Of Six Mediæval Women; To Which Is Added A Note on Mediæval Gardens. Alice Kemp-Welch
them such a sameness of delineation, that we can only imagine that poets sang of qualities that pleased, and did not attempt to individualise. All are good and gracious, beautiful, and slight of figure, with delicate hands and tapering fingers, small feet, fine and glossy hair, and grey eyes, laughing and bright. Only occasionally are these attractions varied and enhanced by the telling of beauty unaided by paint and hair dye.
It is hardly necessary to speak, save very generally, of woman’s dress, for much has already been written on the subject. For everyday use, garments of wool or linen, according to the season, and with much fur in winter, were worn. At weddings or tournaments, or on any other kind of fête-day, the ladies vied with each other in rich cloth of gold and silver, in silks woven with threads of gold and patterned with conventional design, and in all kinds of iridescent silken stuffs from the East. From Mosul, on the banks of the Tigris, whence the material we call muslin takes its name, was brought a fine silk gossamer, something like our crêpe de Chine. This was used for the finely plaited underdress seen at the neck and foot of mediæval costume. Perhaps the best representation of this, although stone seems hardly the most favourable medium for the delineation of so delicate a fabric, can be seen in the long slim figures of the queenly ladies standing in the niches on either side of the west door of Chartres Cathedral.
But when we have contemplated this gorgeous and dainty apparel, and all the other personal luxury that accompanied it, such as enamelled and jewelled gold circlets for the head, jewelled girdles with each jewel chosen for its own special virtue, carved ivory combs, tablets and hand-mirrors, and the like, we are forced to wonder how all this refinement and beauty could go hand in hand with so much that is unpleasing. If we turn to consider the manners of the men, we find the same contrasts—on the one hand the maximum of gallantry and courtesy, and on the other a corresponding churlishness and brutality. Metaphorically and actually, the lance and the battle-axe were still rivalling each other in the warfare of daily life. Although the battle-axe must eventually yield to the lance, still strange extremes have flourished side by side all down the ages. Turning to but comparatively recent times, the coarseness we associate with much of the reign of Charles II. stands out in glaring contrast with the delicate, graceful poetry that found expression then. And coming still nearer to our own days, we think of the unseemly manners in the reigns of George III. and IV. and the dainty miniatures such as those painted by Cosway, and wonder how these could exist together. Might we not just as well wonder why the olive tree has a gnarled, distorted stem, whilst its delicate, symmetrical leaves, of the tenderest green grey, glisten in the sunshine like silvery shells fresh from ocean’s bed?
Renan, amongst the many thinkers on life’s mysteries, tells us that “Life is the result of a conflict between contrary forces.” But to philosophise is useless, and it is still more useless to question life’s seeming anomalies. We can only bow in silence before “what Time in mists confounds.”
As has been already said, it is only a general idea of the women of the Middle Ages that can be gleaned from the Romances. For something to bring us into more real touch with them, and to reveal more of their personality, we must consider some who have made themselves known to us through their work, since history, until we come to the fourteenth century, is almost silent about them. Thus it is that as we study these women, it almost seems at first as if we were looking at some faded frescoes in a dimly lighted church. But just as the half-obliterated figures take form and life as our eyes grow accustomed to the dimness, and our minds get attuned to the days that knew their living representatives, so these women of whom we are speaking may live again for us if only we treat their works as human documents, and not as archæological curiosities. The following pages tell of six such women who lived between the tenth century and the first half of the fifteenth—Roswitha, a nun of Germany; Marie de France, a lady at the Court of Henry the Second of England; Mechthild of Magdeburg, mystic and beguine; Mahaut, Countess of Artois, a great-niece of St. Louis; Christine de Pisan, an Italian by birth, living at the Court of Charles the Fifth of France; and Agnes Sorel, the Mistress and inspirer of Charles the Seventh.
In trying to evoke the women of these days of long ago, it is hardly possible to do more than portray them in outline. Yet even so, if the outline be true, we may remember, for our consolation, that it has been said that we shall never, except in outline, see the mysterious Goddess Truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Book of the Divine Consolation of the Blessed Angela of Foligno. The New Mediæval Library.
[2] Revelations of Divine Love recorded by Julian, Anchoress of Norwich, 1373.
Photo. Macbeth.
ROSWITHA PRESENTING HER POEM TO THE EMPEROR OTHO I., THE ABBESS OF GANDERSHEIM STANDING AT HER SIDE.
A. Dürer, 1501.
To face page 1.
A TENTH-CENTURY DRAMATIST,
ROSWITHA THE NUN
In this age of personal curiosity, politely called psychological interest, when personalities are analysed with all the thoroughness of the dissecting theatre, it seems almost courting failure to try to call to remembrance one whose personality has long since faded away, and of whom, apparently, no contemporary writer has made mention. Of Roswitha, the woman, we know but little, and this little is gathered from her own writings.[3] Presumably the date of her birth was about A.D. 935, and that of her death about A.D. 973. There is a tradition that she was connected with the royal house of Germany, at that time represented by the enlightened Otho the Great. Be this as it may, her life for us begins when, probably at an early age, she entered the Convent of Gandersheim. Gandersheim was a Benedictine nunnery in the Harz Mountains, founded in the ninth century by Liudolf, Duke of Saxony, and important enough to entitle its Abbess to a Seat in the Imperial Diet, a right perhaps never exercised except by proxy. The story of its foundation, as told by Roswitha in the unique MS. of her works, is of strange beauty. Listen to her own words as she tells the tale:—
At that time there was, nigh unto the Monastery,[4] a little wood, encircled by shady hills, those same hills by the which we ourselves are surrounded. And there was, moreover, in the wood a small farm where the swineherds of Liudolf were wont to dwell, and within the enclosure of which the men, during the hours of night, composed to rest their weary bodies until the time when they must needs drive forth to pasture the pigs committed to their care. Here, on a time, two days before the Feast of All Saints, these same herdsmen, in the darkness of the night, saw full many bright lights glowing in the wood. And they were astonished at the sight, and marvelled what could be the purport of this strange vision of blazing light cleaving the darkness of the night with its wondrous brilliance. And all trembling with fear, they related unto their Master that which they had seen, showing unto him the place which had been illumined by the light. And he, desiring by very sight thereof to put to proof that which he had heard tell, joined them without the building, and began the following night, without sleeping, to keep watch, closing not his eyes though they were weighed down by the desire of slumber. And after a while he saw the kindling lights, more in number than afore, once again burn with a red glow, in the same place forsooth, but at an hour somewhat earlier. And this glad sign of happy omen he made known so soon as Phœbus shed his first rays from the sky, and the joyous news spread everywhere. And this could not be kept back from the worthy Duke Liudolf, but swifter than speech did it come to his ears. And he, carefully observing