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Title: A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art

Author: Thomas Wright

Illustrator: F. W. Fairholt

Release date: January 2, 2014 [eBook #44566]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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Transcriber’s Note
Illustrations have been placed approximately where they appeared in the original. Two
illustrations, on pp. 199 and 204, were labelled No. 127. To resolve this, the second of
them, and references to it, was changed to No. 127a.
Footnotes have been gathered at the end of the text, and linked to their anchors for
convenient reference.
Incidental punctuation, especially of abbreviated words and in captions, which is missing
from the printed original have been silently restored.
Please consult the notes at the end of this text for details regarding the resolution of any
other textual issues.

A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND
GROTESQUE.

ARISTOTLE AND PYTHAÏS.
From an Engraving by Burgmair (15th cent.)

A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE
In Literature and Art.

By THOMAS WRIGHT, M.A., F.S.A.

THE ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN AND ENGRAVED BY

F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A.

London:
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
1875.

LONDON:
SAVILL, EDWARDS, AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.

PREFACE.
I have felt some difficulty in selecting a title for the contents of the
following pages, in which it was, in fact, my design to give, as far as may
be done within such moderate limits, and in as popular a manner as such
information can easily be imparted, a general view of the History of Comic
Literature and Art. Yet the word comic seems to me hardly to express all the
parts of the subject which I have sought to bring together in my book.
Moreover, the field of this history is very large, and, though I have only
taken as my theme one part of it, it was necessary to circumscribe even that,
in some degree; and my plan, therefore, is to follow it chiefly through those
branches which have contributed most towards the formation of modern
comic and satiric literature and art in our own island.
Thus, as the comic literature of the middle ages to a very great extent, and
comic art in a considerable degree also, were founded upon, or rather arose
out of, those of the Romans which had preceded them, it seemed desirable
to give a comprehensive history of this branch of literature and art as it was
cultivated among the peoples of antiquity. Literature and art in the middle
ages presented a certain unity of general character, arising, probably, from
the uniformity of the influence of the Roman element of society, modified
only by its lower degree of intensity at a greater distance from the centre,
and by secondary causes attendant upon it. To understand the literature of
any one country in Western Europe, especially during what we may term
the feudal period—and the remark applies to art equally—it is necessary to
make ourselves acquainted with the whole history of literature in Western
Europe during that time. The peculiarities in different countries naturally
became more marked in the progress of society, and more strongly
individualised; but it was not till towards the close of the feudal period that
the literature of each of these different countries was becoming more
entirely its own. At that period the plan I have formed restricts itself,
according to the view stated above. Thus, the satirical literature of the
Reformation and pictorial caricature had their cradle in Germany, and, in
the earlier half of the sixteenth century, carried their influence largely into
France and England; but from that time any influence of German literature

on these two countries ceases. Modern satirical literature has its models in
France during the sixteenth century, and the direct influence of this
literature in France upon English literature continued during that and the
succeeding century, but no further. Political caricature rose to importance in
France in the sixteenth century, and was transplanted to Holland in the
seventeenth century, and until the beginning of the eighteenth century
England owed its caricature, indirectly or directly, to the French and the
Dutch; but after that time a purely English school of caricature was formed,
which was entirely independent of Continental caricaturists.
There are two senses in which the word history may be taken in regard to
literature and art. It has been usually employed to signify a chronological
account of authors or artists and their works, though this comes more
properly under the title of biography and bibliography. But there is another
and a very different application of the word, and this is the meaning which I
attach to it in the present volume. During the middle ages, and for some
period after (in special branches), literature—I mean poetry, satire, and
popular literature of all kinds—belonged to society, and not to the
individual authors, who were but workmen who gained a living by
satisfying society’s wants; and its changes in form or character depended all
upon the varying progress, and therefore changing necessities, of society
itself. This is the reason why, especially in the earlier periods, nearly the
whole mass of the popular—I may, perhaps, be allowed to call it the social
literature of the middle ages, is anonymous; and it was only at rare intervals
that some individual rose and made himself a great name by the superiority
of his talents. A certain number of writers of fabliaux put their names to
their compositions, probably because they were names of writers who had
gained the reputation of telling better or racier stories than many of their
fellows. In some branches of literature—as in the satirical literature of the
sixteenth century—society still exercised this kind of influence over it; and
although its great monuments owe everything to the peculiar genius of their
authors, they were produced under the pressure of social circumstances. To
trace all these variations in literature connected with society, to describe the
influences of society upon literature and of literature upon society, during
the progress of the latter, appears to me to be the true meaning of the word
history, and it is in this sense that I take it.

This will explain why my history of the different branches of popular
literature and art ends at very different periods. The grotesque and satirical
sculpture, which adorned the ecclesiastical buildings, ceased with the
middle ages. The story-books, as a part of this social literature, came down
to the sixteenth century, and the history of the jest-books which arose out of
them cannot be considered to extend further than the beginning of the
seventeenth; for, to give a list of jest-books since that time would be to
compile a catalogue of books made by booksellers for sale, copied from one
another, and, till recently, each more contemptible than its predecessor. The
school of satirical literature in France, at all events as far as it had any
influence in England, lasted no longer than the earlier part of the
seventeenth century. England can hardly be said to have had a school of
satirical literature, with the exception of its comedy, which belongs properly
to the seventeenth century; and its caricature belongs especially to the last
century and to the earlier part of the present, beyond which it is not a part of
my plan to carry it.
These few remarks will perhaps serve to explain what some may consider
to be defects in my book; and with them I venture to trust it to the
indulgence of its readers. It is a subject which will have some novelty for
the English reader, for I am not aware that we have any previous book
devoted to it. At all events, it is not a mere compilation from other people’s
labours.

Thomas Wright.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE

ORIGIN OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE—SPIRIT OF
CARICATURE IN EGYPT—MONSTERS: PYTHON AND GORGON
—GREECE—THE DIONYSIAC CEREMONIES, AND ORIGIN OF
THE DRAMA—THE OLD COMEDY—LOVE OF PARODY—
PARODIES ON SUBJECTS TAKEN FROM GRECIAN
MYTHOLOGY: THE VISIT TO THE LOVER; APOLLO AT DELPHI
—THE PARTIALITY FOR PARODY CONTINUED AMONG THE
ROMANS: THE FLIGHT OF ÆNEAS 1

CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF THE STAGE IN ROME—USES OF THE MASK AMONG
THE ROMANS—SCENES FROM ROMAN COMEDY—THE
SANNIO AND MIMUS—THE ROMAN DRAMA—THE ROMAN
SATIRISTS—CARICATURE—ANIMALS INTRODUCED IN THE
CHARACTERS OF MEN—THE PIGMIES, AND THEIR
INTRODUCTION INTO CARICATURE; THE FARM-YARD; THE
PAINTER’S STUDIO; THE PROCESSION—POLITICAL
CARICATURE IN POMPEII; THE GRAFFITI 23

CHAPTER III.

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE
AGES—THE ROMAN MIMI CONTINUED TO EXIST—THE
TEUTONIC AFTER-DINNER ENTERTAINMENTS—CLERICAL
SATIRES: ARCHBISHOP HERIGER AND THE DREAMER; THE
SUPPER OF THE SAINTS—TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO
MEDIÆVAL ART—TASTE FOR MONSTROUS ANIMALS,
DRAGONS, ETC.; CHURCH OF SAN FEDELE, AT COMO—SPIRIT
OF CARICATURE AND LOVE OF GROTESQUE AMONG THE
ANGLO-SAXONS—GROTESQUE FIGURES OF DEMONS—
NATURAL TENDENCY OF THE EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS TO
DRAW IN CARICATURE—EXAMPLES FROM EARLY
MANUSCRIPTS AND SCULPTURES 40

CHAPTER IV.

THE DIABOLICAL IN CARICATURE—MEDIÆVAL LOVE OF THE
LUDICROUS—CAUSES WHICH MADE IT INFLUENCE THE
NOTIONS OF DEMONS—STORIES OF THE PIOUS PAINTER AND
THE ERRING MONK—DARKNESS AND UGLINESS
CARICATURED—THE DEMONS IN THE MIRACLE PLAYS—THE
DEMON OF NOTRE DAME 61

CHAPTER V.

EMPLOYMENT OF ANIMALS IN MEDIÆVAL SATIRE—POPULARITY
OF FABLES; ODO DE CIRINGTON—REYNARD THE FOX—
BURNELLUS AND FAUVEL—THE CHARIVARI—LE MONDE
BESTORNÉ—ENCAUSTIC TILES—SHOEING THE GOOSE, AND
FEEDING PIGS WITH ROSES—SATIRICAL SIGNS; THE
MUSTARD MAKER 75

CHAPTER VI.

THE MONKEY IN BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE—
TOURNAMENTS AND SINGLE COMBATS—MONSTROUS
COMBINATIONS OF ANIMAL FORMS—CARICATURES ON
COSTUME—THE HAT—THE HELMET—LADIES’ HEAD-
DRESSES—THE GOWN, AND ITS LONG SLEEVES 95

CHAPTER VII.

PRESERVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MIMUS AFTER THE
FALL OF THE EMPIRE—THE MINSTREL AND JOGELOUR—
HISTORY OF POPULAR STORIES—THE FABLIAUX—ACCOUNT
OF THEM—THE CONTES DEVOTS 106

CHAPTER VIII.
118
CARICATURES OF DOMESTIC LIFE—STATE OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN
THE MIDDLE AGES—EXAMPLES OF DOMESTIC CARICATURE
FROM THE CARVINGS OF THE MISERERES—KITCHEN SCENES
—DOMESTIC BRAWLS—THE FIGHT FOR THE BREECHES—
THE JUDICIAL DUEL BETWEEN MAN AND WIFE AMONG THE
GERMANS—ALLUSIONS TO WITCHCRAFT—SATIRES ON THE

TRADES: THE BAKER, THE MILLER, THE WINE-PEDLAR AND
TAVERN KEEPER, THE ALE-WIFE, ETC.

CHAPTER IX.

GROTESQUE FACES AND FIGURES—PREVALENCE OF THE TASTE
FOR UGLY AND GROTESQUE FACES—SOME OF THE POPULAR
FORMS DERIVED FROM ANTIQUITY: THE TONGUE LOLLING
OUT, AND THE DISTORTED MOUTH—HORRIBLE SUBJECTS:
THE MAN AND THE SERPENTS—ALLEGORICAL FIGURES:
GLUTTONY AND LUXURY—OTHER REPRESENTATIONS OF
CLERICAL GLUTTONY AND DRUNKENNESS—GROTESQUE
FIGURES OF INDIVIDUALS, AND GROTESQUE GROUPS—
ORNAMENTS OF THE BORDERS OF BOOKS—UNINTENTIONAL
CARICATURE; THE MOTE AND THE BEAM 144

CHAPTER X.

SATIRICAL LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES—JOHN DE
HAUTEVILLE AND ALAN DE LILLE—GOLIAS AND THE
GOLIARDS—THE GOLIARDIC POETRY—TASTE FOR PARODY
—PARODIES ON RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS—POLITICAL
CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES—THE JEWS OF NORWICH
—CARICATURE REPRESENTATIONS OF COUNTRIES—LOCAL
SATIRE—POLITICAL SONGS AND POEMS 159
CHAPTER XI.

MINSTRELSY A SUBJECT OF BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE—
CHARACTER OF THE MINSTRELS—THEIR JOKES UPON
THEMSELVES AND UPON ONE ANOTHER—VARIOUS MUSICAL
INSTRUMENTS REPRESENTED IN THE SCULPTURES OF THE
MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS—SIR MATTHEW GOURNAY AND THE
KING OF PORTUGAL—DISCREDIT OF THE TABOR AND
BAGPIPES—MERMAIDS 188

CHAPTER XII.

THE COURT FOOL—THE NORMANS AND THEIR GABS—EARLY
HISTORY OF COURT FOOLS—THEIR COSTUME—CARVINGS IN
THE CORNISH CHURCHES—THE BURLESQUE SOCIETIES OF
THE MIDDLE AGES—THE FEASTS OF ASSES, AND OF FOOLS—
THEIR LICENCE—THE LEADEN MONEY OF THE FOOLS—THE
BISHOP’S BLESSING 200

CHAPTER XIII.

THE DANCE OF DEATH—THE PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH OF LA
CHAISE DIEU—THE REIGN OF FOLLY—SEBASTIAN BRANDT;
THE SHIP OF FOOLS—DISTURBERS OF CHURCH SERVICE—
TROUBLESOME BEGGARS—GEILER’S SERMONS—BADIUS,
AND HIS SHIP OF FOOLISH WOMEN—THE PLEASURES OF
SMELL—ERASMUS; THE PRAISE OF FOLLY 214

CHAPTER XIV.

POPULAR LITERATURE AND ITS HEROES; BROTHER RUSH, TYLL
EULENSPIEGEL, THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM—STORIES AND
JEST-BOOKS—SKELTON, SCOGIN, TARLTON, PEELE 228

CHAPTER XV.

THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION—THOMAS MURNER; HIS
GENERAL SATIRES—FRUITFULNESS OF FOLLY—HANS SACHS
—THE TRAP FOR FOOLS—ATTACKS ON LUTHER—THE POPE
AS ANTICHRIST—THE POPE-ASS AND THE MONK-CALF—
OTHER CARICATURES AGAINST THE POPE—THE GOOD AND
BAD SHEPHERDS 244

CHAPTER XVI.

ORIGIN OF MEDIÆVAL FARCE AND MODERN COMEDY—
HROTSVITHA—MEDIÆVAL NOTIONS OF TERENCE—THE
EARLY RELIGIOUS PLAYS—MYSTERIES AND MIRACLE PLAYS
—THE FARCES—THE DRAMA IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 264

CHAPTER XVII.

DIABLERIE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—EARLY TYPES OF THE
DIABOLICAL FORMS—ST. ANTHONY—ST. GUTHLAC—
REVIVAL OF THE TASTE FOR SUCH SUBJECTS IN THE
BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—THE FLEMISH
SCHOOL OF BREUGHEL—THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN
SCHOOLS—CALLOT, SALVATOR ROSA 288

CHAPTER XVIII.

CALLOT AND HIS SCHOOL—CALLOT’S ROMANTIC HISTORY—HIS
“CAPRICI,” AND OTHER BURLESQUE WORKS—THE “BALLI”
AND THE BEGGARS—IMITATORS OF CALLOT; DELLA BELLA
—EXAMPLES OF DELLA BELLA—ROMAIN DE HOOGHE 300

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SATIRICAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—
PASQUIL—MACARONIC POETRY—THE EPISTOLÆ
OBSCURORUM VIRORUM—RABELAIS—COURT OF THE
QUEEN OF NAVARRE, AND ITS LITERARY CIRCLE;
BONAVENTURE DES PERIERS—HENRI ETIENNE—THE LIGUE,
AND ITS SATIRE: THE “SATYRE MENIPPEE” 312

CHAPTER XX.

POLITICAL CARICATURE IN ITS INFANCY—THE REVERS DU JEU
DES SUYSSES—CARICATURE IN FRANCE—THE THREE
ORDERS—PERIOD OF THE LIGUE; CARICATURES AGAINST
HENRI III.—CARICATURES AGAINST THE LIGUE—
CARICATURE IN FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—
GENERAL GALAS—THE QUARREL OF AMBASSADORS—
CARICATURE AGAINST LOUIS XXV.; WILLIAM OF
FURSTEMBERG 347

CHAPTER XXI.

EARLY POLITICAL CARICATURE IN ENGLAND—THE SATIRICAL
WRITINGS AND PICTURES OF THE COMMONWEALTH PERIOD
—SATIRES AGAINST THE BISHOPS; BISHOP WILLIAMS—
CARICATURES ON THE CAVALIERS; SIR JOHN SUCKLING—
THE ROARING BOYS; VIOLENCE OF THE ROYALIST SOLDIERS
—CONTEST BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND
INDEPENDENTS—GRINDING THE KING’S NOSE—PLAYING-
CARDS USED AS THE MEDIUM FOR CARICATURE;
HASELRIGGE AND LAMBERT—SHROVETIDE 360

CHAPTER XXII.

ENGLISH COMEDY—BEN JONSON—THE OTHER WRITERS OF HIS
SCHOOL—INTERRUPTION OF DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES—
COMEDY AFTER THE RESTORATION—THE HOWARDS
BROTHERS; THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM; THE REHEARSAL—
WRITERS OF COMEDY IN THE LATTER PART OF THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—INDECENCY OF THE STAGE—
COLLEY CIBBER—FOOTE 375

CHAPTER XXIII.

CARICATURE IN HOLLAND—ROMAIN DE HOOGHE—THE
ENGLISH REVOLUTION—CARICATURES ON LOUIS XIV. AND
JAMES II.—DR. SACHEVERELL—CARICATURE BROUGHT
FROM HOLLAND TO ENGLAND—ORIGIN OF THE WORD
“CARICATURE”—MISSISSIPPI AND THE SOUTH SEA; THE
YEAR OF BUBBLES 406

CHAPTER XXIV.

ENGLISH CARICATURE IN THE AGE OF GEORGE II.—ENGLISH
PRINTSELLERS—ARTISTS EMPLOYED BY THEM—SIR ROBERT
WALPOLE’S LONG MINISTRY—THE WAR WITH FRANCE—THE
NEWCASTLE ADMINISTRATION—OPERA INTRIGUES—
ACCESSION OF GEORGE III., AND LORD BUTE IN POWER 420

CHAPTER XXV.

HOGARTH—HIS EARLY HISTORY—HIS SETS OF PICTURES—THE
HARLOT’S PROGRESS—THE RAKE’S PROGRESS—THE
MARRIAGE A LA MODE—HIS OTHER PRINTS—THE ANALYSIS
OF BEAUTY, AND THE PERSECUTION ARISING OUT OF IT—HIS
PATRONAGE BY LORD BUTE—CARICATURE OF THE TIMES—
ATTACKS TO WHICH HE WAS EXPOSED BY IT, AND WHICH
HASTENED HIS DEATH 434

CHAPTER XXVI.
450
THE LESSER CARICATURISTS OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.—
PAUL SANDBY—COLLET: THE DISASTER, AND FATHER PAUL
IN HIS CUPS—JAMES SAYER: HIS CARICATURES IN SUPPORT
OF PITT, AND HIS REWARD—CARLO KHAN’S TRIUMPH—
BUNBURY’S: HIS CARICATURES ON HORSEMANSHIP—

WOODWARD: GENERAL COMPLAINT—ROWLANDSON’S
INFLUENCE ON THE STYLE OF THOSE WHOSE DESIGNS HE
ETCHED—JOHN KAY OF EDINBURGH: LOOKING A ROCK IN
THE FACE

CHAPTER XXVII.

GILLRAY—HIS FIRST ATTEMPTS—HIS CARICATURES BEGIN WITH
THE SHELBURNE MINISTRY—IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN
HASTINGS—CARICATURES ON THE KING; NEW WAY TO PAY
THE NATIONAL DEBT—ALLEGED REASON FOR GILLRAY’S
HOSTILITY TO THE KING—THE KING AND THE APPLE-
DUMPLINGS—GILLRAY’S LATER LABOURS—HIS IDIOTCY
AND DEATH 464

CHAPTER XXVIII.

GILLRAY’S CARICATURES ON SOCIAL LIFE—THOMAS
ROWLANDSON—HIS EARLY LIFE—HE BECOMES A
CARICATURIST—HIS STYLE AND WORKS—HIS DRAWINGS—
THE CRUIKSHANKS 480

A HISTORY
OF
CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.

CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN OF CARICATURE AND GROTESQUE.—SPIRIT OF CARICATURE IN
EGYPT.—MONSTERS: PYTHON AND GORGON.—GREECE.—THE
DIONYSIAC CEREMONIES, AND ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA.—THE OLD
COMEDY.—LOVE OF PARODY.—PARODIES ON SUBJECTS TAKEN FROM
GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY: THE VISIT TO THE LOVER: APOLLO AT DELPHI.—
THE PARTIALITY FOR PARODY CONTINUED AMONG THE ROMANS: THE
FLIGHT OF ÆNEAS.

It is not my intention in the following pages to discuss the question what
constitutes the comic or the laughable, or, in other words, to enter into the
philosophy of the subject; I design only to trace the history of its outward
development, the various forms it has assumed, and its social influence.
Laughter appears to be almost a necessity of human nature, in all conditions
of man’s existence, however rude or however cultivated; and some of the
greatest men of all ages, men of the most refined intellects, such as Cicero
in the ages of antiquity, and Erasmus among the moderns, have been
celebrated for their indulgence in it. The former was sometimes called by
his opponents scurra consularis, the “consular jester;” and the latter, who
has been spoken of as the “mocking-bird,” is said to have laughed so
immoderately over the well-known “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” that
he brought upon himself a serious fit of illness. The greatest of comic
writers, Aristophanes, has always been looked upon as a model of literary
perfection. An epigram in the Greek Anthology, written by the divine Plato,
tells us how, when the Graces sought a temple which would not fall, they
found the soul of Aristophanes:—
Ἁι χάριτες τέμενός τι λαβεῖν ὁπερ οὐχὶ πεσεῖται
Ζητοῦσαι, ψυχὴν εὔρον Ἀριστοφάνους.
On the other hand, the men who never laughed, the ἀγέλαστοι, were looked
upon as the least respectable of mortals.
A tendency to burlesque and caricature appears, indeed, to be a feeling
deeply implanted in human nature, and it is one of the earliest talents
displayed by people in a rude state of society. An appreciation of, and

sensitiveness to, ridicule, and a love of that which is humorous, are found
even among savages, and enter largely into their relations with their fellow
men. When, before people cultivated either literature or art, the chieftain sat
in his rude hall surrounded by his warriors, they amused themselves by
turning their enemies and opponents into mockery, by laughing at their
weaknesses, joking on their defects, whether physical or mental, and giving
them nicknames in accordance therewith,—in fact, caricaturing them in
words, or by telling stories which were calculated to excite laughter. When
the agricultural slaves (for the tillers of the land were then slaves) were
indulged with a day of relief from their labours, they spent it in unrestrained
mirth. And when these same people began to erect permanent buildings, and
to ornament them, the favourite subjects of their ornamentation were such
as presented ludicrous ideas. The warrior, too, who caricatured his enemy in
his speeches over the festive board, soon sought to give a more permanent
form to his ridicule, which he endeavoured to do by rude delineations on
the bare rock, or on any other convenient surface which presented itself to
his hand. Thus originated caricature and the grotesque in art. In fact, art
itself, in its earliest forms, is caricature; for it is only by that exaggeration of
features which belongs to caricature, that unskilful draughtsmen could
make themselves understood.

No. 1. An Egyptian Lady at a Feast.

Although we might, perhaps, find in different countries examples of these
principles in different states of development, we cannot in any one country
trace the entire course of the development itself: for in all the highly
civilised races of mankind, we first become acquainted with their history
when they had already reached a considerable degree of refinement; and
even at that period of their progress, our knowledge is almost confined to
their religious, and to their more severely historical, monuments. Such is
especially the case with Egypt, the history of which country, as represented
by its monuments of art, carries us back to the remotest ages of antiquity.
Egyptian art generally presents itself in a sombre and massive character,
with little of gaiety or joviality in its designs or forms. Yet, as Sir Gardner
Wilkinson has remarked in his valuable work on the “Manners and Customs
of the Ancient Egyptians,” the early Egyptian artists cannot always conceal
their natural tendency to the humorous, which creeps out in a variety of
little incidents. Thus, in a series of grave historical pictures on one of the
great monuments at Thebes, we find a representation of a wine party, where
the company consists of both sexes, and which evidently shows that the
ladies were not restricted in the use of the juice of the grape in their
entertainments; and, as he adds, “the painters, in illustrating this fact, have
sometimes sacrificed their gallantry to a love of caricature.” Among the
females, evidently of rank, represented in this scene, “some call the servants
to support them as they sit, others with difficulty prevent themselves from
falling on those behind them, and the faded flower, which is ready to drop
from their heated hands, is intended to be characteristic of their own
sensations.” One group, a lady whose excess has been carried too far, and
her servant who comes to her assistance, is represented in our cut No. 1. Sir
Gardner observes that “many similar instances of a talent for caricature are
observable in the compositions of the Egyptian artists, who executed the
paintings of the tombs” at Thebes, which belong to a very early period of
the Egyptian annals. Nor is the application of this talent restricted always to
secular subjects, but we see it at times intruding into the most sacred
mysteries of their religion. I give as a curious example, taken from one of
Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s engravings, a scene in the representation of a
funeral procession crossing the Lake of the Dead (No. 2), that appears in
one of these early paintings at Thebes, in which “the love of caricature
common to the Egyptians is shown to have been indulged even in this
serious subject; and the retrograde movement of the large boat, which has

grounded and is pushed off the bank, striking the smaller one with its
rudder, has overturned a large table loaded with cakes and other things,
upon the rowers seated below, in spite of all the efforts of the prowman, and
the earnest vociferations of the alarmed steersman.” The accident which
thus overthrows and scatters the provisions intended for the funeral feast,
and the confusion attendant upon it, form a ludicrous scene in the midst of a
solemn picture, that would be worthy of the imagination of a Rowlandson.

No. 2. Catastrophe in a Funeral Procession.

Another cut (No. 3), taken from one of the same series of paintings, belongs
to a class of caricatures which dates from a very remote period. One of the
most natural ideas among all people would be to compare men with the
animals whose particular qualities they possessed. Thus, one might be as
bold as a lion, another as faithful as a dog, or as cunning as a fox, or as
swinish as a hog. The name of the animal would thus often be given as a
nickname to the man, and in the sequel he would be represented pictorially
under the form of the animal. It was partly out of this kind of caricature, no
doubt, that the singular class of apologues which have been since
distinguished by the name of fables arose. Connected with it was the belief
in the metempsychosis, or transmission of the soul into the bodies of
animals after death, which formed a part of several of the primitive
religions. The earliest examples of this class of caricature of mankind are
found on the Egyptian monuments, as in the instance just referred to, which
represents “a soul condemned to return to earth under the form of a pig,
having been weighed in the scales before Osiris and been found wanting.
Being placed in a boat, and accompanied by two monkeys, it is dismissed

the sacred precinct.” The latter animals, it may be remarked, as they are
here represented, are the cynocephali, or dog-headed monkeys (the simia
inuus), which were sacred animals among the Egyptians, and the peculiar
characteristic of which—the dog-shaped head—is, as usual, exaggerated by
the artist.

No. 3. An Unfortunate Soul.

The representation of this return of a condemned soul under the repulsive
form of a pig, is painted on the left side wall of the long entrance-gallery to
the tomb of King Rameses V., in the valley of royal catacombs known as
the Biban-el-Molook, at Thebes. Wilkinson gives the date of the accession
of this monarch to the throne as 1185 B.C. In the original picture, Osiris is
seated on his throne at some distance from the stern of the boat, and is
dismissing it from his presence by a wave of the hand. This tomb was open
in the time of the Romans, and termed by them the “Tomb of Memnon;” it
was greatly admired, and is covered with laudatory inscriptions by Greek
and Roman visitors. One of the most interesting is placed beneath this
picture, recording the name of a daduchus, or torch-bearer in the Eleusinian
mysteries, who visited this tomb in the reign of Constantine.

No. 4. The Cat and the Geese.

No. 5. The Fox turned Piper.

The practice having been once introduced of representing men under the
character of animals, was soon developed into other applications of the
same idea—such as that of figuring animals employed in the various

occupations of mankind, and that of reversing the position of man and the
inferior animals, and representing the latter as treating their human tyrant in
the same manner as they are usually treated by him. The latter idea became
a very favourite one at a later period, but the other is met with not
unfrequently among the works of art which have been saved from the
wrecks of antiquity. Among the treasures of the British Museum, there is a
long Egyptian picture on papyrus, originally forming a roll, consisting of
representations of this description, from which I give three curious
examples. The first (see cut No. 4) represents a cat in charge of a drove of
geese. It will be observed that the cat holds in her hand the same sort of rod,
with a hook at the end, with which the monkeys are furnished in the
preceding picture. The second (No. 5) represents a fox carrying a basket by
means of a pole supported on his shoulder (a method of carrying burthens
frequently represented on the monuments of ancient art), and playing on the
well-known double flute, or pipe. The fox soon became a favourite
personage in this class of caricatures, and we know what a prominent part
he afterwards played in mediæval satire. Perhaps, however, the most
popular of all animals in this class of drolleries was the monkey, which
appears natural enough when we consider its singular aptitude to mimic the
actions of man. The ancient naturalists tell us some curious, though not very
credible, stories of the manner in which this characteristic of the monkey
tribes was taken advantage of to entrap them, and Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. viii.
c. 80) quotes an older writer, who asserted that they had even been taught to
play at draughts. Our third subject from the Egyptian papyrus of the British
Museum (No. 6) represents a scene in which the game of draughts—or,
more properly speaking, the game which the Romans called the ludus
latrunculorum, and which is believed to have resembled our draughts—is
played by two animals well known to modern heraldry, the lion and the
unicorn. The lion has evidently gained the victory, and is fingering the
money; and his bold air of swaggering superiority, as well as the look of
surprise and disappointment of his vanquished opponent, are by no means
ill pictured. This series of caricatures, though Egyptian, belongs to the
Roman period.

No. 6. The Lion and the Unicorn.

No. 7. Typhon.

The monstrous is closely allied to the grotesque, and both come within the
province of caricature, when we take this term in its widest sense. The

Greeks, especially, were partial to representations of monsters, and
monstrous forms are continually met with among their ornaments and
works of art. The type of the Egyptian monster is represented in the
accompanying cut (No. 7), taken from the work of Sir Gardner Wilkinson
before quoted, and is said to be the figure of the god Typhon. It occurs
frequently on Egyptian monuments, with some variation in its forms, but
always characterised by the broad, coarse, and frightful face, and by the
large tongue lolling out. It is interesting to us, because it is the apparent
origin of a long series of faces, or masks, of this form and character, which
are continually recurring in the grotesque ornamentation, not only of the
Greeks and Romans, but of the middle ages. It appears to have been
sometimes given by the Romans to the representations of people whom they
hated or despised; and Pliny, in a curious passage of his “Natural
History,”[1] informs us that at one time, among the pictures exhibited in the
Forum at Rome, there was one in which a Gaul was represented, “thrusting
out his tongue in a very unbecoming manner.” The Egyptian Typhons had
their exact representations in ancient Greece in a figure of frequent
occurrence, to which antiquaries have, I know not why, given the name of
Gorgon. The example in our cut No. 8, is a figure in terra-cotta, now in the
collection of the Royal Museum at Berlin.[2]

No. 8. Gorgon.

In Greece, however, the spirit of caricature and burlesque representation
had assumed a more regular form than in other countries, for it was inherent
in the spirit of Grecian society. Among the population of Greece, the
worship of Dionysus, or Bacchus, had taken deep root from a very early
period—earlier than we can trace back—and it formed the nucleus of the
popular religion and superstitions, the cradle of poetry and the drama. The
most popular celebrations of the people of Greece, were the Dionysiac
festivals, and the phallic rites and processions which accompanied them, in
which the chief actors assumed the disguise of satyrs and fawns, covering
themselves with goat-skins, and disfiguring their faces by rubbing them
over with the lees of wine. Thus, in the guise of noisy bacchanals, they
displayed an unrestrained licentiousness of gesture and language, uttering
indecent jests and abusive speeches, in which they spared nobody. This
portion of the ceremony was the especial attribute of a part of the
performers, who accompanied the procession in waggons, and acted
something like dramatic performances, in which they uttered an abundance
of loose extempore satire on those who passed or who accompanied the
procession, a little in the style of the modern carnivals. It became thus the
occasion for an unrestrained publication of coarse pasquinades. In the time
of Pisistratus, these performances are assumed to have been reduced to a
little more order by an individual named Thespis, who is said to have
invented masks as a better disguise than dirty faces, and is looked upon as
the father of the Grecian drama. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the
drama arose out of these popular ceremonies, and it long bore the
unmistakable marks of its origin. Even the name of tragedy has nothing
tragic in its derivation, for it is formed from the Greek word tragos
(τράγος), a goat, in the skins of which animal the satyrs clothed themselves,
and hence the name was given also to those who personated the satyrs in
the processions. A tragodus (τραγῳδὸς) was the singer, whose words
accompanied the movements of a chorus of satyrs, and the term tragodia
was applied to his performance. In the same manner, a comodus (κωμωδὸς)
was one who accompanied similarly, with chants of an abusive or satirical
character, a comus (κῶμος), or band of revellers, in the more riotous and
licentious portion of the performances in the Bacchic festivals. The Greek
drama always betrayed its origin by the circumstance that the performances
took place annually, only at the yearly festivals in honour of Bacchus, of
which in fact they constituted a part. Moreover, as the Greek drama became

perfected, it still retained from its origin a triple division, into tragedy,
comedy, and the satiric drama; and, being still performed at the Dionysiac
festival in Athens, each dramatic author was expected to produce what was
called a trilogy, that is, a tragedy, a satirical play, and a comedy. So
completely was all this identified in the popular mind with the worship of
Bacchus, that, long afterwards, when even a tragedy did not please the
audience by its subject, the common form of disapproval was, τί ταῦτα πρὸς
τὸν Διόνυσον—“What has this to do with Bacchus?” and, οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν
Διόνυσον—“This has nothing to do with Bacchus.”
We have no perfect remains of the Greek satiric drama, which was, perhaps,
of a temporary character, and less frequently preserved; but the early Greek
comedy is preserved in a certain number of the plays of Aristophanes, in
which we can contemplate it in all its freedom of character. It represented
the waggon-jesting, of the age of Thespis, in its full development. In its
form it was burlesque to a wanton degree of extravagance, and its essence
was personal vilification, as well as general satire. Individuals were not
only attacked by the application to them of abusive epithets, but they were
represented personally on the stage as performing every kind of
contemptible action, and as suffering all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful
treatment. The drama thus bore marks of its origin in its extraordinary
licentiousness of language and costume, and in the constant use of the
mask. One of its most favourite instruments of satire was parody, which
was employed unsparingly on everything which society in its solemn
moments respected—against everything that the satirist considered worthy
of being held up to public derision or scorn. Religion itself, philosophy,
social manners and institutions—even poetry—were all parodied in their
turn. The comedies of Aristophanes are full of parodies on the poetry of the
tragic and other writers of his age. He is especially happy in parodying the
poetry of the tragic dramatist Euripides. The old comedy of Greece has thus
been correctly described as the comedy of caricature; and the spirit, and
even the scenes, of this comedy, being transferred to pictorial
representations, became entirely identical with that branch of art to which
we give the name of caricature in modern times. Under the cover of
bacchanalian buffoonery, a serious purpose, it is true, was aimed at; but the
general satire was chiefly implied in the violent personal attacks on
individuals, and this became so offensive that when such persons obtained
greater power in Athens than the populace the old comedy was abolished.

Aristophanes was the greatest and most perfect poet of the Old Comedy,
and his remaining comedies are as strongly marked representations of the
hostility of political and social parties in his time, as the caricatures of
Gillray are of party in the reign of our George III., and, we may add, even
more minute. They range through the memorable period of the
Peloponnesian war, and the earlier ones give us the regular annual series of
these performances, as far as Aristophanes contributed them, during several
years. The first of them, “The Acharnians,” was performed at the Lenæan
feast of Bacchus in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war, the year 425
B.C., when it gained the first prize. It is a bold attack on the factious
prolongation of the war through the influence of the Athenian demagogues.
The next, “The Knights,” brought out in B.C. 424, is a direct attack upon
Cleon, the chief of these demagogues, although he is not mentioned by
name; and it is recorded that, finding nobody who had courage enough to
make a mask representing Cleon, or to play the character, Aristophanes was
obliged to perform it himself, and that he smeared his face with lees of
wine, in order to represent the flushed and bloated countenance of the great
demagogue, thus returning to the original mode of acting of the
predecessors of Thespis. This, too, was the first of the comedies of
Aristophanes which he published in his own name. “The Clouds,”
published in 423, is aimed at Socrates and the philosophers. The fourth,
“The Wasps,” published in B.C. 422, presents a satire on the litigious spirit
of the Athenians. The fifth, entitled “Peace” (Ἔιρηνη), appeared in the year
following, at the time of the peace of Nicias, and is another satire on the
bellicose spirit of the Athenian democracy. The next in the list of extant
plays comes after an interval of several years, having been published in B.C.
414, the first year of the Sicilian war, and relates to an irreligious movement
in Athens, which had caused a great sensation. Two Athenians are
represented as leaving Athens, in disgust at the vices and follies of their
fellow citizens, and seeking the kingdom of the birds, where they form a
new state, by which the communication between the mortals and the
immortals is cut off, and is only opened again by an arrangement between
all the parties. In the “Lysistrata,” believed to have been brought out in 411,
when the war was still at its height, the women of Athens are represented as
engaging in a cunning and successful plot, by which they gain possession of
the government of the state, and compel their husbands to make peace.
“The Thesmophoriazusæ,” appears to have been published in B.C. 410; it is

a satire upon Euripides, whose writings were remarkable for their bitter
attacks on the character of the female sex, who, in this comedy, conspire
against him to secure his punishment. The comedy of “The Frogs” was
brought out in the year 405 B.C., and is a satire on the literature of the day; it
is aimed especially at Euripides, and was perhaps written soon after his
death, its real subject being the decline of the tragic drama, which Euripides
was accused of having promoted. It is perhaps the most witty of the plays of
Aristophanes which have been preserved. “The Ecclesiazusæ,” published in
392, is a burlesque upon the theories of republican government, which were
then started among the philosophers, some of which differed little from our
modern communism. The ladies again, by a clever conspiracy, gain the
mastery in the estate, and they decree a community of goods and women,
with some laws very peculiar to that state of things. The humour of the
piece, which is extremely broad, turns upon the disputes and
embarrassments resulting from this state of things. The last of his comedies
extant, “Plutus,” appears to be a work of the concluding years of the active
life of Aristophanes; it is the least striking of them all, and is rather a moral
than a political satire.
In a comedy brought out in 426, the year before “The Archarnians,” under
the title of “The Babylonians,” Aristophanes appears to have given great
offence to the democratic party, a circumstance to which he alludes more
than once in the former play. However, his talents and popularity seem to
have carried him over the danger, and certainly nothing can have exceeded
the bitterness of satire employed in his subsequent comedies. Those who
followed him were less fortunate.
One of the latest writers of the Old Comedy was Anaximandrides, who cast
a reflection on the state of Athens in parodying a line of Euripides. This
poet had said,—
ἡ φύσις ἐβούλεθ’ ἦ νόμων οὐδεν μέλει
(Nature has commanded, which cares nothing for the laws);
which Anaximandrides changed to—
ἡ πόλις ἐβούλεθ’ ἦ νόμων οὐδεν μέλει
(The state has commanded, which cares nothing for the laws).

Nowhere is oppression exercised with greater harshness than under
democratic governments; and Anaximandrides was prosecuted for this joke
as a crime against the state, and condemned to death. As may be supposed,
liberty of speech ceased to exist in Athens. We are well acquainted with the
character of the Old Comedy, in its greatest freedom, through the writings
of Aristophanes. What was called the Middle Comedy, in which political
satire was prohibited, lasted from this time until the age of Philip of
Macedon, when the old liberty of Greece was finally crushed. The last form
of Greek comedy followed, which is known as the New Comedy, and was
represented by such names as Epicharmus and Menander. In the New
Comedy all caricature and parody, and all personal allusions, were entirely
proscribed; it was changed entirely into a comedy of manners and domestic
life, a picture of contemporary society under conventional names and
characters. From this New Comedy was taken the Roman comedy, such as
we now have it in the plays of Plautus and Terence, who were professed
imitators of Menander and the other writers of the new comedy of the
Greeks.

No. 9. A Greek Parody.

Pictorial caricature was, of course, rarely to be seen on the public
monuments of Greece or Rome, but must have been consigned to objects of
a more popular character and to articles of common use; and, accordingly,
modern antiquarian research has brought it to light somewhat abundantly on
the pottery of Greece and Etruria, and on the wall-paintings of domestic
buildings in Herculaneum and Pompeii. The former contains comic scenes,
especially parodies, which are evidently transferred to them from the stage,
and which preserve the marks and other attributes—some of which I have
necessarily omitted—proving the model from which they were taken. The
Greeks, as we know from many sources, were extremely fond of parodies
of every description, whether literary or pictorial. The subject of our cut No.
9 is a good example of the parodies found on the Greek pottery; it is taken
from a fine Etruscan vase,[3] and has been supposed to be a parody on the
visit of Jupiter to Alcmena. This appears rather doubtful, but there can be no

doubt that it is a burlesque representation of the visit of a lover to the object
of his aspirations. The lover, in the comic mask and costume, mounts by a
ladder to the window at which the lady presents herself, who, it must be
confessed, presents the appearance of giving her admirer a very cold
reception. He tries to conciliate her by a present of what seem to be apples,
instead of gold, but without much effect. He is attended by his servant with
a torch, to give him light on the way, which shows that it is a night
adventure. Both master and servant have wreaths round their heads, and the
latter carries a third in his hand, which, with the contents of his basket, are
also probably intended as presents to the lady.
A more unmistakable burlesque on the visit of Jupiter to Alcmena is
published by Winckelmann from a vase, formerly in the library of the
Vatican, and now at St. Petersburg. The treatment of the subject is not
unlike the picture just described. Alcmena appears just in the same posture
at her chamber window, and Jupiter is carrying his ladder to mount up to
her, but has not yet placed it against the wall. His companion is identified
with Mercury by the well-known caduceus he carries in his left hand, while
with his right hand he holds a lamp up to the window, in order to enable
Jupiter to see the object of his amour.
It is astonishing with how much boldness the Greeks parodied and ridiculed
sacred subjects. The Christian father, Arnobius, in writing against his
heathen opponents, reproached them with this circumstance. The laws, he
says, were made to protect the characters of men from slander and libel, but
there was no such protection for the characters of the gods, which were
treated with the greatest disrespect.[4] This was especially the case in their
pictorial representations.
Pliny informs us that Ctesilochus, a pupil of the celebrated Apelles, painted
a burlesque picture of Jupiter giving birth to Bacchus, in which the god was
represented in a very ridiculous posture.[5] Ancient writers intimate that
similar examples were not uncommon, and mention the names of several
comic painters, whose works of this class were in repute. Some of these
were bitter personal caricatures, like a celebrated work of a painter named
Ctesicles, described also by Pliny. It appears that Stratonice, the queen of
Seleucus Nicator, had received this painter ill when he visited her court, and
in revenge he executed a picture in which she was represented, according to
a current scandal, as engaged in an amour with a common fisherman, which

he exhibited in the harbour of Ephesus, and then made his escape on ship-
board. Pliny adds that the queen admired the beauty and accuracy of the
painting more than she felt the insult, and that she forbade the removal of
the picture.[6]

No. 10. Apollo at Delphi.

The subject of our second example of the Greek caricature is better known.
It is taken from an oxybaphon which was brought from the Continent to
England, where it passed into the collection of Mr. William Hope.[7] The
oxybaphon (ὀξύβαφον), or, as it was called by the Romans, acetabulum,
was a large vessel for holding vinegar, which formed one of the important
ornaments of the table, and was therefore very susceptible of pictorial
embellishment of this description. It is one of the most remarkable Greek
caricatures of this kind yet known, and represents a parody on one of the
most interesting stories of the Grecian mythology, that of the arrival of
Apollo at Delphi. The artist, in his love of burlesque, has spared none of the
personages who belonged to the story. The Hyperborean Apollo himself
appears in the character of a quack doctor, on his temporary stage, covered
by a sort of roof, and approached by wooden steps. On the stage lies
Apollo’s luggage, consisting of a bag, a bow, and his Scythian cap. Chiron
(ΧΙΡΩΝ) is represented as labouring under the effects of age and blindness,
and supporting himself by the aid of a crooked staff, as he repairs to the
Delphian quack-doctor for relief. The figure of the centaur is made to

ascend by the aid of a companion, both being furnished with the masks and
other attributes of the comic performers. Above are the mountains, and on
them the nymphs of Parnassus (ΝΥΜΦΑΙ), who, like all the other actors in
the scene, are disguised with masks, and those of a very grotesque
character. On the right-hand side stands a figure which is considered as
representing the epoptes, the inspector or overseer of the performance, who
alone wears no mask. Even a pun is employed to heighten the drollery of
the scene, for instead of ΠΥΘΙΑΣ, the Pythian, placed over the head of the
burlesque Apollo, it seems evident that the artist had written ΠΕΙΘΙΑΣ, the
consoler, in allusion, perhaps, to the consolation which the quack-doctor is
administering to his blind and aged visitor.

No. 11. The Flight of Æneas from Troy.

The Greek spirit of parody, applied even to the most sacred subjects,
however it may have declined in Greece, was revived at Rome, and we find
examples of it on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. They show the
same readiness to turn into burlesque the most sacred and popular legends
of the Roman mythology. The example given (cut No. 11), from one of the
wall-paintings, is peculiarly interesting, both from circumstances in the
drawing itself, and because it is a parody on one of the favourite national
legends of the Roman people, who prided themselves on their descent from
Æneas. Virgil has told, with great effect, the story of his hero’s escape from
the destruction of Troy—or rather has put the story into his hero’s mouth.
When the devoted city was already in flames, Æneas took his father,
Anchises, on his shoulder, and his boy, Iulus, or, as he was otherwise called,
Ascanius, by the hand, and thus fled from his home, followed by his wife—
Ergo age, care pater, cervici imponere nostræ;
Ipse subibo humeris, nec me labor iste gravabit.
Quo res cumque cadent, unum et commune periclum,
Una salus ambobus erit. Mihi parvus Iulus
Sit comes, et longe servat vestigia conjux.
—Virg. Æn., lib. ii. l. 707.
Thus they hurried on, the child holding by his father’s right hand, and
dragging after with “unequal steps,”—
dextræ se parvus Iulus
Implicuit sequiturque patrem non passibus æquis.
—Virg. Æn., lib. ii. 1. 723.
And thus Æneas bore away both father and son, and the penates, or
household gods, of his family, which were to be transferred to another
country, and become the future guardians of Rome—
Ascanium, Anchisemque patrem, Tencrosque penates.—Ib., 1. 747.

No. 12. The Flight of Æneas.

In this case we know that the design is intended to be a parody, or
burlesque, upon a picture which appears to have been celebrated at the time,
and of which at least two different copies are found upon ancient intaglios.
It is the only case I know in which both the original and the parody have
been preserved from this remote period, and this is so curious a
circumstance, that I give in the cut on the preceding page a copy of one of
the intaglios.[8] It represented literally Virgil’s account of the story, and the
only difference between the design on the intaglios and the one given in our
first cut is, that in the latter the personages are represented under the forms
of monkeys. Æneas, personified by the strong and vigorous animal,
carrying the old monkey, Anchises, on his left shoulder, hurries forward,
and at the same time looks back on the burning city. With his right hand he
drags along the boy Iulus, or Ascanius, who is evidently proceeding non

passibus æquis, and with difficulty keeps up with his father’s pace. The boy
wears a Phrygian bonnet, and holds in his right hand the instrument of play
which we should now call a “bandy”—the pedun. Anchises has charge of
the box, which contains the sacred penates. It is a curious circumstance that
the monkeys in this picture are the same dog-headed animals, or
cynocephali, which are found on the Egyptian monuments.

When this chapter was already given for press, I first became acquainted with an interesting paper,
by Panofka, on the “Parodieen und Karikaturen auf Werken der Klassischen Kunst,” in the
“Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,” for the year 1854, and I can only
now refer my readers to it.

CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN OF THE STAGE IN ROME.—USES OF THE MASK AMONG THE ROMANS.
—SCENES FROM ROMAN COMEDY.—THE SANNIO AND MIMUS.—THE
ROMAN DRAMA.—THE ROMAN SATIRISTS.—CARICATURE.—ANIMALS
INTRODUCED IN THE CHARACTERS OF MEN.—THE PIGMIES, AND THEIR
INTRODUCTION INTO CARICATURE; THE FARM-YARD; THE PAINTER’S
STUDIO; THE PROCESSION.—POLITICAL CARICATURE IN POMPEII; THE
GRAFFITI.

The Romans appear to have never had any real taste for the regular drama,
which they merely copied from the Greeks, and from the earliest period of
their history we find them borrowing all their arts of this description from
their neighbours. In Italy, as in Greece, the first germs of comic literature
may be traced in the religious festivals, which presented a mixture of
religious worship and riotous festivity, where the feasters danced and sung,
and, as they became excited with wine and enthusiasm, indulged in mutual
reproaches and abuse. The oldest poetry of the Romans, which was
composed in irregular measure, was represented by the versus saturnini,
said to have been so called from their antiquity (for things of remote
antiquity were believed to belong to the age of Saturn). Nævius, one of the
oldest of Latin poets, is said to have written in this verse. Next in order of
time came the Fescennine verses, which appear to have been distinguished
chiefly by their license, and received their name because they were brought
from Fescennia, in Etruria, where they were employed originally in the
festivals of Ceres and Bacchus. In the year 391 of Rome, or 361 B.C., the
city was visited by a dreadful plague, and the citizens hit upon what will
appear to us the rather strange expedient of sending for performers
(ludiones) from Etruria, hoping, by employing them, to appease the anger
of the gods. Any performer of this kind appears to have been so little known
to the Romans before this, that there was not even a name for him in the
language, and they were obliged to adopt the Tuscan word, and call him a
histrio, because hister in that language meant a player or pantomimist. This
word, we know, remained in the Latin language. These first Etrurian
performers appear indeed to have been mere pantomimists, who
accompanied the flute with all sorts of mountebank tricks, gestures, dances,

gesticulations, and the like, mixed with satirical songs, and sometimes with
the performance of coarse farces. The Romans had also a class of
performances rather more dramatic in character, consisting of stories which
were named Fabulæ Atellanæ, because these performers were brought from
Atella, a city of the Osci.
A considerable advance was made in dramatic Art in Rome about the
middle of the third century before Christ. It is ascribed to a freedman named
Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, who is said to have brought out, in the
year 240 B.C., the first regular comedy ever performed in Rome. Thus we
trace not only the Roman comedy, but the very rudiments of dramatic art in
Rome, either direct to the Greeks, or to the Grecian colonies in Italy. With
the Romans, as well as with the Greeks, the theatre was a popular
institution, open to the public, and the state or a wealthy individual paid for
the performance; and therefore the building itself was necessarily of very
great extent, and, in both countries open to the sky, except that the Romans
provided for throwing an awning over it. As the Roman comedy was copied
from the new comedy of the Greeks, and therefore did not admit of the
introduction of caricature and burlesque on the stage, these were left
especially to the province of the pantomime and farce, which the Romans,
as just stated, had received from a still earlier period.

No. 13. A Scene from Terence.

No. 14. Geta and Demea.

Whether the Romans borrowed the mask from the Greeks, or not, is rather
uncertain, but it was used as generally in the Roman theatres, whether in
comedy or tragedy, as among the Greeks. The Greek actors performed upon
stilts, in order to magnify their figures, as the area of the theatre was very
large and uncovered, and without this help they were not so well seen at a
distance; and one object of utility aimed at by the mask is said to have been
to make the head appear proportionate in size to the artificial height of the
body. It may be remarked that the mask seems generally to have been made
to cover the whole head, representing the hair as well as the face, so that the
character of age or complexion might be given complete. Among the
Romans the stilts were certainly not in general use, but still the mask,
besides its comic or tragic character, is supposed to have served useful
purposes. The first improvement upon its original structure is said to have
been the making it of brass, or some other sonorous metal, or at least lining
the mouth with it, so as to reverberate, and give force to the voice, and also
to the mouth of the mask something of the character of a speaking-trumpet.
[9] All these accessories could not fail to detract much from the effect of the
acting, which must in general have been very measured and formal, and
have received most of its importance from the excellence of the poetry, and
the declamatory talents of the actors. We have pictures in which scenes

from the Roman stage are accurately represented. Several rather early
manuscripts of Terence have been preserved, illustrated with drawings of
the scenes as represented on the stage, and these, though belonging to a
period long subsequent to the age in which the Roman stage existed in its
original character, are, no doubt, copied from drawings of an earlier date. A
German antiquary of the last century, Henry Berger, published in a quarto
volume a series of such illustrations from a manuscript of Terence in the
library of the Vatican at Rome, from which two examples are selected, as
showing the usual style of Roman comic acting, and the use of the mask.
The first (No. 13) is the opening scene in the Andria. On the right, two
servants have brought provisions, and on the left appear Simo, the master of
the household, and his freedman, Sosia, who seems to be entrusted with the
charge of his domestic affairs. Simo tells his servants to go away with the
provisions, while he beckons Sosia to confer with him in private:—
Si. Vos istæc intro auferte; abite. Sosia,
Adesdum; paucis te volo. So. Dictum puta
Nempe ut curentur recte hæc. Si. Imo aliud.
Terent. Andr., Actus i., Scena 1.
When we compare these words with the picture, we cannot but feel that in
the latter there is an unnecessary degree of energy put into the pose of the
figures; which is perhaps less the case in the other (No. 14), an illustration
of the sixth scene of the fifth act of the Adelphi of Terence. It represents the
meeting of Geta, a rather talkative and conceited servant, and Demea, a
countryfied and churlish old man, his acquaintance, and of course superior.
To Geta’s salutation, Demea asks churlishly, as not at first knowing him,
“Who are you?” but when he finds that it is Geta, he changes suddenly to an
almost fawning tone:—
G. ... Sed eccum Demeam. Salvus fies.
D. Oh, qui vocare? G. Geta. D. Geta, hominem maximi
Pretii esse te hodie judicavi animo mei.

No. 15. Comic Scene from Pompeii.

That these representations are truthful, the scenes in the wall-paintings of
Pompeii leave us no room to doubt. One of these is produced in our cut No.
15, which is no doubt taken from a comedy now lost, and we are ignorant
whom the characters are intended to represent. The pose given to the two
comic figures, compared with the example given from Berger, would lead
us to suppose that this over-energetic action was considered as part of the
character of comic acting.

No. 16. Cupids at Play.

The subject of the Roman masks is the more interesting, because they were
probably the origin of many of the grotesque faces so often met with in
mediæval sculpture. The comic mask was, indeed, a very popular object
among the Romans, and appears to have been taken as symbolical of
everything that was droll and burlesque. From the comic scenes of the
theatre, to which it was first appropriated, it passed to the popular festivals
of a public character, such as the Lupercalia, with which, no doubt, it was
carried into the carnival of the middle ages, and to our masquerades.
Among the Romans, also, the use of the mask soon passed from the public
festivals to private supper parties. Its use was so common that it became a
plaything among children, and was sometimes used as a bugbear to frighten
them. Our cut No. 16, taken from a painting at Resina, represents two
cupids playing with a mask, and using it for this latter purpose, that is, to
frighten one another; and it is curious that the mediæval gloss of Ugutio
explains larva, a mask, as being an image, “which was put over the face to
frighten children.”[10] The mask thus became a favourite ornament,
especially on lamps, and on the antefixa and gargoyls of Roman buildings,
to which were often given the form of grotesque masks, monstrous faces,
with great mouths wide open, and other figures, like those of the gargoyls
of the mediæval architects.

No. 17. The Roman Sannio, or Buffoon.

While the comic mask was used generally in the burlesque entertainments,
it also became distinctive of particular characters. One of these was the
sannio, or buffoon, whose name was derived from the Greek word σάννος,
“a fool,” and who was employed in performing burlesque dances, making
grimaces, and in other acts calculated to excite the mirth of the spectator. A
representation of the sannio is given in our cut No. 17, copied from one of
the engravings in the “Dissertatio de Larvis Scenicis,” by the Italian
antiquary Ficoroni, who took it from an engraved gem. The sannio holds in
his hand what is supposed to be a brass rod, and he has probably another in
the other hand, so that he could strike them together. He wears the soccus,
or low shoe peculiar to the comic actors. This buffoon was a favourite
character among the Romans, who introduced him constantly into their

feasts and supper parties. The manducus was another character of this
description, represented with a grotesque mask, presenting a wide mouth
and tongue lolling out, and said to have been peculiar to the Atellane plays.
A character in Plautus (Rud., ii. 6, 51) talks of hiring himself as a manducus
in the plays.
“Quid si aliquo ad ludos me pro manduco locem?”
The mediæval glosses interpret manducus by joculator, “a jogelor,” and add
that the characteristic from which he took his name was the practice of
making grimaces like a man gobbling up his food in a vulgar and gluttonous
manner.

No. 18. Roman Tom Fool.

Ficoroni gives, from an engraved onyx, a figure of another burlesque
performer, copied in our cut No. 18, and which he compares to the Catanian
dancer of his time (his book was published in 1754), who was called a
giangurgolo. This is considered to represent the Roman mimus, a class of
performers who told with mimicry and action scenes taken from common
life, and more especially scandalous and indecent anecdotes, like the
jogelors and performers of farces in the middle ages. The Romans were
very much attached to these performances, so much so, that they even had
them at their funeral processions and at their funeral feasts. In our figure,
the mimus is represented naked, masked (with an exaggerated nose), and

wearing what is perhaps intended as a caricature of the Phrygian bonnet. In
his right hand he holds a bag, or purse, full of objects which rattle and make
a noise when shaken, while the other holds the crotalum, or castanets, an
instrument in common use among the ancients. One of the statues in the
Barberini Palace represents a youth in a Phrygian cap playing on the
crotalum. We learn, from an early authority, that it was an instrument
especially used in the satirical and burlesque dances which were so popular
among the Romans.
As I have remarked before, the Romans had no taste for the regular drama,
but they retained to the last their love for the performances of the popular
mimi, or comædi (as they were often called), the players of farces, and the
dancers. These performed on the stage, in the public festivals, in the streets,
and were usually introduced at private parties.[11] Suetonius tells us that on
one occasion, the emperor Caligula ordered a poet who composed the
Atellanes (Attellanæ poetam) to be burnt in the middle of the amphitheatre,
for a pun. A more regular comedy, however, did flourish, to a certain
degree, at the same time with these more popular compositions. Of the
works of the earliest of the Roman comic writers, Livius Andronicus and
Nævius, we know only one or two titles, and a few fragments quoted in the
works of the later Roman writers. They were followed by Plautus, who died
B.C. 184, and nineteen of whose comedies are preserved and well known; by
several other writers, whose names are almost forgotten, and whose
comedies are all lost; and by Terence, six of whose comedies are preserved.
Terence died about the year 159 B.C. About the same time with Terence
lived Lucius Afranius and Quinctius Atta, who appear to close the list of the
Roman writers of comedy.
But another branch of comic literature had sprung out of the satire of the
religious festivities. A year after Livius Andronicus produced the first drama
at Rome, in the year 239 B.C., the poet Ennius was born at Rudiæ, in Magna
Græcia. The satirical verse, whether Saturnine or Fescennine, had been
gradually improving in its form, although still very rude, but Ennius is said
to have given at least a new polish, and perhaps a new metrical shape, to it.
The verse was still irregular, but it appears to have been no longer intended
for recitation, accompanied by the flute. The Romans looked upon Ennius
not only as their earliest epic poet, but as the father of satire, a class of
literary composition which appears to have originated with them, and which

they claimed as their own.[12] Ennius had an imitator in M. Terentius Varro.
The satires of these first writers are said to have been very irregular
compositions, mixing prose with verse, and sometimes even Greek with
Latin; and to have been rather general in their aim than personal. But soon
after this period, and rather more than a century before Christ, came Caius
Lucilius, who raised Roman satirical literature to its perfection. Lucilius, we
are told, was the first who wrote satires in heroic verse, or hexameters,
mixing with them now and then, though rarely, an iambic or trochaic line.
He was more refined, more pointed, and more personal, than his
predecessors, and he had rescued satire from the street performer to make it
a class of literature which was to be read by the educated, and not merely
listened to by the vulgar. Lucilius is said to have written thirty books of
satires, of which, unfortunately, only some scattered lines remain.
Lucilius had imitators, the very names of most of whom are now forgotten,
but about forty years after his death, and sixty-five years before the birth of
Christ, was born Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the oldest of the satirists whose
works we now possess, and the most polished of Roman poets. In the time
of Horace, the satire of the Romans had reached its highest degree of
perfection. Of the two other great satirists whose works are preserved,
Juvenal was born about the year 40 of the Christian era, and Persius in 43.
During the period through which these writers flourished, Rome saw a
considerable number of other satirists of the same class, whose works have
perished.
In the time of Juvenal another variety of the same class of literature had
already sprung up, more artificial and somewhat more indirect than the
other, the prose satiric romance. Three celebrated writers represent this
school. Petronius, who, born about the commencement of our era, died in
A.D. 65, is the earliest and most remarkable of them. He compiled a
romance, designed as a satire on the vices of the age of Nero, in which real
persons are supposed to be aimed at under fictitious names, and which
rivals in license, at least, anything that could have been uttered in the
Atellanes or other farces of the mimi. Lucian, of Samosata, who died an old
man in the year 200, and who, though he wrote in Greek, may be
considered as belonging to the Roman school, composed several satires of
this kind, in one of the most remarkable of which, entitled “Lucius, or the
Ass,” the author describes himself as changed by sorcery into the form of

that animal, under which he passes through a number of adventures which
illustrate the vices and weaknesses of contemporary society. Apuleius, who
was considerably the junior of Lucian, made this novel the groundwork of
his “Golden Ass,” a much larger and more elaborate work, written in Latin.
This work of Apuleius was very popular through subsequent ages.
Let us
return to
Roman
caricature
, one
form of
which
seems to
No. 19. The Farm-yard in Burlesque.
have
been especially a favourite among the people.
It is difficult to imagine how the story of the
pigmies and of their wars with the cranes
originated, but it is certainly of great antiquity,
as it is spoken of in Homer, and it was a very
popular legend among the Romans, who
eagerly sought and purchased dwarfs to make
domestic pets of them. The pigmies and cranes
No. 20. An Asilla-Bearer. occur frequently among the pictorial
ornamentations of the houses of Pompeii and
Herculaneum; and the painters of Pompeii not only represented them in
their proper character, but they made use of them for the purpose of
caricaturing the various occupations of life—domestic and social scenes,
grave conferences, and many other subjects, and even personal character. In
this class of caricatures they gave to the pigmies, or dwarfs, very large
heads, and very small legs and arms. I need hardly remark that this is a class
of caricature which is very common in modern times. Our first group of
these pigmy caricatures (No. 19) is taken from a painting on the walls of the
Temple of Venus, at Pompeii, and represents the interior of a farm-yard in
burlesque. The structure in the background is perhaps intended for a
hayrick. In front of it, one of the farm servants is attending on the poultry.
The more important-looking personage with the pastoral staff is possibly
the overseer of the farm, who is visiting the labourers, and this probably is

the cause why their movements have assumed so much activity. The
labourer on the right is using the asilla, a wooden yoke or pole, which was
carried over the shoulder, with the corbis, or basket, suspended at each end.
This was a common method of carrying, and is not unfrequently
represented on Roman works of art. Several examples might be quoted
from the antiquities of Pompeii. Our cut No. 20, from a gem in the
Florentine Museum, and illustrating another class of caricature, that of
introducing animals performing the actions and duties of men, represents a
grasshopper carrying the asilla and the corbes.

No. 21. A Painter’s Studio.

A private house in Pompeii furnished another example of this style of
caricature, which is given in our cut No. 21. It represents the interior of a
painter’s studio, and is extremely curious on account of the numerous
details of his method of operation with which it furnishes us. The painter,
who is, like most of the figures in these pigmy caricatures, very scantily
clothed, is occupied with the portrait of another, who, by the rather
exaggerated fulness of the gathering of his toga, is evidently intended for a
dashing and fashionable patrician, though he is seated as bare-legged and
bare-breeched as the artist himself. Both are distinguished by a large
allowance of nose. The easel here employed resembles greatly the same
article now in use, and might belong to the studio of a modern painter.
Before it is a small table, probably formed of a slab of stone, which serves
for a palette, on which the painter spreads and mixes his colours. To the
right a servant, who fills the office of colour-grinder, is seated by the side of
a vessel placed over hot coals, and appears to be preparing colours, mixed,
according to the directions given in old writers, with punic wax and oil. In
the background is seated a student, whose attention is taken from his
drawing by what is going on at the other side of the room, where two small

personages are entering, who look as if they were amateurs, and who appear
to be talking about the portrait. Behind them stands a bird, and when the
painting was first uncovered there were two. Mazois, who made the
drawing from which our cut is taken, before the original had perished—for
it was found in a state of decay—imagined that the birds typified some
well-known singers or musicians, but they are, perhaps, merely intended for
cranes, birds so generally associated with the pigmies.

No. 22. Part of a Triumphal Procession.

According to an ancient writer, combats of pigmies were favourite
representations on the walls of taverns and shops;[13] and, curiously enough,
the walls of a shop in Pompeii have furnished the picture represented in our
cut No. 22, which has evidently been intended for a caricature, probably a
parody. All the pigmies in this picture are crowned with laurel, as though
the painter intended to turn to ridicule some over-pompous triumph, or
some public, perhaps religious, ceremony. The two figures to the left, who
are clothed in yellow and green garments, appear to be disputing the
possession of a bowl containing a liquid. One of these, like the two figures
on the right, has a hoop thrown over his shoulder. The first of the latter
personages wears a violet dress, and holds in his right hand a rod, and in his
left a statuette, apparently of a deity, but its attributes are not
distinguishable. The last figure to the right has a robe, or mantle, of two
colours, red and green, and holds in his hand a branch of a lily, or some
similar plant; the rest of the picture is lost. Behind the other figure stands a

fifth, who appears younger and more refined in character than the others,
and seems to be ordering or directing them. His dress is red.
We can have no doubt that political and personal caricature flourished
among the Romans, as we have some examples of it on their works of art,
chiefly on engraved stones, though these are mostly of a character we could
not here conveniently introduce; but the same rich mine of Roman art and
antiquities, Pompeii, has furnished us with one sample of what may be
properly considered as a political caricature. In the year 59 of the Christian
era, at a gladiatorial exhibition in the amphitheatre of Pompeii, where the
people of Nuceria were present, the latter expressed themselves in such
scornful terms towards the Pompeians, as led to a violent quarrel, which
was followed by a pitched battle between the inhabitants of the two towns,
and the Nucerians, being defeated, carried their complaints before the
reigning emperor, Nero, who gave judgment in their favour, and condemned
the people of Pompeii to suspension from all theatrical amusements for ten
years. The feelings of the Pompeians on this occasion are displayed in the
rude drawing represented in our cut No. 23, which is scratched on the
plaster of the external wall of a house in the street to which the Italian
antiquarians have given the name of the street of Mercury. A figure,
completely armed, his head covered with what might be taken for a
mediæval helmet, is descending what appear to be intended for the steps of
the amphitheatre. He carries in his hand a palm-branch, the emblem of
victory. Another palm-branch stands erect by his side, and underneath is the
inscription, in rather rustic Latin, “CAMPANI VICTORIA VNA CVM
NVCERINIS PERISTIS”—“O Campanians, you perished in the victory
together with the Nucerians.” The other side of the picture is more rudely
and hastily drawn. It has been supposed to represent one of the victors
dragging a prisoner, with his arms bound, up a ladder to a stage or platform,
on which he was perhaps to be exhibited to the jeers of the populace. Four
years after this event, Pompeii was greatly damaged by an earthquake, and
sixteen years later came the eruption of Vesuvius, which buried the town,
and left it in the condition in which it is now found.

No. 23. A Popular Caricature.

No. 24. Early Caricature upon a Christian.

This curious caricature belongs to a class of monuments to which
archæologists have given technically the Italian name of graffiti, scratches
or scrawls, of which a great number, consisting chiefly of writing, have
been found on the walls of Pompeii. They also occur among the remains on
other Roman sites, and one found in Rome itself is especially interesting.
During the alterations and extensions which were made from time to time in
the palace of the Cæsars, it had been found necessary to build across a
narrow street which intersected the Palatine, and, in order to give support to
the structure above, a portion of the street was walled off, and remained
thus hermetically sealed until about the year 1857, when some excavations
on the spot brought it to view. The walls of the street were found to be
covered with these graffiti, among which one attracted especial attention,
and, having been carefully removed, is now preserved in the museum of the
Collegio Romano. It is a caricature upon a Christian named Alexamenos, by
some pagan who despised Christianity. The Saviour is represented under the
form of a man with the head of an ass, extended upon a cross, the Christian,
Alexamenos, standing on one side in the attitude of worship of that period.
Underneath we read the inscription, ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ CΕΒΕΤΕ (for
σεβεται) ΘΕΟΝ, “Alexamenos worships God.” This curious figure, which
may be placed among the most interesting as well as early evidences of the
truth of Gospel history, is copied in our cut No. 24. It was drawn when the
prevailing religion at Rome was still pagan, and a Christian was an object
of contempt.

CHAPTER III.
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES.—THE
ROMAN MIMI CONTINUED TO EXIST.—THE TEUTONIC AFTER-DINNER
ENTERTAINMENTS.—CLERICAL SATIRES; ARCHBISHOP HERIGER AND
THE DREAMER; THE SUPPER OF THE SAINTS.—TRANSITION FROM
ANCIENT TO MEDIÆVAL ART.—TASTE FOR MONSTROUS ANIMALS,
DRAGONS, ETC.; CHURCH OF SAN FEDELE, AT COMO.—SPIRIT OF
CARICATURE AND LOVE OF GROTESQUE AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
—GROTESQUE FIGURES OF DEMONS.—NATURAL TENDENCY OF THE
EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS TO DRAW IN CARICATURE.—EXAMPLES
FROM EARLY MANUSCRIPTS AND SCULPTURES.

The transition from antiquity to what we usually understand by the name of
the middle ages was long and slow; it was a period during which much of
the texture of the old society was destroyed, while at the same time a new
life was gradually given to that which remained. We know very little of the
comic literature of this period of transition; its literary remains consist
chiefly of a mass of heavy theology and of lives of saints. The stage in its
perfectly dramatic form—theatre and amphitheatre—had disappeared. The
pure drama, indeed, appears never to have had great vitality among the
Romans, whose tastes lay far more among the vulgar performances of the
mimics and jesters, and among the savage scenes of the amphitheatre.
While probably the performance of comedies, such as those of Plautus and
Terence, soon went out of fashion, and tragedies, like those of Seneca, were
only written as literary compositions, imitations of the similar works which
formed so remarkable a feature in the literature of Greece, the Romans of
all ranks loved to witness the loose attitudes of their mimi, or listen to their
equally loose songs and stories. The theatre and the amphitheatre were state
institutions, kept up at the national expense, and, as just stated, they
perished with the overthrow of the western empire; and the sanguinary
performances of the amphitheatre, if the amphitheatre itself continued to be
used (which was perhaps the case in some parts of western Europe), and
they gave place to the more harmless exhibitions of dancing bears and other
tamed animals,[14] for deliberate cruelty was not a characteristic of the
Teutonic race. But the mimi, the performers who sung songs and told

stories, accompanied with dancing and music, survived the fall of the
empire, and continued to be as popular as ever. St. Augustine, in the fourth
century, calls these things nefaria, detestable things, and says that they were
performed at night.[15] We trace in the capitularies the continuous existence
of these performances during the ages which followed the empire, and, as in
the time of St. Augustine, they still formed the amusement of nocturnal
assemblies. The capitulary of Childebert proscribes those who passed their
nights with drunkenness, jesting, and songs.[16] The council of Narbonne, in
the year 589, forbade people to spend their nights “with dancings and filthy
songs.”[17] The council of Mayence, in 813, calls these songs “filthy and
licentious” (turpia atque luxuriosa); and that of Paris speaks of them as
“obscene and filthy” (obscæna et turpia); while in another they are called
“frivolous and diabolic.” From the bitterness with which the ecclesiastical
ordinances are expressed, it is probable that these performances continued
to preserve much of their old paganism; yet it is curious that they are
spoken of in these capitularies and acts of the councils as being still
practised in the religious festivals, and even in the churches, so tenaciously
did the old sentiments of the race keep their possession of the minds of the
populace, long after they had embraced Christianity. These “songs,” as they
are called, continued also to consist not only of general, but of personal
satire, and contained scandalous stories of persons living, and well known
to those who heard them. A capitulary of the Frankish king Childeric III.,
published in the year 744, is directed against those who compose and sing
songs in defamation of others (in blasphemiam alterius, to use the rather
energetic language of the original); and it is evident that this offence was a
very common one, for it is not unfrequently repeated in later records of this
character in the same words or in words to the same purpose. Thus one
result of the overthrow of the Roman empire was to leave comic literature
almost in the same condition in which it was found by Thespis in Greece
and by Livius Andronicus in Rome. There was nothing in it which would be
contrary to the feelings of the new races who had now planted themselves
in the Roman provinces.
The Teutonic and Scandinavian nations had no doubt their popular festivals,
in which mirth and frolic bore sway, though we know little about them; but
there were circumstances in their domestic manners which implied a
necessity for amusement. After the comparatively early meal, the hall of the
primitive Teuton was the scene—especially in the darker months of winter

—of long sittings over the festive board, in which there was much drinking
and much talking, and, as we all know, such talking could not preserve long
a very serious tone. From Bede’s account of the poet Cædmon, we learn
that it was the practice of the Anglo-Saxons in the seventh century, at their
entertainments, for all those present to sing in their turns, each
accompanying himself with a musical instrument. From the sequel of the
story we are led to suppose that these songs were extemporary effusions,
probably mythic legends, stories of personal adventure, praise of
themselves, or vituperation of their enemies. In the chieftain’s household
there appears to have been usually some individual who acted the part of
the satirist, or, as we should perhaps now say, the comedian. Hunferth
appears as holding some such position in Beowulf; in the later romances,
Sir Kay held a similar position at the court of king Arthur. At a still later
period, the place of these heroes was occupied by the court fool. The
Roman mimus must have been a welcome addition to the entertainments of
the Teutonic hall, and there is every reason to think that he was cordially
received. The performances of the hall were soon delegated from the guests
to such hired actors, and we have representations of them in the
illuminations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.[18] Among the earliest
amusements of the Anglo-Saxon table were riddles, which in every form
present some of the features of the comic, and are capable of being made
the source of much laughter. The saintly Aldhelm condescended to write
such riddles in Latin verse, which were, of course, intended for the tables of
the clergy. In primitive society, verse was the ordinary form of conveying
ideas. A large portion of the celebrated collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry
known as the “Exeter Book,” consists of riddles, and this taste for riddles
has continued to exist down to our own times. But other forms of
entertainment, if they did not already exist, were soon introduced. In a
curious Latin poem, older than the twelfth century, of which fragments only
are preserved, and have been published under the title of “Ruodlieb,” and
which appears to have been a translation of a much earlier German
romance, we have a curious description of the post-prandial entertainments
after the dinner of a great Teutonic chieftain, or king. In the first place there
was a grand distribution of rich presents, and then were shown strange
animals, and among the rest tame bears. These bears stood upon their hind
legs, and performed some of the offices of a man; and when the minstrels

(mimi) came in, and played upon their musical instruments, these animals
danced to the music, and performed all sorts of strange tricks.
Et pariles ursi....
Qui vas tollebant, ut homo, bipedesque gerebant.
Mimi quando fides digitis tangunt modulantes,
Illi saltabant, neumas pedibus variabant.
Interdum saliunt, seseque super jaciebant.
Alterutrum dorso se portabant residendo,
Amplexando se, luctando deficiunt se.
Then followed dancing-girls, and exhibitions of other kinds.[19]
Although these performances were proscribed by the ecclesiastical laws,
they were not discountenanced by the ecclesiastics themselves, who, on the
contrary, indulged as much in after-dinner amusements as anybody. The
laws against the profane songs are often directed especially at the clergy;
and it is evident that among the Anglo-Saxons, as well as on the Continent,
not only the priests and monks, but the nuns also, in their love of such
amusements, far transgressed the bounds of decency.[20] These
entertainments were the cradle of comic literature, but, as this literature in
the early ages of its history was rarely committed to writing, it has almost
entirely perished. But, at the tables of the ecclesiastics, these stories were
sometimes told in Latin verse, and as Latin was not so easily carried in the
memory as the vernacular tongue, in this language they were sometimes
committed to writing, and thus a few examples of early comic literature
have fortunately been preserved. These consist chiefly of popular stories,
which were among the favourite amusements of mediæval society—stories
many of which are derived from the earliest period of the history of our
race, and are still cherished among our peasantry. Such are the stories of the
Child of Snow, and of the Mendacious Hunter, preserved in a manuscript of
the eleventh century.[21] The first of these was a very popular story in the
middle ages. According to this early version, a merchant of Constance, in
Switzerland, was detained abroad for several years, during which time his
wife made other acquaintance, and bore a child. On his return, she excused
her fault by telling him that on a cold wintry day she had swallowed snow,
by which she had conceived; and, in revenge, the husband carried away the
child, and sold it into slavery, and returning, told its mother, that the infant
which had originated in snow, had melted away under a hotter sun. Some of

these stories originated in the different collections of fables, which were
part of the favourite literature of the later Roman period. Another is rather a
ridiculous story of an ass belonging to two sisters in a nunnery, which was
devoured by a wolf.[22] curious how soon the mediæval clergy began to
imitate their pagan predecessors in parodying religious subjects and forms,
of which we have one or two very curious examples. Visits to purgatory,
hell, and paradise, in body or spirit, were greatly in fashion during the
earlier part of the middle ages, and afforded extremely good material for
satire. In a metrical Latin story, preserved in a manuscript of the eleventh
century, we are told how a “prophet,” or visionary, went to Heriger,
archbishop of Mayence from 912 to 926, and told him that he had been
carried in a vision to the regions below, and described them as a place
surrounded by thick woods. It was the Teutonic notion of hell, and indeed
of all settlements of peoples; and Heriger replied with a sneer that he would
send his herdsmen there with his lean swine to fatten them. Each “mark,” or
land of a family or clan, in the early Teutonic settlements, was surrounded
by woodland, which was common to all members of the clan for fattening
their swine and hunting. The false dreamer added, that he was afterwards
carried to heaven, where he saw Christ sitting at the table and eating. John
the Baptist was butler, and served excellent wine round to the saints, who
were the Lord’s guests. St. Peter was the chief cook. After some remarks on
the appointments to these two offices, archbishop Heriger asked the
informant how he was received in the heavenly hall, where he sat, and what
he eat. He replied that he sat in a corner, and stole from the cooks a piece of
liver, which he eat, and then departed. Instead of rewarding him for his
information, Heriger took him on his own confession for the theft, and
ordered him to be bound to a stake and flogged, which, for the offence, was
rather a light punishment.
Heriger illum
jussit ad palum
loris ligari,
scopisque cedi,
sermone duro
hunc arguendo.
These lines will serve as a specimen of the popular Latin verse in which
these monkish after-dinner stories were written; but the most remarkable of

these early parodies on religious subjects, is one which may be described as
the supper of the saints; its title is simply Cœna. It is falsely ascribed to St.
Cyprian, who lived in the third century; but it is as old as the tenth century,
as a copy was printed by professor Endlicher from a manuscript of that
period at Vienna. It was so popular, that it is found and known to have
existed in different forms in verse and in prose. It is a sort of drollery,
founded upon the wedding feast at which the Saviour changed water into
wine, though that miracle is not at all introduced into it. It was a great king
of the East, named Zoel, who held his nuptial feast at Cana of Galilee. The
personages invited are all scriptural, beginning with Adam. Before the feast,
they wash in the river Jordan, and the number of the guests was so great,
that seats could not be provided for them, and they took their places as they
could. Adam took the first place, and seated himself in the middle of the
assembly, and next to him Eve sat upon leaves (super folia),—fig-leaves,
we may suppose. Cain sat on a plough, Abel on a milk-pail, Noah on an ark,
Japhet on tiles, Abraham on a tree, Isaac on an altar, Lot near the door, and
so with a long list of others. Two were obliged to stand—Paul, who bore it
patiently, and Esau, who grumbled—while Job lamented bitterly because he
was obliged to sit on a dunghill. Moses, and others, who came late, were
obliged to find seats out of doors. When the king saw that all his guests had
arrived, he took them into his wardrobe, and there, in the spirit of mediæval
generosity, distributed to them dresses, which had all some burlesque
allusion to their particular characters. Before they were allowed to sit down
to the feast, they were obliged to go through other ceremonies, which, as
well as the eating, are described in the same style of caricature. The wines,
of which there was great variety, were served to the guests with the same
allusions to their individual characters; but some of them complained that
they were badly mixed, although Jonah was the butler. In the same manner
are described the proceedings which followed the dinner, the washing of
hands, and the dessert, to the latter of which Adam contributed apples,
Samson honey; while David played on the harp and Mary on the tabor;
Judith led the round dance; Jubal played on the psalter; Asael sung songs,
and Herodias acted the part of the dancing-girl:—
Tunc Adam poma ministrat, Samson favi dulcia.
David cytharum percussit, et Maria tympana.
Judith choreas ducebat, et Jubal psalteria.
Asael metra canebat, saltabat Herodias.

Mambres entertained the company with his magical performances; and the
other incidents of a mediæval festival followed, throughout which the same
tone of burlesque is continued; and so the story continues, to the end.[23] We
shall find these incipient forms of mediæval comic literature largely
developed as we go on.

No. 25. Saturn Devouring his Child.

The period between antiquity and the middle ages was one of such great
and general destruction, that the gulf between ancient and mediæval art
seems to us greater and more abrupt than it really was. The want of
monuments, no doubt, prevents our seeing the gradual change of one into
the other, but nevertheless enough of facts remain to convince us that it was
not a sudden change. It is now indeed generally understood that the
knowledge and practice of the arts and manufactures of the Romans were
handed onward from master to pupil after the empire had fallen; and this
took place especially in the towns, so that the workmanship which had been
declining in character during the later periods of the empire, only continued

in the course of degradation afterwards. Thus, in the first Christian edifices,
the builders who were employed, or at least many of them, must have been
pagans, and they would follow their old models of ornamentation,
introducing the same grotesque figures, the same masks and monstrous
faces, and even sometimes the same subjects from the old mythology, to
which they had been accustomed. It is to be observed, too, that this kind of
iconographical ornamentation had been encroaching more and more upon
the old architectural purity during the latter ages of the empire, and that it
was employed more profusely in the later works, from which this taste was
transferred to the ecclesiastical and to the domestic architecture of the
middle ages. After the workmen themselves had become Christians, they
still found pagan emblems and figures in their models, and still went on
imitating them, sometimes merely copying, and at others turning them to
caricature or burlesque. And this tendency continued so long, that, at a
much later date, where there still existed remains of Roman buildings, the
mediæval architects adopted them as models, and did not hesitate to copy
the sculpture, although it might be evidently pagan in character. The
accompanying cut (No. 25) represents a bracket in the church of Mont
Majour, near Nismes, built in the tenth century. The subject is a monstrous
head eating a child, and we can hardly doubt that it was really intended for
a caricature on Saturn devouring one of his children.
Sometimes the mediæval sculptors mistook the emblematical designs of the
Romans, and misapplied them, and gave an allegorical meaning to that
which was not intended to be emblematical or allegorical, until the subjects
themselves became extremely confused. They readily employed that class
of parody of the ancients in which animals were represented performing the
actions of men, and they had a great taste for monsters of every description,
especially those which were made up of portions of incongruous animals
joined together, in contradiction to the precept of Horace:—
Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Desinet in piscem mulier formosa superne;
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?

No. 26. Sculpture from San Fedele, at Como.

The mediæval architects loved such representations, always and in all parts,
and examples are abundant. At Como, in Italy, there is a very ancient and
remarkable church dedicated to San Fedele (Saint Fidelis); it has been
considered to be of so early a date as the fifth century. The sculptures that
adorn the doorway, which is triangular-headed, are especially interesting.
On one of these, represented in our cut No. 26, in a compartment to the left,
appears a figure of an angel, holding in one hand a dwarf figure, probably
intended for a child, by a lock of his hair, and with the other hand directing
his attention to a seated figure in the compartment below. This latter figure
has apparently the head of a sheep, and as the head is surrounded with a

large nimbus, and the right hand is held out in the attitude of benediction, it
may be intended to represent the Lamb. This personage is seated on
something which is difficult to make out, but which looks somewhat like a
crab-fish. The boy in the compartment above carries a large basin in his
arms. The adjoining compartment to the right contains the representation of
a conflict between a dragon, a winged serpent, and a winged fox. On the
opposite side of the door, two winged monsters are represented devouring a
lamb’s head. I owe the drawing from which this and the preceding
engraving were made to my friend Mr. John Robinson, the architect, who
made the sketches while travelling with the medal of the Royal Academy.
Figures of dragons, as ornaments, were great favourites with the peoples of
the Teutonic race; they were creatures intimately wrapped up in their
national mythology and romance, and they are found on all their artistic
monuments mingled together in grotesque forms and groups. When the
Anglo-Saxons began to ornament their books, the dragon was continually
introduced for ornamental borders and in forming initial letters. One of the
latter, from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century (the well-
known manuscript of Cædmon, where it is given as an initial V), is
represented in our cut on the next page, No. 27.

No. 27. Anglo-Saxon Dragons.

Caricature and burlesque are naturally intended to be heard and seen
publicly, and would therefore be figured on such monuments as were most
exposed to popular gaze. Such was the case, in the earlier periods of the
middle ages, chiefly with ecclesiastical buildings, which explains how they
became the grand receptacles of this class of Art. We have few traces of
what may be termed comic literature among our Anglo-Saxon forefathers,
but this is fully explained by the circumstance that very little of the popular
Anglo-Saxon literature has been preserved. In their festive hours the Anglo-
Saxons seem to have especially amused themselves in boasting of what they
had done, and what they could do; and these boasts were perhaps often of a
burlesque character, like the gabs of the French and Anglo-Norman
romancers of a later date, or so extravagant as to produce laughter. The
chieftains appear also to have encouraged men who could make jokes, and
satirise and caricature others; for the company of such men seems to have
been cherished, and they are not unfrequently introduced in the stories.
Such a personage, as I have remarked before, is Hunferth in Beowulf; such
was the Sir Kay of the later Arthurian romances; and such too was the
Norman minstrel in the history of Hereward, who amused the Norman
soldiers at their feasts by mimicry of the manners of their Anglo-Saxon
opponents. The too personal satire of these wits often led to quarrels, which
ended in sanguinary brawls. The Anglo-Saxon love of caricature is shown
largely in their proper names, which were mostly significant of personal
qualities their parents hoped they would possess; and in these we remark
the proneness of the Teutonic race, as well as the peoples of antiquity, to
represent these qualities by the animals supposed to possess them, the
animals most popular being the wolf and the bear. But it is not to be
expected that the hopes of the parents in giving the name would always be
fulfilled, and it is not an uncommon thing to find individuals losing their
original names to receive in their place nicknames, or names which
probably expressed qualities they did possess, and which were given to
them by their acquaintances. These names, though often not very
complimentary, and even sometimes very much the contrary, completely
superseded the original name, and were even accepted by the individuals to
whom they applied. The second names were indeed so generally
acknowledged, that they were used in signing legal documents. An Anglo-
Saxon abbess of rank, whose real name was Hrodwaru, but who was known

universally by the name Bugga, the Bug, wrote this latter name in signing
charters. We can hardly doubt that such a name was intended to ascribe to
her qualities of a not agreeable character, and very different to those implied
by the original name, which perhaps meant, a dweller in heaven. Another
lady gained the name of the Crow. It is well known that surnames did not
come into use till long after the Anglo-Saxon period, but appellatives, like
these nicknames, were often added to the name for the purpose of
distinction, or at pleasure, and these, too, being given by other people, were
frequently satirical. Thus, one Harold, for his swiftness, was called Hare-
foot; a well-known Edith, for the elegant form of her neck, was called
Swan-neck; and a Thurcyl, for a form of his head, which can hardly have
been called beautiful, was named Mare’s-head. Among many other names,
quite as satirical as the last-mentioned, we find Flat-nose, the Ugly Squint-
eye, Hawk-nose, &c.
Of Anglo-Saxon sculpture we have little left, but we have a few illuminated
manuscripts which present here and there an attempt at caricature, though
they are rare. It would seem, however, that the two favourite subjects of
caricature among the Anglo-Saxons were the clergy and the evil one. We
have abundant evidence that, from the eighth century downwards, neither
the Anglo-Saxon clergy nor the Anglo-Saxon nuns were generally objects of
much respect among the people; and their character and the manner of their
lives sufficiently account for it. Perhaps, also, it was increased by the
hostility between the old clergy and the new reformers of Dunstan’s party,
who would no doubt caricature each other. A manuscript psalter, in the
University Library, Cambridge (Ff. 1, 23), of the Anglo-Saxon period, and
apparently of the tenth century, illustrated with rather grotesque initial
letters, furnishes us with the figure of a jolly Anglo-Saxon monk, given in
our cut No. 28, and which it is hardly necessary to state represents the letter
Q. As we proceed, we shall see the clergy continuing to furnish a butt for
the shafts of satire through all the middle ages.

No. 28. A Jolly Monk.

No. 29. Satan in Bonds.

The inclination to give to the demons (the middle ages always looked upon
them as innumerable) monstrous forms, which easily ran into the grotesque,
was natural, and the painter, indeed, prided himself on drawing them ugly;
but he was no doubt influenced in so generally caricaturing them, by mixing
up this idea with those furnished by the popular superstitions of the
Teutonic race, who believed in multitudes of spirits, representatives of the
ancient satyrs, who were of a playfully malicious description, and went
about plaguing mankind in a very droll manner, and sometimes appeared to

them in equally droll forms. They were the
Pucks and Robin Goodfellows of later times;
but the Christian missionaries to the west
taught their converts to believe, and probably
believed themselves, that all these imaginary
beings were real demons, who wandered over
the earth for people’s ruin and destruction.
Thus the grotesque imagination of the
converted people was introduced into the
Christian system of demonology. It is a part of
the subject to which we shall return in our next
chapter; but I will here introduce two examples
of the Anglo-Saxon demons. To explain the
first of these, it will be necessary to state that,
according to the mediæval notions, Satan, the
arch demon, who had fallen from heaven for
his rebellion against the Almighty, was not a
free agent who went about tempting mankind,
but he was himself plunged in the abyss, where
he was held in bonds, and tormented by the
demons who peopled the infernal regions, and
also issued thence to seek their prey upon
God’s newest creation, the earth. The history of
No. 30. Satan. Satan’s fall, and the description of his position
(No. 29), form the subject of the earlier part of the Anglo-Saxon poetry
ascribed to Cædmon, and it is one of the illuminations to the manuscript of
Cædmon (which is now preserved at Oxford), which has furnished us with
our cut, representing Satan in his bonds. The fiend is here pictured bound to
stakes, over what appears to be a gridiron, while one of the demons, rising
out of a fiery furnace, and holding in his hand an instrument of punishment,
seems to be exulting over him, and at the same time urging on the troop of
grotesque imps who are swarming round and tormenting their victim. The
next cut, No. 30, is also taken from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, preserved
in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Tiberius, C. vi.), which belongs to the
earlier half of the eleventh century, and contains a copy of the psalter. It
gives us the Anglo-Saxon notion of the demon under another form, equally

characteristic, wearing only a girdle of flames, but in this case the especial
singularity of the design consists in the eyes in the fiend’s wings.

No. 31. The Temptation.

No. 32. David and the Lion.

Another circumstance had no doubt an influence on the mediæval taste for
grotesque and caricature—the natural rudeness of early mediæval art. The
writers of antiquity tell us of a remote period of Grecian art when it was
necessary to write under each figure of a picture the name of what it was
intended to represent, in order to make the whole intelligible—“this is a
horse,” “this is a man,” “this is a tree.” Without being quite so rude as this,
the early mediæval artists, through ignorance of perspective, want of
knowledge of proportion, and of skill in drawing, found great difficulty in
representing a scene in which there was more than one figure, and in which
it was necessary to distinguish them from each other; and they were
continually trying to help themselves by adopting conventional forms or
conventional positions, and by sometimes adding symbols that did not
exactly represent what they meant. The exaggeration in form consisted
chiefly in giving an undue prominence to some characteristic feature, which
answered the same purpose as the Anglo-Saxon nickname and distinctive
name, and which is, in fact, one of the first principles of all caricature.
Conventional positions partook much of the character of conventional
forms, but gave still greater room for grotesque. Thus the very first
characteristics of mediæval art implied the existence of caricature, and no
doubt led to the taste for the grotesque. The effect of this influence is
apparent everywhere, and in innumerable cases serious pictures of the
gravest and most important subjects are simply and absolutely caricatures.
Anglo-Saxon art ran much into this style, and is often very grotesque in
character. The first example we give (cut No. 31) is taken from one of the
illustrations to Alfric’s Anglo-Saxon version of the Pentateuch, in the
profusely illuminated manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton.,
Claudius B iv.), which was written at the end of the tenth, or beginning of
the eleventh, century. It represents the temptation and fall of man; and the
subject is treated, as will be seen, in a rather grotesque manner. Eve is
evidently dictating to her husband, who, in obeying her, shows a mixture of
eagerness and trepidation. Adam is no less evidently going to swallow the
apple whole, which is, perhaps, in accordance with the mediæval legend,
according to which the fruit stuck in his throat. It is hardly necessary to
remark that the tree is entirely a conventional one; and it would be difficult
to imagine how it came to bear apples at all. The mediæval artists were
extremely unskilful in drawing trees; to these they usually gave the forms of
cabbages, or some such plants, of which the form was simple, or often of a

mere bunch of leaves. Our next example (cut No. 32) is also Anglo-Saxon,
and is furnished by the manuscript in the British Museum already
mentioned (MS. Cotton., Tiberius C vi.) It probably represents young David
killing the lion, and is remarkable not only for the strange posture and bad
proportions of the man, but for the tranquillity of the animal and the
exaggerated and violent action of its slayer. This is very commonly the case
in the mediæval drawings and sculptures, the artists apparently possessing
far less skill in representing action in an animal than in man, and therefore
more rarely attempting it. These illustrations are both taken from
illuminated manuscripts. The two which follow are furnished by sculptures,
and are of a rather later date than the preceding. The abbey of St. George of
Boscherville, in the diocese of Auxerre (in Normandy), was founded by
Ralph de Tancarville, one of the ministers of William the Conqueror, and
therefore in the latter half of the eleventh century. A history of this religious
house was published by a clever local antiquary—M. Achille Deville—
from whose work we take our cut No. 33, one of a few rude sculptures on
the abbey church, which no doubt belonged to the original fabric. It is not
difficult to recognise the subject as Joseph taking the Virgin Mary with her
Child into Egypt; but there is something exceedingly droll in the
unintentional caricature of the faces, as well as in the whole design. The
Virgin Mary appears without a nimbus, while the nimbus of the Infant Jesus
is made to look very like a bonnet. It may be remarked that this subject of
the flight into Egypt is by no means an uncommon one in mediæval art; and
a drawing of the same subject, copied in my “History of Domestic Manners
and Sentiments” (p. 115), presents a remarkable illustration of the contrast
of the skill of a Norman sculptor and of an almost contemporary Anglo-
Norman illuminator. Our cut also furnishes us with evidence of the error of
the old opinion that ladies rode astride in the middle ages. Even one, who
by his style of art must have been an obscure local carver on stone, when he
represented a female on horseback, placed her in the position which has
always been considered suitable to the sex.

No. 33. The flight into Egypt.

No. 34. David and Goliah.

For the drawing of the other sculpture to which I allude, I am indebted to
Mr. Robinson. It is one of the subjects carved on the façade of the church of
St. Gilles, near Nismes, and is a work of the twelfth century. It appears to
represent the young David slaying the giant Goliah, the latter fully armed in
scale armour, and with shield and spear, like a Norman knight; while to
David the artist has given a figure which is feminine in its forms. What we
might take at first sight for a basket of apples, appears to be meant for a
supply of stones for the sling which the young hero carries suspended from

his neck. He has slain the giant with one of these, and is cutting off his head
with his own sword.

CHAPTER IV.
THE DIABOLICAL IN CARICATURE.—MEDIÆVAL LOVE OF THE LUDICROUS.—
CAUSES WHICH MADE IT INFLUENCE THE NOTIONS OF DEMONS.—
STORIES OF THE PIOUS PAINTER AND THE ERRING MONK.—DARKNESS
AND UGLINESS CARICATURED.—THE DEMONS IN THE MIRACLE PLAYS.
—THE DEMON OF NOTRE DAME.

As I have already stated in the last chapter, there can be no doubt that the
whole system of the demonology of the middle ages was derived from the
older pagan mythology. The demons of the monkish legends were simply
the elves and hobgoblins of our forefathers, who haunted woods, and fields,
and waters, and delighted in misleading or plaguing mankind, though their
mischief was usually of a rather mirthful character. They were represented
in classical mythology by the fauns and satyrs who had, as we have seen,
much to do with the birth of comic literature among the Greeks and
Romans; but these Teutonic elves were more ubiquitous than the satyrs, as
they even haunted men’s houses, and played tricks, not only of a
mischievous, but of a very familiar character. The Christian clergy did not
look upon the personages of the popular superstitions as fabulous beings,
but they taught that they were all diabolical, and that they were so many
agents of the evil one, constantly employed in enticing and entrapping
mankind. Hence, in the mediæval legends, we frequently find demons
presenting themselves under ludicrous forms or in ludicrous situations; or
performing acts, such as eating and drinking, which are not in accordance
with their real character; or at times even letting themselves be outwitted or
entrapped by mortals in a very undignified manner. Although they assumed
any form they pleased, their natural form was remarkable chiefly for being
extremely ugly; one of them, which appeared in a wild wood, is described
by Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote at the end of the twelfth century, as
being hairy, shaggy, and rough, and monstrously deformed.[24] According to
a mediæval story, which was told in different forms, a great man’s cellar
was once haunted by these demons, who drank all his wine, while the
owner was totally at a loss to account for its rapid disappearance. After
many unsuccessful attempts to discover the depredators, some one,

probably suspecting the truth, suggested that he should mark one of the
barrels with holy water, and next morning a demon, much resembling the
description given by Giraldus, was found stuck fast to the barrel. It is told
also of Edward the Confessor, that he once went to see the tribute called the
Danegeld, and it was shown to him all packed up in great barrels ready to
be sent away—for this appears to have been the usual mode of transporting
large quantities of money. The saintly king had the faculty of being able to
see spiritual beings—a sort of spiritual second-sight—and he beheld seated
on the largest barrel, a devil, who was “black and hideous.”

Vit un déable saer desus
Le tresor, noir et hidus.—Life of S. Edward, l. 944.
An early illuminator, in a manuscript preserved in the library of Trinity
College, Cambridge (MS. Trin. Col., B x. 2), has left us a pictorial
representation of this scene, from which I copy his notion of the form of the
demon in cut No. 35. The general idea is evidently taken from the figure of
the goat, and the relationship between the demon and the classical satyr is
very evident.

No. 35. The Demon of the Treasure.

Ugliness was an essential characteristic of the demons, and, moreover, their
features have usually a mirthful cast, as though they greatly enjoyed their
occupation. There is a mediæval story of a young monk, who was sacristan
to an abbey, and had the directions of the building and ornamentation. The
carvers of stone were making admirable representations of hell and
paradise, in the former of which the demons “seemed to take great delight
in well tormenting their victims”—

Qui par semblant se delitoit
En ce que bien les tormentoit.
The sacristan, who watched the sculptors every day, was at last moved by
pious zeal to try and imitate them, and he set to work to make a devil
himself, with such success, that his fiend was so black and ugly that nobody
could look at it without terror.
Tant qu’un déable à fere emprist;
Si i mist sa poine et sa cure,
Que la forme fu si oscure
Et si laide, que cil doutast
Que entre deus oilz l’esgardast.
The sacristan, encouraged by his success—for it must be understood that
his art was a sudden inspiration (as he had not been an artist before)—
continued his work till it was completed, and then “it was so horrible and so
ugly, that all who saw it affirmed upon their oaths that they had never seen
so ugly a figure either in sculpture or in painting, or one which had so
repulsive an appearance, or a devil which was a better likeness than the one
this monk had made for them”—
Si horribles fu et si lez,
Que trestouz cels que le véoient
Seur leur serement afermoient
C’onques mès si laide figure,
Ne en taille ne en peinture,
N’avoient à nul jor véue,
Qui si éust laide véue,
Ne déable miex contrefet
Que cil moines leur avoit fet.
—Meon’s Fabliaux, tom. ii. p. 414.
The demon himself now took offence at the affront which had been put
upon him, and appearing the night following to the sacristan, reproached
him with having made him so ugly, and enjoined him to break the sculpture,
and execute another representing him better looking, on pain of very severe
punishment; but, although this visit was repeated thrice, the pious monk
refused to comply. The evil one now began to work in another way, and, by
his cunning, he drew the sacristan into a disgraceful amour with a lady of

the neighbourhood, and they plotted not only to elope together by night, but
to rob the monastery of its treasure, which was of course in the keeping of
the sacristan. They were discovered, and caught in their flight, laden with
the treasure, and the unfaithful sacristan was thrown into prison. The fiend
now appeared to him, and promised to clear him out of all his trouble on the
mere condition that he should break his ugly statue, and make another
representing him as looking handsome—a bargain to which the sacristan
acceded without further hesitation. It would thus appear that the demons did
not like to be represented ugly. In this case, the fiend immediately took the
form and place of the sacristan, while the latter went to his bed as if nothing
had happened. When the other monks found him there next morning, and
heard him disclaim all knowledge of the robbery or of the prison, they
hurried to the latter place, and found the devil in chains, who, when they
attempted to exorcise him, behaved in a very turbulent manner, and
disappeared from their sight. The monks believed that it was all a deception
of the evil one, while the sacristan, who was not inclined to brave his
displeasure a second time, performed faithfully his part of the contract, and
made a devil who did not look ugly. In another version of the story,
however, it ends differently. After the third warning, the monk went in
defiance of the devil, and made his picture uglier than ever; in revenge for
which the demon came unexpectedly and broke the ladder on which he was
mounted at his work, whereby the monk would undoubtedly have been
killed. But the Virgin, to whom he was much devoted, came to his
assistance, and, seizing him with her hand, and holding him in the air,
disappointed the devil of his purpose. It is this latter dénouement which is
represented in the cut No. 36, taken from the celebrated manuscript in the
British Museum known as “Queen Mary’s Psalter” (MS. Reg. 2 B vii.). The
two demons employed here present, well defined, the air of mirthful jollity
which was evidently derived from the popular hobgoblins.

No. 36. The Pious Sculptor.

No. 37. The Monk’s Disaster.

No. 38. The Demons Disappointed.

There was another popular story, which also was told under several forms.
The old Norman historians tell it of their duke Richard Sans-Peur. There
was a monk of the abbey of St. Ouen, who also held the office of sacristan,
but, neglecting the duties of his position, entered into an intrigue with a lady
who dwelt in the neighbourhood, and was accustomed at night to leave the
abbey secretly, and repair to her. His place as sacristan enabled him thus to
leave the house unknown to the other brethren. On his way, he had to pass
the little river Robec, by means of a plank or wooden bridge, and one night
the demons, who had been watching him on his errand of sin, caught him
on the bridge, and threw him over into the water, where he was drowned.
One devil seized his soul, and would have carried it away, but an angel
came to claim him on account of his good actions, and the dispute ran so
high, that duke Richard, whose piety was as great as his courage, was called
in to decide it. The same manuscript from which our last cut was taken has
furnished our cut No. 37, which represents two demons tripping up the
monk, and throwing him very unceremoniously into the river. The body of
one of the demons here assumes the form of an animal, instead of taking,
like the other, that of a man, and he is, moreover, furnished with a dragon’s
wings. There was one version of this story, in which it found its place
among the legends of the Virgin Mary, instead of those of duke Richard.
The monk, in spite of his failings, had been a constant worshipper of the

Virgin, and, as he was falling from the bridge into the river, she stepped
forward to protect him from his persecutors, and taking hold of him with
her hand, saved him from death. One of the compartments of the rather
early wall-paintings in Winchester Cathedral represents the scene according
to this version of the story, and is copied in our cut No. 38. The fiends here
take more fantastic shapes than we have previously seen given to them.
They remind us already of the infinitely varied grotesque forms which the
painters of the age of the Renaissance crowded together in such subjects as
“The Temptation of St. Anthony.” In fact these strange notions of the forms
of the demons were not only preserved through the whole period of the
middle ages, but are still hardly extinct. They appear in almost exaggerated
forms in the illustrations to books of a popular religious character which
appeared in the first ages of printing. I may quote, as an example, one of the
cuts of an early and very rare block-book, entitled the Ars Moriendi, or “Art
of Dying,” or, in a second title, De Tentationibus Morientium, on the
temptations to which dying men are exposed. The scene, of which a part is
given in the annexed cut (No. 39), is in the room of the dying man, whose
bed is surrounded by three demons, who are come to tempt him, while his
relatives of both sexes are looking on quite unconscious of their presence.
The figures of these demons are particularly grotesque, and their ugly
features betray a degree of vulgar cunning which adds not a little to this
effect. The one leaning over the dying man suggests to him the words
expressed in the label issuing from his mouth, Provideas amicis, “provide
for your friends;” while the one whose head appears to the left whispers to
him, Yntende thesauro, “think of your treasure.” The dying man seems
grievously perplexed with the various thoughts thus suggested to him.

No. 39. A Mediæval Death-bed.

No. 40. Condemned Souls carried to their Place of Punishment.

Why did the mediæval Christians think it necessary to make the devils
black and ugly? The first reply to this question which presents itself is, that
the characteristics intended to be represented were the blackness and
ugliness of sin. This, however, is only partially the explanation of the fact;
for there can be no doubt that the notion was a popular one, and that it had

previously existed in the popular mythology; and, as has been already
remarked, the ugliness exhibited by them is a vulgar, mirthful ugliness,
which makes you laugh instead of shudder. Another scene, from the
interesting drawings at the foot of the pages in “Queen Mary’s Psalter,” is
given in our cut No. 40. It represents that most popular of mediæval
pictures, and, at the same time, most remarkable of literal interpretations,
hell mouth. The entrance to the infernal regions was always represented
pictorially as the mouth of a monstrous animal, where the demons appeared
leaving and returning. Here they are seen bringing the sinful souls to their
last destination, and it cannot be denied that they are doing the work right
merrily and jovially. In our cut No. 41, from the manuscript in the library of
Trinity College, Cambridge, which furnished a former subject, three
demons, who appear to be the guardians of the entrance to the regions
below—for it is upon the brow above the monstrous mouth that they are
standing—present varieties of the diabolical form. The one in the middle is
the most remarkable, for he has wings not only on his shoulders, but also on
his knees and heels. All three have horns; in fact, the three special
characteristics of mediæval demons were horns, hoofs—or, at least, the feet
of beasts,—and tails, which sufficiently indicate the source from which the
popular notions of these beings were derived. In the cathedral of Treves,
there is a mural painting by William of Cologne, a painter of the fifteenth
century, which represents the entrance to the shades, the monstrous mouth,
with its keepers, in still more grotesque forms. Our cut No. 42 gives but a
small portion of this picture, in which the porter of the regions of
punishment is sitting astride the snout of the monstrous mouth, and is
sounding with a trumpet what may be supposed to be the call for those who
are condemned. Another minstrel of the same stamp, spurred, though not
booted, sits astride the tube of the trumpet, playing on the bagpipes; and the
sound which issues from the former instrument is represented by a host of
smaller imps who are scattering themselves about.

No. 41. The Guardians of Hell Mouth.

No. 42. The Trumpeter of Evil.

It must not be supposed that, in subjects like these, the drollery of the scene
was accidental; but, on the contrary, the mediæval artists and popular
writers gave them this character purposely. The demons and the

executioners—the latter of whom were called in Latin tortores, and in
popular old English phraseology the “tormentours”—were the comic
characters of the time, and the scenes in the old mysteries or religious plays
in which they were introduced were the comic scenes, or farce, of the piece.
The love of burlesque and caricature was, indeed, so deeply planted in the
popular mind, that it was found necessary to introduce them even in pious
works, in which such scenes as the slaughter of the innocents, where the
“knights” and the women abused each other in vulgar language, the
treatment of Christ at the time of His trial, some parts of the scene of the
crucifixion, and the day of judgment, were essentially comic. The last of
these subjects, especially, was a scene of mirth, because it often consisted
throughout of a coarse satire on the vices of the age, especially on those
which were most obnoxious to the populace, such as the pride and vanity of
the higher ranks, and the extortions and frauds of usurers, bakers, taverners,
and others. In the play of “Juditium,” or the day of doom, in the “Towneley
Mysteries,” one of the earliest collections of mysteries in the English
language, the whole conversation among the demons is exactly of that
joking kind which we might expect from their countenances in the pictures.
When one of them appears carrying a bag full of different offences, another,
his companion, is so joyful at this circumstance, that he says it makes him
laugh till he is out of breath, or, in other words, till he is ready to burst; and,
while asking if anger be not among the sins he had collected, proposes to
treat him with something to drink—
Primus dæmon. Peasze, I pray the, be stille; I laghe that I kynke.
Is oghte ire in thi bille? and then salle thou drynke.
—Towneley Mysteries, p. 309.
And in the continuation of the conversation, one telling of the events which
had preceded the announcement of Doomsday says, rather jeeringly, and
somewhat exultingly, “Souls came so thick now of late to hell, that our
porter at hell gate is ever held so close at work, up early and down late, that
he never rests”—

Saules cam so thyk now late unto helle,
As ever
Oure porter at helle gate
Is halden so strate,
Up erly and downe late,
He rystys never.—Ib., p. 314.
With such popular notions on the subject, we have no reason to be surprised
that the artists of the middle ages frequently chose the figures of demons as
objects on which to exercise their skill in burlesque and caricature, that they
often introduced grotesque figures of their heads and bodies in the
sculptured ornamentation of building, and that they presented them in
ludicrous situations and attitudes in their pictures. They are often brought in
as secondary actors in a picture in a very singular manner, of which an
excellent example is furnished by the beautifully illuminated manuscript
known as “Queen Mary’s Psalter,” which is copied in our cut No. 43.
Nothing is more certain than that in this instance the intention of the artist
was perfectly serious. Eve, under the influence of a rather singularly formed
serpent, having the head of a beautiful woman and the body of a dragon, is
plucking the apples and offering them to Adam, who is preparing to eat one,
with evident hesitation and reluctance. But three demons, downright
hobgoblins, appear as secondary actors in the scene, who exercise an
influence upon the principals. One is patting Eve on the shoulder, with an
air of approval and encouragement, while a second, with wings, is urging
on Adam, and apparently laughing at his apprehensions; and a third, in a
very ludicrous manner, is preventing him from drawing back from the trial.

No. 43. The Fall of Man.

In all the delineations of demons we have yet seen, the ludicrous is the spirit
which chiefly predominates, and in no one instance have we had a figure
which is really demoniacal. The devils are droll but not frightful; they
provoke laughter, or at least excite a smile, but they create no horror.
Indeed, they torment their victims so good-humouredly, that we hardly feel
for them. There is, however, one well-known instance in which the
mediæval artist has shown himself fully successful in representing the
features of the spirit of evil. On the parapet of the external gallery of the
cathedral church of Notre Dame in Paris, there is a figure in stone, of the
ordinary stature of a man, representing the demon, apparently looking with
satisfaction upon the inhabitants of the city as they were everywhere
indulging in sin and wickedness. We give a sketch of this figure in our cut
No. 44. The unmixed evil—horrible in its expression in this countenance—
is marvellously portrayed. It is an absolute Mephistophiles, carrying in his
features a strange mixture of hateful qualities—malice, pride, envy—in
fact, all the deadly sins combined in one diabolical whole.

No. 44. The Spirit of Evil.

CHAPTER V.
EMPLOYMENT OF ANIMALS IN MEDIÆVAL SATIRE.—POPULARITY OF
FABLES; ODO DE CIRINGTON.—REYNARD THE FOX.—BURNELLUS AND
FAUVEL.—THE CHARIVARI.—LE MONDE BESTORNÉ.—ENCAUSTIC TILES.
—SHOEING THE GOOSE, AND FEEDING PIGS WITH ROSES.—SATIRICAL
SIGNS; THE MUSTARD MAKER.

The people of the middle ages appear to have been great admirers of
animals, to have observed closely their various characters and peculiarities,
and to have been fond of domesticating them. They soon began to employ
their peculiarities as means of satirising and caricaturing mankind; and
among the literature bequeathed to them by the Romans, they received no
book more eagerly than the “Fables of Æsop,” and the other collections of
fables which were published under the empire. We find no traces of fables
among the original literature of the German race; but the tribes who took
possession of the Roman provinces no sooner became acquainted with the
fables of the ancients, than they began to imitate them, and stories in which
animals acted the part of men were multiplied immensely, and became a
very important branch of mediæval fiction.
Among the Teutonic peoples especially, these fables often assumed very
grotesque forms, and the satire they convey is very amusing. One of the
earliest of these collections of original fables was composed by an English
ecclesiastic named Odo de Cirington, who lived in the time of Henry II. and
Richard I. In Odo’s fables, we find the animals figuring under the same
popular names by which they were afterwards so well known, such as
Reynard for the Fox, Isengrin for the wolf, Teburg for the cat, and the like.
Thus the subject of one of them is “Isengrin made Monk” (de Isengrino
monacho). “Once,” we are told, “Isengrin desired to be a monk. By dint of
fervent supplications, he obtained the consent of the chapter, and received
the tonsure, the cowl, and the other insignia of monachism. At length they
put him to school, and he was to learn the ‘Paternoster,’ but he always
replied, ‘lamb’ (agnus) or ‘ram’ (aries). The monks taught him that he
ought to look upon the crucifix and upon the sacrament, but he ever
directed his eyes to the lambs and rams.” The fable is droll enough, but the

moral, or application is still more grotesque. “Such is the conduct of many
of the monks, whose only cry is ‘aries,’ that is, good wine, and who have
their eyes always fixed on fat flesh and their platter;” whence the saying in
English—
They thou the vulf hore Though thou the hoary wolf
hod to preste, consecrate to a priest,
they thou him to skole sette though thou put him to school
salmes to lerne, to learn Psalms,
hevere bet hise geres ever are his ears turned
to the grove grene to the green grove.
These lines are in the alliterative verse of
the Anglo-Saxons, and show that such
fables had already found their place in
the popular poetry of the English people.
Another of these fables is entitled “Of
the Beetle (serabo) and his Wife.” “A
beetle, flying through the land, passed
among most beautiful blooming trees,
through orchards and among roses and
lilies, in the most lovely places, and at
length threw himself upon a dunghill
among the dung of horses, and found
there his wife, who asked him whence he
came. And the beetle said, ‘I have flown
all round the earth and through it; I have
seen the flowers of almonds, and lilies,
and roses, but I have seen no place so
No. 45. The Fox in the Pulpit.
pleasant as this,’ pointing to the
dunghill.” The application is equally
droll with the former and equally uncomplimentary to the religious part of
the community. Odo de Cirington tells us that, “Thus many of the clergy,
monks, and laymen listen to the lives of the fathers, pass among the lilies of
the virgins, among the roses of the martyrs, and among the violets of the
confessors, yet nothing ever appears so pleasant and agreeable as a
strumpet, or the tavern, or a singing party, though it is but a stinking
dunghill and congregation of sinners.”

No. 46. Ecclesiastical Sincerity.

Popular sculpture and painting were but the
translation of popular literature, and nothing
was more common to represent, in pictures and
carvings, than individual men under the forms
of the animals who displayed similar
characters or similar propensities. Cunning,
treachery, and intrigue were the prevailing
vices of the middle ages, and they were those
also of the fox, who hence became a favourite
character in satire. The victory of craft over
force always provoked mirth. The fabulists, or,
we should perhaps rather say, the satirists, soon
began to extend their canvas and enlarge their
No. 47. Reynard turned Monk.
picture, and, instead of single examples of
fraud or injustice, they introduced a variety of characters, not only foxes,
but wolves, and sheep, and bears, with birds also, as the eagle, the cock, and
the crow, and mixed them up together in long narratives, which thus formed
general satires on the vices of contemporary society. In this manner
originated the celebrated romance of “Reynard the Fox,” which in various
forms, from the twelfth century to the eighteenth, has enjoyed a popularity
which was granted probably to no other book. The plot of this remarkable
satire turns chiefly on the long struggle between the brute force of Isengrin
the Wolf, possessed only with a small amount of intelligence, which is
easily deceived—under which character is presented the powerful feudal
baron—and the craftiness of Reynard the Fox, who represents the
intelligent portion of society, which had to hold its ground by its wits, and

these were continually abused to evil purposes. Reynard is swayed by a
constant impulse to deceive and victimise everybody, whether friends or
enemies, but especially his uncle Isengrin. It was somewhat the relationship
between the ecclesiastical and baronial aristocracy. Reynard was educated
in the schools, and intended for the clerical order; and at different times he
is represented as acting under the disguise of a priest, of a monk, of a
pilgrim, or even of a prelate of the church. Though frequently reduced to
the greatest straits by the power of Isengrin, Reynard has generally the
better of it in the end: he robs and defrauds Isengrin continually, outrages
his wife, who is half in alliance with him, and draws him into all sorts of
dangers and sufferings, for which the latter never succeeds in obtaining
justice. The old sculptors and artists appear to have preferred exhibiting
Reynard in his ecclesiastical disguises, and in these he appears often in the
ornamentation of mediæval architectural sculpture, in wood-carvings, in the
illuminations of manuscripts, and in other objects of art. The popular
feeling against the clergy was strong in the middle ages, and no caricature
was received with more favour than those which exposed the immorality or
dishonesty of a monk or a priest. Our cut No. 45 is taken from a sculpture in
the church of Christchurch, in Hampshire, for the drawing of which I am
indebted to my friend, Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt. It represents Reynard in the
pulpit preaching; behind, or rather perhaps beside him, a diminutive cock
stands upon a stool—in modern times we should be inclined to say he was
acting as clerk. Reynard’s costume consists merely of the ecclesiastical
hood or cowl. Such subjects are frequently found on the carved seats, or
misereres, in the stalls of the old cathedrals and collegiate churches. The
painted glass of the great window of the north cross-aisle of St. Martin’s
church in Leicester, which was destroyed in the last century, represented the
fox, in the character of an ecclesiastic, preaching to a congregation of geese,
and addressing them in the words—Testis est mihi Deus, quam cupiam vos
omnes visceribus meis (God is witness, how I desire you all in my bowels),
a parody on the words of the New Testament.[25] Our cut No. 46 is taken
from one of the misereres in the church of St. Mary, at Beverley, in
Yorkshire. Two foxes are represented in the disguise of ecclesiastics, each
furnished with a pastoral staff, and they appear to be receiving instructions
from a prelate or personage of rank—perhaps they are undertaking a
pilgrimage of penance. But their sincerity is rendered somewhat doubtful by
the geese concealed in their hoods. In one of the incidents of the romance of

Reynard, the hero enters a monastery and becomes a monk, in order to
escape the wrath of King Noble, the lion. For some time he made an
outward show of sanctity and self-privation, but unknown to his brethren he
secretly helped himself freely to the good things of the monastery. One day
he observed, with longing lips, a messenger who brought four fat capons as
a present from a lay neighbour to the abbot. That night, when all the monks
had retired to rest, Reynard obtained admission to the larder, regaled
himself with one of the capons, and as soon as he had eaten it, trussed the
three others on his back, escaped secretly from the abbey, and, throwing
away his monastic garment, hurried home with his prey. We might almost
imagine our cut No. 47, taken from one of the stalls of the church of
Nantwich, in Cheshire, to have been intended to represent this incident, or,
at least, a similar one. Our next cut, No. 48, is taken from a stall in the
church of Boston, in Lincolnshire. A prelate, equally false, is seated in his
chair, with a mitre on his head, and the pastoral staff in his right hand. His
flock are represented by a cock and hens, the former of which he holds
securely with his right hand, while he appears to be preaching to them.

No. 48. The Prelate and his Flock.

Another mediæval sculpture has furnished events for a rather curious
history, at the same time that it is a good illustration of our subject. Odo de
Cirington, the fabulist, tells us how, one day, the wolf died, and the lion
called the animals together to celebrate his exequies. The hare carried the
holy water, hedgehogs bore the candles, the goats rang the bells, the moles
dug the grave, the foxes carried the corpse on the bier. Berengarius, the
bear, celebrated mass, the ox read the gospel, and the ass the epistle. When
the mass was concluded, and Isengrin buried, the animals made a splendid

feast out of his goods, and wished for such another funeral. Our satirical
ecclesiastic makes an application of this story which tells little to the credit
of the monks of his time. “So it frequently happens,” he says, “that when
some rich man, an extortionist or a usurer, dies, the abbot or prior of a
convent of beasts, i.e. of men living like beasts, causes them to assemble.
For it commonly happens that in a great convent of black or white monks
(Benedictines or Augustinians) there are none but beasts—lions by their
pride, foxes by their craftiness, bears by their voracity, stinking goats by
their incontinence, asses by their sluggishness, hedgehogs by their asperity,
hares by their timidity, because they were cowardly where there was no
fear, and oxen by their laborious cultivation of their land.”[26]

No. 49. The Funeral of the Fox.

A scene closely resembling that here described by Odo, differing only in the
distribution of the characters, was translated from some such written story
into the pictorial language of the ancient sculptured ornamentation of
Strasburg Cathedral, where it formed, apparently, two sides of the capital or
entablature of a column near the chancel. The deceased in this picture
appears to be a fox, which was probably the animal intended to be
represented in the original, although, in the copy of it preserved, it looks
more like a squirrel. The bier is carried by the goat and the boar, while a
little dog underneath is taking liberties with the tail of the latter.
Immediately before the bier, the hare carries the lighted taper, preceded by
the wolf, who carries the cross, and the bear, who holds in one hand the
holy-water vessel and in the other the aspersoir. This forms the first division
of the subject, and is represented in our cut No. 49. In the next division (cut

No. 50), the stag is represented celebrating mass, and the ass reads the
Gospel from a book which the cat supports with its head.

No. 50. The Mass for the Fox.

This curious sculpture is said to have been of the thirteenth century. In the
fifteenth century it attracted the attention of the reformers, who looked upon
it as an ancient protest against the corruptions of the mass, and one of the
more distinguished of them, John Fischart, had it copied and engraved on
wood, and published it about the year 1580, with some verses of his own, in
which it was interpreted as a satire upon the papacy. This publication gave
such dire offence to the ecclesiastical authorities of Strasburg, that the
Lutheran bookseller who had ventured to publish it, was compelled to make
a public apology in the church, and the wood-engraving and all the
impressions were seized and burnt by the common hangman. A few years
later, however, in 1608, another engraving was made, and published in a
large folio with Fischart’s verses; and it is from the diminished copy of this
second edition—given in Flögel’s “Geschichte des Komisches Literatur”—
that our cuts are taken. The original Sculpture was still more unfortunate. Its
publication and explanation by Fischart was the cause of no little scandal
among the Catholics, who tried to retort upon their opponents by asserting
that the figures in this funeral celebration were intended to represent the
ignorance of the Protestant preachers; and the sculpture in the church
continued to be regarded by the ecclesiastical authorities with
dissatisfaction until the year 1685, when, to take away all further ground of
scandal, it was entirely defaced.
Reynard’s mediæval celebrity dates certainly from a rather early period.
Montflaucon has given an alphabet of ornamental initial letters, formed

chiefly of figures of men and animals, from a
manuscript which he ascribes to the ninth century,
among which is the one copied in our cut No. 51,
representing a fox walking upon his hind legs, and
carrying two small cocks, suspended at the ends of
a cross staff. It is hardly necessary to say that this
group forms the letter T. Long before this, the
Frankish historian Fredegarius, who wrote about
the middle of the seventh century, introduces a
fable in which the fox figures at the court of the
lion. The same fable is repeated by a monkish
writer of Bavaria, named Fromond, who flourished No. 51. The Fox Provided.
in the tenth century, and by another named Aimoinus, who lived about the
year 1,000. At length, in the twelfth century, Guibert de Nogent, who died
about the year 1124, and who has left us his autobiography (de Vita sua),
relates an anecdote in that work, in explanation of which he tells us that the
wolf was then popularly designated by the name of Isengrin; and in the
fables of Odo, as we have already seen, this name is commonly given to the
wolf, Reynard to the fox, Teburg to the cat, and so on with the others. This
only shows that in the fables of the twelfth century the various animals were
known by these names, but it does not prove that what we know as the
romance of Reynard existed. Jacob Grimm argued from the derivation and
forms of these names, that the fables themselves, and the romance,
originated with the Teutonic peoples, and were indigenous to them; but his
reasons appear to me to be more specious than conclusive, and I certainly
lean to the opinion of my friend Paulin Paris, that the romance of Reynard
was native of France,[27] and that it was partly founded upon old Latin
legends perhaps poems. Its character is altogether feudal, and it is strictly a
picture of society, in France primarily, and secondly in England and the
other nations of feudalism, in the twelfth century. The earliest form in
which this romance is known is in the French poem—or rather poems, for it
consists of several branches or continuations—and is supposed to date from
about the middle of the twelfth century. It soon became so popular, that it
appeared in different forms in all the languages of Western Europe, except
in England, where there appears to have existed no edition of the romance
of Reynard the Fox until Caxton printed his prose English version of the
story. From that time it became, if possible, more popular in England than

elsewhere, and that popularity had hardly diminished down to the
commencement of the present century.
The popularity of the story of Reynard caused it to be imitated in a variety
of shapes, and this form of satire, in which animals acted the part of men,
became altogether popular. In the latter part of the twelfth century, an
Anglo-Latin poet, named Nigellus Wireker, composed a very severe satire
in elegiac verse, under the title of Speculum Stultorum, the “Mirror of
Fools.” It is not a wise animal like the fox, but a simple animal, the ass,
who, under the name of Brunellus, passes among the various ranks and
classes of society, and notes their crimes and vices. A prose introduction to
this poem informs us that its hero is the representative of the monks in
general, who were always longing for some new acquisition which was
inconsistent with their profession. In fact, Brunellus is absorbed with the
notion that his tail was too short, and his great ambition is to get it
lengthened. For this purpose he consults a physician, who, after
representing to him in vain the folly of his pursuit, gives him a receipt to
make his tail grow longer, and sends him to the celebrated medical school
of Salerno to obtain the ingredients. After various adventures, in the course
of which he loses a part of his tail instead of its being lengthened, Brunellus
proceeds to the University of Paris to study and obtain knowledge; and we
are treated with a most amusingly satirical account of the condition and
manners of the scholars of that time. Soon convinced of his incapacity for
learning, Brunellus abandons the university in despair, and he resolves to
enter one of the monastic orders, the character of all which he passes in
review. The greater part of the poem consists of a very bitter satire on the
corruptions of the monkish orders and of the Church in general. While still
hesitating which order to choose, Brunellus falls into the hands of his old
master, from whom he had run away in order to seek his fortune in the
world, and he is compelled to pass the rest of his days in the same humble
and servile condition in which he had begun them.
A more direct imitation of “Reynard the Fox” is found in the early French
romance of “Fauvel,” the hero of which is neither a fox nor an ass, but a
horse. People of all ranks and classes repair to the court of Fauvel, the
horse, and furnish abundant matter for satire on the moral, political, and
religious hypocrisy which pervaded the whole frame of society. At length
the hero resolves to marry, and, in a finely illuminated manuscript of this

romance, preserved in the Imperial Library in Paris, this marriage furnishes
the subject of a picture, which gives the only representation I have met with
of one of the popular burlesque ceremonies which were so common in the
middle ages.

No. 52. A Mediæval Charivari.

Among other such ceremonies, it was customary with the populace, on the
occasion of a man’s or woman’s second marriage, or an ill-sorted match, or
on the espousals of people who were obnoxious to their neighbours, to
assemble outside the house, and greet them with discordant music. This
custom is said to have been practised especially in France, and it was called
a charivari. There is still a last remnant of it in our country in the music of
marrow-bones and cleavers, with which the marriages of butchers are
popularly celebrated; but the derivation of the French name appears not to
be known. It occurs in old Latin documents, for it gave rise to such
scandalous scenes of riot and licentiousness, that the Church did all it could,
though in vain, to suppress it. The earliest mention of this custom, furnished
in the Glossarium of Ducange, is contained in the synodal statutes of the
church of Avignon, passed in the year 1337, from which we learn that when
such marriages occurred, people forced their way into the houses of the
married couple, and carried away their goods, which they were obliged to
pay a ransom for before they were returned, and the money thus raised was
spent in getting up what is called in the statute relating to it a Chalvaricum.

It appears from this statute, that the individuals who performed the
charivari accompanied the happy couple to the church, and returned with
them to their residence, with coarse and indecent gestures and discordant
music, and uttering scurrilous and indecent abuse, and that they ended with
feasting. In the statutes of Meaux, in 1365, and in those of Hugh, bishop of
Beziers, in 1368, the same practice is forbidden, under the name of
Charavallium; and it is mentioned in a document of the year 1372, also
quoted by Ducange, under that of Carivarium, as then existing at Nîmes.
Again, in 1445, the Council of Tours made a decree, forbidding, under pain
of excommunication, “the insolences, clamours, sounds, and other tumults
practised at second and third nuptials, called by the vulgar a Charivarium,
on account of the many and grave evils arising out of them.”[28] It will be
observed that these early allusions to the charivari are found almost solely
in documents coming from the Roman towns in the south of France, so that
this practice was probably one of the many popular customs derived
directly from the Romans. When Cotgrave’s “Dictionary” was published
(that is, in 1632) the practice of the charivari appears to have become more
general in its existence, as well as its application; for he describes it as “a
public defamation, or traducing of; a foule noise made, blacke santus rung,
to the shame and disgrace of another; hence an infamous (or infaming)
ballad sung, by an armed troupe, under the window of an old dotard,
married the day before unto a yong wanton, in mockerie of them both.”
And, again, a charivaris de poelles is explained as “the carting of an
infamous person, graced with the harmonie of tinging kettles and frying-pan
musicke.”[29] The word is now generally used in the sense of a great tumult
of discordant music, produced often by a number of persons playing
different tunes on different instruments at the same time.

No. 53. Continuation of the Charivari.

As I have stated above, the manuscript of the romance of “Fauvel” is in the
Imperial Library in Paris. A copy of this illumination is engraved in Jaime’s
“Musée de la Caricature,” from which our cuts Nos. 52 and 53 are taken. It
is divided into three compartments, one above another, in the uppermost of
which Fauvel is seen entering the nuptial chamber to his young wife, who is
already in bed. The scene in the compartment below, which is copied in our
cut No. 52, represents the street outside, and the mock revellers performing
the charivari; and this is continued in the third, or lowest, compartment,
which is represented in our cut No. 53. Down each side of the original
illumination is a frame-work of windows, from which people, who have
been disturbed by the noise, are looking out upon the tumult. It will be seen
that all the performers wear masks, and that they are dressed in burlesque
costume. In confirmation of the statement of the ecclesiastical synods as to
the licentiousness of these exhibitions, we see one of the performers here
disguised as a woman, who lifts up his dress to expose his person while
dancing. The musical instruments are no less grotesque than the costumes,
for they consist chiefly of kitchen utensils, such as frying-pans, mortars,
saucepans, and the like.

No. 54. The Tables Turned.

There was another series of subjects in which animals were introduced as
the instruments of satire. This satire consisted in reverting the position of
man with regard to the animals over which he had been accustomed to
tyrannise, so that he was subjected to the same treatment from the animals
which, in his actual position, he uses towards them. This change of relative
position was called in old French and Anglo-Norman, le monde bestorné,
which was equivalent to the English phrase, “the world turned upside
down.” It forms the subject of rather old verses, I believe, both in French
and English, and individual scenes from it are met with in pictorial
representation at a rather early date. During the year 1862, in the course of
accidental excavations on the site of the Friary, at Derby, a number of
encaustic tiles, such as were used for the floors of the interiors of churches
and large buildings, were found.[30] The ornamentation of these tiles,
especially of the earlier ones, is, like all mediæval ornamentations,
extremely varied, and even these tiles sometimes present subjects of a
burlesque and satirical character, though they are more frequently adorned
with the arms and badges of benefactors to the church or convent. The tiles
found on the site of the priory at Derby are believed to be of the thirteenth
century, and one pattern, a diminished copy of which is given in our cut No.
54, presents a subject taken from the monde bestorné. The hare, master of

his old enemy, the dog, has become hunter himself, and seated upon the
dog’s back he rides vigorously to the chace, blowing his horn as he goes.
The design is spiritedly executed, and its satirical intention is shown by the
monstrous and mirthful face, with the tongue lolling out, figured on the
outer corner of the tile. It will be seen that four of these tiles are intended to
be joined together to make the complete piece. In an illumination in a
manuscript of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Reg. 10 E
iv.), the hares are taking a still more severe vengeance on their old enemy.
The dog has been caught, brought to trial for his numerous murders, and
condemned, and they are represented here (cut No. 55) conducting him in
the criminal’s cart to the gallows. Our cut No. 56, the subject of which is
furnished by one of the carved stalls in Sherborne Minster (it is here copied
from the engraving in Carter’s “Specimens of Ancient Sculpture”),
represents another execution scene, similar in spirit to the former. The geese
have seized their old enemy, Reynard, and are hanging him on a gallows,
while two monks, who attend the execution, appear to be amused at the
energetic manner in which the geese perform their task. Mr. Jewitt mentions
two other subjects belonging to this series, one of them taken from an
illuminated manuscript; they are, the mouse chasing the cat, and the horse
driving the cart—the former human carter in this case taking the place of
the horse between the shafts.

No. 55. Justice in the Hands of the Persecuted.

No. 56. Reynard brought to Account at Last.

“The World turned upside down; or, the Folly of Man,” has continued
amongst us to be a popular chap-book and child’s book till within a very
few years, and I have now a copy before me printed in London about the
year 1790. It consists of a series of rude woodcuts, with a few doggrel
verses under each. One of these, entitled “The Ox turned Farmer,”
represents two men drawing the plough, driven by an ox. In the next, a
rabbit is seen turning the spit on which a man is roasting, while a cock
holds a ladle and bastes. In a third, we see a tournament, in which the
horses are armed and ride upon the men. Another represents the ox killing
the butcher. In others we have birds netting men and women; the ass, turned
miller, employing the man-miller to carry his sacks; the horse turned
groom, and currying the man; and the fishes angling for men and catching
them.
In a cleverly sculptured ornament in Beverley Minster, represented in our
cut No. 57, the goose herself is represented in a grotesque situation, which
might almost give her a place in “The World turned upside down,” although
it is a mere burlesque, without any apparent satirical aim. The goose has
here taken the place of the horse at the blacksmith’s, who is vigorously
nailing the shoe on her webbed foot.

No. 57. Shoeing the Goose.

Burlesque subjects of this description are not
uncommon, especially among architectural
sculpture and wood-carving, and, at a rather
later period, on all ornamental objects. The
field for such subjects was so extensive, that
No. 58. Food for Swine.
the artist had an almost unlimited choice, and
therefore his subjects might be almost
infinitely varied, though we usually find them running on particular classes.
The old popular proverbs, for instance, furnished a fruitful source for
drollery, and are at times delineated in an amusingly literal or practical
manner. Pictorial proverbs and popular sayings are sometimes met with on
the carved misereres. For example, in one of those at Rouen, in Normandy,
represented in our cut No. 58, the carver has intended to represent the idea
of the old saying, in allusion to misplaced bounty, of throwing pearls to
swine, and has given it a much more picturesque and pictorially intelligible
form, by introducing a rather dashing female feeding her swine with roses,
or rather offering them roses for food, for the swine display no eagerness to
feed upon them.

No. 59. The Industrious Sow.

We meet with such subjects as these scattered
over all mediæval works of art, and at a
somewhat later period they were transferred to
other objects, such as the signs of houses. The
custom of placing signs over the doors of
shops and taverns, was well known to the
ancients, as is abundantly manifested by their
frequent occurrence in the ruins of Pompeii;
but in the middle ages, the use of signs and
badges was universal, and as—contrary to the
apparent practice in Pompeii, where certain
badges were appropriated to certain trades and
professions—every individual was free to
choose his own sign, the variety was unlimited.
Many still had reference, no doubt, to the
particular calling of those to whom they
belonged, while others were of a religious
No. 60. Adulteration. character, and indicated the saint under whose
protection the householder had placed himself. Some people took animals
for their signs, others monstrous or burlesque figures; and, in fact, there
were hardly any of the subjects of caricature or burlesque familiar to the
mediæval sculptor and illuminator which did not from time to time appear
on these popular signs. A few of the old signs still preserved, especially in
the quaint old towns of France, Germany, and the Netherlands, show us

how frequently they were made the instruments of popular satire. A sign not
uncommon in France was La Truie qui file (the sow spinning). Our cut No.
59 represents this subject as treated on an old sign, a carving in bas-relief of
the sixteenth century, on a house in the Rue du Marché-aux-Poirées, in
Rouen. The sow appears here in the character of the industrious housewife,
employing herself in spinning at the same time that she is attending to the
wants of her children. There is a singularly satirical sign at Beauvais, on a
house which was formerly occupied by an épicier-moutardier, or grocer
who made mustard, in the Rue du Châtel. In front of this sign, which is
represented in our cut No. 60, appears a large mustard-mill, on one side of
which stands Folly with a staff in her hand, with which she is stirring the
mustard, while an ape with a sort of sardonic grin, throws in a seasoning,
which may be conjectured by his posture.[31] The trade-mark of the
individual who adopted this strange device, is carved below.

CHAPTER VI.
THE MONKEY IN BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE.—TOURNAMENTS AND
SINGLE COMBATS.—MONSTROUS COMBINATIONS OF ANIMAL FORMS.—
CARICATURES ON COSTUME.—THE HAT.—THE HELMET.—LADIES’
HEAD-DRESSES.—THE GOWN, AND ITS LONG SLEEVES.

The fox, the wolf, and their companions, were introduced as instruments of
satire, on account of their peculiar characters; but there were other animals
which were also favourites with the satirist, because they displayed an
innate inclination to imitate; they formed, as it were, natural parodies upon
mankind. I need hardly say that of these the principal and most remarkable
was the monkey. This animal must have been known to our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers from a remote period, for they had a word for it in their own
language—apa, our ape. Monkey is a more modern name, and seems to be
equivalent with maniken, or a little man. The earliest Bestiaries, or popular
treatises on natural history, give anecdotes illustrative of the aptness of this
animal for imitating the actions of men, and ascribe to it a degree of
understanding which would almost raise it above the level of the brute
creation. Philip de Thaun, an Anglo-Norman poet of the reign of Henry I.,
in his Bestiary, tells us that “the monkey, by imitation, as books say,
counterfeits what it sees, and mocks people:”—
Li singe par figure, si cum dit escripture,
Ceo que il vait contrefait, de gent escar hait.[32]
/He goes on to inform us, as a proof of the extraordinary instinct of this
animal, that it has more affection for some of its cubs than for others, and
that, when running away, it carried those which it liked before it, and those
it disliked behind its back. The sketch from the illuminated manuscript of
the Romance of the Comte d’Artois, of the fifteenth century, which forms
our cut No. 61, represents the monkey, carrying, of course, its favourite
child before it in its flight, and what is more, it is taking that flight mounted
on a donkey. A monkey on horseback appears not to have been a novelty, as
we shall see in the sequel.

Alexander Neckam, a very celebrated English
scholar of the latter part of the twelfth century, and
one of the most interesting of the early mediæval
writers on natural history, gives us many anecdotes,
which show us how much attached our mediæval
forefathers were to domesticated animals, and how
No. 61. A Monkey common a practice it was to keep them in their
Mounted. houses. The baronial castle appears often to have
presented the appearance of a menagerie of animals, among which some
were of that strong and ferocious character that rendered it necessary to
keep them in close confinement, while others, such as monkeys, roamed
about the buildings at will. One of Neckam’s stories is very curious in
regard to our subject, for it shows that the people in those days exercised
their tamed animals in practically caricaturing contemporary weaknesses
and fashions. This writer remarks that “the nature of the ape is so ready at
acting, by ridiculous gesticulations, the representations of things it has seen,
and thus gratifying the vain curiosity of worldly men in public exhibitions,
that it will even dare to imitate a military conflict. A jougleur (histrio) was
in the habit of constantly taking two monkeys to the military exercises
which are commonly called tournaments, that the labour of teaching might
be diminished by frequent inspection. He afterwards taught two dogs to
carry these apes, who sat on their backs, furnished with proper arms. Nor
did they want spurs, with which they strenuously urged on the dogs. Having
broken their lances, they drew out their swords, with which they spent
many blows on each other’s shields. Who at this sight could refrain from
laughter?”[33]

No. 62. A Tournament.

Such contemporary caricatures of the mediæval tournament, which was in
its greatest fashion during the period from the twelfth to the fourteenth
century, appear to have been extremely popular, and are not unfrequently
represented in the borders of illuminated manuscripts. The manuscript now
so well known as “Queen Mary’s Psalter” (MS. Reg. 2 B vii.), and written
and illuminated very early in the fourteenth century, contains not a few
illustrations of this description. One of these, which forms our cut No. 62,
represents a tournament not much unlike that described by Alexander
Neckam, except that the monkeys are here riding upon other monkeys, and
not upon dogs. In fact, all the individuals here engaged are monkeys, and
the parody is completed by the introduction of the trumpeter on one side,
and of minstrelsy, represented by a monkey playing on the tabor, on the
other; or, perhaps, the two monkeys are simply playing on the pipe and
tabor, which were looked upon as the lowest description of minstrelsy, and
are therefore the more aptly introduced into the scene.
The same manuscript has furnished us with the cut No. 63. Here the combat
takes place between a monkey and a stag, the latter having the claws of a
griffin. They are mounted, too, on rather nondescript animals—one having
the head and body of a lion, with the forefeet of an eagle; the other having a
head somewhat like that of a lion, on a lion’s body, with the hind parts of a
bear. This subject may, perhaps, be intended as a burlesque on the mediæval
romances, filled with combats between the Christians and the Saracens; for
the ape—who, in the moralisations which accompany the Bestiaries, is said
to represent the devil—is here armed with what are evidently intended for
the sabre and shield of a Saracen, while the flag carries the shield and lance
of a Christian knight.

No. 63. A Feat of Arms.

The love of the mediæval artists for monstrous figures of animals, and for
mixtures of animals and men, has been alluded to in a former chapter. The
combatants in the accompanying cut (No. 64), taken from the same
manuscript, present a sort of combination of the rider and the animal, and
they again seem to be intended for a Saracen and a Christian. The figure to
the right, which is composed of the body of a satyr, with the feet of a goose
and the wings of a dragon, is armed with a similar Saracenic sabre; while
that to the left, which is on the whole less monstrous, wields a Norman
sword. Both have human faces below the navel as well as above, which was
a favourite idea in the grotesque of the middle ages. Our mediæval
forefathers appear to have had a decided taste for monstrosities of every
description, and especially for mixtures of different kinds of animals, and of
animals and men. There is no doubt, to judge by the anecdotes recorded by
such writers as Giraldus Cambrensis, that a belief in the existence of such
unnatural creatures was widely entertained. In his account of Ireland, this
writer tells us of animals which were half ox and half man, half stag and
half cow, and half dog and half monkey.[34] It is certain that there was a
general belief in such animals, and nobody could be more credulous than
Giraldus himself.

No. 64. A Terrible Combat.

The design to caricature, which is tolerably evident in the subjects just
given, is still more apparent in other grotesques that adorn the borders of
the mediæval manuscripts, as well as in some of the mediæval carvings and
sculpture. Thus, in our cut No. 65, taken from one of the borders in the

Romance of the Comte d’Artois, a manuscript of
the fifteenth century, we cannot fail to recognise an
attempt at turning to ridicule the contemporary
fashions in dress. The hat is only an exaggerated
form of one which appears to have been commonly
used in France in the latter half of the fifteenth
century, and which appears frequently in
illuminated manuscripts executed in Burgundy;
and the boot also belongs to the same period. The
latter reappeared at different times, until at length
it became developed into the modern top-boots. In
cut No. 66, from the same manuscript, where it
forms the letter T, we have the same form of hat,
No. 65. Fashionable Dress.
still more exaggerated, and combined at the same
time with grotesque faces.

No. 66. Heads and Hats.

Caricatures on costume are by no means uncommon among the artistic
remains of the middle ages, and are not confined to illuminated
manuscripts. The fashionable dresses of those days went into far more
ridiculous excesses of shape than anything we see in our times—at least, so
far as we can believe the drawings in the manuscripts; but these, however
seriously intended, were constantly degenerating into caricature, from
circumstances which are easily explained, and which have, in fact, been
explained already in their influence on other parts of our subject. The
mediæval artists in general were not very good delineators of form, and
their outlines are much inferior to their finish. Conscious of this, though
perhaps unknowingly, they sought to remedy the defect in a spirit which has
always been adopted in the early stages of art-progress—they aimed at

making themselves understood by giving a special prominence to the
peculiar characteristics of the objects they wished to represent. These were
the points which naturally attracted people’s first attention, and the
resemblance was felt most by people in general when these points were put
forward in excessive prominence in the picture. The dresses, perhaps,
hardly existed in the exact forms in which we see them in the illuminations,
or at least those were only exceptions to the generally more moderate
forms; and hence, in using these pictorial records as materials for the
history of costume, we ought to make a certain allowance for exaggeration
—we ought, indeed, to treat them almost as caricatures. In fact, much of
what we now call caricature, was then characteristic of serious art, and of
what was considered its high development. Many of the attempts which
have been made of late years to introduce ancient costume on the stage,
would probably be regarded by the people who lived in the age which they
were intended to represent, as a mere design to turn them into ridicule.
Nevertheless, the fashions in dress were, especially from the twelfth century
to the sixteenth, carried to a great degree of extravagance, and were not
only the objects of satire and caricature, but drew forth the indignant
declamations of the Church, and furnished a continuous theme to the
preachers. The contemporary chronicles abound with bitter reflections on
the extravagance in costume, which was considered as one of the outward
signs of the great corruption of particular periods; and they give us not
unfrequent examples of the coarse manner in which the clergy discussed
them in their sermons. The readers of Chaucer will remember the manner in
which this subject is treated in the “Parson’s Tale.” In this respect the
satirists of the Church went hand in hand with the pictorial caricaturists of
the illuminated manuscripts, and of the sculptures with which we
sometimes meet in contemporary architectural ornamentation. In the latter,
this class of caricature is perhaps less frequent, but it is sometimes very
expressive. The very curious misereres in the church of Ludlow, in
Shropshire, present the caricature reproduced in our cut No. 67. It
represents an ugly, and, to judge by the expression of the countenance, an
ill-tempered old woman, wearing the fashionable head-dress of the earlier
half of the fifteenth century, which seems to have been carried to its greatest
extravagance in the beginning of the reign of Henry VI. It is the style of
coiffure known especially as the horned head-dress, and the very name
carries with it a sort of relationship to an individual who was notoriously

horned—the spirit of evil. This dashing dame of the olden time appears to
have struck terror into two unfortunates who have fallen within her
influence, one of whom, as though he took her for a new Gorgon, is
attempting to cover himself with his buckler, while the other, apprehending
danger of another kind, is prepared to defend himself with his sword. The
details of the head-dress in this figure are interesting for the history of
costume.

No. 67. A Fashionable Beauty.

Our next cut, No. 68, is taken from a manuscript
in private possession, which is now rather well
known among antiquaries by the name of the
“Luttrell Psalter,” and which belongs to the
fourteenth century. It seems to involve a satire on
the aristocratic order of society—on the knight
who was distinguished by his helmet, his shield,
and his armour. The individual here represented
presents a type which is anything but aristocratic.
While he holds a helmet in his hand to show the
No. 68. A Man of War.
meaning of the satire, his own helmet, which he
wears on his head, is simply a bellows. He may be
a knight of the kitchen, or perhaps a mere quistron, or kitchen lad.
We have just seen a caricature of one of the ladies’ head-dresses of the
earlier half of the fifteenth century, and our cut No. 69, from an illuminated
manuscript in the British Museum of the latter half of the same century
(MS. Harl., No. 4379), furnishes us with a caricature of a head-dress of a

different character, which came into fashion in the
reign of our Edward IV. The horned head-dress of the
previous generation had been entirely laid aside, and
the ladies adopted in its place a sort of steeple-shaped
head-dress, or rather of the form of a spire, made by
rolling a piece of linen into the form of a long cone.
Over this lofty cap was thrown a piece of fine lawn
or muslin, which descended almost to the ground,
and formed, as it were, two wings. A short
transparent veil was thrown over the face, and
reached not quite to the chin, resembling rather
closely the veils in use among our ladies of the
present day (1864). The whole head-dress, indeed,
has been preserved by the Norman peasantry; for it
may be observed that, during the feudal ages, the
fashions in France and England were always No. 69. A Lady’s Head-
identical. These steeple head-dresses greatly dress.
provoked the indignation of the clergy, and zealous
preachers attacked them roughly in their sermons. A French monk, named
Thomas Conecte, distinguished himself especially in this crusade, and
inveighed against the head-dress with such effect, that we are assured that
many of the women threw down their head-dresses in the middle of the
sermon, and made a bonfire of them at its conclusion. The zeal of the
preacher soon extended itself to the populace, and, for a while, when ladies
appeared in this head-dress in public, they were exposed to be pelted by the
rabble. Under such a double persecution it disappeared for a moment, but
when the preacher was no longer present, it returned again, and, to use the
words of the old writer who has preserved this anecdote, “the women who,
like snails in a fright, had drawn in their horns, shot them out again as soon
as the danger was over.” The caricaturist would hardly overlook so
extravagant a fashion, and accordingly the manuscript in the British
Museum, just mentioned, furnishes us with the subject of our cut No. 69. In
those times, when the passions were subjected to no restraint, the fine ladies
indulged in such luxury and licentiousness, that the caricaturist has chosen
as their fit representative a sow, who wears the objectionable head-dress in
full fashion. The original forms one of the illustrations of a copy of the

historian Froissart, and was, therefore, executed in France, or, more
probably, in Burgundy.
The sermons and satires against extravagance in costume began at an early
period. The Anglo-Norman ladies, in the earlier part of the twelfth century,
first brought in vogue in our island this extravagance in fashion, which
quickly fell under the lash of satirist and caricaturist. It was first exhibited
in the robes rather than in the head-dress. These Anglo-Norman ladies are
understood to have first introduced stays, in order to give an artificial
appearance of slenderness to their waists; but the greatest extravagance
appeared in the forms of their sleeves. The robe, or gown, instead of being
loose, as among the Anglo-Saxons, was laced close round the body, and the
sleeves, which fitted the arm tightly till they reached the elbows, or
sometimes nearly to the wrist, then suddenly became larger, and hung down
to an extravagant length, often trailing on the ground, and sometimes
shortened by means of a knot. The gown, also, was itself worn very long.
The clergy preached against these extravagances in fashion, and at times, it
is said, with effect; and they fell under the vigorous lash of the satirist. In a
class of satires which became extremely popular in the twelfth century, and
which produced in the thirteenth the immortal poem of Dante—the visions
of purgatory and of hell—these contemporary extravagances in fashion are
held up to public detestation, and are made the subject of severe
punishment. They were looked upon as among the outward forms of pride.
It arose, no doubt, from this taste—from the darker shade which spread
over men’s minds in the twelfth century—that demons, instead of animals,
were introduced to personify the evil-doers of the time. Such is the figure
(cut No. 70) which we take from a very interesting manuscript in the British
Museum (MS. Cotton. Nero, C iv.). The demon is here dressed in the
fashionable gown with its long sleeves, of which one appears to have been
usually much longer than the other. Both the gown and sleeve are shortened
by means of knots, while the former is brought close round the waist by
tight lacing. It is a picture of the use of stays made at the time of their first
introduction.

No. 70. Sin in Satins.

This superfluity of length in the different parts of the dress was a subject of
complaint and satire at various and very distant periods, and contemporary
illuminations of a perfectly serious character show that these complaints
were not without foundation.

CHAPTER VII.
PRESERVATION OF THE CHARACTER OF THE MIMUS AFTER THE FALL OF THE
EMPIRE.—THE MINSTREL AND JOGELOUR.—HISTORY OF POPULAR
STORIES.—THE FABLIAUX.—ACCOUNT OF THEM.—THE CONTES
DEVOTS.

I have already remarked that, upon the fall of the Roman empire, the
popular institutions of the Romans were more generally preserved to the
middle ages than those of a higher and more refined character. This is
understood without difficulty, when we consider that the lower class of the
population—in the towns, what we might perhaps call the lower and middle
classes—continued to exist much the same as before, while the barbarian
conquerors came in and took the place of the ruling classes. The drama,
which had never much hold upon the love of the Roman populace, was lost,
and the theatres and the amphitheatres, which had been supported only by
the wealth of the imperial court and of the ruling class, were abandoned and
fell into ruin; but the mimus, who furnished mirth to the people, continued
to exist, and probably underwent no immediate change in his character. It
will be well to state again the chief characteristics of the ancient mimus,
before we proceed to describe his mediæval representative.
The grand aim of the mimus was to make people laugh, and he employed
generally every means he knew of for effecting this purpose, by language,
by gestures or motions of the body, or by dress. Thus he carried, strapped
over his loins, a wooden sword, which was called gladius histricus and
clunaculum, and wore sometimes a garment made of a great number of
small pieces of cloth of different colours, which was hence called
centunculus, or the hundred-patched dress.[35] These two characteristics
have been preserved in the modern harlequin. Other peculiarities of
costume may conveniently be left undescribed; the female mimæ
sometimes exhibited themselves unrestricted by dress. They danced and
sung; repeated jokes and told merry stories; recited or acted farces and
scandalous anecdotes; performed what we now call mimicry, a word
derived from the name of mimus; and they put themselves in strange

postures, and made frightful faces. They sometimes acted the part of a fool
or zany (morio), or of a madman. They added to these performances that of
the conjurer or juggler (præstigiator), and played tricks of sleight of hand.
The mimi performed in the streets and public places, or in the theatres, and
especially at festivals, and they were often employed at private parties, to
entertain the guests at a supper.
We trace the existence of this class of performers during the earlier period
of the middle ages by the expressions of hostility towards them used from
time to time by the ecclesiastical writers, and the denunciations of synods
and councils, which have been quoted in a former chapter.[36] Nevertheless,
it is evident from many allusions to them, that they found their way into the
monastic houses, and were in great favour not only among the monks, but
among the nuns also; that they were introduced into the religious festivals;
and that they were tolerated even in the churches. It is probable that they
long continued to be known in Italy and the countries near the centre of
Roman influence, and where the Latin language was continued, by their old
name of mimus. The writers of the mediæval vocabularies appear all to have
been much better acquainted with the meaning of this word than of most of
the Latin words of the same class, and they evidently had a class of
performers existing in their own times to whom they considered that the
name applied. The Anglo-Saxon vocabularies interpret the Latin mimus by
glig-mon, a gleeman. In Anglo-Saxon, glig or gliu meant mirth and game of
every description, and as the Anglo-Saxon teachers who compiled the
vocabularies give, as synonyms of mimus, the words scurra, jocista, and
pantomimus, it is evident that all these were included in the character of the
gleeman, and that the latter was quite identical with his Roman type. It was
the Roman mimus introduced into Saxon England. We have no traces of the
existence of such a class of performers among the Teutonic race before they
became acquainted with the civilisation of imperial Rome. We know from
drawings in contemporary illuminated manuscripts that the performances of
the gleeman did include music, singing, and dancing, and also the tricks of
mountebanks and jugglers, such as throwing up and catching knives and
balls, and performing with tamed bears, &c.[37]
But even among the peoples who preserved the Latin language, the word
mimus was gradually exchanged for others employed to signify the same
thing. The word jocus had been used in the signification of a jest,

playfulness, jocari signified to jest, and joculator was a word for a jester;
but, in the debasement of the language, jocus was taken in the signification
of everything which created mirth. It became, in the course of time the
French word jeu, and the Italian gioco, or giuoco. People introduced a form
of the verb, jocare, which became the French juer, to play or perform.
Joculator was then used in the sense of mimus. In French the word became
jogléor, or jougléor, and in its later form jougleur. I may remark that, in
mediæval manuscripts, it is almost impossible to distinguish between the u
and the n, and that modern writers have misread this last word as jongleur,
and thus introduced into the language a word which never existed, and
which ought to be abandoned. In old English, as we see in Chaucer, the
usual form was jogelere. The mediæval joculator, or jougleur, embraced all
the attributes of the Roman mimus,[38] and perhaps more. In the first place
he was very often a poet himself, and composed the pieces which it was one
of his duties to sing or recite. These were chiefly songs, or stories, the latter
usually told in verse, and so many of them are preserved in manuscripts that
they form a very numerous and important class of mediæval literature. The
songs were commonly satirical and abusive, and they were made use of for
purposes of general or personal vituperation. Out of them, indeed, grew the
political songs of a later period. There were female jougleurs, and both
sexes danced, and, to create mirth among those who encouraged them, they
practised a variety of performances, such as mimicking people, making wry
and ugly faces, distorting their bodies into strange postures, often exposing
their persons in a very unbecoming manner, and performing many vulgar
and indecent acts, which it is not necessary to describe more particularly.
They carried about with them for exhibition tame bears, monkeys, and other
animals, taught to perform the actions of men. As early as the thirteenth
century, we find them including among their other accomplishments that of
dancing upon the tight-rope. Finally, the jougleurs performed tricks of
sleight of hand, and were often conjurers and magicians. As, in modern
times, the jougleurs of the middle ages gradually passed away, sleight of
hand appears to have become their principal accomplishment, and the name
only was left in the modern word juggler. The jougleurs of the middle ages,
like the mimi of antiquity, wandered about from place to place, and often
from country to country, sometimes singly and at others in companies,
exhibited their performances in the roads and streets, repaired to all great

festivals, and were employed especially in the baronial hall, where, by their
songs, stories, and other performances, they created mirth after dinner.
This class of society had become known by another name, the origin of
which is not so easily explained. The primary meaning of the Latin word
minister was a servant, one who ministers to another, either in his wants or
in his pleasures and amusements. It was applied particularly to the cup-
bearer. In low Latinity, a diminutive of this word was formed, minestellus,
or ministrellus, a petty servant, or minister. When we first meet with this
word, which is not at a very early date, it is used as perfectly synonymous
with joculator, and, as the word is certainly of Latin derivation, it is clear
that it was from it the middle ages derived the French word menestrel (the
modern ménétrier), and the English minstrel. The mimi or jougleurs were
perhaps considered as the petty ministers to the amusements of their lord, or
of him who for the time employed them. Until the close of the middle ages,
the minstrel and the jougleur were absolutely identical. Possibly the former
may have been considered the more courtly of the two names. But in
England, as the middle ages disappeared, and lost their influence on society
sooner than in France, the word minstrel remained attached only to the
musical part of the functions of the old mimus, while, as just observed, the
juggler took the sleight of hand and the mountebank tricks. In modern
French, except where employed technically by the antiquary, the word
ménétrier means a fiddler.
The jougleurs, or minstrels, formed a very numerous and important, though
a low and despised, class of mediæval society. The dulness of every-day life
in a feudal castle or mansion required something more than ordinary
excitement in the way of amusement, and the old family bard, who
continually repeated to the Teutonic chief the praises of himself and his
ancestors, was soon felt to be a wearisome companion. The mediæval
knights and their ladies wanted to laugh, and to make them laugh
sufficiently it required that the jokes, or tales, or comic performances,
should be broad, coarse, and racy, with a good spicing of violence and of
the wonderful. Hence the jougleur was always welcome to the feudal
mansion, and he seldom went away dissatisfied. But the subject of the
present chapter is rather the literature of the jougleur than his personal
history, and, having traced his origin to the Roman mimus, we will now
proceed to one class of his performances.

It has been stated that the mimus and the jougleurs told stories. Of those of
the former, unfortunately, none are preserved, except, perhaps, in a few
anecdotes scattered in the pages of such writers as Apuleius and Lucian, and
we are obliged to guess at their character, but of the stories of the jougleurs
a considerable number has been preserved. It becomes an interesting
question how far these stories have been derived from the mimi, handed
down traditionally from mimus to jougleur, how far they are native in our
race, or how far they were derived at a later date from other sources. And in
considering this question, we must not forget that the mediæval jougleurs
were not the only representatives of the mimi, for among the Arabs of the
East also there had originated from them, modified under different
circumstances, a very important class of minstrels and story-tellers, and
with these the jougleurs of the west were brought into communication at the
commencement of the crusades. There can be no doubt that a very large
number of the stories of the jougleurs were borrowed from the East, for the
evidence is furnished by the stories themselves; and there can be little doubt
also that the jougleurs improved themselves, and underwent some
modification, by their intercourse with Eastern performers of the same
class.
On the other hand, we have traces of the existence of these popular stories
before the jougleurs can have had communication with the East. Thus, as
already mentioned, we find, composed in Germany, apparently in the tenth
century, in rhythmical Latin, the well-known story of the wife of a merchant
who bore a child during the long absence of her husband, and who excused
herself by stating that her pregnancy had been the result of swallowing a
flake of snow in a snow-storm. This, and another of the same kind, were
evidently intended to be sung. Another poem in popular Latin verse, which
Grimm and Schmeller, who edited it,[39] believe may be of the eleventh
century, relates a very amusing story of an adventurer named Unibos, who,
continually caught in his own snares, finishes by getting the better of all his
enemies, and becoming rich, by mere ingenious cunning and good fortune.
This story is not met with among those of the jougleurs, as far as they are
yet known, but, curiously enough, Lover found it existing orally among the
Irish peasantry, and inserted the Irish story among his “Legends of Ireland.”
It is a curious illustration of the pertinacity with which the popular stories
descend along with peoples through generations from the remotest ages of

antiquity. The same story is found in an oriental form among the tales of the
Tartars published in French by Guenlette.
The people of the middle ages, who took their word fable from the Latin
fabula, which they appear to have understood as a mere term for any short
narration, included under it the stories told by the mimi and jougleurs; but,
in the fondness of the middle ages for diminutives, by which they intended
to express familiarity and attachment, applied to them more particularly the
Latin fabella, which in the old French became fablel, or, more usually,
fabliau. The fabliaux of the jougleurs form a most important class of the
comic literature of the middle ages. They must have been wonderfully
numerous, for a very large quantity of them still remain, and these are only
the small portion of what once existed, which have escaped perishing like
the others by the accident of being written in manuscripts which have had
the fortune to survive; while manuscripts containing others have no doubt
perished, and it is probable that many were only preserved orally, and never
written down at all.[40] The recital of these fabliaux appears to have been
the favourite employment of the jougleurs, and they became so popular that
the mediæval preachers turned them into short stories in Latin prose, and
made use of them as illustrations in their sermons. Many collections of
these short Latin stories are found in manuscripts which had served as note-
books to the preachers,[41] and out of them was originally compiled that
celebrated mediæval book called the “Gesta Romanorum.”
It is to be regretted that the subjects and language of a large portion of these
fabliaux are such as to make it impossible to present them before modern
readers, for they furnish singularly interesting and minute pictures of
mediæval life in all classes of society. Domestic scenes are among those
most frequent, and they represent the interior of the mediæval household in
no favourable point of view. The majority of these tell loose stories of
husbands deceived by their fair spouses, or of tricks played upon
unsuspecting damsels. In some instances the treatment of the husband is
perhaps what may be called of a less objectionable character, as in the
fabliau of La Vilain Mire (the clown doctor), printed in Barbazan (iii. 1),
which was the origin of Molière’s well-known comedy of “Le Médecin
malgré lui.” A rich peasant married the daughter of a poor knight; it was of
course a marriage of ambition on his part, and of interest on hers—one of
those ill-sorted matches which, according to feudal sentiments, could never

be happy, and in which the wife was considered as privileged to treat her
husband with all possible contempt. In this instance the lady hit upon an
ingenious mode of punishing her husband for his want of submission to her
ill-treatment. Messengers from the king passed that way, seeking a skilful
doctor to cure the king’s daughter of a dangerous malady. The lady secretly
informed these messengers that her husband was a physician of
extraordinary talent, but of an eccentric temper, for he would never
acknowledge or exercise his art until first subjected to a severe beating. The
husband is seized, bound, and carried by force to the king’s court, where, of
course, he denies all knowledge of the healing art, but a severe beating
obliges him to compliance, and he is successful by a combination of
impudence and chance. This is only the beginning of the poor man’s
miseries. Instead of being allowed to go home, his fame has become so
great that he is retained at court for the public good, and, with a rapid
succession of patients, fearful of the results of his conscious ignorance, he
refuses them all, and is subjected in every case to the same ill-treatment to
force his compliance. The examples in which the husband, on the other
hand, outwits the wife are few. A fabliau by a poet who gives himself the
name of Cortebarbe, printed also by Barbazan (iii. 398), relates how three
blind beggars were deceived by a clerc, or scholar, of Paris, who met them
on the road near Compiègne. The clerk pretended to give the three beggars
a bezant, which was then a good sum of money, and they hastened joyfully
to the next tavern, where they ordered a plentiful supper, and feasted to their
hearts’ content. But, in fact, the clerk had not given them a bezant at all,
although, as he said he did so, and they could only judge by their hearing,
they imagined that they had the coin, and each thought that it was in the
keeping of one of his companions. Thus, when the time of paying came, and
the money was not forthcoming, in the common belief that one of the three
had received the bezant and intended to keep it and cheat the others, they
quarrelled violently, and from abuse soon came to blows. The landlord,
drawn to the spot by the uproar, and informed of the state of the case,
accused the three blind men of a conspiracy to cheat him, and demanded
payment with great threats. The clerk of Paris, who had followed them to
the inn, and taken his lodging there in order to witness the result, delivered
the blind men by an equally ingenious trick which he plays upon the
landlord and the priest of the parish.

Some of these stories have for their subject tricks played among thieves. In
one printed by Méon (i. 124), we have the story of a rich but simple villan,
or countryman, named Brifaut, who is robbed at market by a cunning
sharper, and severely corrected by his wife for his carelessness. Robbery,
both by force and by sleight of hand and craft, prevailed to an extraordinary
degree during the middle ages. The plot of the fabliau of Barat and Haimet,
by Jean de Boves (Barbazan, iv. 233), turns upon a trial of skill among three
robbers to determine who shall commit the cleverest act of thievery, and the
result is, at least, an extremely amusing story. It may be mentioned as an
example of the numerous stories which the jougleurs certainly obtained
from the East, that the well-known story of the Hunchback in the “Arabian
Nights” appears among them in two or three different forms.
The social vices of the middle ages, their general licentiousness, the
prevalence of injustice and extortion, are very fully exposed to view in
these compositions, in which no class of society is spared. The villan, or
peasant, is always treated very contemptuously; he formed the class from
which the jougleur received least benefit. But the aristocracy, the great
barons, the lords of the soil, come in for their full share of satire, and they
no doubt enjoyed the ridiculous pictures of their own order. I will not
venture to introduce the reader to female life in the baronial castle, as it
appears in many of these stories, and as it is no doubt truly painted,
although, of course, in many instances, much exaggerated. We have already
seen how in the story of Reynard, the character of mediæval society was
represented by the long struggle between brute force represented by the
wolf, the emblem of the aristocratic class, and the low astuteness of the fox,
or the unaristocratic class. The success of the craft of the human fox over
the force of his lordly antagonist is often told in the fabliaux in ludicrous
colours. In that of Trubert, printed by Méon (i. 192), the “duke” of a
country, with his wife and family, become repeatedly the dupes of the gross
deceptions of a poor but impudent peasant. These satires upon the
aristocracy were no doubt greatly enjoyed by the good bourgeoisie, who, in
their turn, furnished abundance of stories, of the drollest description, to
provoke the mirth of the lords of the soil, between whom and themselves
there was a kind of natural antipathy. Nor are the clergy spared. The priest
is usually described as living with a concubine—his order forbade marrying
—and both are considered as fair game to the community; while the monk
figures more frequently as the hero of gallant adventures. Both priest and

monk are usually distinguished by their selfishness and love of indulgence.
In the fabliau Du Bouchier d’Abbeville, in Barbazan (iv. 1), a butcher, on
his way home from the fair, seeks a night’s lodging at the house of an
inhospitable priest, who refuses it. But when the former returns, and offers,
in exchange for his hospitality, one of his fat sheep which he has purchased
at the fair, and not only to kill it for their supper, but to give all the meat
they do not eat to his host, he is willingly received into the house, and they
make an excellent supper. By the promise of the skin of the sheep, the guest
succeeds in seducing both the concubine and the maid-servant, and it is
only after his departure the following morning, in the middle of a domestic
uproar caused by the conflicting claims of the priest, the concubine, and the
maid, to the possession of the skin, that it is discovered that the butcher had
stolen the sheep from the priest’s own flock.
The fabliaux, as remarked before, form the most important class of the
extensive mass of the popular literature of the middle ages, and the writers,
confident in their strong hold upon public favour, sometimes turn round and
burlesque the literature of other classes, especially the long heavy
monotony of style of the great romances of chivalry and the extravagant
adventures they contained, as though conscious that they were gradually
undermining the popularity of the romance writers. One of these poems,
entitled “De Audigier,” and printed in Barbazan (iv. 217), is a parody on the
romance writers and on their style, not at all wanting in spirit or wit, but the
satire is coarse and vulgar. Another printed in Barbazan (iv. 287), under the
title “De Berengier,” is a satire upon a sort of knight-errantry which had
found its way into mediæval chivalry. Berengier was a knight of Lombardy,
much given to boasting, who had a beautiful lady for his wife. He used to
leave her alone in his castle, under pretext of sallying forth in search of
chivalrous adventures, and, after a while, having well hacked his sword and
shield, he returned to vaunt the desperate exploits he had performed. But
the lady was shrewd as well as handsome, and, having some suspicions of
his truthfulness as well as of his courage, she determined to make trial of
both. One morning, when her husband rode forth as usual, she hastily
disguised herself in a suit of armour, mounted a good steed, and hurrying
round by a different way, met the boastful knight in the middle of a wood,
where he no sooner saw that he had to encounter a real assailant, than he
displayed the most abject cowardice, and his opponent exacted from him an
ignominious condition as the price of his escape. On his return home at

night, boasting as usual of his success, he found his lady taking her revenge
upon him in a still less respectful manner, but he was silenced by her
ridicule.
The trouvères, or poets, who wrote the fabliaux—I need hardly remark that
trouvère is the same word as trobador, but in the northern dialect of the
French language—appear to have flourished chiefly from the close of the
twelfth century to the earlier part of the fourteenth. They all composed in
French, which was a language then common to England and France, but
some of their compositions bear internal evidence of having been composed
in England, and others are found in contemporary manuscripts written in
this island. The scene of a fabliau, printed by Méon (i. 113), is laid at
Colchester; and that of La Male Honte, printed in Barbazan (iii. 204), is laid
in Kent. The latter, however, was written by a trouvère named Hugues de
Cambrai. No objection appears to have been entertained to the recital of
these licentious stories before the ladies of the castle or of the domestic
circle, and their general popularity was so great, that the more pious clergy
seem to have thought necessary to find something to take their place in the
post-prandial society of the monastery, and especially of the nunnery; and
religious stories were written in the same form and metre as the fabliaux.
Some of these have been published under the title of “Contes Devots,” and,
from their general dulness, it may be doubted if they answered their purpose
of furnishing amusement so well as the others.

CHAPTER VIII.
CARICATURES OF DOMESTIC LIFE.—STATE OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN THE
MIDDLE AGES.—EXAMPLES OF DOMESTIC CARICATURE FROM THE
CARVINGS OF THE MISERERES.—KITCHEN SCENES.—DOMESTIC
BRAWLS.—THE FIGHT FOR THE BREECHES.—THE JUDICIAL DUEL
BETWEEN MAN AND WIFE AMONG THE GERMANS.—ALLUSIONS TO
WITCHCRAFT.—SATIRES ON THE TRADES; THE BAKER, THE MILLER, THE
WINE-PEDLAR AND TAVERN-KEEPER, THE ALE-WIFE, ETC.

The influence of the jougleurs over people’s minds generally, with their
stories and satirical pieces, their grimaces, their postures, and their
wonderful performances, was very considerable, and may be easily traced
in mediæval manners and sentiments. This influence would naturally be
exerted upon inventive art, and when a painter had to adorn the margin of a
book, or the sculptor to decorate the ornamental parts of a building, we
might expect the ideas which would first present themselves to him to be
those suggested by the jougleur’s performance, for the same taste had to be
indulged in the one as in the other. The same wit or satire would pervade
them both.

No. 71. A Mediæval Kitchen Scene.

Among the most popular subjects of satire
during the middle ages, were domestic
scenes. Domestic life at that period
appears to have been in its general
character coarse, turbulent, and, I should
say, anything but happy. In all its points of
view, it presented abundant subjects for
jest and burlesque. There is little room for
No. 72. An Old Lady and her Friends.
doubt that the Romish Church, as it existed
in the middle ages, was extremely hostile to domestic happiness among the
middle and lower classes, and that the interference of the priest in the
family was only a source of domestic trouble. The satirical writings of the
period, the popular tales, the discourses of those who sought reform, even
the pictures in the manuscripts and the sculptures on the walls invariably
represent the female portion of the family as entirely under the influence of
the priests, and that influence as exercised for the worst of purposes. They
encouraged faithlessness as well as disobedience in wives, and undermined
the virtue of daughters, and were consequently regarded with anything but
kindly feeling by the male portion of the population. The priest, the wife,
and the husband, form the usual leading characters in a mediæval farce.
Subjects of this kind are not very unfrequent in the illuminations of
manuscripts, and more especially in the sculptures of buildings, and those
chiefly ecclesiastical, in which monks or priests are introduced in very
equivocal situations. This part of the subject, however, is one into which we
shall not here venture, as we find the mediæval caricaturists drawing plenty
of materials from the less vicious shades of contemporary life; and, in fact,
some of their most amusing pictures are taken from the droll, rather than
from the vicious, scenes of the interior of the household. Such scenes are
very frequent on the misereres of the old cathedrals and collegiate churches.
Thus, in the stalls at Worcester Cathedral, there is a droll figure of a man
seated before a fire in a kitchen well stored with flitches of bacon, he
himself occupied in attending to the boiling pot, while he warms his feet,
for which purpose he has taken off his shoes. In a similar carving in
Hereford Cathedral, a man, also in the kitchen, is seen attempting to take
liberties with the cook maid, who throws a platter at his head. A copy of this
curious subject is given in cut No. 71, and the cut No. 72 is taken from a
similar miserere in Minster Church, in the Isle of Thanet. It represents an

old lady seated, occupied industriously in spinning, and accompanied by
her cats.

No. 73. The Lady and her Cat.

We might easily add other examples of similar subjects from the same
sources, such as the scene in our cut No. 73, taken from one of the stalls of
Winchester Cathedral, which seems to be intended to represent a witch
riding away upon her cat, an enormous animal, whose jovial look is only
outdone by that of its mistress. The latter has carried her distaff with her,
and is diligently employed in spinning. A stall in Sherborne Minster, given
in our cut No. 74, represents a scene in a school, in which an unfortunate
scholar is experiencing punishment of a rather severe description, to the
great alarm of his companions, on whom his disgrace is evidently acting as
a warning. The flogging scene at school appears to have been rather a
favourite subject among the early caricaturists, for the scourge was looked
upon in the middle ages as the grand stimulant to scholarship. In those good
old times, when a man recalled to memory his schoolboy days, he did not
say, “When I was at school,” but, “When I was under the rod.”

No. 74. Scholastic Discipline.

No. 75. A Point in Dispute.

No. 76. Want of Harmony over the Pot.

An extensive field for the study of this
interesting part of our subject will be found in
the architectural gallery in the Kensington
Museum, which contains a large number of
calls from stalls and other sculptures, chiefly
selected from the French cathedrals. One of
these, engraved in our cut No. 75, represents a
couple of females, seated before the kitchen
fire. The date of this sculpture is stated to be
1382. To judge by their looks and attitude,
there is a disagreement between them, and the No. 77. Domestic Strife.
object in dispute seems to be a piece of meat,
which one has taken out of the pot and placed on a dish. This lady wields
her ladle as though she were prepared to use it as a weapon, while her
opponent is armed with the bellows. The ale-pot was not unfrequently the
subject of pictures of a turbulent character, and among the grotesque and
monstrous figures in the margins of the noble manuscript of the fourteenth
century, known as the “Luttrell Psalter,” one represents two personages not
only quarrelling over their pots, which they appear to have emptied, but
actually fighting with them. One of them has literally broken his pot over
his companion’s head. The scene is copied in our cut No. 76.

No. 78. A Struggle for the Mastery.

It must be stated, however, that the more common subjects of these homely
scenes are domestic quarrels, and that the man, or his wife, enjoying their
fireside, or similar bits of domestic comfort, only make their appearance at
rare intervals. Domestic quarrels and combats are much more frequent. We
have already seen, in the cut No. 75, two dames of the kitchen evidently
beginning to quarrel over their cookery. A stall in the church of Stratford-
upon-Avon gives us the group represented in our cut No. 77. The battle has
here become desperate, but whether the male combatant be an oppressed
husband or an impertinent intruder, is not clear. The quarrel would seem to
have arisen during the process of cooking, as the female, who has seized her
opponent by the beard, has evidently snatched up the ladle as the readiest
weapon at hand. The anger appears to be mainly on her side, and the rather
tame countenance of her antagonist contrasts strangely with her inflamed
features. Our next cut, No. 78, is taken from the sculpture of a column in
Ely Cathedral, here copied from an engraving in Carter’s “Specimens of
Ancient Sculpture.” A man and wife, apparently, are struggling for the
possession of a staff, which is perhaps intended to be the emblem of
mastery. As is generally represented to be the case in these scenes of

domestic strife, the woman shows more energy and more strength than her
opponent, and she is evidently overcoming him. The mastery of the wife
over the husband seems to have been a universally acknowledged state of
things. A stall in Sherborne Minster, in Dorset, which has furnished the
subject of our cut No. 79, might almost be taken as the sequel of the last
cut. The lady has possessed herself of the staff, has overthrown her
husband, and is even striking him on the head with it when he is down. In
our next cut, No. 80, which is taken from one of the casts of stalls in the
French cathedrals exhibited in the Kensington Museum, it is not quite clear
which of the two is the offender, but, perhaps, in this case, the archer, as his
profession is indicated by his bow and arrows, has made a gallant assault,
which, although she does not look much displeased at it, the offended dame
certainly resists with spirit.

No. 79. The Wife in the Ascendant.

No. 80. Violence Resisted.

One idea connected with this picture of domestic antagonism appears to
have been very popular from a rather early period. There is a proverbial
phrase to signify that the wife is master in the household, by which it is
intimated that “she wears the breeches.” The phrase is, it must be confessed,
an odd one, and is only half understood by modern explanations; but in
mediæval story we learn how “she” first put in her claim to wear this
particular article of dress, how it was first disputed and contested, how she
was at times defeated, but how, as a general rule, the claim was enforced.
There was a French poet of the thirteenth century, Hugues Piaucelles, two
of whose fabliaux, or metrical tales, entitled the “Fabliau d’Estourmi,” and
the “Fabliau de Sire Hains et de Dame Anieuse,” are preserved in
manuscript, and have been printed in the collection of Barbazan. The
second of these relates some of the adventures of a mediæval couple, whose
household was not the best regulated in the world. The name of the heroine
of this story, Anieuse, is simply an old form of the French word ennuyeuse,
and certainly dame Anieuse was sufficiently “ennuyeuse” to her lord and
husband. “Sire Hains,” her husband, was, it appears, a maker of “cottes”
and mantles, and we should judge also, by the point on which the quarrel
turned, that he was partial to a good dinner. Dame Anieuse was of that
disagreeable temper, that whenever Sire Hains told her of some particularly
nice thing which he wished her to buy for his meal, she bought instead
something which she knew was disagreeable to him. If he ordered boiled
meat, she invariably roasted it, and further contrived that it should be so

covered with cinders and ashes that he could not eat it. This would show
that people in the middle ages (except, perhaps, professional cooks) were
very unapt at roasting meat. This state of things had gone on for some time,
when one day Sire Hains gave orders to his wife to buy him fish for his
dinner. The disobedient wife, instead of buying fish, provided nothing for
his meal but a dish of spinage, telling him falsely that all the fish stank. This
leads to a violent quarrel, in which, after some fierce wrangling, especially
on the part of the lady, Sire Hains proposes to decide their difference in a
novel manner. “Early in the morning,” he said, “I will take off my breeches
and lay them down in the middle of the court, and the one who can win
them shall be acknowledged to be master or mistress of the house.”
Le matinet, sans contredire,
Voudrai mes braies deschaucier,
Et enmi nostre cort couchier;
Et qui conquerre les porra,
Par bone reson mousterra
Qu’il ert sire ou dame du nostre.
Barbazan, Fabliaux, tome iii. p. 383.
Dame Anieuse accepted the challenge with eagerness, and each prepared for
the struggle. After due preparation, two neighbours, friend Symon and
Dame Aupais, having been called in as witnesses, and the object of dispute,
the breeches, having been placed on the pavement of the court, the battle
began, with some slight parody on the formalities of the judicial combat.
The first blow was given by the dame, who was so eager for the fray that
she struck her husband before he had put himself on his guard; and the war
of tongues, in which at least Dame Anieuse had the best of it, went on at the
same time as the other battle. Sire Hains ventured a slight expostulation on
her eagerness for the fray, in answer to which she only threw in his teeth a
fierce defiance to do his worst. Provoked at this, Sire Hains struck at her,
and hit her over the eyebrows, so effectively, that the skin was discoloured;
and, over-confident in the effect of this first blow, he began rather too soon
to exult over his wife’s defeat. But Dame Anieuse was less disconcerted
than he expected, and recovering quickly from the effect of the blow, she
turned upon him and struck him on the same part of his face with such
force, that she nearly knocked him over the sheepfold. Dame Anieuse, in
her turn, now sneered over him, and while he was recovering from his

confusion, her eyes fell upon the object of contention, and she rushed to it,
and laid her hands upon it to carry it away. This movement roused Sire
Hains, who instantly seized another part of the article of his dress of which
he was thus in danger of being deprived, and began a struggle for
possession, in which the said article underwent considerable dilapidation,
and fragments of it were scattered over the court. In the midst of this
struggle the actual fight recommenced, by the husband giving his wife so
heavy a blow on the teeth that her mouth was filled with blood. The effect
was such that Sire Hains already reckoned on the victory, and proclaimed
himself lord of the breeches.
Hains fiert sa fame enmi les denz
Tel cop, que la bouche dedenz
Li a toute emplie de sancz.
“Tien ore,” dist Sire Hains, “anc,
Je cuit que je t’ai bien atainte,
Or t’ai-je de deux colors tainte—
J’aurai les braies toutes voies.”
But the immediate effect on Dame Anieuse was only to render her more
desperate. She quitted her hold on the disputed garment, and fell upon her
husband with such a shower of blows that he hardly knew which way to
turn. She was thus, however, unconsciously exhausting herself, and Sire
Hains soon recovered. The battle now became fiercer than ever, and the
lady seemed to be gaining the upper hand, when Sire Hains gave her a
skilful blow in the ribs, which nearly broke one of them, and considerably
checked her ardour. Friend Symon here interposed, with the praiseworthy
aim of restoring peace before further harm might be done, but in vain, for
the lady was only rendered more obstinate by her mishap; and he agreed
that it was useless to interfere until one had got a more decided advantage
over the other. The fight therefore went on, the two combatants having now
seized each other by the hair of the head, a mode of combat in which the
advantages were rather on the side of the male. At this moment, one of the
judges, Dame Aupais, sympathising too much with Dame Anieuse, ventured
some words of encouragement, which drew upon her a severe rebuke from
her colleague, Symon, who intimated that if she interfered again there might
be two pairs of combatants instead of one. Meanwhile Dame Anieuse was
becoming exhausted, and was evidently getting the worst of the contest,

until at length, staggering from a vigorous push, she fell back into a large
basket which lay behind her. Sire Hains stood over her exultingly, and
Symon, as umpire, pronounced him victorious. He thereupon took
possession of the disputed article of raiment, and again invested himself
with it, while the lady accepted faithfully the conditions imposed upon her,
and we are assured by the poet that she was a good and obedient wife
during the rest of her life. In this story, which affords a curious picture of
mediæval life, we learn the origin of the proverb relating to the possession
and wearing of the breeches. Hugues Piaucelles concludes his fabliau by
recommending every man who has a disobedient wife to treat her in the
same manner; and mediæval husbands appear to have followed his advice,
without fear of laws against the ill-treatment of women.

No. 81. The Fight for the Breeches.

A subject like this was well fitted for the burlesques on the stalls, and
accordingly we find on one of those in the cathedral at Rouen, the group
given in our cut No. 81, which seems to represent the part of the story in
which both combatants seize hold of the disputed garment, and struggle for
possession of it. The husband here grasps a knife in his hand, with which he
seems to be threatening to cut it to pieces rather than give it up. The fabliau
gives the victory to the husband, but the wife was generally considered as in
a majority of cases carrying off the prize. In an extremely rare engraving by
the Flemish artist Van Mecken, dated in 1480, of which I give a copy in our
cut No. 82. the lady, while putting on the breeches, of which she has just
become possessed, shows an inclination to lord it rather tyrannically over

her other half, whom she has condemned to perform the domestic drudgery
of the mansion.

No. 82. The Breeches Won.

In Germany, where there was still more roughness in mediæval life, what
was told in England and France as a good story of domestic doings, was
actually carried into practice under the authority of the laws. The judicial
duel was there adopted by the legal authorities as a mode of settling the
differences between husband and wife. Curious particulars on this subject
are given in an interesting paper entitled “Some observations on Judicial
Duels as practised in Germany,” published in the twenty-ninth volume of
the Archæologia of the Society of Antiquaries (p. 348). These observations
are chiefly taken from a volume of directions, accompanied with drawings,
for the various modes of attack and defence, compiled by Paulus Kall, a
celebrated teacher of defence at the court of Bavaria about the year 1400.
Among these drawings we have one representing the mode of combat
between husband and wife. The only weapon allowed the female, but that a
very formidable one, was, according to these directions, a heavy stone
wrapped up in an elongation of her chemise, while her opponent had only a
short staff, and he was placed up to the waist in a pit formed in the ground.
The following is a literal translation of the directions given in the
manuscript, and our cut No. 83 is a copy of the drawing which illustrates it:

—“The woman must be so prepared, that a sleeve of her chemise extend a
small ell beyond her hand, like a little sack; there indeed is put a stone
weighing three pounds; and she has nothing else but her chemise, and that
is bound together between the legs with a lace. Then the man makes himself
ready in the pit over against his wife. He is buried therein up to the girdle,
and one hand is bound at the elbow to the side.” At this time the practice of
such combats in Germany seems to have been long known, for it is stated
that in the year 1200 a man and his wife fought under the sanction of the
civic authorities at Bâle, in Switzerland. In a picture of a combat between
man and wife, from a manuscript resembling that of Paulus Kall, but
executed nearly a century later, the man is placed in a tub instead of a pit,
with his left arm tied to his side as before, and his right holding a short
heavy staff; while the woman is dressed, and not stripped to the chemise, as
in the former case. The man appears to be holding the stick in such a
manner that the sling in which the stone was contained would twist round it,
and the woman would thus be at the mercy of her opponent. In an ancient
manuscript on the science of defence in the library at Gotha, the man in the
tub is represented as the conqueror of his wife, having thus dragged her
head-foremost into the tub, where she appears with her legs kicking up in
the air.

No. 83. A Legal Combat.

This was the orthodox mode of combat between man and wife, but it was
sometimes practised under more sanguinary forms. In one picture given
from these old books on the science of defence by the writer of the paper on
the subject in the Archæologia, the two combatants, naked down to the
waist, are represented fighting with sharp knives, and inflicting upon each
other’s bodies frightful gashes.

No. 84. The Witch and the Demon.

No. 85. The Witch and her Victim.

A series of stall carvings at Corbeil, near Paris, of which more will be said a
little farther on in this chapter, has furnished the curious group represented
in our cut No. 84, which is one of the rather rare pictorial allusions to the
subject of witchcraft. It represents a woman who must, by her occupation,

be a witch, for she has so far got the mastery of the demon that she is
sawing off his head with a very uncomfortable looking instrument. Another
story of witchcraft is told in the sculpture of a stone panel at the entrance of
the cathedral of Lyons, which is represented in our cut No. 85. One power,
supposed to be possessed by witches, was that of transforming people to
animals at will. William of Malmesbury, in his Chronicle, tells a story of
two witches in the neighbourhood of Rome, who used to allure travellers
into their cottage, and there transform them into horses, pigs, or other
animals, which they sold, and feasted themselves with the money. One day
a young man, who lived by the profession of a jougleur, sought a night’s
lodging at their cottage, and was received, but they turned him into an ass,
and, as he retained his understanding and his power of acting, they gained
much money by exhibiting him. At length a rich man of the neighbourhood,
who wanted him for his private amusement, offered the two women a large
sum for him, which they accepted, but they warned the new possessor of the
ass that he should carefully restrain him from going into the water, as that
would deprive him of his power of performing. The man who had
purchased the ass acted upon this advice, and carefully kept him from
water, but one day, through the negligence of his keeper, the ass escaped
from his stable, and, rushing to a pond at no great distance, threw himself
into it. Water—and running water especially—was believed to destroy the
power of witchcraft or magic; and no sooner was the ass immersed in the
water, than he recovered his original form of a young man. He told his
story, which soon reached the ears of the pope, and the two women were
seized, and confessed their crimes. The carving from Lyons Cathedral
appears to represent some such scene of sorcery. The naked woman,
evidently a witch, is, perhaps, seated on a man whom she has transformed
into a goat, and she seems to be whirling the cat over him in such a manner
that it may tear his face with its claws.
There was still another class of subjects for satire and caricature which
belongs to this part of our subject—I mean that of the trader and
manufacturer. We must not suppose that fraudulent trading, that deceptive
and imperfect workmanship, that adulteration of everything that could be
adulterated, are peculiar to modern times. On the contrary, there was no
period in the world’s history in which dishonest dealing was carried on to
such an extraordinary extent, in which there was so much deception used in
manufactures, or in which adulteration was practised on so shameless a

scale, as during the middle ages. These vices, or, as we may, perhaps, more
properly describe them, these crimes, are often mentioned in the mediæval
writers, but they were not easily represented pictorially, and therefore we
rarely meet with direct allusions to them, either in sculpture, on stone or
wood, or in the paintings of illuminated manuscripts. Representations of the
trades themselves are not so rare, and are sometimes droll and almost
burlesque. A curious series of such representations of arts and trades was
carved on the misereres of the church of St. Spire, at Corbeil, near Paris,
which only exist now in Millin’s engravings, but they seem to have been
works of the fifteenth century. Among them the first place is given to the
various occupations necessary for the production of bread, that article so
important to the support of life. Thus we see, in these carvings at Corbeil,
the labours of the reaper, cutting the wheat and forming it into sheaves, the
miller carrying it away to be ground into meal, and the baker thrusting it
into the oven, and drawing it out in the shape of loaves. Our cut No. 86,
taken from one of these sculptures, represents the baker either putting in or
taking out the bread with his peel; by the earnest manner in which he looks
at it, we may suppose that it is the latter, and that he is ascertaining if it be
sufficiently baked. We have an earlier representation of a mediæval oven in
our cut No. 87, taken from the celebrated illuminated manuscript of the
“Romance of Alexandre,” in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which appears
to belong to an early period of the fourteenth century. Here the baker is
evidently going to take a loaf out of the oven, for his companion holds a
dish for the purpose of receiving it.

No. 86. A Baker of the Fifteenth Century.

In nothing was fraud and adulteration
practised to so great an extent as in the
important article of bread, and the two
occupations especially employed in
making it were objects of very great
dislike and of scornful satire. The miller
was proverbially a thief. Every reader of
Chaucer will remember his character so
No. 87. A Mediæval Baker.
admirably drawn in that of the miller of
Trumpington, who, though he was as proud and gay “as eny pecok,” was
nevertheless eminently dishonest.
A theef he was for soth of corn and mele,
And that a sleigh (sly), and usyng (practised) for to stele.
Chaucer’s Reeves Tale.
This practice included a large college then existing in Cambridge, but now
forgotten, the Soler Hall, which suffered greatly by his depredations.

And on a day it happed in a stounde,
Syk lay the mauncyple on a maledye,
Men wenden wisly that he schulde dye;
For which this meller stal bothe mele and corn
A thousend part more than byforn.
For ther biforn he stal but curteysly;
But now he is a theef outrageously.
For which the wardeyn chidde and made fare,
But therof sette the meller not a tare;
He crakked boost, and swor it was nat so.
Two of the scholars of this college resolved to go with the corn to the mill,
and by their watchfulness prevent his depredations. Those who are
acquainted with the story know how the scholars succeeded, or rather how
they failed; how the miller stole half a bushel of their flour and caused his
wife to make a cake of it; and how the victims had their revenge and
recovered the cake.
As already stated, the baker had in these good old times no better character
than the miller, if not worse. There was an old saying, that if three persons
of three obnoxious professions were put together in a sack and shaken up,
the first who came out would certainly be a rogue, and one of these was a
baker. Moreover, the opinion concerning the baker was so strong that, as in
the phrase taken from the old legends of the witches, who in their festivals
sat thirteen at a table, this number was popularly called a devil’s dozen, and
was believed to be unlucky—so, when the devil’s name was abandoned,
perhaps for the sake of euphony, the name substituted for it was that of the
baker, and the number thirteen was called “a baker’s dozen.” The makers of
nearly all sorts of provisions for sale were, in the middle ages, tainted with
the same vice, and there was nothing from which society in general,
especially in the towns where few made bread for themselves, suffered so
much. This evil is alluded to more than once in that curious educational
treatise, the “Dictionarius” of John de Garlande, printed in my “Volume of
Vocabularies.” This writer, who wrote in the earlier half of the thirteenth
century, insinuates that the makers of pies (pastillarii), an article of food
which was greatly in repute during the middle ages, often made use of bad
eggs. The cooks, he says further, sold, especially in Paris to the scholars of
the university, cooked meats, sausages, and such things, which were not fit

to eat; while the butchers furnished the meat of animals which had died of
disease. Even the spices and drugs sold by the apothecaries, or épiciers,
were not, he says, to be trusted. John de Garlande had evidently an
inclination to satire, and he gives way to it not unfrequently in the little
book of which I am speaking. He says that the glovers of Paris cheated the
scholars of the university, by selling them gloves made of bad materials;
that the women who gained their living by winding thread (devacuatrices,
in the Latin of the time), not only emptied the scholars’ purses, but wasted
their bodies also (it is intended as a pun upon the Latin word); and the
hucksters sold them unripe fruit for ripe. The drapers, he says, cheated
people not only by selling bad materials, but by measuring them with false
measures; while the hawkers, who went about from house to house, robbed
as well as cheated.
M. Jubinal has published in his curious volume entitled “Jongleurs et
Trouvères,” a rather jocular poem on the bakers, written in French of,
perhaps, the thirteenth century, in which their art is lauded as much better
and more useful than that of the goldsmith’s. The millers’ depredations on
the corn sent to be ground at the mill, are laid to the charge of the rats,
which attack it by night, and the hens, which find their way to it by day; and
he explains the diminution the bakings experienced in the hands of the
baker as arising out of the charity of the latter towards the poor and needy,
to whom they gave the meal and paste before it had even been put into the
oven. The celebrated English poet, John Lydgate, in a short poem preserved
in a manuscript in the Harleian Library in the British Museum (MS. Harl.
No. 2,255, fol. 157, vo, describes the pillory, which he calls their Bastile, as
the proper heritage of the miller and the baker:—

Put out his hed, lyst nat for to dare,
But lyk a man upon that tour to abyde,
For cast of eggys wil not oonys spare,
Tyl he be quallyd body, bak, and syde.
His heed endooryd, and of verray pryde
Put out his armys, shewith abrood his face;
The fenestrallys be made for hym so wyde,
Claymyth to been a capteyn of that place.

The bastyle longith of verray dewe ryght
To fals bakerys, it is trewe herytage
Severalle to them, this knoweth every wyght,
Be kynde assygned for ther sittyng stage;
Wheer they may freely shewe out ther visage,
Whan they tak oonys their possessioun,
Owthir in youthe or in myddyl age;
Men doon hem wrong yif they take hym down.

Let mellerys and bakerys gadre hem a gilde,
And alle of assent make a fraternité,
Undir the pillory a letil chapelle bylde,
The place amorteyse, and purchase lyberté,
For alle thos that of ther noumbre be;
What evir it coost afftir that they wende,
They may clayme, be just auctorité,
Upon that bastile to make an ende.

The wine-dealer and the publican formed another class in mediæval society
who lived by fraud and dishonesty, and were the objects of satire. The latter
gave both bad wine and bad measure, and he often also acted as a
pawnbroker, and when people had drunk more than they could pay for, he
would take their clothes as pledges for their money. The tavern, in the
middle ages, was the resort of very miscellaneous company; gamblers and
loose women were always on the watch there to lead more honest people
into ruin, and the tavern-keeper profited largely by their gains; and the more
vulgar minstrel and “jogelour” found employment there; for the middle

classes of society, and even their betters, frequented the tavern much more
generally than at the present day. In the carved stalls of the church of
Corbeil, the liquor merchant is represented by the figure of a man wheeling
a hogshead in a barrow, as shown in our cut No. 88. The graveness and air
of importance with which he regards it would lead us to suppose that the
barrel contains wine; and the cup and jug on the shelf above show that it
was to be sold retail. The wine-sellers called out their wines from their
doors, and boasted of their qualities, in order to tempt people in; and John
de Garlande assures us that when they entered, they were served with wine
which was not worth drinking. “The criers of wine,” he says, “proclaim
with extended throat the diluted wine they have in their taverns, offering it
at four pennies, at six, at eight, and at twelve, fresh poured out from the
gallon cask into the cup, to tempt people.” (“Volume of Vocabularies,” p.
126.) The ale-wife was an especial subject of jest and satire, and is not
unfrequently represented on the pictorial monuments of our forefathers. Our
cut No. 89 is taken from one of the misereres in the church of
Wellingborough, in Northamptonshire; the ale-wife is pouring her liquor
from her jug into a cup to serve a rustic, who appears to be waiting for it
with impatience.

No. 88. The Wine Dealer.

No. 89. The Ale-Wife.

The figure of the ale-drawer, No. 90, is taken
from one of the misereres in the parish church
of Ludlow, in Shropshire. The size of his jug is
somewhat disproportionate to that of the barrel
from which he obtains the ale. The same
misereres of Ludlow Church furnish the next
scene, cut No. 91, which represents the end of
the wicked ale-wife. The day of judgment is
supposed to have arrived, and she has received
her sentence. A demon, seated on one side, is
reading a list of the crimes she has committed, No. 90. The Ale-Drawer.
which the magnitude of the parchment shows to be a rather copious one.
Another demon (whose head has been broken off in the original) carries on
his back, in a very irreverent manner, the unfortunate lady, in order to throw
her into hell-mouth, on the other side of the picture. She is naked with the
exception of the fashionable head-gear, which formed one of her vanities in
the world, and she carries with her the false measure with which she
cheated her customers. A demon bagpiper welcomes her on her arrival. The
scene is full of wit and humour.

No. 91. The Ale-Wife’s End.

The rustic classes, and instances of their rusticity, are not unfrequently met
with in these interesting carvings. The stalls of Corbeil present several
agricultural scenes. Our cut No. 92 is taken from those of Gloucester
cathedral, of an earlier date, and represents the three shepherds, astonished
at the appearance of the star which announced the birth of the Saviour of
mankind. Like the three kings, the shepherds to whom this revelation was
made were always in the middle ages represented as three in number. In our
drawing from the miserere in Gloucester cathedral, the costume of the
shepherds is remarkably well depicted, even to the details, with the various
implements appertaining to their profession, most of which are suspended
to their girdles. They are drawn with much spirit, and even the dog is well
represented as an especially active partaker in the scene.

No. 92. The Shepherds of the East.

No. 93. The Carpenter.

No. 94. The Shoemaker.

Of the two other examples we select from the misereres of Corbeil, the first
represents the carpenter, or, as he was commonly called by our Anglo-
Saxon and mediæval forefathers, the wright, which signifies simply the
“maker.” The application of this higher and more general term—for the
Almighty himself is called, in the Anglo-Saxon poetry, ealra gescefta
wyrhta, the Maker, or Creator, of all things—shows how important an art
that of the carpenter was considered in the middle ages. Everything made of
wood came within his province. In the Anglo-Saxon “Colloquy” of
archbishop Alfric, where some of the more useful artisans are introduced
disputing about the relative value of their several crafts, the “wright” says,
“Who of you can do without my craft, since I make houses and all sorts of
vessels (vasa), and ships for you all?” (“Volume of Vocabularies,” p. 11.)
And John de Garlande, in the thirteenth century, describes the carpenter as
making, among other things, tubs, and barrels, and wine-cades. The
workmanship of those times was exercised, before all other materials, on
wood and metals, and the wright, or worker in the former material, was
distinguished by this circumstance from the smith, or worker in metal. The
carpenter is still called a wright in Scotland. Our last cut (No. 94), taken
also from one of the misereres at Corbeil, represents the shoemaker, or as he
was then usually called, the cordwainer, because the leather which he
chiefly used came from Cordova in Spain, and was thence called cordewan,

or cordewaine. Our shoemaker is engaged in cutting a skin of leather with
an instrument of a rather singular form. Shoes, and perhaps forms for
making shoes, are suspended on pegs against the wall.

CHAPTER IX.
GROTESQUE FACES AND FIGURES.—PREVALENCE OF THE TASTE FOR UGLY
AND GROTESQUE FACES.—SOME OF THE POPULAR FORMS DERIVED
FROM ANTIQUITY; THE TONGUE LOLLING OUT, AND THE DISTORTED
MOUTH.—HORRIBLE SUBJECTS: THE MAN AND THE SERPENTS.—
ALLEGORICAL FIGURES: GLUTTONY AND LUXURY.—OTHER
REPRESENTATIONS OF CLERICAL GLUTTONY AND DRUNKENNESS.—
GROTESQUE FIGURES OF INDIVIDUALS, AND GROTESQUE GROUPS.—
ORNAMENTS OF THE BORDERS OF BOOKS.—UNINTENTIONAL
CARICATURE; THE MOTE AND THE BEAM.

The grimaces and strange postures of the jougleurs seem to have had great
attractions for those who witnessed them. To unrefined and uneducated
minds no object conveys so perfect a notion of mirth as an ugly and
distorted face. Hence it is that among the common peasantry at a country
fair few exhibitions are more satisfactory than that of grinning through a
horse-collar. This sentiment is largely exemplified in the sculpture
especially of the middle ages, a long period, during which the general
character of society presented that want of refinement which we now
observe chiefly in its least cultivated classes. Among the most common
decorations of our ancient churches and other mediæval buildings, are
grotesque and monstrous heads and faces. Antiquity, which lent us the types
of many of these monstrosities, saw in her Typhons and Gorgons a
signification beyond the surface of the picture, and her grotesque masks had
a general meaning, and were in a manner typical of the whole field of comic
literature. The mask was less an individual grotesque to be laughed at for
itself, than a personification of comedy. In the middle ages, on the contrary,
although in some cases certain forms were often regarded as typical of
certain ideas, in general the design extended no farther than the forms
which the artist had given to it; the grotesque features, like the grinning
through the horse-collar, gave satisfaction by their mere ugliness. Even the
applications, when such figures were intended to have one, were coarsely
satirical, without any intellectuality, and, where they had a meaning beyond
the plain text of the sculpture or drawing, it was not far-fetched, but plain
and easily understood. When the Anglo-Saxon drew the face of a bloated

and disfigured monk, he no doubt intended thereby to proclaim the popular
notion of the general character of monastic life, but this was a design which
nobody could misunderstand, an interpretation which everybody was
prepared to give to it. We have already seen various examples of this
description of satire, scattered here and there among the immense mass of
grotesque sculpture which has no such meaning. A great proportion, indeed,
of these grotesque sculptures appears to present mere variations of a certain
number of distinct types which had been handed down from a remote
period, some of them borrowed, perhaps involuntarily, from antiquity.
Hence we naturally look for the earlier and more curious examples of this
class of art to Italy and the south of France, where the transition from
classical to mediæval was more gradual, and the continued influence of
classical forms is more easily traced. The early Christian masons appear to
have caricatured under the form of such grotesques the personages of the
heathen mythology, and to this practice we perhaps owe some of the types
of the mediæval monsters. We have seen in a former chapter a grotesque
from the church of Monte Majour, near Nismes, the original type of which
had evidently been some burlesque figure of Saturn eating one of his
children. The classical mask doubtless furnished the type for those figures,
so common in mediæval sculpture, of faces with disproportionately large
mouths; just as another favourite class of grotesque faces, those with
distended mouths and tongues lolling out, were taken originally from the
Typhons and Gorgons of the ancients. Many other popular types of faces
rendered artificially ugly are mere exaggerations of the distortions produced
on the features by different operations, such, for instance, as that of blowing
a horn.
The practice of blowing the horn, is, indeed, peculiarly calculated to exhibit
the features of the face to disadvantage, and was not overlooked by the
designers of the mediæval decorative sculpture. One of the large collection
of casts of sculptures from French cathedrals exhibited in the museum at
South Kensington, has furnished the two subjects given in our cut No. 95.
The first is represented as blowing a horn, but he is producing the greatest
possible distortion in his features, and especially in his mouth, by drawing
the horn forcibly on one side with his left hand, while he pulls his beard in
the other direction with the right hand. The force with which he is supposed
to be blowing is perhaps represented by the form given to his eyes. The face
of the lower figure is in at least comparative repose. The design of

representing general distortion in the first is further shown by the
ridiculously unnatural position of the arms. Such distortion of the members
was not unfrequently introduced to heighten the effect of the grimace in the
face; and, as in these examples, it was not uncommon to introduce as a
further element of grotesque, the bodies, or parts of the bodies, of animals,
or even of demons.

No. 95. Grotesque Monsters.

No. 96. Diabolical Mirth.

No. 97. Making Faces.

Another cast in the Kensington Museum is the subject of our cut No. 96,
which presents the same idea of stretching the mouth. The subject is here
exhibited by another rather mirthful looking individual, but whether the
exhibitor is intended to be a goblin or demon, or whether he is merely
furnished with the wings and claws of a bat, seems rather uncertain. The bat
was looked upon as an unpropitious if not an unholy animal; like the owl, it
was the companion of the witches, and of the spirits of darkness. The group
in our cut No. 97 is taken from one of the carved stalls in the church of
Stratford-upon-Avon, and represents a trio of grimacers. The first of these
three grotesque faces is lolling out the tongue to an extravagant length; the
second is simply grinning; while the third has taken a sausage between his
teeth to render his grimace still more ridiculous. The number and variety of
such grotesque faces, which we find scattered over the architectural
decoration of our old ecclesiastical buildings, are so great that I will not
attempt to give any more particular classification of them. All this church

decoration was calculated especially to produce its effect upon the middle
and lower classes, and mediæval art was, perhaps more than anything else,
suited to mediæval society, for it belonged to the mass and not to the
individual. The man who could enjoy a match at grinning through horse-
collars, must have been charmed by the grotesque works of the mediæval
stone sculptor and wood carver; and we may add that these display, though
often rather rude, a very high degree of skill in art, a great power of
producing striking imagery.
These mediæval artists loved also to produce horrible objects as well as
laughable ones, though even in their horrors they were continually running
into the grotesque. Among the adjuncts to these sculptured figures, we
sometimes meet with instruments of pain, and very talented attempts to
exhibit this on the features of the victims. The creed of the middle ages
gave great scope for the indulgence of this taste in the infinitely varied
terrors of purgatory and hell; and, not to speak of the more crude
descriptions that are so common in mediæval popular literature, the account
to which these descriptions might be turned by the poet as well as the artist
are well known to the reader of Dante. Coils of serpents and dragons, which
were the most usual instruments in the tortures of the infernal regions, were
always favourite objects in mediæval ornamentation, whether sculptured or
drawn, in the details of architectural decoration, or in the initial letters and
margins of books. They are often combined in forming grotesque tracery
with the bodies of animals or of human beings, and their movements are
generally hostile to the latter. We have already seen, in previous chapters,
examples of this use of serpents and dragons, dating from the earliest
periods of mediæval art; and it is perhaps the most common style of
ornamentation in the buildings and illuminated manuscripts in our island
from the earlier Saxon times to the thirteenth century. This ornamentation is
sometimes strikingly bold and effective. In the cathedral of Wells there is a
series of ornamental bosses, formed by faces writhing under the attacks of
numerous dragons, who are seizing upon the lips, eyes, and cheeks of their
victims. One of these bosses, which are of the thirteenth century, is
represented in our cut No. 98. A large, coarsely featured face is the victim
of two dragons, one of which attacks his mouth, while the other has seized
him by the eye. The expression of the face is strikingly horrible.

No. 98. Horror.

The higher mind of the middle ages loved to see inner meanings through
outward forms; or, at least, it was a fashion which manifested itself most
strongly in the latter half of the twelfth century, to adapt these outward
forms to inward meanings by comparisons and moralisations; and under the
effect of this feeling certain figures were at times adopted, with a view to
some other purpose than mere ornament, though this was probably an
innovation upon mediæval art. The tongue lolling out, taken originally, as
we have seen, from the imagery of classic times, was accepted rather early
in the middle ages as the emblem or symbol of luxury; and, when we find it
among the sculptured ornaments of the architecture especially of some of
the larger and more important churches, it implied probably an allusion to
that vice—at least the face presented to us was intended to be that of a
voluptuary. Among the remarkable series of sculptures which crown the
battlements of the cloisters of Magdalen College, Oxford, executed a very
few years after the middle of the fifteenth century, amid many figures of a
very miscellaneous character, there are several which were thus, no doubt,
intended to be representatives of vices, if not of virtues. I give two
examples of these curious sculptures.

No. 99. Gluttony. No. 100. Luxury.

The first, No. 99, is generally considered to represent gluttony, and it is a
remarkable circumstance that, in a building the character of which was
partly ecclesiastical, and which was erected at the expense and under the
directions of a great prelate, Bishop Wainflete, the vice of gluttony, with
which the ecclesiastical order was especially reproached, should be
represented in ecclesiastical costume. It is an additional proof that the detail
of the work of the building was left entirely to the builders. The coarse,
bloated features of the face, and the “villainous” low forehead, are
characteristically executed; and the lolling tongue may perhaps be intended
to intimate that, in the lives of the clergy, luxury went hand in hand with its
kindred vice. The second of our examples, No. 100, appears by its different
characteristics (some of which we have been unable to introduce in our
woodcut) to be intended to represent luxury itself. Sometimes qualities of
the individual man, or even the class of society, are represented in a manner
far less disguised by allegorical clothing, and therefore much more plainly
to the understanding of the vulgar. Thus in an illuminated manuscript of the
fourteenth century, in the British Museum (MS. Arundel, No. 91), gluttony

is represented by a monk devouring a pie alone and in secret, except that a
little cloven-footed imp holds up the dish, and seems to enjoy the prospect
of monastic indulgence. This picture is copied in our cut No. 101. Another
manuscript of the same date (MS. Sloane, No. 2435) contains a scene,
copied in our cut No. 102, representing drunkenness under the form of
another monk, who has obtained the keys and found his way into the cellar
of his monastery, and is there indulging his love for good ale in similar
secrecy. It is to be remarked that here, again, the vices are laid to the charge
of the clergy. Our cut No. 103, from a bas-relief in Ely Cathedral, given in
Carter’s “Specimens of Ancient Sculpture,” represents a man drinking from
a horn, and evidently enjoying his employment, but his costume is not
sufficiently characteristic to betray his quality.
The subject of grotesque faces and heads naturally
leads us to that of monstrous and grotesque bodies
and groups of bodies, which has already been
partly treated in a former chapter, where we have
noticed the great love shown in the middle ages
for monstrous animated figures, not only monsters No. 101. Monkish Gluttony.
of one nature, but, and that especially, of figures
formed by joining together the parts of different, and entirely dissimilar,
animals, of similar mixtures between animals and men. This, as stated
above, was often effected by joining the body of some nondescript animal
to a human head and face; so that, by the disproportionate size of the latter,
the body, as a secondary part of the picture, became only an adjunct to set
off still further the grotesque character of the human face. More importance
was sometimes given to the body combined with fantastic forms, which
baffle any attempt at giving an intelligible description. The accompanying
cut, No. 104, represents a winged monster of this kind; it is taken from one
of the casts from French churches exhibited in the Kensington Museum.

No. 102. The Monastic Cellarer. No. 103. Drunkenness.

No. 104. A Strange Monster.

No. 105. Rolling Topsy Turvy.

Sometimes the mediæval artist, without
giving any unusual form to his human
figures, placed them in strange postures,
or joined them in singular combinations.
These latter are commonly of a playful
character, or sometimes they represent
droll feats of skill, or puzzles, or other
subjects, all of which have been
No. 106. A Continuous Group. published pictorially and for the
amusement of children down to very recent times. There were a few of
these groups which are of rather frequent occurrence, and they were
evidently favourite types. One of these is given in the annexed cut, No. 105.
It is taken from one of the carved misereres of the stalls in Ely cathedral, as
given in Carter, and represents two men who appear to be rolling over each
other. The upper figure exhibits animal’s ears on his cap, which seem to
proclaim him a member of the fraternity of fools: the ears of the lower
figure are concealed from view. This group is not a rare one, especially on
similar monuments in France, where the architectural antiquaries have a
technical name for it; and this shows us how even the particular forms of art
in the middle ages were not confined to any particular country, but more or

less, and with exceptions, they pervaded all those which acknowledged the
ecclesiastical supremacy of the church of Rome; whatever peculiarity of
style it took in particular countries, the same forms were spread through all
western Europe. Our next cut, No. 106, gives another of these curious
groups, consisting, in fact, of two individuals, one of which is evidently an
ecclesiastic. It will be seen that, as we follow this round, we obtain, by
means of the two heads, four different figures in so many totally different
positions. This group is taken from one of the very curious seats in the
cathedral of Rouen in Normandy, which were engraved and published in an
interesting volume by the late Monsieur E. H. Langlois.
Among the most interesting of the mediæval
burlesque drawings are those which are found in
such abundance in the borders of the pages of
illuminated manuscripts. During the earlier
periods of the mediæval miniatures, the favourite
objects for these borders were monstrous animals,
especially dragons, which could easily be twined
into grotesque combinations. In course of time,
the subjects thus introduced became more
numerous, and in the fifteenth century they were
very varied. Strange animals still continued to be
favourites, but they were more light and elegant in
their forms, and were more gracefully designed.
Our cut No. 107, taken from the beautifully-
illuminated manuscript of the romance of the
“Comte d’Artois,” of the fifteenth century, which
has furnished us previously with several cuts, will
illustrate my meaning. The graceful lightness of
the tracery of the foliage shown in this design is
No. 107. Border Ornament. found in none of the earlier works of art of this
class. This, of course, is chiefly to be ascribed to
the great advance which had been made in the art of design since the
thirteenth century. But, though so greatly improved in the style of art, the
same class of subjects continued to be introduced in this border
ornamentation long after the art of printing, and that of engraving, which
accompanied it, had been introduced. The revolution in the ornamentation
of the borders of the pages of books was effected by the artists of the

sixteenth century, at which time people had become better acquainted with,
and had learnt to appreciate, ancient art and Roman antiquities, and they
drew their inspiration from a correct knowledge of what the middle ages
had copied blindly, but had not understood. Among the subjects of
burlesque which the monuments of Roman art presented to them, the
stumpy figures of the pigmies appear to have gained special favour, and
they are employed in a manner which reminds us of the pictures found in
Pompeii. Jost Amman, the well-known artist, who exercised his profession
at Nüremberg in the latter half of the sixteenth century, engraved a set of
illustrations to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which were printed at Lyons in
1574, and each cut and page of which is enclosed in a border of very
fanciful and neatly-executed burlesque. The pigmies are introduced in these
borders very freely, and are grouped with great spirit. I select as an
example, cut No. 108, a scene which represents a triumphal procession—
some pigmy Alexander returning from his conquests. The hero is seated on
a throne carried by an elephant, and before him a bird, perhaps a
vanquished crane, proclaims loudly his praise. Before them a pigmy
attendant marches proudly, carrying in one hand the olive branch of peace,
and leading in the other a ponderous but captive ostrich, as a trophy of his
master’s victories. Before him again a pigmy warrior, heavily armed with
battle-axe and falchion, is mounting the steps of a stage, on which a
nondescript animal, partaking somewhat of the character of a sow, but
perhaps intended as a burlesque on the strange animals which, in mediæval
romance, Alexander was said to have encountered in Egypt, blows a horn,
to celebrate or announce the return of the conqueror. A snail, also advancing
slowly up the stage, implies, perhaps, a sneer at the whole scene.

No. 108. A Triumphal Procession.

No. 109. The Mote and the Beam.

Nevertheless, these old German, Flemish, and Dutch artists were still much
influenced by the mediæval spirit, which they displayed in their coarse and
clumsy imagination, in their neglect of everything like congruity in their
treatment of the subject with regard to time and place, and their naïve
exaggerations and blunders. Extreme examples of these characteristics are
spoken of, in which the Israelites crossing the Red Sea are armed with
muskets, and all the other accoutrements of modern soldiers, and in which
Abraham is preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac by shooting him with a
matchlock. In delineating scriptural subjects, an attempt is generally made
to clothe the figures in an imaginary ancient oriental costume, but the
landscapes are filled with the modern castles and mansion houses, churches,
and monasteries of western Europe. These half-mediæval artists, too, like
their more ancient predecessors, often fall into unintentional caricature by
the exaggeration or simplicity with which they treat their subjects. There
was one subject which the artists of this period of regeneration of art
seemed to have agreed to treat in a very unimaginative manner. In the
beautiful Sermon on the Mount, our Saviour, in condemning hasty
judgments of other people’s actions, says (Matt. vii. 3-5), “And why
beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the

beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me
pull out the mote out of thine eye, and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt
thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” Whatever be
the exact nature of the beam which the man was expected to overlook in his
“own eye,” it certainly was not a large beam of timber. Yet such was the
conception of it by artists of the sixteenth century. One of them, named
Solomon Bernard, designed a series of woodcuts illustrating the New
Testament, which were published at Lyons in 1553; and the manner in
which he treated the subject will be seen in our cut No. 109, taken from one
of the illustrations to that book. The individual seated is the man who has a
mote in his eye, which the other, approaching him, points out; and he retorts
by pointing to the “beam,” which is certainly such a massive object as could
not easily have been overlooked. About thirteen years before this, an artist
of Augsburg, named Daniel Hopfer, had published a large copper-plate
engraving of this same subject, a reduced copy of which is given in the cut
No. 110. The individual who sees the mote in his brother’s eye, is evidently
treating it in the character of a physician or surgeon. It is only necessary to
add that the beam in his own eye is of still more extraordinary dimensions
than the former, and that, though it seems to escape the notice both of
himself and his patient, it is evident that the group in the distance
contemplate it with astonishment. The building accompanying this scene
appears to be a church, with paintings of saints in the windows.

No. 110. The Mote and the Beam—Another Treatment.

CHAPTER X.
SATIRICAL LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—JOHN DE HAUTEVILLE AND
ALAN DE LILLE.—GOLIAS AND THE GOLIARDS.—THE GOLIARDIC
POETRY.—TASTE FOR PARODY.—PARODIES ON RELIGIOUS SUBJECTS.—
POLITICAL CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—THE JEWS OF
NORWICH.—CARICATURE REPRESENTATIONS OF COUNTRIES.—LOCAL
SATIRE.—POLITICAL SONGS AND POEMS.

In a previous chapter I have spoken of a class of satirical literature which
was entirely popular in its character. Not that on this account it was original
among the peoples who composed mediæval society, for the intellectual
development of the middle ages came almost all from Rome through one
medium or other, although we know so little of the details of the popular
literature of the Romans that we cannot always trace it. The mediæval
literature of western Europe was mostly modelled upon that of France,
which was received, like its language, from Rome. But when the great
university system became established, towards the end of the eleventh
century, the scholars of western Europe became more directly acquainted
with the models of literature which antiquity had left them; and during the
twelfth century these found imitators so skilful that some of them almost
deceive us into accepting them for classical writers themselves. Among the
first of these models to attract the attention of mediæval scholars, were the
Roman satirists, and the study of them produced, during the twelfth century,
a number of satirical writers in Latin prose and verse, who are remarkable
not only for their boldness and poignancy, but for the elegance of their
style. I may mention among those of English birth, John of Salisbury,
Walter Mapes, and Giraldus Cambrensis, who all wrote in prose, and
Nigellus Wireker, already mentioned in a former chapter, and John de
Hauteville, who wrote in verse. The first of these, in his “Polycraticus,”
Walter Mapes, in his book “De Nugis Curialium,” and Giraldus, in his
“Speculum Ecclesiæ,” and several other of his writings, lay the lash on the
corruptions and vices of their contemporaries with no tender hand. The two
most remarkable English satirists of the twelfth century were John de
Hauteville and Nigellus Wireker. The former wrote, in the year 1184, a

poem in nine books of Latin hexameters, entitled, after the name of its hero,
“Architrenius,” or the Arch-mourner. Architrenius is represented as a youth,
arrived at years of maturity, who sorrows over the spectacle of human vices
and weaknesses, until he resolves to go on a pilgrimage to Dame Nature, in
order to expostulate with her for having made him feeble to resist the
temptations of the world, and to entreat her assistance. On his way, he
arrives successively at the court of Venus and at the abode of Gluttony,
which give him the occasion to dwell at considerable length on the license
and luxury which prevailed among his contemporaries. He next reaches
Paris, and visits the famous mediæval university, and his satire on the
manners of the students and the fruitlessness of their studies, forms a
remarkable and interesting picture of the age. The pilgrim next arrives at the
Mount of Ambition, tempting by its beauty and by the stately palace with
which it was crowned, and here we are presented with a satire on the
manners and corruptions of the court. Near to this was the Hill of
Presumption, which was inhabited by ecclesiastics of all classes, great
scholastic doctors and professors, monks, and the like. It is a satire on the
manners of the clergy. As Architrenius turns from this painful spectacle, he
encounters a gigantic and hideous monster named Cupidity, is led into a
series of reflections upon the greediness and avarice of the prelates, from
which he is roused by the uproar caused by a fierce combat between the
prodigals and the misers. He is subsequently carried to the island of far-
distant Thule, which he finds to be the resting-place of the philosophers of
ancient Greece, and he listens to their declamations against the vices of
mankind. After this visit, Architrenius reaches the end of his pilgrimage. He
finds Nature in the form of a beautiful woman, dwelling with a host of
attendants in the midst of a flowery plain, and meats with a courteous
reception, but she begins by giving him a long lecture on natural
philosophy. After this is concluded, Dame Nature listens to his complaints,
and, to console him, gives him a handsome woman, named Moderation, for
a wife, and dismisses him with a chapter of good counsels on the duties of
married life. The general moral intended to be inculcated appears to be that
the retirement of domestic happiness is to be preferred to the vain and
heartless turmoils of active life in all its phases. It will be seen that the kind
of allegory which subsequently produced the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” had
already made its appearance in mediæval literature.

Another of the celebrated satirists of the scholastic ages was named Alanus
de Insulis, or Alan of Lille, because he is understood to have been born at
Lille in Flanders. He occupied the chair of theology for many years in the
university of Paris with great distinction, and his learning was so extensive
that he gained the name of doctor universalis, the universal doctor. In one
of his books, which is an imitation of that favourite book in the middle ages
“Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ,” Dame Nature, in the place of
Philosophy—not, as in John de Hauteville, as the referee, but as the
complainant—is introduced bitterly lamenting over the deep depravity of
the thirteenth century, especially displayed in the prevalence of vices of a
revolting character. This work, which, like Boethius, consists of alternate
chapters in verse and prose, is entitled “De Planctu Naturæ,” the
lamentation of nature. I will not, however, go on here to give a list of the
graver satirical writers, but we will proceed to another class of satirists
which sprang up among the mediæval scholars, more remarkable and more
peculiar in their character—I mean peculiar to the middle ages.
The satires of the time show us that the students in the universities in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who enjoyed a great amount of
independence from authority, were generally wild and riotous, and, among
the vast number of youths who then devoted themselves to a scholastic life,
we can have no doubt that the habit of dissipation became permanent.
Among these wild students there existed, probably, far more wit and
satirical talent than among their steadier and more laborious brethren, and
this wit, and the manner in which it was displayed, made its possessors
welcome guests at the luxurious tables of the higher and richer clergy, at
which Latin seems to have been the language in ordinary use. In all
probability it was from this circumstance (in allusion to the Latin word
gula, as intimating their love of the table) that these merry scholars, who
displayed in Latin some of the accomplishments which the jougleurs
professed in the vulgar tongue, took or received the name of goliards (in the
Latin of that time, goliardi, or goliardenses).[42] The name at least appears
to have been adopted towards the end of the twelfth century. In the year
1229, during the minority of Louis IX., and while the government of France
was in the hands of the queen-mother, troubles arose in the university of
Paris through the intrigues of the papal legate, and the turbulence of the
scholars led to their dispersion and to the temporary closing of the schools;
and the contemporary historian, Matthew Paris, tells us how “some of the

servants of the departing scholars, or those whom we used to call
goliardenses,” composed an indecent epigram on the rumoured familiarities
between the legate and the queen. But this is not the first mention of the
goliards, for a statute of the council of Treves, in 1227, forbade “all priests
to permit truants, or other wandering scholars, or goliards, to sing verses or
Sanctus and Angelus Dei in the service of the mass.”[43] This probably
refers to parodies on the religious service, such as those of which I shall
soon have to speak. From this time the goliards are frequently mentioned.
In ecclesiastical statutes published in the year 1289, it is ordered that the
clerks or clergy (clerici, that is, men who had their education in the
university) “should not be jougleurs, goliards, or buffoons;”[44] and the
same statute proclaims a heavy penalty against those clerici “who persist in
the practice of goliardy or stage performance during a year,”[45] which
shows that they exercised more of the functions of the jougleur than the
mere singing of songs.
These vagabond clerks made for themselves an imaginary chieftain, or
president of their order, to whom they gave the name of Golias, probably as
a pun on the name of the giant who combated against David, and, to show
further their defiance of the existing church government, they made him a
bishop—Golias episcopus. Bishop Golias was the burlesque representative
of the clerical order, the general satirist, the reformer of eclesiastical and all
other corruptions. If he was not a doctor of divinity, he was a master of arts,
for he is spoken of as Magister Golias. But above all he was the father of
the Goliards, the “ribald clerks,” as they are called, who all belonged to his
household,[46] and they are spoken of as his children.
Summa salus omnium, filius Mariæ,
Pascat, potat, vestiat pueros Golyæ![47]
“May the Saviour of all, the Son of Mary, give food, drink, and clothes to
the children of Golias!” Still the name was clothed in so much mystery, that
Giraldus Cambrensis, who flourished towards the latter end of the twelfth
century, believed Golias to be a real personage, and his contemporary. It
may be added that Golias not only boasts of the dignity of bishop, but he
appears sometimes under the title of archipoeta, the archpoet or poet-in-
chief.

Cæsarius of Heisterbach, who completed his book of the miracles of his
time in the year 1222, tells us a curious anecdote of the character of the
wandering clerk. In the year before he wrote, he tells us, “It happened at
Bonn, in the diocese of Cologne, that a certain wandering clerk, named
Nicholas, of the class they call archpoet, was grievously ill, and when he
supposed that he was dying, he obtained from our abbot, through his own
pleading, and the intercession of the canons of the same church, admission
into the order. What more? He put on the tunic, as it appeared to us, with
much contrition, but, when the danger was past, he took it off immediately,
and, throwing it down with derision, took to flight.” We learn best the
character of the goliards from their own poetry, a considerable quantity of
which is preserved. They wandered about from mansion to mansion,
probably from monastery to monastery, just like the jougleurs, but they
seem to have been especially welcome at the tables of the prelates of the
church, and, like the jougleurs, besides being well feasted, they received
gifts of clothing and other articles. In few instances only were they
otherwise than welcome, as described in the rhyming epigram printed in my
“Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes.” “I come uninvited,” says the
goliard to the bishop, “ready for dinner; such is my fate, never to dine
invited.” The bishop replies, “I care not for vagabonds, who wander among
the fields, and cottages, and villages; such guests are not for my table. I do
not invite you, for I avoid such as you; yet without my will you may eat the
bread you ask. Wash, wipe, sit, dine, drink, wipe, and depart.”

Goliardus.
Non invitatus venio prandere paratus;
Sic sum fatatus, nunquam prandere vocatus.

Episcopus.
Non ego curo vagos, qui rura, mapalia, pagos
Perlustrant, tales non vult mea mensa sodales.
Te non invito, tibi consimiles ego vito;
Me tamen invito potieris pane petito.
Ablue, terge, sede, prande, bibe, terge, recede.

In another similar epigram, the goliard complains of the bishop who had
given him as his reward nothing but an old worn-out mantle. Most of the
writers of the goliardic poetry complain of their poverty, and some of them
admit that this poverty arose from the tavern and the love of gambling. One
of them alleges as his claim to the liberality of his host, that, as he was a
scholar, he had not learnt to labour, that his parents were knights, but he had
no taste for fighting, and that, in a word, he preferred poetry to any
occupation. Another speaks still more to the point, and complains that he is
in danger of being obliged to sell his clothes. “If this garment of vair which
I wear,” he says, “be sold for money, it will be a great disgrace to me; I
would rather suffer a long fast. A bishop, who is the most generous of all
generous men, gave me this cloak, and will have for it heaven, a greater
reward than St. Martin has, who only gave half of his cloak. It is needful
now that the poet’s want be relieved by your liberality [addressing his
hearers]; let noble men give noble gifts—gold, and robes, and the like.”
Si vendatur propter denarium
Indumentum quod porto varium,
Grande mihi fiet opprobrium;
Malo diu pati jejunium.
Largissimus largorum omnium
Prœsul dedit mihi hoc pallium,
Majus habens in cælis præmium
Quam Martinus, qui dedit medium.
Nunc est opus ut vestra copia
Sublevetur vatis inopia;
Dent nobiles dona nobilia,—
Aurum, vestes, et his similia.
There has been some difference of opinion as to the country to which this
poetry more especially belongs. Giraldus Cambrensis, writing at the end of
the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, evidently thought that
Golias was an Englishman; and at a later date the goliardic poetry was
almost all ascribed to Giraldus’s contemporary and friend, the celebrated
humourist, Walter Mapes. This was, no doubt, an error. Jacob Grimm
seemed inclined to claim them for Germany; but Grimm, on this occasion,
certainly took a narrow view of the question. We shall probably be more
correct in saying that they belonged in common to all the countries over

which university learning extended; that in whatever country a particular
poem of this class was composed, it became the property of the whole body
of these scholastic jougleurs, and that it was thus carried from one land to
another, receiving sometimes alterations or additions to adapt it to each.
Several of these poems are found in manuscripts written in different
countries with such alterations and additions, as, for instance, that in the
well-known “Confession,” in the English copies of which we have, near the
conclusion, the line—
Præsul Coventrensium, parce confitenti;
an appeal to the bishop of Coventry, which is changed, in a copy in a
German manuscript, to
Electe Coloniæ, parce pœnitenti,
“O elect of Cologne, spare me penitent.” From a comparison of what
remains of this poetry in manuscripts written in different countries, it
appears probable that the names Golias and goliard originated in the
university of Paris, but were more especially popular in England, while the
term archipoeta was more commonly used in Germany.
In 1841 I collected all the goliardic poetry which I could then find in
English manuscripts, and edited it, under the name of Walter Mapes, as one
of the publications of the Camden Society.[48] At a rather later date I gave a
chapter of additional matter of the same description in my “Anecdota
Literaria.”[49] All the poems I have printed in these two volumes are found
in manuscripts written in England, and some of them are certainly the
compositions of English writers. They are distinguished by remarkable
facility and ease in versification and rhyme, and by great pungency of
satire. The latter is directed especially against the clerical order, and none
are spared, from the pope at the summit of the scale down to the lowest of
the clergy. In the “Apocalypsis Goliæ,” or Golias’s Revelations, which
appears to have been the most popular of all these poems,[50] the poet
describes himself as carried up in a vision to heaven, where the vices and
disorders of the various classes of the popish clergy are successively
revealed to him. The pope is a devouring lion; in his eagerness for pounds,
he pawns books; at the sight of a mark of money, he treats Mark the
Evangelist with disdain; while he sails aloft, money alone is his anchoring-
place. The original lines will serve as a specimen of the style of these

curious compositions, and of the love of punning which was so
characteristic of the literature of that age:—
Est leo pontifex summus, qui devorat,
Qui libras sitiens, libros impignorat;
Marcam respiciet, Marcum dedecorat;
In summis navigans, in nummis anchorat.
The bishop is in haste to intrude himself into other people’s pastures, and
fills himself with other people’s goods. The ravenous archdeacon is
compared to an eagle, because he has sharp eyes to see his prey afar off,
and is swift to seize upon it. The dean is represented by an animal with a
man’s face, full of silent guile, who covers fraud with the form of justice,
and by the show of simplicity would make others believe him to be pious.
In this spirit the faults of the clergy, of all degrees, are minutely criticised
through between four and five hundred lines; and it must not be forgotten
that it was the English clergy whose character was thus exposed.
Tu scribes etiam, forma sed alia,
Septem ecclesiis quæ sunt in Anglia.
Others of these pieces are termed Sermons, and are addressed, some to the
bishops and dignitaries of the church, others to the pope, others to the
monastic orders, and others to the clergy in general. The court of Rome, we
are told, was infamous for its greediness; there all right and justice were put
up for sale, and no favour could be had without money. In this court money
occupies everybody’s thoughts; its cross—i. e. the mark on the reverse of
the coin—its roundness, and its whiteness, all please the Romans; where
money speaks law is silent.
Nummis in hac curia non est qui non vacet;
Crux placet, rotunditas, et albedo placet,
Et cum totum placeat, et Romanis placet,
Ubi nummus loquitur, et lex omnis tacet.
Perhaps one of the most curious of these poems is the “Confession of
Golias,” in which the poet is made to satirise himself, and he thus gives us a
curious picture of the goliard’s life. He complains that he is made of light
material, which is moved by every wind; that he wanders about irregularly,
like the ship on the sea or the bird in the air, seeking worthless companions

like himself. He is a slave to the charms of the fair sex. He is a martyr to
gambling, which often turns him out naked to the cold, but he is warmed
inwardly by the inspiration of his mind, and he writes better poetry than
ever. Lechery and gambling are two of his vices, and the third is drinking.
“The tavern,” he says, “I never despised, nor shall I ever despise it, until I
see the holy angels coming to sing the eternal requiem over my corpse. It is
my design to die in the tavern; let wine be placed to my mouth when I am
expiring, that when the choirs of angels come, they may say, ‘Be God
propitious to this drinker!’ The lamp of the soul is lighted with cups; the
heart steeped in nectar flies up to heaven; and the wine in the tavern has for
me a better flavour than that which the bishop’s butler mixes with water....
Nature gives to every one his peculiar gift: I never could write fasting; a
boy could beat me in composition when I am hungry; I hate thirst and
fasting as much as death.”

Tertio capitulo memoro tabernam:
Illam nullo tempore sprevi, neque spernam,
Donec sanctos angelos venientes cernam,
Cantantes pro mortuo requiem æternam.

Meum est propositum in taberna mori;
Vindum sit appositum morientis ori,
Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori,
‘Deus sit propitius huic potatori!’

Poculis accenditur animi lucerna;
Cor imbutum nectare volat ad superna:
Mihi sapit dulcius vinum in taberna,
Quam quod aqua miscuit præsulis pincerna.

Unicuique proprium dat natura munus:
Ego nunquam potui scribere jejunus;
Me jejunum vincere posset puer unus;
Sitim et jejunium odi tanquam funus.[51]

Another of the more popular of these goliardic poems was the advice of
Golias against marriage, a gross satire upon the female sex. Contrary to

what we might perhaps expect from their being written in Latin, many of
these metrical satires are directed against the vices of the laity, as well as
against those of the clergy.
In 1844 the celebrated German scholar, Jacob Grimm, published in the
“Transactions of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin” a selection of goliardic
verses from manuscripts in Germany, which had evidently been written by
Germans, and some of them containing allusions to German affairs in the
thirteenth century.[52] They present the same form of verse and the same
style of satire as those found in England, but the name of Golias is
exchanged for archipoeta, the archpoet. Some of the stanzas of the
“Confession of Golias” are found in a poem in which the archpoet
addresses a petition to the archchancellor for assistance in his distress, and
confesses his partiality for wine. A copy of the Confession itself is also
found in this German collection, under the title of the “Poet’s Confession.”
The Royal Library at Munich contains a very important manuscript of this
goliardic Latin poetry, written in the thirteenth century. It belonged
originally to one of the great Benedictine abbeys in Bavaria, where it
appears to have been very carefully preserved, but still with an apparent
consciousness that it was not exactly a book for a religious brotherhood,
which led the monks to omit it in the catalogue of their library, no doubt as
a book the possession of which was not to be proclaimed publicly. When
written, it was evidently intended to be a careful selection of the poetry of
this class then current. One part of it consists of poetry of a more serious
character, such as hymns, moral poems, and especially satirical pieces. In
this class there are more than one piece which are also found in the
manuscripts written in England. A very large portion of the collection
consists of love songs, which, although evidently treasured by the
Benedictine monks, are sometimes licentious in character. A third class
consists of drinking and gambling songs (potatoria et lusoria). The general
character of this poetry is more playful, more ingenious and intricate in its
metrical structure, in fact, more lyric than that of the poetry we have been
describing; yet it came, in all probability, from the same class of poets—the
clerical jougleurs. The touches of sentiment, the descriptions of female
beauty, the admiration of nature, are sometimes expressed with remarkable
grace. Thus, the green wood sweetly enlivened by the joyous voices of its
feathered inhabitants, the shade of its branches, the thorns covered with

flowers, which, says the poet, are emblematical of love, which pricks like a
thorn and then soothes like a flower, are tastefully described in the
following lines:—
Cantu nemus avium
Lascivia canentium
Suave delinitur,
Fronde redimitur,
Vernant spinæ floribus
Micantibus,
Venerem signantibus
Quia spina pungit, flos blanditur.
And the following scrap of the description of a beautiful damsel shows no
small command of language and versification—
Allicit dulcibus
Verbis et osculis,
Labellulis
Castigate tumentibus,
Roseo nectareus
Odor infusus ori;
Pariter eburneus
Sedat ordo dentium
Par niveo candori.
The whole contents of this manuscript were printed in 1847, in an octavo
volume, issued by the Literary Society at Stuttgard.[53] I had already printed
some examples of such amatory Latin lyric poetry in 1838, in a volume of
“Early Mysteries and Latin Poems;”[54] but this poetry does not belong
properly to the subject of the present volume, and I pass on from it.
The goliards did not always write in verse, for we have some of their prose
compositions, and these appear especially in the form of parodies. We trace
a great love for parody in the middle ages, which spared not even things the
most sacred, and the examples brought forward in the celebrated trial of
William Hone, were mild in comparison to some which are found scattered
here and there in mediæval manuscripts. In my Poems, attributed to Walter
Mapes,[55] I have printed a satire in prose entitled “Magister Golyas de
quodam abbate” (i.e., Master Golias’s account of a certain abbot), which

has somewhat the character of a parody upon a saint’s legend. The
voluptuous life of the superior of a monastic house is here described in a
tone of banter which nothing could excel. Several parodies, more direct in
their character, are printed in the two volumes of the “Reliquæ
Antiquæ.”[56] One of these (vol. ii. p. 208) is a complete parody on the
service of the mass, which is entitled in the original, “Missa de
Potatoribus,” the Mass of the Drunkard. In this extraordinary composition,
even the pater-noster is parodied. A portion of this, with great variations, is
found in the German collection of the Carmina Burana, under the title of
Officium Lusorum, the Office of the Gamblers. In the “Reliquæ Antiquæ”
(ii. 58) we have a parody on the Gospel of St. Luke, beginning with the
words, Initium fallacis Evangelii secundum Lupum, this last word being, of
course, a sort of pun upon Lucam. Its subject also is Bacchus, and the scene
having been laid in a tavern in Oxford, we have no difficulty in ascribing it
to some scholar of that university in the thirteenth century. Among the
Carmina Burana we find a similar parody on the Gospel of St. Mark, which
has evidently belonged to one of these burlesques on the church service;
and as it is less profane than the others, and at the same time pictures the
mediæval hatred towards the church of Rome, I will give a translation of it
as an example of this singular class of compositions. It is hardly necessary
to remind the reader that a mark was a coin of the value of thirteen shillings
and fourpence:—
“The beginning of the holy gospel according to Marks of silver. At that time the pope said to the
Romans: ‘When the son of man shall come to the seat of our majesty, first say, Friend, for what
hast thou come? But if he should persevere in knocking without giving you anything, cast him out
into utter darkness.’ And it came to pass, that a certain poor clerk came to the court of the lord the
pope, and cried out, saying, ‘Have pity on me at least, you doorkeepers of the pope, for the hand of
poverty has touched me. For I am needy and poor, and therefore I seek your assistance in my
calamity and misery.’ But they hearing this were highly indignant, and said to him: ‘Friend, thy
poverty be with thee in perdition; get thee backward, Satan, for thou dost not savour of those
things which have the savour of money. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Thou shalt not enter into the
joy of thy lord, until thou shalt have given thy last farthing.’
“Then the poor man went away, and sold his cloak and his gown, and all that he had, and gave it to
the cardinals, and to the doorkeepers, and to the chamberlains. But they said, ‘And what is this
among so many?’ And they cast him out of the gates, and going out he wept bitterly, and was
without consolation. After him there came to the court a certain clerk who was rich, and gross, and
fat, and large, and who in a tumult had committed manslaughter. He gave first to the doorkeeper,
secondly to the chamberlain, third to the cardinals. But they judged among themselves, that they
were to receive more. Then the lord the pope, hearing that the cardinals and officials had received
many gifts from the clerk, became sick unto death. But the rich man sent him an electuary of gold
and silver, and he was immediately made whole. Then the lord the pope called before him the

cardinals and officials, and said to them: ‘Brethren, see that no one deceive you with empty words.
For I give you an example, that, as I take, so take ye also.’”

This mediæval love of parody was not unfrequently displayed in a more
popular form, and in the language of the people. In the Reliquæ Antiquæ (i.
82) we have a very singular parody in English on the sermons of the
Catholic priesthood, a good part of which is so written as to present no
consecutive sense, which circumstance itself implies a sneer at the
preachers. Thus our burlesque preacher, in the middle of his discourse,
proceeds to narrate as follows (I modernise the English):—
“Sirs, what time that God and St. Peter came to Rome, Peter asked Adam a full great doubtful
question, and said, ‘Adam, Adam, why ate thou the apple unpared?’ ‘Forsooth,’ quod he, ‘for I had
no wardens (pears) fried.’ And Peter saw the fire, and dread him, and stepped into a plum-tree that
hanged full of ripe red cherries. And there he saw all the parrots in the sea. There he saw steeds
and stockfish pricking ‘swose’ (?) in the water. There he saw hens and herrings that hunted after
harts in hedges. There he saw eels roasting larks. There he saw haddocks were done on the pillory
for wrong roasting of May butter; and there he saw how bakers baked butter to grease with old
monks’ boots. There he saw how the fox preached,” &c.

The same volume contains some rather clever parodies on the old English
alliterative romances, composed in a similar style of consecutive nonsense.
It is a class of parody which we trace to a rather early period, which the
French term a coq-à-l’âne, and which became fashionable in England in the
seventeenth century in the form of songs entitled “Tom-a-Bedlams.” M.
Jubinal has printed two such poems in French, perhaps of the thirteenth
century,[57] and others are found scattered through the old manuscripts.
There is generally so much coarseness in them that it is not easy to select a
portion for translation, and in fact their point consists in going on through
the length of a poem of this kind without imparting a single clear idea.
Thus, in the second of those published by Jubinal, we are told how, “The
shadow of an egg carried the new year upon the bottom of a pot; two old
new combs made a ball to run the trot; when it came to paying the scot, I,
who never move myself, cried out, without saying a word, ‘Take the feather
of an ox, and clothe a wise fool with it.’”—

Li ombres d’un oef
Portoit l’an reneuf
Sur la fonz d’un pot;
Deus viez pinges neuf
Firent un estuef
Pour courre le trot;
Quant vint au paier l’escot,
Je, qui onques ne me muef,
M’escriai, si ne dis mot:—
‘Prenés la plume d’un buef,
S’en vestez un sage sot.’—Jubinal, Nouv. Rec., ii. 217.
The spirit of the goliards continued to exist long after the name had been
forgotten; and the mass of bitter satire which they had left behind them
against the whole papal system, and against the corruptions of the papal
church of the middle ages, were a perfect godsend to the reformers of the
sixteenth century, who could point to them triumphantly as irresistible
evidence in their favour. Such scholars as Flacius Illyricus, eagerly
examined the manuscripts which contained this goliardic poetry, and
printed it, chiefly as good and effective weapons in the great religious strife
which was then convulsing European society. To us, besides their interest as
literary compositions, they have also a historical value, for they introduce
us to a more intimate acquaintance with the character of the great mental
struggle for emancipation from mediæval darkness which extended
especially through the thirteenth century, and which was only overcome for
a while to begin more strongly and more successfully at a later period. They
display to us the gross ignorance, as well as the corruption of manners, of
the great mass of the mediæval clergy. Nothing can be more amusing than
the satire which some of these pieces throw on the character of monkish
Latin. I printed in the “Reliquæ Antiquæ,” under the title of “The Abbot of
Gloucester’s Feast,” a complaint supposed to issue from the mouth of one
of the common herd of the monks, against the selfishness of their superiors,
in which all the rules of Latin grammar are entirely set at defiance. The
abbot and prior of Gloucester, with their whole convent, are invited to a
feast, and on their arrival, “the abbot,” says the complainant, “goes to sit at
the top, and the prior next to him, but I stood always in the back place
among the low people.”

Abbas ire sede sursum,
Et prioris juxta ipsum;
Ego semper stavi dorsum
inter rascalilia.
The wine was served liberally to the prior and the abbot, but “nothing was
give to us poor folks—everything was for the rich.”
Vinum venit sanguinatis
Ad prioris et abbatis;
Nihil nobis paupertatis,
sed ad dives omnia.
When some dissatisfaction was displayed by the poor monks, which the
great men treated with contempt, “said the prior to the abbot, ‘They have
wine enough; will you give all our drink to the poor? What does their
poverty regard us? they have little, and that is enough, since they came
uninvited to our feast.’”
Prior dixit ad abbatis,
‘Ipsi habent vinum satis;
Vultis dare paupertatis
noster potus omnia?
Quid nos spectat paupertatis?
Postquam venit non vocatis
ad noster convivia.’
Thus through several pages this amusing poem goes on to describe the
gluttony and drunkenness of the abbot and prior, and the ill-treatment of
their inferiors. This composition belongs to the close of the thirteenth
century. A song very similar to it in character, but much shorter, is found in
a manuscript of the middle of the fifteenth century, and printed with the
other contents of this manuscript in a little volume issued by the Percy
Society.[58] The writer complains that the abbot and prior drunk good and
high-flavoured wine, while nothing but inferior stuff was usually given to
the convent; “But,” he says, “it is better to go drink good wine at the tavern,
where the wines are of the best quality, and money is the butler.”

Bonum vinum cum sapore
Bibit abbas cum priore;
Sed conventus de pejore
semper solet bibere.
Bonum vinum in taberna,
Ubi vina sunt valarna (for Falerna),
Ubi nummus est pincerna,
Ibi prodest bibere.

No. 111. Caricature upon the Jews at Norwich.

Partly out of the earnest, though playful, satire described in this chapter,
arose political satire, and at a later period political caricature. I have before
remarked that the period we call the middle ages was not that of political or
personal caricature, because it wanted that means of circulating quickly and
largely which is necessary for it. Yet, no doubt, men who could draw, did, in
the middle ages, sometimes amuse themselves in sketching caricatures,
which, in general, have perished, because nobody cared to preserve them;
but the fact of the existence of such works is proved by a very curious
example, which has been preserved, and which is copied in our cut No. 111.
It is a caricature on the Jews of Norwich, which some one of the clerks of
the king’s courts in the thirteenth century has drawn with a pen, on one of
the official rolls of the Pell office, where it has been preserved. Norwich, as
it is well known, was one of the principal seats of the Jews in England at
this early period, and Isaac of Norwich, the crowned Jew with three faces,

who towers over the other figures, was no doubt some personage of great
importance among them. Dagon, as a two-headed demon, occupies a tower,
which a party of demon knights is attacking. Beneath the figure of Isaac
there is a lady, whose name appears to be Avezarden, who has some relation
or other with a male figure named Nolle-Mokke, in which another demon,
named Colbif, is interfering. As this latter name is written in capital letters,
we may perhaps conclude that he is the most important personage in the
scene; but, without any knowledge of the circumstances to which it relates,
it would be in vain to attempt to explain this curious and rather elaborate
caricature.
Similar attempts at caricature, though less direct and
elaborate, are found in others of our national records.
One of these, pointed out to me by an excellent and
respected friend, the Rev. Lambert B. Larking, is
peculiarly interesting, as well as amusing. It belongs
to the Treasury of the Exchequer, and consists of two
volumes of vellum called Liber A and Liber B,
forming a register of treaties, marriages, and similar
documents of the reign of Edward I., which have
been very fully used by Rymer. The clerk who was
employed in writing it, seems to have been, like
many of these official clerks, somewhat of a wag,
and he has amused himself by drawing in the margin
figures of the inhabitants of the provinces of
Edward’s crown to which the documents referred. No. 112. An Irishman.
Some of these are evidently designed for caricature. Thus, the figure given
in our cut No. 112 was intended to represent an Irishman. One trait, at least,
in this caricature is well known from the description given by Giraldus
Cambrensis, who speaks with a sort of horror of the formidable axes which
the Irish were accustomed to carry about with them. In treating of the
manner in which Ireland ought to be governed when it had been entirely
reduced to subjection, he recommends that, “in the meantime, they ought
not to be allowed in time of peace, on any pretence or in any place, to use
that detestable instrument of destruction, which, by an ancient but accursed
custom, they constantly carry in their hands instead of a staff.” In a chapter
of his “Topography of Ireland,” Giraldus treats of this “ancient and wicked
custom” of always carrying in their hand an axe, instead of a staff, to the

danger of all persons who had any relations with them. Another Irishman,
from a drawing in the same manuscript, given in our cut No. 113, carries his
axe in the same threatening attitude. The costume of these figures answers
with sufficient accuracy to the description given by Giraldus Cambrensis.
The drawings exhibit more exactly than that writer’s description the “small
close-fitting hoods, hanging a cubit’s length (half-a-yard) below the
shoulders,” which, he tells us, they were accustomed to wear. This small
hood, with the flat cap attached to it, is shown better perhaps in the second
figure than in the first. The “breeches and hose of one piece, or hose and
breeches joined together,” are also exhibited here very distinctly, and appear
to be tied over the heel, but the feet are clearly naked, and evidently the use
of the “brogues” was not yet general among the Irish of the thirteenth
century.
If the Welshman of this period was somewhat
more scantily clothed than the Irishman, he had the
advantage of him, to judge by this manuscript, in
wearing at least one shoe. Our cut No. 114, taken
from it, represents a Welshman armed with bow
and arrow, whose clothing consists apparently only
of a plain tunic and a light mantle. This is quite in
accordance with the description by Giraldus
Cambrensis, who tells us that in all seasons their
dress was the same, and that, however severe the
weather, “they defended themselves from the cold
only by a thin cloak and tunic.” Giraldus says
nothing of the practice of the Welsh in wearing but
No. 113. Another Irishman.
one shoe, yet it is evident that at the time of this
record that was their practice, for in another figure of a Welshman, given in
our cut No. 115, we see the same peculiarity, and in both cases the shoe is
worn on the left foot. Giraldus merely says that the Welshmen in general,
when engaged in warfare, “either walked bare-footed, or made use of high
shoes, roughly made of untanned leather.” He describes them as armed
sometimes with bows and arrows, and sometimes with long spears; and
accordingly our first example of a Welshman from this manuscript is using
the bow, while the second carries the spear, which he apparently rests on the
single shoe of his left foot, while he brandishes a sword in his left hand.
Both our Welshmen present a singularly grotesque appearance.

No. 114. A Welsh Archer. No. 115. A Welshman with his Spear.

The Gascon is represented with more peaceful
attributes. Gascony was the country of
vineyards, from whence we drew our great
supply of wines, a very important article of
consumption in the middle ages. When the
official clerk who wrote this manuscript came
to documents relating to Gascony, his thoughts
wandered naturally enough to its rich
vineyards and the wine they supplied so
plentifully, and to which, according to old
reports, clerks seldom showed any dislike, and
No. 116. A Gascon at his Vine.
accordingly, in the sketch, which we copy in
our cut No. 116, we have a Gascon occupied diligently in pruning his vine-
tree. He, at least, wears two shoes, though his clothing is of the lightest
description. He is perhaps the vinitor of the mediæval documents on this
subject, a serf attached to the vineyard. Our second sketch, cut No. 117,
presents a more enlarged scene, and introduces us to the whole process of
making wine. First we see a man better clothed, with shoes (or boots) of
much superior make, and a hat on his head, carrying away the grapes from
the vineyard to the place where another man, with no clothing at all, is
treading out the juice in a large vat. This is still in some of the wine
countries the common method of extracting the juice from the grape.

Further to the left is the large cask in which the juice is put when turned into
wine.

No. 117. The Wine Manufacturer.

Satires on the people of particular localities were not uncommon during the
middle ages, because local rivalries and consequent local feuds prevailed
everywhere. The records of such feuds were naturally of a temporary
character, and perished when the feuds and rivalries themselves ceased to
exist, but a few curious satires of this kind have been preserved. A monk of
Peterborough, who lived late in the twelfth or early in the thirteenth century,
and for some reason or other nourished an unfriendly feeling to the people
of Norfolk, gave vent to his hostility in a short Latin poem in what we may
call goliardic verse. He begins by abusing the county itself, which, he says,
was as bad and unfruitful as its inhabitants were vile; and he suggests that
the evil one, when he fled from the anger of the Almighty, had passed
through it and left his pollution upon it. Among other anecdotes of the
simplicity and folly of the people of this county, which closely resemble the
stories of the wise men of Gotham of a later date, he informs us that one
day the peasantry of one district were so grieved by the oppressions of their
feudal lord, that they subscribed together and bought their freedom, which
he secured to them by formal deed, ratified with a ponderous seal. They
adjourned to the tavern, and celebrated their deliverance by feasting and
drinking until night came on, and then, for want of a candle, they agreed to
burn the wax of the seal. Next day their former lord, informed of what had
taken place, brought them before a court, where the deed was judged to be
void for want of the seal, and they lost all their money, were reduced to
their old position of slavery, and treated worse than ever. Other stories, still
more ridiculous, are told of these old Norfolkians, but few of them are

worth repeating. Another monk, apparently, who calls himself John de St.
Omer, took up the cudgels for the people of Norfolk, and replied to the
Peterborough satirist in similar language.[59] I have printed in another
collection,[60] a satirical poem against the people of a place called Stockton
(perhaps Stockton-on-Tees in Durham), by the monk of a monastic house,
of which they were serfs. It appeared that they had risen against the tyranny
of their lord, but had been unsuccessful in defending their cause in a court
of law, and the ecclesiastical satirist exults over their defeat in a very
uncharitable tone. There will be found in the “Reliquæ Antiquæ,”[61] a very
curious satire in Latin prose directed against the inhabitants of Rochester,
although it is in truth aimed against Englishmen in general, and is entitled
in the manuscript, which is of the fourteenth century, “Proprietates
Anglicorum” (the Peculiarities of Englishmen). In the first place, we are
told, that the people of Rochester had tails, and the question is discussed,
very scholastically, what species of animals these Rocestrians were. We are
then told that the cause of their deformity arose from the insolent manner in
which they treated St. Augustine, when he came to preach the Gospel to the
heathen English. After visiting many parts of England, the saint came to
Rochester, where the people, instead of listening to him, hooted at him
through the streets, and, in derision, attached tails of pigs and calves to his
vestments, and so turned him out of the city. The vengeance of Heaven
came upon them, and all who inhabited the city and the country round it,
and their descendants after them, were condemned to bear tails exactly like
those of pigs. This story of the tails was not an invention of the author of
the satire, but was a popular legend connected with the history of St.
Augustine’s preaching, though the scene of the legend was laid in
Dorsetshire. The writer of this singular composition goes on to describe the
people of Rochester as seducers of other people, as men without gratitude,
and as traitors. He proceeds to show that Rochester being situated in
England, its vices had tainted the whole nation, and he illustrates the
baseness of the English character by a number of anecdotes of worse than
doubtful authenticity. It is, in fact, a satire on the English composed in
France, and leads us into the domains of political satire.
Political satire in the middle ages appeared chiefly in the form of poetry and
song, and it was especially in England that it flourished, a sure sign that
there was in our country a more advanced feeling of popular independence,
and greater freedom of speech, than in France or Germany.[62] M. Leroux de

Lincy, who undertook to make a collection of this poetry for France, found
so little during the mediæval period that came under the character of
political, that he was obliged to substitute the word “historical” in the title
of his book.[63] Where feudalism was supreme, indeed, the songs which
arose out of private or public strife, which then were almost inseparable
from society, contained no political sentiment, but consisted chiefly of
personal attacks on the opponents of those who employed them. Such are
the four short songs written in the time of the revolt of the French during
the minority of St. Louis, which commenced in 1226; they are all of a
political character which M. Leroux de Lincy has been able to collect
previous to the year 1270, and they consist merely of personal taunts
against the courtiers by the dissatisfied barons who were out of power. We
trace a similar feeling in some of the popular records of our baronial wars
of the reign of Henry III., especially in a song, in the baronial language
(Anglo-Norman), preserved in a small roll of vellum, which appears to have
belonged to the minstrel who chanted it in the halls of the partisans of
Simon de Montfort. The fragment which remains consists of stanzas in
praise of the leaders of the popular party, and in reproach of their
opponents. Thus of Roger de Clifford, one of earl Simon’s friends, we are
told that “the good Roger de Clifford behaved like a noble baron, and
exercised great justice; he suffered none, either small or great, or secretly or
openly, to do any wrong.”
Et de Cliffort ly bon Roger
Se contint cum noble ber,
Si fu de grant justice;
Ne suffri pas petit ne grant,
Ne arère ne par devant,
Fere nul mesprise.
On the other hand, one of Montfort’s opponents, the bishop of Hereford, is
treated rather contemptuously. We are told that he “learnt well that the earl
was strong when he took the matter in hand; before that he (the bishop) was
very fierce, and thought to eat up all the English; but now he is reduced to
straits.”

Ly eveske de Herefort
Sout bien que ly quens fu fort,
Kant il prist l’affère;
Devant ce esteit mult fer,
Les Englais quida touz manger,
Mès ore ne set que fere.
This bishop was Peter de Aigueblanche, one of the foreign favourites, who
had been intruded into the see of Hereford, to the exclusion of a better man,
and had been an oppressor of those who were under his rule. The barons
seized him, threw him into prison, and plundered his possessions, and at the
time this song was written, he was suffering under the imprisonment which
appears to have shortened his life.
The universities and the clerical body in general were deeply involved in
these political movements of the thirteenth century; and our earliest
political songs now known are composed in Latin, and in that form and
style of verse which seems to have been peculiar to the goliards, and which
I venture to call goliardic. Such is a song against the three bishops who
supported king John in his quarrel with the pope about the presentation to
the see of Canterbury, printed in my Political Songs. Such, too, is the song
of the Welsh, and one or two others, in the same volume. And such, above
all, is that remarkable Latin poem in which a partisan of the barons,
immediately after the victory at Lewes, set forth the political tenets of his
party, and gave the principles of English liberty nearly the same broad basis
on which they stand at the present. It is an evidence of the extent to which
these principles were now acknowledged, that in this great baronial struggle
our political songs began to be written in the English language, an
acknowledgment that they concerned the whole English public.
We trace little of this class of literature during the reign of Edward I.; but,
when the popular feelings became turbulent again under the reign of his son
and successor, political songs became more abundant, and their satire was
directed more even than formerly against measures and principles, and was
less an instrument of mere personal abuse. One satirical poem of this
period, which I had printed from an imperfect copy in a manuscript at
Edinburgh, but of which a more complete copy was subsequently found in a
manuscript in the library of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge,[64] is extremely
curious as being the earliest satire of this kind written in English that we

possess. It appears to have been written in the year 1320. The writer of this
poem begins by telling us that his object is to explain the cause of the war,
ruin, and manslaughter which then prevailed throughout the land, and why
the poor were suffering from hunger and want, the cattle perished in the
field, and the corn was dear. These he ascribes to the increasing wickedness
of all orders of society. To begin with the church, Rome was the head of all
corruptions, at the papal court false-hood and treachery only reigned, and
the door of the pope’s palace was shut against truth. During the twelfth and
following centuries these complaints, in terms more or less forcible, against
the corruptions of Rome, are continually repeated, and show that the evil
must have been one under which everybody felt oppressed. The old charge
of Romish simony is repeated in this poem in very strong terms. “The
clerk’s voice shall be little heard at the court of Rome, were he ever so
good, unless he bring silver with him; though he were the holiest man that
ever was born, unless he bring gold or silver, all his time and anxiety are
lost. Alas! why love they so much that which is perishable?”
Voys of clerk shall lytyl be heard at the court of Rome,
Were he never so gode a clerk, without silver and he come;
Though he were the holyst man that ever yet was ibore,
But he bryng gold or sylver, al hys while is forlore
And his thowght.
Allas! whi love thei that so much that schal turne to nowght?
When, on the contrary, a wicked man presented himself at the pope’s court,
he had only to carry plenty of money thither, and all went well with him.
According to our satirist, the bishops were “fools,” and the other dignitaries
and officials of the church were influenced chiefly by the love of money
and self-indulgence. The parson began humbly, when he first obtained his
benefice, but no sooner had he gathered money together, than he took “a
wenche” to live with him as his wife, and rode a hunting with hawks and
hounds like a gentleman. The priests were men with no learning, who
preached by rote what they neither understood nor appreciated. “Truely,” he
says, “it fares by our unlearned priests as by a jay in a cage, who curses
himself: he speaks good English, but he knows not what it means. No more
does an unlearned priest know his gospel that he reads daily. An unlearned
priest, then, is no better than a jay.”

Certes at so hyt fareth by a prest that is lewed,
As by a jay in a cage that hymself hath beshrewed:
Gode Englysh he speketh, but he not never what.
No more wot a lewed prest hys gospel wat he rat
By day.
Than is a lewed prest no better than a jay.
Abbots and priors were remarkable chiefly for their pride and luxury, and
the monks naturally followed their examples. Thus was religion debased
everywhere. The character of the physician is treated with equal severity,
and his various tricks to obtain money are amusingly described. In this
manner the songster presents to view the failings of the various orders of
lay society also, the selfishness and oppressive bearing of the knights and
aristocracy, and their extravagance in dress and living, the neglect of justice,
the ill-management of the wars, the weight of taxation, and all the other
evils which then afflicted the state. This poem marks a period in our social
history, and led the way to that larger work of the same character, which
came about thirty years later, the well-known “Visions of Piers
Ploughman,”[65] one of the most remarkable satires, as well as one of the
most remarkable poems, in the English language.
We will do no more than glance at the further progress of political satire
which had now taken a permanent footing in English literature. We see less
of it during the reign of Edward III., the greater part of which was occupied
with foreign wars and triumphs, but there appeared towards the close of his
reign, a very remarkable satire, which I have printed in my “Political Poems
and Songs.” It is written in Latin, and consists of a pretended prophecy in
verse by an inspired monk named John of Bridlington, with a mock
commentary in prose—in fact, a parody on the commentaries in which the
scholastics of that age displayed their learning, but in this case the
commentary contains a bold though to us rather obscure criticism on the
whole policy of Edward’s reign. The reign of Richard II. was convulsed by
the great struggle for religious reform, by the insurrections of the lower
orders, and by the ambition and feuds of the nobles, and produced a vast
quantity of political and religious satire, both in prose and verse, but
especially the latter. We must not overlook our great poet Chaucer, as one of
the powerful satirists of this period. Political song next makes itself heard
loudly in the wars of the Roses. It was the last struggle of feudalism in

England, and the character of the song had fallen back to its earlier
characteristics, in which all patriotic feelings were abandoned to make place
for personal hatred.

CHAPTER XI.
MINSTRELSY A SUBJECT OF BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE.—CHARACTER
OF THE MINSTRELS.—THEIR JOKES UPON THEMSELVES AND UPON ONE
ANOTHER.—VARIOUS MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS REPRESENTED IN THE
SCULPTURES OF THE MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS.—SIR MATTHEW GOURNAY
AND THE KING OF PORTUGAL.—DISCREDIT OF THE TABOR AND
BAGPIPES.—MERMAIDS.

One of the principal classes of the satirists of the middle ages, the minstrels,
or jougleurs, were far from being unamenable to satire themselves. They
belonged generally to a low class of the population, one that was hardly
acknowledged by the law, which merely administered to the pleasures and
amusements of others, and, though sometimes liberally rewarded, they were
objects rather of contempt than of respect. Of course there were minstrels
belonging to a class more respectable than the others, but these were
comparatively few; and the ordinary minstrel seems to have been simply an
unprincipled vagabond, who hardly possessed any settled resting-place,
who wandered about from place to place, and was not too nice as to the
means by which he gained his living—perhaps fairly represented by the
street minstrel, or mountebank, of the present day. One of his talents was
that of mocking and ridiculing others, and it is not to be wondered at,
therefore, if he sometimes became an object of mockery and ridicule
himself. One of the well-known minstrels of the thirteenth century,
Rutebeuf, was, like many of his fellows, a poet also, and he has left several
short pieces of verse descriptive of himself and of his own mode of life. In
one of these he complains of his poverty, and tells us that the world had in
his time—the reign of St. Louis—become so degenerate, that few people
gave anything to the unfortunate minstrel. According to his own account, he
was without food, and in a fair way towards starvation, exposed to the cold
without sufficient clothing, and with nothing but straw for his bed.

Je touz de froit, de fain baaille,
Dont je suis mors et maubailliz,
Je suis sanz coutes et sans liz;
N’a si povre jusqu’à Senliz.
Sire, si ne sai quel part aille;
Mes costeiz connoit le pailliz,
Et liz de paille n’est pas liz,
Et en mon lit n’a fors la paille.
—Œuvres de Rutebeuf, vol. i. p. 3.
In another poem, Rutebeuf laments that he has rendered his condition still
more miserable by marrying, when he had not wherewith to keep a wife and
family. In a third, he complains that in the midst of his poverty, his wife has
brought him a child to increase his domestic expenses, while his horse, on
which he was accustomed to travel to places where he might exercise his
profession, had broken its leg, and his nurse was dunning him for money. In
addition to all these causes of grief, he had lost the use of one of his eyes.
Or a d’enfant géu ma fame;
Mon cheval a brisié la jame
A une lice;
Or veut de l’argent ma norrice,
Qui m’en destraint et me pélice,
For l’enfant pestre.
Throughout his complaint, although he laments over the decline of liberality
among his contemporaries, he nevertheless turns his poverty into a joke. In
several other pieces of verse he speaks in the same way, half joking and half
lamenting over his condition, and he does not conceal that the love of
gambling was one of the causes of it. “The dice,” he says, “have stripped
me entirely of my robe; the dice watch and spy me; it is these which kill
me; they assault and ruin me, to my grief.”
Li dé que li détier ont fet,
M’ont de ma robe tout desfet;
Li dé m’ocient.
Li dé m’aguetent et espient;
Li dé m’assaillent et dessient,
Ce poise moi.—Ib., vol. i. p. 27.

And elsewhere he intimates that what the minstrels sometimes gained from
the lavish generosity of their hearers, soon passed away at the tavern in dice
and drinking.
One of Rutebeuf’s contemporaries in the same profession, Colin Muset,
indulges in similar complaints, and speaks bitterly of the want of generosity
displayed by the great barons of his time. In addressing one of them who
had treated him ungenerously, he says, “Sir Count, I have fiddled before
you in your hostel, and you neither gave me a gift, nor paid me my wages.
It is discreditable behaviour. By the duty I owe to St. Mary, I cannot
continue in your service at this rate. My purse is ill furnished, and my
wallet is empty.”
Sire quens, j’ai vielé
Devant vos en vostre ostel;
Si ne m’avez riens donné,
Ne mes gages acquitez,
C’est vilanie.
Foi que doi sainte Marie,
Ensi ne vos sieurré-je mie.
M’aumosnière est mal garnie,
Et ma male mal farsie.
He proceeds to state that when he went home to his wife (for Colin Muset
also was a married minstrel), he was ill received if his purse and wallet
were empty; but it was very different when they were full. His wife then
sprang forward and threw her arms round his neck; she took his wallet from
his horse with alacrity, while his lad conducted the animal cheerfully to the
stable, and his maiden killed a couple of capons, and prepared them with
piquant sauce. His daughter brought a comb for his hair. “Then,” he
exclaims, “I am master in my own house.”

Ma fame va destroser
Ma male sans demorer;
Mon garçon va abuvrer
Men cheval et conreer;
Ma pucele va tuer
Deux chapons por deporter
A la sause aillie.
Ma fille m’aporte un pigne
En sa main par cortoisie.
Lors sui de mon ostel sire.
When the minstrels could thus joke upon themselves, we need not be
surprised if they satirised one another. In a poem of the thirteenth century,
entitled “Les deux Troveors Ribauz,” two minstrels are introduced on the
stage abusing and insulting one another, and while indulging in mutual
accusations of ignorance in their art, they display their ignorance at the
same time by misquoting the titles of the poems which they profess to be
able to recite. One of them boasts of the variety of instruments on which he
could perform:—
Je suis jugleres de viele,
Si sai de muse et frestele,
Et de harpes et de chifonie,
De la gigue, de l’armonie,
De l’salteire, et en la rote
Sai-ge bien chanter une note.
It appears, however, that among all these instruments, the viol, or fiddle,
was the one most generally in use.
The mediæval monuments of art abound with burlesques
and satires on the minstrels, whose instruments of music
are placed in the hands sometimes of monsters, and at
others in those of animals of a not very refined character.
Our cut No. 118 is taken from a manuscript in the British
Museum (MS. Cotton, Domitian A. ii.), and represents a
female minstrel playing on the fiddle; she has the upper
part of a lady, and the lower parts of a mare, a combination
No. 118. A
which appears to have been rather familiar to the Charming

imagination of the mediæval artists. In our cut No. 119, Fiddler.
which is taken from a copy made by Carter of one of the misereres in Ely
Cathedral, it is not quite clear whether the performer on the fiddle be a
monster or merely a cripple; but perhaps the latter was intended. The
instrument, too, assumes a rather singular form. Our cut No. 120, also taken
from Carter, was furnished by a sculpture in the church of St. John, at
Cirencester, and represents a man performing on an instrument rather
closely resembling the modern hurdy-gurdy, which is evidently played by
turning a handle, and the music is produced by striking wires or strings
inside. The face is evidently intended to be that of a jovial companion.

No. 119. A Crippled Minstrel.

No. 120. The Hurdy-Gurdy.

Gluttony was an especial characteristic of that class of society to which the
minstrel belonged, and perhaps this was the idea intended to be conveyed in
the next picture, No. 121, taken from one of the stalls in Winchester
Cathedral, in which a pig is performing on the fiddle, and appears to be
accompanied by a juvenile of the same species of animal. One of the same
stalls, copied in our cut No. 122, represents a sow performing on another
sort of musical instrument, which is not at all uncommon in mediæval
delineations. It is the double pipe or flute, which was evidently borrowed
from the ancients. Minstrelsy was the usual accompaniment of the
mediæval meal, and perhaps this picture is intended to be a burlesque on
that circumstance, as the mother is playing to her brood while they are
feeding. They all seem to listen quietly, except one, who is evidently much
more affected by the music than his companions. The same instrument is
placed in the hands of a rather jolly-looking female in one of the sculptures
of St. John’s Church in Cirencester, copied in our cut No. 123.

No. 121. A Swinish Minstrel.

No. 122. A Musical Mother.

No. 123. The Double Flute.

Although this instrument is rather frequently represented in mediæval
works of art, we have no account of or allusion to it in mediæval writers;
and perhaps it was not held in very high estimation, and was used only by a
low class of performers. As in many other things, the employment of
particular musical instruments was guided, no doubt, by fashion, new ones
coming in as old ones went out. Such was the case with the instrument
which is named in one of the above extracts, and in some other mediæval
writers, a chiffonie, and which has been supposed to be the dulcimer, that
had fallen into discredit in the fourteenth century. This instrument is
introduced in a story which is found in Cuvelier’s metrical history of the
celebrated warrior Bertrand du Gueselin. In the course of the war for the
expulsion of Pedro the Cruel from the throne of Castile, an English knight,
Sir Matthew Gournay, was sent as a special ambassador to the court of
Portugal. The Portuguese monarch had in his service two minstrels whose
performances he vaunted greatly, and on whom he let great store, and he
insisted on their performing in the presence of the new ambassador. It
turned out that they played on the instrument just mentioned, and Sir
Matthew Gournay could not refrain from laughing at the performance.
When the king pressed him to give his opinion, he said, with more regard

for truth than politeness, “in France and Normandy, the instruments your
minstrels play upon are regarded with contempt, and are only in use among
beggars and blind people, so that they are popularly called beggar’s
instruments.” The king, we are told, took great offence at the bluntness of
his English guest.
The fiddle itself appears at this time to have been gradually sinking in
credit, and the poets complained that a degraded taste for more vulgar
musical instruments was introducing itself. Among these we may mention
especially the pipe and tabor. The French antiquary, M. Jubinal, in a very
valuable collection of early popular poetry, published under the title of
“Jongleurs et Trouvères,” has printed a curious poem of the thirteenth or
fourteenth century, intended as a protest against the use of the tabor and the
bagpipes, which he characterises as properly the musical instruments of the
peasantry. Yet people then, he says, were becoming so besotted on such
instruments, that they introduced them in places where better minstrelsy
would be more suitable. The writer thinks that the introduction of so vulgar
an instrument as the tabor into grand festivals could be looked upon in no
other light than as one of the signs which might be expected to be the
precursors of the coming of Antichrist. “If such people are to come to grand
festivals as carry a bushel [i.e. a tabor made in the form of a bushel
measure, on the end of which they beat], and make such a terrible noise, it
would seem that Antichrist must now be being born; people ought to break
the head of each of them with a staff.”
Déussent itiels genz venir à bele feste
Qui portent un boissel, qui mainent tel tempeste,
Il samble que Antecrist doie maintenant nestre;
L’en duroit d’un baston chascun brisier la teste.
This satirist adds, as a proof of the contempt in which the Virgin Mary held
such instruments, that she never loved a tabor, or consented to hear one, and
that no tabor was introduced among the minstrelsy at her espousals. “The
gentle mother of God,” he says, “loved the sound of the fiddle,” and he goes
on to prove her partiality for that instrument by citing some of her miracles.

Onques le mère Dieu, qui est virge honorée,
Et est avoec les angles hautement coronée,
N’ama onques tabour, ne point ne li agrée,
N’onques tabour n’i ot quant el fu espousée.
La douce mère Dieu ama son de viele.

No. 124. The Tabor, or Drum.

No. 125. Bruin turned Piper.

The artist who carved the curious stalls in Henry VII.’s Chapel at
Westminster, seems to have entered fully into the spirit displayed by this
satirist, for in one of them, represented in our cut No. 124, he has
introduced a masked demon playing on the tabor, with an expression
apparently of derision. This tabor presents much the form of a bushel
measure, or rather, perhaps, of a modern drum. It may be remarked that the
drum is, in fact, the same instrument as the tabor, or, at least, is derived
from it, and they were called by the same names, tabor or tambour. The
English name drum, which has equivalents in the later forms of the
Teutonic dialects, perhaps means simply something which makes a noise,
and is not, as far as I know, met with before the sixteenth century. Another
carving of the same series of stalls at Westminster, copied in our cut No.
125, represents a tame bear playing on the bagpipes. This is perhaps
intended to be at the same time a satire on the instrument itself, and upon
the strange exhibitions of animals domesticated and taught various singular
performances, which were then so popular.

No. 126. Royal Minstrelsy.

In our cut No. 126 we come to the fiddle again, which long sustained its
place in the highest rank of musical instruments. It is taken from one of the
sculptures on the porch of the principal entrance to the Cathedral of Lyons
in France, and represents a mermaid with her child, listening to the music of
the fiddle. She wears a crown, and is intended, no doubt, to be one of the
queens of the sea, and the introduction of the fiddle under such
circumstances can leave no doubt how highly it was esteemed.
The mermaid is a creature of the imagination, which appears to have been
at all times a favourite object of poetry and legend. It holds an important
place in the mediæval bestiaries, or popular treatises on natural history, and
it has only been expelled from the domains of science at a comparatively
recent date. It still retains its place in popular legends of our sea-coasts, and
more especially in the remoter parts of our islands. The stories of the
merrow, or Irish fairy, hold a prominent place among my late friend Crofton
Croker’s “Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland.” The mermaid is also
introduced not unfrequently in mediæval sculpture and carving. Our cut No.
127, representing a mermaid and a merman, is copied from one of the stalls
of Winchester Cathedral. The usual attributes of the mermaid are a looking-
glass and comb, by the aid of which she is dressing her hair; but here she

holds the comb alone. Her companion, the male, holds a fish, which he
appears to have just caught, in his hand.

No. 127. Mermaids.

While, after the fifteenth century the profession of the minstrel became
entirely degraded, and he was looked upon more than ever as a rogue and
vagabond, the fiddle accompanied him, and it long remained, as it still
remains in Ireland, the favourite instrument of the peasantry. The blind
fiddler, even at the present day, is not unknown in our rural districts. It has
always been in England the favourite instrument of minstrelsy.

CHAPTER XII.
THE COURT FOOL.—THE NORMANS AND THEIR GABS.—EARLY HISTORY OF
COURT FOOLS.—THEIR COSTUME.—CARVINGS IN THE CORNISH
CHURCHES.—THE BURLESQUE SOCIETIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.—THE
FEASTS OF ASSES, AND OF FOOLS.—THEIR LICENCE.—THE LEADEN
MONEY OF THE FOOLS.—THE BISHOP’S BLESSING.

From the employment of minstrels attached to the family, probably arose
another and well-known character of later times, the court fool, who took
the place of satirist in the great households. I do not consider what we
understand by the court fool to be a character of any great antiquity.
It is somewhat doubtful whether what we call a jest, was really appreciated
in the middle ages. Puns seem to have been considered as elegant figures of
speech in literary composition, and we rarely meet with anything like a
quick and clever repartee. In the earlier ages, when a party of warriors
would be merry, their mirth appears to have consisted usually in ridiculous
boasts, or in rude remarks, or in sneers at enemies or opponents. These jests
were termed by the French and Normans gabs (gabæ, in mediæval Latin), a
word supposed to have been derived from the classical Latin word cavilla, a
mock or taunt; and a short poem in Anglo-Norman has been preserved
which furnishes a curious illustration of the meaning attached to it in the
twelfth century. This poem relates how Charlemagne, piqued by the taunts
of his empress on the superiority of Hugh the Great, emperor of
Constantinople, went to Constantinople, accompanied by his douze pairs
and a thousand knights, to verify the truth of his wife’s story. They
proceeded first to Jerusalem, where, when Charlemagne and his twelve
peers entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they looked so handsome
and majestic, that they were taken at first for Christ and his twelve apostles,
but the mystery was soon cleared up, and they were treated by the patriarch
with great hospitality during four months. They then continued their
progress till they reached Constantinople, where they were equally well
received by the emperor Hugo. At night the emperor placed his guests in a
chamber furnished with thirteen splendid beds, one in the middle of the
room, and the other twelve distributed around it, and illuminated by a large

carbuncle, which gave a light as bright as that of day. When Hugh left them
in their quarters for the night, he lent them wine and whatever was
necessary to make them comfortable; and, when alone, they proceeded to
amuse themselves with gabs, or jokes, each being expected to say his joke
in his turn. Charlemagne took the lead, and boasted that if the emperor
Hugh would place before him his strongest “bachelor,” in full armour, and
mounted on his good steed, he would, with one blow of his sword, cut him
through from the head downwards, and through the saddle and horse, and
that the sword should, after all this, sink into the ground to the handle.
Charlemagne then called upon Roland for his gab, who boasted that his
breath was so strong, that if the emperor Hugh would lend him his horn, he
would take it out into the fields and blow it with such force, that the wind
and noise of it would shake down the whole city of Constantinople. Oliver,
whose turn came next, boasted of exploits of another description if he were
left alone with the beautiful princess, Hugh’s daughter. The rest of the peers
indulged in similar boasts, and when the gabs had gone round, they went to
sleep. Now the emperor of Constantinople had very cunningly, and rather
treacherously, made a hole through the wall, by which all that passed inside
could be seen and heard, and he had placed a spy on the outside, who gave
a full account of the conversation of the distinguished guests to his imperial
master. Next morning Hugh called his guests before him, told them what he
had heard by his spy, and declared that each of them should perform his
boast, or, if he failed, be put to death. Charlemagne expostulated, and
represented that it was the custom in France when people retired for the
night to amuse themselves in that manner. “Such is the custom in France,”
he said, “at Paris, and at Chartres, when the French are in bed they amuse
themselves and make jokes, and say things both of wisdom and of folly.”
Si est tel custume en France, à Paris e à Cartres,
Quand Franceis sunt culchiez, que se giuunt e gabent,
E si dient ambure e saver e folage.
But Charlemagne expostulated in vain, and they were only saved from the
consequence of their imprudence by the intervention of so many miracles
from above.[66]
In such trials of skill as this, an individual must continually have arisen who
excelled in some at least of the qualities needful for raising mirth and
making him a good companion, by showing himself more brilliant in wit, or

more biting in sarcasms, or more impudent in his jokes, and he would thus
become the favourite mirth-maker of the court, the boon companion of the
chieftain and his followers in their hours of relaxation. We find such an
individual not unusually introduced in the early romances and in the
mythology of nations, and he sometimes unites the character of court orator
with the other. Such a personage was the Sir Kay of the cycle of the
romances of king Arthur. I have remarked in a former chapter that Hunferth,
in the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf, is described as holding a somewhat
similar position at the court of king Hrothgar. To go farther back in the
mythology of our forefathers, the Loki of Scandinavian fable appears
sometimes to have performed a similar character in the assembly of his
fellow deities; and we know that, among the Greeks, Homer on one
occasion introduces Vulcan acting the part of joker (γελωτοποιὸς) to the
gods of Olympus. But all these have no relationship whatever to the court-
fool of modern times.
The German writer Flögel, in his “History of Court Fools,”[67] has thrown
this subject into much confusion by introducing a great mass of irrelevant
matter; and those who have since compiled from Flögel, have made the
confusion still greater. Much of this confusion has arisen from the
misunderstanding and confounding of names and terms. The mimus, the
joculator, the ministrel, or whatever name this class of society went by, was
not in any respects identical with what we understand by a court fool, nor
does any such character as the latter appear in the feudal household before
the fourteenth century, as far as we are acquainted with the social manners
and customs of the olden time. The vast extent of the early French romans
de geste, or Carlovingian romances, which are filled with pictures of courts
both of princes and barons, in which the court fool must have been
introduced had he been known at the time they were composed, that is, in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, contains, I believe, no trace of such
personage; and the same may be said of the numerous other romances,
fabliaux, and in fact all the literature of that period, one so rich in works
illustrative of contemporary manners in their most minute detail. From
these facts I conclude that the single brief charter published by M. Rigollot
from a manuscript in the Imperial Library in Paris, is either misunderstood
or it presents a very exceptional case. By this charter, John, king of
England, grants to his follus, William Picol, or Piculph (as he is called at the
close of the document), an estate in Normandy named in the document Fons

Ossanæ (Menil-Ozenne in Mortain), with all its appurtenances, “to have
and to hold, to him and to his heirs, by doing there-for to us once a year the
service of one follus, as long as he lives; and after his death his heirs shall
hold it of us, by the service of one pair of gilt spurs to be rendered annually
to us.”[68] The service (servitium) here enjoined means the annual payment
of the obligation of the feudal tenure, and therefore if follus is to be taken as
signifying “a fool,” it only means that Picol was to perform that character
on one occasion in the course of the year. In this case, he may have been
some fool whom king John had taken into his special favour; but it certainly
is no proof that the practice of keeping court fools then existed. It is not
improbable that this practice was first introduced in Germany, for Flögel
speaks, though rather doubtfully, of one who was kept at the court of the
emperor Rudolph I. (of Hapsburg), whose reign lasted from 1273 to 1292. It
is more certain, however, that the kings of France possessed court fools
before the middle of the fourteenth century, and from this time anecdotes
relating to them begin to be common. One of the earliest and most curious
of these anecdotes, if it be true, relates to the celebrated victory of Sluys
gained over the French fleet by our king Edward III. in the year 1340. It is
said that no one dared to announce this disaster to the French king, Philippe
VI., until a court fool undertook the task. Entering the king’s chamber, he
continued muttering to himself, but loud enough to be heard, “Those
cowardly English! the chicken-hearted Britons!” “How so, cousin?” the
king inquired. “Why,” replied the fool, “because they have not courage
enough to jump into the sea, like your French soldiers, who went over
headlong from their ships, leaving those to the enemy who showed no
inclination to follow them.” Philippe thus became aware of the full extent of
his calamity. The institution of the court fool was carried to its greatest
degree of perfection during the fifteenth century; it only expired in the age
of Louis XIV.
It was apparently with the court fool that the costume was introduced which
has ever since been considered as the characteristic mark of folly. Some
parts of this costume, at least, appear to have been borrowed from an earlier
date. The gelotopœi of the Greeks, and the mimi and moriones of the
Romans, shaved their heads; but the court fools perhaps adopted this
fashion as a satire upon the clergy and monks. Some writers professed to
doubt whether the fools borrowed from the monks, or the monks from the
fools; and Cornelius Agrippa, in his treatise on the Vanity of Sciences,

remarks that the monks had their heads “all shaven like fools” (raso toto
capite ut fatui). The cowl, also, was perhaps adopted in derision of the
monks, but it was distinguished by the addition of a pair of asses’ ears, or
by a cock’s head and comb, which formed its termination above, or by both.
The court fool was also furnished with a staff or club, which became
eventually his bauble. The bells were another necessary article in the
equipment of a court fool, perhaps also intended as a satire on the custom of
wearing small bells in the dress, which prevailed largely during the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially among people who were fond
of childish ostentation. The fool wore also a party-coloured, or motley,
garment, probably with the same aim—that of satirising one of the
ridiculous fashions of the fourteenth century.

No. 127a. Court Fools.

It is in the fifteenth century that we first meet with the fool in full costume
in the illuminations or manuscripts, and towards the end of the century this

costume appears continually in engravings. It is also met with at this time
among the sculptures of buildings and the carvings of wood-work. The two
very interesting examples given in our cut No. 127a are taken from carvings
of the fifteenth century, in the church of St. Levan, in Cornwall, near the
Land’s End. They represent the court fool in two varieties of costume; in the
first, the fool’s cowl, or cap, ends in the cock’s head; in the other, it is fitted
with asses’ ears. There are variations also in other parts of the dress; for the
second only has bells to his sleeves, and the first carries a singularly formed
staff, which may perhaps be intended for a strap or belt, with a buckle at the
end; while the other has a ladle in his hand. As one possesses a beard, and
presents marks of age in his countenance, while the other is beardless and
youthful, we may consider the pair as an old fool and a young fool.

No. 128. A Fool and a Grimace-maker.

The Cornish churches are rather celebrated for their early carved wood-
work, chiefly of the fifteenth century, of which two examples are given in
our cut, No. 128, taken from bench pannels in the church of St. Mullion, on
the Cornish coast, a little to the north of the Lizard Point. The first has bells
hanging to the sleeves, and is no doubt intended to represent folly in some
form; the other appears to be intended for the head of a woman making
grimaces.[69]
The fool had long been a character among the people before he became a
court fool, for Folly—or, as she was then called, “Mother Folly”—was one
of the favourite objects of popular worship in the middle ages, and, where
that worship sprang up spontaneously among the people, it grew with more
energy, and presented more hearty joyousness and bolder satire than under
the patronage of the great. Our forefathers in those times were accustomed
to form themselves into associations or societies of a mirthful character,
parodies of those of a more serious description, especially ecclesiastical,
and elected as their officers mock popes, cardinals, archbishops and
bishops, kings, &c They held periodical festivals, riotous and licentious
carnivals, which were admitted into the churches, and even taken under the
especial patronage of the clergy, under such titles as “the feast of fools,”
“the feast of the ass,” “the feast of the innocents,” and the like. There was
hardly a Continental town of any account which had not its “company of

fools,” with its mock ordinances and mock ceremonies. In our own island
we had our abbots of misrule and of unreason. At their public festivals
satirical songs were sung and satirical masks and dresses were worn; and in
many of them, especially at a later date, brief satirical dramas were acted.
These satires assumed much of the functions of modern caricature; the
caricature of the pictorial representations, which were mostly permanent
monuments and destined for future generations, was naturally general in its
character, but in the representations of which I am speaking, which were
temporary, and designed to excite the mirth of the moment, it became
personal, and, often, even political, and it was constantly directed against
the ecclesiastical order. The scandal of the day furnished it with abundant
materials. A fragment of one of their songs of an early date, sung at one of
these “feasts” at Rouen, has been preserved, and contains the following
lines, written in Latin and French:—

De asino bono nostro,
Meliori et optimo,
Debemus faire fête.
En revenant de Gravinaria,
Un gros chardon reperit in via,
Il lui coupa la tête.

Vir monachus in mense Julio
Egressus est e monasterio,
C’est dom de la Bucaille;
Egressus est sine licentia,
Pour aller voir dona Venissia,
Et faire la ripaille.

TRANSLATION.

For our good ass,
The better and the best,
We ought to rejoice.
In returning from Gravinière,
A great thistle he found in the way,
He cut off its head.

A monk in the month of July
Went out of his monastery,
It is dom de la Bucaille;
He went out without license,
To pay a visit to the dame de Venisse,
And make jovial cheer.

It appears that De la Bucaille was the prior of the abbey of St. Taurin, at
Rouen, and that the dame de Venisse was prioress of St. Saviour, and these
lines, no doubt, commemorate some great scandal of the day relating to the
private relations between these two individuals.
These mock religious ceremonies are supposed to have been derived from
the Roman Saturnalia; they were evidently of great antiquity in the
mediæval church, and were most prevalent in France and Italy. Under the
name of “the feast of the sub-deacons” they are forbidden by the acts of the
council of Toledo, in 633; at a later period, the French punned on the word
sous-diacres, and called them Saouls-diacres (Drunken Deacons), words
which had nearly the same sound. The “feast of the ass” is said to be traced
back in France as far as the ninth century. It was celebrated in most of the
great towns in that country, such as Rouen, Sens, Douai, &c, and the service
for the occasion is actually preserved in some of the old church books.
From this it appears that the ass was led in procession to a place in the
middle of the church, which had been decked out to receive it, and that the
procession was led by two clerks, who sung a Latin song in praise of the
animal. This song commences by telling us how “the ass came from the
east, handsome and very strong, and most fit for carrying burthens”:—

Orientis partibus
Adventavit asinus,
Pulcher et fortissimus,
Sarcinis aptissimus.
The refrain or burthen of the song is in French, and exhorts the animal to
join in the uproar—“Eh! sir ass, chant now, fair mouth, bray, you shall have
hay enough, and oats in abundance:”—
Hez, sire asnes, car chantez,
Belle bouche, rechignez,
Vous aurez du foin assez,
Et de l’avoine à plantez.
In this tone the chant continues through nine similar stanzas, describing the
mode of life and food of the ass. When the procession reached the altar, the
priest began a service in prose. Beleth, one of the celebrated doctors of the
university of Paris, who flourished in 1182, speaks of the “feast of fools” as
in existence in his time; and the acts of the council of Paris, held in 1212,
forbid the presence of archbishops and bishops, and more especially of
monks and nuns, at the feasts of fools, “in which a staff was carried.”[70] We
know the proceedings of this latter festival rather minutely from the
accounts given in the ecclesiastical censures. It was in the cathedral
churches that they elected the archbishop or bishop of fools, whose election
was confirmed, and he was consecrated, with a multitude of buffooneries.
He then entered upon his pontifical duties wearing the mitre and carrying
the crosier before the people, on whom he bestowed his solemn
benediction. In the exempt churches, or those which depended immediately
upon the Holy See, they elected a pope of fools (unum papam fatuorum),
who wore similarly the ensigns of the papacy. These dignitaries were
assisted by an equally burlesque and licentious clergy, who uttered and
performed a mixture of follies and impieties during the church service of
the day, which they attended in disguises and masquerade dresses. Some
wore masks, or had their faces painted, and others were dressed in women’s
clothing, or in ridiculous costumes. On entering the choir, they danced and
sang licentious songs. The deacons and sub-deacons ate black puddings and
sausages on the altar while the priest was celebrating; others played at cards
or dice under his eyes; and others threw bits of old leather into the censer in
order to raise a disagreeable smell. After the mass was ended, the people

broke out into all sorts of riotous behaviour in the church, leaping, dancing,
and exhibiting themselves in indecent postures, and some went as far as to
strip themselves naked, and in this condition they were drawn through the
streets with tubs full of ordure and filth, which they threw about at the mob.
Every now and then they halted, when they exhibited immodest postures
and actions, accompanied with songs and speeches of the same character.
Many of the laity took part in the procession, dressed as monks and nuns.
These disorders seem to have been carried to their greatest degree of
extravagance during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[71]
Towards the fifteenth century, lay societies, having apparently no
connection with the clergy or the church, but of just the same burlesque
character, arose in France. One of the earliest of these was formed by the
clerks of the Bazoche, or lawyers’ clerks of the Palais de Justice in Paris,
whose president was a sort of king of misrule. The other principal society of
this kind in Paris took the rather mirthful name of Enfans sans Souci
(Careless Boys); it consisted of young men of education, who gave to their
president or chieftain the title of Prince des Sots (the Prince of Fools). Both
these societies composed and performed farces, and other small dramatic
pieces. These farces were satires on contemporary society, and appear to
have been often very personal.

No. 129. Money of the Archbishop of the Innocents.

No. 130. Money of the Pope of Fools.

Almost the only monuments of the older of these societies consist of coins,
or tokens, struck in lead, and sometimes commemorating the names of their
mock dignitaries. A considerable number of these have been found in
France, and an account of them, with engravings, was published by Dr.
Rigollot some years ago.[72] Our cut No. 129 will serve as an example. It
represents a leaden token of the Archbishop of the Innocents of the parish of
St. Firmin, at Amiens, and is curious as bearing a date. On one side the
archbishop of the Innocents is represented in the act of giving his blessing
to his flock, surrounded by the inscription, MONETA · ARCHIEPI · SCTI · FIRMINI.
On the other side we have the name of the individual who that year held the
office of archbishop, NICOLAVS · GAVDRAM · ARCHIEPVS · 1520, surrounding a
group consisting of two men, one of whom is dressed as a fool, holding
between them a bird, which has somewhat the appearance of a magpie. Our
cut No. 130 is still more curious; it is a token of the pope of fools. On one
side appears the pope with his tiara and double cross, and a fool in full
costume, who approaches his bauble to the pontifical cross. It is certainly a
bitter caricature on the papacy, whether that were the intention or not. Two
persons behind, dressed apparently in scholastic costume, seem to be
merely spectators. The inscription is, MONETA · NOVA · ADRIANI · STVLTORV [M]·
PAPE (the last E being in the field of the piece), “new money of Adrian, the
pope of fools.” The inscription on the other side of the token is one
frequently repeated on these leaden medals, STVLTORV [M] · INFINITVS · EST ·
NVMERVS, “the number of fools is infinite.” In the field we see Mother Folly
holding up her bauble, and before her a grotesque figure in a cardinal’s hat,
apparently kneeling to her. It is rather surprising that we find so few
allusions to these burlesque societies in the various classes of pictorial
records from which the subject of these chapters has been illustrated; but
we have evidence that they were not altogether overlooked. Until the latter
end of the last century, the misereres of the church of St. Spire, at Corbeil,
near Paris, were remarkable for the singular carvings with which they were
decorated, and which have since been destroyed, but fortunately they were
engraved by Millin. One of them, copied in our cut No. 131, evidently
represents the bishop of fools conferring his blessing; the fool’s bauble
occupies the place of the pastoral staff.

No. 131. The Bishop of Fools.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE DANCE OF DEATH.—THE PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH OF LA CHAISE
DIEU.—THE REIGN OF FOLLY.—SEBASTIAN BRANDT; THE “SHIP OF
FOOLS.”—DISTURBERS OF CHURCH SERVICE.—TROUBLESOME
BEGGARS.—GEILER’S SERMONS.—BADIUS, AND HIS SHIP OF FOOLISH
WOMEN.—THE PLEASURES OF SMELL.—ERASMUS; THE “PRAISE OF
FOLLY.”

There is still one cycle of satire which almost belongs to the middle ages,
though it only became developed at their close, and became most popular
after they were past. There existed, at least as early as the beginning of the
thirteenth century, a legendary story of an interview between three living
and three dead men, which is usually told in French verse, and appears
under the title of “Des trois vifs et des trois morts.” According to some
versions of the legend, it was St. Macarius, the Egyptian recluse, who thus
introduced the living to the dead. The verses are sometimes accompanied
with figures, and these have been found both sculptured and painted on
ecclesiastical buildings. At a later period, apparently early in the fifteenth
century, some one extended this idea to all ranks of society, and pictured a
skeleton, the emblem of death, or even more than one, in communication
with an individual of each class; and this extended scene, from the manner
of the grouping—in which the dead appeared to be wildly dancing off with
the living—became known as the “Dance of Death.” As the earlier legend
of the three dead and the three living was, however, still often introduced at
the beginning of it, the whole group was most generally known—especially
during the fifteenth century—as the “Danse Macabre,” or Dance of
Macabre, this name being considered as a mere corruption of Macarius. The
temper of the age—in which death in every form was constantly before the
eyes of all, and in which people sought to regard life as a mere transitory
moment of enjoyment—gave to this grim idea of the fellowship of death
and life great popularity, and it was not only painted on the walls of
churches, but it was suspended in tapestry around people’s chambers.
Sometimes they even attempted to represent it in masquerade, and we are
told that in the month of October, 1424, the “Danse Macabre” was publicly

danced by living people in the cemetery of the Innocents, in Paris—a fit
place for so lugubrious a performance—in the presence of the Duke of
Bedford and the Duke of Burgundy, who came to Paris after the battle of
Verneuil. During the rest of the century we find not unfrequently allusions
to the “Danse Macabre.” The English poet Lydgate wrote a series of stanzas
to accompany the figures, and it was the subject of some of the earliest
engravings on wood. In the posture and accompaniments of the figures
representing the different classes of society, and in the greater or less
reluctance with which the living accept their not very attractive partners,
satire is usually implied, and it is in some cases accompanied with drollery.
The figure representing death has almost always a grimly mirthful
countenance, and appears to be dancing with good will. The most
remarkable early representation of the “Danse Macabre” now preserved, is
that painted on the wall of the church of La Chaise Dieu, in Auvergne, a
beautiful fac-simile of which was published a few years ago by the well-
known antiquary M. Jubinal. This remarkable picture begins with the
figures of Adam and Eve, who are introducing death into the world in the
form of a serpent with a death’s head. The dance is opened by an
ecclesiastic preaching from a pulpit, towards whom death is leading first in
the dance the pope, for each individual takes his precedence strictly
according to his class—alternately an ecclesiastic and a layman. Thus next
after the pope comes the emperor, and the cardinal is followed by the king.
The baron is followed by the bishop, and the grim partner of the latter
appears to pay more intention to the layman than to his own priest, so that
two dead men appear to have the former in charge. The group thus
represented by the nobleman and the two deaths, is copied in our cut No.
132, and will serve as an example of the style and grouping of this
remarkable painting. After a few other figures, perhaps less striking, we
come to the merchant, who receives the advances of his partner with a
thoughtful air; while immediately after him another death is trying to make
himself more acceptable to the bashful nun by throwing a cloak over his
nakedness. In another place two deaths armed with bows and arrows are
scattering their shafts rather dangerously. Soon follow some of the more
gay and youthful members of society. Our cut No. 133 represents the
musician, who appears also to attract the attentions of two of the
persecutors. In his dismay he is treading under foot his own viol. The dance
closes with the lower orders of society, and is concluded by a group which

is not so easily understood. Before the end of the fifteenth century, there
had appeared in Paris several editions of a series of bold engravings on
wood, in a small folio size, representing the same dance, though somewhat
differently treated. France, indeed, appears to have been the native country
of the “Danse Macabre.” But in the century following the beautiful set of
drawings by the great artist Hans Holbein, first published at Lyons in 1538,
gave to the Dance of Death a still greater and wider celebrity. From this
time the subjects of this dance were commonly introduced in initial letters,
and in the engraved borders of pages, especially in books of a religious
character.

No. 132. The Knight in the Dance of Death.

No. 133. The Musician in Death’s Hands.

Death may truly be said to have shared with Folly that melancholy period—
the fifteenth century. As society then presented itself to the eye, people
might easily suppose that the world was running mad, and folly, in one
shape or other, seemed to be the principle which ruled most men’s actions.
The jocular societies, described in my last chapter, which multiplied in
France during the fifteenth century, initiated a sort of mock worship of
Folly. That sort of inauguration of death which was performed in the
“Danse Macabre,” was of French growth, but the grand crusade against
folly appears to have originated in Germany. Sebastian Brandt was a native
of Strasburg, born in 1458. He studied in that city and in Bâle, became a
celebrated professor in both those places, and died at the former in 1520.
The “Ship of Fools,” which has immortalised the name of Sebastian Brandt,
is believed to have been first published in the year 1494. The original
German text went through numerous editions within a few years; a Latin
translation was equally popular, and it was afterwards edited and enlarged
by Jodocus Badius Ascensius. A French text was no less successful; an
English translation was printed by Richard Pynson in 1509; a Dutch version
appeared in 1519. During the sixteenth century, Brandt’s “Ship of Fools”

was the most popular of books. It consists of a series of bold woodcuts,
which form its characteristic feature, and of metrical explanations, written
by Brandt, and annexed to each cut. Taking his text from the words of the
preacher, “Stultorum numerus est infinitus,” Brandt exposes to the eye, in
all its shades and forms, the folly of his contemporaries, and bares to view
its roots and causes. The cuts are especially interesting as striking pictures
of contemporary manners. The “Ship of Fools” is the great ship of the
world, into which the various descriptions of fatuity are pouring from all
quarters in boat-loads. The first folly is that of men who collected great
quantities of books, not for their utility, but for their rarity, or beauty of
execution, or rich bindings, so that we see that bibliomania had already
taken its place among human vanities. The second class of fools were
interested and partial judges, who sold justice for money, and are
represented under the emblem of two fools throwing a boar into a caldron,
according to the old Latin proverb, Agere aprum in lebetem. Then come the
various follies of misers, fops, dotards, men who are foolishly indulgent to
their children, mischief-makers, and despisers of good advice; of nobles and
men in power; of the profane and the improvident; of foolish lovers; of
extravagant eaters and drinkers, &c, &c Foolish talking, hypocrisy,
frivolous pursuits, ecclesiastical corruptions, impudicity, and a great
number of other vices as well as follies, are duly passed in review, and are
represented in various forms of satirical caricature, and sometimes in
simpler unadorned pictures. Thus the foolish valuers of things are
represented by a fool holding a balance, one scale of which contains the
sun, moon, and stars, to represent heaven and heavenly things, and the other
a castle and fields, to represent earthly things, the latter scale overweighing
the other; and the procrastinator is pictured by another fool, with a parrot
perched on his head, and a magpie on each hand, all repeating cras, cras,
cras (to-morrow). Our cut No. 134 represents a group of disturbers of
church service. It was a common practice in former days to take to church
hawks (which were constantly carried about as the outward ensign of the
gentleman) and dogs. The fool has here thrown back his fool’s-cap to
exhibit more fully the fashionable “gent” of the day; he carries his hawk on
his hand, and wears not only a fashionable pair of shoes, but very
fashionable clogs also. These gentlemen à la mode, turgentes genere et
natalibus altis, we are told, were the persons who disturbed the church
service by the creaking of their shoes and clogs, the noise made by their

birds, the barking and quarrelling of their dogs, by their own whisperings,
and especially with immodest women, whom they met in church as in a
convenient place of assignation. All these forms of the offence are
expressed in the picture. Our second example cut No. 135, which forms the
fifty-ninth title or subject in the “Ship of Fools,” represents a party of the
beggars with which, either lay or ecclesiastical, the country was then
overrun. In the explanation, these wicked beggars are described as
indulging in idleness, in eating, drinking, rioting, and sleep, while they levy
contributions on the charitable feelings of the honest and industrious, and,
under cover of begging, commit robbery wherever they find the
opportunity. The beggar, who appears to be only a deceptive cripple, leads
his donkey laden with children, whom he is bringing up in the same
profession, while his wife lingers behind to indulge in her bibulous
propensities. These cuts will give a tolerable notion of the general character
of the whole, which amount in number to a hundred and twelve, and
therefore present a great variety of subjects relative to almost every class
and profession of life.

No. 134. Disturbers of Church Service.

No. 135. Mendicants on their Travels.

We may remark, however, that after Folly had thus run through all the
stages of society, until it had reached the lowest of all, the ranks of
mendicity, the gods themselves became alarmed, the more so as this great
movement was directed especially against Minerva, the goddess of wisdom,
and they held a conclave to provide against it. The result is not told, but the
course of Folly goes on as vigorously as ever. Ignorant fools who set up for
physicians, fools who cannot understand jokes, unwise mathematicians,
astrologers, of the latter of which the moraliser says, in his Latin verse—

Siqua voles sortis prænoscere damna futuræ,
Et vitare malum, sol tibi signa dabit.
Sed tibi, stulte, tui cur non dedit ille furoris
Signa? aut, si dederit, cur tanta mala subis?
Nondum grammaticæ callis primordia, et audes
Vim cœli radio supposuisse tuo.
The next cut is a very curious one, and appears to represent a dissecting-
house of this early period. Among other chapters which afford interesting
pictures of that time, and indeed of all times, we may instance those of
litigious fools, who are always going to law, and who confound blind
justice, or rather try to unbind her eyes; of filthy-tongued fools, who glorify
the race of swine; of ignorant scholars; of gamblers; of bad and thievish
cooks; of low men who seek to be high, and of high who are despisers of
poverty; of men who forget that they will die; of irreligious men and
blasphemers; of the ridiculous indulgence of parents to children, and the
ungrateful return which was made to them for it; and of women’s pride.
Another title describes the ruin of Christianity: the pope, emperor, king,
cardinals, &c, are receiving willingly from a suppliant fool the cap of Folly,
while two other fools are looking derisively upon them from an adjoining
wall. It need hardly be said that this was published on the eve of the
Reformation.
In the midst of the popularity which greeted the appearance of the work of
Sebastian Brandt, it attracted the special attention of a celebrated preacher
of the time named Johann Geiler. Geiler was born at Schaffhausen, in
Switzerland, in 1445, but having lost his father when only three years of
age, he was educated by his grandfather, who lived at Keysersberg, in
Alsace, and hence he was commonly called Geiler of Keysersberg. He
studied in Freiburg and Bâle, obtained a great reputation for learning, was
esteemed a profound theologian, and was finally settled in Strasburg, where
he continued to shine as a preacher until his death in 1510. He was a bold
man, too, in the cause of truth, and declaimed with earnest zeal against the
corruptions of the church, and especially against the monkish orders, for he
compared the black monks to the devil, the white monks to his dam, and the
others he said were their chickens. On another occasion he said that the
qualities of a good monk were an almighty belly, an ass’s back, and a
raven’s mouth. He told his congregation from the pulpit that a great

reformation was at hand, that he did not expect to live to see it himself, but
that many of those who heard him would live to see it. As may be supposed,
the monks hated him, and spoke of him with contempt. They said, that in
his sermons he took his texts, not from the Scriptures, but from the “Ship of
Fools” of Sebastian Brandt; and, in fact, during the year 1498, Geiler
preached at Strasburg a series of sermons on the follies of his time, which
were evidently founded upon Brandt’s book, for the various follies were
taken in the same order. They were originally compiled in German, but one
of Geiler’s scholars, Jacob Other, translated them into Latin, and published
them, in 1501, under the title of “Navicula sive Speculum Fatuorum
præstantissimi sacrarum literarum doctoris Johannis Geiler.” Within a few
years this work went through several editions both in Latin and in German,
some of them illustrated by woodcuts. The style of preaching is quaint and
curious, full of satirical wit, which is often coarse, according to the manner
of the time, sometimes very indelicate. Each sermon is headed by the motto,
“Stultorum infinitus est numerus.” Geiler takes for his theme in each
sermon one of the titles of Brandt’s “Ship of Fools,” and he separates them
into subdivisions, or branches, which he calls the bells (nolas) from the
fool’s-cap.
The other scholar who did most to spread the knowledge of Brandt’s work,
was Jodocus Badius, who assumed the additional name of Ascensius
because he was born at Assen, near Brussels, in 1462. He was a very
distinguished scholar, but is best known for having established a celebrated
printing establishment in Paris, where he died in 1535. I have already stated
that Badius edited the Latin translation of the “Ship of Fools” of Sebastian
Brandt, with additional explanations of his own, but he was one of the first
of Brandt’s imitators. He seems to have thought that Brandt’s book was not
complete—that the weaker sex had not received its fair share of importance;
and apparently in 1498, while Geiler was turning the “Stultifera Navis” into
sermons, Badius compiled a sort of supplement to it (additamentum), to
which he gave the title of “Stultiferæ naviculæ, seu Scaphæ, Fatuarum
Mulierum,” the Boats of Foolish Women. As far as can be traced, the first
edition appears to have been printed in 1502. The first cut represents the
ship carrying Eve alone of the female race, whose folly involved the whole
world. The book is divided into five chapters, according to the number of
the five senses, each sense represented by a boat carrying its particular class
of foolish women to the great ship of foolish women, which lies off at

anchor. The text consists of a dissertation on the use and abuse of the
particular sense which forms the substance of the chapter, and it ends with
Latin verses, which are given as the boatman’s celeusma, or boat song. The
first of these boats is the scapha stultæ visionis ad stultiferam navem
perveniens—the boat of foolish seeing proceeding to the ship of fools. A
party of gay ladies are taking possession of the boat, carrying with them
their combs, looking-glasses, and all other implements necessary for
making them fair to be looked upon. The second boat is the scapha
auditionis fatuæ, the boat of foolish hearing, in which the ladies are playing
upon musical instruments. The third is the scapha olfactionis stultæ, the
boat of foolish smell, and the pictorial illustration to it is partly copied in
our cut No. 136. In the original some of the ladies are gathering sweet-
smelling flowers before they enter the boat, while on board a pedlar is
vending his perfume. One folle femme, with her fool’s cap on her head, is
buying a pomander, or, as we should perhaps now say, a scent-ball, from the
itinerant dealer. Figures of pomanders are extremely rare, and this is an
interesting example; in fact, it is only recently that our Shakspearian critics
really understood the meaning of the word. A pomander was a small
globular vessel, perforated with holes, and filled with strong perfumes, as it
is represented in our woodcut. The fourth of these boats is that of foolish
tasting, scapha gustationis fatuæ, and the ladies have their well-furnished
table on board the boat, and are largely indulging in eating and drinking. In
the last of these boats, the scapha contactionis fatuæ, or boat of foolish
feeling, the women have men on board, and are proceeding to great liberties
with them; one of the gentle damsels, too, is picking the pocket of her male
companion in a very unlady-like manner.

No. 136. The Boat of Pleasant Odours.

Two ideas combined in this peculiar field of satiric literature, that of the
ship and that of the fools, now became popular, and gave rise to a host of
imitators. There appeared ships of health, ships of penitence, ships of all
sorts of things, on the one hand; and on the other, folly was a favourite
theme of satire from many quarters. One of the most remarkable of the
personages involved in this latter warfare, was the great scholar Desiderius
Erasmus, of Rotterdam, who was born in that city in 1467. Like most of
these satirists, Erasmus was strongly imbued with the spirit of the
Reformation, and he was the acquaintance and friend of those to whom the
Reformation owed a great part of its success. In 1497, when the “Ship of
Fools” of Sebastian Brandt was in the first full flush of its popularity,
Erasmus came to England, and was so well received, that from that time
forward his literary life seemed more identified with our island than with
any other country. His name is still a sort of household word in our
universities, especially in that of Cambridge. He made here the friendly
acquaintance of the great Sir Thomas More, himself a lover of mirth, and
one of those whose names are celebrated for having kept a court fool. In the
earlier years of the sixteenth century, Erasmus visited Italy, and passed two
or three years there. He returned thence to England, as appears, early in the
year 1508. It is not easy to decide whether his experience of society in Italy
had convinced him more than ever that folly was the presiding genius of
mankind, or what other feeling influenced him, but one of the first results of
his voyage was the Μωρίας Ἐγκώμιον (Moriæ Encomium), or “Praise of

Folly.” Erasmus dedicated this little jocular treatise to Sir Thomas More as
a sort of pun upon his name, although he protests that there was a great
contrast between the two characters. Erasmus takes much the same view of
folly as Brandt, Geiler, Badius, and the others, and under this name he
writes a bold satire on the whole frame of contemporary society. The satire
is placed in the mouth of Folly herself (the Mère Folie of the jocular clubs),
who delivers from her pulpit a declamation in which she sets forth her
qualities and praises. She boasts of the greatness of her origin, claims as her
kindred the sophists, rhetoricians, and many of the pretentious scholars and
wise men, and describes her birth and education. She claims divine affinity,
and boasts of her influence over the world, and of the beneficent manner in
which it was exercised. All the world, she pretends, was ruled under her
auspices, and it was only in her presence that mankind was really happy.
Hence the happiest ages of man are infancy, before wisdom has come to
interfere, and old age, when it has passed away. Therefore, she says, if men
would remain faithful to her, and avoid wisdom altogether, they would pass
a life of perpetual youth. In this long discourse of the influence of folly,
written by a man of the known sentiments of Erasmus, it would be strange
if the Romish church, with its monks and ignorant priesthood, its saints, and
relics, and miracles, did not find a place. Erasmus intimates that the
superstitious follies had become permanent, because they were profitable.
There are some, he tells us, who cherished the foolish yet pleasant
persuasion, that if they fixed their eyes devoutly on a figure of St.
Christopher, carved in wood or painted on the wall, they would be safe from
death on that day; with many other examples of equal credulity. Then there
are your pardons, your measures of purgatory, which may be bought off at
so much the hour, or the day, or the month, and a multitude of other
absurdities. Ecclesiastics, scholars, mathematicians, philosophers, all come
in for their share of the refined satire of this book, which, like the “Ship of
Fools,” has gone through innumerable editions, and has been translated into
many languages.

No. 137. Superstition.

In an early French translation, the text of this work of Erasmus is
embellished with some of the woodcuts belonging to Brandt’s “Ship of
Fools,” which, it need hardly be remarked, are altogether inappropriate, but
the “Praise of Folly” was detained to receive illustrations from a more
distinguished pencil. A copy of the book came into the hands of Hans
Holbein—it may possibly have been presented to him by the author—and
Holbein took so much interest in it, that he amused himself with drawing
illustrative sketches with a pen in the margins. This book afterwards passed
into the library of the University of Bâle, where it was found in the latter
part of the seventeenth century, and these drawings have since been
engraved and added to most of the subsequent editions. Many of these
sketches are very slight, and some have not a very close connection with the
text of Erasmus, but they are all characteristic, and show the spirit—the
spirit of the age—in which Holbein read his author. I give two examples of
them, taken almost haphazard, for it would require a longer analysis of the
book than can be given here to make many of them understood. The first of
these, our cut No. 137, represents the foolish warrior, who has a sword long
enough to trust to it for defence, bowing with trembling superstition before

a painting of St. Christopher crossing the water with the infant Christ on his
shoulder, as a more certain security for his safety during that day. The other,
our cut No. 138, represents the preacher, Lady Folly, descending from her
pulpit, after she has concluded her sermon.

No. 138. Preacher Folly ending her Sermon.

CHAPTER XIV.
POPULAR LITERATURE AND ITS HEROES; BROTHER RUSH, TYLL
EULENSPIEGEL, THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM.—STORIES AND JEST-
BOOKS.—SKELTON, SCOGIN, TARLTON, PEELE.

The people in the middle ages, as well as its superiors, had its comic
literature and legend. Legend was the literature especially of the peasant,
and in it the spirit of burlesque and satire manifested itself in many ways.
Simplicity, combined with vulgar cunning, and the circumstances arising
out of the exercise of these qualities, presented the greatest stimulants to
popular mirth. They produced their popular heroes, who, at first, were much
more than half legendary, such as the familiar spirit, Robin Goodfellow,
whose pranks were a source of continual amusement rather than of terror to
the simple minds which listened to those who told them. These stories
excited with still greater interest as their spiritual heroes became incarnate,
and the auditors were persuaded that the perpetrators of so many artful acts
of cunning and of so many mischievous practical jokes, were but ordinary
men like themselves. It was but a sign or symbol of the change from the
mythic age to that of practical life. One of the earliest of these stories of
mythic comedy transformed into, or at least presented under the guise of,
humanity, is that of Brother Ruth. Although the earliest version of this story
with which we are acquainted dates only from the beginning of the
sixteenth century,[73] there is no reason for doubt that the story itself was in
existence at a much more remote period.
Rush was, in truth, a spirit of darkness, whose mission it was to wander on
the earth tempting and impelling people to do evil. Perceiving that the
internal condition of a certain abbey was well suited to his purpose, he
presented himself at its gates in the disguise of a youth who wanted
employment, and was received as an assistant in the kitchen, but he pleased
the monks best by the skill with which he furnished them all with fair
companions. At length he quarrelled with the cook, and threw him into the
boiling caldron, and the monks, assuming that his death was accidental,
appointed Rush to be cook in his place. After a service of seven years in the

kitchen—which appears to have been considered a fair apprenticeship for
the new honour which was to be conferred upon him—the abbot and
convent rewarded him by making him a monk. He now followed still more
earnestly his design for the ruin of his brethren, both soul and body, and
began by raising a quarrel about a woman, which led, through his
contrivance, to a fight, in which the monks all suffered grievous bodily
injuries, and in which Brother Rush was especially active. He went on in
this way until at last his true character was accidentally discovered. A
neighbouring farmer, overtaken by night, took shelter in a hollow tree. It
happened to be the night appointed by Lucifer to meet his agents on earth,
and hear from them the report of their several proceedings, and he had
selected this very oak as the place of rendezvous. There Brother Rush
appeared, and the farmer, in his hiding-place, heard his confession from his
own lips, and told it to the abbot, who, being as it would appear a magician,
conjured him into the form of a horse, and banished him. Rush hurried
away to England, where he laid aside his equine form, and entered the body
of the king’s daughter, who suffered great torments from his possession. At
length some of the great doctors from Paris came and obliged the spirit to
confess that nobody but the abbot of the distant monastery had any power
over him. The abbot came, called him out of the maiden, and conjured him
more forcibly than ever into the form of a horse.
Such is, in mere outline, the story of Brother Rush, which was gradually
enlarged by the addition of new incidents. But the people wanted a hero
who presented more of the character of reality, who, in fact, might be
recognised as one of themselves; and such heroes appear to have existed at
all times. They usually represented a class in society, and especially that
class which consisted of idle sharpers, who lived by their wits, and which
was more numerous and more familiarly known in the middle ages than at
the present day. Folly and cunning combined presented a never-failing
subject of mirth. This class of adventurers first came into print in Germany,
and it is there that we find its first popular hero, to whom they gave the
name of Eulenspiegel, which means literally “the owl’s mirror,” and has
been since used in German in the sense of a merry fool. Tyll Eulenspiegel,
and his story, are supposed to have belonged to the fourteenth century,
though we first know them in the printed book of the commencement of the
sixteenth, which is believed to have come from the pen of the well-known
popular writer, Thomas Murner, of whom I shall have to speak more at

length in another chapter. The popularity of this work was very great, and it
was quickly translated into French, English, Latin, and almost every other
language of Western Europe. In the English version the name also was
translated, and appears under the form of Owleglass, or, as it often occurs
with the superfluous aspirate, Howleglass.[74] According to the story, Tyll
Eulenspiegel was the son of a peasant, and was born at a village called
Kneitlingen, in the land of Brunswick. The story of his birth may be given
in the words of the early English version, as a specimen of its quaint and
antiquated language:—
“Yn the lande of Sassen, in the vyllage of Ruelnige, there dwelleth a man that was named Nicholas
Howleglas, that had a wife named Wypeke, that lay a childbed in the same wyllage, and that
chylde was borne to christening; and named Tyell Howleglass. And than the chyld was brought
into a taverne, where the father was wyth his gosseppes and made good chere. Whan the mydwife
had wel dronke, she toke the childe to bere it home, and in the wai was a litle bridg over a muddy
water. And as the mydwife would have gone over the lytle brydge, she fel into the mudde with the
chylde, for she had a lytel dronk to much wyne, for had not helpe come quickly, the had both be
drowned in the mudde. And whan she came home with the childe, the made a kettle of warm water
to be made redi, and therin they washed the child clen of the mudde. And thus was Howleglas thre
tymes in one dai cristened, once at the churche, once in the mudde, and once in the warm water.”

It will be seen that the English translator was not very correct in his
geography or in his names. The child, having thus escaped destruction,
grew rapidly, and displayed an extraordinary love of mischief, with various
other evil propensities, as well as a cunning beyond his age, in escaping the
risks to which these exposed him. At a very early age, he displayed a
remarkable talent for setting the other children by the ears, and this was his
favourite amusement during life. His mother, who was now a widow,
contemplating the extraordinary cunning of her child, which, as she
thought, must necessarily ensure his advancement in the world, resolved
that he should no longer remain idle, and put him apprentice to a baker; but
his wicked and restless disposition defeated all the good intentions of his
parent, and Eulenspiegel was obliged to leave his master in consequence of
his mal-practices. One day his mother took him to a church-dedication, and
the child drank so much at the feast on that occasion, that he crept into an
empty beehive and fell asleep, while his mother, thinking he had gone
home, returned without him. In the night-time two thieves came into the
garden to steal the bees, and they agreed to take first the hive which was
heaviest. This, as may be supposed, proved to be the hive in which
Eulenspiegel was hidden, and they fixed it on a pole which they carried on
their shoulders, one before and one behind, the hive hanging between them.

Eulenspiegel, awakened by the movement, soon discovered the position in
which he was placed, and hit upon a plan for escaping. Gently lifting the lid
of the hive, he put out his arm and plucked the hair of the man before, who
turned about and accused his companion of insulting him. The other
asserted that he had not touched him, and the first, only half satisfied,
continued to bear his share of the burthen, but he had not advanced many
steps when a still sharper pull at his hair excited his great anger, and from
wrathful words the two thieves proceeded to blows. While they were
fighting, Eulenspiegel crept out of the hive and ran away.
After leaving the baker, Eulenspiegel became a wanderer in the world,
gaining his living by his trickery and deception, and engaging himself in all
sorts of strange and ludicrous adventures. He ended everywhere by creating
discord and strife. He became at different times a blacksmith, a shoemaker,
a tailor, a cook, a drawer of teeth, and assumed a variety of other characters,
but remained in each situation only long enough to make it too hot for him,
and to be obliged to secure his retreat. He intruded himself into all classes
of society, and invariably came to similar results. Many of his adventures,
indeed, are so droll that we can easily understand the great popularity they
once enjoyed. But they are not merely amusing—they present a continuous
satire upon contemporary society, upon a social condition in which every
pretender, every reckless impostor, every private plunderer or public
depredator, saw the world exposed to him in its folly and credulity as an
easy prey.
The middle ages possessed another class of these popular satirical histories,
which were attached to places rather than to persons. There were few
countries which did not possess a town or a district, the inhabitants of
which were celebrated for stupidity, or for roguery, or for some other
ridiculous or contemptible quality. We have seen, in a former chapter, the
people of Norfolk enjoying this peculiarity, and, at a later period, the
inhabitants of Pevensey in Sussex, and more especially those of Gotham in
Nottinghamshire, were similarly distinguished. The inhabitants of many
places in Germany bore this character, but their grand representatives
among the Germans were the Schildburgers, a name which appears to
belong entirely to the domain of fable. Schildburg, we are told, was a town
“in Misnopotamia, beyond Utopia, in the kingdom of Calecut.” The
Schildburgers were originally so renowned for their wisdom, that they were

continually invited into foreign countries to give their advice, until at length
not a man was left at home, and their wives were obliged to assume the
charge of the duties of their husbands. This became at length so onerous,
that the wives held a council, and resolved on despatching a solemn
message in writing to call the men home. This had the desired effect; all the
Schildburgers returned to their own town, and were so joyfully received by
their wives that they resolved upon leaving it no more. They accordingly
held a council, and it was decided that, having experienced the great
inconvenience of a reputation of wisdom, they would avoid it in future by
assuming the character of fools. One of the first evil results of their long
neglect of home affairs was the want of a council-hall, and this want they
now resolved to supply without delay. They accordingly went to the hills
and woods, cut down the timber, dragged it with great labour to the town,
and in due time completed the erection of a handsome and substantial
building. But, when they entered their new council-hall, what was their
consternation to find themselves in perfect darkness! In fact, they had
forgotten to make any windows. Another council was held, and one who
had been among the wisest in the days of their wisdom, gave his opinion
very oracularly; the result of which was that they should experiment on
every possible expedient for introducing light into the hall, and that they
should first try that which seemed most likely to succeed. They had
observed that the light of day was caused by sunshine, and the plan
proposed was to meet at mid-day when the sun was brightest, and fill sacks,
hampers, jugs, and vessels of all kinds, with sunshine and daylight, which
they proposed afterwards to empty into the unfortunate council-hall. Next
day, as the clock struck one, you might see a crowd of Schildburgers before
the council-house door, busily employed, some holding the sacks open, and
others throwing the light into them with shovels and any other appropriate
implements which came to hand. While they were thus labouring, a stranger
came into the town of Schildburg, and, hearing what they were about, told
them they were labouring to no purpose, and offered to show them how to
get the daylight into the hall. It is unnecessary to say more than that this
new plan was to make an opening in the roof, and that the Schildburgers
witnessed the effect with astonishment, and were loud in their gratitude to
their new comer.
The Schildburgers met with further difficulties before they completed their
council-hall. They sowed a field with salt, and when the salt-plant grew up

next year, after a meeting of the council, at which it was stiffly disputed
whether it ought to be reaped, or mowed, or gathered in in some other
manner, it was finally discovered that the crop consisted of nothing but
nettles. After many accidents of this kind, the Schildburgers are noticed by
the emperor, and obtain a charter of incorporation and freedom, but they
profit little by it. In trying some experiments to catch mice, they set fire to
their houses, and the whole town is burnt to the ground, upon which, in
their sorrow, they abandon it altogether, and become, like the Jews of old,
scattered over the world, carrying their own folly into every country they
visit.
The earliest known edition of the history of the Schildburgers was printed in
1597,[75] but the story itself is no doubt older. It will be seen at once that it
involves a satire upon the municipal towns of the middle ages. A similar
series of adventures, only a little more clerical, bore the title of “Der
Pfarrherrn vom Kalenberg,” or the Parson of Kalenberg, and was first, as
far as we know, published in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The first
known edition, printed in 1582, is in prose. Von der Hagen, who reprinted a
subsequent edition in verse, in a volume already quoted, seems to think that
in its first form the story belongs to the fourteenth century.
The Schildburgers of Germany were represented in England by the wise
men of Gotham. Gotham is a village and parish about seven miles to the
south-west of Nottingham, and, curiously enough, a story is told according
to which the folly of the men of Gotham, like that of the Schildburgers, was
at first assumed. It is pretended that one day king John, on his way to
Nottingham, intended to pass through the village of Gotham, and that the
Gothamites, under the influence of some vague notion that his presence
would be injurious to them, raised difficulties in his way which prevented
his visit. The men of Gotham were now apprehensive of the king’s
vengeance, and they resolved to try and evade it by assuming the character
of simpletons. When the king’s officers came to Gotham to inquire into the
conduct of the inhabitants, they found them engaged in the most
extraordinary pursuits, some of them seeking to drown an eel in a pond of
water, others making a hedge round a tree to confine a cuckoo which had
settled in it, and others employing themselves in similar futile pursuits. The
commissioners reported the people of Gotham to be no better than fools,

and by this stratagem they escaped any further persecution, but the
character they assumed remained attached to them.
This explanation is, of course, very late and very apocryphal; but there can
be little doubt that the character of the wise men of Gotham is one of
considerable antiquity. The story is believed to have been drawn up in its
present form by Andrew Borde, an English writer of the reign of Henry
VIII. It was reprinted a great number of times under the form of those
popular books called chap-books, because they were hawked about the
country by itinerant booksellers or chap-men. The acts of the Gothamites
displayed a greater degree of simplicity even than those of the
Schildburgers, but they are less connected. Here is one anecdote told in the
unadorned language of the chap-books, in explanation of which it is only
necessary to state that the men of Gotham admired greatly the note of the
cuckoo. “On a time the men of Gotham fain would have pinn’d in the
cuckow, that she might sing all the year; and, in the midst of the town, they
had a hedge made round in compass, and got a cuckow and put her into it,
and said, ‘Sing here, and you shall lack neither meat nor drink all the year.’
The cuckow, when she perceived herself encompassed with the hedge, flew
away. ‘A vengeance on her,’ said these wise men, ‘we did not make our
hedge high enough.’” On another occasion, having caught a large eel which
offended them by its voracity, they assembled in council to deliberate on an
appropriate punishment, which ended in a resolution that it should be
drowned, and the criminal was ceremoniously thrown into a great pond.
One day twelve men of Gotham went a-fishing, and on their way home they
suddenly discovered that they had lost one of their number, and each
counted in his turn, and could find only eleven. In fact, each forgot to count
himself. In the midst of their distress—for they believed their companion to
be drowned—a stranger approached, and learnt the cause of their sorrow.
Finding they were not to be convinced of their mistake by mere argument,
he offered, on certain conditions, to find the lost Gothamite, and he
proceeded as follows. He took one by one each of the twelve Gothamites,
struck him a hard blow on the shoulder, which made him scream, and at
each cry counted one, two, three, &c When it came to twelve, they were all
satisfied that the lost Gothamite had returned, and paid the man for the
service he had rendered them.

As a chap-book, this history of the men of Gotham became so popular, that
it gave rise to a host of other books of similar character, which were
compiled at a later period under such titles—formerly well known to
children—as, “The Merry Frolicks, or the Comical Cheats of Swalpo;”
“The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly
called the King’s Fool;” “Simple Simon’s Misfortunes;” and the like. Nor
must it be forgotten that the history of Eulenspiegel was the prototype of a
class of popular histories of larger dimensions, represented in our own
literature by “The English Rogue,” the work of Richard Head and Francis
Kirkman, in the reign of Charles II., and various other “rogues” belonging
to different countries, which appeared about that time, or not long
afterwards. The earliest of these books was “The Spanish Rogue, or Life of
Guzman de Alfarache,” written in Spanish by Mateo Aleman in the latter
part of the sixteenth century. Curiously enough, some Englishman, not
knowing apparently that the history of Eulenspiegel had appeared in
English under the name of Owlglass, took it into his head to introduce him
among the family of rogues which had thus come into fashion, and, in 1720,
published as “Made English from the High Dutch,” what he called “The
German Rogue, or the Life and Merry Adventures, Cheats, Stratagems, and
Contrivances of Tiel Eulespiegle.”
The fifteenth century was the period during which mediæval forms
generally were changing into forms adapted to another state of society, and
in which much of the popular literature which has been in vogue during
modern times took its rise. In the fourteenth century, the fabliaux of the
jougleurs were already taking what we may perhaps term a more literary
form, and were reduced into prose narratives. This took place especially in
Italy, where these prose tales were called novelle, implying some novelty in
their character, a word which was transferred into the French language
under the form of nouvelles, and was the origin of our modern English
novel, applied to a work of fiction. The Italian novelists adopted the Eastern
plan of stringing these stories together on the slight framework of one
general plot, in which are introduced causes for telling them and persons
who tell them. Thus the Decameron of Boccaccio holds towards the
fabliaux exactly the same position as that of the “Arabian Nights” to the
older Arabian tales. The Italian novelists became numerous and celebrated
throughout Europe, from the time of Boccaccio to that of Straparola, at the
commencement of the sixteenth century, and later. The taste for this class of

literature appears to have been introduced into France at the court of
Burgundy, where, under duke Philippe le Bon, a well-known courtier and
man of letters named Antoine de La Sale, who had, during a sojourn in
Italy, become acquainted with one of the most celebrated of the earlier
Italian collections, the “Cento Novello,” or the Hundred Novels, compiled a
collection in French in imitation of them, under the title of “Les Cent
Nouvelles Nouvelles,” or the Hundred new Novels, one of the purest
examples of the French language in the fifteenth century.[76] The later
French story-books, such as the Heptameron of the queen of Navarre, and
others, belong chiefly to the sixteenth century. These collections of stories
can hardly be said to have ever taken root in this island as a part of English
literature.
But there arose partly out of these stories a class of books which became
greatly multiplied, and were, during a long period, extremely popular. With
the household fool, or jester, instead of the old jougleur, the stories had been
shorn of their detail, and sank into the shape of mere witty anecdotes, and at
the same time a taste arose for what we now class under the general term of
jests, clever sayings, what the French call bons mots, and what the English
of the sixteenth century termed “quick answers.” The word jest itself arose
from the circumstance that the things designated by it arose out of the older
stories, for it is a mere corruption of gestes, the Latin gesta, in the sense of
narratives of acts or deeds, or tales. The Latin writers, who first began to
collect them into books, included them under the general name of facetiæ.
The earlier of these collections of facetiæ were written in Latin, and of the
origin of the first with which we are acquainted, that by the celebrated
scholar Poggio of Florence, a curious anecdote is told. Some wits of the
court of pope Martin V., elected to the papacy in 1417, among whom were
the pope’s two secretaries, Poggio and Antonio Lusco, Cincio of Rome, and
Ruzello of Bologna, appropriated to themselves a private corner in the
Vatican, where they assembled to chat freely among themselves. They
called it their buggiale, a word which signifies in Italian, a place of
recreation, where they tell stories, make jests, and amuse themselves with
discussing satirically the doings and characters of everybody. This was the
way in which Poggio and his friends entertained themselves in their
buggiale, and we are assured that in their talk they neither spared the church
nor the pope himself or his government. The facetiæ of Poggio, in fact,
which are said to be a selection of the good things said in these meetings,

show neither reverence for the church of Rome nor respect for decency, but
they are mostly stories which had been told over and over again, long
before Poggio came into the world. It was perhaps this satire upon the
church and upon the ecclesiastics which gave much of their popularity to
these facetiæ at a time when a universal agitation of men’s minds on
religious affairs prevailed, which was the great harbinger of the
Reformation; and the next Latin books of facetiæ came from men such as
Henry Bebelius, who were zealous reformers themselves.
Many of the jests in these Latin collections are put into the mouths of
jesters, or domestic fools, fatui, or moriones, as they are called in the Latin;
and in England, where these jest-books in the vernacular tongue became
more popular perhaps than in any other country, many of them were
published under the names of celebrated jesters, as the “Merie Tales of
Skelton,” “The Jests of Scogin,” “Tarlton’s Jests,” and “The Jests of George
Peele.”
John Skelton, poet-laureat of his time, appears to have been known in the
courts of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. quite as much in the character of a
jester as in that of a poet. Poet-laureat was then a title or degree given in the
university of Oxford. His “Merye Tales” are all personal of himself, and we
should be inclined to say that his jests and his poetry are equally bad. The
former picture him as holding a place somewhere between Eulenspiegel and
the ordinary court-fool. We may give as a sample of the best of them the
tale No. 1.—
“How Skelton came home late to Oxford from Abington.
“Skelton was an Englysheman borne as Skogyn was, and hee was educated and broughte up in
Oxfoorde, and there was he made a poete lauriat. And on a tyme he had ben at Abbington to make
mery, wher that he had eate salte meates, and hee did com late home to Oxforde, and he did lye in
an ine named the Tabere, whyche is now the Angell, and hee dyd drynke, and went to bed. About
midnight he was so thyrstie or drye that he was constrained to call to the tapster for drynke, and the
tapster harde him not. Then hee cryed to hys oste and hys ostes, and to the ostler, for drinke, and
no man would here hym. Alacke, sayd Skelton, I shall peryshe for lacke of drynke! What
reamedye? At the last he dyd crie out and sayd, Fyer, fyer, fyer! When Skelton hard every man
bustle hymselfe upward, and some of them were naked, and some were halfe asleepe and amased,
and Skelton dyd crye, Fier, fier! styll, that everye man knewe not whether to resorte. Skelton did
go to bed, and the oste and ostis, and the tapster, with the ostler, dyd runne to Skeltons chamber
with candles lyghted in theyr handes, saying, Where, where, where is the fyer? Here, here, here,
said Skelton, and poynted hys fynger to hys mouth, saying, Fetch me some drynke to quenche the
fyer and the heate and the drinesse in my mouthe. And so they dyd.”

Another of these “Merye Tales” of Skelton contains a satire upon the
practice which prevailed in the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth
centuries of obtaining letters-patent of monopoly from the crown, and also
on the bibulous propensities of Welshmen—
“How the Welshman dyd desyre Skelton to ayde hym in hys sute to the kynge for a patent to sell
drynke.
“Skelton, when he was in London, went to the kynges courte, where there did come to hym a
Welshman, saying, Syr, it is so, that manye dooth come upp of my country to the kynges court, and
some doth get of the kyng by patent a castell, and some a parke, and some a forest, and some one
fee and some another, and they dooe lyve lyke honest men; and I shoulde lyve as honestly as the
best, if I myght have a patyne for good dryncke, wherefore I dooe praye yow to write a fewe
woords for mee in a lytle byll to geve the same to the kynges handes, and I wil geve you well for
your laboure. I am contented, sayde Skelton. Syt downe then, sayde the Welshman, and write.
What shall I wryte? sayde Skelton. The Welshman sayde wryte dryncke. Nowe, sayde the
Welshman, write more dryncke. What now? sayde Skelton. Wryte nowe, a great deale of dryncke.
Nowe, sayd the Welshman, putte to all thys dryncke a littell crome of breade, and a great deale of
drynke to it, and reade once agayne. Skelton dyd reade, Dryncke, more dryncke, and a great deale
of dryncke, and a lytle crome of breade, and a great deale of dryncke to it. Than the Welshman
sayde, Put oute the litle crome of breade, and sette in, all dryncke and no breade. And if I myght
have thys sygned of the kynge, sayde the Welshman, I care for no more, as longe as I dooe lyve.
Well then, sayde Skelton, when you have thys signed of the kyng, then wyll I labour for a patent to
have bread, that you wyth your drynke and I with the bread may fare well, and seeke our livinge
with bagge and staffe.”

These two tales are rather favourable specimens of the collection published
under the name of Skelton, which, as far as we know, was first printed
about the middle of the sixteenth century. The collection of the jests of
Scogan, or, as he was popularly called, Scogin, which is said to have been
compiled by Andrew Borde, was probably given to the world a few years
before, but no copies of the earlier editions are now known to exist. Scogan,
the hero of these jests, is described as occupying at the court of Henry VII.
a position not much different from that of an ordinary court-fool. Good old
Holinshed the chronicler says of him, perhaps a little too gently, that he was
“a learned gentleman and student for a time in Oxford, of a pleasant wit,
and bent to merrie devices, in respect whereof he was called into the court,
where, giving himselfe to his naturall inclination of mirth and pleasant
pastime, he plaied manie sporting parts, although not in such uncivil
manner as hath beene of him reported.” This allusion refers most probably
to the jests, which represent him as leading a life of low and coarse
buffoonery, in the course of which he displayed a considerable share of the
dishonest and mischievous qualities of the less real Eulenspiegel. He is
even represented as personally insulting the king and queen, and as being

consequently banished over the Channel, to show no more respect to the
majesty of the king of France. Scogin’s jests, like Skelton’s, consist in a
great measure of those practical jokes which appear in all former ages to
have been the delight of the Teutonic race. Many of them are directed
against the ignorance and worldliness of the clergy. Scogin is described as
being at one time himself a teacher in the university, and on one occasion,
we are told, a husbandman sent his son to school to him that he might be
made a priest. The whole story, which runs through several chapters, is an
excellent caricature on the way in which men vulgarly ignorant were
intruded into the priesthood before the Reformation. At length, after much
blundering, the scholar came to be ordained, and his examination is
reported as follows:—
“How the scholler said Tom Miller of Oseney was Jacob’s father.
“After this, the said scholler did come to the next orders, and brought a present to the ordinary
from Scogin, but the scholler’s father paid for all. Then said the ordinary to the scholler, I must
needes oppose you, and for master Scogin’s sake, I will oppose you in a light matter. Isaac had two
sons, Esau and Jacob. Who was Jacob’s father? The scholler stood still, and could not tell. Well,
said the ordinary, I cannot admit you to be priest untill the next orders, and then bring me an
answer. The scholler went home with a heavy heart, bearing a letter to master Scogin, how his
scholler could not answer to this question: Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob; who was Jacob’s
father? Scogin said to his scholler, Thou foole and asse-head! Dost thou not know Tom Miller of
Oseney? Yes, said the scholler! Then, said Scogin, thou knowest he had two sonnes, Tom and
Jacke; who is Jacke’s father? The scholler said, Tom Miller. Why, said Scogin, thou mightest have
said that Isaac was Jacob’s father. Then said Scogin, Thou shalt arise betime in the morning, and
carry a letter to the ordinary, and I trust he will admit thee before the orders shall be given. The
scholler rose up betime in the morning, and carried the letter to the ordinary. The ordinary said, For
Master Scogin’s sake I will oppose you no farther than I did yesterday. Isaac had two sons, Esau
and Jacob; who was Jacob’s father? Marry, said the scholler, I can tell you now that was Tom
Miller of Oseney. Goe, foole, goe, said the ordinary, and let thy master send thee no more to me for
orders, for it is impossible to make a foole a wise man.”

Scogin’s scholar was, however, made a priest, and some of the stories
which follow describe the ludicrous manner in which he exercised the
priesthood. Two other stories illustrate Scogin’s supposed position at court:
—
“How Scogin told those that mocked him that he had a wall-eye.
“Scogin went up and down in the king’s hall, and his hosen hung downe, and his coat stood awry,
and his hat stood a boonjour, so every man did mocke Scogin. Some said he was a proper man, and
did wear his rayment cleanly; some said the foole could not put on his owne rayment; some said
one thing, and some said another. At last Scogin said, Masters, you have praised me wel, but you
did not espy one thing in me. What is that, Tom? said the men. Marry, said Scogin, I have a wall-
eye. What meanest thou by that? said the men. Marry, said Scogin, I have spyed a sort of knaves
that doe mocke me, and are worse fooles themselves.”

“How Scogin drew his sonne up and downe the court.
“After this Scogin went from the court, and put off his foole’s garments, and came to the court like
an honest man, and brought his son to the court with him, and within the court he drew his sonne
up and downe by the heeles. The boy cried out, and Scogin drew the boy in every corner. At last
every body had pity on the boy, and said, Sir, what doe you meane, to draw the boy about the
court? Masters, said Scogin, he is my sonne, and I doe it for this cause. Every man doth say, that
man or child which is drawne up in the court shall be the better as long as hee lives; and therefore I
will every day once draw him up and downe the court, after that hee may come to preferment in
the end.”

The appreciation of a good joke cannot at this time have been very great or
very general, for Scogin’s jests were wonderfully popular during at least a
century, from the first half of the sixteenth century. They passed through
many editions, and are frequently alluded to by the writers of the
Elizabethan age. The next individual whose name appears at the head of a
collection of his jests, was the well-known wit, Richard Tarlton, who may
be fairly considered as court fool to Queen Elizabeth. His jests belong to the
same class as those of Skelton and Scogin, and if possible, they present a
still greater amount of dulness. Tarlton’s jests were soon followed by the
“merrie conceited jests” of George Peele, the dramatist, who is described in
the title as “gentleman, sometimes student in Oxford;” and it is added that
in these jests “is shewed the course of his life, how he lived; a man very
well knowne in the city of London and elsewhere.” In fact, Peele’s jests are
chiefly curious for the striking picture they give us of the wilder shades of
town life under the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.
During the period which witnessed the publication in England of these
books, many other jest-books appeared, for they had already become an
important class of English popular literature. Most of them were published
anonymously, and indeed they are mere compilations from the older
collections in Latin and French. All that was at all good, even in the jests of
Skelton, Scogin, Tarlton, and Peele, had been repeated over and over again
by the story-tellers and jesters of former ages. Two of the earlier English
collections have gained a greater celebrity than the rest, chiefly through
adventitious circumstances. One of these, entitled “A Hundred Merry
Tales,” has gained distinction among Shakespearian critics as the one
especially alluded to by the great poet in “Much Ado about Nothing,” (Act
ii., Sc. 1), where Beatrice complains that somebody had said “that I had my
good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales.” The other collection alluded to
was entitled “Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very

pleasant to be readde,” and was printed in 1567. Its modern fame appears to
have arisen chiefly from the circumstance that, until the accidental
discovery of the unique and imperfect copy of the “Hundred Merry Tales,”
it was supposed to be the book alluded to by Shakespeare. Both these
collections are mere compilations from the “Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles,”
“Poggio,” “Straparola,” and other foreign works.[77] The words put into the
mouth of Beatrice are correctly descriptive of the use made of these jest-
books. It had become fashionable to learn out of them jests and stories, in
order to introduce them into polite conversation, and especially at table; and
this practice continued to prevail until a very recent period. The number of
such jest-books published during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, was quite extraordinary. Many of these were given anonymously;
but many also were put forth under names which possessed temporary
celebrity, such as Hobson the carrier, Killigrew the jester, the friend of
Charles II., Ben Jonson, Garrick, and a multitude of others. It is, perhaps,
unnecessary to remind the reader that the great modern representative of
this class of literature is the illustrious Joe Miller.

CHAPTER XV.
THE AGE OF THE REFORMATION.—THOMAS MURNER; HIS GENERAL
SATIRES.—FRUITFULNESS OF FOLLY.—HANS SACHS.—THE TRAP FOR
FOOLS.—ATTACKS ON LUTHER.—THE POPE AS ANTICHRIST.—THE POPE-
ASS AND THE MONK-CALF.—OTHER CARICATURES AGAINST THE POPE.
—THE GOOD AND BAD SHEPHERDS.

The reign of Folly did not pass away with the fifteenth century—on the
whole the sixteenth century can hardly be said to have been more sane than
its predecessor, but it was agitated by a long and fierce struggle to
disengage European society from the trammels of the middle ages. We have
entered upon what is technically termed the renaissance, and are
approaching the great religious reformation. The period during which the
art of printing began first to spread generally over Western Europe, was
peculiarly favourable to the production of satirical books and pamphlets,
and a considerable number of clever and spirited satirists and comic writers
appeared towards the end of the fifteenth century, especially in Germany,
where circumstances of a political character had at an early period given to
the intellectual agitation a more permanent strength than it could easily or
quickly gain in the great monarchies. Among the more remarkable of these
satirists was Thomas Murner, who was born at Strasburg, in 1475. The
circumstances even of his childhood are singular, for he was born a cripple,
or became one in his earliest infancy, though he was subsequently healed,
and it was so universally believed that this malady was the effect of
witchcraft, that he himself wrote afterwards a treatise upon this subject
under the title of “De Phitonico Contractu.” The school in which he was
taught may at least have encouraged his satirical spirit, for his master was
Jacob Locher, the same who translated into Latin verse the “Ship of Fools”
of Sebastian Brandt. At the end of the century Murner had become a master
of arts in the University of Paris, and had entered the Franciscan order. His
reputation as a German popular poet was so great, that the emperor
Maximilian[ ]I., who died in 1519, conferred upon him the crown of poetry,
or, in other words, made him poet-laureat. He took the degree of doctor in
theology in 1509. Still Murner was known best as the popular writer, and he

published several satirical poems, which were remarkable for the bold
woodcuts that illustrated them, for engraving on wood flourished at this
period. He exposed the corruptions of all classes of society, and, before the
Reformation broke out, he did not even spare the corruptions of the
ecclesiastical state, but soon declared himself a fierce opponent of the
Reformers. When the Lutheran revolt against the Papacy became strong,
our king, Henry VIII., who took a decided part against Luther, invited
Murner to England, and on his return to his own country, the satiric
Franciscan became more bitter against the Reformation than ever. He
advocated the cause of the English monarch in a pamphlet, now very rare,
in which he discussed the question whether Henry VIII. or Luther was the
liar—“Antwort dem Murner uff seine frag, ob der künig von Engllant ein
Lügner sey oder Martinus Luther.” Murner appears to have divided the
people of his age into rogues and fools, or perhaps he considered the two
titles as identical. His “Narrenbeschwerung,” or Conspiracy of Fools, in
which Brandt’s idea was followed up, is supposed to have been published as
early as 1506, but the first printed edition with a date, appeared in 1512. It
became so popular, that it went through several editions during subsequent
years; and that which I have before me was printed at Strasburg in 1518. It
is, like Brandt’s “Ship of Fools,” a general satire against society, in which
the clergy are not spared, for the writer had not yet come in face of Luther’s
Reformation. The cuts are superior to those of Brandt’s book, and some of
them are remarkable for their design and execution. In one of the earliest of
them, copied in the cut No. 139, Folly is introduced in the garb of a
husbandman, scattering his feed over the earth, the result of which is a very
quick and flourishing crop, the fool’s heads rising above ground, almost
instantaneously, like so many turnips. In a subsequent engraving,
represented in our cut No. 140, Folly holds out, as an object of emulation,
the fool’s cap, and people of all classes, the pope himself, and the emperor,
and all the great dignitaries of this world, press forward eagerly to seize
upon it.

No. 139. Sowing a Fruitful Crop.

The same year (1512) witnessed the appearance of another poetical, or at
least metrical, satire by Murner, entitled “Schelmenzunft,” or the
Confraternity of Rogues, similarly illustrated with very spirited engravings
on wood. It is another demonstration of the prevailing dominion of folly
under its worst forms, and the satire is equally general with the preceding.
Murner’s satire appears to have been felt not only generally, but personally;
and we are told that he was often threatened with assassination, and he
raised up a number of literary opponents, who treated him with no little
rudeness; in fact, he had got on the wrong side of politics, or at all events on
the unpopular side, and men who had more talents and greater weight
appeared as his opponents—men like Ulrich von Utten, and Luther himself.

No. 140. An Acceptable Offering.

Among the satirists who espoused the cause to which Murner was opposed,
we must not overlook a man who represented in its strongest features,
though in a rather debased form, the old spontaneous poetry of the middle
ages. His name was Hans Sachs, at least that was the name under which he
was known, for his real name is said to have been Loutrdorffer. His spirit
was entirely that of the old wandering minstrel, and it was so powerful in
him, that, having been apprenticed to the craft of a weaver, he was no
sooner freed from his indentures, than he took to a vagabond life, and
wandered from town to town, gaining his living by singing the verses he
composed upon every occasion which presented itself. In 1519, he married
and settled in Nüremberg, and his compositions were then given to the
public through the press. The number of these was quite extraordinary—
songs, ballads, satires, and dramatic pieces, rude in style, in accordance
with the taste of the time, but full of cleverness. Many of them were printed
on broadsides, and illustrated with large engravings on wood. Hans Sachs
joined in the crusade against the empire of Folly, and one of his broadsides
is illustrated with a graceful design, the greater part of which is copied in
our cut No. 141. A party of ladies have set a bird-trap to catch the fools of
the age, who are waiting to be caught. One fool is taken in the trap, while
another is already secured and pinioned, and others are rushing into the

snare. A number of people of the world, high in their dignities and stations,
are looking on at this remarkable scene.

No. 141. Bird-Traps.

The evil influence of the female sex was at this time proverbial, and, in fact,
it was an age of extreme licentiousness. Another poet-laureat of the time,
Henricus Bebelius, born in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and rather
well known in the literature of his time, published, in 1515, a satirical poem
in Latin, under the title of “Triumphus Veneris,” which was a sort of
exposition of the generally licentious character of the age in which he lived.
It is distributed into six books, in the third of which the poet attacks the
whole ecclesiastical state, not sparing the pope himself, and we are thereby
perfectly well initiated into the weaknesses of the clergy. Bebelius had been
preceded by another writer on this part of the subject, and we might say by
many, for the incontinence of monks and nuns, and indeed of all the clergy,
had long been a subject of satire. But the writer to whom I especially allude
was named Paulus Olearius, his name in German being Oelschlägel. He
published, about the year 1500, a satirical tract, under the title of “De Fide
Concubinarum in Sacerdotes.” It was a bitter attack on the licentiousness of
the clergy, and was rendered more effective by the engravings which
accompanied it. We give one of these as a curious picture of contemporary
manners; the individual who comes within the range of the lady’s
attractions, though he may be a scholar, has none of the characteristics of a

priest. She presents a nosegay, which we may suppose to represent the
influence of perfume upon the senses; but the love of the ladies for pet
animals is especially typified in the monkey, attached by a chain. A donkey
appears to show by his heels his contempt for the lover.

No. 142. Courtship.

From an early period, the Roman church had been accustomed to treat
contemptuously, as well as cruelly, all who dissented from its doctrines, or
objected to its government, and this feeling was continued down to the age
of the Reformation, in spite of the tone of liberalism which was beginning
to shine forth in the writings of some of its greatest ornaments. Some
research among the dusty, because little used, records of national archives
and libraries would no doubt bring to light more than one singular
caricature upon the “heretics” of the middle ages, and my attention has been
called to one which is possessed of peculiar interest. There is, among the
imperial archives of France, in Paris, among records relating to the country
of the Albigeois in the thirteenth century, a copy of the bull of pope
Innocent IV. giving directions for the proceedings against dissenters from
Romanism, on the back of which the scribe, as a mark of his contempt for

these arch-heretics of the south, has drawn a caricature of a woman bound
to a stake over the fire which is to burn her as an open opponent of the
church of Rome. The choice of a woman for the victim was perhaps
intended to show that the proselytism of heresy was especially successful
among the weaker sex, or that it was considered as having some relation to
witchcraft. It is, by a long period, the earliest known pictorial representation
of the punishment of burning inflicted on a heretic.
The shafts of satire were early employed
against Luther and his new principles, and men
like Murner, already mentioned, Emser,
Cochlæus, and others, signalised themselves
by their zeal in the papal cause. As already
stated, Murner distinguished himself as the
literary ally of our king Henry VIII. The taste
for satirical writings had then become so
general, that Murner complains in one of his
satires that the printers would print nothing but
abusive or satirical works, and neglected his
more serious writings.
No. 143. Burning a Heretic.
Da sindt die trucker schuld daran,
Die trucken als die Gauchereien,
Und lassen mein ernstliche bücher leihen.
Some of Murner’s writings against Luther,
most of which are now very rare, are
extremely violent, and they are generally
illustrated with satirical woodcuts. One of
these books, printed without name of place or
date, is entitled, “Of the great Lutheran Fool,
how Doctor Murner has exorcised him” (Von
dem grossen Lutherisschen Narren, wie in
Doctor Murner beschworen hat). In the
woodcuts to this book Murner himself is
introduced, as is usually the case in these No. 144. Folly in Monastic Habit.
satirical engravings, under the character of a
Franciscan friar, with the head of a cat, while Luther appears as a fat and
jolly monk, wearing a fool’s cap, and figuring in various ridiculous

circumstances. In one of the first woodcuts, the cat Franciscan is drawing a
rope so tight round the great Lutheran fool’s neck, that he compels him to
disgorge a multitude of smaller fools. In another the great Lutheran fool has
his purse, or pouch, full of little fools suspended at his girdle. This latter
figure is copied in the cut No. 144, as an example of the form under which
the great reformer appears in these satirical representations.
In a few other caricatures of this period which have been preserved, the
apostle of the Reformation is attacked still more savagely. The one here
given (Fig. 145), taken from a contemporary engraving on wood, presents a
rather fantastic figure of the demon playing on the bagpipes. The instrument
is formed of Luther’s head, the pipe through which the devil blows entering
his ear, and that through which the music is produced forming an elongation
of the reformer’s nose. It was a broad intimation that Luther was a mere
tool of the evil one, created for the purpose of bringing mischief into the
world.

No. 145. The Music of the Demon.

The reformers, however, were more than a match for their opponents in this
sort of warfare. Luther himself was full of comic and satiric humour, and a

mass of the talent of that age was ranged on his side, both literary and
artistic. After the reformer’s marriage, the papal party quoted the old
legend, that Antichrist was to be born of the union of a monk and a nun, and
it was intimated that if Luther himself could not be directly identified with
Antichrist, he had, at least, a fair chance of becoming his parent. But the
reformers had resolved, on what appeared to be much more conclusive
evidence, that Antichrist was only emblematical of the papacy, that under
this form he had been long dominant on earth, and that the end of his reign
was then approaching. A remarkable pamphlet, designed to place this idea
pictorially before the public, was produced from the pencil of Luther’s
friend, the celebrated painter, Lucas Cranach, and appeared in the year 1521
under the title of “The Passionale of Christ and Antichrist” (Passional
Christi und Antichristi). It is a small quarto, each page of which is nearly
filled by a woodcut, having a few lines of explanation in German below.
The cut to the left represents some incident in the life of Christ, while that
facing it to the right gives a contrasting fact in the history of papal tyranny.
Thus the first cut on the left represents Jesus in His humility, refusing
earthly dignities and power, while on the adjoining page we see the pope,
with his cardinals and bishops, supported by his hosts of warriors, his
cannon, and his fortifications, in his temporal dominion over secular
princes. When we open again we see on one side Christ crowned with
thorns by the insulting soldiery, and on the other the pope, enthroned in all
his worldly glory, exacting the worship of his courtiers. On another we have
Christ washing the feet of His disciples, and in contrast the pope compelling
the emperor to kiss his toe. And so on, through a number of curious
illustrations, until at last we come to Christ’s ascension into heaven, in
contrast with which a troop of demons, of the most varied and singular
forms, have seized upon the papal Antichrist, and are casting him down into
the flames of hell, where some of his own monks wait to receive him. This
last picture is drawn with so much spirit, that I have copied it in the cut No.
146.

No. 146. The Descent of the Pope.

The monstrous figures of animals which had
amused the sculptors and miniaturists of an earlier
period came in time to be looked upon as realities,
and were not only regarded with wonder as
physical deformities, but were objects of
superstition, for they were believed to be sent into
the world as warnings of great revolutions and
calamities. During the age preceding the
Reformation, the reports of the births or
discoveries of such monsters were very common,
and engravings of them were no doubt profitable
articles of merchandise among the early book-
hawkers. Two of these were very celebrated in the
time of the Reformation, the Pope-ass and the
No. 147. The Pope-ass. Monk-calf, and were published and republished

with an explanation under the names of Luther and Melancthon, which
made them emblematical of the Papacy and of the abuses of the Romish
church, and, of course, prognostications of their approaching exposure and
fall. It was pretended that the Pope-ass was found dead in the river Tiber, at
Rome, in the year 1496. It is represented in our cut No. 147, taken from an
engraving preserved in a very curious volume of broadside Lutheran
caricatures, in the library of the British Museum, all belonging to the year
1545, though this design had been published many years before. The head
of an ass, we are told, represented the pope himself, with his false and
carnal doctrines. The right hand resembled the foot of an elephant,
signifying the spiritual power of the pope, which was heavy, and stamped
down and crushed people’s consciences. The left hand was that of a man,
signifying the worldly power of the pope, which grasped at universal
empire over kings and princes. The right foot was that of an ox, signifying
the spiritual ministers of the papacy, the doctors of the church, the
preachers, confessors, and scholastic theologians, and especially the monks
and nuns, those who aided and supported the pope in oppressing people’s
bodies and souls. The left foot was that of a griffin, an animal which, when
it once seizes its prey, never lets it escape, and signified the canonists, the
monsters of the pope’s temporal power, who grasped people’s temporal
goods, and never returned them. The breast and belly of this monster were
those of a woman, and signified the papal body, the cardinals, bishops,
priests, monks, &c, who spent their lives in eating, drinking, and
incontinence; and this part of the body was naked, because the popish
clergy were not ashamed to expose their vices to the public. The legs, arms,
and neck, on the contrary, were clothed with fishes’ scales; these signified
the temporal princes and lords, who were mostly in alliance with the
papacy. The old man’s head behind the monster, meant that the papacy had
become old, and was approaching its end; and the head of a dragon,
vomiting flames, which served for a tail, was significative of the great
threats, the venomous horrible bulls and blasphemous writings, which the
pontiff and his ministers, enraged at seeing their end approach, were
launching into the world against all who opposed them. These explanations
were supported by apt quotations from the Scriptures, and were so effective,
and became so popular, that the picture was published in various shapes,
and was seen adorning the walls of the humblest cottages. I believe it is still
to be met with in a similar position in some parts of Germany. It was

considered at the time to be a masterly piece of satire. The picture of the
Monk-calf, which is represented in our cut No. 148, was published at the
same time, and usually accompanies it. This monster is said to have been
born at Freyburg, in Misnia, and is simply a rather coarse emblem of the
monachal character.
The volume of caricatures just mentioned contains
several satires on the pope, which are all very
severe, and many of them clever. One has a movable
leaf, which covers the upper part of the picture;
when it is down, we have a representation of the
pope in his ceremonial robes, and over it the
inscription ALEX · VI · PONT · MAX. Pope
Alexander VI. was the infamous Roderic Borgia, a
man stained with all the crimes and vices which
strike most horror into men’s minds. When the leaf
No. 148. The Monk-Calf.
is raised, another figure joins itself with the lower
part of the former, and represents a papal demon, crowned, the cross being
transformed into an instrument of infernal punishment. This figure is
represented in our cut No. 149. Above it are inscribed the words EGO ·
SVM · PAPA, “I am the Pope.” Attached to it is a page of explanation in
German, in which the legend of that pope’s death is given, a legend that his
wicked life appeared sufficient to sanction. It was said that, distrusting the
success of his intrigues to secure the papacy for himself, he applied himself
to the study of the black art, and sold himself to the Evil One. He then
asked the tempter if it were his destiny to be pope, and received an answer
in the affirmative. He next inquired how long he should hold the papacy,
but Satan returned an equivocal and deceptive answer, for Borgia
understood that he was to be pope fifteen years, whereas he died at the end
of eleven. It is well known that Pope Alexander VI. died suddenly and
unexpectedly through accidentally drinking the poisoned wine he had
prepared with his own hand for the murder of another man.

No. 149. The Head of the Papacy.

An Italian theatine wrote a poem against the Reformation, in which he
made Luther the offspring of Megæra, one of the furies, who is represented
as having been sent from hell into Germany to be delivered of him. This
sarcasm was thrown back upon the pope with much greater effect by the
Lutheran caricaturists. One of the plates in the above-mentioned volume
represents the “birth and origin of the pope” (ortus et origo papæ), making
the pope identical with Antichrist. In different groups, in this rather
elaborate design, the child is represented as attended by the three furies,
Megæra acting as his wet-nurse, Alecto as nursery-maid, and Tisiphone in
another capacity, &c The name of Martin Luther is added to this caricature
also.
Hie wird geborn der Widerchrist.
Megera sein Seugamme ist;
Alecto sein Keindermeidlin,
Tisiphone die gengelt in.—M. Luth., D. 1545.

One of the groups in this plate, representing the
fury Megæra, a becoming foster-mother, suckling
the pope-infant, is given in our cut, No. 150.
In another of these caricatures the pope is
represented trampling on the emperor, to show the
manner in which he usurped and tyrannised over
the temporal power. Another illustrates “the
No. 150. The Pope’s Nurse.
kingdom of Satan and the Pope” (regnum Satanæ
et Papæ), and the latter is represented as presiding over hell-mouth in all his
state. One, given in our cut No. 151, represents the pope under the form of
an ass playing on the bagpipes, and is entitled Papa doctor theologiæ et
magister fidei. Four lines of German verse beneath the engraving state how
“the pope can alone expound Scripture and purge error, just as the ass alone
can pipe and touch the notes correctly.”
Der Bapst kan allein auslegen
Die Schrifft, und irthum ausfegen;
Wie der esel allein pfeiffen
Kan, und die noten recht greiffen.—1545.
This was the last year of Luther’s active labours.
At the commencement of the year following he
died at Eissleben, whither he had gone to attend
the council of princes. These caricatures may
perhaps be considered as so many proclamations
of satisfaction and exultation in the final triumph
No. 151. The Pope giving
of the great reformer.
the Tune.
Books, pamphlets, and prints of this kind were
multiplied to an extraordinary degree during the age of the Reformation, but
the majority of them were in the interest of the new movement. Luther’s
opponent, Eckius, complained of the infinite number of people who gained
their living by wandering over all parts of Germany, and selling Lutheran
books.[78] Among those who administered largely to this circulation of
polemic books was the poet of farces, comedies, and ballads, Hans Sachs,
already mentioned. Hans Sachs had in one poem, published in 1535,
celebrated Luther under the title of “the Wittemberg Nightingale:”—

Die Wittembergisch’ Nachtigall,
Die man jetzt höret überall;
and described the effects of his song over all the other animals; and he
published, also in verse, what he called a Monument, or Lament, on his
death (“Ein Denkmal oder Klagred’ ob der Leiche Doktors Martin Luther”).
Among the numerous broadsides published by Hans Sachs, one contains the
very clever caricature of which we give a copy in our cut No. 152. It is
entitled “Der gut Hirt und böss Hirt,” the good shepherd and bad shepherd,
and has for its text the opening verses of the tenth chapter of the gospel of
St. John. The good and bad shepherds are, as may be supposed, Christ and
the pope. The church is here pictured as a not very stately building; the
entrance, especially, is a plain structure of timber. Jesus said to the
Pharisees, “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth
up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in
by the door is the shepherd of the flock.” In the engraving, the pope, as the
hireling shepherd, sits on the roof of the stateliest part of the building,
pointing out to the Christian flock the wrong way, and blessing the
climbers. Under him two men of worldly distinction are making their way
into the church through a window; and on a roof below a friar is pointing to
the people the way up. At another window a monk holds out his arms to
invite people up; and one in spectacles, no doubt emblematical of the
doctors of the church, is looking out from an opening over the entrance
door to watch the proceedings of the Good Shepherd. To the right, on the
papal side of the church, the lords and great men are bringing the people
under their influence, till they are stopped by the cardinals and bishops,
who prevent them from going forward to the door and point out very
energetically the way up the roof. At the door stands, the Saviour, as the
good shepherd, who has knocked, and the porter has opened it with his key.
Christ’s true teachers, the evangelists, show the way to the solitary man of
worth who comes by this road, and who listens with calm attention to the
gospel teachers, while he opens his purse to bestow his charity on the poor
man by the road side. In the original engraving, in the distance on the left,
the Good Shepherd is seen followed by his flock, who are obedient to his
voice; on the right, the bad shepherd, who has ostentatiously drawn up his
sheep round the image of the cross, is abandoning them, and taking to flight
on the approach of the wolf. “He that entereth in by the door is the shepherd
of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice, and

he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he
putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him,
for they know his voice.... But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd,
whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep,
and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.” (John x.
2–4, 12.)

No. 152. The Two Shepherds.

The triumph of Luther is the subject of a rather large
and elaborate caricature, which is an engraving of
great rarity, but a copy of it is given in Jaime’s
“Musée de Caricature.” Leo X. is represented seated
on his throne upon the edge of the abyss, into which
his cardinals are trying to prevent his falling; but
their efforts are rendered vain by the appearance of
Luther on the other side supported by his principal
adherents, and wielding the Bible as his weapon, and
the pope is overthrown, in spite of the support he
receives from a vast host of popish clergy, doctors,
&c. No. 153. Murner and
Luther’s Daughter.
The popish writers against Luther charged him with
vices for which there was probably no foundation, and invented the most

scandalous stories against him. They accused him, among other things, of
drunkenness and licentiousness. and there may, perhaps, be some allusion to
the latter charge in our cut No. 153, which is taken from one of the comic
illustrations to Murner’s book, “Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren,”
which was published in 1522; but, at all events, it will serve as a specimen
of these illustrations, and of Murner’s fancy of representing himself with
the head of a cat. In 1525, Luther married a nun who had turned Protestant
and quitted her convent, named Catherine de Bora, and this became the
signal to his opponents for indulging in abusive songs, and satires, and
caricatures, most of them too coarse and indelicate to be described in these
pages. In many of the caricatures made on this occasion, which are usually
woodcut illustrations to books written against the reformer, Luther is
represented dancing with Catherine de Bora, or sitting at table with a glass
in his hand. An engraving of this kind, which forms one of the illustrations
to a work by Dr. Konrad Wimpina, one of the reformer’s violent opponents,
represents Luther’s marriage. It is divided into three compartments; to the
left, Luther, whom the Catholics always represented in the character of a
monk, gives the marriage ring to Catherine de Bora, and above them, in a
sort of aureole, is inscribed the word Vovete; on the right appears the nuptial
bed, with the curtains drawn, and the inscription Reddite; and in the middle
the monk and nun are dancing joyously together, and over their heads we
read the words—
Discedat ab aris
Cui tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus.
While Luther was heroically fighting the great fight of reform in Germany,
the foundation of religious reform was laid in France by John Calvin, a man
equally sincere and zealous in the cause, but of a totally different temper,
and he espoused doctrines and forms of church government which a
Lutheran would not admit. Literary satire was used with great effect by the
French Calvinists against their popish opponents, but they have left us few
caricatures or burlesque engravings of any kind; at least, very few
belonging to the earlier period of their history. Jaime, in his “Musée de
Caricature,” has given a copy of a very rare plate, representing the pope
struggling with Luther and Calvin, as his two assailants. Both are tearing
the pope’s hair, but it is Calvin who is here armed with the Bible, with
which he is striking at Luther, who is pulling him by the beard. The pope

has his hands upon their heads. This scene takes place in the choir of a
church, but I give here (cut No. 154) only the group of the three
combatants, intended to represent how the two great opponents to papal
corruptions were hostile at the same time to each other.

No. 154. Luther and Calvin.

CHAPTER XVI.
ORIGIN OF MEDIÆVAL FARCE AND MODERN COMEDY.—HROTSVITHA.—
MEDIÆVAL NOTIONS OF TERENCE.—THE EARLY RELIGIOUS PLAYS.—
MYSTERIES AND MIRACLE PLAYS.—THE FARCES.—THE DRAMA IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

There is still another branch of literature which, however it may have been
modified, has descended to us from the middle ages. It has been remarked
more than once in the course of this book, that the theatre of the Romans
perished in the transition from the empire to the middle ages; but something
in the shape of theatrical performances appears to be inseparable from
society even in its most barbarous state, and we soon trace among the
peoples who had settled upon the ruins of the empire of Rome an approach
towards a drama. It is worthy of remark, too, that the mediæval drama
originated exactly in the same way as that of ancient Greece, that is, from
religious ceremonies.
Such was the ignorance of the ancient stage in the middle ages, that the
meaning of the word comœdia was not understood. The Anglo-Saxon
glossaries interpret the word by racu, a narrative, especially an epic recital,
and this was the sense in which it was generally taken until late in the
fourteenth or the fifteenth century. It is the sense in which it is used in the
title of Dante’s great poem, the “Divina Commedia.” When the mediæval
scholars became acquainted in manuscripts with the comedies of Terence,
they considered them only as fine examples of a particular sort of literary
composition, as metrical narratives in dialogue, and in this feeling they
began to imitate them. One of the first of these mediæval imitators was a
lady. There lived in the tenth century a maiden of Saxony, named Hrotsvitha
—a rather unfortunate name for one of her sex, for it means simply “a loud
noise of voices,” or, as she explains it herself, in her Latin, clamor validus.
Hrotsvitha, as was common enough among the ladies of those days, had
received a very learned education, and her Latin is very respectable. About
the middle of the tenth century, she became a nun in the very aristocratic
Benedictine abbey of Gandesheim, in Saxony, the abbesses of which were

all princesses, and which had been founded only a century before. She
wrote in Latin verse a short history of that religious house, but she is best
known by seven pieces, which are called comedies (comœdiæ), and which
consist simply of legends of saints, told dialogue-wise, some in verse and
some in prose. As may be supposed, there is not much of real comedy in
these compositions, although one of them, the Dulcitius, is treated in a style
which approaches that of farce. It is the story of the martyrdom of the three
virgin saints—Agape, Chione, and Irene—who excite the lust of the
persecutor Dulcitius; and it may be remarked, that in this “comedy,” and in
that of Callimachus and one or two of the others, the lady Hrotsvitha
displays a knowledge of love-making and of the language of love, which
was hardly to be expected from a holy nun.[79]
Hrotsvitha, in her preface, complains that, in spite of the general love for
the reading of the Scriptures, and contempt for everything derived from
ancient paganism, people still too often read the “fictions” of Terence, and
thus, seduced by the beauties of his style, soiled their minds with the
knowledge of the criminal acts which are described in his writings. A rather
early manuscript has preserved a very curious fragment illustrative of the
manner in which the comedies of the Romans were regarded by one class of
people in the middle ages, and it has also a further meaning. Its form is that
of a dialogue in Latin verse between Terence and a personage called in the
original delusor, which was no doubt intended to express a performer of
some kind, and may be probably considered as synonymous with jougleur.
It is a contention between the new jouglerie of the middle ages and the old
jouglerie of the schools, somewhat in the same style as the fabliau of “Les
deux Troveors Ribauz,” described in a former chapter.[80] We are to suppose
that the name of Terence has been in some way or other brought forward in
laudatory terms, upon which the jougleur steps forward from among the
spectators and expresses himself towards the Roman writer very
contemptuously. Terence then makes his appearance to speak in his own
defence, and the two go on abusing one another in no very measured
language. Terence asks his assailant who he is? to which the other replies,
“If you ask who I am, I reply, I am better than thee. Thou art old and broken
with years; I am a tyro, full of vigour, and in the force of youth. You are but
a barren trunk, while I am a good and fertile tree. If you hold your tongue,
old fellow, it will be much better for you.”

Si rogitas quis sum, respondeo: te melior sum.
Tu vetus atque senex; ego tyro, valens, adulescens.
Tu sterilis truncus; ego fertilis arbor, opimus.
Si taceas, o vetule, lucrum tibi quæris enorme.
Terence replies:—“What sense have you left? Are you, think you, better
than me? Let me see you, young as you are, compose what I, however old
and broken, will compose. If you be a good tree, show us some proofs of
your fertility. Although I may be a barren trunk, I produce abundance of
better fruit than thine.”
Quis tibi sensus inest? numquid melior me es?
Nunc vetus atque senex quæ fecero fac adolescens.
Si bonus arbor ades, qua fertilitate redundas?
Cum sim truncus iners, fructu meliore redundo.
And so the dispute continues, but unfortunately the latter part has been lost
with a leaf or two of the manuscript. I will only add that I think the age of
this curious piece has been overrated.[81]
Hrotsvitha is the earliest example we have of mediæval writers in this
particular class of literature. We find no other until the twelfth century,
when two writers flourished named Vital of Blois (Vitalis Blesensis) and
Matthew of Vendôme (Matthæus Vindocinensis), the authors of several of
the mediæval poems distinguished by the title of comœdiæ, which give us a
clearer and more distinct idea of what was meant by the word. They are
written in Latin Elegiac verse, a form of composition which was very
popular among the mediæval scholars, and consist of stories told in
dialogue. Hence Professor Osann, of Giessen, who edited two of those of
Vital of Blois, gives them the title of eclogues (eclogæ). The name comedy
is, however, given to them in manuscripts, and it may perhaps admit of the
following explanation. These pieces seem to have been first mere
abridgments of the plots of the Roman comedies, especially those of
Plautus, and the authors appear to have taken the Latin title of the original
as applied to the plot, in the sense of a narrative, and not to its dramatic
form. Of the two “comedies” by Vital of Blois, one is entitled “Geta,” and is
taken from the “Amphytrio” of Plautus, and the other, which in the
manuscripts bears the title of “Querulus,” represents the “Aulularia” of the
same writer. Independent of the form of composition, the scholastic writer

has given a strangely mediæval turn to the incidents of the classic story of
Jupiter and Alcmena. Another similar “comedy,” that of Babio, which I first
printed from the manuscripts, is still more mediæval in character. Its plot,
perhaps taken from a fabliau, for the mediæval writers rarely invented
stories, is as follows, although it must be confessed that it comes out rather
obscurely in the dialogue itself. Babio, the hero of the piece, is a priest,
who, as was still common at that time (the twelfth century), has a wife, or,
as the strict religionists would then say, a concubine, named Pecula. She has
a daughter named Viola, with whom Babio is in love, and he pursues his
design upon her, of course unknown to his wife. Babio has also a man-
servant named Fodius, who is engaged in a secret intrigue with his mistress,
Pecula, and also seeks to seduce her daughter, Viola. To crown the whole,
the lord of the manor, a knight named Croceus, is also in love with Viola,
though with more honourable designs. Here is surely intrigue enough and a
sufficient absence of morality to satisfy a modern French novelist of the
first water. At the opening of the piece, amid some by-play between the four
individuals who form the household of Babio, it is suddenly announced that
Croceus is on his way to visit him, and a feast is hastily prepared for his
reception. It ends in the knight carrying away Viola by force. Babio, after a
little vain bluster, consoles himself for the loss of the damsel with
reflections on the virtue of his wife, Pecula, and the faithfulness of his man,
Fodius, when, at this moment, Fame carries to his ear reports which excite
his suspicions against them. He adopts a stratagem very frequently
introduced in the mediæval stories, surprises the two lovers under
circumstances which leave no room for doubting their guilt, and then
forgives them, enters a monastery, and leaves them to themselves. In form,
these “comedies” are little more than scholastic exercises; but, at a later
period, we shall see the same stories adopted as the subjects of farces.[82]
Already, however, by the side of these dramatic poems, a real drama—the
drama of the middle ages—was gradually developing itself. As stated
before, it arose, like the drama of the Greeks, out of the religious
ceremonies. We know nothing of the existence of anything approaching to
dramatic forms which may have existed among the religious rites of the
peoples of the Teutonic race before their conversion to Christianity, but the
Christian clergy felt the necessity of keeping up festive religious
ceremonies in some form or other, and also of impressing upon people’s
imagination and memory by means of rude scenical representations some of

the broader facts of scriptural and ecclesiastical history. These performances
at first consisted probably in mere dumb show, or at the most the
performers may have chanted the scriptural account of the transaction they
were representing. In this manner the choral boys, or the younger clergy,
would, on some special Saint’s day, perform some striking act in the life of
the saint commemorated, or, on particular festivals of the church, those
incidents of gospel history to which the festival especially related. By
degrees, a rather more imposing character was given to these performances
by the addition of a continuous dialogue, which, however, was written in
Latin verse, and was no doubt chanted. This incipient drama in Latin, as far
as we know it, belongs to the twelfth century, and is represented by a
tolerably large number of examples still preserved in mediæval
manuscripts. Some of the earliest of these have for their author a pupil of
the celebrated Abelard, named Hilarius, who lived in the first half of the
twelfth century, and is understood to have been by birth an Englishman.
Hilarius appears before us as a playful Latin poet, and among a number of
short pieces, which may be almost called lyric, he has left us three of these
religious plays. The subject of the first of these is the raising of Lazarus
from the dead, the chief peculiarity of which consists of the songs of
lamentation placed in the mouths of the two sisters of Lazarus, Mary and
Martha. The second represents one of the miracles attributed to St.
Nicholas; and the third, the history of Daniel. The latter is longer and more
elaborate than the others, and at its conclusion, the stage direction tells us
that, if it were performed at matins, Darius, king of the Medes and Persians,
was to chant Te Deum Laudamus, but if it were at vespers, the great king
was to chant Magnificat anima mea Dominum.[83]
That this mediæval drama was not derived from that of the Roman is
evident from the circumstance that entirely new terms were applied to it.
The western people in the middle ages had no words exactly equivalent
with the Latin comœdia, tragœdia, theatrum, &c; and even the Latinists, to
designate the dramatic pieces performed at the church festivals, employed
the word ludus, a play. The French called them by a word having exactly
the same meaning, jeu (from jocus). Similarly in English they were termed
plays. The Anglo-Saxon glossaries present as the representative of the Latin
theatrum, the compounded words plege-stow, or pleg-stow, a play-place,
and pleg-hus, a play-house. It is curious that we Englishmen have preferred
to the present time the Anglo-Saxon words in play, player, and play-house.

Another Anglo-Saxon word with exactly the same signification, lac, or
gelac, play, appears to have been more in use in the dialect of the
Northumbrians, and a Yorkshireman still calls a play a lake, and a player a
laker. So also the Germans called a dramatic performance a spil, i.e. a play,
the modern spiel, and a theatre, a spil-hus. One of the pieces of Hilarius is
thus entitled “Ludus super iconia sancti Nicolai,” and the French jeu and the
English play are constantly used in the same sense. But besides this general
term, words gradually came into use to characterise different sorts of plays.
The church plays consisted of two descriptions of subjects, they either
represented the miraculous acts of certain saints, which had a plain
meaning, or some incident taken from the Holy Scriptures, which was
supposed to have a hidden mysterious signification as well as an apparent
one, and hence the one class of subject was usually spoken of simply as
miraculum, a miracle, and the other as mysterium, a mystery. Mysteries and
miracle-plays are still the names usually given to the old religious plays by
writers on the history of the stage.
We have a proof that the Latin religious plays, and the festivities in which
they were employed, had become greatly developed in the twelfth century,
in the notice taken of them in the ecclesiastical councils of that period, for
they were disapproved by the stricter church disciplinarians. So early as the
papacy of Gregory VIII., the pope urged the clergy to “extirpate” from their
churches theatrical plays, and other festive practices which were not quite
in harmony with the sacred character of these buildings.[84] Such
performances are forbidden by a council held at Treves in 1227.[85] We
learn from the annals of the abbey of Corbei, published by Leibnitz, that the
younger monks at Heresburg performed on one occasion a “sacred comedy”
(sacram comœdiam) of the selling into captivity and the exaltation of
Joseph, which was disapproved by the other heads of the order.[86] Such
performances are included in a proclamation of the bishop of Worms, in
1316, against the various abuses which had crept into the festivities
observed in his diocese at Easter and St. John’s tide.[87] Similar prohibitions
of the acting of such plays in churches are met with at subsequent periods.
While these performances were thus falling under the censure of the church
authorities, they were taken up by the laity, and under their management
both the plays and the machinery for acting them underwent considerable
extension. The municipal guilds contained in their constitution a

considerable amount of religious spirit. They were great benefactors of the
churches in cities and municipal towns, and had usually some parts of the
sacred edifice appropriated to them, and they may, perhaps, have taken a
part in these performances, while they were still confined to the church.
These guilds, and subsequently the municipal corporations, took them
entirely into their own hands. Certain annual religious festivals, and
especially the feast of Corpus Christi, were still the occasions on which the
plays were acted, but they were taken entirely from the churches, and the
performances took place in the open streets. Each guild had its particular
play, and they acted on movable stages, which were dragged along the
streets in the procession of the guild. These stages appear to have been
rather complicated. They were divided into three floors, that in the middle,
which was the principal stage, representing this world, while the upper
division represented heaven, and that at the bottom hell. The mediæval
writers in Latin called this machinery a pegma, from the Greek word πῆγμα,
a scaffold; and they also applied to it, for a reason which is not is easily
seen, unless the one word arose out of a corruption of the other, that of
pagina, and from a further corruption of these came into the French and
English languages the word pageant, which originally signified one of these
movable stages, though it has since received secondary meanings which
have a much wider application. Each guild in a town had its pageant and its
own actors, who performed in masks and costumes, and each had one of a
series of plays, which were performed at places where they halted in the
procession. The subjects of these plays were taken from Scripture, and they
usually formed a regular series of the principal histories of the Old and New
Testaments. For this reason they were generally termed mysteries, a title
already explained; and among the few series of these plays still preserved,
we have the “Coventry Mysteries,” which were performed by the guilds of
that town, the “Chester Mysteries,” belonging to the guilds in the city of
Chester, and the “Towneley Mysteries,” so called from the name of the
possessor of the manuscript, but which probably belonged to the guilds of
Wakefield in Yorkshire.
During these changes in the method of performance, the plays themselves
had also been considerably modified. The simple Latin phrases, even when
in rhyme, which formed the dialogue of the earlier ludi—as in the four
miracles of St. Nicholas, and the six Latin mysteries taken from the New
Testament, printed in my volume of “Early Mysteries and other Latin

Poems”—must have been very uninteresting to the mass of the spectators,
and an attempt was made to enliven them by introducing among the Latin
phrases popular proverbs, or even sometimes a song in the vulgar tongue.
Thus in the play of “Lazarus” by Hilarius, the Latin of the lamentations of
his two sisters is intermixed with French verses. Such is the case also with
the play of “St. Nicholas” by the same writer, as well as with the curious
mystery of the Foolish Virgins, printed in my “Early Mysteries” just alluded
to, in which latter the Latin is intermingled with Provençal verse. A much
greater advance was made when these performances were transferred to the
guilds. The Latin was then discarded altogether, and the whole play was
written in French, or English, or German, as the case might be, the plot was
made more elaborate, and the dialogue greatly extended. But now that the
whole institution had become secularised, the want of something to amuse
people—to make them laugh, as people liked to laugh in the middle ages—
was felt more than ever, and this want was supplied by the introduction of
droll and ludicrous scenes, which are often very slightly, if at all, connected
with the subject of the play. In one of the earliest of the French plays, that
of “St. Nicholas,” by Jean Bodel, the characters who form the burlesque
scene are a party of gamblers in a tavern. In others, robbers, or peasants, or
beggars form the comic scene, or vulgar women, or any personages who
could be introduced acting vulgarly and using coarse language, for these
were great incitements to mirth among the populace.
In the English plays now remaining, these scenes are, on the whole, less
frequent, and they are usually more closely connected with the general
subject. The earliest English collection that has been published is that
known as the “Towneley Mysteries,” the manuscript of which belongs to
the fifteenth century, and the plays themselves may have been composed in
the latter part of the fourteenth. It contains thirty-two plays, beginning with
the Creation, and ending with the Ascension and the Day of Judgment, with
two supplementary plays, the “Raising of Lazarus” and the “Hanging of
Judas.” The play of “Cain and Abel ” is throughout a vulgar drollery, in
which Cain, who exhibits the character of a blustering ruffian, is
accompanied by a garcio, or lad, who is the very type of a vulgar and
insolent horse-boy, and the conversation of these two worthies reminds us a
little of that between the clown and his master in the open-air performances
of the old wandering mountebanks. Even the death of Abel by the hand of
his brother is performed in a manner calculated to provoke great laughter. In

the old mirthful spirit, to hear two persons load each other with vulgar
abuse, was as good as seeing them grin through a horse-collar, if not better.
Hence the droll scene in the play of “Noah” is a domestic quarrel between
Noah and his wife, who was proverbially a shrew, and here gives a tolerable
example of abusive language, as it might then come from a woman’s
tongue. The quarrel arises out of her obstinate refusal to go into the ark. In
the New Testament series the play of “The Shepherds” was one of those
most susceptible of this sort of embellishment. There are two plays of the
Shepherds in the “Towneley Mysteries,” the first of which is amusing
enough, as it represents, in clever burlesque, the acts and conversation of a
party of mediæval shepherds guarding their flocks at night; but the second
play of the Shepherds is a much more remarkable example of a comic
drama. The shepherds are introduced at the opening of the piece conversing
very satirically on the corruptions of the time, and complaining how the
people were impoverished by over-taxation, to support the pride and vanity
of the aristocracy. After a good deal of very amusing talk, the shepherds,
who, as usual, are three in number, agree to sing a song, and it is this song,
it appears, which brings to them a fourth, named Mak, who proves to be a
sheep-stealer; and, in fact, no sooner have the shepherds resigned
themselves to sleep for the night, than Mak chooses one of the best sheep in
their flocks, and carries it home to his hut. Knowing that he will be
suspected of the theft, and that he will soon be pursued, he is anxious to
conceal the plunder, and is only helped out of his difficulty by his wife, who
suggests that the carcase shall be laid at the bottom of her cradle, and that
she shall lie upon it and groan, pretending to be in labour. Meanwhile the
shepherds awake, discover the loss of a sheep, and perceiving that Mak has
disappeared also, they naturally suspect him to be the depredator, and
pursue him. They find everything very cunningly prepared in the cottage to
deceive them, but, after a large amount of roundabout inquiry and research,
and much drollery, they discover that the boy of which Mak’s wife pretends
to have been just delivered, is nothing else but the sheep which had been
stolen from their flocks. The wife still asserts that it is her child, and Mak
sets up as his defence that the baby had been “forspoken,” or enchanted, by
an elf at midnight, and that it had thus been changed into the appearance of
a sheep; but the shepherds refuse to be satisfied with this explanation. The
whole of this little comedy is carried out with great skill, and with infinite
drollery. The shepherds, while still wrangling with Mak and his wife, are

seized with drowsiness, and lie down to sleep; but they are aroused by the
voice of the angel, who proclaims the birth of the Saviour. The next play in
which the drollery is introduced, is that of “Herod and the Slaughter of the
Innocents.” Herod’s bluster and bombast, and the vulgar abuse which
passes between the Hebrew mothers and the soldiers who are murdering
their children, are wonderfully laughable. The plays which represented the
arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus, are all full of drollery, for the grotesque
character which had been given to the demons in the earlier middle ages,
appears to have been transferred to the executioners, or, as they were called,
the “tormentors,” and the language and manner in which they executed their
duties, must have kept the audience in a continual roar of laughter. In the
play of “Doomsday,” the fiends retained their old character, and the manner
in which they joke over the distress of the sinful souls, and the details they
give of their sinfulness, are equally mirth-provoking. The “Coventry
Mysteries” are also printed from a manuscript of the middle of the fifteenth
century, and are, perhaps, as old as the “Towneley Mysteries.” They consist
of forty-two plays, but they contain, on the whole, fewer droll scenes than
those of the Towneley collection. But a very remarkable example is
furnished in the play of the “Trial of Joseph and Mary,” which is a very
grotesque picture of the proceedings in a mediæval consistory court. The
sompnour, a character so well known by Chaucer’s picture of him, opens
the piece by reading from his book a long list of offenders against chastity.
At its conclusion, two “detractors” make their appearance, who repeat
various scandalous stories against the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph,
which are overheard by some of the high officers of the court, and Mary
and Joseph are formally accused and placed upon their trial. The trial itself
is a scene of low ribaldry, which can only have afforded amusement to a
very vulgar audience. There is a certain amount of the same kind of
indelicate drollery in the play of “The Woman taken in Adultery,” in this
collection. The “Chester Mysteries” are still more sparing of such scenes,
but they are printed from manuscripts written after the Reformation, which
had, perhaps, gone through the process of expurgation, in which such
excrescences had been lopped off. However, in the play of “Noah’s Flood,”
we have the old quarrel between Noah and his wife, which is carried so far
that the latter actually beats her husband in the presence of the audience.
There is a little drollery in the play of “The Shepherds,” a considerable
amount of what may be called “Billingsgate” language in the play of the

“Slaughter of the Innocents,” but less than the usual amount of insolence in
the tormentors and demons.[88] It is probable, however, that these droll
scenes were not always considered an integral part of the play in which they
were introduced, but that they were kept as separate subjects, to be
introduced at will, and not always in the same play, and therefore that they
were not copied with the play in the manuscripts.
In the Coventry play of “Noah’s Flood,” when Noah has received the
directions from an angel for the building of the ark, he leaves the stage to
proceed to this important work. On his departure, Lamech comes forward,
blind and led by a youth, who directs his hand to shoot at a beast concealed
in a bush. Lamech shoots, and kills Cain, upon which, in his anger, he beats
the youth to death, and laments the misfortune into which the latter has led
him. This was the legendary explanation of the passage in the fourth chapter
of Genesis: “And Lamech said ... I have slain a man to my wounding, and a
young man to my hurt; if Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, truly Lamech
seventy and seven-fold.” It is evident that this is a piece of scriptural story
which has nothing to do with Noah’s flood, and accordingly, in the
Coventry play, we are told in the stage directions, that it was introduced in
the place of the “interlude,”[89] as if there were a place in the machinery of
the pageant where the episode, which was not an integral part of the subject,
was performed, and that this part of the performance was called an
interlude, or play introduced in the interval of the action of the main
subject. The word interlude remained long in our language as applied to
such short and simple dramatic pieces as we may suppose to have formed
the drolleries of the mysteries. But they had another name in France which
has had a greater and more lulling celebrity. In one of the early French
miracle-plays, that of “St. Fiacre,” an interlude of this kind is introduced,
containing five personages—a brigand or robber, a peasant, a sergeant, and
the wives of the two latter. The brigand, meeting the peasant on the
highway, asks the way to St. Omer, and receives a clownish answer, which
is followed by one equally rude on a second question. The brigand, in
revenge, steals the peasant’s capon, but the sergeant comes up at this
moment and, attempting to arrest the thief, receives a blow from the latter
which is supposed to break his right arm. The brigand thus escapes, and the
peasant and the sergeant quit the scene, which is immediately occupied by
their wives. The sergeant’s wife is informed by the other of the injury
sustained by her husband, and she exults over it because it will deprive him

of the power of beating her. They then proceed to a tavern, call for wine,
and make merry, the conversation turning upon the faults of their respective
husbands, who are not spared. In the midst of their enjoyments, the two
husbands return, and show, by beating their wives, that they are not very
greatly disabled. In the manuscript of the miracle-play of “St. Fiacre,” in
which this amusing episode is introduced, a marginal stage direction is
expressed in the following words, “cy est interposé une farsse” (here a farce
is introduced). This is one of the earliest instances of the application of the
term farce to these short dramatic facetiæ. Different opinions have been
expressed as to the origin of the word, but it seems most probable that it is
derived from an old French verb, farcer, to jest, to make merry, whence the
modern word farceur for a joker, and that it thus means merely a drollery or
merriment.
I have just suggested as a reason for the absence of these interludes, or
farces, in the mysteries as they are found in the manuscripts, that they were
probably not looked upon as parts of the mysteries themselves, but as
separate pieces which might be used at pleasure. When we reach a certain
period in their history, we find that not only was this the case, but that these
farces were performed separately and altogether independently of the
religious plays. It is in France that we find information which enables us to
trace the gradual revolution in the mediæval drama. A society was formed
towards the close of the fourteenth century under the title of Confrères de la
Passion, who, in 1398, established a regular theatre at St. Maur-des-Fossés,
and subsequently obtained from Charles VI. a privilege to transport their
theatre into Paris, and to perform in it mysteries and miracle-plays. They
now rented of the monks of Hermières a hall in the hospital of the Trinity,
outside of the Porte St. Denis, performing there regularly on Sundays and
saints’ days, and probably making a good thing of it, for, during a long
period, they enjoyed great popularity. Gradually, however, this popularity
was so much diminished, that the confrères were obliged to have recourse
to expedients for reviving it. Meanwhile other similar societies had arisen
into importance. The clerks of the Bazoche, or lawyers’ clerks of the Palais
de Justice, had thus associated together, it is said, as early as the beginning
of the fourteenth century, and they distinguished themselves by composing
and performing farces, for which they appear to have obtained a privilege.
Towards the close of the fourteenth century, there arose in Paris another
society, which took the name of Enfans sans souci, or Careless Boys, who

elected a president or chief with the title of Prince des Sots, or King of the
Fools, and who composed a sort of dramatic satires which they called
Sotties. Jealousies soon arose between these two societies, either because
the sotties were made sometimes to resemble too closely the farces, or
because each trespassed too often on the territories of the other. Their
differences were finally arranged by a compromise, whereby the
Bazochians yielded to their rivals the privilege of performing farces, and
received in return the permission to perform sotties. The Bazochians, too,
had invented a new class of dramatic pieces which they called Moralities,
and in which allegorical personages were introduced. Thus three dramatic
societies continued to exist in France through the fifteenth century, and until
the middle of the sixteenth.
These various pieces, under the titles of farces, sotties, moralities, or
whatever other names might be given to them, had become exceedingly
popular at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and a very considerable
number of them were printed, and many of them are still preserved, but they
are books of great rarity, and often unique.[90] Of these the farces form the
most numerous class. They consist simply of the tales of the older jougleurs
or story-tellers represented in a dramatic form, but they often display great
skill in conducting the plot, and a considerable amount of wit. The story of
the sheep-stealer in the Towneley play of “The Shepherds,” is a veritable
farce. As in the fabliaux, the most common subjects of these farces are love
intrigues, carried on in a manner which speaks little for the morality of the
age in which they were written. Family quarrels frequently form the subject
of a farce, and the weaknesses and vices of women. The priests, as usual,
are not spared, but are introduced as the seducers of wives and daughters. In
one the wives have found a means of re-modelling their husbands and
making them young again, which they put in practice with various ludicrous
circumstances. Tricks of servants are also common subjects for these farces.
One is the story of a boy who does not know his own father, and some of
the subjects are of a still more trivial character, as that of the boy who steals
a tart from the pastrycook’s shop. Two hungry boys, prowling about the
streets, come to the shop door just as the pastrycook is giving directions for
sending an eel-pie after him. By an ingenious deception the boys gain
possession of the pie and eat it, and they are both caught and severely
chastised. This is the whole plot of the farce. A dull schoolboy examined by
his master in the presence of his parents, and the mirth produced by his