Chapter XIII: Les Miracles De Notre Dame (2)

When our dear Lord, who deigned to write With his own hand that in his sight Those in his kingdom held most dear Father and mother honoured here,-- When He saw His Mother's face He rose and said with gentle grace: "Well are you come, my heart's desire!" Like loving son, like gracious sire; Took her hand gently in His own; Gently placed her on His throne, Wishing her graciously good cheer:-- "What brings my gentle Mother here, My sister, and my dearest friend?"

One can see Queen Blanche going to beg--or command--a favour of her son, King Louis, and the stately dignity of their address, while Saint Peter and the virgins remain in the antechamber; but, as for Saint Peter's lost soul, the request was a mere form, and the doors of paradise were instantly opened to it, after such brief formalities as should tend to preserve the technical record of the law-court. We tread here on very delicate ground. Gaultier de Coincy, being a priest and a prior, could take liberties which we cannot or ought not to take. The doctrines of the Church are too serious and too ancient to be wilfully misstated, and the doctrines of what is called Mariolatry were never even doctrines of the Church. Yet it is true that, in the hearts of Mary's servants, the Church and its doctrines were at the mercy of Mary's will. Gaultier de Coincy claimed that Mary exasperated the devils by exercising a wholly arbitrary and illegitimate power. Gaultier not merely admitted, but frankly asserted, that this was the fact:--

Font li deables:--"de cest plait, Mal por mal, assez miex nous plest Que nous aillons au jugement Li haut jugeur qui ne ment. C'au plait n'au jugement sa mere De droit jugier est trop avere; Mais dieu nous juge si adroit, Plainement nous lest notre droit. Sa mere juge en tel maniere Qu'elle nous met touz jors arriere Quant nous cuidons estre devant. . . . . . . . En ciel et en terre est plus Dame Par un petit que Diex ne soit. Il l'aimme tant et tant la croit, N'est riens qu'elle face ne die Qu'il desveile ne contredie. Quant qu'elle veut li fait acroire, S'elle disoit la pie est noire Et l'eue trouble est toute clere: Si diroit il voir dit ma mere!"

"In this law-suit," say the devils, "Since it is a choice of evils, We had best appeal on high To the Judge Who does not lie. What is law to any other, 'T is no use pleading with His Mother; But God judges us so true That He leaves us all our due. His Mother judges us so short That she throws us out of court When we ought to win our cause. . . . . . . . . In heaven and earth she makes more laws By far, than God Himself can do, He loves her so, and trusts her so, There's nothing she can do or say That He'll refuse, or say her nay. Whatever she may want is right, Though she say that black is white, And dirty water clear as snow:-- My Mother says it, and it's so!"

If the Virgin took the feelings of the Trinity into consideration, or recognized its existence except as her Son, the case has not been reported, or, at all events, has been somewhat carefully kept out of sight by the Virgin's poets. The devils were emphatic in denouncing Mary for absorbing the whole Trinity. In one sharply disputed case in regard to a villain, or labourer, whose soul the Virgin claimed because he had learned the "Ave Maria," the devils became very angry, indeed, and protested vehemently:--

Li lait maufe, li rechinie Adonc ont ris et eschinie. C'en font il:--"Merveillans merveille! Por ce vilain plate oreille Aprent vo Dame a saluer, Se nous vorro trestous tuer Se regarder osons vers s'ame. De tout le monde vieut estre Dame! Ains nule dame ne fu tiez. II est avis qu'ele soit Diex Ou qu'ele ait Diex en main bornie. Nul besoigne n'est fournie, Ne terrienne ne celestre, Que toute Dame ne veille estre. Il est avis que tout soit suen; Dieu ne deable n'i ont rien."

The ugly demons laugh outright And grind their teeth with envious spite; Crying:--"Marvel marvellous! Because that flat-eared ploughman there Learned to make your Dame a prayer, She would like to kill us all Just for looking toward his soul. All the world she wants to rule! No such Dame was ever seen! She thinks that she is God, I ween, Or holds Him in her hollow hand. Not a judgment or command Or an order can be given Here on earth or there in heaven, That she does not want control. She thinks that she ordains the whole, And keeps it all for her own profit. God nor Devil share not of it."

As regards Mary of Chartres, these charges seem to have been literally true, except so far as concerned the "laid maufe" Pierre de Dreux. Gaultier de Coincy saw no impropriety in accepting, as sufficiently exact, the allegations of the devils against the Virgin's abuse of power. Down to the death of Queen Blanche, which is all that concerns us, the public saw no more impropriety in it than Gaultier did. The ugly, envious devils, notorious as students of the Latin Quarter, were perpetually making the same charges against Queen Blanche and her son, without disturbing her authority. No one could conceive that the Virgin held less influence in heaven than the queen mother on earth. Nevertheless there were points in the royal policy and conduct of Mary which thoughtful men even then hesitated to approve. The Church itself never liked to be dragged too far under feminine influence, although the moment it discarded feminine influence it lost nearly everything of any value to it or to the world, except its philosophy. Mary's tastes were too popular; some of the uglier devils said they were too low; many ladies and gentlemen of the "siecle" thought them disreputable, though they dared not say so, or dared say so only by proxy, as in "Aucassins." As usual, one must go to the devils for the exact truth, and in spite of their outcry, the devils admitted that they had no reason to complain of Mary's administration:--

"Les beles dames de grant pris Qui traynant vont ver et gris, Roys, roynes, dus et contesses, En enfer vienent a granz presses; Mais ou ciel vont pres tout a fait Tort et bocu et contrefait. Ou ciel va toute la ringaille; Le grain avons et diex la paille."

"All the great dames and ladies fair Who costly robes and ermine wear, Kings, queens, and countesses and lords Come down to hell in endless hordes; While up to heaven go the lamed, The dwarfs, the humpbacks, and the maimed; To heaven goes the whole riff-raff; We get the grain and God the chaff."

True it was, although one should not say it jestingly, that the Virgin embarrassed the Trinity; and perhaps this was the reason, behind all the other excellent reasons, why men loved and adored her with a passion such as no other deity has ever inspired: and why we, although utter strangers to her, are not far from getting down on our knees and praying to her still. Mary concentrated in herself the whole rebellion of man against fate; the whole protest against divine law; the whole contempt for human law as its outcome; the whole unutterable fury of human nature beating itself against the walls of its prison-house, and suddenly seized by a hope that in the Virgin man had found a door of escape. She was above law; she took feminine pleasure in turning hell into an ornament; she delighted in trampling on every social distinction in this world and the next. She knew that the universe was as unintelligible to her, on any theory of morals, as it was to her worshippers, and she felt, like them, no sure conviction that it was any more intelligible to the Creator of it. To her, every suppliant was a universe in itself, to be judged apart, on his own merits, by his love for her,--by no means on his orthodoxy, or his conventional standing in the Church, or according to his correctness in defining the nature of the Trinity. The convulsive hold which Mary to this day maintains over human imagination--as you can see at Lourdes--was due much less to her power of saving soul or body than to her sympathy with people who suffered under law,--divine or human,--justly or unjustly, by accident or design, by decree of God or by guile of Devil. She cared not a straw for conventional morality, and she had no notion of letting her friends be punished, to the tenth or any other generation, for the sins of their ancestors or the peccadilloes of Eve.

So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste of any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in making this world decent and pay its bills, without having to continue the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own, so independent that the Trinity might have perished without much affecting her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity could look on and see her dethroned with almost a breath of relief. Aucassins and the devils of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger. Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no favours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that three hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfied with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The Puritans abandoned the New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to the beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church's affair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it with Church or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists are seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the dead architecture where it belongs.

Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took no special interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the wise. For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and with their doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered; but occasionally she could not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of the manner in which the Trinity allowed their--the regular--Church to be administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had any,--and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them,--while she was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court. One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying in the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate historian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names or dates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Mary never loved bankers, and had no reason for taking interest in this one, or for doing him injury; but it happened that the parish priest was summoned to both death-beds at the same time, and neglected the old pauper in the hope of securing a bequest for his church from the banker. This was the sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in the Church of the Trinity, which, in her opinion, was not cared for as it should be, and she felt it her duty to intimate as much.

Although the priest refused to come at the old woman's summons, his young clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in orders, took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her hut, which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age:--

Close de piex et de serciaus Comme une viez souz a porciaus.

Roof of hoops, and wall of logs, Like a wretched stye for hogs.

There the beggar lay, already insensible or at the last gasp, on coarse thatch, on the ground, covered by an old hempen sack. The picture represented the extremest poverty of the thirteenth century; a hovel without even a feather bed or bedstead, as Aucassins' ploughman described his mother's want; and the old woman alone, dying, as the clerk appeared at the opening:--

Li clers qui fu moult bien apris Le cors Nostre Seigneur a pris A l'ostel a la povre fame S'en vient touz seus mes n'i treuve ame. Si grant clarte y a veue Que grant peeur en a eue. Ou povre lit a la vieillete Qui couvers iert d'une nateite

Assises voit XII puceles Si avenans et si tres beles N'est nus tant penser i seust Qui raconter le vout peust. A coutee voist Nostre Dame Sus le chevez la povre fame Qui por la mort sue et travaille. La Mere Dieu d'une tovaille Qui blanche est plus que fleur de lis La grant sueur d'entor le vis A ses blanches mains li essuie.

The clerk, well in these duties taught, The body of our Saviour brought Where she lay upon her bed Without a soul to give her aid. But such brightness there he saw As filled his mind with fear and awe. Covered with a mat of straw The woman lay; but round and near

A dozen maidens sat, so fair No mortal man could dream such light, No mortal tongue describe the sight. Then he saw that next the bed, By the poor old woman's head, As she gasped and strained for breath In the agony of death, Sat Our Lady,--bending low,-- While, with napkin white as snow, She dried the death-sweat on the brow.

The clerk, in terror, hesitated whether to turn and run away, but Our Lady beckoned him to the bed, while all rose and kneeled devoutly to the sacrament. Then she said to the trembling clerk:--

"Friend, be not afraid! But seat yourself, to give us aid, Beside these maidens, on the bed."

And when the clerk had obeyed, she continued--

"Or tost, amis!" fait Nostre Dame, "Confessies ceste bone fame Et puis apres tout sans freeur Recevra tost son sauveeur Qui char et sanc vout en moi prendre."

"Come quickly, friend!" Our Lady says, "This good old woman now confess And afterwards without distress She will at once receive her God Who deigned in me take flesh and blood."

After the sacrament came a touch of realism that recalls the simple death-scenes that Walter Scott described in his grand twelfth- century manner. The old woman lingered pitiably in her agony:--

Lors dit une des demoiselles A madame sainte Marie: "Encore, dame, n'istra mie Si com moi semble du cors l'ame." "Bele fille," fait Nostre Dame, "Traveiller lais un peu le cors, Aincois que l'ame en isse hors, Si que puree soil et nete Aincois qu'en Paradis la mete. N'est or mestier qui soions plus, Ralon nous en ou ciel lassus, Quant tens en iert bien reviendrons En paradis l'ame emmerrons."

A maiden said to Saint Marie, "My lady, still it seems to me The soul will not the body fly." "Fair child!" Our Lady made reply, "Still let awhile the body fight Before the soul shall leave it quite. So that it pure may be, and cleansed When it to Paradise ascends. No longer need we here remain; We can go back to heaven again; We will return before she dies, And take the soul to paradise."

The rest of the story concerned the usurer, whose death-bed was of a different character, but Mary's interest in death-beds of that kind was small. The fate of the usurer mattered the less because she knew too well how easily the banker, in good credit, could arrange with the officials of the Trinity to open the doors of paradise for him. The administration of heaven was very like the administration of France; the Queen Mother saw many things of which she could not wholly approve; but her nature was pity, not justice, and she shut her eyes to much that she could not change. Her miracles, therefore, were for the most part mere evidence of her pity for those who needed it most, and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the siecle, but more commonly the helpless. Every saint performed miracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any one intermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyond these exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to the whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity and the only hope of despair. One might go on for a volume, studying the character of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from the earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles at Lourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied a development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets long ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what was most dramatic for popular use. The Virgin's most famous early miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was what one might call her salvation of Faust. Another Byzantine miracle was an original version of Shylock. Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic material untouched. Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain untouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth much money--so much that the rival shrines stole each other's miracles without decency--one does not care to see one's Virgin put to money- making for Jew theatre-managers. One's two-hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors shrink.

For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap. Better is that called the "Tombeor de Notre Dame," only recently printed; told by some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any of Gaultier de Coincy's. Indeed the "Tombeor de Notre Dame" has had more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin. One fears only to spoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a glossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm.

The story is that of a tumbler--tombeor, street-acrobat--who was disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for becoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the famous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly been blessed by the Virgin's presence. Ignorant at best, and especially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of a religious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:--

Car n'ot vescu fors de tumer Et d'espringier et de baler. Treper, saillir, ice savoit; Ne d'autre rien il ne savoit; Car ne savoit autre lecon Ne "pater noster" ne chancon Ne le "credo" ne le salu Ne rien qui fust a son salu.

For he had learned no other thing Than to tumble, dance and spring: Leaping and vaulting, that he knew, But nothing better could he do. He could not say his prayers by rote; Not "Pater noster", not a note, Not "Ave Mary," nor the creed; Nothing to help his soul in need.

Tormented by the sense of his uselessness to the society whose bread he ate without giving a return in service, and afraid of being expelled as a useless member, one day while the bells were calling to mass he hid in the crypt, and in despair began to soliloquize before the Virgin's altar, at the same spot, one hopes, where the Virgin had shown herself, or might have shown herself, in her infinite bounty, to Saint Bernard, a hundred years before:--

"Hai," fait il, "con suis trais! Or dira ja cascuns sa laisse Et jo suis ci i hues en laisse Qui ne fas ci fors que broster Et viandes por nient gaster. Si ne dirai ne ne ferai? Par la mere deu, si ferai! Ja n'en serai ore repris; Jo ferai ce que j'ai apris; Si servirai de men mestier La mere deu en son mostier; Li autre servent de canter Et jo servirai de tumer." Sa cape oste, si se despoille, Deles l'autel met sa despoille, Mais por sa char que ne soit nue Une cotele a retenue Qui moult estait tenre et alise, Petit vaut miex d'une chemise, Si est en pur le cors remes. Il s'est bien chains et acesmes, Sa cote caint et bien s'atorne, Devers l'ymage se retorne Mout humblement et si l'esgarde: "Dame," fait il, "en vostre garde Comant jo et mon cors et m'ame. Douce reine, douce dame, Ne despisies ce que jo sai Car jo me voil metre a l'asai De vos servir en bone foi Se dex m'ait sans nul desroi. Jo ne sai canter ne lire Mais certes jo vos voil eslire Tos mes biax gieus a eslicon. Or soie al fuer de taurecon Qui trepe et saut devant sa mere. Dame, qui n'estes mie amere A cels qui vos servent a droit, Quelsque jo soie, por vos soit!"

Lors li commence a faire saus Bas et petits et grans et haus

Primes deseur et puis desos, Puis se remet sor ses genols, Devers l'ymage, et si l'encline: "He!" fait il, "tres douce reine Par vo pitie, par vo francise, Ne despisies pas mon servise!"

"Ha!" said he, "how I am ashamed! To sing his part goes now each priest, And I stand here, a tethered beast, Who nothing do but browse and feed And waste the food that others need. Shall I say nothing, and stand still? No! by God's mother, but I will! She shall not think me here for naught; At least I'll do what I've been taught! At least I'll serve in my own way God's mother in her church to-day. The others serve to pray and sing; I will serve to leap and spring." Then he strips him of his gown, Lays it on the altar down; But for himself he takes good care Not to show his body bare, But keeps a jacket, soft and thin, Almost a shirt, to tumble in. Clothed in this supple woof of maille His strength and health and form showed well. And when his belt is buckled fast, Toward the Virgin turns at last: Very humbly makes his prayer; "Lady!" says he, "to your care I commit my soul and frame. Gentle Virgin, gentle dame, Do not despise what I shall do, For I ask only to please you, To serve you like an honest man, So help me God, the best I can. I cannot chant, nor can I read, But I can show you here instead, All my best tricks to make you laugh, And so shall be as though a calf Should leap and jump before its dam. Lady, who never yet could blame Those who serve you well and true, All that I am, I am for you."

Then he begins to jump about, High and low, and in and out,

Straining hard with might and main; Then, falling on his knees again, Before the image bows his face: "By your pity! by your grace!" Says he, "Ha! my gentle queen, Do not despise my offering!"

In his earnestness he exerted himself until, at the end of his strength, he lay exhausted and unconscious on the altar steps. Pleased with his own exhibition, and satisfied that the Virgin was equally pleased, he continued these devotions every day, until at last his constant and singular absence from the regular services attracted the curiosity of a monk, who kept watch on him and reported his eccentric exercise to the Abbot.

The mediaeval monasteries seem to have been gently administered. Indeed, this has been made the chief reproach on them, and the excuse for robbing them for the benefit of a more energetic crown and nobility who tolerated no beggars or idleness but their own; at least, it is safe to say that few well-regulated and economically administered modern charities would have the patience of the Abbot of Clairvaux, who, instead of calling up the weak-minded tombeor and sending him back to the world to earn a living by his profession, went with his informant to the crypt, to see for himself what the strange report meant. We have seen at Chartres what a crypt may be, and how easily one might hide in its shadows while mass is said at the altars. The Abbot and his informant hid themselves behind a column in the shadow, and watched the whole performance to its end when the exhausted tumbler dropped unconscious and drenched with perspiration on the steps of the altar, with the words:--

"Dame!" fait il, "ne puis plus ore; Mais voire je reviendrai encore."

"Lady!" says he, "no more I can, But truly I'll come back again!"

You can imagine the dim crypt; the tumbler lying unconscious beneath the image of the Virgin; the Abbot peering out from the shadow of the column, and wondering what sort of discipline he could inflict for this unforeseen infraction of rule; when suddenly, before he could decide what next to do, the vault above the altar, of its own accord, opened:--

L'abes esgarde sans atendre Et vit de la volte descendre Une dame si gloriouse Ains nus ne vit si preciouse Ni si ricement conreee, N'onques tant bele ne fu nee. Ses vesteures sont bien chieres D'or et de precieuses pieres.

Avec li estoient li angle Del ciel amont, et li arcangle, Qui entor le menestrel vienent, Si le solacent et sostienent. Quant entor lui sont arengie S'ot tot son cuer asoagie. Dont s'aprestent de lui servir Por ce qu'ils volrent deservir La servise que fait la dame Qui tant est precieuse geme. Et la douce reine france Tenoit une touaille blance, S'en avente son menestrel Mout doucement devant l'autel. La franc dame debonnaire Le col, le cors, et le viaire Li avente por refroidier; Bien s'entremet de lui aidier; La dame bien s'i abandone; Li bons hom garde ne s'en done, Car il ne voit, si ne set mie Qu'il ait si bele compaignie.

The Abbot strains his eyes to see, And, from the vaulting, suddenly, A lady steps,--so glorious,-- Beyond all thought so precious,-- Her robes so rich, so nobly worn,-- So rare the gems the robes adorn,-- As never yet so fair was born.

Along with her the angels were, Archangels stood beside her there; Round about the tumbler group To give him solace, bring him hope; And when round him in ranks they stood, His whole heart felt its strength renewed. So they haste to give him aid Because their wills are only made To serve the service of their Queen, Most precious gem the earth has seen. And the lady, gentle, true, Holds in her hand a towel new; Fans him with her hand divine Where he lies before the shrine. The kind lady, full of grace, Fans his neck, his breast, his face! Fans him herself to give him air! Labours, herself, to help him there! The lady gives herself to it; The poor man takes no heed of it; For he knows not and cannot see That he has such fair company.

Beyond this we need not care to go. If you cannot feel the colour and quality--the union of naivete and art, the refinement, the infinite delicacy and tenderness--of this little poem, then nothing will matter much to you; and if you can feel it, you can feel, without more assistance, the majesty of Chartres.