
types of such tomb slabs: first, slabs where "the parts
of the figures represented are sunk below the surface of
the stone and made to appear as if they were disclosed by
the removal of portions of the coffin lid . . . :" second,
. . . "the partial development of the effigy is produced
by entirely cutting away the adjoining parts of stone . . . :"
third, " . . . the head, bust, or half-figure has the
appearance of being placed upon the surface of the slab
. . . ." Only those examples of the first type which have
an inscription on the cover may be conclusively taken to
be a body within a coffin according to Boutell.

”ls.h., Additional 42130 (c. 1340).

69

were confined to small, delicately drawn pictures in the
bottom margins. In the Luttrell Psalter the pictures

and grotesques are not only in the bottom margins but
along the sides and across the top. They are too large
for the scale of the page and even the leaf motifs are
often too large and coarse to be beautiful. The grotesques
are huge, monstrous beings but they have a hard, mechanical
appearance and are remarkable for their disruption of

the harmony and idealism which had been established by
the artists of the thirteenth century. The scenes, drawn
from contemporary life, display the same lively animation
in action and expression as well as a close observation
of details which had been characteristic of the natural-
istic period, yet the mood and tone of the work is
something different. The pictures are somewhat crudely
drawn by early fourteenth century standards. The concen-
tration is on non-religious scenes which sometimes border
on the morbid: the grotesque holding a death's head out
toward the reader on folio 27, for example. ‘The drawing
is harsher and the naturalism is only an adjunct in
producing a scene which throws itself out at the viewer
rather than being a small decorative addition to the
page. This, rather than the text, is meant to be the
focus of attention. The grotesques, especially, are

intended to create an instant of horror as the reader

70

turns the page. This is in direct contrast to the amiable
beasts and humorous grotesques seen in earlier works.

The passing of the Plague left England with a
weakened population and many problems. Many of the artists
died in the Plague and thus in the years directly after
1349 little was done in the production of new art work.
When it was resumed again, however, art adopted the
vigorously realistic outlook which had begun to be in
evidence in the 1340's, rejecting the idealism which was
unable to express this new world view. The Plague and
the hard times which followed assured the success of a
reaction against the idealism of early Gothic art. The
rest of the century is a period which uses realism, often
stark and horrible, to express a view of the world not
shared by its predecessors. Late fourteenth century men
were continually assaulted by art and literature which
attempted to shock, especially in the parish church.
"Whenever he entered his parish church," says Coulton,
there stood the great ghastly picture of the Last Judgment
staring down at him from the walls--blood and fire and
devils in pitiless realism . ."L’2

The realism of this art went beyond mere naturalism.

Naturalism had attempted to imitate nature because nature

 

“20.0. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge: The
University Press, 1938), p. l 5.

71

was created by God and hence, by imitating it, we partake
in some small measure in the creation. Realism, on the
other hand, often uses naturalism, but its purpose is to
show the bad, the shocking, and the horrible aspects of
life (and death)--aspects which cannot be understood but
only feared. The naturalism of the early part of the
century is like a color photograph of a mountainside
covered with flowers. The photograph dwells on the
beauty and upon the decorative aspects of the flowers.

A black and white photograph of the same mountain in the
fading light of dusk gives a far different impression for
then, though the same flowers are there, the emphasis is
on the stark outline of the mountain itself, upon the
awesome power and might of the mountain rather than upon
the delicate beauty of the flowers. The very luxuriance
of the naturalism in works like the Queen Mary's Psalter
encouraged a reaction. Authors, as we shall see, were
rejecting the same over-elaboration in literary forms

and artists, too, were beginning to dwell on simple
linear patterns which played down the color and detail

of the earlier works while retaining a fidelity to nature.
Realism changed the basis of artistic expression.
Idealistic details were left out because the artist wished
to express the harsh realities of life rather than the

pleasant, luxurious dream world of his predecessors.

72

His expression of these realities demanded a close obser-
vation of the world around him and thus art retained
something of the naturalistic technique of earlier artists
while rejecting their idealistic outlook.
The new realism was p0pular with both the upper and
lower classes. The art of the court circles had the most
in common with naturalism of the early years of the century.
Often called the "Dutch"style (because a number of artists
from the lowlands were imported by wealthy English patrons),
it was, ". . . plastically conceived throughout: scenes,
figures, and initial decoration are all thought of as
having substance and potential movement in three directions'.’+3
One of the earliest examples of this style is the
Bohun Psalter (c. l380).4u The Italian influence is
prominent in the features of the figures. The large black
eyes are covered by heavy lids (figure IX): black hair
and beards are set off by white faces, and the draperies
are richly shaded. The miniatures as a whole are much
smaller and are crowded into letters with little atten-
tion to background and, in fact, there is less attention
to detail than was noted in manuscripts of the first years

of the century.

 

43Margaret Rickert, The Reconstructed Carmelite
Missal (London: Faber and Faber, 1952 , p. 2.

44B.M., Egerton 3277.

73

,

or
. ' I

*- am‘m fo'
”*4“ {‘1-5‘

x
v I |
NA‘ put rk ‘
1 . |' ‘ 1..
~a--M—- -
cl. ‘ .

 

 

 

 

FIGURE IX

The Bohun Psalter

 

74

The decorative influence is still very much in
evidence in the borders of the Bohun Psalter. A
similar manuscript is a Psalter done about 1395.45
In this manuscript the decorative style is less rich
than the Bohun work and there are no marginal grotesques.
The faces are much the same as those of the Bohun Psalter,
having the same heavy-lidded, sullen faces which cannot,

I would say, be taken as portraits. The figures in both
these manuscripts have thin. swirling drapery and very
little body, characteristics of the earlier years of the
century. I doubt that they are the work of Hermann

Scheerre as has been suggested)?6 although they may have been
done by a member of his school. There is not the background
and depth of body characteristic of Scheerre's work and

the faces themselves, while like his work. are not of the
same quality.

The work of Scheerre is unmistakable. His technique
is a soft, painterly technique. The faces are lightly
modeled in browns, the modelling is delicate but firm,
and the figures are sensitive in gesture and expression.

The many historiated initials of the Bedford Hours“?

(figure X) illustrate his skill in differentiating types

 

458.M.. Additional 16968.

“6See Rickert, Painting in Britain, p. 169. Scheerre
was the greatest of the miniaturists imported to England
by Richard II.

“7B.M., Additional 42131 (c. 1395).

 

75

 

 

FIGURE X
The Bedford Hours

 

76

and some are undoubtedly realistic portraits of recog-
nizable individuals. He has a really remarkable ability
to show personality or emotional content in the faces
of his figures and even the figures themselves, in Spite
of the heavy black outline characteristic of English
art of the period, are full-bodied. The miniatures are
deeply modeled in a conscious attempt to create space.
The dressed figures have draperies which are very full,
and even though the body does not show through there is
an impression of solidity beneath.

"The Annunciation" (figure XI), which is the major
miniature in the Beaufort Hour398 illustrates another
side of Scheerre's work for here the architectural setting
is exquisitely painted in white and shaded in gray so as
to suggest a three-dimensional form. We are meant to see
the action as taking place in a small chapel. The floor is
lightly shaded with red toward the back so one has a
feeling of depth. The baldaquin of the prie-dieu with
the green and gold patterned backdrop makes a fine contrast
to the architecture and the two wonderful figures. These
larger figures are really beautifully done and are almost
beyond his time in that they have given up the heavy out-
line of the form: and the bodies, unlike those in the

Bedford Hours, show through the draperies which fall in

 

488.h., Royal 2 A xviii, fol. 23v (c. 1399).

77

 

 

FIGURE XI

"The Annunciation"
The Beaufort Hours

 

78

soft, clinging folds around the figures. The faces are A
exquisitely done and those of the two smaller figures

are probably portraits of John Beaufort and his wife,
Margaret. It is difficult to exaggerate the delicacy

of this miniature for even the almost invisible faces

in the blue of the upper left-hand corner of the archi-
tecture are beautifully modeled with shades of white.

The colors are harmonious and the mood is quiet. There
is little or no concentration on detail nor are the figures
crowded. This miniature contains perhaps the least trace
of the realism and is perhaps farthest removed from the
harsher work of the wall painter. And yet, even here,
there is a certain sadness which is in sharp contrast to
the confidence and light gaiety of the thirteenth century
work.

Another Scheerre manuscript is the so-called Big
Byble offigghard 11.49 Here something of the finish of
the Beaufort Hours is lost for the perspective of all
but the smallest scenes is lacking and occasionally the
miniatures are very crowded, as in folio 126v. Simple
outlining is used to accentuate the contour but is slightly
more obvious than in the Beaufort work. The faces are

still Scheerre's forte and retain the soft modeling and

 

“9B.M., Royal I E ix (0. 1410).

79

delicate differentiation of types. Scheerre died soon
after this manuscript was completed and his work may
well have been fading at this time.

"The Annunciation" of the Carmelite hgggg; (folio 138)50
is done in the school of Scheerre although the faces are
generally not up to his style. Here the artist shows a
great interest in space for the house with its empty
porch and dim interior depths, the use of light and shadow
in representing the solidity of the building, and the
modification of the structural lines as they recede into
the background, indicate a conscious attempt to create
a spatial setting.

Scheerre's interest was in faces but his sense of
the spatial was well developed. He liked to contrast
his softly modeled faces with colorful backgrounds.
His use of colors was masterful but he seldom used gold
for anything more than small bits of decoration in contrast
to the heavy use of gold in earlier works. He employs
naturalism in the faces, but with a different purpose.
for he is trying to create emotion in the figures and
he has no need to rely on the conventions of twisted bodies
and lined faces, as did the thirteenth century artists.

His work, however, is executed with extreme care and is

 

50Margaret Rickert's work on this manuscript has
identified three seperate hands at work in this manuscript.
Rickert, Reconstructed Carmelite Missal, pp. 14-15, 88.

80

full of rich color and fine workmanship. It is unmistakably
the work characteristic of court circles and dedicated to
patrons well able to afford such quality. The famous
Wilton Diptych is an objet de luxe which is very similar
in style and quality to Scheerre's work which, although
it was not his, may have been done in his school.51
The artist has used the miniaturists' shading technique
in this panel-painting but the faces, though excellently
rendered, do not have the emotional content of Scheerre's
work. The Diptych relies on conventional expressions to
convey nobility and serenity in the same manner as the
Queen Mary's Psalter does but, of course, these are much
more modeled and shaded to give a sense of volume. The
gradations of shading are slightly cruder, the modelling
itself is not as soft, and the features are more linear
than in the work of Scheerre.

An earlier, but similarly rich, work is the group
of panels in the decorated ceiling of St. Helen's Church,
Abingdon (c. 1375-80). In spite of the modelling and rich,
thick draperies these panels have a much more linear
feeling. The outline and facial features are made heavy
and black so as to be visible from below and the poses

of the bodies are often awkward. The bodies are not

 

511 am convinced by Mathew's arguments as to its
provenance which he gives as London, sometime between
1395 and 1399. See Mathew, pp. 47-49.

81

anatomical or solid as are those of the Wiiton Diptych

but the modelling of the faces and draperies combine to
give these works a rich, emotional contact with the viewer
which is common to both the court and the peasant painting
of the period. The style of these paintings is different
from that of the "Dutch" school although its quality of
workmanship and certain details of the work, such as the
drapery treatment, make me think that they were executed
by a less able artisan who consciously copied the "Dutch"
style.

The Abingdon panels form a link with the less accom-
plished peasant art of the period. This peasant art is
perhaps the most important type of art in this period
for it is here more than in the court art that the real
reaction to the idealism of the thirteenth century sets
in. I have used the term 'peasant' art to describe this
style because it is the style of much of the work in
country churches and is the style in which work done by
peasant artists or work meant for peasant audiences is
done. Yet the simplicity and stark realism of this art
can also creep into upper class circles as we shall see.
It is a style which is more common and therefore more
expressive of the interests and attitudes of the mass of

the people in the late fourteenth century. It is notable

82

for its lively narrative interest, its multiplicity of
scenes and its easy visibility. It is expressive, though
not always naturalistic, in pose and gesture and it is
concerned with simple settings in which clouds, water,

or ground may be treated as conventionalized or, on oc-
casion, naturalistic. The complex detail which had deve10ped
in the iconography of wall painting is simplified and single
paintings of single subjects came to replace the involved
histories which had decorated the walls in the thirteenth
century. Despite its simplicity, however, the quality
and delicacy of this art is evident when compared with the
Doomsday mural at North Cove, Suffolk (figure XII), done
about the middle of the thirteenth century. The bodies
are large and bulky with little attention to details.

The draperies are drawn in with extremely stylized lines
and dots as are the faces and the whole composition has

an unreal and immobile look about it. The long, thin,
figures and bright colors (now rather faded) of St.

George and the Dragon at Troston, Suffolk (figure XIII).
were done about 1340 and indicate that wall painting

had deve10ped the same tendency toward naturalism as

had occurred in other forms of art. This painting is full
of the same sort of detail and conveys the same sense of
confidence as the miniatures of the period. The scene

itself bears a remarkable resemblance to some of the

83

 

 

FIGURE XII

Christ in Judgment
Detail of the Doomsday Mural
North Cove, Suffolk

84

 

 

FIGURE XIII

St. George and the Dragon
Troston, Suffolk

85

scenes in the bottom margins of the Queen Mary's Psalter.
The naturalistic horse, the long body of St. George, the
gentle motion of the curl of the dragon's tail are all
part of the effect. The dragon, which resembles a panting
pet spaniel, is certainly an amiable beast and is similar
in execution to the dragon being killed by a monk in a
corbel of the Chapter House stairs at Wells Cathedral

(0. 1320).

Around 1340, however, the mood changes. One can
see, in the face of St. Christopher at Edingthorpe something
of the modelling and expressive faces which developed
in the work of Scheerre but the design is much broader
“and stiffer than even the St. George at Troston. The
colors are not bright and there is little of the interest
in decorative additions which had characterized the first
part of the century. The use of black outlines and
earth colors combine to create a mood which is just the
opposite of the happy, confident mood of the Troston
work.

Similar styles are evident in some manuscripts of
the period. The dark greens and reds of The Pearl
illustrations52 are exceedingly somber and there is an

emphasis on the features of the individuals. The Omne

 

52B.M., Cotton Nero A x art. 3.

86

BQQEQ done about 1350,53 is very linear in its treatment
both of the faces and bodies of the figures. The same
is true of an: anonymous manuscript in the collections
of the British Museum.5u Here the stylized bodies and
faces and the somber coloring create a mood which is
positively frightening. The reaction to the idealism and
the confidence of the previous period is complete in this
manuscript although it is evident more in its mood than
in its style.

This linear style has carried over into at least
one manuscript of court circles, the Lovell Lectionary
(figure XIV).55 The work of an Englishman, John Siferwas,
the-faces in folio 4v are in much the same sort of plain,
linear style. They are obviously meant as portraits but
the protruding eyeballs and heavy eyelids, the modelling
which is dependent on the contrasting colors, and the colors
themselves create a brutal or harsh effect. They are,
however, extremely well done portraits and contain much
of the harsh realism, and the linear style of the less
polished wall paintings of the period. There is a marked
similarity in style and appearance between the Lovell
figures and the three "Executors of William of Wykham"

(figure XV) at Winchester for they, too, have a linear

 

548.M., Additional 37049.

55B.M., Harleian 7026 (c. 1400).

87

 

 

FIGURE XIV

The Love 1 Lectionai'y

88

 

 

FIGURE XV

The Executors of William of Wykham
Detail of his tomb in Winchester Cathedral

89

outline in their drapery and faces. The concentration in
the faces is upon the harsh reality of their ugliness--
both in features and personality-~rather than on any
ideal beauty.

Art works are generally the product of more than
one mind. Both the artist and his patron have a strong
influence on the finished product even though the taste
of the patron often lags behind that of the artist.

This and the length of time necessary to produce some of
the larger art works have tended to make the transition
from idealistic to realistic somewhat slower than the
transition in literature. Hence the change from idealism
to realism does not appear until the 1340's in art,
somewhat later than its literary counterpart.

It is not necessary to emphasize again the changing
tenor of life in the fourteenth century. From about 1340
both the upper and lower class artistic production attempted
to express the new and changing world around them. The
court style incorporated the naturalism of the first half
of the century but used it to achieve a very different
effect. Instead of mere decoration and instead of using
naturalism in an effort to make an ideal world seem more
real, these artists used it to show the pathos and harsh-
ness of the world as they saw it. Often this meant hor-

rifying or grotesque figures but it could also mean a

9O

portrayal of court life. Even when the life at court
served as a model, however, these artists trimmed away

all of the color and exhuberance of the thirteenth century.
The ugly was no longer ruled out simply because it was
ugly and neither was beauty idealized as it had been a
century before.

The reaction against idealism in art is more easily
recognized on the wall of the parish church or in the
art produced by or for the lower classes. Although the
ideal world expressed by the thirteenth century artist
may never have existed for the lower classes it did
constitute a comfortable fiction around which society
could theoretically be organized. After the hardships
of mid-century, however, idealism was no longer suf-
ficient to express the harsh realities of the world.

The reaction to this world is most extreme in the art
of the lower classes. Naturalism was rejected and in
its place a very bare, bleak, and linear world was
substituted.

Whether naturalism was rejected or incorporated by
the artist of the later fourteenth century the result
was the same. The balance between sense perception and
logic had been tipped in favor of the former. The artist
wished the viewer to have an emotional response to his

work rather than a quiet, rational approach which was

91

often the effect of thirteenth century art. Not that the
art of that century was unable to evoke emotional responses
but these responses were usually emotions of love or
gaiety while the emotions of the later period were fright,
horror, pain and suffering.

In the generation before the Plague there was a
gradual change in the tone and mood of art. It is clear
that artists were attempting to express a changing outlook
on the world around them and in doing so they were forced
to look for a new basis for their expression. Realism
was not simply an extension of naturalism, it was a whole
new outlook on life which saw a dark and horrible side which
the thirteenth century had not wanted to admit existed.

In the following chapter we shall see that the change
in tone and mood of artistic expression was closely

paralleled by a similar change in literature.

CHAPTER III

Changing Tone in Literature

The change from idealistic to realistic modes of
expression is evident in literature as well as art. In
a story, first told at the end of the twelfth century by
Geraldus Cambrensis, a parish priest who had been kept
awake all night by people dancing and singing in the
churchyard, startled his congregation at his early morning
service by singing the refrain from the song he had heard
all night, "Swete lamman dhin are," instead of the usual
'Dominus vobiscum.'1 These early folk lyrics must have
been as numerous as they were popular but unfortunately
very few have survived. In fact, written material of any
sort is hard to find. The Romances, so popular in France,
did not become popular in England until about the middle
of the thirteenth century and even sermon collections
for the early part of the century are not plentiful.
Nevertheless, on the basis of existing sources, one can
see many parallels with the changes which we have observed
taking place in art.

On of the most obvious features of the art of the

early thirteenth century was its mood of happy confidence.

 

1Sisam, p. IV.

92

93

This, I think, is also the mood of the majority of the
examples of 'popular' or folk literature which survive.2
To be sure, there is often a note of melancholy in some
of the poetry of the period. Brown especially notes this
in his observations on the earliest extant lyric of the
century, "Now Comes the Blast of Winter." Yet I cannot
agree with him that there is a "pervading note of melan-
choly" in this age.3 On the basis of so little evidence
from the early years of the century it seems impossible

to make such a broad judgment. Other poems such as

"The Singing Maid" or "The Man in the Moon" seem to bear
out my contention that the prevailing mood was, if any-
thing, one of happy confidence rather than melancholy.
Furthermore, the first lines of Brown's own example,

"Now Comes the Blast of Winter," begin, "Mirie it is while
sumer ilast,/ with fugheles song" which suggests that this
is more a lament on the passing of summer than an example
of the mood of melancholy which he finds in the century.
As such this theme is related to other nature lyrics of

this period which are usually not at all melancholy.

 

2By 'popular' I mean something which met the taste
of the people in general rather than of one group--say
the court or the clergy--and something which was generally
current and appreciated: something, in other words,
which 'caught on.‘

3Carleton Brown, English Lyrics of the Thirteenth
Century (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1965), p. xiv.

94

"Sumer is I-cumen In" is also a lyric from the first

A

half of the century. If the coming of winter brought

sadness to the author of Brown's example, the coming
of spring brought a note of freshness and gaiety to the
author of this poem.

Sumer is icumen in,

Lhude sing cuccul

Groweth sad and bloweth med
and springth the wode nu.
Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,

Ihouth after calue cu,

Bulluc sterteth, bucke uerteth.

Murie sing cuccul

Cuccu, cuccu,

Wel singes thu cuccu.

Ne swik thu nauer nu!

Springtime was a season which constantly recurs

in the poetry of the thirteenth century. "Sumer is i-cumen
in" celebrates quite openly the coming of spring. Later
in the century, spring comes to be associated with the
welling up of love for men as well as for nature. A
mid-thirteenth century poem celebrating the birth of

Christ begins with a close parallel to "Sumer is i-cumen in."

Somer is comen and winters gon
this day beginning to longe
and this foules evericho

joye hem wit songe . . .

 

”The date of c. 1240 still seems to hold up despite
Bukofzer's suggestion that 1310 would be more likely.
See further, Manfred F. Bukofzer, "'Sumer is icumen in' A
Revision," University of California Publigations in Music,
Vol. II, no. 2_(Berkeley: The University of California
Press, 1944).

5B.M., Harleian 978, fol. 11v.

'1 10 ii!!!» I!“
. m

95

There is a similar poem to the Virgin in the same manu-
script (fol. 2) and Brown's edition contains one found
in Trinity College has. 323 from the same period:
Nu this fules [birds] singet hand maket hure blisse
and that gres up thringet [grass springs up] and
leued the ris:
of on 10 wille singen that is makeles matchless]
the king of halle kinges to moder he h re ches [chose].7
There is a need to sing and express the Joy and happiness
that the coming of spring brings to these men.
Nu yh se blostme sprynge,
hic herde a fuheles song.
a swete longinge
myn herte thurethuth sprong,
that is of luue newe,
that is so swete and trewe
hyt gladiet a1 my song; . . 8
of iesu crist hi synge . . .

The mood of these poems is happy and light but they
also have something of the feeling of serenity and con-
fidence found in the art of the thirteenth century. The
emphasis is on the return of spring and there is confidence
in the movement of nature through her cycles in an orderly
fashion.

If the relationship of man to nature is orderly
and confident, 80 too is the relationship between man

and Christ or the Virgin. Both relationships are

 

7Brown, Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century, p. 55.

BB.M., Royal 2 F viii, fol. 1v.

96

symptomatic of a working arrangment which the thirteenth
century felt had been reached with God. Like the artist
of the period the authors tended to think of Christ and
the Virgin in terms of feudal relationships. Thus the
Virgin was the fair "quene in heuene of feire ble." Or:

Leudi, flour of alle thing,

Thu bere ihesu, heuene-king,

of alle thu berst the pris,

leuedi, quene of parays [paradise]

Mayde milde Moder . . .
In heaven Christ is the king and Mary the queen, "thi
leoue sune is hore king & thu ert hore kwene," and there
is something of the personal relationship which was found
between the lord and his vassal. I am not sure, as Owst
is, that "it is clear that this praise of the Queen of
Heaven in homily and sacred poem was definitely fostered--
by the Mendicant in particular—-to counteract the popularity
of the trouvere's secular love-themes."lo Many of these
poems are directed at a lower class of people than the
poems of the trouvere and so could not have been in direct
competition. In any case the poems of the trouvere did
not gain much popularity in England until the later years
of the century, while the religious poems were popular

much earlier. Nevertheless, there is a close relationship

between the secular and the religious in this context.

 

9B.M., Cotton Nero A xiv, fol. 121v.

10Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 17.

97

There is evidence that as the century progressed preachers
made increasing use of such themes in their Sunday sermons
and certainly these themes are common in the courtly
literature of the period. There is a note of exultation
and bliss in them which dies out of preaching almost
entirely and becomes the exclusive realm of the mystic
in the next century. In the later fourteenth century
few preachers would begin a sermon with: "Who is the
rote of the lilie of heven but this mayden, that is the
modere of the floure of heven . . ."11

If contemplation of the King and Queen of Heaven
brought bliss and a certain calm and security to these
religious authors the passions of earthly lovers were
far more restless and feverish. Even a cleric courting
a lady complains that "My deth I love, my lif ich hate/
for levedy shene."12 This sort of poetry becomes even
more common toward the end of the century and the
British Museum Manuscript, Harleian 2253, is full cf
such love lyrics. Beginning with an allusion to the
season, one lovesick poet complains that he has loved
his lady all year although the lady does not even know

he exists (fol. 80v). Alysoun's lover is similarly smitten:

 

11B.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 169v.

12B.M., Harleian 2253, fol. 80v. This manuscript
contains a great number of religious and secular love
poems, largely in English. Although it was written about
1310 the poems are thought to have been composed in the
late thirteenth century.

98

Bytuene mersh & aueril

when spray beginneth to springe,
the lutel foul hath hire wyl

on hyre lud to synge.

Ich libbe in louelonginge

for semlokest of alle thynge;

He may me blisse bringe, 13
icham in hire baundoun [power].

The conventional 'I am in her power' of the last
line of this poem is very close to the ethic of courtly
love in the romances which were growing in pOpularity in
the latter half of the century. The earliest extant English
romances are King Horn and Floriz and Blauncheflur, which
date from around 1240. This is some eighty or ninety
years later than the earliest French romances-~the Roman

de Thebes (c. 1150), Eneas (1155), and the Roman de Troie

 

(1160). By 1240 the French romance was in full flower
although its English counterpart was seemingly only just
beginning to become popular.

When the English did accept the romance into their
body of popular literature they modified and changed it
to fit their special temperment. The world of the English
romance is not as idealistically treated as that of the
French romance even though often based on a French original.
A convincing reason for this is suggested by Professor
Gibbs. Many of the English versions are popular adaptations

from French originals and this means that they were made

 

13Ibid., fol. 63v.

99

for a less sophisticated audience than the originals.
In the Opening lines of Havelok there is an unmistakable
inference that the narrator is trying to gather an audience
around him, perhaps in a marketplace.

Harkneth to me, gode men,

Wives, maydnes, and all men,

Of a tale Ich you wil telle,

Hwoso it wile here and therto duelle.14
The ideals and ideas of the romances were reinterpreted
for an audience which would not understand their subtle-
ties and were reinterpreted by poets who often did not
understand them either. The result was a difference in
emphasis leading toward a more realistic style.

The most obvious difference between the English and
French romances is that the English authors were not as
interested in love as a central theme. Two thirteenth
century examples are Beves of Hamtoun and Guy of Warwick,
both of which had French models. In contrast to the
models, however, the English versions are much more closely
engaged in reality. They do not conceive of their chivalry,
their love, or their actions in the same abstract terms
as the French. The French emphasis on love simply did

not catch on or was not understood by the English audiences.

The story of King Horn is even more closely related to

 

lL"Havelok the Dane as quoted in A.C. Gibbs (ed.).

Middle En lish Romances (London: Edward Arnold, Ltd.,
195659 p0 200

100

the real world, for here the story takes place in Ireland
and England and the characters are engaged in politcal
activities (gathering armies, raising taxes, etc.) which
could well be real. Havelok, too, is strongly related

in time and place to the real world.

Despite all this the romance is certainly an ideal-
ization for it attempts to take the listener away from
worldly concerns and does so quite deliberately. The romance
tends to present a world described in superlatives and
a world which has only the most superficial relationship
to reality. Havelok and King Horn (from the middle of the
century) place more emphasis on the adventures of their
respective heroes than upon the love element. In Floriz
and Blauncheflur there is no question of any realistic
scene or political situation for the setting is taken
from the Holy Land and the love is presented in an emotional
and sentimental fashion. Throughout this period the
romance had developed as an English literary form but a
form heavily indebted to the French tradition for its
basic inspiration.

The period from 1270 to 1340 is known to art histor-
ians as the "decorative period" and the same term might
be applied to literature. The‘action in the romances of
the thirteenth century had, as the art did, a sort of

swift and lively motion but in the later period the action

101

moves sluggishly through a great maze of decorative des-
criptions which correspond to the artists' desire for an
ever increasing abundance of naturalistic animals and
foliage in the borders of their works. The romance
literature of the period becomes rather mechanical but as
a whole, the atmosphere remains much as it had been.
This period produces both some of the best and some of
the worst literature.

Sir Orfeo,cnuaof the best of the English romances,
is particularly unrealistic, carrying the idealism of
the preceding tales a step farther by invoking a fairy
world. The tone, however, is light and happy and the
classical ending is changed so that the hero is made to
rescue Heurodis and in so doing conquers death.

The poem to Mary (0. 1300)15maintains the image of
Mary as Queen of Heaven and celebrates her as a lover
would in the romances. The lover recites each of her
virtues point by point and deals with aflegorical meaning
of each virtue in great detail. The tone is quite serene
and confident although the poetry itself has become extremely
complicated and the images are conventional.

This increase in complexity and decoration is evident

in the work of the period and had apparently proceeded

 

15B.M., Additional 17376, fol. 204v.

102

to the point where no less an author than Robert Mannyng
felt it necessary to remark on the state of affairs when
writing his Chronicle of England about 1330.

Haf I alle in myn Inglis layd

In symple speche as I couthe, . . .

For many it ere that strange Inglis

In ryme wate neuer what it is,

And bot thai wist what it mente,
Ellis me thought it were alle schente.

16

Much of the poetry of the period was good. Several
poems--most of them from Harleian 2253, a manuscript
replete with light, happy secular poetry--are quite
polished and original in their thoughts. Even Mannyng's
Handlyng Synne, while extremely dull and expressing no
new ideas, is quite significant for its light treatment
of the sins. He employs a loose, conversational style
which avoids the forced and affected feeling which makes
Michael of Northgate's Ayenbyte of Inwyt so totally de-
void of interest.

The tone of the poetry, as of the art, remains
one of confidence but more especially of gaiety in this
"decorative period." Miss Sandison professes to be sur-

prised that "the prevailing seriousness of English poetry

is notably lightened at the beginning of the fourteenth

 

16Chronicle of England as quoted by Keneth Sisam
(ed.). Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford:

At The Clarendon Press, 1921). P. 3.

103

century by a group of lyrics, many of which celebrate the
theme 'lenten ys come with loue to toune.'"17 This,
however, seems hardly surprising since English poetry, at
least in the preceding century, was not all serious and,
in fact, included many such nature-oriented lyrics. This
theme continues to be popular and many of these poems
have a particularly haunting beauty combined with an
increasing tendency toward naturalism.

Such lyrics as "Lenten ys come with loue to toune,/
with blosmen & with briddes roune,/ that al this blisse

"18 or "Somer is comen with loue to toune,/

bryngeth,
With blostme, and with brides roune" are very close to the
earlier expressions of Joy at the coming of spring.
"Maiden in the mor lay," quoted in full in Apendix I
below, is similar in its joy at the return of Spring
but is much less conventional in its expression.
This happy outlook carries over into other themes

as well. One poet complains that the man in the moon
will not listen to him when he wants dawn to come.

This mon hereth me nout thah ich to hym crye;

ichot the cherl is def, the del hym to drawe
. . . the cherld nul nout adoun er the day dawe."19

 

17He1en E. Sandison, The "Chanson d'Aventure" in
Middle English ("Bryn Mawr College Monographs," ser. xii:
Bryn Mawr, Penn.: Bryn Mawr College, 1913), p. l.
l8B.M., Harleian 2253, fol. 71v.

19Ibid., fol. 115.

104

Another complains that his wife won't give him another
drink:
Is tell yw my mind, anes tayliur, dame:
I deme we lak plesur.
loke here, dame, vn-loke our dur;
a-lacke we haue no lykur! O
The boisterous contempt of Lawrence Minot for the Scots
and the French is a good reflection of the spirit of the
English in the first half of the fourteenth century.
Hhare er ye skottes if Saint Iohnes toune?
The boste of yowre baner es betin all doune.
dhan ye bosting will bede, Sir Edward es boune
For to kindel yow care, and crak yowre crowne.21
The literary evidence of the period confirms the
impressions drawn from artistic evidence. The spirit
was a happy, confident one though of course there were
exceptions, especially in the writings of the priests
who never could let an opportunity to describe the horrors
of hell go by untaken. But even so conventional a work
as the Handlyng Synne is not particularly graphic in its
description of hell and its off-hand treatment of the sins
is decidedly mild in tone. To a lesser extent the works
of the first half of the fourteenth century exhibit the
lightness and gaiety of the previous century. Still,

the increasing emphasis on form and complication of the

rhyme had the effect of moderating the freshness and

 

20B.M., Additional 14997, fol. 39.

21B.M., Cotton Galba E ix, fol. 52. This poem was
probably composed about 1333.

105

spontaneity of the works much as the focus on individual
elements had the effect of stiffening the motion of the
art in this period. As we found in art, the harmony be-
tween faith and experience is lost in the early years of
the fourteenth century and the increasing reliance on exper-
ience of the senses leads to a decorative style in liter-
ature as well as in art which is evidenced by an emphasis
on form and style and on naturalistic descriptions of the
scenes which are often irrelevant to the work itself.

The early lightness and gaiety seen in these works becomes
increasingly rare as the century advances.

By the middle decades of the century the mood of
gaiety and happiness had begun to decay. Perhaps "Lollai,"
the mournful lullaby written about 1340 (Appendix I).
is the best example of the change which came over England.
This lyric lullaby retains much of the beauty and polish
of the earlier works but the tone is exceedingly mourn-
ful and the feeling of confidence, so evident in the
thirteenth century, is entirely absent. A darker side
of life is "turned up and reported by men whose eyes are
not quick to catch the brightness. The number of occasional
satires increases but they are seldom gay."22 The serene
manner in which the sins of the age had been handled by

men like Robert Mannyng is much changed in this poem and

 

22Sisam, p. xxviii.

106

there was in the country a despondent mood often tempered
with harsh exhortations or bitter satires. The happy,
secular love lyrics of manuscripts such as Harleian 2253
were forgotten and in their place poems of a much bleaker
outlook are found.

An interest in a dark, harsh side of life begins to
emerge in the fourteenth century. Art and literature no
longer excluded either the dark or the ugly or even the
depraved. The ideal world of the previous century had
begun to crumble and this fallen world, with its evil and
hopelessness, is precisely the world which the authors
and artists began attempting to express. The change,
however, was not an abrupt one: nor did all of the elements
characteristic of the previous age die out. But the world
was different (at least as men saw it) and it was this
world which the art and literature of the period mirrored.

Preaching, even in the thirteenth century, was
much given to themes of hell-fire and damnation. In the
thirteenth century these sermons were often tempered by
gentler themes of love and bliss and the memory of an
ever-forgiving Redeemer. But In the next century themes
such as these were relegated to the background and preachers
preferred to thunder of sin and Judgment and the wrath
of God. "I knowe no thyng that sholde more dryue away

mannes vnreasonable loue fro the passyng joie of this

107

world then the minde of the dredful reckennys," is a
recurring theme.23 The Lord rewards but more often He
punishes. Men must, therefore, "be war hou thu wilt an-
swere to god at his dredful dom."24
The contrast with the close kinship between man
and God felt in the thirteenth century is nowhere better
illustrated than in a Wycliffite sermon of about 1380.
Lyrical songs and miracle plays are condemned, says this
preacher, because they make God seem too close to men and
"takith awey the drede of God that men shulden han . . . ."25
The confidence in the mercy of Christ and the Virgin at
the judgment is shattered, for on the day of doom "ryght-
wisness shalle rygorisly be shewed to us at the day of
dome wit-cute any mercye." Men shall be treated, he
goes on, "wit-cute mercys, fulle rygorysly, fulle sternely."26
The Parlement of the Thre Ages, written about 1360-70
and using the conventional dream setting and debate
presentation, shares the melancholy mood of the preachers.
The contrast between youth and old age, the inability of

men to influence the inexorable movement of fortune's

 

23B.M., Additional 37677. fol. 85v.
2L’Ibid” fol. 86v.
25B.M., Additional 24202. fol. 14.

298.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fols. 57. 59.-

108

wheel both contribute to a mood of hopelessness illustrated
by the line, "quia in inferno nulla est redempcio."27

Along with this feeling of alienation there are
many collections of lyrics devoted to the idea of inter-
cession by Mary or Christ on behalf of men. We have seen
a growth in the numbers of paintings of the Virgin in
intercession painted in the country churches and these
seem to be the written equivalents.28 The Virgin now
appears, however, not as the Queen of Heaven but in a
submissive, pleading posture. Even prayers praising the
Virgin, so popular in the thirteenth century, have become
almost the exclusive realm of the mystic or hermit.

But if the tone of this literature has changed from
the idealism of the previous century, even more noticeable
is the change in the mode of expression. This is parti-
cularly evident in the romances, which continued to interest
people. Athelstan (c. 1350) is.a romance which suffers
from the kind of cramped, overdone style of the early
fourteenth century. It differs from the other romances
of this period in that it is based on a motif of court

intrigue and violent action. It treats themes close

 

27M.Y. Offord (ed.). The Parlement of the Thre Ages,
(Orig. ser. 246: London: Early English Text Society,
1959), l. 642.

28See especially the poems in Carleton Brown, Religious
Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century, 2d. ed.. rev. (Oxford:
At the Clarendon Press, 1965).

109

to home with a certain harsh and convincing realism
unknown to earlier works.

The atmosphere of fantasy which served to modify or
hide reality in the earlier romances is entirely absent
in Richard Coeur de Lion, where the hero reveals a brutal
and harsh nature. At one point in the poem he is repre-
sented as zestfully feeding off the boiled heads of cap-
tured Saracens. Miss Schlaugh points out that gory
descriptions were not uncommon in tales of the crusades
."but Richard's cannibalism is exceptional."29

One of the most effective tools used by the author
of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is his application of
realism to make the tale seem less remote to the audience.
The descriptions of the armor and dresses, and the hunting
scenes, serve to convey the full excitement of the action
to the listener. This skill in producing pictorial
effects is also present in The Pearl, possibly by the same
author, and in Chaucer's works. Both Sir Gawain and Th2
223;; are essentially romances for the upper class and they
reflect a court culture which preferred the older styles
and which commissioned the art works of Scheerre.

An author from a lower class, Langland, is also
much given to realistic scenes. Gluttony is depicted

as a realistic, everyday 'cherl'. The description of

 

29Margaret Schlauch, English Medieval Literature and
Its Social Foundations (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo

Naukowe, 1956), p. 180.

110

Gluttony is preceded by one of a night at the pub which
sets a very real and raucous atmosphere and gives the
historian some insight into the life of the lower classes
in England.

Ther was lauywhing and lotering, and "let go the
cuppex"

Bargeyns and Beuerages, bi-gonne to aryse,

And seeten so til Euensong, and songen sum while,

Til Gloten hedde I-gloupet, A Galoun and a gille.

He pissede a potel, In a pater-noster while,

And Bleuh the Ronde Ruwet, atte Rugge-bones ende,

that alle that herde the horn, heolden heore neose

after,

And weschte that hit weore I-wipet, with a wesp of
Firsen.

He hedde no strengthe to stonde, til he his staf
hedde:

thenne gon he for to go, lyk a gleo-monnes bicche,
Sum tyme asyde, and sum tyme arere,
As hose leith lynes, to [lacche] with Foules.30
Langland paints a realistic picture of the drabness
of medieval life for the average laborer (in contrast to
the happy, well-fed peasants of the Queen Mary's Psalter).
Another poem of about fifty years later (0. 1394) which
paints much the same sort of picture is Pierce the
Ploughmans Crede. This plowman is described:
El] seiy a sely man me by, opon the plow hongen.
is cote was of cloute, that cary was y-called,
His hod was full of holes, and his heer oute,

With his knopped schon, clouted full thykke:
His ton toteden out, as he the londe treddede,

 

30William Langland, The Vision of William Concerning
Piers the Plowman Together with Vita de DowelI Dobet, et
Dobest, Secundum Wit et Resoun, ed. Walter W. Skeat
(Orig. ser. 28: Oxford: The Early English Text Society,
1968). pp. 62-3.

111

His hosen ouerhongen his hokschynes, on eueriche
a side,

A1 beslombred in fen, as he the plow folwede:

Twey myteynes, as mete, maad all of cloutes:

The fyngers were for-werd, & cul of fen honged.

This whit waselede in the [fen], almost to the ancle,

Foure rogheren hym by-forn, that feble were 3

Men myghte reken ich a ryb, so feufull they weren.
Unlike authors of the preceding century, however, neither
of these writers idealized his subjects. The misery of
the poor is exposed to view but, if they deserve it, so
are their vices and indolence.

Chaucer uses realism as a mode of expression though
he, like the other literary figures of this period, does
not dwell only on the light and gay aspects. For him the
whole range of human experience is important and therefore
the ugliness and stupidity of the world are just as nec-
essary as the beauty which writers of the thirteenth century
so coveted. The everyday life of the"Miller's Tale",
the concrete details of gardens, stables and the whole
of the miller's life, are important. So, too, is the
description of the Pardoner. His physical characteristics
are given in the "General Prologue" as being "heer as
yelow as wex, But smothe it heengg" he had the eyes of a
hare, his voice was "smal as hath a goot," and "no berde

hadde he, ne never shoulde have." Now in medieval phy-

siognomical lore, Coghill points out, sparse yellow hair,

 

31As quoted in Joe Horrell, "Chaucer's Symbolic
Plowman," Speculum, XXIV (1939). p. 88.

112

soft and long, betokens effeminacy, cunning, and decep-
tiveness; glittering hare-eyes go with shameless effron-
tery, gluttony, drunkenness, and libertinism. The goat
voice confirms his lack of manhood, as does also the beard-
1essness which, in addition, implies treachery and craf-
tiness.32 Chaucer, with a pretense of almost photographic
realism, describes the Pardoner and at the same time
loads his character with seemingly innocent detail. In
case one should miss the point, however, he mildly adds,
"I trowe he were a geldyng or a mare."33

Perhaps the most devastating use of realism in a
descriptive sense is Chaucer's manner of Opposing reality
and idealism in his satires on the romances. In the
Parlement of Foules, for example, he sets up an ideal
which he then renders ridiculous by its contrast with
reality. Similarly, Sir Thopas is a brilliant satire on
the whole body of courtly literature. In both works we
are relieved to hear the spell of these oppressively
idealistic courtly sentiments broken by plain, practical

realism. After listening to long protestations of love

 

32Nevill Coghill, "The Prologue to the Canterbury
Tales," Chaucer and His Contemporaries, ed. Helaine
Newstead (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc..

1968), pp. 166-68.

33Chaucer, Canterbury_Tales, "The Pardoner's Prologue,"
1. 691.

11 $21

a
I
I"" .-u . . '

 

113

from the three eagles, in the Parlement of Foules, the

goose finally breaks in saying, "al this nys not worth a
flye."31+ The idealism of the thirteenth century world

is no longer visible and it is everywhere burlesqued in
Chaucer's writing. More will be said about his satiriza-
tion of various aspects of the medieval world but it

should be noted that this form of realism was important

in the destruction of the mood and idealism of the preceding
century.

Although the literature of the late fourteenth century
is based upon the literature of a preceding age, the tone
is very different. As was true in art, themes such as
the whim of fortune, death, and the passion of Christ on
the Cross became much more important and much more common
in this period. There was an uncommon interest in the
wounds of Christ and each is dwelt upon.

His heued was crouned that was sene
with sscharpe thrones and with kene
That auerich thron hadde a wonde

the stremes rounen doun to grounde.35

Authors commonly declared that Christ's tears "brekst

mine herte ato."

 

3”Chaucer, Parliament of Foules, l. 501.

35David Laing (ed.). A Penni worth of Witte: Florice
and Blauncheflour and Other Pieces of Ancient English
Poetry_Selected from the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh:

The Abbotsford Club, n.d.), "The Passion," p. 88.

114

The turning of fortune's wheel is central to the
plot of Troilus and;g;eseyde, the"Knight's Tale,"and the
"Nun's-Priest's Tale." Palamon's predestinational attitude
of discouragement when he says, ". . . be it of werre,
or pees, or hate, or love,/ Al is this reuled by the sight
above,"36 is even found in such a conventional romance as
The Awntyrs of Arthure where a ghost prophesies Arthur's
fall early in the poem.

Chaucer invokes a heavy, black atmosphere foretelling
that of the fifteenth century Danse Macabre in the "Par-
doner's Tale." Over and over men of the late fourteenth
century are urged to "think of dredful Domesday." Death
shall come with its inevitability. "All mon als was/
to powder passe,/ To dede, when thou gase."37

From this evidence I think certain conclusions may
be drawn. The tone of this literature was markedly
different from that of the preceding century. A thir-
teenth century clerk passing through a wood might be
expected to hear a bird discoursing on love or charity
or the virtues of the Virgin. His successor in the late
fourteenth century was more apt to hear an old man's
somber disquisition on worldly vanity or death. Songs
to the Virgin might take the form of lullabies or laments

rather than happy songs of praise. The romances which had

 

36Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "Knight's Tale," 11. 1670-72.

37Brown, Lyrics of the Fougteenth Century, p, 97,

115

become popular in the latter half of the thirteenth century
began to lose favor about the middle of the next century
and by its end they had become the subject of ridicule.
William of Nassington considers them mere vanity:

I warn yow first at the begynnyng,

I wille make na vayn carpynge

Of dedes of armys, ne of amours,

As dose mynstrals and jestours . . .38

The Spirit of this period is very different, for

the poets of the mid and late fourteenth century are more
inclined toward somber shapes and tones, and they seldom
have the enthusiasm of earlier works; "Sumer is icumen
in," for example. It is possible that there is some merit
to Professor Sisam's theory that this change in tone is
due to a change in the production center of the literature.
He argues that most of the work of the late thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries came from the South and South-
east, areas which were most effected by the French influence.
About the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the
centers of production shifted to the North.39 This argument
holds good when one realizes that Rolle, Wycliffe, Bromyard,
and Mannyng were all Northerners. The York and Towneley
miracle cycles are Northern, as are many of the prose works

of the period including Sir Gawayne, The Pearl, the

Destruction of Troy, and Piers Plowman. The new authors,

 

38William of Nassington, Speculum Vitae. B.M.,
Stowe 951, fol. 32v.

39Sisam, pp. xvi-xxi.

116

argues Sisam, did not catch the form and spirit of the
French models as did the Southern poets, nor were they
using the same techniques for they preferred unrhymed
alliterative verse to the complicated works of the French
and Southern authors. This, he explains, is because of
the harsher tradition of the Old English school which

was the forerunner of this Northern school.

'Sumer is icumen in' which is the essence of thir-

teenth century poetry, is barely conceivable in Old

English, where even the Cuckoo's note sounded melan-

choly; and it would come oddly from the poets of the

middle fourteenth century, who had learned from the

French Trouveres the convention of spring with sun-

shine, flowers, and singing birds, but seem unable

to put away cogBletely the memory of winter and
rough weather.

The second theory often heard in connection with this
change from idealism to realism is the 'Plague thory.'
According to this the devastations of the Plague turned
men's minds to thoughts of death and judgment and away
from the happier side of life.

Professor Sisam's theory has the great advantage of
explaining why this change began to occur as early as

1330, nearly two decades before the Plague swept over

England, but it fails to take into account the influence

 

“OSisam, p. xx. A good example of this is from a
late fourteenth century manuscript, B.M., Additional 31042.
The poem on folio 98v begins, "In a mornennyng of may
when medowes alle/ spryng: blomes a blossome of bryghte
colores . . ." but then the birds warn the author to live
a clean life or the after-life will not be so pleasant.

117

which such a great catastrOphe must have had on the
population which remained. The fourteenth century was

a bad one for England, beginning with the famine of 1316
and continuing with intermittent famine and plague through-
out the century. Thus the Plague theory would seem to
pin-point the date too closely while failing to account
for the shift which was taking place in the centers of
production. Sisam, on the other hand, would seem to me

to place too much emphasis on the tradition of Northern
literature, extracting it almost entirely from its histor-
ical setting. The Old English literary heritage of these
authors undoubtedly had some influence on their style and
perhaps on their tone but one must be careful not to
underestimate the current attitudes of the people, for

it is the readers who make such literature popular, and

it is they for whom these authors wrote. Both theories
have their merits but it seems to me that because of the
hardships of the century--and not only the Black Plague

of l349--the Northern school became more popular.

With the beginning of the Hundred Years War the French
school of the South was fast becoming unpopular in England.
More importantly, the Northern school had more to offer

in the way of expressing the mood and feeling of its
audience than the lighter, French-oriented Southern school,
and as a consequence of the reaction to the idealism of

this school the Northern authors grew in popularity.

118

Not all the works of either the Northern or the
Southern schools can be made to fit into such neat cate-
gories as Sisam would likehbonstruct but it is worth
noting in his support that the majority of the English
wall paintings having to do with themes of judgment and
horror are to be found in the Northeast. and North of
England, while very few exist in the South. This, however,
may be due to the caprices of the Puritans and the luck
of preservation. The Northeast was also going through a
period of relative prosperity in the last half of the
century and was in the process of building many new parish
churches, all of which were decorated in this period. It
may be, therefore, that more paintings have survived in
Northeast England simply because more churches, built in
the fourteenth century, survived in this area.

These arguments notwithstanding, I think that there
is some evidence to support Sisam's idea that the Northern
school was much more stark and aware of the ugly than
the Southern school. The growing pOpularity of this
school seems to me to have been based on the disasters
of the century which produced a new frame of mind among
the people. While art and literature may be 'ahead'
or 'avant guard' at times I think that for the most part

they simply reflect the mood and interests of the times.

xr- mug} '- 2“

in...

 

119

Another aspect of the change from ideal to real is
the change in style of writing. Mannyng's objection to
the complicated rhyme has already been noted and his was
not the only such complaint. One need only compare the
writings of the two periods to see how far the trend had
advanced. Rolle's works, for example, were composed in
an elaborate, decorative, and tortuous manner. He con—
structed careful sentences studded with alliteration,
assonance, and rhyme. By comparison Julian of Norwich's
work (c. 1373) is written in artless language which is
confused in places and totally lacking in the kind of care
and involvement which mark Rolle's work. She is, at
times, gruesomely concrete.

The difference between naturalism and realism is
not an easy one to define but it does share much in common
with the artistic trends of the period. The concept of
the world held by thirteenth century men was symbolic.
"Symbolism's image of the world," says Huizinga, "is
distinguished by impeccable order, architectonic struc-
ture, and hierarchic subordination."l+l We have seen that
this was a most important factor in the development of
thirteenth century Gothic art and this is also true of
thirteenth century literature, which was usually constructed
with infinite care and was replete with symbolic inter-

pretation. The trend toward unity dominated literature

 

ulHuizinga, p. 205.

120

as well as art and philosophy until about the 1270's,

when it began to lose its cohesiveness under the influence
of Duns Scotus and Ockham. In the first half ot the four-
teenth century the tendency to emphasize the individual
comes out in literature in a series of naturalistic scenes
which describe nature as accurately as possible. Yet
these passages show bits of the world which further the
essentially idealistic and happy view held by both the
author and his audience. In other words, they were

meant as decorative additions to an essentially idealistic
framework.

Beginning about 1330 the literary and artistic tone
began to change. The complicated rhyme of the first half
of the century fell from favor and in.its place a much
simpler, unelaborate type of work became pOpular. It is
possible to see in the somber and often harsh realism of
this literature a departure from the naturalism which
had gone before. Where the naturalism was decorative the
realism was essential to the tone of the work; naturalism
was an expendable part of the symbolic whole, but realism
was absolutely necessary to describe a non-ideal world in
which there was more bad than good. Quite probably realism
grew out of naturalism and the concentration on detail
which had been prevalent in the early decades of the
century but it was used to express sentiments which would

have been quite foreign to those earlier writers.

121

In the last decade of the century, under the patronage
of Richard II, there was something of a revival of the
happier, romantic literature of the first half of the
century--in court circles at least. But even though the
dominant note of poems such as "Adam lay ibounden" is one
of gladness there is not quite the light-heartedness of
the earlier works. Nor are the revived romances such as
Sir Percyvelle of Galles or Yvain and Gawain of the same
quality as their earlier models and the harsh realism of
the age tends to creep in, driving out such sentiments
as love and honor.

Perhaps most indicative of the mood of the age and
the tone of its expression is the short political poem
(only two lines long) which showed the sentiment which
turned moderate men against Richard II in 1390-91.

The ax was Sharpe, the stokke was harde,
In the xiiii yere of kyng Richarde. 2

The world was indeed a very different place in the

late fourteenth century.

 

“ZSt. John's College, Oxford, Mss 209, fol. 57 as
quoted by Sisam, p. 159.

CHAPTER IV

Criticism of the Church

Before entering into this section of the paper I
would ask the reader to recall my method of arriving at
the topics of this and the succeeding chapters. A
close study of the literature and art of the fourteenth
century has indicated a profound change in the mood and
tone of the period. There were also some new topics which
were either entirely unknown to the thirteenth century
or were treated in a significantly different manner by
men of the fourteenth century. Such changes in subject
confirm, I believe, a widespread change in outlook--
the ppltanschauupg of the century.

In the fourteenth century the tOpic of a corrupt
and degenerate Church became increasingly popular and
works dealing with this theme ranged from severe
denunciation to light satire. The Church had not
always been the subject of such an attack, for in the
thirteenth century the majority of the criticism Of
this institution came from bishops and other clergy
eager for some reform from within the ranks of the
Church itself. Direct criticism was rare and usually
came from the mouth of some dissatisfied clerk. One

such author was Walter Mapes who, for some unknown

122

123

reason, had conceived a bitter hatred for the Cistercians.
As a friend of Henry II, his writing was motivated by
two influences, the first prompting his attacks on the
Cistercians and the second his attacks on the court of
Rome, with which Henry was often on bad terms.
The conventional view that the Church became more

worldly in the thirteenth century is borne out, for
the majority of Mapes' works are devoted to bitter
attacks on the venality of Home. In his work "Contra
Ambitiosos et Avaros," Pecunia ends her speech by saying
that she has searched all over the world and has found
no place where she is so hospitably received as in
Rome.1 Speaking of the Pope he says, ". . .in summis
navigans, in nummis anchorat."2 He is equally scathing
regarding bishops:

Errantem sequitur grex errans praevium,

quem pastor devius ducans per devium,

post lac et vallera, dat carnes ov um

luporum dentibus et rostris avium.

Abbots, he says, never fail to lead their flocks to
hell and the full habits of the monks allow them to

 

lThomas Wright (ed), The Latin Poems Commonly Attributed
to Walter Mapes (London: The Camden Society, 1841),

p. 159.

2Ibid., p. 7. He navigates in heavenly places, he
is anchored in greed.

 

31bid., p. 8. And thus his wandering flock follows
a blind guide led from the way as their shepherd and when
he hath the fleece he leaves both flesh and hide to feed
the hungry wolves and the greedy birds.

124

chase women and to make love without being suspected.
Their tonsured heads are convenient because they allow
more freedom to get their heads into the drinking cup.“
It would be a mistake to generalize from this evidence,
however. Such criticism is not common in the thirteenth
century, this being the only example I know of. The
view that
they are not the expressions of hostility of one
man against an order of monks, but the indignant
patriotism of a considerable portion of the English
nation against thesencroachments of ecclesiastical
and civil tyranny,
seems rather naive when one considers that most of this
type of satire was written in Latin and was meant for
the eyes of other clergy or of the upper classes, not
for the "English Nation" as a whole. Bishops, like
John Grey, complained of laxness and corruption within
the Church in their letters to other clerics.6 The
mendicant orders had not yet become corrupted by success
and the reforming influence of Innocent III was still
enough to blunt the most severe of criticisms. In the
popular mind the friars were quite respectable and what
comments there are seem to be favorable-- the poet

quoted by Brown who wishes he could become a friar,

for example.

 

“Ibid., p. 17.

5Ibid., p. xxi.

6B.M. Additional 24097, fol. 24v.

125

No more ne willi wiked be,

Forsake ich wille this world-is fe,
This wildis wedis, this folen gle;
ich wul be mild of chere,

of cnottis scal me girdil be,
becomen ich wil frere.7

Criticism of the Church in the first half of the
thirteenth century was rare and never, to my knowledge,
did it come from the lower levels of society. Attacks
came from the upper levels of the clergy and were most
often concerned with the need for more and better
preaching among the lower orders, hence the long col-
lections of sermons and homilies which might be read
or used in sermons to help the less educated parish
priest.

The really serious complaints against the Church
are all directed at the venality or corruption within
it. The critics agreed that the curia and the upper
orders were often venal but they do not call for absolute
poverty, nor do they attack the functions, services
or doctrine of the Church as an institution. Rather,
they seem content with complaints of abuses and charges
of simony. Says Yunck:

However exalted or however corrupt the motives

of the individual writers the clerical ideal which

their satire implies emerges as a rather universal

form and a distinct picture: The clergy freely
devoted to the service of Justice and of Christ

 

7Brown, The Thirteenth Century, p. 126.

126

on earth, trustwogthy custodians of the Patrimony
Of the POOP O O 0

Not until the beginning of the fourteenth century
does this criticism begin to pick up adherents among
the lower classes. England had never had any real
anti-Church movement such as the Cathars of Southern
France but it had suffered the same sense of withdrawal
from the heart of the Church. The Church, as it became
more venal and more political, became less and less
accessible to the poor. The Mendicant orders, which
had overrun England by the end of the century, had
become especially corrupt and were a frequent target of
the satirists.

Until around 1340 this criticism was fairly light
hearted and mild in its tone. The poem "My deth I Love"
from which I have already quoted (see above, page 97)
is a happy poem which follows the wiles of a cleric
who attempts to seduce one of his parishioners. One
of the gayest burlesques of the clergy is the Land of
Cokaygpe in which monks are depicted as living in a
monastery where there are no storms or animals, meat
and drink abound and there is no more "russin a' sopper,"

and a monk "shal hab with cute danger xii wiues euche

 

8John A. Yunck, "Economic Conservatism, Papal Finance,

and the Medieval Satires on Rome," Change in Medieval
Society, Ed. Sylvia L. Thrupp (New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, 1964), p. 82.

127

yere."9

Another satire in the same manuscript criticises
the vices of monks.

Hail ye holi monkes with yur corrin

Late and rape, ifilled of ale and wine

Depe cun ye bouse, that is al yure care

with seint Benet is scurge come ye disciplineth

taketh hed al to me 10

that this is slecke, ye now wel se.

It is obvious that such poems criticize but they
are also meant to entertain, as is evident from the
last lines--"Take hed al to me." There was a genuine
spirit of fun in the thirteenth century. Abuse was
often of a personal character or, if not, usually had
a real person or persons as its model. This was most
evident in the Latin and Anglo-Norman satires of the
period.

Within a century a new type of poetry had entered
this 'roguish world of metrical caricature." The
older forms of criticism were continued in, for example,
the sermons of the Archbishop of Armaugh. However,
the "classical traditions and niceties" of the Anglo-
Norman and Latin schools disappeared. The sentiments
of gay romance, feudal pride and springtime which were
found in poetry of the thirteenth century are missing
from the English satire of the following century.

The earlier note of undisguised fun, the delight taken

 

98.M. Harleian 913, fols. 3-6.

loIbid., fol. 7v.

128

in personal taunts and abuse have vanished. Instead
there is bitterness, pessimism, and solemn indignation.

A special hatred for the begging friars appears
and a large portion of the contempt and gibes of the
period were levelled at the mendicant orders. One of
the reasons for the foundation of these orders had
been to promote preaching in the countryside. By the
fourteenth century this preaching mission had degenerated,
as had the educational level of the friars, and they
were severely criticised by laymen and lower clergy
as well as by the upper clergy. In one manuscript a
preacher named John Thorp (about whom nothing else
is known) is said to have had no fear of reproaching
monks and even bishops for their sins.11 Bromyard12
asserts that "more willingly would they keep a thousand
usurers and as many prostitutes than twenty friars."13
Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester from 1373 to 1389,
devoted forty-three of the one hundred and five sermons
in his collection to criticising ignorance,laziness,
and immorality in his clergy. Although this was a
problem which had occupied the thoughts of bishops of

 

11B.M., Additional 21253, fol. 54v.

12John Bromyard: All that is known of his life is
that he was a noted opponent of both Wycliffe and the
mendicants. He was a chancellor at Cambridge about 1383
and died soon after 1409. His most famous work is the
Summa Praedicantium written about 1390.

13Quoted in Owst, greachingin Medieval England, p. 68.

129

the preceding century as well, by the end of the four-

teenth century curates were no better educated, and

Riponll+ complains that some of them are not able to

expound a single article of the Faith. Knowledge, he
says, is the prerequisite for holding this position
and many are not qualified who now hold the office.15
Another sermon from the later years of the century
claims that the word of God, "hath be long hid.
thorough negligence or curatis worldeli ocupacion."
Many preachers don't preach and of those who do,

'. . . thogh these pore prestis allege hem hooli

scripture of [those] prOphetes of the olde laws . . .

for thei vnderstonden noght the Scripture."16

For the most part, however, the poor parish

priests came off fairly well, perhaps because of their

17

very poverty. Myrc, who is sympathetic to the

country parson, advises him to take care that he

repeats the baptismal formula correctly if he is

tipsy while giving the service.18

A

1“Robert Ripon [also Rypon]: a sub-prior of the
monastery at Durham and later a prior of Finchale after 1397.

l5B.M., Harleian 4894, fols. 197, 208.

16B.M., Additional 41321, fols., 38-38v.

17John Myrc: chiefly known for his Liber Festialis,
a catalogue of church holidays, and his Manuale Sacerdotum.
He apparently had some background as a parish priest and
was flourishing from 1390 to c. 1405.

18John Myrc, p. 19.

130

Monks and friars were also accused of ignorance,
but this was not their major sin. In the eyes of
Richard FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armaugh from 1343 to
1361, they are guilty of every sin possible. In his
sermon in defense of curates he first defends the
hapless curates and then launches into a bitter attack
on the mendicants. They take tithes which belong to
the Church, they hear confession for fees, they are
habitual liars and have no reverence for priests,
but most of all they are covetous, greedy beggars
who would turn the poverty of Christ into a joke.
Christ taught that none should beg and he feels that
only parish priests should have authority in their
parishes.19

It was not so much the content of their sermons
(or lack of it) which disturbed the general populace
as the spirit in which the mendicants went about their
duties. Frequent were the commotions caused when
travelling monks or friars attempted to give the
Sunday sermon over the objections of the parish priest--
who had the right to refuse them permission. These
scenes often ended in a fight in the pulpit itself.

If the parish priest did not satisfy his requests a

visiting pardoner was apt to excommunicate those he

 

19B.M., Harleian 1900, fols 7b-16. Richard FitzRalph's
sermon "Defensio Curatorum.‘

131

felt responsible, take up a position in their churches
at offertory time, and by vociferous begging hold up
the service until it was too late to say mass that
day.20 This practice was apparently so common that]
official injunctions had to be sent out stating that,
'quodsi quicumque predicatores ygl perdoniste sermonem
facientes moniti ipso tempore silere noluerint, ipsi
inquisitores eos ab hujusmodi officio suspenders possunt.21
Bromyard complained of pardoners selling prayers and
sacraments in churches, and they were also noted for
exhibiting false relics for money.22
The life-style of the mendicants was a source of
especially harsh criticism. They lived in a manner which
ill befitted their claims to poverty and holiness.
"Many monkys, ffreres . . . are more worldly, lifen more
lustily, are more delanth in cupose talkyng of the world
an luken more aft worldly pineass' than they would if
they lived in the midst of the world and had to work.

They take orders, continues this author, to live well

 

29Epgland's Miracle Playg, pps. 114-125 as quoted

in Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, pp. 107-08.

21Ibid., p. 107. If, while making a sermon, the
pardoners are warned to keep silence and yet are un-
willing to do so, the inquisitors have the power to
suspend them from that office.

228cc Bromyard's sermons in Harleian 2276, especially
fol. 119.

132

without having to work.23 In the monasteries there is
no worry over food or a place to sleep, complained the
author of the Land of Cokaygne early in the century.24
Jack Upland notes that they "have more courts than many
lords of England; for ye now wenden throgh the realme,
and ech night will lig in your own courts; and so mow
but right few lords doe."25 Chaucer reiterates the
common complaint that the lives of the mendicants do
not measure up to their words.

And feyne hem pore, and hemsilf feden

With gode morcels delicious,

And drinken good wyn precious,

And preche us povert and distresse,

And fisshen himsilf gret richesse2

With wily nettis that they caste.

So bad was the reputation of the mendicants that
they were uniformly considered the epitome of the sins
of greed and gluttony. Chaucer sets out to construct
a typical pardoner, a remarkable charlatan who, in the
course of the pilgrimage, delivers a 'sermon' as an
example of the tricks of his trade. He not only

indicates that he is using his profession to trick

 

23B.M. Royal 8 c i, fol. 131.

2“See above, p.

25As quoted in Thomas Wright, Political Poems and
Son 8, p. 251.

26Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose, 11. 6178-6183.

133

the simple people but brazenly accuses himself of
covetousness.
Thus kan I preche agayn that same vice
Which that I use, and that is avarice.
But though myself be gilty in that synne,
Yet kan I maken oother folk to twynne
From avarice, and score to repente.
But that is nat my principal ententgi
I preche nothyng but for coveitise.
The bare-faced, inordinate pride of this braggart is a
more subtle commentary on the state of the clergy.
His greed is so great that he says,
I wol have moneie, wolle, shese, and shete
al were it yeven of the poverest page
Or of the povereste wydwe in the village, 28
Al shoulde hir children sterve for famyne.
Chaucer's criticism is subtle and powerful for the
pardoner is not simply a characterization of pardoners.
His "Tale" also deals with an unwitting encounter with
spiritual death through the pursuit of material gain,
for the three revellers' pursuit for gold leads them to
find death much as the Pardoner's own greed has led
him to spiritual death. The story is told with a
somber and terrible irony which makes the Pardoner one
of Chaucer's best and most terrifying characters.
Most of the contemporary literature has something
to say about the lives of monks and friars. The parallels

between Chaucer's monk and Gower's treatment of the

 

4 :7Chaucer, Cant. Tales, "Pardoner's Prologue," 11.
27-3 .

28Ibid., 11. 448-51.

134

monk are at once striking in their similarities and
in the very different ways in which they are set out.

Cil moigne n'est pas bon claustral
Q'est fait gardein ou seneschal
D'ascun office q'est forein;

Car lors luy falt selle et chival
Pour courre les paiis aval,

Si fait despense au large mein;

Il prent vers soy 1e meulx de grein,
Et laist as autres comme vilein

La paille, . . .29

Similarly, Chaucer's monk is tempted by life beyond the
cloister. He rides out of the monastery on the excuse
of official business and precedes to violate all the
rules of his order. This monk is no ordinary cloisterer
but a fashionable dresser and a lover of the hunt.

He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen,

That seith that hunters ben nat hooly men,

Ne that a monk, what he is recchelees,

Is likned til a flesh that is waterless, --
But thilke text heeld he nat worth an oystre;
And I seyde his opinion was good.

What shoulde he studie and make hymsleven wood,
Upon a book in cloystre alwey to poure,

0r swynken with his handes and laboure,

As Austyn bit?3O

Although Langland's condemnation of monks as a

class is not as bitter as Gowers', nor as humorous as

 

29John Gower, The Complete Works of John Gower, ed.
G. C. Macauley Vol. I: The French Works (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1899),T Mirrour De L'Omme, " 11.
20953-21001. That monk is not a good cloisterer/ who
is made a guardian or seneschal/ of any outside office ,/
for then he needs a saddle and horse/ to ride around the
country,/ and he spends largely./ He takes the best of
the grain for himself/ and leaves others as to churls ,/
the Straw o o o o

30Chaucer, Cant. Tales, "Gen. Prol., 11. 177-88.

135

Chaucer's, his monk is equally colorful, being a man
who loves the hunt and is somewhat ignorant (charac-
teristics which seem universal descriptions).

I have be prest and persoun passyng thretti wynter,
Yete can I neither solfe, ne synge, ne swyntes
lyvves rede.
But I can fynde in a felde, or in a fourlonge an
hare,
Better than in Beatus Vir, or in Beati Omnes 31
Construe oon clause wel, and kenne it to my parochienes.

Monks were generally thought of as greedy as well as
avaricious. Chaucer's monk was bald and "a lord ful fat
and in good poynt.” Likewise Gower's monks avoid:

. . . being hungry, and slake their thirst with wine.

They get rid of all cold with their warm furred cloaks.

Faintness of the belly does not come upon them in the

hours of the night, and their raucous voice does

not sing the heights of heaven in chorus with a

drinking cup.32
In the course of his wanderings the narrator of Pierce
Plowman's Crede comes across a fat friar whom he describes
in much the same manner:

With a face as fat as a full bledder,
Blowen bretfull of breth and as a bagge honged

 

31William Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. Elizabeth
Salter and Derek Pearsall (London:’ Edward Arnold,
ltd., 1967), pass. V, 11 422-26.

32John Gower, The MajorgLatin Works of John Gower,
ed. Erick W. Stockton (Seattle: The University of
Washington Press, 1962), "Vox Clamantis,‘ Bk. Iv,
Chap. 1, 11. 25-29.

136

On bothen his chekes, and his chyn with a chol
lollede, [double chin] 33
As greet as a gos ege growen all of grece.
Wycliffe, in the context of his general condemnations
of the Church, claims that the friars beg only to live

34 Such was

better and to build magnificent churches.
the view found in the Land of Cokaygne and in Pierce
Ploughman's Crede. In the latter poem the author finds
his fat friar sitting in a magnificent monastery wearing
"many gay garments, that weren goldbeten." The monastery,
he says, is fit to house a queen,

And yet thise bilderes wilne beggen, bagg-ful of

wheate,

Of a pure pore man, that male ouethe paie 35

Halfe his rente in a yer, and half ben behynde!
After a fruitless quest among the clerics, the narrator
finds a poor plowman who tells him to beware of friars
and seems to express a fairly common view of the friars
in this period. "Thei ben wilde wer-wolues, that wilne
the fold robben. The fend founded hem first, the feith

to destroie."36

 

33Walter W. Skeat (ed), Pierce Plou hman's Crede
(London: Early English Text Society, 1867), Orig. Ser.
30, 11. 222-225.

BuJohn Wyclif, En lish Works of Wyclif, Ed. F.D.
Matthew (orig. sev. 74; London: Early English Text

Society, 1880), p. 58.
35lbid., 11. 216-18.
361bid., 11. 459-60.

137

The bulk of the criticism of the thirteenth century
had originated from within the ranks of the clergy and
was directed at the clergy. As I have noted earlier,
the most common complaint was the lack of preaching
done by the lower clergy. Another, somewhat less fertile,
field of criticism was the wealth, venality and corruption
of the upper clergy. If this was a common theme in the
thirteenth century it was no less so in the fourteenth--
there being seven thirteenth and six fourteenth century
examples in my sampling of sermon material. Although
there is no great increase in absolute volume of such
material it, like the other topics of criticism, was
taken up by the lower classes where earlier it had been
confined almost exclusively to clerical circles. In
the fourteenth century Bishop Brinton, Archbishop
FitzRalph, and Wycliffe all complain of the venality
and corruption of the court of Rome. These were upper
class preachers, however, and much of this sort of
criticism comes from other levels. In one of his ser-
mons a preacher named John Waldeby (c. 1360-90) satirizes
the "vertuouse cardinals."37 Another describes prelates
as the epitome of the sins of pride, covetousness, and

simony. Pride, he says, 'schal be ful high in prelatis.

 

37B.M., Royal 17 0 viii, fol. 38v.

138
For hir pride schal passe all temporalle lordes . . . ."38
Bromyard claims that,
In the matter of title and honours, so ambitious
are the ecclesiastics that, if they possess a fat
living, it is not enough for them unless they have
a prebend. If they have a prebend, they are not
satisfied unless they have several. If they have
several, they afgsct to be a bishop; and then a
bishop at court. '
Yet another preacher compares the prelates to sailors
responsible for the safe steering of the ship of the
Church across a perilous sea into port. It is sad, he
says, that these sailors know nothing of seamanship,
and some who know neglect their duties.)+0
There is a certain amount of sympathy in this line
of complaint, as if the prelates could be forgiven
because they were usually nobles and could not be
expected to act otherwise. Proud and greedy prelates
were nothing new although there were probably more of
them in the fourteenth century. What was considered
normal, if bad, behavior for a prelate was not to be
condoned in a monk who was not removed from the populace.
by the chasm of class.

What is surprising in the fourteenth century is

 

it

388.M., Additional 41321, fol. 8v.
39As quoted in Owst, Literature and Pul it, p. 247.

40A8 quoted in Owst, Preaching in Medieval England,

p. 37.

139

the concerted attack on the morals of the clergy from
the parish priest to the prelate. This particular sub-
ject of criticism had been left largely untouched in
the preceding century.

The morals of the clergy must have been extremely
poor for men of the period are constantly cautioned to
watch out for their wives and daughters.

Were I a man that hous helde,
If any woman with me dwelde,
Ther is no frer, bot he were gelde,
Shuld com within my wones.
For may he til a woman wynne,
In priveyte, he wyl not blynne,
Er he a childe put hir with&nne,
And perchaunce two at ones. 1
For six pence, says another, a monk would slay your father

“2 The wife of Bath begins her

and rape your mother.
tale with a nostalgic return to the good old days when
there was a strict law and quick punishment. Nowadays,
unfortunately, women are in danger of assault from the
friars, she complains.“3

In a passage almost identical to the one just quoted
Gower warns the men,

D'incest del ordre as mendiantz

Je loo que tous jalous amantz
Pensent leur femmes a defendre:

 

41Wright, Pol. Poems and Songs, "Song Against the
Friars," Vol I, p. 266.

n2B.M., Harleian 7322, fol. 52v.

“BChaucer, Cant. Tales, "Wife of Bath's Tale,"
11. 878-81.

140

Ly confessour, 1y limitantz,

Chascun de s'aquointance ad tantby
Pour confesser, et pour aprendre,

Que ce leur fait eslire et prendre
Tout la plus belle et la plus tendre,
Car d'autre ne sont disirantz.

Itiel incest maint fils engendre
Dessur 1a femenine gendre, 44
Dont autre est piere a les enfantz.

In another passage he calls for a remedy in strong, if
crude, terms.

I feel that Nature decreed something that is to be
observed among bees so that a friar might take
note: for if a bee stings, its mischief retaliates
against it, so that it does not possess its sting
any more. And afterwards it keeps to the hidden
recesses of its dwelling place and flies forth no
more to make honey from the flowers of the field.

0 God, if the adulterous friar would only lose his
swollen pricker in the same way when he has stung,
so that he would not pluck women's flowers nor “5
go wandering about in the world away from his home!

Langland was clearly nervous and hesitating in his
criticism of the clergy but he speaks up in the hope
that some corrective measures will be taken. Written
about 1360, the Vision of Piers Plowman is a fairly

straightforward criticism of the conditions seen around

 

uuGower, Com lete Works, "Mirrour," 11. 9134-45.
see also lines 21312-525 for an almost identical quota-
tion. From the incest of the mendicant orders/ I advise
that all jealous lovers/ take care to protect their women./
The confessor, the limitor,/ by his acquaintance has so
many/ to confess and to learn about/ that he need choose
and take/ only the prettiest and most tender,/ for the
others he does not desire./ This incest engenders many
children/ upon the female sex/ When another is the father
of the children.

uSGower, Latin Works, "Vox Clamantis," Bk. IV,
Chap. 19, 110 Bfi-WOO

 

m

 

141

him. Unlike Chaucer, he has no sympathy for the objects
of his satire. His monk is a rider and a roamer of back
streets who will one day be punished.

There shal come a kyng and confesse you religiouses

And bete yow as the bible telleth for breakynf of

yowre reule.

Wycliffe, in the 1380's, was equally straightforward in
his criticism although with different ends in mind, as
we shall see.

In Gower we find a hint of sarcasm and satire.
"The man who takes a bride because urged on by a cleric
will contribute heavily to Venus, since the cleric may
be adulterous in the matter," he says.47 Others are
even more biting in their satire. The author of the
"Song Against Friars" (c. 1382) says that he believes
"that thai are men of grete penaunce,/ and also that
thair sustynaunce simple is and wayke [scant]." What
he cannot understand is how "I have lyved now fourty
yers,/ And fatter men about the neres/ yit sawe I never

than are these frers."u'8

Such criticisms even found
their way into sculpture for the corbels of the Chapter

House at York contain heads of monks which have round,

 

uéLangland, Piers Plowman (Salter ed.), Pass. X,
11. 317-18.

47
48

Gower, Latin Works, "Vox C1amantis," Bk. VII, chap. 3.
Wright, Political Poems and Songs, I, p. 264.

142

fat, even obese faces and in the parish church at Wing-
field the head carved in one of the choir stalls is that
of a nun with a pig's snout.

Chaucer was the master of satire and he was par-
ticularly effective against the clergy. His characters
are created to portray the faults of clerics without
any overt criticism by Chaucer himself. The monk, as
seen in the preceding passages, was a hunter, loved
good clothes, and was a glutton. The friar, too, is
characterized as gluttonous, and greedy but he is also
"Ful wel biloved" because his absolutions are not hard.
Tongue in cheek, Chaucer asks how we can criticize such
amiable clerics for not having the acquaintance of sick
lepers?“9 After all, they are good at their work;

"for thogh a wydwe hadd noght a sho,/ So pleasaunt
was his 'in principio,'/ Yet wolde he have a ferthyng,

"50 The "Summoner's Tale" is, in great part,

er he wente.
an illustration of the methods of begging used by the
unscrupulous friar whose tale had, in turn, unveiled the
methods of unscrupulous summoners. Much more bluntly
the author of Pierce Plowman's Crede says that if a

friar can't beg well "Vnder a pot he schal be put, in

 

n9Compare this to Gower's more direct criticism:
"But if a priest knows that some important personages are
tainted, he does not dare cleanse them for he is afraid."
Gower, Latin Works, "Vox Clamantis," Bk. III, Chap. 3, p.190.

50
253-55-

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "Gen. Prologue," ll.

143

a pryvie chambre,/ that he schal 1yuen ne last, but
litell while after-2"51

The virtues of the poor Parson are skillfully made
to reflect the defects of the others in the Canterbury
Tglgp. The comparisons are subtle and skillfully done
for the Monk, Friar, Pardoner, and Summoner are made
to seem even more abhorrent because they interfere with
the work of the poor parson and hold up to ridicule the
only truly good clergyman on the pilgrimage.

The Pardoner and Summoner are also played off against
one another. Part of the Summoner's job was to bring
such miscreants as the Pardoner before the archdeacon's
court but instead Chaucer's Pardoner and Summoner are
on excellent terms. Gower, too, claims that the two
are often on such good terms that they travel in pairs
so as to cheat the common people.52

Between the lines of the poetry and sermons of the
late fourteenth century lie all the power of contempt
it is possible to put in the written word. How different
this is from the tone and content of thirteenth century
poems which generally had a high regard for the mendicants!
The irony of these authors glitters like frozen icicles

 

51Skeat, Pierce Ploughman's Crede, 11. 627.

52Gower, Complete Works, "Mirrour," lls. 21244-49.

144

of anger. The old familiar note of undisguised fun,
the delight in personal taunt and abuse "akin to the
careless school-boy spirit" has vanished from the works
of the fourteenth century and in its place is bitter-
ness and pessimism. When the satirist laughs it is not
with delight in the personal taunt, but with a fierce
mocking laughter.

The most bitter attacks and satirizations are against
the monks and friars. There is, however, a note of
gloom which falls over the entire Church structure. No
cleric can escape. To the constructive criticism coming
from within the Church, the fourteenth century adds the
often destructive criticism of many levels of society.
Instead of merely pointing up a few vices in the hope
that they will be remedied the authors of the period
turn to a much more all-encompassing indictment of the
whole of the Church structure which is sometimes beyond
any hope of reform. Gower, for one, found the entire
structure in need of renovation from top to bottom,
and in his works we do not find any exceptions to the
rule, such as the poor Parson of the Canterbury ngpp.
The law, which was supposed to protect, is used by the

clergy for their own benefit, complains Gower.53 The

 

53Gower, Complete Works, "Mirrour," lls. 24601-604.

 

 

3.

l

”V?”- IDB Fry? .)

 

145

"Songs on Evil Times," which I have quoted above, deal
at length with the particulars of the many iniquities
in the Church from the Curia itself to the newly installed,
youthful parish priests. The Archbishop of Armaugh was
forced to admit that among the prelates of the Church
there were fornicators, gluttons, thieves, and robbers.54
In the gggdg we are told that many evil men control the
Church, "And now they haven an hold, they harmen full
many."55

The monks, friars, curates, and prelates were
accused of all this and more. The list of such complaints
is endless but perhaps is best summed up in the statement
by Poggio that the whole tree was rotten to the core.
"The worst men in the world live in Rome," he says, "and
worse than the others are the priests, and the worst of
the priests they make cardinals and the worst of all
the cardinals they make Pope."56 Bromyard sees the
corruption of the Church while "other Christian princes
and lords of ecclesiastical rank seeing her miserable
dissolution and most cpen ruin and infamy" pour scorn‘
on her ministry. "Truly," he declares, "it is to be
feared that in this disaster the disease of the Church

 

5LLB.M., Lansdowne 393, fol. 63v.

55Skeat, Crede, op, cit., l. 461.

56Poggio, The Facetiae of Poggio, trans. Edward Storer,
(London: George Routledge & Sons, 1 d., n.d. ), p. 37.

146
is rendered incurable."57

Not all the critics of the Church would have agreed
with Bromyard's dismal diagnosis but the notes of melan-
choly and helplessness prevailed. "In my tyme I have
iseie that kynges and princes hadde holy churche in
grete worschepe, & now I see the contrarie," says one
anonymous priest. ". . . moche is chalanged of us
[the Church] and no thing is igeue vs."58 In the old
days, echoes Gower, the Church was good and "thei were
ek chaste in word and dede,/ Wherof the people onsample
tok."59

No one disputed the fact that the state of the
Church was much worse than it had been a century before.
The question, in England as in the rest of EurOpe, was
what should be done to bring it back into the respected
position it had once held. Men like Bishop Brinton,
Archbishop FitzRalph, Langland, and many others, were
trying to bring about reform from within the Church
itself, much as their predecessors of the thirteenth
century had done. All their attempts to end the

Babylonian Captivity accomplished nothing except to

 

57As quoted in Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 265-66.
58B.M., Additional 24194, fol. 1.
59John Gower, Confessio Amantis, ed. Terence T.

Miller (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin.Books, 1963),
Prologue," 11. 229-30.

147

divide the Church even further, for ending the Captivity
was followed by a schism which lasted into the following
century. In the last years of the fourteenth century
attempts at reform from within seemed to have failed
and the Church was worse off than ever before. The
best solution available seemed to Thomas Wimbledon, to
be a return to the method by which St. Nicholas had
been chosen. He was chosen POpe, went the old tale,
because the dying Pope had willed that the first man
named Nicholas to step into the Church should be the
next Pope. If such a plan were adopted, says Wimbledon,
"than there shuld be non suche striffe as there is
now for that office."60
The outlook of such men is not as dismal as Brom-
yard's, yet a note of despair is there. If Bromyard
thought the position of the Church beyond repair,
Wycliffe and the Lollards thought that the old edifice
should be completely torn down. Though in sympathy
with the ideals of the spirituals, Wycliffe became
disillusioned with their wealth and property. He
attacked the "Caesarean clergy" which were those priests
who joined the authority of clerical and lay offices,
maintaining that no prelate had a place in civil office.

He pr0posed further that the civil authorities might

 

60B.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 69.

148

justly deprive a corrupt Church of its property. Four
of the heresies of which he was accused at his trial
at St. Paul's are worth examination because they, unlike
the others which were concerned more with the theology
of the Church, attack its rights directly and on the basis
of the corruptions already described.
9. That no one in mortal sin is lord, priest,
or bishop.
10. That no priest or member of the consecrated
can have civil dominion.
12. That temporal lords have the power to take
away temporalities from ecclesiastics.
13. That no one is bound to géve tithes or
offerings to bad priests. 1
The sinful priest, then, regardless of his status in the
hierarchy of the Church, may be deprived of his bene-
fice because God grants dominion to those in His grace,
but mortal sin, being tantamount to treason, results in
the loss or forfeiture of dominion. God had committed
his sheep to the Pope "to be pastured, and not to be

62 Stacey maintains that Wycliffe's

shorn or shaven."
views hardened into a belief that the Pope was Anti-
christ and that he was "consistently and always Anti-

christ."63 Wycliffe's attacks, unlike those of the

 

61Papal Bull as quoted in Joseph H. Dahmus, The
Prosecution of John Wyclyf (New Haven: Yale Uniyersity
Press, 1952), p. 21.

62John Wickliff, Writin s of John Wickliff, (London:
The Religious Tract Society, 1831), p. 18.

63John Stacey, John Wyclif gnd Reform, (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1964, p. 32.

149

thirteenth century, were not meant to engender reform;
and unlike those of Chaucer, were not simply bitter
satire against a clergy he despised. His attack on
the Church deserves attention because it is not an
occasional denunciation of some of the abuse within
the Church but a frontal attack on the entire institu-
tion which was designed to break its prestige and
authority over the English people. "Peter was never
so great a fole," says one of Wycliffe's Lollard followers,
"to leave his key with such a lorell, . . . . I trowe
they have the key of hell;/ their master is of that
place marshall."64

In concluding this chapter the reader is reminded
that the complaints against the clergy were not a new
phenomenaibut they were treated with a new harshness.
The indications of ferment, the dissatisfaction and
complaints grew increasingly strident in the fourteenth
century. The reforms of Innocent III allayed criticism
during most of the century but the mendicant orders
were already under attack in the 1240's by the secular

clergy.65 The controversy between seculars and regulars

 

6“Wright, Political Poems, "The Complaint of the
Ploughman," I, p. 314.

65As quoted in Richard J. Schoeck and Jerome Taylor
(eds), Chaucer Criticism: The Cantgrburquales (Notre
Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1965), p. 66.

 

150

raged throughout the century until the Council of
Vienna (1311) established a compromise whereby the
mendicant orders kept their confessional powers but
had to be licensed and controlled by the bishop of the
diocese, had to give the parish priest a quarter of
their fees for burying the dead, and could preach,
but not in competition with the secular clergy.66

One would guess, from the tone and subjects of
the criticism in England, that these compromises had
lost their effect by the 1340's. As we have seen, not
long after the Council there were already complaints
of friars competing with the parish priest for the
right to preach. But even while there was controversy
there was little outright criticism from any but cleri-
cal sources. In the earliest years of the thirteenth
century England had had an important group of satirical
poets writing in Latin which, toward the middle of the
century, gave way to an Anglo-French group. The tone
of these satirists was much the same as that already
described in the preceding chapter. It was light and
gay. The usual topic was the corruption of religious
orders or occasionally, an attack on the folly of a

specific individual's extravagant dress or covetousness

 

66A good summary of the attacks on the mendicants

from their foundation through the fourteenth century is
found in: Arnold Williams, "Chaucer and the Friars,"

Speculum, XXVIII (1953), pp. 499-513.

151

for example. Sisam points out that "These pieces are
mostly in the early French manner, where so much wit
tempers the indignation that one doubts whether the
satirist would be really happy if he succeeded in
destroying the butts of his ridicule."67

This cannot be said of the English criticism and
satire Of the following century. In 1350 Richard
FitzRalph Opened an offensive against the mendicant
orders. Others took up this cause and attacked cor-
ruption in other areas, although the mendicants took
the brunt of the attack. The mood of this attack was
far more urgent, for the abuses seem to have multiplied
and the feeling the reader gets is that if they were
not corrected the whole fabric of the Church might fall
apart. Although FitzRalph and many Of his supporters
were churchmen, many were not. Reform was still urged
from within, albeit with more urgency and a certain
note of helplessness.

The agitation caused by FitzRalph's new attacks did
not die down but progressed into a more destructive
criticism launched by Wycliffe and the Lollards. It
should be remembered that at the same time the Church
had progressed from the Captivity to the Schism. The

 

67

Sisam, p. xxvii.

152

criticism is bitter and it is accompanied by a most
biting collection of satirical poetry. Reform is
deemed impossible and the whole structure, in the opinion
of some men at least, must be discarded.

Satire, it seems to me, is a comparatively sophis-
ticated mode of expression, while complaint is not.
The use of satire in the second half of the fourteenth
century reflects an advanced form of literary sophis-
tication but it also indicates that previous, more
direct criticism had proved ineffective. Thus some
authors resorted to this more scathing type of criticism.
It is true that the state of the Church was much altered
in the later years of the century and this undoubtedly
had the effect of increasing the tempo Of such criticism
and satire. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note
that those who make most efficient use Of satire--Chaucer,
Bromyard, and some of the anonymous authors of the later
half of the century have the least hOpe of reform in
the Church. The existence of satire and complaint
contemporaneously and the differences between those who
use these two forms indicates that it is more than a
simple evolution of literary sophistication.

While it would be naive to claim any direct progression
of ideas, it does seem to me that the tone and aims of
the complaints aimed at the clergy had changed in the

course of the century. Where the thirteenth century

153

criticism had come from within the Church and was meant
to engender reform, by the middle of the following
century it was coming from all levels of society, and
finally it lost even the hOpe of reform. At the end
Of the century one preacher who, from his own remarks,
was of humble rank, and was preaching the sermon as a
substitute for the bishop in an emergency, ventured to
criticize the conduct of the Pope and prelates and to
question the entire Church structure before laymen and
even the visiting bishop himself.68

The criticism of monks, friars, and higher clergy
in the works Of Langland, Gower, and FitzRalph retained
much of the personal flavor of the thirteenth century
and is much more straightforward than the biting satire
of Chaucer or Bromyard. Thus the Church, which had once
existed in the eyes Of the world as a pillar Of the
social system is, at the end of the fourteenth century,
seen as a "rotten and feeble column." The mild complaints
of the thirteenth century had turned to mocking satire
and direct frontal attacks which threatened the very
foundations of the Church and helped to sweep away the

remaining respect for her ministers and her sacraments.

 

68B.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 47.

 

.1 Esprit?! I05

154

No institution could withstand these attacks for long
and certainly, by the turn of the century, the social
position of the Church was well on its way toward
total collapse.

CHAPTER V
The Chivalric Ideal

During the high middle ages England began to develop
a society which felt a strong bond to an idealistic code

1 Knighthood was a sacred brother-

Of personal conduct.
hood devoted to religious and ethical ideals which were
very Often unattainable.2 Yet chivalry became the ideal
of life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a
position it could not have attained had it not contained

high social values. The strength of chivalry, Observes

 

1Southern points out that nobility had two roots:
"property, by which a man entered into a set Of relation-
ships determining his place in society; and knighthood,
by which he assumed responsibilities and privileges
denied to those outside the ranks of the fraternity.
. . . It is not surprising therefore that the first was
the practical working bond between men, while the second
had almost from the first something of romance and
idealism and ineffectiveness." E.W. Southern, Tpe Making
of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press,

1953), p0 1160

2It is impossible to have the ideal form of the
noble life independent of religion and hence, piety and
virtue were the essence Of the knight's life. Within
its basic context of religion the ideal was impossible
to attain because of its earthly origin. Man is born
in sin and can never quite overcome this fact. See
especially Gustave Cohen, Histoire de la Chevalerie
en France au Moyen Age (Paris: Richard-Masse, 1949),
13138 0 17-20 0

 

155

 

3 E541. n.1,

156

Huizinga, "lay in the very exaggeration of its generous
and fantastic view."3 It was a goal towards which men
could strive even though the reality Of their actions
seldom measured up to the ideal.

In England the chivalric ideal of life leaned more
toward the heroic actions of the individual than toward
the element of romance if compared to its French model.
Both elements were an important means of creating an
ideal world for they exemplified

the individual testing Of standards in all

directions . . . the use of fantasy as a means

of expressing emotional experience not sanctioned

by conventional good sense and not strictly

accountable to reason.
The romances usually had strong overtones Of the
exotic in an attempt to help the audience forget about
their normal surroundings. They represent an attempt
to escape from the everyday pressures of the world and
and to cultivate an ideal mode of behavior.. The world
of fantasy was much more interesting than the hum-drum
world of thirteenth century Englishmen.

The elements of romantic love and heroic actions
were both essential to the idealistic outlook of the

thirteenth century. The heroic outlook contained ele-

ments of loyalty, physical prowess, and complete freedom

 

3Huizinga, p. 106.

“A000 Gibbs, pp. 1-20

157

from cowardice or any of the baser human emotions. In
the literature of the thirteenth century many of the
same plots were used over and over, all emphasizing
warlike adventure, crusades, encounters with the super-
natural and chivalrous service to a lover or overlord.
Kinngorn, Beves of Hamtoun, Guy of Warwick, Havelok
the Dane, Athelston and other romances all have stereo-
typed heroes who epitomize the qualities Of the ideal
knight.

Though not as essential to English romances, the
element of romantic love was nevertheless important.
Perhaps because Of a harsher existence on their cold,
damp island, perhaps because of the Nordic strain in
their blood, or perhaps, as I suggested earlier,5
because the English romances were Often directed at
less sophisticated audiences than the French romances,
the element of romantic love takes second place to acts
of heroism and physical prowess. There is a great
difference between the English and French versions Of

Yvain and Gawain, for example.6 At the beginning of

 

5See above, pp.98-99.

6For an excellent discussion of this poem see:
Albert B. Friedman and Norman T. Harrington (eds),
Ywain and Gawain (London: Early English Text Society,
orig.,ser. 254, 1964), pp. xvi-xix.

158

the French version the knights and ladies talk of love
but the English versions begin with talk of heroic
deeds rather than of ggppp. The English poets are
notably unsympathetic to the intricacies Of fine amour.7

Despite the lack Of concentration on love in these
romances there are many poems from the thirteenth cen-
tury which are devoted to this theme. The beautiful
poem on love in Digby 86 is in the gay, happy mood we
have seen in other thirteenth century works.

Loue is sofft, loue is swet, loue is goed sware.

Loue is muche tene, loue is muchel kare.

Loue is blessene mest, loue is bot gare.

Loue is wondred and wo, with for to fare.
The poem is essentially idealistic in tone yet it is
fresh and is free of the stylization and the disci-
plined emotion of later works.

The world of the romance is purposely ideal, as

were the abstract principles of the courtly love system.

The main principles are these. First it is sensual;

 

7Fine amour, Gibbs explains, was a code Of love which
was stronglytinfluenced by feudalism. The lover was the
lady's vassal, and bound to do her service. Love thus
became formalized and the lover owed to his lady a kind of
feudal homage. Probably the hardest questions to answer
are those which ask whether the code of fine amour had
any existence outside literature . . . whether or not she
[Eleanor of Aquitaine] actually held 'courts of love'
in which nice points of fine amour were debated, she and
the others like her certainly encouraged the writing of
poetry of this kind. Gibbs, pp. 12-13.

 

8Brown, Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century, pp. 107-8.

159

as in the poem, "Blow, northerne winde, Send thou me

n9

my sweting, the love arises from contemplation of
beauty and culminates in the gratification of this love.
Secondly, this love was illicit and usually adulterous.
Love must, therefore, be kept secret. Finally, the
love must not be too easily obtained. For many Of
these poets this element Of unfulfilled desire is the
ennobling element and is probably the main feature of
the courtly love system.
In the poem just quoted and in "Alysoun" there is

a new element brought into the courtly love theme:

Bytuene mersh & Aueril

when spray biginneth to springe,

the lutel foul hath hise wyl

on hyre lud to synge.
This element of nature is one I have mentioned before
in connection with the tone of the later thirteenth

century.11

The relationship of love and springtime is
Obvious, but these are not merely nature poems for there
is a strong element of courtly love in them. In
"Alysoun," for example, the poet's love arises from
contemplating Alysoun's beauty and not simply out of

his joy at the coming of spring. Alysoun is inaccesible

 

9B.M., Harleian 2253, fol. 72v.

108.M., Harleian 2253, fol. 63v.

11See above, pp.93-95.

160

and therefore ennobling to his own soul by the very
depth of his feeling which is unreturned. These poems
need not be directly connected to the court or court
culture to be part of the courtly love tradition al-
though they were often written for someone in the court.
The world which this literature claimed to mirror
was not meant to be too close to reality. No one, in
fact, seemed to think it curious that this illusion
of a society based on chivalry clashed with the reality
of things until around the turn of the fourteenth cen-
tury. Chivalry, it must be kept in mind, was a form
of expression. As has been the case with other forms
examined in this paper, chivalry, by the fourteenth
century, had become overloaded with pomp and decoration.
The code of courtly love had become over-formalized and
the great tournaments were the expression of the full
heroic fancy of this culture. But this highly deve10ped,
highly formalized culture had very little to do with
the realities of the fourteenth century. Militarily,
the first signs of a decline in the importance Of the
mounted knight were seen as early as Edward I's Scottish
wars, when the longbow began to replace the mounted
knight as the most important instrument Of war. This
change was made painfully evident to the French at

Crécy and Poitiers. As the military importance Of the

161

nobility declined that of the English footsoldier was
on the ascent. Later, in 1381, he was to discover that
an English peasant with his bow could overcome and

kill a fully armed knight.

Likewise, in contrast to the ideals of courtly
love, the sexual life of the upper classes remained
rather crude; the ceremonial and heroic expressions
of these ideals in the early fourteenth century became
formalized, and it was this very formalization which
Huizinga recognizes as "the supreme realization Of

the aspiration to the life beautiful."12

The early
years Of the fourteenth century seem to me to mark the
zenith of idealism as a means of expressing a world
which was fast changing, and a world which, in any case,
often had little in common with the expression.

In the same vein, Huizinga notes that the "lasting
vogue of the pastoral genre towards the end Of the
Middle Ages implies a reaction against the ideal of
courtesy."13 Though Huizinga writes only of France and
the Lowlands, this conclusion would seem to me to be
equally true of England. In England, as we have seen,

the pastoral scene, the identification with nature,

and the simplicity of life style were present in literature

 

12Huizinga, p. 128.

13Ibid., p. 128.

162

throughout the thirteenth century. Yet at the beginning
of the fourteenth century there was a marked increase
in the examples of such poetry, and certainly pastoral
scenes such as those found in the bottom margins of
manuscripts such as the Queen Mary's Psalter were not
present in earlier works. This pastoral genre would
seem to me to be the literary counterpart of the naturalism
which invaded the art of the period and marked the
beginning of the reaction against the idyllic vision of
life as seen through the eyes of the upper classes.
Examples of the decline in popularity of the idyllic
world vision are not hard to find. Previous tales, for
example, had stressed the idea of self-realization--Of
the quest--but in Dame Seriz (c. 1320) the aim Of the
quest is reversed and vice triumphs. In all the other
tales the fun was at the expense Of vice but in this
story a young man in love with a lady asks a procuress
to win his suit for him. She does so by exhibiting
a weeping bitch to the lady and telling her that this
was her daughter, turned into a dog because she refused
the advances of love. Unlike the French version Of
the tale, where the emphasis is on the love-sensations,
the English version stresses the ruse by which the
procuress accomplishes her mission. The characters are

no longer an anonymous young man, an Old woman, and a

163

chaste wife, but very real, naturalistic figures whose
characters are revealed through realistic dialogue
which is the literary counterpart of the artists'
naturalistic, pastoral scenes.

A similar story is the Vox and Wolf where many of
the characteristics of the nobility are burlesqued.
The contrast between such humorous tales and the
excessively idealistic tales of the courtly tradition
is striking. The Vox and Wolf theme is one of the first
satires on the chivalric view of the world, and this
is taken up later in the century by no less noted an
author than Chaucer. Even in its original English
form (dating from around the turn Of the century) the

theme of Vox and Wolf forms the complete antithesis to

 

the idealism of the Arthurian romances. The story is
of a tricky fox (the evil baron) who is summoned before
the king after committing numerous misdeeds throughout
the realm. He feigns repentance and promises to go on
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to gain a pardon.
As soon as he is out of the king's reach he retreats to
his castle and from its security he defies the king.

As it deve10ps throughout the fourteenth century this

14

tale is "the epic of dissillusionment," for it

 

1”See especially the introduction Of: William W.

Lawrence, Medieval Story and the Beginnings of the Social
Ideals of English-Spgaking People (2nd ed.; New York:
Columbia University Press, 1926):

164

satirizes everybody and everything and makes a mockery

of the entire chivalric culture. This theme is preserved
in stone in the roof bosses of Gloucester Cathedral

(c. 1370) where fox-like nobles are gathered around a
rather harried looking bear-king.

In the same cathedral most Of the sculptured stone
figures have coarse features with fat necks and heavy
lips, as do many Of the figures at Exeter Cathedral.

As we shall see in a later chapter, there was a cor-
responding change in the style of tomb effigies. In

the thirteenth century effigies of knights and their
ladies were notable for their idealized features and
actions, but in the fourteenth century the emphasis

is upon the realism Of the effigy. The effigies of
Queen Philippa and Of Richard II in Westminster Abbey
are Obviously intended as portraits and as such they

are unflattering pieces of sculpture. Even in death the
idealism of the knightly class was on the wane.

As their usefulness declined and as ideals came
to represent reality less and less the nobility was
subjected to an ever increasing flow of scorn and
criticism. In the early years of the century they

15

are indicted by Robert Mannyng of Brunne as being

 

15Robert Mannyng of Brunne flourished between 1288
and 1338. He entered a house of Gilbertine cannons at
Sempringham in 1288 probably as a lay brother. He is
noted primarily for his Handlyng_§ynne which was a trans-
lation of the French Manuel des Pechiez. His translation

165

especially guilty of lechery, the seventh deadly sin.
There are, says Mannyng, seven kinds of lechery--forni-
cation, adultery, incest of laymen and incest Of reli-
gious folk, rape of virgins, rape of other wives, and
lying with common women--the lords being guilty Of all
at one point or another.

Also do these lordynges

thei trespass mothe yn twey thynges

they rauyss a mayden agenss here wyll l6

and mennys wyuys they lede away theertyl
Likewise these men are usually guilty of breaking the
second commandment against swearing, "For ryche men

comunly/ Sweryn grete othys grysly."17

Another fourteenth century preacher, John Waldeby,l8
complains that nobles are guilty Of the deadly sin of
lechery but, like many of his fellows, his indictment
goes somewhat deeper than Mannyng's. The nobility, he

says, are guilty first and foremost Of the sin of Pride,

 

made free use of the original adding or cutting as he
felt the need. Consequently, it gives a good picture Of
the social life of the times giving a revealing critique
Of the vices prevalent in England.

16Robert Mannyng, Handling of Synne, B.M., Harleian
1701, fols. 49-49v.

l71bid., fol. 2v.

18John Waldeby (d. 1393) a brother Of Robert Waldeby,
Archbishop of York, with whom he is Often confused, was
a doctor of theology, was influential in fighting Wycliffe,
and was a pOpular preacher of the period.

166

which is the head and worst of the tree of the seven
deadly sins, for it is from Pride that all the others
arise. Clothing, riches, cattle, and ancestry are
not acquired through the nobles' work but rather are the
"geftes Of fortune" which may disappear at any moment,
such is the transitory nature of life.19
"Pride of Ancestry" was a commonly criticized
failing in the upper class in the late fourteenth cen-
tury and the preachers of the age poured out ruthless
scorn upon such proud men. The characteristic talk of
the knights is "with braggynge and with bostynge."20
When their stories of past escapades are exhausted they
will turn to boasting of future plans and "sayn thei
schal makyn this and that, as castellys or cherche,
howse, or suche an-other werk. Thei fare as the cuccuke,

that syngyth but of him-self!"21 Bromyard accuses

them of being "carpet knights"22 and they are also
accused of being "Liouns in halle, and hares in the

feld."23 Brunton feels much the same for despite their

 

19B.M., Royal 8 C i, fols. 144-157.

20B.M., Harleian 2398, fol. 9.

21Richard Morris (ed), Dan Michel's Ayenbite of
Inwyt (London: Early English Text Society, 1866), Orig.
Ser. 23, p. 220

22B.M., Harleian 3760. fol. 113v.

23Wright, Political Songs and Poems, p. 334.

167

boasting, many knights live a life of wanton ease,
dicing and hunting and spending more time on their
clothes than on exercises of arms or deeds of war.24
Many who should be going on crusades sit among the
luxuries of Pall Mall and boast of deeds they never
did; but, says Bromyard, some do go to the Holy Land
out of a certain curiosity or spirit of amusement, with
the intention of returning so that they can narrate
what they have seen and heard, in boastful fashion
among their neighbors.25 Another reason some go on
crusades is:
. . . men that may not haunt her leccherie at
home as they wolden for drede of lordis, of
maystris and for clamour of negeboris, thei
casten many days byfore and gederen what thei
may . . . to go out of the cuntrey in pilgrimage
. . . , and lyven in the going in leccherye,
in gloutenie, in drunkennesse, and mayntenen
falsnesse Of osterleris, of kokis, of taverners,
and veynly spenden hore good . . ; bostyng Of
her glotenie whan thei comen home that they 26
never drank but wyn in al the iourney . . . .
The true purpose of a knight, as seen by men of
the fourteenth century, was to protect the poor and
put down lawbreakers. Such knights, says Langland,

would act for God, and their obligation was to restore

 

24B.M., Harleian 4894, fols. 188v-189.

25R.M., Royal 7 E iv, fol. 118.

26B.M., Additional 24202, fol. 27v.

168

27

equity and fair treatment to the kingdom. Instead,

the knights terrorized the countryside.

for by cause that the drede Of the comyn people
have of the knyghtes/ they laboure and clutyue the 28
erthe,/ for fere leste/ they shold be destroyed. . .

Nobles tended to forget that it was also "thoffyce of
a knyght to mayntene and deffende wymmen/ wydowes and

orphanes/ and men dyseased and not puyssant ne stronge

. . . .29 Froissarts' description of the sack of Limoges

by the Black Prince betrays the fact that nobles were
no longer seen as ideal figures.

It wasa most melancholy business; for all ranks,

ages and sexes cast themselves on their knees

before the prince, begging for mercy; but he was

so inflamed with passion and revenge that he

listened to none, but all were put to the sword,
wherever they could be found, even those who were

not spared, who could not have had any part in this
treason; but they suffered for it, and indeed more 30
than those who had been the leaders of the treachery.

It seems that while in the thirteenth century the knight
would have protected the poor from a sense of personal

justice, when he does so in the fourteenth century it is

 

27Pearsall and Salter, Piers Plowman, Chap. IV,
11. 37-39.

28William Caxton (trans.), The Book of the Ordre
of Chyvalpy (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 32.

291bid., p. 38.
30Sir John Froissart, Chronicle Of England, France,

Spain and the AdjoiningCountries, trans. Thomas Johnes
(New York: J. Winchester, 1888), chap. 290. pp. 200-01.

169

from a sense of personal pity, not from a concept of his
duty to society.

Nor had the romantic facade fooled the preacher,
who often considered the nobles beasts of prey. The

officers of gret men that wereth her lyveretthes

the wiche, by colour Of lawe and agens lawe,
robbeth and dispoyleth the poure peple, now
betynge, now sle inge, now puttynge hem from

hous and landes. 1
They were portrayed as a whole tribe Of insatiate monsters
attacking a corpse. First come the larger beasts to
pluck the larger morsels. These are

the great prelates and lords, who devise and

levy great and excessive exactions and dues for

the marriage of their daughters, for knighting

of their sons, for superfluous expenses at tourna-

ments and the like. When they have gong the

lesser beasts come to take the remains. 2
The pageantry and glittering clothes of the tournaments
deceived no one. For all their sparkle there was a
dark side behind.

This foolishness Of pretenses was yet another source
of criticism. William of Nassington Opens his Mirror
of Life with the following denunciation of such things:

Ne of the lyfe of Bryes of Hampton
that was a knight of grete renoun

Ne of Sir gye of Warewyck
Alle if it myght some men 1yke

 

318.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 142.

32Anonymous sermon as quoted in Owst, Literature
and Pulpit, p. 326.

170

I thynk my carpyng salte noght be 33
for I halde that noght bot vanite.

The nobility are constantly reminded that such vanities
and pride will come to nought for, as the king of the

trois vifs scenes Often points out, "I weende a kynge

 

& wisse. What helpis honor or werldis blyss. Dede is
to mane the kynde wai: i wende to be clade in clay."34
The Black Prince's epitaph, which he is said to have
composed, indicates that some nobles were aware of this
vanity, even if they did nothing about it (see Appendix
II). The miniature of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell on his
horse is interesting because while he strikes an heroic
pose and is clad in all the finery of the court, the
portrait is surrounded, on both the preceding and fol-
lowing pages, by numerous death's heads, perhaps as a
reminder that pride and worldly splendor cannot follow
one to the grave.

While the preachers were pouring out their scorn
on the pretenses of chivalry other authors were attacking
them in a more subtle way through the use Of sarcasm.
The late fourteenth century produced some Of the best

and some of the worst of the romantic literature. Sir

 

33B.M., Stowe 951, fol. 32v.

3“B.M., Cotton Faustina B vi pt. ii, fol. 1v.
See figure

171

t’35

Gawayne and the Green Knigh as I mentioned before,

 

was one of the best romances written in England but
Eggge, written about 1390, illustrates the depths Of

the ineptitude to which the romance could sink.36 In
the works of Chaucer the romance and the romantic ideals
take their worst drubbing, and the dry, stilted romances
such as Epppg furnished him with the basis of some of
the best satires on chivalry and the romantic ideals,
which he found particularly ridiculous.

In The Parliament of Fowls Chaucer constantly ridi-
cules the aristocracy's idyllic vision of nature by
contrasting it with reality. On St. Valentine's Day
all the birds gather together to choose their mates in
an assembly presided over by Nature. Three eagles
pleading for the hand of one female represent the
nobility and treat the reader to long discourses on
love and courtly manners. Their speeches are full of
glowing offers of eternal devotion and entreaties for
mercy and grace. Treated to these long discourses the
other fowls cry out, just as Chaucer might have, against

the foolishness of it all.

 

35Brian Stone (trans.), Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964).

36See Gibbs examination Of this romance, pp. 35-8.

172

"Com of!" they criede, "allas, ye wol us shende!
Whan shal youre cursede pletynge have an ende?"37

The amusingly naive spokesman of the idealistic aris-
tocracy (the eagle) who suggests a trial by combat is
ironically contrasted with the fully conscious, lower-
class practicality of the goose who feels that "al
this nys not worth a flye"! and suggests that the female
decide for herself.38

Both Eggpg and another romance, Sir Cleges, were
exemplary of the type of thought which Chaucer so glee-
fully burlesqued in his famous tale of Sir Thppas.
Once again, in this story, Chaucer sets up an ideal
which he then contrasts with reality. This tale has
everything a romance ought to have--except sense.
Thopas, for example, is a true knight-errant and the
only hero of the romances of the late fourteenth cen-
tury to devote his entire life to the pursuit of chivalry.
This, of course, is hardly comical. What is comical
is the fact that ThOpas is not very good at being a
knight. In the description of his features he has been
thoroughly emasculated with a white face and "lippes
"39

rede as rose. He resolves to fall in love with a

 

37Chaucer, Parliament of Fowls, 11. 494-5.
381bid., 11. 501, 565-68.
39Chaucer, Cant. Tales, "Sir Thopas," 11. 194-99.

173

fairy queen for no better reason than that that is
what knights in romances do. When the giant appears,
as he must if it is to be a true romance, Thopas'
actions are all wrong.

Sire Thopas draw abak ful fastfié
This geant at hym stones caste

He then rides back into town and boasts to his friends
that he must fight a giant. The events of the story
are ridiculous because, unlike Sir Gawayne, Chaucer has
established no meaningful context for them in terms of
the hero's progressive realization of the ideals Of
chivalry. In fact, the knight never even finds the
fairy queen he has been dreaming about. The rhyme is
Often forced and the lines are padded with meaningless
cliches such as "for sothe, as I you telle may" further
parodying the language of the romance. The world of
the poem is an ideal world filled with bright, varied
life but none of it really blends. "It is a world

full Of booby-traps, invested by a booby who ambles

through it at a rocking-horse pace."Ll'1

 

4O

ulWilliam Lawrence, "Satire in Sir Thopas," Publi-
cations Of the Modern Language Association, L (1935),
p. 90. There has been some discussion as to whether this
tale was meant to burlesque the Flemish chivalry of the
period or simply as a burlesque of chivalry in general.
Whether or not Chaucer had a particular subject in mind
is beside the point, at least for this paper, for the
tale is certainly a devastating attack on the romance

Ibid., 11. 827-28.

174

It would certainly be a great mistake to treat
Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" as a satirical tale. Yet
even in this predominantly sober story realism intrudes
to deflate the tone and to change the point Of view
very subtly. Palamon and Arcite are romantic fools
[and are mocked by the Duke, yet even he is willing to
admit that he once was such a fool himself. Troilus

and Creseyde is a similarly sober tale but it, too,

 

has its moments Of irony. Yet perhaps the most impor-
tant irony of these two stories is in their endings.
Fate plays a major role and the heroes, instead of
realizing the chivalric, romantic ideals of the romance,
are left wondering about the worth of these ideals.

In most of his stories Chaucer has something to
say about various aspects of the chivalric culture of
the fourteenth century. The "Knight's Tale" fills the
Miller with such impatience and incredulity with its
philosophical discussions and the appearance Of com-
plexity applied to what must have seemed a simple
problem to him that he begins his tale as a kind of
rebuttal and gives the major victory to Nicholas, the
man of action.

In the "Merchant's Tale" Damyan is the ultimate

 

literature and upon the ideals of chivalry. See further
J.M. Manly "Sir Thopas: A Satire," Essays and Studies,
XIII (1928 , pp. 52-73.

175

debasement of the courtly lover. His acts are all
wrong and his sentiments are the antithesis Of the
romantic ideal. Chaucer mocks the ideal of pity in
his sarcastic comment on the reason for May's physical
surrender to Damyan saying: "Lo, pitee renneth scone

“2 He satirizes the morals of the

in gentil herte!"
nobility in the "Wife Of Bath's Tale" saying: "For
be we never so vicious withinne/ we wol been holden
wyse, and clene of sinne."43
In most of the satires on courtly ethics it is the
ironical juxtaposition of the ideals with the realistic
bourgeois attitudes which creates the humor of the
situation. He mocks the usual pretense of an audience
composed of lords and ladies in Sir Thopas: "Now

holde your mouth, par charitee/ Bothe knyghte and lady

 

free."un Mated in these first lines is the courtly
formula appealing to charity in pretentious French and
some extremely gross, lower class language.

In the "Merchant's Tale" the careful, savage treat-
ment of blind love and the biting commentary on old
age are created by placing the real goals against the
ideal attitudes of the protagonists. The humor of.

 

uzChaucer, Cant. Tales, "Merchant's Tale," 1. 1986.

uB;21Q., "Wife of Bath's Tale," 11. 87-88.

unlplg., "Sir Thopas," 11. 179-80.

176

Chaucer's satire arises out of the humanity of his
heroes, when in the tradition of the romance, they are
supposed to be ideal creations of the mind. ThOpas
is a real man with real faults when he is supposed to
be an ideal construct. It is Chaucer's bold use of the
ugly as well as the beautiful which helps him to
succeed in his satirization of the chivalric ideal. By
contrasting the ideal-beauty with the real-ugly in the
actions and attitudes of his heroes he is extremely
effective in his satirization of the romance and all
it stands for. He achieves comedy by placing the
romantic and cynical side by side.

By mid-fourteenth century the chivalric ideal
had no practical reality at all and its satirization was
quickly taken up by authors from all classes. The
reaction against the chivalric culture of the thirteenth
century began among the noble classes themselves,
probably at about the time of Edward III's accession.
The demise of Edward II and the attendant political
problems brought a good deal of unrest. As long as
there had been successful wars under Edward I there was
a justification for the feudal nobility and the chival-
ric culture which had developed around it. But when
the wars failed and order broke down during the reign

of Edward II the discrepancy between the "braggynge"

177

and the realities of the knightly class began to impinge
on society as a whole. As far as can be ascertained,
there was a break in this type of criticism between
about 1340 and 1360, which would correspond with the
improvement in government and success at war in the
early years of Edward III's reign. By 1370, however,
the pretenses of chivalry were so formalized and bore

so little resemblance to the realities of the situation
that the criticism and satire was vigorously renewed

by all levels of society.

As a form of expression, the chivalric culture was
dying out in the fourteenth century. By the time of
Richard II it was, like other artistic forms of expres-
sion in the earlier half of the century, buried in a
mountain of fantastic ornament, devoid Of the essentials
which had made its predecessors important reflections
of their culture. Gower mourns the passing of the ideal
world of former years saying,

If I schal drawe in to my mynde

The tyme passed, thanne I fynde

The world stod thanne in a1 his welthe:
Justice Of lawe tho was hOlde,

The privilege of regalie

Was sauf, and al the baronie
Worschiped was in his astat;

The cities knewen no debat,

The people stod in obeissance

Under the reule of governance, 5
And pes, which ryhtwisnesse keste.

 

45Gower, Confessio, Prologus, 11. 93-109, 119.

178

He concludes that "The world is changed overal" and he
is not alone in this judgment.
Ther-as sumtyme amonge lordes was fortune and
grace reynynge, . . . now is grace and fortune
with-drawe, and we be not only sett aboute with
enmyes with-cute forthe, but also with-in . . '46
Thus the world is transposed up-so-downe. . . .
The Chivalric culture and the Romance were Often
a joke both to the authors Of this sort of poetry and
to the nobles themselves. The contrast between ideal
and real in their actions was Obvious to the most dull-
witted observer. There was a vein of mocking pleasantry
running through most of these artificial stories in the
later half of the fourteenth century and it is evident
that the aristocracy, too, was able to laugh at its
own ideal. Sir Thopas mocks the ideal knight. Another
poem, evidently written for some noble patron, mocks
the theme Of love. The lady describes her lover as
an ugly man whose visage she sees "Whan I remembre of
som baud so lewd."47
Left in the hands of men like Chaucer and the

preachers of the age, the contrast between the professed

ideals of the chivalric culture and the realities of

 

46

47Raw1inson Mss 36 as quoted in: Rossell HOpe
Robbins (ed), Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Cen-
turies (2nd ed.; Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1968),
p. 219.

B.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 168.

179

the world became evident. The nobility had lost sight
of the rationale for their existence and of the basis
for the romantic ideal. Where the noble in Henry III's
day might have appreciated the deeds and ideals embodied
in the Song of William Marshal, his counterpart in the
reign of Richard 11 would have been more apt to appre-
ciate the acts of the Black Prince, whose cruelty and
arrogance were legendary. Whether or not these ideals
were ever confused with reality in the high middle ages
they did exist as scale against which conduct could

be measured. The ideals embodied in the romance were
no longer viable or even appreciated in the late four-
teenth century and had, in fact, become a subject of

ridicule.

CHAPTER VI

Social Levellerism

Despite the idealization of the hardworking peasants
in courtly literature of the early fourteenth century,
the realities of the peasants' lives were Often harsh
and cruel. In mid-century Langland portrayed the con-
ditions of the laborers in all their harshness (see
above, page110). In the early years of the century,
when the dominant note was a happy one, the lives of
the peasants were portrayed idealistically in terms
of their work (the peasants gathering up the sheaves
in the Queen Mary's Psalter) or in terms Of their
vices, which were humorously illustrated in many poems
such as this one from a Balliol College manuscript:

Ale make many a man to ly in the miere;

And Ale make many a man to slepe by the fiere.

Ale make many a man to wet his chekes;

Ale make many a man to ly in the stretes;

And Ale make many a man to wet his shetes.

But the life of a peasant was seldom full Of fun
and drunkenness at the ale house. He Often struggled

to feed his children and himself. One of Langland's

 

1Balliol College Mss., 354; as quoted in John Speirs,
Medieval Epglish Poeppy: The Non-Chaucerian Tradition
(London: Faber and Faber, 1957), p.88.

180

181

most moving commentaries is his depiction of the life
of the harrassed serf.

. . . Charged with children

and chef lordes rente,

that thei with spynnynge may spare
spenen hit on hous-hyre,

Bothe in mylk and in mele

to make with papelotes [porridge]
To a-glotye [satisfy] here gurles
that greden after fode.

Al-so hem-selue

suffren muche hunger

And so in winter tyme

with wakynge a nyghtes .
To ryse to the ruel [regularly]
to rocke the cradel,

Bothe to karde and to kembe

to clouten [patch] and to wasche
to rubbe and rely rewind]
russches to pilie peel]

That reuthe is to rede

othere in ryme shewe

the wo of these women

that wonyth [dwell] in cotes

And of meny other men 2

that muche wo suffren . . .

In the years prior to the Black Plague there had
been numerous famines and outbreaks of disease which
took a heavy toll of the poorest laboring classes. The
reduction in their numbers hurried the agricultural
revolution and labor became so scarce that by1350
(only a year after the plague and certainly not long
enough for these effects to be felt had they been based
solely on the devastations of the Plague) Parliament

jpassed the Statute of Labourers. In the generation

 

2Langland, Piers Plowman, (C-text), B.M., Cotton
Vespasian B xvi,—fol. 87v.

182

preceeding the Revolt Of 1381 there was much dissatis-
faction and growing criticism of the government and the
ruling classes.

The laborer's life was not happy and certainly
bore no resemblance to that of Havelok's friend Grim,3
the idealized fisherman of the thirteenth century tale.
Nor did his subservience and general attitude bear
much resemblance to that of his predecessor described
in the thirteenth century Fleta, for he is no longer
content to do his work uncomplainingly.

The plough-drivers . . . should not be melancholy

or wrathful, but cheerful, jocund and full of

song, that by their melody and song the oxen may

in a manner rejoice in their labor. Such a

ploughman should bring the fodder with his own

hands, and love his oxen and sleep with them by
night, tickling and combing and rubbing them with
straw; . . . when plough-time is over, (he) must
dike and delve, thresh, fence, clean the water-
courses, and do other such-like profitable works.

Piers Plowman reports that many laborers grumbled
about their wages "And corse yerne [grumble against]
the kyng, and a1 his Counseil aftur, Suche lawes to

loke, laborers to chaste."5 Nor was Piers the only

 

3Grim was the fisherman who, though ordered to drown
Havelok, took him into his home and raised him as a son.
He is also the legendary founder of Grimsby, Lincolnshire.

413th century Fleta trans. by John Selden in 1647
zas quoted in 0.0. Coulton (ed), Social Life in Britain
from the Conquest to the Reformation_(New YOrk: Barnes
& Noble, inc., 1968), p. 304}

5Piers Plowman, (Skeat edition), vii, 11. 302-3.

183

one to complain. In a sermon from the later part of
the century the preacher feels that the kingdom is in
bad hands. The poverty and misery Of the people are
due in part to the troubles of the kingdom for,

Waste makes a kyngdome in nede
And nede makes a man to trauayle.

Most of the problems, as he sees it, could be solved by
"gude consayle."6 Even the court writer, Gower, feels
that the times are hard indeed.

Wherof the povere schulden clothe

And etc and drinke and house bothe;

The charite goth a1 unknowe, 7

For thei no grein Of Pite sowe.
Falseness, says another, "haues dreuen trwvte of lande
[truth out of the]"; evil now reigns supreme.8 The
troubles of the period are best summed up in a two

line poem from about the year 1400.

A gud schorte Songe of this dete 9
This worlde es tourned up sodownne.

In the thirteenth century the Church had provided
both comert and example. As the Church had become
wealthy the division between the poor country priest

and the prelate had widened, with neither group able

 

6B.M., Additional 31042, fol. 120.

7Gower, Confessio Amantis, lls. 317-21.
8

p. 540
9B.h., Additional 31042, fol. 97v.

As quoted in Brown, Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century,

184

to provide much of an example. Nor were the clergy
much comfort. A thirteenth century sermon promised
heaven to the working classes, describing it as a holy
city where the virtues of manual labor and poverty
were a certain means to gain admission.lo In a four-
teenth century sermon God gives death "to pore folk

that hath neode."ll

A priest related to his congre-
gation that he heard a peasant say, bemoaning his life:
"I harde on say, '0 god! for ay?/ hough long shall I

12 The emphasis in these examples

leve in my doloure?"
is very different for in the earlier period the emphasis
is on the heavenly city where the poor can abide and
live in happiness and ease after a life of hard work.
In the latter the emphasis is not upon the after-life
but rather on the death which comes as a release from
their lives of misery.

If the Church no longer provided consolation or
example the nobility did no better. The upper classes
were the subject of much ridicule for their own way of

life and their idealistic vision Of the world. Much

more bitter, however, were the attacks upon their

 

10B.M., Additional 24097, fols. 1-24.

llB.M., Additional 22203, fol. 19v.

lgms. Univ. Lib. Camb. Ff. 1. 6. fol. 56b as quoted
in Furnivall, Political, Religious, and Love Poems, (orig.
ser. 15; London: Early English Text Society, 1965), p. 244;
a similar example exists in a sermon from B.M. Royal 18B
xxiii, fol. 112v-ll4r.

185

wealth and their attitude toward the poor. NO less
a figure than the Bishop of Rochester, Thomas Brinton,
had a certain sympathy for the poor because Of con-
sideration of their humble origins and surroundings.
He preached a doctrine of Christian socialism in which
both the rich and poor have a place--a doctrine which
is fairly orthodox and is mirrored in the works of
Gower and others. The rich, he says, are not upholding
their end of the bargain.
For the rich of this world to whom God has given
an abundance of wealth that they may honour God,
scorn and despise the poor, nor do they even help
them in necessity. As far as they can, they violate
and trespass upon their liberty.1
Another preacher, Thomas Wimbledon, urges the rich to
meditate on their lives Of ease.
Sytte the or knele as is thy most ese. Than be
thou lord be thou lady thenke wel that thou hast
a god that made the Of nougt. The whiche hath
ygeue the thy rygt wittes . . . and other worldlich
ese more than to meny other as thou may see a1 day
by hem that lyen in muche desese and in gret
bodily myscheffl“+
Piers Plowman concludes that the evil Of injustices lies
in having taken from others that which is their due.

Injustice is naturally said to be most prevalent among

 

13Sister Mary Aquinas Devlin, The Sermons of Thomas
Brinton, Bishop of Rochester, 1323-1389 (Camden Society:
Third Series, LXXXVLl954j), Sermon 33.

14B.M., Harleian 2398, fol. 186.

186

the respected and the rich. "God is muche in the gorge,
Of theose grete Maystres,/ Bote A-Mong Mene Men, his
Merci and his werkes."15

The rich were generally despised for their pride
of ancestry but Chaucer assures us that "genterye is
nat annexed to possessioun." The gifts of inheritance,
in fact, are Often a source Of abuses of the world.

For, God it woot, men may wel Often fynde

A lordes sone do shame and vileynye;

And he that wole han pris Of his gentrye,

For he was boren of a gentil hous,

And hadde his eldres noble and vertuous,

And nel hymselven do no gentil dedis,

Ne folwen his gentil auncestre that deed is,
He nys nat gentil, be he duc or erl;

For vileyns synful dedes make a cherl.

For gentillesse nys but renomee

Of thyne auncestres, for hire heigh bountee,
Which is a strange thyng to thy persone.

Thy gentillesse cometh fro God allone.

Thanne comth oure verray gentillesse Of grace°
It was no thyng biquethe us with oure place.15

Pride in possessions is even less to be admired by
the poor. Bromyard bids honest, simple peasants to
look away when they see the wealthy winning and boasting
of their ill-gotten wealth, food, homes, and clothing
and say in their hearts "I prefer poverty, with security
and happiness to all that which are only the snares of
the devil."17 At the Doom, he declares, Christ will

 

15Piers Plowman (Skeat Edition), xi, 11. 53-4.

16Chaucer, Cant. Tales, "Wife of Bath's Tale,"
11. 1150-64.

17B.M., Royal 7 E vii, fol. 32.

187

say to the rich "Woe to you that are rich! for you
have received your consolation," (Luke vi, 24) but to
the poor he will say "Come unto me all ye that labour."18
Another priest voices the sufferings of the poor by
contrast to the rich who possess so much wealth that
it rots in their coffers and when they see a poor man
dying Of hunger, they will not give him anything to
eat. Nor will they give the poor man without any clothes
anything to cover his nakedness even "when thei behol
hem deiyng Of cold in the wintere."19
Certes it semeth that it may not be with-cute
grete outrage and synne that oon persone schal
have for his owne body so many robes and clothinges
in a yere of dyverse coloures, and riches, thorgh
whiche many pore men and nedy persones myght be
sufficiantly susteyned and clothed as charite
asketh.20
In this passage the dominant theme of contempt or
complaint passes to a theme which is new to the later
fourteenth century. The complaints of the poor and
humble classes against the vices and abuses Of the
rich began, in the decade preceding the plague and grew
in volume and in scOpe until, with this passage, there

is a note of real levellerism. Here it is stated

 

18Ibid., fol. 42.

19B.M., Additional 21253, fol. 105.

20B.M., Harleian 45, fol. 164.

188

categorically that it is a "grete outrage" but more
importantly a "synne" that so few should have so much.
This author has left it to others to decide on a remedy
for the situation. Yet from the middle of the 1360's
this sort Of feeling prevailed and led eventually to
the Revolt Of 1381.

In the last half of the century there was a growing
sentiment toward a more equal social balance. Men were
constantly reminded that they all came from the same
earth.

Wrecche mon, sy artou proud,
That art of herth I-maked?
hydyr ne browtestou no schrgud,
bot pore thou come & naked. 1

One of the most quoted poems of the century expresses
these views in much more concrete terms.

When Adam delf,
And Even Span,

Spir, if thou will spede,
Whare was than

The pride Of man

That now merres his mede?
In worlde we ware

Cast for to care,

To we be broght to wende

Til wele or wa--
An of tha twa--

To won withouten ende.22

 

21B.M., Cotton Titus A xxvi, fol. 19v.

22As quoted in R.T. Davies (ed), Medieval English
L rics: A Critical Anthology (London: Faber and Faber,
1963), p. 143.

189.

Likewise Brinton declares that:

All Christians, rich and poor alike, without
distinction of persons, are from one father,
Adam . . . . In these and many other things the
rich and the poor are alike and equal [italics
are mine].23

Bromyard picks up this theme. "All are descended," he
says, '

From the same first parents, and all come of the
same mud. For, if God had fashioned nobles from
gold, and the ignoble from mud, then the former
would have cause for pride. But whereas all are
of one material, in that fact 'thy boasting is
excluded.' True glory does not depend upon the
origin or beginning from whégh anything proceeds,
but upon its own condition.

Even so conservative a writer as Gower argued in

strong terms for the original equality of men.

Tous suismes d'un Adam issuz,

Combien que l'un soit au dessus

En halt estat, et l'autre en bass;

et tous au mond nasquismes nudz,

Car ja nasquist si riches ggls

Qui de nature ot un pigas.
For him it is the law which is the salvation and the

guarantee of equality.

 

23Devlin, Sermons Of Brinton, sermon 33.

2“Bromyard as quoted in Owst, Literature and Pulpit,

Op. cit., p. 292.

25Gower, Mirrour, 11. 23389-394. We all issue
from the same Adam,7 Even though one is in high estate
and the other in low:/ And all are born nude into the
world/ for never is one born so rich as to/ possess by
nature a single shoe. [the phrase 'single shoe' here
emphasizes man's original nudity].

190

Justice est ferme contant

Du volente que ja me fine,

Q'an riche et pobre en jouste line

Son droit a Chascun vait connant:26
Wimbledon shares this view: "In commune to all,

rich and poore, the earth was made."27

Gower speaks
frequently Of the common good, seeming to emphasize

this concept. The bad conduct of the rulers destroys
"l'amour commun," covetousness on the part Of the king
or nobles destroys "la commun profitement" and on the
part Of the knights who are supposed to protect "1e
commun droit." Concord among the classes guards "la
commune pes."28 Chaucer, too, refers to every man
"lered other lewed/ That loved commune profyt," saying
that these men would surely go to heaven. In the "Clerk's
Tale" he speaks of the "commune profit" as being in need
of "redresse."29 The common profit is also a central
theme in Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman and this
becomes the test of right action there just as it does
in Chaucer's Parliament of Fowles.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to read
the intentions behind the words of these men. It would

 

. 26Ibid., 11. 15195-198. Justice is a firm deter-
mination? of the will that never ends/ which gives justly
to rich and poor/ each his right.

27B.M., Harleian 2398, fol. 185v.

28Gower, Mirrour, 11. 6727, 23178, 23610, 13871,
and 21540 respectively.

29Chaucer, Cant. Tales, "Clerk's Tale," 1. 431.

191

seem to me, however, a great mistake to read great
exhortive or revolutionary intent behind all of the
writing of these years, though certainly many who heard
the words Of Brinton or Gower must have interpreted

them in a revolutionary sense. There were, on the

other hand, a few writers whose intention was unmistakably
revolutionary. Gower, criticizing the aims of the
Peasants' Revolt, attributes these words to John Ball:

"Look, now the day has come when the peasantry will

triumph . . . ."30 Froissart quotes one of Ball's

sermons in these words:

Ah, ye good peOple, the matters goeth not well

to pass in England, nor shall not do till every-
thing be common, and that there be no villeins nor
gentlemen, but that we may be all united together,
and that the lords be no greater masters than we

be. What have we deserved, or why should we be

kept thus in servage? We be all come from one
father and mother, Adam and Eve: whereby can they31
say or shew that they be greater lords than we be?

One noble is told that "Wormes shulen ete thy fleysh
for al thyn heye parage [peerage]."32

Bromyard and others constantly reminded the peasantry
that nothing the rich did was without anguish for the

poor. What sort of people are the rich? 'Assuredly

 

30
694-5.

31

Gower, Latin Works, "Vox Clamantis," IX, 11.

Froissart, Chronicles, p. 283.

 

32B.M., Harleian 2253, fol. 57.

192

they are proud and greedy, exactors and Oppressors of
the poor," replies Rypon.33 When these rich men go
Off to war they go, not with prayers of the people
behind them,

but with the curses of many. For they march, not
at the king's expense or their own, but at the
expense of the churches and the poor, whom they
spoil in their path. And if they do happen to
buy anything, they give nothing but tallies in
payment. Christ fed five thousand on five loaves.
These men do a greater miracle; for they feed ten
thousand on little tallies, . . . not once or
twice, like Christ, but frequently. . . . thus,
while the English army was recently marching by
against the enemy, in proud array of this kind,

a certain worthy person remarked that they seemed
to be going to a feast rather than a war.

John Ball's letter to the peasants of Essex shows the
deep impression which the allegorical form of Piers
Plowman had made on the peasants of England. The letter
treats each man as an allegorical figure (Iohon Nameles,
Iohon the Mulere, and Iohon Cartere) bidding them to
beware of treachery and to "stondeth togedre."

Iohan the Mulere hath ygrounde smal, smal, smal;

the kynges sone of heuene schal paye for al.

Be war or ye be wo; 35

Knoweth your freend fro your foo;

Even Chaucer gives warning to the rich that if they

do not perform their functions, "They shul receyven, by

 

33B.M., Harleian 4894, fol. 173v.

3”Bromyard as quoted in Owst, Literature and Pulpit,
p- 338-

35B.M., Royal 13 E ix, fol. 287.

193

the same measure that they han mesured to povre folk."36

It is noteworthy that these words come from the mouth
of the Parson, who is one of the few really good people
on the pilgrimage. He is not ever labeled as a Lollard
by Chaucer but his fellow pilgrims, the Host and the
Shipman, smell of a 'loller' in the wind, an accusation
which the Parson never denies. The Blackfriars Council
of 1382 had effectively destroyed the Lollard movement
at Oxford and after that Lollardry became the province
of poor wandering priests like John Ball who kept it
alive and popular with the poor. Thus Chaucer is
expressing some sympathy both for the poor and for the
Lollard movement in making the only really good charac-
ter in the Canterbury Tales a poor Lollard parson.
Piers Plowman, too, exhibits a certain affinity for
the Lollards:

. . . and ich in a cote, clothed as a lollere,

. . . leyue me for sothe, 37

Among lollares of London and lewede hermytes.

The co-existence of these sympathetic descriptions
of the Lollards and the dire warnings contained in the
writings Of men like Ball were a new element in the

fourteenth century. They had arisen in the 1340's,

not as warnings of revolution but from two very real

 

36Chaucer, Cant. Tales, "Parson's Tale," 11. 768-82.
37Piers Plowman, (Skeat edition), vi, 11. 2-4.

194

sources. First, they arose as complaints against the
pride and misrule of the rich. Secondly (and this is
really an adjunct of warnings against pride), they
arose as warnings of death and its levelling effect.
The combination of the two themes along with continued
famine and instability in the government only gradually
evolved into revolutionary exhortations and a genuine
hatred of the upper classes.

Death, more than anything else, provided the four-
teenth century with its most vivid illustration Of the
ultimate equality Of men. The attitudes toward death,
as we shall see in the following chapter, had changed
greatly. The pp; gppp theme which asked the age-Old
question Of 'where are they now?' was as popular in the
fourteenth century as it had been in previous ones.

To this century, however, are added dire warnings of
the levelling effect of death which are not mere
remonstrances against the sin Of pride. Ideas Of
equality came to be embodied in the tombs themselves
and certainly the idea of death reflected much of the
leveller spirit of the age.

The rich are particularly warned that death will
bring all to the same condition --albeit a low one.

A poet in the early 1340's warns that we are all alike
in death.

 

195

 

FIGURE XVI

The Three Living

196

Alas, alas the riche men,
Of much shi wal ye fille yur denne?
Wende ye to her hit henne738
Later, when the dance Of death began to catch on, it
was a knight, a bishop, and a king who were taken by
death (figure XVI). The king commonly laments that:
I weende a kynge & wisse. What helpis honor or
werldis blysse. Dede is to mane the kynde wai:
i wende to be clade in clay.3
The reminders of death penetrated into the art forms
Of the upper class as well as those of the lower classes.
The Bedford Hours is sown with skulls as reminders of
death. Certainly the theme of the three living and the
three dead was popular in the court as well as the
country. The upper classes were constantly reminded of
the levelling aspects of death both from within their
own class and from outside it. Vanity is stupidity,
cried the preachers!
For under the sunne a man may se
Thys world ys butte a vanyte.
Grace passeth gollde
And precyous stoon,
And god schal be god”O
When goolde ys goon.
The rich, says another preacher, should give much of

their money to the poor because they will not be able

 

388.M., Harleian 913, fol. 9.

39R.h., Cotton Faustina B vi, Pt. ii, fol. 1v.

“OCambridge University Library Mss., Bd. VI 1,

fol. 142v.

197

l
to get into heaven with it.’1

Death and poverty have
new friends for when one dies worldly friends steal

what they can and then seek new friends. "But the cause
Of frenshippe is richesse. Than cessynge the cause

of rychesse cessesse the effecte of frenshippe.”2

As early as 1340 men, and the rich in particular,
were urged to look at tombs and to meditate on them.
"From the dreorie death/ ne mai nomon at-blenche,/ Ye
that sittet i-schrud/ widh skarlet and widh palle."u3
Late in the century the message is much the same.
"And heere augten prude men of the world . . . be sore
a schamed . . ." to see Christ riding on an ass while
they ride with "sadeles with gingelinge brideles . . . ."4u
This is remarkably close to Chaucer's description of
his Monk who rides a fine horse adorned with many fine
silver ornaments.

All men were brought into the world in the same
fashion and in the same state and the rich should
remember that they will also depart as equals.

Kinde knoweth no riches, that bringeth forth al

men poore. For we be bringeth them to this world,
needie of meat, and of drink, and clothing. Naked

 

41
42

B.M., Royal 8 C i, fol. 135.
B.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 80.
43B.M., Cotton Caligula A ix, fol. 247v.

“4B.M., Additional 41321, fol. l.

198

the earth taketh us, as she naked brought us
hither. She cannot close with us our possession
in the sepulchre; for kind maketh no difference
between poore and rich in comming hither, ne
in going hence. All in O maner he brin eth forth;
all in o maner he closeth in the grave. 5
What riches and pomp worth to those in the grave? It
is in the grave that the rich and poor meet together
at last. If the upper classes of the thirteenth century
could ignore the remonstrances against pride embodied
in the ubi sunt theme the fourteenth century had a
stronger note to play on. For who could ignore the
grim reality of the tomb? Priests constantly alluded
to the grave and the tombs themselves came to represent
the most vivid aSpects of the deterioration of the
body. "Wormes mete and rotye!" "Stinking frog's
meat." These are the cries which resound throughout
the literature of the period and are portrayed over
and over in the art (figure XVII).
Rigt as a worme is but litel and a foul thinge
and of no prise, and cometh crepynge naked bare
out of the erthe where he was bred, rigt so a man
at his begynnynge is a foule thing, litel and
pore . . . . Therefore seith the holy man Bernard
thus: "Quid est homo nisi Sperma fetidum, saccus
stercorum, esca vermium?" What is man, he seith,

but a stynkynge slyme, and after that a sakg ful
of donge, and at the laste mete to wormes.

 

45

uéB.M., Harleian 45, fol. 112b. See also in this
mss. fol. 106v. Similar illustrations are found throughout
the Cambridge University Library Mss., Ed, VI. 29 and a
poem by Lydgate with the beautiful title "Remember man
thow art but wormes mete" is to be found in B.M., Addi-
tional 29729, fol. 7.

B.M., Harleian 2398, fol. 186.

199

 

 

 

FIGURE XVII

The Grave

The inscription reads:

Take hede vn to my fygure here abowue,

And so how sumtyme I was fresche & gay.

Now turned to wormes mete & corrupconn,

Bot fowle erth & stynkyng slyme & clay.

Attends therefore to this disputacion written here
And writte it wysely in thi hert fre,

At that sum wisdom thu may here,

To so what thou art & here aftyr 331 be

When thu lefte wanes, vepit more pg supare,

When thi grase grenes, bonum pp mortis meditari.

 

 

200

From the tone of these works I would suggest that
there is something more to the literature of the late
fourteenth century than mere remonstrances against the
sin of pride. This, of course, was part of it, yet
these preachers and artists go far beyond the necessities
of that sort of remonstrance. The problems of this
century were grave and, especially after the middle of
the century, were felt particularly by the lower,
laboring classes. The wage legislation seemed to be
directed specifically at laborers and they blamed much
of their trouble upon the upper classes. These orders
were not upholding what was considered their traditional
duty in society. Langland and Gower both feel that
each social level has its own duty to perform and that
if any one group falls down then the whole fabric will
collapse. Judging by the amount of criticism directed
at the clergy and the nobility it seems that both Of
these groups were considered to have neglected their
responsibilities.

In the 1340's, and for the next decade or so, much
of this was simply a matter of criticism with the hOpe
of reform, but in the 1360's the mood of this criticism
begins to change. A bitter note of levellerism begins
to creep into the literature and within a decade this
takes the form of dire warnings Of a revolt to come,

especially in the sermons Of John Ball. Far from killing

201

off this levellerism, the crushing of the Revolt of
1381 merely drove it temporarily underground. In the
process the nobility even seems to have incorporated
some social levellerism into its own literature and
art. In the later years of the century the theme of
the three living and three dead, the macabre Dance of
Death, and the vivid tombs which incorporate a 'transi'
become more and more popular with these classes.

At the same time the lower classes supported the
Lollards and their doctrine of human equality. The
Revolt of 1381 and the Lollard movement both had a
broad base of support from serfs, free peasants, poor
priests, craftsmen, small tradesmen and a few of the
gentry. Three members of the London City Council
belonging to the victuralers' guild Opened the city
to the rebels. Wycliffe's protest against the political
role of the Church contributed to the Revolt, and the
support he received from the populace, especially
the citizens of London, is important. .

Criticism and the reminders of the equality of all
men at birth and death were the seeds of the revolt.
Both before and after the Revolt of 1381, impoverished
parish priests were often revolutionary leaders, urging
men on to rebellion in words which could not be ignored

by the upper classes.

202

And yet not long agoo

Was preachers on or twoo,
That spake yt playne inowe
TO you, to you, and to you--
Hygh tyme for to repent

This dyvelishe entent

Of covitis convente.

From Scotland into Kent

This preaching was bysprent;
And from the Easte frount
Unto saynct Myghelles Mount
This sayeng dyd surmount
Abrode to all mens eares

And to your graces peeres,--
That from piller unto post
The powr man he was tost;
meane the labouring man,
meane the husbandman,
meane the ploughman, 47
meane the playne true man.

HHHH

What had begun as complaints became dire warnings and
Open revolts. When there was no longer hope of improve-
ment the revolt took place. And when it was crushed

its spirit and its spokesmen, in the form of the Lollards,

lived on and gained in popularity.

 

“7A8 quoted in Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 307.

CHAPTER VII

Death

The fourteenth century was a difficult time for

Englishmen. With plagues and famines following one

another throughout the century it is not surprising

that men were becoming preoccupied with the subject of
death. Early in the century men began to find it
necessary to understand and to accommodate themselves

to the idea of death, and by the end of the century men
were everywhere assaulted by reminders of their eventual
end. The walls of their parish churches were usually
covered with murals often depicting death overtaking

the living. The pulpit itself was usually raised among
tombs, and priests were constantly reminding the members
of their congregations of their impending deaths. With
ever-increasing realism these authors and artists began
to portray death as something macabre, something to be
feared because of its suddenness. Death ceased to be
regarded idealistically and became a very real, imme-
diate problem to these men. They came to know and to
accept death into their experience in a very different

way than their thirteenth century predecessors because

203

204

in their world death came more suddenly and Often more
horribly than ever before.

The change from an idealistic to a realistic view
of the world is apparent in the changing concept Of
death. In no other period has there been such sustained
and realistic interest in death. The specter of death
was no longer presented simply to demonstrate the
impermanence of life and worldly glory reminding men
that pride in the material things leads to spiritual
death. Instead, in this century death became much more
fearsome. The warning against the sin of pride was no
longer as important as the idea that death makes all
men equals. Idealized portrayals of the dead were
replaced by horrific, macabre death portraits and tomb
sculptures. Sermons and poems continually warned of
death's impending approach. Everyone had death on
his mind, not as a romoved or idealistic concept, but
as something which might strike him down at any moment.
It was death itself which worried these men and not
what would happen to them in the after-life.

The interests of thirteenth century moralists were
directed toward the spiritual rather than the physical
death of man. The thought of death served as a warning,
not simply that all must die, but that pride is the head

and fountain of the Seven Deadly Sins. Murals depicting

205

these Sins were common to thirteenth century parish
churches and discussions of the Seven Deadly Sins were
second only to exhortations to penance and confession
in thirteenth century preaching. Before his death a
man must repent of these sins which led the way to
spiritual death rather than to eternal life.

Such warnings against pride often were illustrated
by the examples of historical figures who were remem-
bered for their great pride but now, the moralists asked,
ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? The moral of these poems
is clearly meant as an exhortation to repent.

Uuere beth they biforen vs weren,

Houndes ladden and hauekes beren

And hadden feld and wode?

The riche leuedies in hoere bour, _

That wereden gold in hoere tressour [tresses]
With hoere brigtte rode; [bright faces]

Hoere paradis hy nomen here [they took paradise here]
And nou they lien in helle I-fere,

The fuir [fire] hit brennes heuere [forever]
Long is ay and long is ho,

Long is wy and long is wo--

Thennes ne cometh they neuere.

Another poem from a Trinity College Manuscript echoes
the same moral:

Wen the turuf is thi tuur,

& thi put is thi hour,

The wel & the wite throte
ssulen wormes to note.

Wat helpit the thenne_ 2
Al the worilde wnne? [wealth]

 

8 1A8 quoted by Brown, Lyrigs of the Thirteenth Century,
p. 50

2Trinity College Cambridge, Mss. 323, fol 47v. See
also Brown, Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century, p. 54.

206

Friar Thomas de Hales' "Love Ron" is similar:

Hwer is paris & heleyne _

that weren so bryht & feyre on bleo, [brave]
Amadas & dideyne,

tristram, yseude and alle theo,

Ector, with his scharpe meyne

& cesar, riche of wordes feo.3

These poems are all fairly mild in tone and Friar Thomas

even gives the ubi sunt theme some sympathetic under-

 

standing for he cannot conceal his admiration and com-
passion for the magnificent lovers of the past.

The Object of these poems was to invoke memories
of famous persons and their common end as a warning against
the sin of pride. The central theme of these thirteenth
century poems was this sin and not the levelling aspect
of death which only provided the warning.

The thirteenth century was adept at invoking death
to warn the proud, not only in the pp; pppp theme but
in other ways as well. This pp; pppp question was only
a part of a larger body of literature all having the
basic idea that the world could not be trusted--dglggp-
temptu gppg1--and all having as their primary interest
the various sins of mankind. Sdme of this literature
produced a much stronger image than Friar Thomas was
able to manage in his "Love Ron." All the beauty and

goods Of the world avail no one in death. Death comes

 

3As quoted by Brown, Ibid., p. 70.

207

quickly and when man is laid in the grave,
Thu shalt in orthe wonien and wormes the tochewen
and of alle ben lot that her thee were ilewe.
[you will be ugly to all who were friends here]
Once dead "Thanne lyde mine hus uppe mine nose./ of all
this world ne give I it a pese!"5
It is unusual to find such strong images of death
and the decaying body in the thirteenth century. Death
was only an adjunct to the larger theme of sin and
thirteenth century moralists were seldom able to look
at death full face. Most of the anonymous sermons of
this century avoid any direct treatment of physical
death, emphasizing instead that the world and its
luxuries are not to be trusted.6 This whole strain
of medieval preaching revolves around the central idea
that the world is deceiving because it leads men into
sins and therefore to spiritual death. The physical
death of the body is secondary for even though the
soul is freed to go to heaven or hell only after the

death of the body, the thirteenth century concept of

 

“Trinity College Cambridge, Mss. 323, fol. 2?. Davies
finds that this poem closely resembles some twelfth cen-
tury works which he traces. See further Davies,

Medieval English Lyrics, p. 315 and beyond.

5Trinity COllege Cambridge, Mss. 323, fol. 73v.
6Such a work is the British Museum Manuscript, Addi-
tional 24097 which contains numerous sermons on the
theme of distrust for the world.

208

death is bound up with the soul and not the body. At
Doomsday, it was thought, Christ will come to take an
accounting and those who have been spiritually dead
will be condemned to hell.

The figure of death itself was not particularly
frightening to men of the thirteenth century. While
preaching a sermon on proper respect for the dead in
1260, John de Hoveden tells of a man who always repeated
the "De Profundis" as he passed through the cemetery.
One night this man was set upon by robbers who chased
him into the graveyard where the dead rose up to pro-

7

tect him against his pursuers. In another sermon on
the same subject he relates the story of a priest who
walked around the cemetery sprinkling holy water every
day. On one occasion the dead held up their hands to.
receive it and expressed gratitude for his ministrations.8
Another tale in this same sermon tells of a Cistercian
monk who suffers in purgatory for neglecting services

for the dead. In yet another sermon a dead knight appears
to ask his comrade to return the unjustly gotten goods

which he had not had time to restore when dying. And

later the preacher tells of a rector who appeared to a

 

7B.M., Additional 11284, fol. 23.
8Ibid., fol. 23v.

firffl'l'i '
| ‘.

-J

M‘“- __

209

lady naked and shivering and complaining that his exe-
cutors and the bishOp have robbed him.9

In none of these examples do the dead appear as
fearful beings. None of these contacts with the dead
frightened the living. The dead, as John de Hoveden
saw them, are friends of the living and are able to
communicate with the living for purposes other than
grisly reminders of death as they were to become in the
next century.

In the same way the death of the body was not
regarded with the same finality which it was to have
in later years. In the late thirteenth century romance
of Sir Orfeo the hero pursues his abducted queen to a
magic castle. Once inside the castle he is confronted
by several visions of Death. Each of these apparitions
is a dead person, each captured and frozen in the
moment of his death. Yet here, and in the thirteenth
century as a whole, the idea of death is absorbed into
the idea of enchantment for the dead, although "thought

10 If the dead are not really

ded and nere nought."
dead but enchanted, then they are capable of being

disenchanted or released from death. Orfeo was able

 

9Ibid., fol. 36.

1°R.M., Harleian 3810, fol. 12.

210

to confront death and not only to live through the
encounter but to release one of death's captives.

The same sense of enchantment is embodied in the
tombs of the thirteenth century. Generally speaking,
there are two major concepts involved: the first is
the use of the grave to represent a dwelling place
in which the defunct continues his existence, lying
in eternal rest; the second stresses the immortal soul
which has left the body and is in heaven. Early in the
century tombs usually had only a simple slab on which
the figure was carved. They were usually stiff,
cramped and were meant only as an idealization of the
qualities or characteristics which a person of a given
rank or station should have. There was a distinct
sense of immobility which was emphasized by the shallow,
patterned folds of the vestments which did not
intrude on the basic inertia of the stone. After the
middle of the century tomb sculptors, like other
artists, began to introduce naturalism into their works.
In spite of their becoming increasingly naturalistic
toward the end of the century, the effigies retained
their profound idealism. Sculptors of the thirteenth
century saw no inconsistency in combining the suggestion
of resting in eternal peace in death with that Of
standing in eternal life in heaven.

211

Physical death was de-emphasized or ignored in
the tombs Of the thirteenth century. Tombs were meant
to proclaim the ultimate aim of this life as fixed on
the life beyond. Through the ideal beauty Of natural
forms man was reminded that death is only a step leading
from this transient existence to eternal life. The
naturalistic effigies of the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries were still intended to depict ideal
human forms. Such sculptures seldom bore more than
a superficial. resemblance to the deceased and were
certainly not meant as portraits of the dead, either
before or after death.

It is a testimony to their fervent idealism that
men of the thirteenth century believed they would appear
at the Last Judgment in the same youthful age as Christ
when He died for the redemption of mankind. Frequently,
therefore, the effigy bestowed upon the deceased the
same youthfulness as Christ on the Cross and was meant

11

as a representation of perfect man in his prime. The

effigy of Edward I, for example, rests in a calm position.

 

11Henriette s'Jacob suggests a parallel between the
youthful Gothic statues and the Greek boy-statues, the
"kouroi," which might also be sepulchral effigies.
Both, she says, radiate a strong idealism. The custom
of representing the defunct as youth "continued until
0. 1350 by which time the advent of greater realism
made such conceptions impossible." Henriette s'Jacob,
Idealism and Realism, pp. 17-18.

212

The eyes stare upward toward heaven and appear to have
discovered something which mere mortals cannot see. The
emphasis is on the eyes while the hair and facial lines
are drawn in a symmetrical and schematic manner. The
face reflects a sense of peace and of abstraction from
the cares of the world. We are meant to see the effigy
not as the portrait of an individual but of a soul. To
produce this effect the artist has placed the emphasis
on the eyes for it is here that the soul may be seen
and it is the emphasis on the soul which is important
in this type of effigy.

Another form of thirteenth century effigy depicts
the deceased in some active, life role. Usually he is
shown in the attitude of prayer or engaged in some other
religious function of his lifetime. Such effigies
remind those left behind that the dead man was holy,
not as a matter of conceit, but to indicate that for
them, too, there can be salvation and eventual bliss.
Although an attitude of prayer was the usual stance,
the deceased was also sometimes shown with a symbol
of his former dignity such as a crozier, or royal in-
signia as does the effigy of Henry II. It is usual
to find the knights of the numerous English funeral

brasses with their legs crossed, a medieval convention

213

meant to convey dignity.12 The convention was not, of
course, limited to brasses for the stone effigy of
Robert Courthouse in Gloucester Cathedral (c. 1290)
shows him in full armour lying prone but with his legs
crossed so that he looks as if he is standing in the
manner of the Roman emperors.

The contradictory ideas of resting in eternal peace
and standing in heaven were reconciled in the late
years of the thirteenth century for the draperies of
the prone effigies were arranged in such a way as to
indicate that the effigy was, in fact, standing. A
compromise seems to have been reached when this standing
posture took on a dual spiritual meaning signifying both
standing in heaven and resurrection from the grave.
The concept of resurrection is wonderfully expressed
in the tomb of Sir Oliver de Ingham (figure XVIII).
He is neither lying in the grave nor standing in heaven.
Rather, he is seen raising himself erect with a peace-
ful look on his face and a faraway stare in his eyes

as if he is suddenly glimpsing heaven. The emphasis

 

12In Roman art, s'Jacob points out, gods were repre-
sented in a standing position with crossed legs in order
to distinguish them from ordinary mortals. The emporers
also affected this position as a mark of their authority
and s'Jacob traces this position through the sixteenth
century in sepulchral art. Ibid., pp. 20-22.

 

214

 

 

FIGURE XVIII

Tomb of Sir Oliver de Ingham

 

215

is still on the soul but now he is seen as not quite
in heaven but not quite on earth, either. There is,
however, a closer relationship to this world and to
the grave than ever before.

The gradual shift from idealism to realism can
easily be seen in the sepulchral art of the fourteenth
century. In the early years Of the century the tendency

toward more naturalism in the portrayal of the human

Flinn-mans“. 1

body began to change the entire idealistic conception
of death which had dominated sepulchral art. The ideal
youth gradually gave way to attempts at portraiture.
The first signs of this change were evident early in
the century. There are constant reminders of the
physical existence of the dead body in these tombs.

The erect or rising postures which had symbolized
resurrection from the grave in the thirteenth century
came to be more closely associated with the life of
the deceased than with the after-life. Knights often

are portrayed standing upright with a foot on the

 

head of a conquered enemy.13 Small dogs appear at
the head or feet of the effigy and would seem to be

meant as links with everyday existence. So that no

 

13A good example is the tomb of Michael de la
Pole at Wingfield, Suffolk. Here the effigy seems
to be standing on the head of a Saracen.

216

mistake may be made as to their meaning the name of
the dog, "Jakke," is carved into the brass of Sir

1“ The link

Bryan Stapleton at Ingham, Norfolk.
between the real world and the tomb is also preserved
by the attempt of these artists to produce portrait-
type tombs. Unlike the uniform tombs of his predeces-
sors, the tomb of Edward II indicates that the aim
of the artist was to record the facial characteristics
of his person and not the idealized characteristics of
a monarch.

When this increasing demand for naturalism in
tomb sculpture was combined with the older concept
of the dead lying in peace the result was an individual
human body shown lying on a bier soon after death. The
extent to which this idea of representing the actual
body of the deceased was expanded in the fourteenth
century is really quite startling. One explanation of
the origin of this style of tomb was suggested in the
nineteenth century by Boutell whose theory is that
they originated from an attempt to combine two types
of tombs: the monumental effigy and the less expensive

cross carved into a coffin slab. This combination on

 

1["'Sketched in 1785 by R. Gough, Sepulchral Monuments
in Great Britain (London: T. Payne & Son, 1786), II,
p. 119. Another extant example is the name "Terri"
carved in the tomb of Lady Cassy in Deerhurst Church,
Gloucester.

217

the same coffin lid led, he argued, to portraits of
dead men lying in their tombs seen through an aperture
carved in the lid.15

This theory does not, in my view, explain the
stark realism which these tombs were to take on by the
end Of the century but it does go a long way in providing
an explanation of how they came into being.

Before its destruction Boutell sketched a coffin

slab in the parish church at Gilling, Yorkshire.16

This
slab, dated around 1320, appears as a covered coffin
with part Of the lid sawn away to reveal the body within.
Only the head and feet are visible through the apertures
forming the top and bottom of the cross while the owner's
shield standing opposite his crest form the arms of

the cross.. Here, especially, it would seem that the
purpose was to show the dead lying in peace for there

is no hint of bodily decomposition. Because the lines
of the face are stylized and the eyes stare vacantly

at something beyond, it is possible that this example
was meant as no more than a variation on the traditional

idealistic effigy with the emphasis on the soul rather

than on the body in the grave.

 

15Charles Boutell, Christian Monuments in England
and Wales, p. 119.

16

 

Ibid., p. 124.

218

On the other hand, where there is an inscription
on the coffin lid there can be no mistaking the inten-
tion of the artist to portray the grave itself rather
than an idealized form of the deceased waiting for the
Judgment. The tomb of William de Staunton (d. 1326)
in the Staunton parish church is similar to the Gilling
example in that the apertures through which we see
the body are also cut to form a cross. The face and
eyes have the same stylized, other-worldly look about
them. Here, however, much more of the body is revealed
and the inscription on the lid indicates that this
tomb is meant to be a likeness of the grave itself.
There is a small dog at the feet to link the tomb with
the world left behind.

In these examples we have the first tentative
attempts to portray the tomb realistically--as it might
appear if we were to disinter the body. A further
step toward realism in tomb effigies is found in the
tomb of an unidentified man in Lichfield Cathedral.
Here the body is seen from a side view as if in a coffin
sunk into the wall. The side of the coffin has been
cut away to reveal the head and feet in profile and
so there is no attempt at making a cross. The face
is more naturalistic than any previous example and it

is possible that it was meant as a portrait of the

219

deceased just after his death.

Thomas de Apuldefeld's tomb in the north wall of
the sanctuary in the church of Lenham, Kent, is much
like the Lichfield example. (figure VII) All that is
known about Thomas is that he was alive in the first
years of Edward III's reign but the similarity in
style to the Lichfield and Gilling examples leads me
to believe that the tomb was constructed in the 1340's.
Of all the examples of such tombs this is the most
open. Very little of the top of the coffin is left
and almost the entire body is shown. The pillows under
the head, the body itself, and the draperies are rendered
in a naturalistic manner. Despite its mutilation the
double chin and thick features of a monk in middle
age can still be made out.

Until the early years of the fourteenth century
death was not a subject which held much interest for
the vast majority of men. In an Apocalypse from the
turn of the century the dead rising from their graves
is a scene conspicuously absent.17 When death was dealt
with, as in the miniature of the dead Christ on the
Cross on the death roll of Lucy, Countess of Oxford
(c. 1215), the purpose was to emphasize the peace and

 

17B.M., Royal 15 D 11.

18B.M., Egerton 2849, fol. l.

220

tranquility of death rather than the pain or the realism
of the grave.
A series of gradual steps led to more realistic
tombs in which the effigy was meant to be a likeness
of the body as it might have appeared soon after death.
These developments were paralleled in the early years
of the fourteenth century by changes in other fields
of art. In the Lenham example just mentioned the
idealistic element Of youth was abandoned. This was
also true of no less important a manuscript than the
Qpeen Mary's Psalter where the dead were shown rising
from their graves at the second coming. In this manu-
script the dead are represented at all ages, not just
in youth.18
By the 1340's the pace Of these changes had ac-
celerated to the point where men were being confronted
by realistic images of death on all sides. The manner
in which the image of death was presented was changing
radically in the years just before and after the Black
Plague. In the Luttrell Psalter19 the unsuspecting
reader is suddenly confronted by a grotesque holding
a death's head. From the pulpit men were urged to

Open graves and meditate on the bones of their

 

18B.M., Royal 2 B vii, fol. 302v.

198.M., Additional 42130, fol. 27.

221

predecessors. "Than open, and looke among dead bones,
who was rich, and who was poor."20 Bromyard advised
men to:

Go to the buryeles of thy fader & moder; and suche
schalt thou be, be he never so fayr, never so
kunnynge, never so strong, never so gay, never so
lygt. Loke also what fruyt cometh Of a man at
alle yssues of his body, as at nose, atte mouthe,
at eygen, and atte alle the othe yggues of the
body, and of othe pryvey membres, and he schall
have mater to lowe his herte.21

What men saw in these tombs becomes increasingly
horrible after the Plague. The pulpit rings with cries
of "Wormes mete and rotye." "What is man, but stynkynge
slyme, and after that a sakeful of donge, and at the
22

laste mete to wormes."

Man & wimman han on ende;
for, esye he comun a1; esye ho ssuln wende.

0f thi lif nou litel lete, 23
for thou art tornid to wormis mete.

A father reminds his son that "fowl and stinkande is
mi roting,"24 and another especially horrible poem
reminds the reader that in death there are no friends:

Thare es nane, I thee hete,
Of all thy kith

 

20B.M., Harleian 45, fol. 163.

21B.M., Harleian 2398, fol. ll.

228.h., Harleian 45, fol. 112v.

23R.h., Harleian 7322, fol. 164.

2”B.M., Harleian 2316, fol. 25.

222

Wald slepe thee with 25
A night under the shete.

One preacher is even reported to have gone so far
as to suddenly pull out and display the skull of a
dead man which he had been carrying under his cloak
in order to drive home the message of his sermon.26

When one took the advice of his priest and looked
at the tombs around him what he saw was hardly reassuring.
What had begun as an attempt to be more naturalistic
in the portrayal of effigies had become painful and
horrible realism by the end of the century. On the
tomb of Henry Chichele (d. 1443) at Canterbury, small
miniatures illustrate three general attitudes of death
which are also found in the epitaph: caro vilis,
vermis, and pulvi .

The caro vilis, or vile flesh, depicts the condi-

 

tion of the body shortly after death. This form of
effigy was commonly used in the early years of the
century (at Lenham and Lichfield, for instance) when
the Object was to show the body as naturally as

possible and yet retain the idealism Of the earlier

 

25Cambridge University Lib. Mss., Dd. 5. 64, III,
fol.u35v; as quoted in Davies, Medieval English Lyrics,
p. l .

263.M., Sloan 3102, fol. 80. n. . . caput defuncti
quod sub capa ferebat subito ostendebat . . . ."

Tux“!

'. " l .
i
I

‘1’.- -'—,"-'—S
Q
4 a

223

effigies. Usually such tombs do not produce a sensation
of horror so much as a sensation of the dead lying in
peace shortly after death. Vermis, on the other hand,
usually portrays the corpse in the last stages of decay
and, as the name implies, there are Often worms and
other types of loathsome animals present. Figure

XVII shows worms crawling out of the body and the effigy
of Chichele is covered with worms and a small animal

27

cats out the stomach cavity.

r“
.3

The purpose of the artist in this type of sepulchral
art is to show the body of the deceased ip transi, that
is, the state between life and the dust "to which ye
shall return." In an attempt to portray the reality
of death these artists indulged in scrupulous detailing
of their effigies. It is possible that the effigies
of Edward III and of Richard II were both done from

death masks since neither is a particularly flattering

 

 

27Pulvis, the third form, is a much more advanced a
state of decay with usually no more than the skeleton in,
left. This stage develOped in the fifteenth century and ' ‘
is, I think, an attempt to combine the ideal and the
real. The depiction of a skeleton is certainly realis-
tic but it does not have the same effect on the viewer
as the depiction of a rotting body. A skeleton may
be viewed with a greater degree of detachment and it
is meant as a depiction Of death itself, a general
concept, while the caro vilis and vermis depict an
individual's body. An individual's dead body does not
allow the viewer to remove it from his experience by turn-
ing it into a general concept. The pulvis is thus a later
develOpment which comes out of an attempt to reconcile the
idealism of the thirteenth century with the realism Of the
fourteenth. The skeleton is death itself, and not a par-
ticular dead person.

224

portrait. The tomb of John Golape at Fyfield, Oxon,
(d. 1406), shows the embalming incisions. These transi
are what remains of real people, of peOple who once
lived and breathed. They are not general concepts
of the soul or of the beauty Of the human form. Gone
are the Open eyes, gazing into heaven. Gone, too, is
the youth and the idealization of the activities such
as praying or hunting. The artist's object was to
capture the body in a state of decomposition at some
particular moment in time as if it had just been dis-
interred. This points up the fourteenth century idea
that the passage of time which brings on this decomposi-
tion is all that the living and the dead have in common.
In the church at Feniton, Devon, there is a fine
example of a transi (figure XIX) which was finished
between 1385 and 1395. Here, in particular, one can
see the difference between the view of death in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The focus of
attention is on the body in the grave, not the soul in
heaven. The death of the body itself has achieved
prominence displacing the soul's voyage to heaven in
the minds of Englishmen. The dead and decaying body
has a certain macabre life of its own when compared
with the immobile effigies of the thirteenth century.

The attitude toward death has changed for the movement

225

r
L

 

 

FIGURE XIX

The Skeleton Niche
Feniton, Devon

 

 

226

is no longer seen in the abstract soul, a soul which
is outside the body and ceases to have any immediate
influence upon the living, but in the body itself and
its relationship to the living. The soul has departed
the body and we are left to look at the corpse which
is the only reality. The presence of vermin makes the
corpse a much more alive form than the skeleton and

V

hence more terrifying as "it seems to be animated by

a life of its own."28

These vermin, like the realistic
scenes from the lives of the peOple in Chaucer and
Langland, serve to relate the tomb more closely to the
living. The tomb is meant to be seen as contemporary
while the soul itself is beyond time and space. There
is no suggestion in the Feniton tomb of the soul
standing, thus implying the hope of resurrection.
There is, in fact, no allusion to the soul at all for
the soul was of little interest in the context of these
tombs. The artist has attempted to capture an instant
in the putrification of the dead body for it is this
relationship to the living which was important.

But the fourteenth century plowman did not have

to look at tombs to be shocked by the realities of death.

From their pulpits the priests were hardly less vivid.

 

28Emile Male, Religious Art From the Twelfth to the
Eighteenth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, inc.,
1949), p. 147.

227

The pp; sppp formula of the thirteenth century was
expanded so that it was no longer a simple reminder
to repent the sin of pride before it is too late. It
became a grisly reminder that death is just around the
corner. "Disputations between the body and the soul"
were pOpular.

I seig a sorri siht,

A bodi ther hit on bere lay,

That hadde 1 ben a comely knigt; 29

Biheold the flesch ther hit come fro.
The disputation, in this poem, includes a fairly common-
place pp; pppp formula and then goes on to describe
the worms on the body and the frog which rests "on
thi chin." Parish churches abound with paintings of
the subject Of the three living and the three dead.
I have found some twenty-three existing paintings,
more than of any other single subject in the late
fourteenth century. Generally the story is the same.
Three kings (although sometimes it is a king, a bishop,
and a knight) go off into the forest to hunt. From
behind the trees emerge three corpses who admonish
them for their vanity and warn them to turn from things
of this world and consider their eventual end. "As

you are," say the corpses, "so once were we. As we

are, so shall you be."

 

29B.M., Additional 22283, fol. 80v.

228

The warning against the sin Of pride is still there
but these poems and paintings have a new emphasis. It
is in this emphasis that the main change in the attitude
toward death may be seen with the most clarity. In
stressing the death and decomposition of the body the
art and literature Of the late fourteenth century seem
to me to lament the passing of life and to instill a
dread of death not felt by earlier generations. This
dread Of the coming Of death replaces even the original
moral, the warning against pride in these poems and
paintings and thus an important shift in emphasis has
been made from what happens to the soul in the £232;-
1133 to what happens to the body after gpspp.

In the thirteenth century the specter of death
was regarded not as an affliction but rather as the
culmination of a journey. Death releases man from all
the shortcomings of his mortal state and delivers him
into eternal joy. This is the message Of the placid,
peaceful effigies. This is also the message of the
poet who thumbs his nose at death. When he dies they
will build a house upon his nose and "Off al this
world ne gyffe ihic a pese."30 Two apocalypses from

the last years of the thirteenth century omit entirely

 

30Trinity College Cambridge, Mss. 43, fol. 73v.

229

any illustration of the dead rising from their graves
perhaps in an attempt to place the emphasis on the
renewed life which the Judgment promised rather than
on the death which preceded it.31 Even thoughts of
the day of doom differ considerably for although the
thirteenth century poet professes much dread--"Wenne

hi thenche on domes-dai ful sore 1 me adrede"32--it is

 

:-a
for his rather abstract and unremembered sins. He is
confident that the Virgin will intercede for him. , .
By comparison the works of the fourteenth century

are much more concerned with the actual coming Of death
than the promise of the resurrection. Death is an evil
because it comes so suddenly and strips one of life
without warning and without regard to age or wealth.

As we have seen the concept of death is intimately
related to the leveller concept of equality among men
for in death all men are the same. Death is also
damned for its impartiality as regards age. Death
comes suddenly and "felled [him] in that floure."33

Or again in a poem on the death of Edward I: "Me

 

thuncheth that Deth hath don us wrong/ That he so sone

 

31B.M., Royal 19 B xv; and Royal 15 D ii.
32B.M., Cotton Caligula A ix, fol. 246.
33B.M., Royal 1? C vii, fol. 114.

230

shall ligge stille."3“

The three messengers of Death are outlined so that
man can have some forwarning. Death is especially evil
in this poem,

Whon deth cometh that is so derk
ther may ne mon him with stonde

I take witnesse on a noble clerke
that wrot theos vers with his honde
Deth he sley this kempes kene [keen minds]
And kynges in heore Worthli won
Riche and pore alle bi dene [done]
yong ne old spare he non

ther is one of ye messagers

that of no mon wol take meede

he is so hardi and so fers

that all men of him have drede

Ye messager hette-Auentures [change]

. . . be war bi that

gigrngfiegtures 3%1 come as a theof

In one of the more famous poems Of mid-century, the
Parlement of the Thre Ages, Elde or Old Age is not only
preaching against Vanity as in the thirteenth century
works, nor is he merely expressing personal grief for
the loss of his youth. Rather he is acting as Death's
messenger, reminding his hearers that Death may strike
at any time. In a similar fashion the old man in
Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale" is Death's messenger who

leads the young hunters to their deaths. In recalling
the ubi sunt formula Elde is fortifying his argument

 

3”B.M., Harleian 2253, fol. 73a.

35R.h., Additional 22283, fol. 88v.

231

that the worldly joys praised by Youth and Middle Age
are only vanity since Death will overtake all regard-
less of power and position on earth. These famous
names suggest the transitory nature of life and earthly
glory but also indicate the ruthlessness Of death.
Elde concludes:
he think the wolle [wealth] of this world worthes ' k
to nought, 3
And haues gode day for to my grave must I wend.

Deth dynges [knocks] on my dore I dare no longer
abide.36 L;

 

To Chaucer's revelers Death is a thief--"ther cam a
privee theef men clepeth [call] Deeth."37 The revelers
set out to kill death.

And we wol sleen this false traytour Deeth.

He shal be slayn, he that so manye séeeth,

By Goddes dignitee, er it be nyght!
Yet in the end they find that death has caught them
up in a trap as he does all men.

In the "Pardoner's Tale" Chaucer is not setting up
a logical argument on death but rather an emotional

barrage. He creates an air "heavy with fear and sin,

the mood of a Danse Macabre."39 This tale and the

 

 

 

36B.M., Additional 31042, fol. 178v.
37Chaucer, Cant. Tales, "Pardoner's Tale," 1. 675.
38Ibid., 11. 699-701.

39G.G. Sedgweick, "The Progress of Chaucer's Par-
doner," Modern Language_guarterly, I (1940), p. 439.

232

Parlement both are similar to the story of "the three
dead and the three living." The constant note of all
of them is the loss Of the earth's glory and the sudden
finality of death. The knight, the king, and the
bishop all bewail their fate. Says the king, "1 weende
a kynge and wisse. What helpis honor or werldis blysse.
Dede is to mane the kynde wai: i wende to be clade in
clay."l+O In the same tone the inscription on the tomb
of the Black Prince bewails the suddenness of death

and the passing of worldly glory. (Appendix I)

After seeing such tombs and paintings the warning
is clear. As John of Grimston points out, death is
inevitable and impartial. Echoing the wall-paintings
of "the three dead and the three living" he says:

Wat so thu art that gost her be me
Witstand and be hold and wel be thenk the

that suich as thu art was I wone to Re
And suich as i am nou saltu sone be.

“Wank“,

I I

Likewise the drawing of the effigy of a great lady in
figure XVII has an epitaph below. "Take heed unto my

figure above," it says, "for I was fresche and gay."

 

40
Figure
41

B.M., Cotton Faustina B vi, pt. ii, fol. lb. See

Advocates Library, Edinburgh, Mss. 18. 7. 21, fols.
87-87v; as quoted in Owst, Preaching in Medieval Engl.,

p. 344. Owst also finds that there is a quantity Of
vernacular literature in this source all dealing with

the necessity of looking into tombs or on the body of a

dead man from time to time.

.D “- “in in‘—Al‘s

“j...

..--—-1Ii-"'7" ' I m

E

i 111—- _\

233

Now, however, she is turned to worm's meat and corrup-
tion. "Se what thou art and here aftyr sal be."42
Death, in the later fourteenth century, was no

longer a blessing leading to eternal peace.
Scharp and strong is my deying,
I ne woth whider shal i;
Fowl and stinkande is mi rotifig--
on me, ihesu, yow haue mercy.
After rehearsing the good things he has had in life the

anonymous author of the Vernon manuscript reports that

1.. {“83 9.317
A .—I

it is "A-geyn mi wille I take mi leue [leave]."44 It

 

would seem that the promise of the life everlasting was
not enough to assuage the horrors of death for men of
this age. This was a period in which the preacher

and the artist strove to capture the imagination by
picturing a grim figure of death appearing in the fashion
of the 'three dead' or the rotting effigy. The preacher
remarks, "ofte cometh deth amonges men. And they
[though] a man be in goede poynt at eve, hayyplyche

he is ded by morowe."u5

For most ages, and particularly for the thirteenth

 

century, the figure of death is an abstract, removed

 

”28.M., Additional 37049, fol. 32v.

uBB.M., Harleian 2316, fol. 25.
44

45

B.M., Additional 22283, fol. 129.
B.M., Harleian 2398, fol. 46v.

234

concept. For the period under examination here, how-
ever, death was a vivid, horribly real concept whose
proximity was emphasized on every side by the preacher
and the artist. Even a comparatively mild author like
Langland finds death a dreadful thing "to vndone vs
alle.”6 There are only three certainties about death.

Hit beoth threo tymes [things] on tho day

That sothe to witen me mai: [that I may know]

That on ys, that i shal henne;

That other, that y not whenne;

That thridde is my moste care,

That y not whider i shal fare.47
By 1407 Thomas Hoccleve, a contemporary of Chaucer, wrote
that he felt death was near: "My gost is wrappede in
an hevy drede." Now he says, "I am so rype unto my

“8 It should be evident that men of the thirteenth

pit."
century and fourteenth century had very different con-
ceptions of death. In the earlier period effigies

lie or stand looking into another world. The dead
were not fearsome but rather, were more Often friends
to the living. Death was introduced into the under-

standing of men in order to emphasize the necessity

of repentance and the futility of worldly glory--the

 

46
47

Langland, Piers Plowman (Skeat Ed.), xx, 1. 88.
B.M., Harleian 7322, fol. 8.
48Thomas Hoccleve, Hoccleve's Minor Poems, ed.

E.Jk Furnival (London: Early English Text Society,
21892), Extra Ser. 61, 1. 95.

 

" 7.7" we: nm:u (am-1

235

pp; sppp theme. More than anything else the willing
surrender to death in the hope of everlasting life was
the mark of a pre-eminently idealistic age.

The difference in mood begins to impinge upon our
consciousness early in the century and by small stages.
Idealistic traits Of the earlier period, such as the
youthful appearance, were gradually discarded and the ' [I
tombs came to represent the grave itself, the resting E

place of a decomposing body instead of pointing beyond

the grave to the life everlasting.

Essentially the difference in mood is in its
attachment to the earthly as Opposed to the other-worldly.
In both art and literary works the overwhelming pre-
possession of the fourteenth century was to depict the
material and earthly side of death. The dead coming out
of the forest to take the three hunters, the body de-
composing in the grave, and the macabre urgings of A.
priests to look into graves are all evidences of this ‘
concern with the realism and horror of the grave. As

early as the first decade of the century this change was

 

evident in the anxiety of court artists to immortalize
the true features of the deceased. A good example is
the tomb of Edward I where the face shows the effects
of the apOplexy from which he died. In this instance,

however, naturalism is not the same thing as realism,

236

and a discernable change in mood from idealism to realism
is not readily apparent until the 1320's. At this point
the defunct began to be seen in their graves, not yet
decomposed, to be sure, but nevertheless in a grave and
the idealistic representation of death was replaced by
a more realistic one.

By 1340 death seems to have been on everyone's mind.
The concept of death was dislodged from its thirteenth
century position as the prelude to an after-life and
became an apparition which stalked the land. Death
became an evil because it stole one away from the enjoy-
ment of the world and, as I pointed out earlier, not
even the promise of the life everlasting could make
death less fearsome. What was meant as a warning against
pride in the thirteenth century became a lament at the
passing of the very things which engendered that pride.
The thought which attaches to the earthly side of death
is hardly pious and certainly not similar to the thir-
teenth century concept Of death. It would seem to me
that it is a reaction to the idealism and sensuality of
the thirteenth century for this contempt for the things
of the world and for human beauty paradoxically ex-
jpresses a very materialistic concept of death. All
beauty and happiness, they seem to be saying, are worth-

Zless because they are bound to end soon. Death is evil

 

237

because it ends the happiness of this world.

Death is alluded to frequently in medieval litera-
ture but in no other age was it personified and pursued
with such intensity. Death was constantly put before
fourteenth century men and with a grim, intense reality.

It were well betere for to see

A mon that mow parteth and dis [dead]

then a feste of realte. [royal feast

The feste wol make his flesh to ris,

And drawe his herte to vanite;

The body that on the bere lis

Sheweth the same that we shall be.

That ferful fit may no mon flee,

Ne with no wiles win it away:

Therfore among all jolite 49

Sumtime thenk on yesterday.
No other epoch, and particularly not the thirteenth
century, has laid such an emphasis on the idea of death.

The unsettled condition of life in fourteenth cen-
tury England certainly brought the prospect of sudden
death closer to the average man. The extreme realism
of his outlook on death, however, cannot be explained
so simply. I would suggest that this realism was a
reaction against the idealism of the preceding century
‘brought on by an inability of the thirteenth century
concept to cope with fourteenth century life. Like
ffhomism, the clergy, the chivalric mode Of life, the
concept of death had broken down and a new, more realistic

concept was develOped to replace it. The concept of

 

“9A8 quoted in Davies, Medieval English Lyrics, p. 118.

238

death was colder, harsher, and much more horrifying in
its effect but it was better suited to the real world.
The world in which fourteenth century Englishmen lived
was often horrifying and it was this world which their
vision of death sought to express, a vision which may

be summed up in a word: macabre.

CHAPTER VIII

Fortune

Perhaps because of the frequent and unforseeable
appearance of death, there was a tendency for Englishmen
of the fourteenth century to be fascinated by the old
pagan concept of Fortune or Fate. Fortune re-emerged as
a goddess who sent her messenger, Death, to seek men out
and destroy them. In this century the caprice of Fortune
was seen as responsible for most Of life's miseries, giving
wealth and happiness to some and poverty and death to
others. There was no element of mercy or stability to
be found in Fortune as there was in God for, as Chaucer
points out, "Yf Fortune bygan to duelle stable, she cessede
thanne to ben Fortune."1

As life became more and more unstable in the four-
teenth century the concept of a pagan goddess of Fortune
came to displace that of God as the controller of men's
lives. The concept of Fortune was very different from
that of God for Fortune simply turned her wheel spinning
«out the thread of life. In the thirteenth century God
(could be counted upon to be merciful. God at least did

IlOt totally abandon man after bringing all sorts of

 

1Chaucer, Boece, Bk. II, Prosa I, 11. 114-15.

239

240

calamities down upon him. God's mercy could be counted
on, if not in this world then in the next, and there
was even the hope that, like the Biblical story of Job,
these misfortunes were only a test. But Fortune was
different. She offered no hope. She was like a machine,
owing no allegiance and taking no responsibility for her
actions. It was Fortune who made every form of human
happiness a theme for tragedy, for "Tragedye is to seyn
a dite of a prosperity for a tyme, that endeth in
wrecchidness."2

Fortune had not always been conceived of in this

bleak manner. In the early years of the Church, St.

Augustine had gone to great lengths to clarify his attitude

toward fate and Fortune. Fate, he had argued, is only
a term for God's word: i.e., the divine providence. In
the géty Of God he derived the word fatum from fari
(to speak).
God spoke in the Scriptures and He knew all that
was to be. In this way, we might use the word
'fate' to mean what God has 'spoken', except that
the meaning of the word has already taken a girection
in which we do not want men's minds to move.
He is more explicit in denying the conventional pagan

'view of Fortune in his Retractations.

 

2Ibid., Bk. II, Prosa 2, 11. 70-72.

3Ludwig Schopp (ed.), The Fatheps,of the Church,
‘Vol. VIII: The C$ty of God, trans. Demetrius B. Zema
vand.Gera1d G. Walsh (60 vols.: New York: Fathers of the
(Zhurch, Inc., 1950), Bk. V, Chap. 9. P. 259.

 

241

But I regret that, in these three books of mine

[the De Academicis Libri Tres], I mention fortune

so often, although I did not intend that any goddess
be understood by this term, but a fortuitous outcome
of events of good and evil circumstances, either in
our bodies or extraneous to them. It is from this
that we have words which no religious scruple forbids
us to use: perchance, perhaps, peradventure, possibly,
haply: but all of these should be applied to Divine
Providence. Furthermore, at the time, I was not
silent on this point for I said, "And indeed, per-
haps by a certain hidden order, and in events, we

do not term anything 'chance' unless its reason and
cause are unknown." Certainly, I said this, but
nevertheless, I regret that I spoke about fortune in
this way since I realize that men have a very bad
habit of saying, "Fortune willed this" when they
should say, "God willed this."u

This view of fortune had nothing to do with the old
pagan concept of Fortune as a goddess who was merciless,
unavoidable, and who stood above or at least side by side
with God.

In the thirteenth century St. Thomas agreed with
.Augustine that fortune was God's providence and was not
a separate, independent force. Time, the element which
made Fortune's whim so frightening, was an element which
cannot be said to apply to God. TO attribute time and
space to God was to limit him and thus, for St. Thomas
at least, the whole pagan concept of Fate or Fortune was

irrelevant to the Christian concept of God.5 Hence

 

“Ibid., Vol. LX: Saint Au ustine: The Retractations.
trans. Mary Inez Bogan, Bk. I, Chap. 1, pp. 6-7. See also
a very similar passage in Bk. I, Chap. 3. p. 14.

5St. Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writipgs, Bk. I, Ques. 14,

.A145. 13, reply to Obj. 3. St. Thomas says: "Things
waiuced to actuality in time are known by us successively

242

St. Thomas says, "If then everything has been foreseen by
God, nothing will happen by chance. And thus chance and
fortune disappear."6

Doubtless the average Englishman of the thirteenth
century did not know or understand the erudite concepts
of the schoolmen. For whatever the reason, however, it
would seem that they were simply not very much attracted
by the Old pagan concept of Fortune. She is seldom men-
tioned in the literature of the period and hardly ever
found in the paintings on the walls of thirteenth century
parish churches. The unhappiness in the world of the
thirteenth century was due to the correctable sins of men
and not to an abstract, impersonal concept Of Fortune.

In a century like the fourteenth, however, the world
must have seemed far more unstable. Death came to the
pious and the impious, men rose and fell seemingly at
lrandom. For many, then, the world seemed to be ruled by
a capricious force which laughed at the misery of men,
offering only an inescapable grave.

In the two decades immediately preceding the Plague
the Old pagan concept of a goddess of Fortune re-emerges.

Langland's view of the evil in the world is conventional

 

in time, but by God they are known in eternity, which is
above time. Whence to us they cannot be certain, since
we know future contingent things only as contingent
futures: but they are certain to God alone, whose under-
standing is in eternity above time."

6Ibid,. Bk. I, Ques. 22, Art. 2. Obj. l.

243

and, I think, in keeping with the idealism of the late
thirteenth century. That is to say, he avoids the subject.
Since God made the world, he says, it must be good. He
believes in the Bible and pursues the subject no further.

God, that of thi goodnesse gonne the world make

And madest of nauhte auhte and man liche thysulve,

And sethe soffredest hym to synge, and sykenesse

to us alle,

And for cure beste, as I beleve, what-so the book

telle.7
His contemporaries, however, did not seem to share his
trust or his ability to reconcile questions Of theodicy.
Both the art and literature of these years began to
depict the common view of the world as ruled by a goddess
sitting at her wheel spinning out the destiny of men.
Fortune, in these years, had come to represent exactly
what Augustine was cautioning against nearly ten centuries
earlier: she was a force separated from God and in a
position above or equal to God.

Far from being a part of God's plan, Fortune seems
to have become an evil force, particularly in her rela-
tionship to Death. In the poem "The Three MeSsengers
of Death," the character of Auentures is the personifica-
tion of Fortune.8 As we saw in the preceding chapter,

.Death was considered an evil force because of its unpre-

dictability and in this poem Fortune is also explicitly

 

7Piers Plowman (Salter ed.), Chap. 5, 11. 4-7.
8B.M., Additional 22283, fol. 88v.

 

5

a;

 

244

considered as evil--"And auentures cometh with his synne."
Unlike the other two messengers, sickness and Old age,
Fortune gives no previous warning and Offers no chance
of repentance.
In dedly sinne he is ifounde [by Auentures]
withoute schrift and repentaunce
he gath into helle grounde . . .

More than anything else it was the suddenness of death,
the aspect of chance, of Fortune cutting the thread of
life, which frightened men.

With I and E,

Dede to thee

Shall com, als I thee kenne,

Thou ne wate

In what state,

How, ne whare, ne when.10

Death was perhaps the first of the many faces of

Fortune to be seen by men of the fourteenth century.
Langland's contemporaries often conjured up a vision of

death-fortune as a skulking, ghostly tyrant, who flits

through all lands and places sparing none, rich or poor,

high or low. He is a dreaded visitor who comes unannounced.

Bromyard, in about 1340, points out that only death is
to be feared because of its element of chance.

What es til man mare certayn
Than the Dede es that es swa sodayn

 

 

 

Ibid,

10Cambridge University Library Mss., Dd. 5. 64, III,
fol. 35v: as quoted in Brown, Lyrics of the Fourteenth

Century, p. 96.

245

And what es mare uncertayn thyng
Than es the tyme of the Dede commyng?11

Friar John of Grimston notes down in his sermon-encyclo-
paedia in about 1376 a bit of vernacular verse which
begins:

be war, man, i come as thef 12
to renne [snatch] thi life that is the lef [thy love].

And his sentiments are echoed by Thomas Wimbledon about

1389.

. . . trewly what tyme and when it shalle be &

whethur nyght or day, t er s no clerke in erthe

ne aungelle ne postelle [apostle] ne seynt in heven

that can tell that day.1

Early in the century, then, Fortune began to emerge
as an independent goddess, closely associated with Death.
Behind the whole concept of death, in fact, it was easy
to find Fortune, unavoidable, fickle, and without mercy.
.As the preachers pointed out:

This [life] is a wondir merie pley, & longe ssal

botfafgi'thi sets is perilous, war the ate laste.14
Life is short and will not last so one must make of it
‘what he can. The underlying assumption is that life is

in some way predestined by Fortune and thus what we do

 

11Richard Morris (ed.). Pricke of Conscience (London:
'Phe Philogical Society, 1863), p. 52.

12As quoted by Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 532.
13B.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 113.
1"R.M.. Harleian 7322, fol. 162v.

" 1

 

 

246

on earth will have little bearing on when we die or what
happens to us afterward. Hence, by the 1360's the poet
could advise: "Makith glad, mi frendis, ye sittith to
longe stille,/ Spekith now and gladieth and drinketh a1
yur fille."15

From a tendency to look at Fortune as the motivating
force behind the coming of Death, fourteenth century men
began to move in the direction of seeing Fortune behind
all the unhappiness of the world. Death remained as one
Of the primary aspects of Fortune but as the century

progressed, the effect of the goddess on human affairs

became an increasingly common topic. Allusions to Fortune

at her wheel became numerous. She was often described

as blind and two-faced or, on the other hand, as a beautiful,

fickle woman at her wheel.16 Bromyard, comparing Fortune

to a contrary woman, reminded his listeners that Fortune

was sometimes depicted upon the walls as a woman turning

a wheel with her hands.17 A goOd illustration is the well-

preserved painting of Fortune and her wheel on the wall
of the choir of Rochester Cathedral (figure XX). As she
turns the wheel men hang on desperately and each turn

brings some up and some down. A similar wheel is still

 

15B.M., Harleian 913, fol. 31v.
161bid,. fols. 78v and 162v.
17B.M., Harleian 7322, fol. 162v.

2&1

“I, '— 1 .“-‘T " “an. Finn-“1 .
3;!" ‘ u'

M I ,.‘
rh—stv-f)

 

247

 

 

 

FIGURE XX

Fortune at her wheel

 

 

248

visible at the church of Belchamp Walter, Essex, and is

described by a homiliest in about 1340.

That great wheel is weele and honour of the realm,
which is now up, now down, now hye, now low, and
revolves in the manner of a wheel. Upon that wheel
very many both in Church and State ascend--gape

upward ful fast. [Eote the small figures gaping

upward in figure . Some ar qwirled up suddenly

upon it and become rom pore gentilmen grete astates
and gret lordis. Some ar hurlid doun from that wheel,
from high honours and dignities to extreme poverty,
sorooful care and misery.

 

The constant allusions to Fortune and her wheel lend

an air of discouragment to life in the fourteenth century.

 

As long as men can hang onto the wheel they may be better
or worse off than before but if they should fall Off or,
alternately, if Fortune should cut the thread then there

is no escape from death.

Thou most fort, wit wele or wo,
be thou lef, other be thou lot,
forto gon Vp on this wel

that eueremore aboute got.

 

Yf thou go cointeli on this wel,
thou ssalt liue eueremore:

bot yf thou falle, & go amis, 1
wit dulful det i wonde the sore. 9

 

Fortune is responsible for the woes of this wOrld also.

1
She is perhaps less trustworthy in this context than any E"

other.

 

180xford Bodleian Mss., 649, fol. 131. as quoted in
Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 239.

198.14.. Harleian 7322, fol. 163.

 

249

The leudi fortune is bothe frend and fO,
(M‘pore che makit riche, of riche pore also.

Che turney wo a1 into wele, and wele a1 into wo,

No triste no man to this wele, the whel it turnet $0.20

The actions of this goddess are entirely unpredictable.
The world is no longer comprehensible to men and their

attitude toward it becomes one of hopelessness.

The lif of this world
Is Reuled with wynd.
With wind we blowen,
With wind we lassun.

What these men seem to be expressing is a discourage-
ment with the world, a world which was once understood

in terms of the mercy of God but now seems to be run

entirely at random by an evil, impersonal force. Worldly

happiness is an illusion and all who trust in Fortune

are fools. Such happiness "fareth as a foules flight,/

Now it is henne, now it is here."22 All "who trusteth
to trust," says another poet, "is redy for to falle."23

Chaucer's monk agrees that it is fatal to trust in Fortune,

20Cambridge University Mss., 01. 7. 32: as quoted
by Brown, Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century, p. 56.

21B.M.. Harleian 7322, fol. 136v. There is a very
similar poem on fol. 163: "This wondir wel vndir this
trone,/ it changit Ofte as dot the mone:/ al that euere

come ther-on,/ it fondit forto gile."
228.11.. Harleian 3938, fol. 409.

23As quoted in Davies, Medieval English Lyrics. p. 161.

 

 

 

 

250

"For when men trusteth hir than wol she faille/ And covere
hir brighte face with a cloude."2“

From merely appearing, as she did in the early years
of the century, as the force behind the sudden appearance
of Death, this goddess began to develop a personality of
her own later in the fourteenth century. She seemed to
take Special glee in causing unwary men to feel the pangs
of a Spurned or badly used love. Secular love, unlike the
love Of God, was bound to lead to unhappiness if only
because of its association with the goddess of Fortune
in these years. In the "Knight's Tale" the entire story
is said to be ruled by "the gods" who, in this case, are
particular manifestations of Fortune or Destiny. Arcite
is struck down in the full flower of his youth and love.
"And we been pilgrymes," says his father in reference to
the image of Fortune's wheel, "passynge to and fro."25
At the end of Troilus and Creseyde the hero looks down on
the world and laughs, somewhat disdainfully, at the
spectacle of men wasting their energies in the pursuit
of love. In a devastating criticism of the whole courtly
love theme, Troilus is even able to laugh at his own love

for Creseyde, women in general, and at the whole religion

 

2[“Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "Monk's Tale," 11.
775-760

251bid.. "Knight's Tale," 1. 2848.

 

 

 

251

cfi'courtly love which he has pursued with such enthusiasm

whilecniearth. He sadly laments:

Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love:

Swich fyn hath a1 his greate worthynesse!

Swich fyn hath his estat real above,

Swich fyn his lust, Swich fyn hath his noblesse!
Swich fyn hath false worldes brotelnesse!2

The main thrust of another poem from the Vernon Manuscript
is contained in its refrain, "This world fareth as a

Fantasy."27 Man, these authors seem to be saying, is often
the victim of an arbitrary, often cruel and ironical

mischance or Fortune.

She, cruel Fortune, casteth adoun kynges that whilom
weren ydradd: and she, descyvable, enhaunceth up the
humble chere of hym that is discounfited. Ne sche
neither heereth, ne rekketh of wrecchide wepynges:
and she is so hard that sche laugheth and scorneth
the wepynges of hem, the whiche sche hath maked wepe
with hir free wille. Thus sche pleyeth, and thus
sche proeveth hir strengthes, and scheweth a greet
wonder to alle hir servauntz yif that a wyght is
seyn weleful and overthrowe in an houre.2

Fortune, in the later half of the fourteenth century
had come to be regarded as a goddess acting more or less
independently of God or any other force. G.R. Owst

says of the fourteenth century image of Fortune:

It the wheel of Fortune] illustrated with a peculiar
'viv dness the preachers' own favourite view of life,
fundamentally harsh and pagan as it had remained,

the inevitable round of existence for every mortal
human being, the successive stages of man's tragic

 

26Chaucer, Troilus and Creseyde, Bk. V, 11. 1828-32.

27As quoted in Brown, Lyrics of the Fouppeenth Century,

p. 160.
28Chaucer, Boece, Bk. II, Met. 1, 11. 7-18.

 

\uln“

 

 

 

252

journey upon earth from cradle to grave, the varying
temporal fortunes of a world that offered him no

abiding security.

Hence, warnings against trusting in Fortune had become
one of the most popular subjects of the later decades of

the century. An unseen figure warned one poet on his walk

through the woods that trusting in Fortune is foolish.
Trust not the ontrustye, for hys promysse ys not sure.

Whome schall I acuse ther-of to make probacyon

Thys falsse flateryng world that sayth we schall remayne
Contenewally with hym in plesure and delectacyon

And have welth and prOSperyte as men of reputacyon

Not to be transposed, but styll here to indure

For he wyll soneste dysceve hym that trustyth hym moste.3O

A similar poem ends:

. . . he is noght wyse that this [world] to traystes.

For the warlde laghes on a man smyles
Bot at the last it hym begyles.

The note of hopelessness in these popular poems was

not necessarily shared by the more accomplished poets of

the age. Langland, in the first half of the century,

did not feel that the struggle against Fortune was entirely

hopeless. If a man was fortified with Truth then "Deth

dar not do thing that he [Truth] defendeth [forbids].32

29Owst, Literature and Pul it, p. 239.
30B.M., Cotton CleOpatra C iv, fol. 69.

31B.M., Additional 37049, fol. 36.

32Langland. Piers Plowman (Skeat edition), v1, 1. 84.
Langland does not appear to have been overly confident of
this remedy against Fortune and he says, finally, that
the problem of Fortune cannot be answered by those who
"seekest after the whyes." See further: Greta Hort,
Piers Plowman and Contemporary Reli ious Tho ht (London:
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 193 , p. 109.

 

 

 

 

 

253

Gower,it seems, was also not entirely sure that Fortune

was responsible for all this world's woes. In this

passage the vision of Fortune is there yet Gower continues
toluflo.the more traditional view that man can influence his
own fate through the use of his free will.

For after that we falle and rise,
The world arist and falth withal,
So that the man is overal

His oghne cause of wel and wo.
That we fortune clepe[ [blameg 33
Out of man himself it growet

The other side of the argument against Fortune is the
hopeless attitude which he finds common in his age and
which he relates a few lines later on.

For every worldes thing is vein,
And evere goth the whiel aboute,
And evere stant a man in doute,
Fortune stant no while stille,

So hath ther noman a1 his wille.
Als far as evere a man may knowe,
Ther lasteth nothing bot a throwe;
The world stant evere upon debat,
So may be seker non astat,

Now hier now ther, now to now fro,
Now up now down, this world goth so
And evere hath don and evere schalaju

Gower's feeling, it seems to me, is that man is capable
of deciding his fate in the sense that by his own good
works he may influence his position in the after-life.
He is not, however, capable of influencing what happens
to him on this earth, and it is here that he is tossed

 

33Gower, Confessio Amantis, "Prologus," 11. 544-59.

Burma“ 11. 560-71.

 

 

 

 

254

around, up and down, by the whim of Fortune. He concurs
with most of his contemporaries in saying that love is
especially susceptible to the caprices of Fortune.

Bot sche which kepth the blinde whel,

Venus, whan thei be most above,

In al the hoteste of here love,

Hire shiel sche torneth, and thgg felle

In the manere as I schal telle.

Chaucer, more than any other author of the period,
centered his attention upon the Goddess of Fortune. The
whole structure of the Canterbury Tales, the actions,
the tales, the laughter or misery of the characters
everywhere implies a delicate balance between man as a
free agent and man as the slave of Fortune.36 The

mutability of earthly love is a subject which crOps up

over and over.

But worldly joye may nat alwey dure

To Januarie, ne to no creature.

O sodeyn hap: of thou Fortune unstable:

Lyk to that scorpion so deceyvable,

That flaterest with thyn heed whan thou wols stynge;
Thy tayl is deeth, thurgh thyn envenymynge. 7

 

351bid., Bk. I, 11. 2u90-94.

36Paul Ruggiers' excellent work on the structure of
the Tales argues the thesis that:

Everywhere is implied that delicate balance between

man as a free agent, his emotional life hardening

into will, and will into act of pilgrimage: and man

as the slave of appetite, or of fate, or of fortune.
‘This balance is different for each character and it is
the human.condition which is the subject of the Tales.

Paul G. Ruggiers, The Art of the Canterbu Tales (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1937;, p. 12.
37Chaucer, Qantegbury Tales, "Merchant's Tale,"

 

 

.il. a - u

‘-

 

255

The merchant rails against Fortune: "0 monstre, that so

subtilly kanst laynte/ Thy yiftes under hewe of stide-

fastnesse."38
The problem of Fortune's control over the lives of

men comes up again in the "Nun's Priest's Tale" as the

fox waits to fall on Chauntecleer. Fortune has elevated

Chauntecleer to a point where the reader is led to expect

a reversal. He seems to act in accordance with a pre-

ordained fate.

O Chauntecleer. acursed be that morwe
That thou into that yerd flaugh fro the bemes:
Thou were ful wel ywarned by thy dremes

That thilke day was perilous to thee:

But what that God forwoot moot nedes bee,
After the cpinion of certain clerkis.39

Chaucer's own opinion is given to us through the mouth
of the priest who summarizes the tale, indicating that

Fortune is indeed pre-ordained and is outside the realm

of man's influence: "0 destinee, that mayst nat be es-

chewed”)+0
Even the Wife of Bath seems to be governed in her

life by a fate which she cannot avoid. Her sexual desire

is the mark of Fortune upon her which drives her to

331mm,. 11. 2062-63.

39Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "Nun's Priest's Tale,"

“OIbm. , 1 . 3338.

 

 

.m-Wj

ESE-r.- J

 

256

relationships which fall far short of love. Her own tragedy
stems from her desire to be wanted-~something about which
she can do nothing-~and there is considerable pathos and
melancholy involved in her response to the passage of time
and the loss of beauty. Her life is being Spun out and
she is acting in ways which are completely beyond her
control. Her lament at the passage of time and beauty
bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Elde in the
Parlement of the Thre Ages.

But Age, allas! that al wole envenyme,

Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith.

Lat go, farewel: the devel go therwith!
The flour is goon, ther is namoore to telle:

41
Likewise, the three revelers of the "Pardoner's Tale"
are led down the path to death by a pre-ordained fate.
This whole tale is built around the common theme of the
three youths who venture into the woods and are met by
death, one of the most popular scenes in late fourteenth
century art and literature.
Perhaps as a reproof to those who spend their time
in pursuit of earthly romance, Chaucer has placed his most
bitter lessons on Fortune in two romances, "The Knight's

Tale" and Troilus and Creseyde. In "The Knight's Tale"

Palamon, like Chauntecleer. adopts a fatalistic outlook.

 

“1 Chaucer, gagt2§22£x_2§;g§, "The Wife of Bath's
Tale," 11. #74-77. The lament of Elde is found in M. Y.
Offord (ed.), The Parlement of the Thre Ages (original
series 2&6; London: Early English Text Society, 1959),
11. 604-653.

 

 

257

The destinee, ministre general,
That executeth in the world over all
The purveiaunce that God hat seyn biforn
. . . be it of werre, or pees, or hatfié or love,
a1 is this reuled by the sight above.
It is the necessity of death which occupies the characters.
Fortune, or the "cruel goddes," are blamed for the suffering
of the world.
. . . I moot been in prisoun thurgh Saturne,
And eek thurgh Juno, jalous and eek wood,
That hath destroyed wel my al the blogg
of thebes with his waste walles syde:
Arcite prepares to enter the grave alone and without
company, having been swept along by fate.
In the same way the story of Troilus and Creseyde
is swept along by inevitable fate. The doom of the hero
and heroine is inseparably linked to the fate of Troy,
a fate which is more terrible because they themselves do
nothing to bring on the catastrophe. Why, Chaucer seems
to be asking, is man so often the victim of arbitrary,
cruel, and ironical Fortune? Why is it "that folk ungiltif
suffren hire injure,/ An who that giltif is, al quyt
goth he?"uu

In the end, Chaucer says, one must simply have the

faith to accept Fortune and Death as part of God's design.

 

 

 

“ZChaucer, Canterbury TalesI "The Knight's Tale,"
1]. 0 1663-72.

“3lpig&, 11. 1328-31. See also lines 1307-11 which
contain a similar indictment of God.

““Chauoer, Troilus and Creseyde, Bk. III, 11. 1018-19.

3"

258

Thanne is it wysdom, as it thynketh me,

To maken vertu of necessitee,

And take it weel that which] we may nat eschue,

And namely that [which to us a11e is due. 5
Nevertheless, such faith is hard to come by and Chaucer
himself may not have had such faith. The Knight wryly
declines to say where Arcite is going at the end of his
tale. In death Troilus can see how ridiculously he has
behaved. Neither will comment on the after-life or upon
God's mercy.“6

By using men's passions Fortune tries to lure them
onto a path which can lead only to death, both spiritual
and physical. Palamon voices the confusion of the age
arising out of the fact that man is forced to restrain
his passions for fear of divine reprisal:

And yet encresseth this a1 my penaunce,

That man is bounden to his observaunce,

For Goddes sake, to letten of his wille,

Ther as a beest may a1 his lust fulfille.

And whan a beest is deed he hath no peyne:

But man after his deeth moot wepe and pleyne,

Though in this world he have care and wo. 7
This kind of questioning seems to have been common in the
later years of the century. Gower reports:

Dont un me disoit l'autre jour,

Cil qui puet tenir la doulour
De ceste vie et la desvoie,

 

uSChaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Knight's Tale,"
11. 3041-44.

46Chaucer, Troilus and Creseyde, Bk. V, 11. 1828-34.

“7Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Knight's Tale,"
11. 1315-21.

 

W... ..

- ‘T~ogl.‘.'a"n sin-.3
L'

l“..__
-111.“

259

A son avis ferroit folour,
O'apres ce nuls sciet la verrour,
Queu part aler ne quelle voie.
This feeling is found as early as the 1340's in a poem
on the illusory face of the world.
Dieth mon and beestes die,
And all is on ocasion the same 3
And a11e o deth bos bo he drye both die];
And han on incarnacion:
Save that men beth more sleighe [sly],
All is o comparison.
Who wot yif monnes soule stighe gascends],
And bestes soules sinketh down?“

Like death, Fortune was not a new concept in the
fourteenth century but it certainly enjoyed a tremendous
growth in popularity after the 1330's. The efforts of the
Church fathers to define Fortune as a part of God's will
seem to have gone largely unnoticed in this century when
Fortune was perceived in a decidedly pagan form--a goddess
independent of any other force.

This re-emergence of the pagan notion of Fortune
seems to have begun early in the century. The goddess
first materialized out of the concept of death; the fear-
some, relentless stalker who seemed to owe allegiance

to no one. The concept of Fortune, the image of the

1wheel, were brought forward about the middle of the

 

“8Gower, Mirrour, 11. 25915-920. One told me the
cyther day/ that he who could have the sweetness/ of this
Ilife and turns it down,/ to his opinion is a fool./ After
‘this life no one knows the truth/ of where we go or by

what means .

ugBodleian Library Mss., Eng. Poet, a. I, fol. 409:
am; quoted in Davies, Medieval English Lyrics, p. 126.

 

F“:

 

260

century to explain the senseless, fickle world in which
men lived. The turning of the wheel brought good times
and bad, riches and poverty, but always it led inexorably
toward death. With a poignant note Chaucer has the Reeve
speak of the mystery of death and Fortune in a homely
image of liquid pouring out of the cask of life.

And yet ik have alwey a coltes tooth,

As many a yeer as it is passed hanne

Syn that my tappe of lif bigan to renne.

For sikerly, whan I was bore, anon

Deeth drough the tappe of 1yf and let it gon;

And ever sithe hath so the tappe yronne

Til that almoost a1 empty is the tonne.5O

This concept of Fortune--a force over which men could
have little influence--seems to me to confirm the pessi-
mistic outlook which ruled the age. The inherent unfairness
of Fortune is a problem to the fourteenth century when men
were so often confronted by death or changing times because
of the demographic and political instability of the epoch.
No matter what else, Fortune was usually without hOpe,

always uncertain, always distrusted, and certainly a mel-

ancholy prospect to men of the late fourteenth century.

 

 

CHAPTER IX

Religious Mysticism

Despite his frequent criticism of the Church the
fourteenth century Englishman remained essentially reli-
gious. Some men reacted to the changing conditions of
their world, and particularly the Church, by criticizing
and rejecting it. Others, however, attempted to re-assert
older values, as was the case with the mystics. These
Amen sought to give their audience a sense of direct par-
ticipation in religion. As early as 1330 religious litera-
ture began to stress the passion of Christ and the Virgin
with increasing realism in an effort to bring the reader
to an almost physical identification with the suffering
and pain of Christ. Mysticism, as it developed in four-
teenth century England, stressed the experience of the
senses rather than of the intellect and thus, almost
paradoxically it had much in common with the contemporary
artistic and philoSOphical movements which laid a similarly
heavy emphasis on the individual's own sense-experience.1

The four best known English mystics of this century

are Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, The Cloud author, and

 

1See above, Chapter II, for a discussion of Ockham
and the changing emphasis in art.

261

 

 

262

Julian of Norwich. All agreed that the essence of the

mystical experience lay in the senses rather than the

intellect but they differed greatly in their basic approaches

to that experience. Hilton and The Cloud author approached

the mystical encounter in a traditional fashion.2 Like

many earlier continental mystics (St. Bernard, St. Bona- ‘
venture, and Hugh of St. Victor, for example) Hilton and ' Flwr.

The Cloud author stress logic and knowledge of the world

 

as a necessary preparation for the final state of mystical i
ecstasy. Knowledge was learning about God and although “J
the final ecstasy could come only as an act of God's grace
it could not come until man had brought himself closer to
God by learning about His creation. Both The Scale of
Perfection and The Cloud of Unknowing distinguish several
steps toward the final mystical experience which stress
knowledge and the intellect of the believer. Both works
emphasize the role of these steps which only a few can
successfully pass beyond, for the final union with God

"is a special gift and not a common one."3

 

2Eric Colledge (ed.), The Mediaeval stics of En land
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961;, "Scale of

Perfection," Chap. IX, p. 207.

 

3Walter Hilton (d. 1396) was a canon of the house of
Augustinian canons at Thurgarton, Nottinghamshire. He
was extensively educated at Oxford and his chief work is
the English Scale of Perfectygn. A number of lesser works
have been attributed to him and he was apparently a prolific
‘writer although little is known of his life.

The author of The Cloud of Unknowing had remained
anonymous despite attempts to attribute the work to Walter

263

More typical of the fourteenth century is the vivid

4 Characteristic of this

and emotional mysticism of Rolle.
type of mysticism was an anti-intellectualism which rejected
the intellectual preparation deemed necessary by Hilton.
Both Hilton and The Cloud author were well-educated men

who wrote for learned audiences, while Rolle was a simple
man who wrote for simple people.

I offer this book for the consideration, not of

philosophers, not of the wise of this world, not

of great divines involved in endless questionings,

but of the simple and unlearned, who endeavour to

love God better rather than to know many things.

Rolle perceived his experiences in terms of physical
sensations such as heat, song, and sweetness. The two
Latin works written in the 1330's, the Melos Amoris and
the Incendium Amoris, lay great emphasis on these physical
sensations. After several months of preparation he relates

that he

. . . sat forsooth in a chapel, and whilst I was
greatly delighted with the sweetness of prayer or

 

Hilton. He must have been a well-educated man but nothing
further can be ascertained of his lifetime and he is
known to historians simply as "The Cloud author."

“Richard Rolle of Hampole (12907-1349) was an Oxford-
educated man who became a hermit under the patronage of
one John de Dalton, a local squire. The author of many
tracts on contemplation and the love of God, he is best
known for the Incendio Amoris, in which he details the
steps by which he reached the highest point of divine
rapture, and the Pricke of Conscience, which treats of the
instability of the world, death and why it is to be dreaded,

and powerfully enjoins the reader to follow the ascetic life.

5Richard Rolle, Selected Works of Richard Rolle Hermit,
ed. G.C. Hesseltine (London: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1930), "Incendium Amoris," Prologus, p. 147.

 

 

264

meditation, suddenly I felt within myself a merry
and strange heat. . . . I became aware that it was
not of a creature but of my Maker, for I found it
grow more hot and more delectable.

A few months later,
Whilst I sat in the same chapel in the night . . .
I heard above me the noise as it were of readers or
rather singers. Whilst I took heed, praying to
heaven with all desire, in what manner I know not

suddenly I received a most pleasant heavenly melody
dwelling within me in my mind.

In his English works, Our Daily Work and The Form of Living,
Rolle instructs others in the ways in which man may
experience these three gifts of heat, song, and sweetness.
His three steps are very different from those intellectual
steps which Hilton describes. Rolle's steps are degrees
of love and in the last and finest form of love all thoughts
but those of Christ are cast out of the mind.8 In this
state,

Jesus shall be all your desire, all your delight,

all your joy, all your solace, all your comfort.

Then may you say:

I sleep and my heart wakes:

Who shall to my lover say
I long for His love for aye?9

 

6Ibid., "Incendium," Bk. I, Chap. xv.
7Ibid.

 

8Another anonymous mystic from Farne describes his
experiences in a very similar manner placing much emphasis
on the physical senses. See W.A. Pantin,"The Monk-Solitary
of Farne," English Historical Review, LIX (1944), pp. 162-86.

9Colledge, "I Sleep and My Heart Wakes," p. 152.

 

 

265

He cautions his readers that "some are beguiled with
overmuch abstinence from meat and drink and sleep."10
In spite of the warning, however, he was much criticised
by the mystics of Hiltonfs school for his emphasis on
physical sensations. Hilton's reference to Rolle in the
following passages is unmistakable.
Hearing of delectable song or feeling of comfortable
heat in the body or seeing of light. These are not
ghostly feelings, for ghostly feelings are felt in
the powers of the soul, principally in the under-
standing and love and little in imagination . . . .
All men that speak of the fire of love know not well
what it is . . . it is neither bodily, nor is it not
bodily felt. A soul may feel if in prayer . . . but
he feeleth it by no bodily wit. 1
Many of the interests and the changes of his age are
mirrored in Rolle's works. His writing style was beautiful
but it was also simple, lacking any of the detail and
extraneous description characteristic of the literature of
the last years of the previous century. He emphasized
the passion of Christ and the transitory nature of life,
and not the logical or literary aspects of mysticism.
"The measure of thy life here," he says, "is so short
that it is scarcely anything." He echoes contemporary

complaints about the uncertainty of life, saying "we

never know when we shall die, nor where we shall die,

 

 

 

10Bo11e, "Form of Living," p. 17.
11Colledge, "Scale," Chap. XLII, p. 225.

13::

J .r. -
ram. ..

266

nor whither we shall go when we are dead . . ."12

And he was also one of the first to utter the theme
later taken up by most of the writers of the fourteenth
century--the levelling aSpect of death. The fruitlessness
of earthly labor, he remarks, "is every day seen by the
dead who, be they never so rich, with them bear but a
winding-cloth."13

Writing later in the century Julian of Norwich goes
much further than Rolle in attempting to re-create the
horror and wretchedness of Christ in her own eXperiences.
Julian does not set out, as do the other mystics of the
century, to construct a set of steps on the mystical way.
Rather she desires simply to describe, through a series
of 'shewings,' how she learned "that Love was our Lord's
meaning."lu

In the space of two days she had some sixteen shewings.
Seven were directly connected with the Lord's passion,
eight with other spiritual truths, and the last dealt
with the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the soul.
She may have been aware of the condemnation, by Hilton

and The Cloud author, of visionaries, for she emphasized

 

12Rolle, "Form of Living," p. 26.

13As quoted in Geraldine Hodgson, Rolle and "Our
Daily Work" (London: The Faith Press, 1929), p. 50.

14Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love,
ed. by Grace Warrack (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1901), p. 177.

 

 

267

the point that the shewings of themselves are no proof of
holiness in the recipient: "because of the shewing I am
not good, but only if I love God the better."15 At first
sceptical, and finally convinced by her visions, it seems
to me that we must regard Julian as a convinced mystic
whose approach is very definitely not in the traditional
mode exemplified by Hilton. A
Each of her visions culminates in a penetrating

grasp of the Godhead as it is revealed through Christ.

Her language, though it seems to be inordinately full of

 

the medieval device of breaking everything up into groups
of threes and fours, does not seem to be cumbersome or
artificial. She shows no interest in elaborate, arbitrary
symbolism, and her style is extremely simple and easy to
follow.

It is the work of Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich
which forms what I would identify as the mainstream of ffi}

fourteenth century religious thought among the non-clerical ' “

 

body of Englishmen. Both express themselvesin a simple, 4
realistic manner. Both focus their attention on the passion i4”€
of Christ and the Virgin. Descriptions are vivid and L;
both would agree, I think, that the personal, almost

physical identification with the pain and suffering of the

Crucified Christ is all-important. Whereas the more

 

15Ibid,, p. 20.

268

conventional, intellectual type of mysticism exemplified
by Walter Hilton and The Cloud author found few followers
in England, the personal, individual style of Rolle and
Julian became fairly popular, especially after 1350.16
By way of contrast, in the thirteenth century England

could claim no noteworthy mystics. The Church was in a
period of lingering reform and there was no need for a
pOpular religious movement of this type. The passion of
Christ was largely ignored. One Psalter from the first

decade of the century contains a miniature of the Cruci-

 

fixion in which Christ is treated conventionally. His

body twisted in a gentle, sweeping s-shaped curve and
showing no pain or emotion whatever.17 A book of hours

from the 1250's omits the crucifixion in favor of a miniature
showing Christ rising from the tomb. The contrast between

the emphasis on rebirth, joy, and the risen Christ in the

 

16An indication of Rolle's popularity is the number I
of surviving manuscripts of his works. The most popular
works were his Emendatio Vitae which survives in one
hundred nine manuscripts and second is his commentary on
the Psalter with fifty-eight versions surviving. Both
were works in daily use as models for Spiritual life and
as commentaries on those parts of the Scriptures that
were in everyday use. Next in popularity came the Incen-
dium Amoris and the £92 which survive in forty-two manuscripts
each, the latter being a commentary on the lessons in the
Office of the Dead. The Form of Living survives in
thirty-eight manuscripts. See further; W.A. Pantin,

The English Church_in the Fourteenth Centugy (Cambridge:
At the University Press, 1955), p. 245.

 

1W .. WT
"ragga-

17B.M., Arundel 157, fol. 10v.

269

the thirteenth century and the dead, pained Christ on the
cross of the fourteenth century is obvious in this choice of
subjects. AlthOUgh the entire body of Christ is visible

he prepares to step out of the tomb, only one wound (on

the right foot) is visible.18

The object of such works was to bring the viewer into

a relationship of quiet sadness. The emotional response ' E]_

a-OA

desired is suggested in the popular lyric, "Sunset on

Calvary."

 

Nou goth sonne vnder wod,- E:’
me reweth, marie, thi faire Rode [face].
Nou goth sonne vnder tre,-
me reweth, marie, thi sone & the.19
The picture enggested is the sinking of the sun behind
some lonely forest, the shadows of evening and the ensuing
darkness. One sympathizes with the heart-broken, lonely
mother but in a slightly detached manner. Certainly there
was not the crude, abrupt, horrific assault on the senses {:7
which was to characterize the works of the fourteenth century.

The vision of a tortured Christ on the Cross was

common in the literature and sermons of the fourteenth

 

century, often assuming gruesome dimensions. In the 4;,
sermons it appears that Christ was felt to suffer physi-
cally for specific happenings in the world. Individuals

were meant to see and identify with His wounds. They were

 

188.M., Harleian 928, fol. 9.
19B.M., Additional 10053, fol. 55.

270

to feel the pains of them in much the same way as they
were made to feel the proximity of death by contemplating
tombs.

As early as 1330 Christ on the Cross began to assume
this new, realistic dimension. One Crucifixion scene
shows Him with muscles bulging in pain and face taut and
drawn.20 Nowhere is the passion of Christ more vividly
portrayed than in the British Museum manuscript illustrated
in figure XXI. The rather crude drawing portrays a
Christ covered with blood. The heart shape shows the
five wounds and purports to give them in actual size.

". . . this is the mesure of the wounde that our jhe
crist suffered for cure redempcon." Another leaf of this
manuscript shows a bloody Christ on the Cross with huge,
prominent nails through His hands and feet. Yet another
drawing of Christ covered with blood carries the inscrip-
tion'MCCCCLXXV woundes" (1475 wounds) and under it a poem
entitled "The Heart" is accompanied by an illustration of
a heart and the inscription "XXHXX XLHII 3 drops" meaning
that Christ supposedly lost 547,500 drops of blood from

21

his wounds.

Julian of Norwich describes the wounds with equal

vividness.

 

20B.M., Egerton 2781, fol. 49.
21B.M., Additional 37049, fol. 24v.

 

U

 

"In? . “I." flit-n
\i’xtz...

 

271

 

 

FIGURE XXI

The Man of Sorrows

 

272

In this suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down
from under the Garland hot and freshly and right
plenteously . . . .

The great drops of blood fell down from under the
Garland like pellots, seeming as it had come out of
the veins: and in the coming out they were brown-red,
for the blood was full thick . . . like to the drops
of water that fall off the eaves after a great shower
of rain . . . and for roundness they were like the
scale of a herring.22

In the 1370's Thomas Wimbledon, possibly alluding
to a painting of the crucifixion in his church, urged
his listeners to think often of the passion of Christ.

. . . behold thi mirrour in the Cros, & thou may

see hym is bake scourged, the hede sett wit white

thornes crowned, the side perch wit a Speyre, hondes

and feete wit nayles pershed & non hool parti in
alle is bodie no whole part in all his body] but

is tounge wit he wiche he preyed for synnefulle

men.

Such contemplation of the passion was not always
crude and horrific and often there was even an element of
beauty and poetry in it. One poet, walking through the
woods, discovered Christ sitting under a tree--"From head
to foot wounded was he"--and described the graciousness
and love of Christ who tells him that He suffers for him--

"Quia amore langueo."24 Christ is often pictured as

appealing for sympathy. In one poem he appeals to man:

 

 

 

22Julian of Norwich, Revelations, Chap. 4, p. 8 and
Chap. 7' pp. 15-160

23B.M., Royal 18 B xxiii, fol. 88v.

2“'Lambeth Palace Mss., 853; as quoted in Spiers,
Medieval English Poetry, pp. 80-81.

273

With scharpe thornes that weren ful kene,
Myn heed was crowned, ye moun wel sene:
The blood ran doun a1 bi my cheke

Thou proud man, therfore be meke.é

In another he pleads:

Beheld my side,
My wundes Sprede so wide;
Restless I ride;

Lok upon me--put fro the pride.26

Finally, He appeals to the Virgin:
Maiden & moder, cum & se,
thi child is nailed to a tre;
hand & fot he may nouth go,
his bodi is wonden al in wo.
A1 abouten he is to-toren,
his heued is wrethen with a thorn,
his sides bothen on blode be,
with blod he's blent, he may nouth se.27
As was the case in the visual representations of the
crucifixion, the purpose of such poetry was to produce
a close emotional and physical bond with the suffering
Christ. Just as the parishioners were urged to look into
tombs, so were they also asked to look at and to feel the
wounds of Christ in much the same manner as Julian of
Norwich had. One author has Christ asking:
Man and wyman, loket to me,
u michel pine ich tholded [suffer] for the:

loke up-one mi rig, u sore ick was i-biten: 8
loke to mi side, wat Blode ich haue i-leten.2

 

25B.h., Harleian 2339, fol. 117v.
25B.M., Harleian 2316, fol. 25.

27Advocated Lib. 18. 7. 21, fol. 121: as quoted in
Brown, Lyrics of the Fourteenth Centugy, p. 85.

28New College Oxford Mss. 88, fol. 179.

 

 

274

The object of such poetry was to shock the reader into

taking a more realistic look at his world, and particularly.

his own life, and to reform himself accordingly.
This mysticism often succeeded in producing emotional

outbursts of feeling:

I sike [sigh] when I singe

For sorewe that I se,

When I with wipinge 29

Beholde upon the Tree . . .
or

Lovely ter of lovely eiye,

Why dostu me so wo?

Sorful ter of sorful eiye, 0

Thu brekst mine herte ato.3
The identification was so close that one poet "woulde
be clad in Christis skin."31 Huizinga records instances
of such extreme religious sensibility. A preacher often
stood in silence with his arms extended in the form of
a cross for a quarter of an hour. A poor nun carrying
wood to the kitchen imagines she is carrying the cross.32
In one sermon, the Wycliffite preacher rails against images

because they cannot convey the tortured hunger, thirst,

and pain of Christ. These are only "dede ymagis," he

 

29B.M., Harleian 2253, fol. 80.

30Advocates Lib. l8. 7. 21, fol. 124v: as quoted in
Davies, Medieval English Lyrics, p. 111.

311bid,, p. 125.

32Huizinga, Waninggcf the Middle Ages, p. 191.

 

f‘"_"lflll

K" It
1
4

m...
.
I
i
‘ -

 

it-

275

maintains, and they do not convey the prOper intensity
of feeling necessary for salvation.33

This intense, emotional mysticism which developed
in fourteenth century England is another indication of the
change in outlook developing in this period. English
mysticism was anti-intellectual in the sense that it was
based strictly on the individual's sense perception and
emotional sensibilities. It rejected allegorical, idealistic
interpretation as well as the uniformity of institutional

religion.34

It was a return to a pre-institutional, almost
pre-intellectual mental life, in which all symbolic or
idealistic relationships with Christ were obliterated in
favor of the individual, intensely emotional responses

of Julian of Norwich and her school.

The expression of mystical experiences was often

very realistic, as we have seen. The tendency to see

 

33B.M., Additional 24202, fol. 26.

3“This type of mysticism was often criticized by

the doctors of the Church. Dr. Lichfield, for one,

wrote that:
Mich peple that are bonden to cylence, as religyouse
folke, ankyres and ankereses, are like to floode
gatys of a mylne, wyche long tyme withstandith the
water and kepith it, that it flow not. Bot wen the
flowde gatys ar Opened, then shotys the watir oute
at onys. Thus many suche peple kepyn silence for a
tyme in certen places. But wen the place or occacion
of spekying comith, then they speke £2 myche and veyne.
Thus did the frendes of Job, that were comen to
confort hym. They sate still vii dayes; but wen they
begonnen to Speke, thay couthe not stynt her tonges.

B.M., Royal 8 C i, fol. 124v.

 

 

276

the risen Christ tortured anew and physically affected by
Specific happenings in the world was a new conception of

God. Christ was not, as He had been in the thirteenth

century, merely the victim of Specific historical events--

the expiation of all the sins of mankind in a single
event. Rather He was continually suffering for the sins
of the world. This new, perhaps vulgar, conception of
Christ continually suffering was very different from the
thirteenth century image of Christ as a tranquil judge
sitting and sustaining the perpetual order of the
Heavenly Jerusalem.

The first Signs of this changing view of Christ were
evident at the end of the second decade of the century.
Rolle was writing from c. 1325 until his death in 1349
and Langland (who saw a vision of Christ "paynted all
bloody") was writing in the 1330's and beyond. Bloody
crucifixions were commonly painted in country churches
for two decades prior to the Black Plague and thus the
reasons for the popularity of this subject must lie in
the hardships and uncertainties of the first half of the
century. The disaster of 1349 only served to assure its
popularity for the next generation.

From a geographical point of view it is interesting

to note that most of the English mystical writers of the

fourteenth century were drawn from the northern and eastern

 

 

277

parts of England. This adds some evidence to support
Sisam's theory that a realistic view of the world was
characteristic of that section of the country (see above,
Chapter III). Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and Julian
of Norwich all came from the North and East as well as
some of the more obscure mystical writers like the
anonymous monk-solitary of Farne who, in the 1340's, was
describing 'Showings' comparable to those of Dame Julian.
John Grimestone, who authored the Commonplace Book,
so painstakingly edited by Carleton Brown, was from
south-east Yorkshire.35

The fourteenth century religious outlook had become

more realistic in much the same way as realism had crept

into other subjects. The gentle s-Shaped curve of the body,

the peaceful face, and the serene peace of the dead Christ
on the Cross so characteristic of the thirteenth century
had been replaced by a tortured, straining Christ in great
pain and bleeding profusely. The harsh, uncompromising
realism of these works reflected a new outlook. They were
intended to illustrate a flash of insight which came out
of a mystical experience. They reflected the intimate

and individual knowledge of mystics such as Julian of
Norwich, a knowledge which was immediate and sensible

rather than removed and intellectual. But this outlook

 

35Brown, Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century, pp.
XVI-XVII e

 

 

 

278

was also popular, for no church was without a crucifixion
mural and no preacher was without at least one good sermon
on the pain and anguish of Christ. Such religious expres-
sion rejected the intellectualism and restraint of the
previous century in favor of a simple,~realistic, often
crude and macabre experience of the senses which all men

could feel and understand.

 

 

CHAPTER X

Conclusions

There can be no doubt that the fourteenth century

saw a great change in the outlook of Englishmen. The

 

idealism and confidence which had characterized England ! ”1

only a century before were replaced by a pessimism and

 

macabre realism which constituted a reaction against the ’y“'
older vision of the world. From the artistic expression .—J
of the thirteenth century one gets an impression of man

in harmony with God and nature. But into this idyllic

world the fourteenth century introduced new tensions.

More often than not Death, or Fortune, or raucous satire

is made to appear with startling suddenness. The "Pardoner's
Tale" first creates an ideal world similar to that of the E~—.
thirteenth century stories but then this simple world is
made far more complex and strained by the sudden intro-

duction of Death.

 

The rejection of the old world view was gradual, A 3
involving a number of diverse elements. Recurring plagues,
the economic dislocations, wars, and political instability
combined to create a mood of insecurity. Against this

background men were finding that the world which the

conventional artistic and literary forms had expressed

279

280

bore little relationship to the world in which they
lived. At the same time men became more critical of
older institutions whose members had long since ceased
maintaining the high ideals of their founders. There
were also some new problems to be dealt with. As the need
to understand and to cope with the immediacy of death
became more acute, for example, Death came to be seen
as a real figure searching out men of all ranks and
stations in life. In tombs, artists no longer portrayed
the Spiritual life of the deceased, rather it was the very
real and often horrifying decay of the body in the grave
which fascinated them. The living began to try to conceive
of the dead, not as they might be in heaven, but as they
were on earth. Graves were depicted open, with rotting,
worm-ridden cadavers exposed for all to see.

In religion too, there was an increasing tendency to
emphasize the real, that which could be seen or heard
with a man's own senses. On one hand, some men were tearing
at the fabric of the Church, criticizing the clergy for
their lack of morality, while on the other the mystics
were attempting to revive the religious experience, throwing
men back on their own sense experience., At both extremes
men were asked to believe what was real, what they could
see rather than what they were told. On the one hand the

offenses of the clergy were, like the dead in their tombs,

 

 

 

Minimu— 7"!‘M
3%
£64319. _

 

281

exposed for all to see; on the other the mystics urged
men to believe in their personal experiences, in their
sensual experience of God.

The change from idealistic to realistic modes of
expression was already in progress in the early years of
the fourteenth century. The naturalism of the first two
decades of the century grew out of the inclination of
artists and philosophers to break up unified ideals
into a body of individuals. Thus we have the naturalistic
ornament in the miniatures and stories of the early part
of the century. The war with France and the extravagant
complication of the French models provoked a reaction
in English artistic and literary tastes. In the hands
of a group of men who came out of the northern parts of
England this naturalism came to depict all that was cold
and hard about life in the fourteenth century. The
description of the hunt in Sir Gawain, for example,
presents the most minute details down to the slitting open
of the deer. One even catches a glimpse of the birds
huddling on the bare twigs in the cold of winter. The
reader enjoys a sense of direct participation in the action
and the emotions of the work.

This was the object of most of the creative art of
this century, from the tombs to the mystics' revelations,

for it seems that a man could not know what was real unless

 

 

282

he was able to feel it with his senses, to partake of the
suffering or horror of the work. Even the common scene of
St. Michael weighing the souls was divorced from general
murals and became a separate scene which now represented
the judgment of the individual soul at the moment of death,
not the general Judgment of the thirteenth century which 2

1 "l

was more abstract and farther removed from the viewer.

Realizing the proximity of death in this age of plagues

 

and famines the viewer could now identify with this scene, g _
could feel the fear and loneliness of that poor soul 2:)
standing before God.

The reaction to ways of expression was accompanied
by a reaction to the ideals which had guided men in the
thirteenth century. The clergy and nobility were especially
harshly used by the artists of the fourteenth century. The
reaction from the solemn piety of the saintly legends of
the thirteenth century is obvious when these are compared a
with the series of burlesque writings such as the Land of I

Qgggyng or the Martyre de Saint Bacchus. The same is true ;

when contrasting the excessive idealism of the Round Table A f
l;

 

romances on the one hand and "The Knight's Tale" on the
other: in this tale Chaucer refrains from any direct
criticism of the chivalric ideals (although many of his

contemporaries were not so generous) but in doing so he

 

1Tristram, Wall Painting of the Fougteenth Century,
p. 19.

283

has given the tale the diSpassionate air of life studied as
a biological specimen. The excessive detail becomes
ridiculous and is in itself a criticism of the high ideals
which were so far from the realities of aristocratic activity
in the fourteenth century.

The art and the literature of the fourteenth century, .
then, reflect a change in both the tone and the subject fad
matter compared with the preceding century. Not only

did men begin to see their world in a new light but they

 

became aware of new things, often frightening things,

 

which were going on in their world. They were prepared
to reject some of the older ideals which no longer fit
the world as they saw it. At the same time they were
seeing new aspects of their world: the horror of death,
the capriciousness of Fortune, or the need for social
reform.

There is no simple answer to the question of why
this change took place. Three of the major authorities

on this period, Tristram, Huizinga, and Owst, have found

 

1349 a convenient date and are inclined to lay great i? (
emphasis on the Black Plague as the cause of these b
changes. They, like most historians of the period, are

appalled by the death toll of this visitation by the

plague and are willing to attribute any number of changes

to it. Such a facile answer to the problem is not to be

284

found, however, for the changes were well under way in the
generation which preceded this event. The disasters of
1349 and the succeeding generation seem to have been
responsible only for assuring the success of the newly
established realistic mode of looking at the world. The
real impetus for this changing outlook must be found,

not in the plague year of 1349, but in the previous

generation.

The art and literature of this period reflect conditions

of unrest among the laity, problems of social, economic,
and political adjustment at all levels of society. The

older, idealistic system could no longer express this new

and very much changed world. To help them understand their

world, the men of the fourteenth century began to look
to new forms of artistic expression. The northern school
of literature became popular because its harsh simplicity
better described the way in which these men saw their
world. The old means of expression were no longer viable,
and new means were being sought.
As Professor Whitehead has pointed out, no epoch
is homogeneous.
. . . whatever you may have assigned as the dominant
note of a considerable period, it will always be
possible to produce men, and great men, belonging

to the same time, who exhibit themselves as antagon-
istic to the tone of their age.2

 

2Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World.

(New York: The Free Press, 1953). p. 661

 

7

 

r‘...“ um
mi
1’

285

Certainly it is possible to find exceptions, men who

still clung to idealistic artistic or literary forms, men
who still hoped to revive older forms of government or to
revive the code of chivalry. Richard II was probably such
a man. And yet the tone of the period, one must conclude,
was something very different. The vast bulk of the evidence
points to a Shift from an idealistic to a realistic view

of the world. Though reacting against many of the elements
of the medieval world the fourteenth century was still a
part of that world. It contained many elements of the
older world but it also was a new and different world, a
unique world which required an entirely new frame of

reference. Realism was that frame of reference.

 

 

 

 

APPENDICES

 

APPENDIX I

Maiden of the Moor1

Maiden in the mor lay--
in the mor lay--
seuenyst fulle, seuenist fulle. -
Maiden in the mor 1ay-- , .
in the mor lay-- ~-r
seuenistes fulle ant a day.

 

Welle was hire mete. .
wat was hire mete? . “
the primerole ant the-- -'I
the primerole ant the--
Welle was hire mete.

Wat was hire mete?
the primerole ant the violet.

Welle Lwas hire dryng.]
watflwas hire dryng?
Lthe chelde water of the--]
_ [the chelde water of the--]
LWelle was hire dryn .]
LWat was hire dryng?
the chelde water of the welle-spring.

Welle was hire bour. FEW?
wat was hire bour? f ;
{the rede rose and te--] _ ~.
_ Lthe rede rose and te--] F
LWelle was hire bour. .
LWat was hire bour.] ' 4
the rede rose an te lilie flour. . g-“.
y

 

 

1Dodleian Lib., Oxford, MSS Rawlinson D913, Item
I h, as quoted in Robbins, p. 12.

286

287

Lo11ai2

Lollai, Lollai, litil child, whi we istou so sore?

Nedes mostou wepe, hit was iyarkid ordained] the yore
Lof old]

Euer to lib in sorrow a' sich and mourne euere,

AS thin eldren did er this, whil hi alives were.

Lollai, (lollai) litil child, child, lolai, lullow,

In to vncuth world icommen so ertow.

Bestis a' thos foules, the fisses in the lode F1

(and) eurch schef atines Lliving creature makid of -
bone a' blode,

Whan hi comith to the world, in doth ha silf sum gote,

Al bot the wrech brol Lchild] that is of Atam is blode.

Lollai, lollai litil child, to kar ertou be mente; ' ‘

Thou nost nogt this world is wild bifor the is isette. El,

 

Child, if betideth that thou ssalt thriue a' the

Thench thou wer ifostered up thi moder kne:

Euer hab mund in thi hert of thos things thre;

Whan thou commist, whan thou art, and what ssal com of the.

Lollai, lollai litil child, child lollai, lollai,

With sorow thou com into this world, with sorrow ssalt
wend awai.

Ne tristou to this world, hit is thi ful Jo Levil].
The rich he makith pouer, the pore rich al so.

Hit turneth wo to wel and en wel to wo.

Ne trist no man to this world whil it turneth so.
Lollai, lollai, litil child the fote is in the whele,
Thou nost, whoder turne, to wo other wele.

Child thou ert a pilgrim in wikidnis iborn,

Thou wandrest in this fals world, thou loke the bifor.

Deth ssal com with a blast ute of a wel dim horre

Adam is kindun to cast, him silf hath ido before.

Lollai, lollai litil child, so wo the worth Lwrought]
Adam,

In the lond of paradis, throgh wikidnes of Satan.

 

Child thou nert a pilgrim, but on vncuthe gist Lguest],
The dawes beth itold, thi jvrneis [journeys] beth icast.
Whoder thou salt wend north other est,

Deth the sal betide, with bitter bale in brest.

Lollai, lollai litil child, this wo Adam the wrogt

Whan he of the appil ete and Eue hit him betacht.

 

2B.M., Harleian 913, fol. 32.

APPENDIX II

Inscription on the tomb of the Black Prince

De la mort ne pensay je mye
tant come j'avoi la vie .
en terre avoi gud richesse

dont je y fis gud noblesse s .
terre mesons & gud tresor : ‘I
draps, chivalx, argent et or.

Mes ores su je povres and cheitifs
profound en la terre gyS

1
ma gud beaute est tout alee 5?]

 

ma char est tout gastee
Moult est estroit ma meson.

I never thought of my death

so much as I have life

on earth. I had great riches

of which I made out great nobility,

country houses and great treasure

clothes, horses, silver, and gold.

But now I know profound poverty and wretchedness
Deep in the ground I lie

my great beauty is all gone --
my flesh is all spoiled E&
my house is greatly cramped for room now.

 

..._
‘lh‘ . ‘
t-‘L. u
n
n

288

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

I

 

‘Jnmm. l7‘_---I _Af
“Ila-=-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Literature dealing with the fourteenth century is
dominated by the brilliant work of Johan Huizinga whose
excellent synthesis presents for the reader much of the
wide variety, the tone, and the mood of the late medieval
world. But there are also a number of other authors
whose works, though often not as well known, are especially
helpful to the student of the period.

Anyone wishing to familiarize himself with four-
teenth century England will find several excellent poli-
tical histories available including works by McKissack,

Wilkinson, Tout, Richardson and Sayles. For a view of

upper class life at the end of the century I would recommend

Gervase Mathew's recent work, The Court of Richard II.
Although political history and the lives of various impor-
tant men like John of Gaunt or the three Edwards have been
well documented, very little has been written on the
pOpular culture of this century.

In the field of English literature the two works of
G.R. Owst cited below are invaluable for their insight
into the lives and attitudes of English preachers in the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The

works of Carleton Brown have made much of the poetry of

289

 

 

 

290

the age available to American readers for the first time
and his introductions are extremely helpful guides to read-
ing and understanding the literature of these centuries.

I would also point to Paul Ruggiers', The Art of the

 

Canterbury_Tales, which is an exciting and relatively new
interpretation of Chaucer's masterpiece.

My own research relies heavily on the manuscript iii
collections of the British Museum for the simple reason

that there is so much untouched material there that I

 

did not find it necessary to go much further. Both the %:J
Oxford and Cambridge University Libraries have extensive
manuscript collections of which I have made limited use.
It Should also be noted that many manuscripts have been
edited and printed. Many of England's most famous authors--
Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Wycliffe, to name a few--have
had their works printed and many different editions are
available. The Macauley edition of Gower's works and the fibm‘
F.N. Robinson edition of Chaucer remain the standard

editions of these two most famous authors of fourteenth

 

century England. Another extremely good source for printed QZJ”
manuscript material are the editions puplished by The 3'}
early English Text Society which, over the past century,

has printed the original texts of many middle English

works which probably would not otherwise have found their

way into print.

291

The late medieval period seems to have been of
special interest to art historians. Male, Frankl, Branner,
Jantzen, DvorAk, and Panofsky are only a few of the great
art historians who have become fascinated by Gothic art.
Margaret Rickert and Peter Brieger have produced several
good works, Specifically on English art, for the Oxford
and Pelican series. Anyone interested in the art of the If}

lower classes will find his research facilitated by E.W.

 

Tristram's thorOUgh cataloguing of thirteenth and four- .1
teenth century wall painting in English parish churches. E5)
These works contain references to paintings which have been
destroyed as well as to those still existing.
The most important sources for this period are still
to be found in manuscript form and the authors whose names
appear here are only a small sampling of some of the
most important works in this field. A more complete,
but by no means full, list of the most valuable printed Efln]

sources follows. a

 

 

Books ; a“
A
Aquinas, Thomas. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. -;
Edited by Anton C. Pegis. New York: Random House,

1948.

Bennett, H.S. Life on the English Manor: A Study of
Peasant Conditions, 1150-1400. Cambridge: At the
University Press, 1938.

Boutell, Charles. Christian Monuments in England and
Wales. London: George Bell, 1849.

292

Branner, Robert. Gothic Architecture. New York: George
Braziller, 1967.

Brieger, Peter. English Art, 1216-1307. Bol. IV of
The Oxford History of Art. Edited by T.S.R. Boase.
Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1957.

Briggs, Milton, and Jordan, Percy. Economic History of
England. 11th ed. revised. London: University
Tutorial Press, Ltd., 1964.

Brown, Carleton. English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century.
Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1965.

. Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century.
2d ed.. revised. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press,

1965.

Caiger-Smith, A. English Medieval Mural Painting.
Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1963.

 

Caxton, William (trans.). The Book of the Ordre of
Chyvalry. London: Oxford University Press, 1926.

Cohen. Gustave. Histoire de la chevalerie en France au
mgyen age. Paris: Hichard-Masse, 1949.

Colledge, Eric (ed.). The Mediaeval Mystics of England.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961.

Coulton, G.G. Medieval_Panorama. Cambridge: The Univer-
sity Press, 1938.

. Social Life in Britain from the Conquest tb
the Reformation. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc.,

1968.

Dahmus, Joseph H. The Prosecution of John Wyplyf.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.

 

Davies, R.T. (ed.). Medieval English Lyrics: A Cgitical
Anthology. London: Faber and Faber, 1963.

Déprez, E. Les préliminaires de la guerre de cent ans.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1902.

Devlin, Mary Aquinas. The Sermons of Thomas Brintoni
Bishopgof Rochester; 1323-1382. 2 vols. (The
Camden Society: third series, vols. LXXXV-LXXXVI.)
London: The Camden Society, 1954.

293

Didron, Adolphe N. Manuel d'iconographie chrétienne.
Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1845.

Dodd, William G. Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower.
London: Ginn and Co., 1913.

Dvorék, Max. Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art.
Translated by Randolph Klawiter. Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1967.

Evans, Joan. English Art. 1307-1461. Vol. V of The
Oxford History of English Art. Edited by T.S.R.
Boase. Oxford: At the Clarendoanress, 1949.

Frankl, Paul. The Gothic: Literary Sources and Inter-
pretations Through Eight Centuries. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1960.

 

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