Chapter II: Sacred Music

Every nobleman and gentleman in the Middle Ages, we have seen, had one or more minstrels as part of his household, and among their other duties they were required to assist at the celebration of divine worship. Allusions occur perpetually in the old romances, showing that it was the universal custom to hear mass before dinner, and even-song before supper, _e.g._: "And so they went home and unarmed them, and so to even-song and supper.... And on the morrow they heard mass, and after went to dinner, and to their counsel, and made many arguments what were best to do."[337] "The Young Children's Book," a kind of mediæval "Chesterfield's Letters to his Son," published by the Early English Text Society, from a MS. of about 1500 A.D., in the Bodleian Library, bids its pupils--

"Aryse be tyme oute of thi bedde,
And blysse[338] thi brest and thi forhede,
Then wasche thi handes and thi face,
Keme thi hede and ask God grace
The to helpe in all thi workes;
Thou schalt spede better what so thou carpes.
Then go to the chyrche and here a massé,
There aske mersy for thi trespasse.
When thou hast done go breke thy faste
With mete and drynk a gode repast."

In great houses the service was performed by the chaplain in the chapel of the hall or castle, and it seems probable that the lord's minstrels assisted in the musical part of the service.

The organ doubtless continued to be, as we have seen it in Saxon times, the most usual church instrument. Thus the King of Hungary in "The Squire of Low Degree," tells his daughter:--

"Then shal ye go to your even song,
With tenours and trebles among;

* * * *

Your quere nor organ song shal want
With countre note and dyscant;
The other half on organs playing,
With young children ful fayn synging."

And in inventories of church furniture in the Middle Ages we find organs enumerated:[339] Not only the organ, but all instruments in common use, were probably also used in the celebration of divine worship. We meet with repeated instances in which David singing the psalms is accompanied by a band of musicians, as in the Saxon illumination on p. 272, and again in the initial letter of this chapter, which is taken from a psalter of early thirteenth-century date in the British Museum (Harl. 5,102). The men of those days were in some respects much more real and practical, less sentimental and transcendental, than we in religious matters. We must have everything relating to divine worship of different form and fashion from ordinary domestic appliances, and think it irreverent to use things of ordinary domestic fashion for religious uses, or to have domestic things in the shapes of what we call religious art. They had only one art, the best they knew, for all purposes; and they were content to apply the best of that to the service of God. Thus to their minds it would not appear at all unseemly that the minstrels who had accompanied the divine service in chapel should walk straight out of chapel into the hall, and tune their instruments anew to play symphonies, or accompany chansons during dinner, or enliven the dance in the great chamber in the evening--no more unseemly than that their master and his family should dine and dance as well as pray. The chapel royal establishment of Edward IV. consisted of trumpets, shalms, and pipes, as well as voices; and we may be quite sure that the custom of the royal chapel was imitated by noblemen and gentlemen of estate. A good fifteenth-century picture of the interior of a church, showing the organ in a gallery, is engraved in the "Annales Archæologiques," vol. xii., p. 349. A very good representation of an organ of the latter part of the sixteenth century (1582) is in the fine MS. Plut. 3,469, folio 27.[340] An organ of about this date is still preserved in that most interesting old Manor House, Igtham Mote, in Kent. They were sometimes placed at the side of the chancel, sometimes in the rood-loft, which occupied the same relative position in the choir which the music gallery did in the hall.

In the MSS. we not unfrequently find the ordinary musical instruments placed in the hands of the angels; _e.g._, in the early fourteenth-century MS. Royal 2 B. vii., in a representation of the creation, with the morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy, an angelic choir are making melody on the trumpet, violin, cittern, shalm (or psaltery), and harp. There is another choir of angels at p. 168 of the same MS., two citterns and two shalms, a violin and trumpet. Similar representations occur very significantly in churches. On the arch of the Porta Della Gloria of Saragossa Cathedral, of the eleventh century, from which there is a cast at the entrance to the South Kensington Museum, are a set of angel minstrels with musical instruments. In the bosses of the ceiling of Tewkesbury Abbey Church we find angels playing the cittern (with a plectrum), the harp (with its cover seen enveloping the lower half of the instrument)[341] and the cymbals. A set of angel musicians is sculptured on the rood loft of York Minster. In the triforum of the nave of Exeter Cathedral is a projecting gallery for the minstrels, with sculptures of them on the front playing instruments.[342] In the choir of Lincoln Cathedral, some of the noble series of angels which fill the spandrels of its arcades, and which have given to it the name of the Angel Choir, are playing instruments, viz., the trumpet, double pipe, pipe and tabret, dulcimer, viol and harp. They represent the heavenly choir attuning their praises in harmony with the human choir below: "Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name." There is a band of musicians sculptured on the grand portal of the Cathedral at Rheims; a sculptured capital from the church of St. Georges de Bocherville, now in the Museum at Rouen, represents eleven crowned figures playing different instruments.[343] On the chasse of St. Ursula at Bruges are angels playing instruments beautifully painted by Hemling.[344] We cannot resist the temptation to introduce here another charming little drawing of an angelic minstrel, playing a psaltery, from the Royal MS. 14 E iii.; others occur at folio 1 of the same MS. The band of village musicians with flute, violin, clarinet, and bass-viol, whom most of us have seen occupying the singing-gallery of some country church, are the representatives of the band of minstrels who occupied the rood-lofts in mediæval times.

Clerical censors of manners during the Middle Ages frequently denounce the dissoluteness of minstrels, and the minstrels take their revenge by lampooning the vices of the clergy. Like all sweeping censures of whole classes of men, the accusations on both sides must be received cautiously. However, it is certain that the minstrels were patronised by the clergy. We shall presently find a record of the minstrels of the Bishop of Winchester in the fourteenth century; and the Ordinance of Edward II., quoted at p. 296, tells us that minstrels flocked to the houses of prelates as well as of nobles and gentlemen. In the thirteenth century, that fine sample of an English bishop, Grostête of Lincoln, was a great patron of minstrel science: he himself composed an allegorical romance, the Chasteau d'Amour. Robert de Brunne, in his English paraphrase of Grostête's Manuel de Peches (begun in 1303), gives us a charming anecdote of the Bishop's love of minstrelsy.

"Y shall yow telle as y have herde,
Of the bysshope seyut Robérde,
Hys to-name ys Grostet.
Of Lynkolne, so seyth the gest
He loved moche to here the harpe,
For mannys witte hyt makyth sharpe.
Next hys chaumber, besyde his stody,
Hys harpers chaumbre was fast therby.
Many tymes be nyght and dayys,
He had solace of notes and layys.
One askede hym onys resun why
He hadde delyte in mynstralsy?
He answered hym on thys manere
Why he helde the harper so dere.
The vertu of the harpe, thurghe skylle and ryght,
Wyl destroy the fendes myght;
And to the croys by gode skylle
Ys the harpe lykened weyle.
Tharfor gode men, ye shul lere
Whan ye any gleman here,
To wurschep Gode al youre powére,
As Dauyde seyth yn the sautére."

We know that the abbots lived in many respects as other great people did; they exercised hospitality to guests of gentle birth in their own halls, treated them to the diversions of hunting and hawking over their manors and in their forests, and did not scruple themselves to partake in those amusements; possibly they may have retained minstrels wherewith to solace their guests and themselves. It is quite certain at least that the wandering minstrels were welcome guests at the religious houses; and Warton records many instances of the rewards given to them on those occasions. We may record two or three examples.

The monasteries had great annual feasts, on the ecclesiastical festivals, and often also in commemoration of some saint or founder; there was a grand service in church, and a grand dinner afterwards in the refectory. The convent of St. Swithin, in Winchester, used thus to keep the anniversary of Alwyne the Bishop; and in the year A.D. 1374 we find that six minstrels, accompanied by four harpers, performed their minstrelsies at dinner, in the hall of the convent, and during supper sang the same gest in the great arched chamber of the prior, on which occasion the chamber was adorned, according to custom on great occasions, with the prior's great dorsal (a hanging for the wall behind the table), having on it a picture of the three kings of Cologne. These minstrels and harpers belonged partly to the Royal household in Winchester Castle, partly to the Bishop of Winchester. Similarly at the priory of Bicester, in Oxfordshire, in the year A.D. 1432, the treasurer of the monastery gave four shillings to six minstrels from Buckingham, for singing in the refectory, on the Feast of the Epiphany, a legend of the Seven Sleepers. In A.D. 1430 the brethren of the Holie Crosse at Abingdon celebrated their annual feast; twelve priests were hired for the occasion to help to sing the dirge with becoming solemnity, for which they received four pence each; and twelve minstrels, some of whom came from the neighbouring town of Maidenhead, were rewarded with two shillings and four pence each, besides their share of the feast and food for their horses. At Mantoke Priory, near Coventry, there was a yearly obit; and in the year A.D. 1441, we find that eight priests were hired from Coventry to assist in the service, and the six minstrels of their neighbour, Lord Clinton, of Mantoke Castle, were engaged to sing, harp, and play, in the hall of the monastery, at the grand refection allowed to the monks on the occasion of that anniversary. The minstrels amused the monks and their guests during dinner, and then dined themselves in the painted chamber (_camera picta_) of the monastery with the sub-prior, on which occasion the chamberlain furnished eight massy tapers of wax to light their table.

These are instances of minstrels formally invited by abbots and convents to take part in certain great festivities; but there are proofs that the wandering minstrel, who, like all other classes of society, would find hospitality in the guest-house of the monastery, was also welcomed for his minstrel skill, and rewarded for it with guerdon of money, besides his food and lodging. Warton gives instances of entries in monastic accounts for disbursements on such occasions; and there is an anecdote quoted by Percy of some dissolute monks who one evening admitted two poor priests whom they took to be minstrels, and ill-treated and turned them out again when they were disappointed of their anticipated gratification.

On the next page is a curious illumination from the Royal MS. 2 B vii., representing a friar and a nun themselves making minstrelsy.

At tournaments the scene was enlivened by the strains of minstrels, and horses and men inspirited to the charge by the loud fanfare of their instruments. Thus in "The Knight's Tale," at the tournament of Palamon and Arcite, as the king and his company rode to the lists:--

"Up gon the trumpets and the melodie,
And to the listés ride the companie."

And again:--

"Then were the gates shut, and cried was loude
Now do your devoir youngé knightés proud.
The heralds left their pricking up and down,
Now ringen trumpets loud and clarioun.
There is no more to say, but East and West
In go the spearés sadly in the rest;
In goeth the sharpé spur into the side;
There see men who can just and who can ride.
Men shiveren shaftés upon shieldés thick,
He feeleth thro the hearte-spoon the prick."

In actual war only the trumpet and horn and tabor seem to have been used. In "The Romance of Merlin" we read of

"Trumpés beting, tambours classing"

in the midst of a battle; and again, in Chaucer's "Knight's Tale"--

"Pipes, trumpets, nakeres,[345] and clariouns
That in the battle blowen bloody sounds;"

and again, on another occasion--

"The trumping and the tabouring,
Did together the knights fling."

There are several instances in the Royal MS., 2 B vii., in which trumpeters are sounding their instruments in the rear of a company of charging chevaliers.

Again, when a country knight and his neighbour wished to keep their spears in practice against the next tournament, or when a couple of errant knights happened to meet at a manor-house, the lists were rudely staked out in the base-court of the castle, or in the meadow under the castle-walls; and, while the ladies looked on and waved their scarfs from the windows or the battlements, and the vassals flocked round the ropes, the minstrels gave animation to the scene. In the illustration on p. 414 from the title-page of the Royal MS., 14 E iii., a fine volume of romances of early fourteenth-century date, we are made spectators of a scene of the kind; the herald is arranging the preliminaries between the two knights who are about to joust, while a band of minstrels inspire them with their strains.

Not only at these stated periods, but at all times, the minstrels were liable to be called upon to enliven the tedium of their lord or lady with music and song; the King of Hungary (in "The Squire of Low Degree"), trying to comfort his daughter for the loss of her lowly lover by the promise of all kinds of pleasures, says that in the morning--

"Ye shall have harpe, sautry, and songe,
And other myrthes you among."

And again a little further on, after dinner--

"When you come home your menie amonge,
Ye shall have revell, daunces, and songe;
Lytle children, great and smale,
Shall syng as doth the nightingale."

And yet again, when she is gone to bed--

"And yf ye no rest can take,
All night mynstrels for you shall wake."

Doubtless many of the long winter evenings, when the whole household was assembled round the blazing wood fire in the middle of the hall, would be passed in listening to those interminable tales of chivalry which my lord's chief harper would chant to his harp, while his fellows would play a symphony between the "fyttes." Of other occasions on which the minstrels would have appropriate services to render, an entry in the Household Book of the Percy family in A.D. 1512 gives us an indication: There were three of them at their castle in the north, a tabret, a lute, and a rebec; and we find that they had a new-year's gift, "xx_s._ for playing at my lordes chamber doure on new yeares day in the mornynge; and for playing at my lordes sone and heire's chamber doure, the lord Percy, ii_s._; and for playing at the chamber dours of my lord's yonger sonnes, my yonge masters, after viii. the piece for every of them."

* * * * *

But besides the official minstrels of kings, nobles, and gentlemen, bishops, and abbots, and corporate towns, there were a great number of "minstrels unattached," and of various grades of society, who roamed abroad singly or in company, from town to town, from court to camp, from castle to monastery, flocking in great numbers to tournaments and festivals and fairs, and welcomed everywhere.

The summer-time was especially the season for the wanderings of these children of song,[346] as it was of the knight-errant[347] and of the pilgrim[348] also. No wonder that the works of the minstrels abound as they do with charming outbursts of song on the return of the spring and summer, and the delights which they bring. All winter long the minstrel had lain in some town, chafing at its miry and unsavoury streets, and its churlish, money-getting citizens; or in some hospitable castle or manor-house, perhaps, listening to the wind roaring through the broad forests, and howling among the turrets overhead, until he pined for freedom and green fields; his host, perchance, grown tired of his ditties, and his only occupation to con new ones; this, from the "Percy Reliques," sounds like a verse composed at such a time:--

"In time of winter alange[349] it is!
The foules lesen[350] her bliss!
The leves fallen off the tree;
Rain alangeth[351] the countree."

No wonder they welcomed the return of the bright, warm days, when they could resume their gay, adventurous, open-air life, in the fresh, flowery meadows, and the wide, green forest glades; roaming to town and village, castle and monastery, feast and tournament; alone, or in company with a band of brother minstrels; meeting by the way with gay knights adventurous, or pilgrims not less gay--if they were like those of Chaucer's company; welcomed everywhere by priest and abbot, lord and loon. These are the sort of strains which they carolled as they rested under the white hawthorn, and carelessly tinkled an accompaniment on their harps:--

"Merry is th' enté of May;
The fowles maketh merry play;
The time is hot, and long the day.
The joyful nightingale singeth,
In the grene mede flowers springeth.

* * * *

"Merry it is in somer's tide;
Fowles sing in forest wide;
Swaines gin on justing ride,
Maidens liffen hem in pride."

The minstrels were often men of position and wealth. Rayer, or Raherus, the first of the king's minstrels whom we meet with after the Conquest, founded the Priory and Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, London, in the third year of Henry I., A.D. 1102, and became the first prior of his own foundation. He was not the only minstrel who turned religious. Foulquet de Marseille, first a merchant, then a minstrel of note--some of his songs have descended to these days--at length turned monk, and was made abbot of Tournet, and at length Archbishop of Toulouse, and is known in history as the persecutor of the Albigenses: he died in 1231 A.D. It seems to have been no unusual thing for men of family to take up the wandering, adventurous life of the minstrel, much as others of the same class took up the part of knight adventurous; they frequently travelled on horseback, with a servant to carry their harp; flocking to courts and tournaments, where the graceful and accomplished singer of chivalrous deeds was perhaps more caressed than the large-limbed warrior who achieved them; and obtained large rewards, instead of huge blows, for his guerdon.

There are some curious anecdotes showing the kind of people who became minstrels, their wandering habits, their facility of access to all companies and places, and the uses which were sometimes made of their privileges. All our readers will remember how Blondel de Nesle, the minstrel of Richard Coeur de Lion, wandered over Europe in search of his master. There is a less known instance of a similar kind and of the same period. Ela, the heiress of D'Evereux, Earl of Salisbury, had been carried abroad and secreted by her French relations in Normandy. To discover the place of her concealment, a knight of the Talbot family spent two years in exploring that province; at first under the disguise of a pilgrim; then, having found where she was confined, in order to gain admittance, he assumed the dress and character of a harper; and being a jocose person, exceedingly skilled in the Gests of the ancients, he was gladly received into the family. He succeeded in carrying off the lady, whom he restored to her liege lord the king, who bestowed her in marriage, not upon the adventurous knight-minstrel, as ought to have been the ending of so pretty a novelet, but upon his own natural brother, William Longespée, to whom she brought her earldom of Salisbury in dower.

Many similar instances, not less valuable evidences of the manners of the times because they are fiction, might be selected from the romances of the Middle Ages; proving that it was not unusual for men of birth and station[352] to assume, for a longer or shorter time, the character and life of the wandering minstrel.

But besides these gentle minstrels, there were a multitude of others of the lower classes of society, professors of the joyous science; descending through all grades of musical skill, and of respectability of character. We find regulations from time to time intended to check their irregularities. In 1315 King Edward II. issued an ordinance addressed to sheriffs, &c., as follows: "Forasmuch as ... many idle persons under colour of mynstrelsie, and going in messages[353] and other faigned busines, have been and yet be receaved in other men's houses to meate and drynke, and be not therwith contented yf they be not largely considered with gyftes of the Lordes of the Houses, &c.... We wyllyng to restrayne such outrageous enterprises and idlenes, &c., have ordeyned ... that to the houses of Prelates, Earls, and Barons, none resort to meate and drynke unless he be a mynstrell, and of these mynstrels that there come none except it be three or four mynstrels of honour at most in one day unless he be desired of the Lorde of the House. And to the houses of meaner men, that none come unlesse he be desired; and that such as shall come so holde themselves contented with meate and drynke, and with such curtesie as the Master of the House wyl shewe unto them of his owne good wyll, without their askyng of any thyng. And yf any one do against this ordinaunce at the first tyme he to lose his minstrelsie, and at the second tyme to forsweare his craft, and never to be received for a minstrell in any house." This curious ordinance gives additional proof of several facts which we have before noted, viz., that minstrels were well received everywhere, and had even become exacting in their expectations; that they used to wander about in bands; and the penalties seem to indicate that the minstrels were already incorporated in a guild. The first positive evidence of such a guild is in the charter (already alluded to) of 9th King Edward IV., A.D. 1469, in which he grants to Walter Haliday, _Marshall_, and seven others, his own minstrels, a charter by which he restores a Fraternity or perpetual Guild (such as he understands the brothers and sisters of the Fraternity of Minstrels had in times past), to be governed by a marshall, appointed for life, and by two wardens, to be chosen annually, who are empowered to admit brothers and sisters into the guild, and are authorised to examine the pretensions of all such as affect to exercise the minstrel profession; and to regulate, govern, and punish them throughout the realm--those of Chester excepted. It seems probable that the King's Minstrel, or the King of the Minstrels, had long previously possessed an authority of this kind over all the members of the profession, and that the organization very much resembled that of the heralds. The two are mentioned together in the Statute of Arms for Tournaments, passed in the reign of Edward I., A.D. 1295. "E qe nul Roy de Harraunz ne Menestrals[354] portent privez armez:" that no King of the Heralds or of the Minstrels shall carry secret weapons. That the minstrels attended all tournaments we have already mentioned. The heralds and minstrels are often coupled in the same sentence; thus Froissart tells us that at a Christmas entertainment given by the Earl of Foix, there were many minstrels, as well his own as strangers, "and the Earl gave to Heraulds and Minstrelles the sum of fyve hundred frankes; and gave to the Duke of Tourayne's mynstreles gowns of cloth of gold furred with ermine, valued at 200 frankes."[355]