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MODERN IDEAS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 ilDKLE AGES. 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 CB351 .F82 
 
 Modern Ideas In the Middle Ages. 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 762 469 
 
 K,tJI>^0 FRANCK^, Ph.D;, , 
 
 AS^IST^NT FROKBS^Ojt. Or GBRHAN IS HARVARD UNIVEKSITV, CAMBRIDGE, MASSr ^i 
 
 j|)ejVinte4' ftoflj (^^ PuMicalimi ;o£ i&n^-MeDBRN LAnijuase Association at Amkrica, 
 SllpJIle^Bt to Vol. V, No. 2, 1890. * . 
 
' ^ I, 
 
 
 MODERN IDEAS 
 
 MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 BY 
 
 KUNO FRANC KE, Ph.D., 
 
 ASSISTANT PROCESSOR OF GERMAN IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDfGE, TMASS^ 
 
 Deprinted from the PuhUcaiions of the MoDfiRN LAi^GCAGfi AssOClAtioi* of AmsriCA, 
 Supplement to Vol. v. No. .i, 1890. 
 
^va^-^r^ 
 
Modern Ideas in the Middle Ages. 
 
 By KUNO FRANCKE, Ph. D., 
 assistant professor of german in harvard university, cam- 
 bridge, mass. 
 
 The didactic poetry of the Middle Ages, devoid as it largely 
 is of romantic charm and artistic beauty, presents, nevertheless, 
 a phenomenon of no little interest to the historical student. The 
 growth of this species of literature is simultaneous with the 
 decay of chivalric poetry, and it is one of the first manifestations 
 of that commercial spirit which, together with the failure of the 
 Crusades and the break down of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, 
 marks the thirteenth centui'y as one of the great turning epochs 
 in European history. Three features of the didactic poetry are 
 especially significant in this respect. First, what may be called 
 the democratic attitude of the didactic writers. As a rule,' they 
 detest war, they abhor the unproductive life and the shallow 
 amusements of the nobility, they extol the honesty and industry 
 of the peaceful citizen ; and if few of them go so far as to say 
 with Hugo von Trimberg, that true love of mankind could be 
 found only with the lower classes, since they alone were capable 
 of self sacrifice, yet it is" an adequate expression of the prevail- 
 ing sentiment of his fellow writers when the sturdy Ulric 
 Boner says that a poor freeman is richei- than a rich man in 
 dependence. 
 
 Vrlheit zieret allez leben, 
 
 Unt kan wol guot gemiiete geben ; 
 
 Vriheit hoehet wlp unt man, 
 
 Den armen sie rich machen kan ; 
 
 Vriheit ist der Sren hort. 
 
 Si iiberkroenet werk unt wort. 
 
 A second trait which these writers, be they German, French or 
 English, have in common, is the opposition against the church 
 of Rome. Hardly a more drastic word has been spoken in 
 Germany before the times of Huss and Luther about the 
 policy of the Holy See than that famous passage in Freidank's 
 'Bescheidenheit' where the author speaks of the double dignity 
 
 I Der Winsbeke and Freidank are the most notable exceptions of this rule. 
 
ry6 KUNO FRANCKE. 
 
 of St. Peter as fisherman and as shepherd. St. Peter's net 
 was destined for the fishing of men, the pope catches silver and 
 gold, castles and countries instead ; St. Peter was ordained a 
 shepherd in order to guide and watch over his flock, not, as the , 
 Pope does, to shear God's sheep or even to kill them. In 
 France the horrors of the Albigensic wars find an echo among 
 others in the bitter invectives of GuiOT de Provins, inserted in 
 his great satirical review of the social organism of his time. And 
 in England the great trio of Gower, Chaucer and Langland 
 needs only to be mentioned to remind one that here also the 
 spirit of the reformation found a literary expression long before 
 the reformation itself, in the didactic poetry of the middle 
 classes. 
 
 Finally, it is in this poetry that we first notice a decided in- 
 fluence of classic models upon the literature of modern nations. 
 Felippo Villani in his ' Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis 
 civibus ' counts it among the greatest achievements of DA:NTE 
 that he " first of all united the fanciful creations of the ancient 
 poets with the belief of the christian religion and showed that 
 those ancients not less than we were filled with the Holy Spirit." 
 This " first of all " is not quite correct. Not Dante, but the 
 didactic poets that preceded him, have a claim to be called the 
 first forerunners of humanism. The ' Welsche Gast ' of Tho- 
 MASiN VON ZiRCLARiA as Well as Hugo von Trimberg's 
 • Renner,' and above all the most famous of all the didactic 
 poems of the Middle Ages, the ' Roman de la Rose,' are satu- 
 rated with Greek and Roman traditions, conceptions and 
 expressions. And although these classic allusions and figures 
 as a rule betray as little of the classic spirit as Perugino's 
 famous frescoes in the exchange of Perugia betray any resem- 
 blance to the ancient heros and sages which they were meant to 
 represent, yet the fact remains that in this respect also the 
 didactic poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were on 
 the side of those ideas and forces which in the end were bound 
 to overthrow the aristocratic hierarchy of papacy and empire. 
 
 It is curious that, although considerable attention has been 
 given to this branch of mediaeval literature, this attention should 
 have been almost wholly confined to works in the vernacular. 
 And yet the latin didactic poems of the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries are not only numerous and bulky ; but, since a good 
 many of them were written before the greater part of didactic 
 
MODERN IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 177 
 
 works in the vernacular, they are also not infrequently valuable 
 as furnishing the source of the latter,^ and moreover they give 
 us an additional and most conclusive evidence that the most 
 educated part at least of the clergy (the only class of people 
 to whom Latin was accessible at that time) were siding with 
 the friends of reform and progress. 
 
 It is on this background that rest three remarkable produc- 
 tions which through a strange mishap seem to have escaped the 
 notice of the historians of literature : the 'Palponista' of Bern- 
 hard VON Gest, the ' Brunellus' of Nigel Wireker, and the 
 ' Architrenius ' of Jean de Anville. 
 
 The first of these poems, the author of which was living as a 
 canon at Miinster, WestphaUa, in the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century, is so completely forgotten that not even a mention of it 
 is made in any history of German literature, and there exists no 
 edition of it later than the seventeenth century.3 And yet, few 
 productions of the Middle.Ages reveal such a thoroughly demo- 
 cratic spirit, few give us a more vivid and realistic picture of the 
 life of the time, in castle and town, in tavern and market-place. 
 And it is especially interesting as one of the earliest expressions 
 of that hatred and contempt for the folhes and sins of the ruling 
 aristocracy which a hundred years later was fanned into the 
 violent outbursts of the Jacqueries and Wat Tyler's rebellion in 
 France and England, and of the guild revolutions in Germany. 
 The author represents himself as enjoying the quiet retreat of his 
 garden, far removed from the busy world, when an old adven- 
 turer with gray hair and a weather-beaten face accosts him and 
 asks why he is so averse to the life of a courtier. To him, the 
 adventurer, it seemed the very best of lives. Old as he was, at 
 the nod of his master he would do anything, endure cold and 
 heat, play the juggler or the clown, the soldier or the servant — 
 not, as he expressly states, out of any attachment for his master, 
 but simply for the sake of a rich reward. The canon is of 
 course indignant over this mercenary talk, but the courtier goes 
 on and reveals himself still more unmistakably. The court, he 
 says, knows neither of heaven nor hell ; therefore you must look 
 out and get what you can for yourself. Some of the tricks by 
 
 2 Thus the character of Genius in the 'Roman de la Rose' is tal<en from Alain de 
 l'Isle's * De Planctu Maturae.' 
 
 3 :;ome information about the author and the editions of the " Palponista " I have given 
 in ' Zur Geschichte der lat. Schulpoesie des I2ten u. i3ten Jahrlmnderts.' MUnchen, 1879. 
 
178 
 
 KUNO FRANCKE. 
 
 which you can cheat your master, I will tell you. Of course 
 your master is stupid and very proud of his family. That you 
 must make use of. You tell him for instance : " I know count 
 so and so, your cousin. That is a man ! a wolf in battle, a lamb 
 in peace, and how munificent ! The other day he presented with 
 most luxurious garments and with rich donations in land five 
 hundred knights *ho had done some fighting for him. Fre- 
 quently he speaks of you and wishes you well ; truly, you would 
 delight him and his wife highly, if you sent them a little present, 
 even if it were only a falcon or a hawk." Now, of course, this is all 
 lies, and the truth is that this affectionate cousin of your master's 
 hates him to such a degree that it gives him the qualms to hear 
 his name. . . Then you must not forget to praise the outward 
 appearance of your master. If he is short, then you say : "A 
 heavy body makes one slow, a light one favors quickness of 
 mind." If he is tall, then you say : " Only such a body is fitting 
 for a ruler, ridiculous would be a short-legged knight." Is he 
 thin, then you observe that only thin people live long, whereas 
 stout ones are apt to die suddenly. Is he stout, then you com- 
 fort him by saying : " What benefit do thin people derive from 
 all their eating ? you certainly show that you have lived to some 
 purpose"! — But the best way to insinuate yourself into your 
 master's esteem is to help him out of his debts, and the best 
 way to accomplish this is to find out an opportunity for him to 
 extort money from his subjects. For instance, a row has taken 
 place in the town. There, as you know, all sorts of people 
 come together ; rich and poor, foreigner and citizen, master and 
 servant will drink there together in the same inn. At first a 
 quiet conversation is carried on about affairs of war and peace, 
 about the quality of the wine, about the character of the prince 
 and so forth; gradually, as the tongues become heavier, the 
 scene becomes livelier and the talk more heated. A rundown 
 merchant tells in a bragging way of his former travels on land 
 and sea. "At that time, he says, my vessel was heavy with 
 precious ware ; nowadays the grocer, who hasn't ever ventured 
 more than a hundred yards outside of the city walls, thinks 
 himself my equal, nowadays the cobbler and the weaver drinks 
 his wine, walks about in scarlet, and rides on horseback and 
 would refuse my daughter even if I gave him a lump of silver 
 into the bargain." Such talk of course, is irritating to the com- 
 mon people and one of the crowd gives it to the merchant. 
 
MODERN IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 179 
 
 " You miserable braggart, what's the use of all this high-flown 
 rodomontade. After all your boasted adventures on land and 
 sea, what has become of you ? A good for nothing wretch. 
 And that is because you always have been cheating and always 
 will cheat." This is too much for the merchant. He pours his 
 wine into the face of his defamer and lets his bumper land on 
 his skull. Now a general fight ensues, with fists, boots, candle- 
 sticks, chairs they belabor each other, and there is a good deal 
 of blood and many bruises. Finally, they get tired and calm 
 down, they ask for more wine and drink cordially in honor of 
 the reconciliation. "Only, they say to each other, let us keep 
 this quarrel quiet, lest our master, the count, hear about it and 
 call us to account." But you have been on the lookout for such 
 a thing and you report it as quick as you can to the count and 
 tell him that this is a splendid opportunity to make the people 
 bleed. " For the more you trim the tree, the better it grows ; 
 and the more you fleece the common people the better do they 
 work."- 
 
 Somewhat more attention has been given of late to the second 
 of the above-mentioned poems, the ' Brunellus ' of Nigel 
 WiREKER, an English Benedictin monk of the end of the 
 twelfth century. Th. Wright has inserted it in his 'Satirical 
 Poets of the Twelfth Century,' and Prof Morley devotes some 
 pages in his ' English Writers ' to an analysis of it. Yet no one, 
 as far as I know, has pointed out that in this grotesque compo- 
 sition we have a most striking mockery of the whole scholastic 
 life, a fanciful play of irony with what to most of the poet's con- 
 temporaries must have appeared as the very foundations of 
 society. The hero of the poem is an ass, named Brunellus, who 
 is very much grieved to have such a short tail. He, therefore, 
 asks the wise Galienus (Galenus) to procure him a new one by 
 performing an operation. Galienus tries to dissuade him, but 
 when he finds that the ass has set his mind on it, he apparently 
 consents to his plan. " Go to Salerno," he says, " and buy there 
 the following medicines : Marblefat, some goosemilk, some 
 snail-swiftness and wolfefear, a pound of ■ peacocksong, fresh- 
 fallen snow from St. John's night. All this do well up in boxes 
 and then come back to me. May water and thistles be plenti- 
 ful on your journey, may hail, snow and rain protect you, and 
 may your friend the bulldog, accompany you everywhere. 
 Goodbye.'' Gratefully and contentedly poor Brunellus trots 
 
i8o 
 
 KUNO FRANCKE. 
 
 off, but soon a dog proves indeed fatal to him. For while one 
 day he is passing a Cistercian monastery near Lyons, he is at- 
 tacke^d by the watchdogs, and when they let him loose the un- 
 fortunate tail is entirely gone. Now from sheer despair the ass 
 resolves to study theology and law. He goes to Paris and 
 stays there seven years. But at the end of this time he has not 
 even yet learned to pronounce the name of Paris. Finally he 
 decides to become a monk ; but as he cannot find an order 
 which altogether suits him, he is going to found a new one him- 
 self, which is to be a caricature of all the existing ones. From 
 the Templars he is going to adopt the preference for fine horses, 
 from the Hospital brothers the practice of lying, from the Clunia- 
 censes the permission to eat fat on Fridays, from the Carthusians 
 the scarcity of masses, from the secular canons the concubines, 
 from the Premonstratenses the soft tunic, and so forth. While 
 the ass is still dwelling on these reformatory plans, his old master 
 appears and drives him back to his work in the mill. 
 
 Although it seems strange that two poems of such marked 
 individuality, as the ' Palponista ' and the ' Brunellus,' should 
 have attracted so little attention, yet it is much more curious that 
 the same fate has befallen a work for which it is not claiming 
 too much to characterize it as a forerunner of Bunyan's ' Pil- 
 grim's Progress.' And it is hard to see why its author, Jean 
 DE Anville (or Hauteville), a Cistercian monk of Norman 
 descent who lived at or near Rouen towards the end of the 
 twelfth century, should have been deprived thus far of a place in 
 the history of French literature. It is an epic poem in nine can- 
 tos, entitled ' Architrenius,' and written in that turgid and pomp- 
 ous Latin which was the bane of all mediaeval imitators of Virgil 
 and LuCAN. The following abstract is made from several manu- 
 scripts of the work at Rome and Perugia, which I compared,'* 
 and from Th. Wright's edition in his ' Satirical Poets.' Archi- 
 trenius or Archweeper, — this is the name of the hero as well as 
 the title of the book, — having just reached his full manhood, 
 sets himself to thinking how he has employed his life so far and 
 what he has accomplished. To his grief he finds that he has 
 not been one day without guilt, and the tormenting question 
 forces itself upon him whether nature has condemned man from 
 the outset to a sinful existence, whether there is no rescue from 
 
 4 Cf. Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichie xx, pp. 475-502, and A?nerican yournal 
 of Philology, vol. xi, pp. 80-87. 
 
 * 
 
MODERN IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 I8l 
 
 the curse of evil. To put an end to his doubts, he resolves to 
 go in search of Nature herself, to inquire for the reason of her 
 wrath, and as a loving son to appeal to her motherly heart. So 
 he sets out on his journey and wanders all over the world, 
 through deserts and dense forests, over rocky mountains and 
 through lonely valleys, until at last he gets to the golden house 
 of Venus, situated on a high summit. The goddess herself, 
 who barbarously enough is described as sitting with a torch and 
 a fishing rod in her hands, does not seem to attract the attention 
 of Architrenius very strongly ; all the more however he is im- 
 pressed with the charms of one of the girls who sit in a circle 
 around her. To an analysis of her beauty and to the description 
 of Cupid who from a slope near by is sending his arrows upon 
 this company, is given the rest of the first and a part of the 
 second canto ; and although this passage is entirely without 
 poetical value, it gives us interesting information about the 
 costume of fashionable young people in the twelfth century. 
 Especially Cupid with his long pointed shoes, with his wide, 
 luxurious pantaloons (ritu Teutonico as is added), with his slit 
 sleeves, his bracelets, and his diadem is unmistakably represent- 
 ed as a chevalresque young courtier. Architrenius seems a 
 good deal affected by the presence of Cupid, and it takes all his 
 resolution to tear himself away from this scene, but at last he 
 recalls the purpose of his journey and takes it up again. Next 
 he comes to an inn where a crowd of young fellows indulge in 
 noisy carousing. It is a scene that reminds one of the Carfnina 
 burana and other songs of the vaganies, that shifting class of 
 traveling students among whom the famous 
 
 Mihi est propositum 
 In taberna mori 
 
 first originated. ' Wesheil,' ' wesheil,' it sounds from all sides 
 in the student slang of the time, and a song in honor of Bacchus 
 gives expression to the general feeling. 
 
 Bacche corymbiferis Phrygiae spectabilis aris 
 Quem love majorem Thebae venerantur alumnura 
 Rarnasusque deum, cunctis deus inclyte terris, 
 Quam bonus es ! meliusque sapis, plus sole sereni. 
 Plus splendoris habes auro, Phoeboque nitoris, etc. 
 
 This time Architrenius remains entirely faithful to his purpose, 
 and while continuing his pilgrimage, he bewails the dissipation 
 and gluttony of the young men, declaims against man's desires 
 
1 82 KUNO FRANCKE. 
 
 as the disfigurers of all pure nature and beauty, and praises the 
 sobriety of the Cistercians, the moderation of the Roman Fabri- 
 cius, and the frugal table of Philemon and Baucis. At the end 
 of the second canto he arrives at Paris, and the whole following 
 canto is devoted to a most vivid description of the miserable life 
 which the poor scholastics led there. Paris itself, to be sure, 
 must have possessed -even at that time a charm of its own. 
 Architrenius calls it "altera regia Phoebi," " mundi rosa," " bal- 
 samus orbis " ; and he extols highly its beautiful surroundings, 
 its fertile vineyards, its good-natured people. But alas ! the 
 unfortunate scholastic derives no benefit from all these attrac- 
 tions. His life is wasted in fruitless plodding and incessant 
 abnegation. He is the true picture of a grind ; pale, shortsighted, 
 with unkempt hair, always in the same shabby antiquated dress, 
 so he lives on, year after year, in his gloomy den. His meals 
 consist of peas, beans and cabbage ; next to no care is taken of 
 his room ; his bed is a hard mattress lying close on the floor; 
 sitting on it at night he is surrounded by books, and when at last 
 the candle has burnt down and he lies back to seek rest, even 
 then his studies pursue him and keep him awake until the early 
 morning hours. It is no wonder that such a life cannot have a 
 great charm for Architrenius. After having again given vent to 
 his feelings by passionate declamations and profuse tears, he 
 travels on and with the beginning of the fourth canto, suddenly 
 steps out of the most tangible reality into the shadowy realm of 
 Allegory. A mountain arises before his eyes, covered with 
 beautiful groves of the rarest trees and fragrant with the per- 
 fume of the choicest flowers. From its summit runs a crystal 
 brook over pebbles of gold and silver, and on its highest peak 
 there stands a vast and luxurious castle. This is the Mount of 
 Ambition. Ambition herself, and with her other states of mind 
 and faults of a similar nature such as Hypocrisy, Anxiety, Adu- 
 lation, are thought of as monsters creeping all over the surface 
 of the mountain and lurking from under the trees and bushes, 
 whereas still more repelling vices such as Fraud, Perjury, Cruel- 
 ty, reside in the castle in company with a large crowd of devo- 
 tees and worshippers. The sight of all this prompts Architrenius 
 to profuse lamentations about the temptations and evils of court- 
 life, with which the fourth book closes. The fifth canto brings 
 him to the Hill of Presumption, inhabited by a large number of 
 people who in some way or other assumed a dignity or position 
 
MODERN IDEAS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 183 
 
 which they had no right to hold. Among them Architrenius 
 notices Niobe, Phaeton, the Titans, Persius, the dabbling imitator 
 of Horace, and Old Age which had dared, as the poet says, to 
 creep over the face of Henry II, the then-reigning king of Eng- 
 land and duke of Normandy. On the highest summit of this 
 hill, Money is enthroned, the mother of all presumption and 
 elation, and on a peak near by Arrogance, who, once a goddess, 
 was together with Lucifer ejected from heaven, and is now visit- 
 ing the palaces of the great on earth, but frequently, also, steals 
 into the monastery and hides under a monks gown. Here the 
 narrative is strangely interrupted through the sudden appearance 
 of a knight, called Walganus, who without the slightest provo- 
 cation proceeds to tell the tale, well-known to the readers of that 
 time through the chronicle of Geoffry of Monmouth, of the 
 fabulous expedition of the Roman Brutus and his followers to 
 England.' And equally sudden is the change of scene which 
 takes place with the beginning of the sixth canto. For here we 
 see Architrenius on the island of Thule, which is represented as 
 a region of eternal spring and happiness, in the midst of an as- 
 sembly of Greek and Roman philosophers conversing about 
 moral and theological questions. The speeches of these phi- 
 losophers, nineteen in number, take up the sixth, seventh and a 
 large part of the eighth canto. The first twehe, by Archytas, 
 Plato, Cato, Diogenes, Socrates, Cicero, Plinius, Crates, Seneca, 
 Boethius, Xenocrates, Pythagoras, are directed against vices. 
 Then follows a pitiful complaint of Architrenius about the eterni- 
 ty of the punishments of hell, in answer to which the Seven Sages 
 speak about the love of God and the humihty and devotion of a 
 Christian. At the end of all these speeches, Architrenius lifts 
 his eyes and sees in a lovely garden, surrounded by a circle of 
 saintly looking old men, the goddess Nature herself enthroned' 
 in imperial state. He approaches her, and is about to lay his 
 doubts and troubles before her when she takes the words from 
 his lips and tries to comfort him through a long exposition of 
 the wisdom and order of the universe, which extends over into 
 the ninth canto. Architrenius, however, is not in the least 
 edified by this lecture on natural philosophy. On the contrary, 
 he complains bitterly to the goddess of her injustice. " If you 
 are so wise and powerful," he says, " as you describe yourself, 
 why then do you not end my sufferings and let me share in the 
 happiness of the universe"? And now Nature, at last, is in- 
 
1 84 KUNO FRANCKE. 
 
 duced to give to the^ weary pilgrim ajvisible proof of her kind- 
 ness/i She tells him that he needs a wife ; and in mgist glowing 
 terjtis, she describes to him a girl, called Moderantia, who would 
 be" a suitable mate for him. Architrenius recovers fropi despair ; 
 Moderantia is introduced and the wedding of the happy couple 
 is celebrated, the birds accompanying the sound of the harps, 
 aijtd all the Virtues attending in a chorus. 
 
 Considered as works of art neither the ' Palponista ' nor the 
 ' Brunellus ' nor the 'Architrenius ' offer much to attract our 
 attention. As historical documents they bear important witness 
 to-'the growth, in the twelfth 'and thirteenth centuries, of that 
 sp$^ of individualism which is the soul of all modern flife.