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SPECULUM
A JOURNAL OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
ee
CONTENTS ARTICLES LITERATURE AND LEARNING IN THE ENGLISH CIVIL SER-
VICE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY .......... T.F.Tovr 365 THE ORGAN IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES. ... . H. R. Birrermann 390 THE COVERS OF THE LORSCH GOSPELS ......... C.R. Morey 411 ON THE TEXT OF SPECULUM STULTORUM....... J.H. Moztey 430
MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY EXCAVATIONS AT CLUNY, IV . . K.J.Conanr 443
NOTES
A SOLINUS MANUSCRIPT FROM THE LIBRARY OF COLUCCIO ee ee ee oe eee ee ee ee H.1. Bert 451
A MOZARABIC PSALTER FROM SANTO DOMINGO DE SILOS W. M. Warrenty, Jr 461
ae ee ee ae eee ea ee ee el ee ee ee 469 H. E. Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for his Biography (H. R. Patch); Art Studies: Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern, No. 5 (A. P. McMahon); W. O. Ault, ed., Court Rolls of the Abbey of Ramsey and of the Honor of Clare (W. A. Morris); H. Baron, ed., Leonardo Bruni Aretino: Humanistisch- philosophische Schriften. Mit einer Chronologie seiner Werke und Briefe (W. L. Bul- lock); W. E. Brown, The Achievement of the Middle Ages (N. S. B. Gras); M. Grab- mann and Fr. Pelster, edd., Opuscula et Textus Historiam Ecclesiae Eiusque Vitam atqgue Doctrinam Illustrantia, Series Scholastica (S. H. Thomson); M. Inguanez, ed., Codicum Casiensium Manuscriptorum Catalogus, vol. II, pars 1; I Placiti Cassinesi del Secolo x con Periodi in Volgare; L’Opera Conservatrice degli Amanuensi Cassinesi (C. U. Clark); G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (D. B. Macdonald); D. E. Smith, Le Comput Manuel de Magister Anianus (L. C. Karpinski).
ANNOUNCEMENT OF BOOKS RECEIVED ................ 494 ADDENDUM AND CORRIGENDA.................-22:- 496 VoLumME IV OCTOBER, 1929 NUMBER 4.
PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY THE MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY OF AMERICA
SPECULUM, A JOURNAL OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
EDITORIAL BOARD Eprtor-1n-CHIEF JEREMIAH Denis Mattuias Forp Manaaine Epitor AssISTANT MANAGING Eprtor Francis Peaspopy Macown, Jr SaMuEL Hazzarp Cross Pus.isHine Epitor Joun Nicnotas Brown
% Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cable address, ‘Speculum, Cambridgemass’.
CuarLes Rurus Morey JoHN StronG Perry TatLock Princeton University University of California Dana CarRLTON Munro Ernest Hatca WILKINS Princeton University Oberlin College JamMES Hucu Ryan Kart Youne
Catholic University of America Yale University
ADVISORY BOARD
Puitie ScHuyLER ALLEN GreorcE La PIANA University of Chicago Harvard University CuarLes Henry BEESON JoHn MattHews MANLy University of Chicago University of Chicago Greorce RateicgH CorrMaN WituiaM ALBert NITZE Boston University University of Chicago CorNELIA CATLIN COULTER ArtHuR KinGsLey PorTER Mount Holyoke College Harvard University Rautpn Apams CRAM Epwarp KeEennarp Ranp Boston, Massachusetts Harvard University Gorpon Hatt GEROULD Frep Norris Rosinson Princeton University Harvard University ETIENNE GILSON JAMES WESTFALL THOMPSON Universities of Paris and Toronto University of Chicago GeorcE LivincsToNE HamittoN LyNN THORNDIKE Cornell University Columbia University CuarLes Homer HaskKINs JAMES Frietp WILLARD
University of Colorado BUSINESS BOARD
Amos Puitiep McManon New York University
GEORGE ARTHUR PLIMPTON
New York City
Harvard University
JOHN MARSHALL Cambridge, Mass.
Specotum, A JourNnaL or Mep1aEvaL Sruptes, is published quarterly by the Meptarval Acapemy or America. The subscription price is Five Dollars; single copies of the current issue may be had post-free for One Dollar and Fifty Cents. MSS submitted for publication should be forwarded to the Managing Editor, but MSS will not be returned unless accom- panied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope. For the details of editorial practice cor- tributors are directed to ‘Notes for Contributors’ at the end of the January issue.
Vou. IV, No. 4. — Copyright, 1929, by the Mediaeval Academy of America. — Paintep i U.S. A. Entered as second-class matter, May 8, 1926, at the Post Office at Boston, Mass., under the Act of August 24, 1912.
SPECULUM
A JOURNAL OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
os
LITERATURE AND LEARNING IN THE ENGLISH CIVIL SERVICE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY!
By THOMAS FREDERICK TOUT
HE Mepraevar Acapemy or AMeriIca aims at bringing into a
common organisation all scholars devoting themselves to the study of some aspect of the Middle Ages. It is, therefore, a society of specialists, for to the outsider mediaeval study is in itself a spe- cialised field. Yet all of us who seek to make a permanent contribu- tion to knowledge cannot hope to attain our purpose, if we take the whole of mediaeval life as our province. The outlook is too vast, the ground to be covered indeed enormous. We are, therefore, compelled to further specialisation within our special subject. And the more deeply we delve into our own particular patch of knowledge, the more completely we become engulfed in it and, therefore, indifferent to the labors of workers in adjacent fields. In the long run each specialist tends to erect round himself a thick hedge of incuriousness that blocks his fellow workers out of vision. It is useless to com- plain of such a process. It is the condition precedent to the advance of science. Yet it is an evil thing for all that, for knowledge is not really split up into water-tight compartments. We can properly appreciate our own particular work only if we bring it into relation with the work of those who are dealing with closely allied studies. To establish easily such relations, the workers on adjoining fields must meet together, compare notes, put into plain language the general results of their investigations, and set up, so to say, a clearing-
1 An address delivered at the Third Annual Meeting of the MeptarvaL ACADEMY OF Auerica in Boston, April 29, 1928.
365
SPECULUM, A JOURNAL OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
EDITORIAL BOARD
Eprtor-1N-CHIEF JEREMIAH Denis Marruias Forp Manaaine Epitor AssISTANT MANaGING Eprror Francis Peaspopy Magoun, Jr SAMUEL Hazzarp Cross PusuisHine Epitor Joun Nicnotas Brown
% Mediaeval Academy of America, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cable address, ‘Speculum, Cambridgemass’.
CuarLes Rurus Morey JOHN StronG Perry TatLock Princeton University University of California
Dana CaRLTON Munro Ernest Hatca WILKINS Princeton University Oberlin College
JAMES Hucu Ryan Kart Youna Catholic University of America Yale University
ADVISORY BOARD GrorcE La PIANA
Paitie ScHuyLER ALLEN
University of Chicago Harvard University CHARLES HENRY BEESON JoHN MatrHews MANLy University of Chicago University of Chicago GrorcEe RaLeicH CorrMaN Witu1am ALBErtT NITZE Boston University University of Chicago CorNELIA CATLIN COULTER ArtHuR KINGSLEY PorTER Mount Holyoke College Harvard University Ratepa Apams CRAM Epwarp KeEennarp Ranp Boston, Massachusetts Harvard University Gorpon Hatt GEROULD Frep Norris Rospinson Princeton University Harvard University ETIENNE GILSON JAMES WESTFALL THOMPSON Universities of Paris and Toronto University of Chicago GeorGE LivINGsSTONE HamittoN LyYNN THORNDIKE Cornell University Columbia University CuarLes Homer HaAskIns JAMES Fretp WILLARD
University of Colorado BUSINESS BOARD
Amos Paitie McManon JoHN MARSHALL New York University Cambridge, Mass.
GrEorGE ARTHUR PLIMPTON New York City
Harvard University
Specutum, A JournaL or Mepiaevat Sruptes, is published quarterly by the MEDIAEVAL Acapemy or America. The subscription price is Five Dollars; single copies of the current issue may be had post-free for One Dollar and Fifty Cents. MSS submitted for publication should be forwarded to the Managing Editor, but MSS will not be returned unless accom- panied by a stamped and self-addressed envelope. For the details of editorial practice con- tributors are directed to ‘Notes for Contributors’ at the end of the January issue.
Vou. IV, No. 4. — Copyright, 1929, by the Mediaeval Academy of America. — Paintep ix U.S. A. Entered as second-class matter, May 8, 1926, at the Post Office at Boston, Mass., under the Act of August 24, 1912.
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AMER
SPECULUM
A JOURNAL OF MEDIAEVAL STUDIES
oo
LITERATURE AND LEARNING IN THE ENGLISH CIVIL SERVICE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY '!
By THOMAS FREDERICK TOUT
HE Mepraevat Acapemy or AMERICA aims at bringing into a
common organisation all scholars devoting themselves to the study of some aspect of the Middle Ages. It is, therefore, a society of specialists, for to the outsider mediaeval study is in itself a spe- cialised field. Yet all of us who seek to make a permanent contribu- tion to knowledge cannot hope to attain our purpose, if we take the whole of mediaeval life as our province. The outlook is too vast, the ground to be covered indeed enormous. We are, therefore, compelled to further specialisation within our special subject. And the more deeply we delve into our own particular patch of knowledge, the more completely we become engulfed in it and, therefore, indifferent to the labors of workers in adjacent fields. In the long run each specialist tends to erect round himself a thick hedge of incuriousness that blocks his fellow workers out of vision. It is useless to com- plain of such a process. It is the condition precedent to the advance of science. Yet it is an evil thing for all that, for knowledge is not really split up into water-tight compartments. We can properly appreciate our own particular work only if we bring it into relation with the work of those who are dealing with closely allied studies. To establish easily such relations, the workers on adjoining fields must meet together, compare notes, put into plain language the general results of their investigations, and set up, so to say, a clearing-
1 An address delivered at the Third Annual Meeting of the MepiarvaL ACADEMY OF Auerica in Boston, April 29, 1928.
365
366 Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service
house, where ideas can be exchanged and different points of view presented. Thus only can we attain such a general synthesis as will make our knowledge complete.
I may perhaps be permitted to make my own case a personal illustration of this twofold process. I have been engaged for more years than I care to remember in investigating the administrative machinery of the mediaeval English state. To understand that ma- chine properly one has to learn something about the men engaged in working that machine. Gradually one comes to the conclusion that, before the beginning of the fourteenth century, perhaps even earlier, the government of England was largely in the hands of a body something like the permanent civil service of the modern state. This civil service was in its origin a branch of the household service of the king. As government became more complex, there arose, in fact if not in name, a differentiation between the servant of the crown, who worked in the ever-itinerating household of his master, and the servant of the state, who became gradually established in some permanent government office, located for the most part in London or Westminster. This civil service was, like the civil service of the modern British state, permanent in character and ‘non- political’ in the sense that it went on with its work with little regard to changes of monarch or changes of ministers. Its members were professional men who made their career and earned their living in the service of the state and went on with their work until death, promotion, pension, or dismissal brought their official careers to an end. They were thus essentially like our modern civil servants, but yet in some ways they were extraordinarily different. One great point of contrast is that to most of them the service of the state was not their exclusive profession. They were to a large extent clerks, that is actual or potential ecclesiastics, capable of ordination to minor or holy orders, and often were ordained priests or deacons. They were, therefore, competent to receive ecclesiastical preferment as the reward for their political services. As a result, a large number of smaller benefices and prebends in the church fell to them. More- over, as the modern distinction between the permanent servants of the state and ‘political’ ministers of the state had not yet arisen, the
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Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service 367
promoted civil servant might well become a minister of state, a chan- cellor, or a treasurer, as well as a bishop or an archbishop. To fol- low their careers to the end, the administrative historian must go to the ecclesiastical historian. If this is easy in the case of the shining lights who became ministers or bishops, it is difficult when we come to the lesser personages who had their reward in livings, prebends, dean- eries, or other less conspicuous posts. And even when we have painful- ly compiled a list of their preferments, and perhaps added to this some account of their property and estates, such as official records often supply, we are still quite unable to picture to ourselves what manner of men they were, what were their ideals, their ambitions, their characters, their personalities, their education, their habits, and their amusements. This difficulty is enhanced in the course of the four- teenth, and still more during the fifteenth, century, when the lay civil servant came increasingly to the fore, gradually making his way into posts hitherto regarded as the exclusive preserve of the clerk, so that the word clerk began to connote not ecclesiastic so much as writer. For the career of the lay officer, we can get no help from the abundant records of the church, though, if his promotion be political, we may perchance know the names of his offices and the dates of his appointments from the records of the state. Failing this, we are hardly able to catalogue the dry bones of his career, as we can with the clerical official.
I must, however, pull myself up. To make alive the career of the mediaeval official would require a book and not a lecture, and, more- over, would need gifts of imagination and presentation that seldom fall to the lot of the poor scholar. To-day I want to take only one single aspect of this large subject by suggesting one way in which the administrative historian needs the codperation of the academic his- torian and of the literary historian, almost as much as he needs the help of the historian of the church. The former may in some cases tell him how the mediaeval civil servant was educated and what his re- lations were to educational foundations. The latter will occasionally help him to realise what manner of man he was by the books which he wrote. Both will illustrate my theme of the relations of the me- diaeval civil service to literature. To save overcrowding the canvas,
368 Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service
I shall draw most of my illustrations from the fourteenth century, not only because it is the period that I have most in my mind, but because it gives us the best evidence of the activities with which I am concerned.
My chief thesis to-day is that an appreciable proportion of four- teenth-century English literature came from the civil servants of the state. By English literature I mean books written by Englishmen, in whatever tongue they were written, it being understood that most books made in England were then written in Latin, some in French, and some in English. To write good books in any tongue involves a good education, and I may perhaps begin with a few words about the education of the civil servant of the Middle Ages. That he was a fairly well educated man is clear from his works. He had, for ex- ample, to have a reading and writing knowledge of three languages. Assuming English to be his mother tongue (an assumption not al- ways warranted in the fourteenth century), his official vernacular was certainly French until the very end of the period, and his official com- munications, so far as they were formal, were generally made in Latin, though again, as the century grew older, the official language became to an increasing extent French. To this we must add a wide acquaintance with official forms and precedents, the traditions of his office, the corresponding formalities and traditions of foreign courts and offices, skill in the art of dictamen or literary composition and form, and a good knowledge of law, municipal, civil, and ecclesiasti- cal. How was all this knowledge obtained? Mainly, I feel convinced, by apprenticeship under a master, the method in which all knowledge was acquired in the Middle Ages. The junior official copied forms under direction, until he was skillful enough to write them on his own responsibility. Ultimately he became in his turn, the master, that is, the instructor and director, of his juniors. The clerk may also have gone to a university, but a university training and degree were, I am convinced, the exception rather than the rule. That can be proved by the rarity with which the individual official is desig- nated by the coveted title of ‘master,’ which, like its equivalents ‘doctor’ or ‘professor,’ then denoted the attainment of a full uni- versity degree in any recognised faculty.
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Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service 369
The Chancery, whose sphere took in all administration and the higher secretarial work, was the most learned of the government of- fices, and we know that occasionally a graduate of distinction was brought in from the outside and given from the beginning a conspicu- ous post. But it is an illusion to think that ‘masters of chancery ’— a rare term before the end of the fourteenth century — were so called because they were commonly masters of arts or doctors of laws. They were so called because they had the privilege of acting as masters of the junior clerks who served under them and whom they introduced into official life. Moreover, the members of a north European uni- versity were, in the Middle Ages, clerks by the fact of their student- ship, and there was, therefore, no place in the university for the lay element, which was now becoming increasingly prominent in the civil service. Of course, a university-trained clerk could easily re- nounce his clergy for a lay career, culminating perhaps in knight- hood. Doutbless there were other places than the university where a lay aspirant to the civil service might receive an education. Perhaps already, as certainly in the fifteenth century, he might fre- quent the London law schools which, I imagine, owed their very existence to the fact that the university had no place for the lay student or for the student of common law. I feel fairly convinced that the normal school of the civil servant was a sort of apprentice- ship, either in the royal household or in some government office under a senior officer. We have instances of civil servants using the stan- dard manuals of dictamen, or the art of literary composition, and themselves compiling treatises on the common forms of documents for the use of themselves or their office. I shall return to this ques- tion later when dealing with the concrete problem of the education of that eminent lay civil servant, Geoffrey Chaucer.
However this may be, it is clear from his works that the mediaeval civil servant had somehow the opportunity of a good education. Like most mediaeval education, its tendency was technical rather than humanistic. Its object was not to widen the mind, but to give aman the tools of his trade. Subject to these limitations, the medi- aeval civil servant had the training which enabled him, on occasion, to befriend literature and science and, in some cases, to make per-
370 Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service
sonal contributions to them. This was in the very dawn of our civil service and remains true of the present day, despite the increasing call of the exacting modern state on the services of its members.
Professor Haskins has suggested, even as regards the twelfth cen- tury, that literature, though never a department of government, has its importance to those who, like myself, are concerned with admin- istrative history. ‘It is,’ he says, ‘at least a phase of the larger life of the mediaeval court and thus not without its contacts with actual administration.’ To see what these contacts were in the twelfth century, when administrative history as a serious study begins, I need only refer to Stubbs’ two lectures on ‘Learning and Literature at the Court of Henry II’ and to the admirable supplement in Dr Haskins’ paper on ‘Henry II as a Patron of Literature,’ which he contributed not long ago to a volume in which I take a particular interest.! It is enough to note that among the men who practised the literary craft at that great king’s court, were Richard FitzNeal, the exchequer magnate, who wrote the Dialogus de Scaccario and I know not what beside; the mighty justiciar, Ranulf Glanville with his famous law book; and that humbler ‘clerk of chancery’ (if we may anticipate a later phrase) who wrote one of the lives of the great chancellor who became St Thomas of Canterbury. If the literary stream flowed less copiously from the court during the thir- teenth century, it revived after the death of Edward I. It is with this revival that we have chiefly to do.
The civil servants of the fourteenth century with direct literary interests may be divided into three classes. Firstly, there were, con- spicuously and clearly, men of the academic type who had, before their entrance into state service, studied and taught at a university. There were, secondly, the men who, without being themselves pro- found scholars, posed as patrons of learning, friends of learned men, collectors of libraries, benefactors of universities, or pious founders of academic colleges. Thirdly, there were (most important of all) the men who themselves made solid contributions to literature. Each class shades into the other, and the line between them is hard
1 Essays in Mediaeval History presented to Thomas Frederick Tout (Manchester Univer- sity Press, 1925).
Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service 371
to draw, just as it was difficult in those days to make our modern dis- tinction between civil servant and political minister, since, as in modern imperial Germany, the minister was often the promoted civil servant, and the modern differentiation of professions had hardly begun. There is, moreover, the trouble that always besets the mediaevalist when he finds that very different things are being done at the same time by a person with a given name. He is always in doubt whether these things are all the work of the same man or whether they suggest two different persons with precisely the same name, and how, assuming the second possibility to be true, he can divide the acts done between these hypothetically separate indivi- duals. Perhaps we shall clear up the ground best if we begin with these doubtful identifications. This we can do the more rapidly since, with one possible exception, they concern personalities of no great importance.
This possible exception is that of John Wycliffe. We all know that ‘John Wycliffe’ appears in the later part of Edward III’s reign, doing so many different things that many have been led to insist on there being two John Wycliffes and some have gone so far as to believe that only the hypothesis of three John Wycliffes will explain all the facts. This is a problem on which I have no views, but it is one irrelevant to our present purpose, for the great John Wycliffe, who is undoubtedly the only Wycliffe who was at any time in the service of the state, cannot be regarded as, in modern speech, a mem- ber of the permanent civil service, though he was so frequently em- ployed by the crown on special missions that he called himself ‘specialis regis clericus.’ We may, however, dismiss him and go on to the less distinguished persons more regularly in the royal service, whose identity is doubtful. They are all too obscure to make it worth while to tarry long over them, but they are numerous enough to make their cases worth consideration.
First among them comes Roger Waltham, king’s clerk, who was keeper of Edward II’s wardrobe in 1322 and 1323. As the head of the wardrobe was nearly always a promoted wardrobe clerk, he was likely to have been a permanent officer of the household. About the same time, there flourished a scholastic philosopher named Roger
372 Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service
Waltham, who wrote a Compendium Moralis Philosophiae, which survives in several manuscripts, though it has, I believe, never been printed. It has had some reputation at different times and has been used by Sir John Fortescue in the fifteenth century and by Dr Charles Plummer and Mr C. L. Kingsford in our own days. It is not a treatise on moral philosophy, but a series of disquisitions on the duties of princes, enforced by historical examples. Mr Kingsford, who was an excellent scholar, wrote Roger’s life in the Dictionary of National Biography and accepted the identification of the author with the keeper of the king’s wardrobe. Dr Plummer, another ex- cellent scholar, is more doubtful. The probability is that we have no means for coming to a positive decision, but I regret that in my brief reference to Waltham in my Administrative History, I did not mention the possibility of his having been an author.
It is a far cry from Roger Waltham at one end of the century to Roger Walden at the other. Roger Walden’s career, both in the public service and in the church, is perfectly well known. Under Richard II he was in turn treasurer of Calais, king’s secretary, and treasurer for the exchequer. His devotion to Richard II and pre- rogative elevated him, in 1397, to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and he was so well liked and so pliant that, though forced out of the primacy on the restoration of the deposed Archbishop Arundel by Henry IV, he was soon made bishop of London and died in peace and prosperity. The good will of Arundel to his supplanter discounts the statement of Lancastrian partisan chroniclers that he was illiter- ate and insufficient. But I am pretty sure that we cannot sustain as proof of his literacy the attribution to him of an unpublished chronicle, still lurking in two manuscripts in the British Museum. ‘This chronicle is,’ says my old colleague, Professor Tait, ‘a manu- script collection of chronological tables of patriarchs, popes, kings and emperors, misleadingly entitled Historia Mundi.’ A note at the beginning of the copy in a Cotton manuscript ascribes this jejune performance to Roger Walden. The late Mr. Wylie was prepared to accept this and suggested that the period between Walden’s removal from Canterbury and his establishment at London, gave him the time to compose what he wrongly called a General History. Un-
Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service 373
luckily, the attribution has no weight, for it is written in a sixteenth- century hand, while the Cotton manuscript itself goes back to the early thirteenth century, a fact fatal to the assignation of its author- ship by a man who lived into the fifteenth century! Moreover, the other manuscript of the same document has a similar note ascribing its authorship to our friend Roger Waltham, who lived almost two generations earlier! Nothing can be made of ‘evidence’ such as this.
It is the same with another wardrobe clerk, William Pakington, who spent a long life in the public service, being for many years general receiver to Edward, the Black Prince, and, after his death, to his widow, Joan of Kent. Their son, Richard IT, took Pakington into his own service, and he acted from 1377 to 1396 as keeper of the king’s wardrobe. Of him Leland in the sixteenth century said that he wrote a French chronicle, ranging from the ninth year of King John to his own time, and dedicated it to the Black Prince. In his Collectanea Leland translated some passages of what he said was a French epitome of this book. There the matter rested until in 1904 Dr Brie, the German editor of the English Brut Chronicle, claimed that he had discovered this epitome,’ and explained, rather pom- pously, his “Recovery of an Anglo-Norman Chronicle’ in a short pamphlet, in which he maintained that this was an abstract of the Chronicle which Leland had assigned to Pakington. Dr Brie held forth prospects of a fuller statement of his position in an elaborate introduction which he contemplated to his edition of the English Brut. This introduction, so far as I know, has never been published. But on the evidence before us, it may be said categorically that both Leland and Dr Brie are wrong. I have examined the Cotton manu- script in question and find nothing in it that associates Pakington with the work. I find that even Leland’s description is very inexact. It begins, not in the ninth year of the reign of King John, but with Harthacnut in the middle of the eleventh century. It becomes very fragmentary after 1333, and its last entry is in 1346, when the Black Prince was a boy, and long before a man who lived till 1390 was likely to have entered into his service. Indeed I cannot prove that Pakington served the Black Prince before 1364. We may, therefore,
1 In MS. Cotton Tib. A. VI, 455-470.
374 Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service
dismiss the literary claims of Pakington as decisively as we have dismissed those of Roger Walden.
From civil servants whose literary credentials are unfounded we pass to those whose pretensions are doubtful though plausible. At the head of these I would place Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham, the reputed author of one of the most human and attractive of mediaeval literary efforts, the Philobiblon. Bury’s claims to be a civil servant cannot be gainsaid. He is a typical professional servant of the crown who, in the course of a long career, worked his way up from humble beginnings to the highest posts in church and state. He was from his earliest years in the service of Edward of Windsor, when the future Edward III, a mere boy in years, was still only earl of Chester. Beginning as clerk of the justice of Chester, he rose to be chamberlain of Chester, the chief clerical officer of the palati- nate, who not only managed its finances as a chamberlain naturally would, but was keeper of the Chester seal, and therefore the head of its chancery, or department of general administration. He was taken from Cheshire to southwestern France when his master became duke of Guienne and, as constable of Bordeaux, did the same sort of mixed financial and administrative work which he had performed when chamberlain of Chester. This duty kept him away from Eng- land during the troubles which led to Edward II’s deposition. But he came back with his master in 1326, and his public advance was thereafter ensured. As wardrobe clerk, ultimately cofferer and treas- urer of the wardrobe, and as keeper of the privy seal, he went through every stage of household service and finally attained the great poli- tical posts of treasurer and chancellor, while in the church he rose to the great palatine bishopric of Durham. Bury held every office im- aginable in turn, except perhaps that of tutor to Edward III, which was assigned to him by the tradition of the next generation, though in reality this tutorship was held by an obscure successor of his as chamberlain of Chester, named John Paynel, parson of Rostherne.
Bury has his real place in literary history as an indefatigable book- hunter, the collector of a library which was bequeathed to an Oxford college belonging to the monks of his cathedral at Durham. His most famous literary act was that he was the cause of the composi-
Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service 375
tion of the most attractive of mediaeval treatises on the love of books. But I do not believe that Richard himself wrote the Philobiblon, though personal vanity made him willing to accept the credit of it. He was a professional administrator and not more highly educated than the mass of household clerks. Adam Murimuth, the chronicler, speaks with contempt of his illiteracy and his foolish wish to be thought a ‘great clerk.’ This is, however, a rather prejudiced judg- nent, for, if Richard were not learned, he certainly wished to learn and was keenly interested in books and in all things academic. His assiduity in book-collecting, perhaps even book-stealing, — for then, as now, it was hard to separate the two hobbies, — is well attested by some famous passages in the Philobiblon, which, if not his, doubtless contains his sentiments. Moreover, it is brought home by the con- crete fact of his library and the assignment of it by him to public use. His interest in matters academic is indicated by the frequency with which he went to Cambridge to examine the scholars of the King’s Hall, a society set up by Edward II, where boy choristers of the King’s Chapel, after their voices had broken, might be trained up to serve in the clerical offices of state. It is even more strikingly demonstrated by the fact that, when of mature years and after a long official career, he obtained an indult for three years non-residence on his benefices to allow him to pursue his studies at a university. Luckily or otherwise, Richard’s elevation to the see of Durham cut short his academic ambitions. One new indication of his anxiety to pose as a scholar may, I venture to suggest, have made its mark in the English public records. I notice that in records he is often officially described as ‘dominus’ and sometimes as ‘magister.’ Now magister — master — was a title which involved a full degree in some university faculty, while dominus — foolishly Englished by moderns as ‘sir,’ which normally meant a knight — was the common title given to such clerks as had not the definite status of a master. Once, at least, I observed that ‘ magister Ricardus de Bury’ had been struck out and ‘dominus’ substituted, as if some pedantic purist had erased the misleading title and reduced Richard to his proper level. On the other hand, his kinsman, Simon de Bury, is always called ‘magister.’ But he clearly had a right to that designation.
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Richard of Bury’s patronage of learning in no wise stands alone. Predecessors in such work may be well represented by Walter Mer- ton, the household clerk of Henry III, whom the jealous king con- tinued to regard as a member of his household even when he became chancellor of England, the more so since in the late thirteenth cen- tury the distinction, emphasised by Bury, between the offices of the court and the great offices of state had not yet been drawn. As the founder of the first college on a large scale at Oxford, Merton has a place of his own in academic, if not in literary, history. Similarly the natural successor of Bury in the patronage of academic learning was William of Wykeham. A link between Merton and Bury was Walter Stapeldon, the famous reforming treasurer of Edward IT and founder of Exeter College, Oxford, though Stapeldon, a professional civil law- yer, was perhaps never what we should call a civil servant. A more natural successor to Bury was William of Wykeham, both in his career as a servant of the state and in the noble benefactions which set up a new and magnificent type of the endowment of study and learning in the twin foundations of the School of St Mary’s at Win- chester and its correlative, the new College of St Mary’s, at Oxford.
Like Bury, Wykeham was in the strictest sense a civil servant by profession, working his way up from humble beginnings to confiden- tial posts in the royal household and then rising to the keepership of the privy seal and finally to the great offices of state and the bishopric of Winchester. Like Bury, Wykeham was primarily an administrator, and his unblushing pluralism supplied him with the resources of which he made good use in his two foundations as well as in his virtual rebuilding of his cathedral. He was anticipated in the latter task by his predecessor, Bishop Edington, also a politician and prelate who had worked his way through the household and wardrobe to the treasury and chancery. Unlike Bury, Wykeham made no claim to literature, and it was reserved to the moderns to proclaim him a great architect without any reason at all, except his skill in directing the craftsmen who designed the king’s works and his bounty in erecting buildings at Winchester and Oxford. A chronicler well puts his position in the phrase that he compensated for his lack of letters by his wonderful liberality.
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Even more interesting than great prelates such as Bury and Wyke- ham were civil service patrons of learning of humbler status, who were able and willing to devote their modest means to founding colleges and schools with a liberality that stood in closer relation to their total means than the moneys lavished on their foundations by men like Stapeldon or Wykeham. Such was Adam de Brome, clerk of the king’s chancery, who, towards the close of his long career as a civil servant, founded the College of St Mary at Oxford, which was later called Oriel College, whose sixth centenary was celebrated only a year or two ago. Another man of the same type was Harvey of Staun- ton, chancellor of the exchequer and, therefore, in those days a civil servant, who founded Michaelhouse at Cambridge about the same time. These are only instances, not an exhaustive list, but I will call attention to one foundation which, though never carried out, deserves due recognition. This is the proposed foundation of John Winwick, the son of a country gentleman from Huyton, near Liver- pool, who was for many years a clerk of the privy seal and rose to be its keeper during the critical years between Poitiers and Brétigni. He was one of the strongest and most influential ministers of his time and was amply rewarded by prebends and livings, though cut off by death from higher promotion. By his will he set apart estates for establishing at Oxford a college of scholars to study civil and common law, ‘desiring to enrich the English church with men of letters.’ The foundation never materialised, apparently through the greediness of his heirs.
There are other ways of being a benefactor to learning besides the foundation of colleges, and I think fourteenth-century Oxford would have put high on its list of benefactors Robert Stratford, an Oxford doctor and a prominent chancery clerk, who rose, under his brother John’s protection, to be chancellor of England and a bishop. He is interesting as holding the office of chancellor of Oxford, when a non- resident and a prelate, being the first of the magnate university chancellors who were soon to supersede the resident working chan- cellors of earlier days. Robert Stratford used his great position in church and state to crush remorselessly the ‘adulterine,’ or unrecog- nised, University of Stamford, which a group of seceders from the
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older university were striving to set up. Perhaps a broader vision would have encouraged, rather than repressed, the multiplication of university centres: but the work of the pious founders tended in the same direction as that of Robert Stratford, since the immense in- crease of endowments of corporations within the corporate univer- sity undoubtedly increased the stability of each existing studiwm and made successful rivalry to it more difficult.
Already by the fourteenth century the Oxford element in the public service was strong enough to make itself felt. Cambridge doctors were also beginning to come to the front. It was a sign of the increasing tendency of universities to nationalise themselves that the Continental, generally the Paris, doctor becomes almost a negli- gible quantity. The two tendencies converge in St Thomas of Can- tiloupe, whom Simon de Montfort took in 1265 from the chancellor- ship of Oxford to be chancellor of England. After Montfort’s fall, Thomas retired to Paris, where he taught theology, and came back to England to be again chancellor of Oxford and finally bishop of Hereford. There is little evidence of St Thomas’ contribution to scholastic or theological literature.
Equally lacking in output were most of the other eminent doctors who, in later times, became administrators or ministers of state. John Stratford, later archbishop of Canterbury, was an Oxford doc- tor of laws, and long employed in the king’s service before his three- fold tenure of the chancellorship enabled him to pack the office with his kinsmen. But he never wrote much himself, save that in his controversy with Edward III in 1340-1341 he formulated the Lan- castrian theory of baronial control of the crown, and thus made some contribution to political ideas. A more distinguished academic per- sonage was Thomas Bradwardine, the doctor profundus, the writer of the greatest Augustinian theological work of his century, and also a king’s clerk, accompanying Edward on his campaigns and pro- moted, just before his death, to the archbishopric of Canterbury. If, as is likely, Bradwardine’s introduction to the king’s service came from worldlings, like Bury and John Stratford, links between the practical academic leader and the deep scholar are brought
home to us.
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Of other persons of high academic standing, though not of learned output, who were distinguished in the king’s service, I may mention instances. Among them were John Thoresby, doctor of laws, chan- cery clerk, chancellor, and archbishop of York; Walter Skirlaw, doctor of laws, clerk of chancery, and bishop of Durham; and John Ronhale, doctor of laws, worthy of special notice because he went from the mastership of the King’s Hall at Cambridge to serve the king as notary of chancery, thus fulfilling for once the special function of that foundation. Ronhale is the most conspicuous instance of a Cambridge master ‘in Edward III’s service. It is indeed sometimes said that Robert Thorp, a common lawyer by profession, was in earlier life master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and based his attitude as chancellor on his loyalty to the house of Pembroke, which had founded the college of which he was once head. However, the identity of names is not enough, especially in the case of so common a name as his. Robert Thorp, the chancellor, had long been a practising lawyer. It is conceivable that he might, like other successful common lawyers, have renounced his clergy for the bar and knighthood. Yet by the end of Edward III’s reign, when the common law had become substantially a lay profession, some more positive proof is needed before we can accept so improb- able an identification.
I must not dwell longer on the academic personage in politics. Still less must I stress the relation to our subject of the many men of letters who were attached for a time to the courts of Edward ITI, his queen, his sons, and his grandson, though in the aggregate they suggest a literary atmosphere, more literary in the narrow sense than that of the shrewd worldlings and saintly recluses who fluctuated between the service of the university and the service of the crown. Yet in days when service in the household was hardly yet differen- tiated from the service of the state, a plausible claim might be made for their inclusion. Such were John Froissart of Valenciennes, poet, clerk, chronicler, and traveller, attached for some years to the service of his countrywoman, Queen Philippa, and upholding a very English point of view until better pay or prospects lured him away to serve French masters and change his attitude to politics.
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In the same category as Froissart we may place the anonymous Chandos Herald, a Hainaulter like Froissart, if we may argue from his language, who chronicled in rhyme the doings of Chandos’ master, the Black Prince. The presence of skilled pens about the court made easy the establishment of what we may almost call an effective publicity department, by which knowledge of the king’s great doings against the French were duly reported home in des- patches that had the same function of interesting and educating public opinion as was thought necessary during our most recent war. The same spirit inspired the incorporation of these despatches in the drum and trumpet history of Robert Avesbury, himself an official of the ecclesiastical courts, and in the lurid patriotism of Geoffrey Baker’s Chronicle, and of Laurence Minot’s war songs. In home affairs we have already had an instance of such appeal to public opinion in the controversy between Edward III and John Stratford, in which the frenzied denunciations of the courtiers who drew up the libellus famosus were countered by the dignified utterances of Stratford from his retreat at Canterbury.
These appeals to public opinion came to a head in the opposition to Richard’s attempt at autocracy when Thomas Favent, the chap- lain of a lord of the opposition, wrote in Latin a strongly partisan ac- count of the acts of the Wonderful Parliament of 1387, so anti-royal- ist into temper that it was disinterred and translated into English as a weapon to fight the cause of the Long Parliament against Charles I. It was equally conspicuous on the king’s side in the falsification of the parliament roll of 1397, worked by chancery clerks in Richard II’s in- terests. Finally, we see its effects in the considerable literature, main- ly of French provenance, which sought to stir up European opinion against the Lancastrian usurper by depicting the sufferings and mur- der of the deposed Richard II. Even such acts as the reconciliation of Richard II with the Londoners in 1392 have their literary com- memoration in the person of Richard Maidstone. Long before this the strenuous Sir Peter de la Mare’s speakership of the Commons inspired popular songs in honour of the popular hero. The remark- able account of the Good Parliament preserved in the annals of a Yorkshire abbey, and recently published in the Anonimalle Chron-
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icle by Mr Galbraith, shows that there was a public for the faith- ful reporting of memorable parliamentary debates. The spread of interest in current affairs from the magnate to the simple squire and citizen had, as one of its results, the increasing attention paid in court circles to publicity. This had some effect in the increasing value of the government agent who could write.
We have still to consider the direct contribution of the fourteenth- century official to literature, and especially to current vernacular literature. Preéminent among these we have now to deal with two personages who were undoubtedly men of letters, and equally un- doubtedly civil servants. These were Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Hoccleve, respectively representing the lay and clerical branches of that service.
No mere historian can add anything material to the biography of either Chaucer or Hoccleve. All he can hope to do is to harp on the claims of the civil service on its own and perhaps put into focus their professional career, which the literary historian, too often un- mindful of fourteenth-century social and political conditions, may sometimes fail to codrdinate with their literary activities. Yet their professional record cannot be overstressed; for Chaucer, a bona fide layman at every stage of his career, could not have written his poems but for the court favour which gave him and his something approaching a sufficiency to live upon, and even Hoccleve, the clerk, when he cut off all chance of a career by becoming clericus uxoratus, had nothing to keep him alive save his modest salary and other occasional state bounties. And to obtain the payment of all of these he had frequent occasion to call upon the aid of his muse. Mediaeval conditions made literature an impossible profession. There could hardly be publication in our sense. There were certainly no direct profits of authorship and no legal copyright, as long as there was no printing or other means of rapidly multiplying copies to meet a com- mercial demand. Preferment in the church for the clerk, offices in the state for clerk and layman alike, the bounty of kings and mag- nates in all cases — such were the only means by which the man of letters could earn his living and that by occupations quite foreign to his literary profession. Hence the importance of political service
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for the literary aspirant of the later Middle Ages. For it was rarely indeed that literature was cultivated by a man of private means, like John Gower, who seems to have lived on his patrimony and to have written for writing’s sake.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s literary primacy needs neither statement nor demonstration. My humbler duty to-day is to emphasise his posi- tion as a permanent civil servant, a position the more emphatic since it was, after a fashion, hereditary. His father, John Chaucer, a prosperous London wine merchant, was attached to Edward III's household service as deputy butler. So intimate were the ties in- volved in that office that John Chaucer attended the king in his long sojourns in the Netherlands between 1338 and 1340, his foreign service probably lasting until nearly the period of his famous son’s birth. It was easy for a youth, born in the atmosphere of the royal household, to be attached from early years to the service of the court. I am convinced that the excellent education which Geoffrey undoubtedly received was the education which the household of a king, or one of the greater magnates, could give to its junior mem- bers. How this education was conducted we know very little, but it clearly combined that familiar knowledge of the Latin tongue, which in the Middle Ages was the essence of literacy, with that broader accomplishment in modern literature whose chief vehicle was still French, the lingua franca, so to say, of cultivated lay society in Western Europe. I emphasise the point since this part of the ‘Chau- cer legend’ has not yet been so decisively dissipated as the rest of it has been by the admirable scholars who are collecting, with extraor- dinary patience, every scrap of evidence from record sources.
This process of investigation is still going on, and a notable ex- ample of the sort of picture it enables us to build up can be found in Mr J. M. Manly’s Some New Light on Chaucer. He throws over most of the derelict planks of the Chaucer legend. He rightly dis- misses the conjecture, with which one is still sometimes confronted, that Chaucer might have been educated at Oxford or Cambridge. There is not a scrap of evidence in support of these imaginings, and all our knowledge of fourteenth-century conditions is against them. The university legend fades away when we remember that, north of
SF ent et fe amet =z
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the Alps, the mediaeval universities were universities of clerks, and there is the extreme unlikelihood that such a bona fide layman as Chaucer was at any time in his career a tonsured clerk. Moreover, we cannot find any time during which a youth, who had been for some years a page in a subordinate royal household, and who took arms in the campaign of 1359, before he was twenty, could have attended the courses of any university. Unluckily, Mr Manly is still inclined to the alternative theory that Chaucer was educated at the Temple. His only positive reason for thinking this is a reference in an Eliza- bethan writer, which, if only a scrap of contemporary corroboration could be found, would make the theory probable. But no such con- temporary evidence exists. Mr Manly makes much of the inade- quacy of a training about the court, and considers it far more likely that an exceptional education, such as that of Chaucer, would have been obtained in one of the common law schools of London, the ‘Inns of Court,’ for such he assumes the Temple had already become. This assumption may well be right, but we have no certain knowledge to support it. Mr Manly goes further and says that a legal training is a natural explanation of Chaucer’s career. Both these arguments, I think, are pressed too far. Households, royal and baronial, were the usual training ground for officials, and I see no unlikelihood what- ever in their having been responsible for the education of a man like Chaucer. I am certain too that there is nothing in his career which suggests that he was a trained lawyer, and we know that most of his contemporaries, who- held similar posts, were not trained lawyers either. The whole theory remains conjectural, therefore, and I think that our absolute lack of knowledge of the early history of the London law schools makes it improbable that it will ever be proved. We must guard against that subtle, but widespread, sin of the historian, namely, the reading back into an earlier age, for which he has no evidence, the testimony of the documents of a later date. It is highly dangerous to assume that Fortescue’s famous account of the education of the London law schools, nearly a hun- dred years later, applied to the reign of Edward III. For Fortescue’s own days it suggests just the sort of education Chaucer might well have received, including the study of history on Sundays and saints’
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days, when no more serious lectures were available! But even if such schools were in operation in the middle of the fourteenth century, we have no evidence of Chaucer being in any sense a lawyer. On the contrary, his whole early history centres round the households of the king and his sons, and those only.’
As a boy, Chaucer was a page in the household of the king’s son, Lionel of Antwerp. He was still in Lionel’s retinue when he made his first campaign in France in 1359, and was already important enough for the king to contribute towards his ransom when he was taken prisoner in a skirmish near Rethel. Geoffrey was subsequently transferred to the king’s household, and to that confidential branch of it called the king’s chamber. In 1367, and probably earlier, he was yeoman, or valetius, of the king’s chamber, and afterwards held the higher rank of esquire of the chamber. Chamber office, originally the personal service of the king’s bedroom, still normally involved close attendance at court and intimate relations with the king. It was, however, usual to employ chamber officers on delicate missions at home and abroad. Such incidents of the duty of an esquire of the chamber gave Chaucer his diplomatic experiences in France and Italy, and perhaps, therefore, his personal acquaintance with Italian poets. His marriage with a lady of the court not only strengthened his position, but involved him ultimately in a left-hand connexion with John of Gaunt. Modest pensions and grants from both king and duke of Lancaster rewarded the divided service to two masters which was so usual with the officials of that age.
In 1374 Chaucer was relieved from his constant attendance at court by his appointments as controller of the great and petty customs in the port of London. Henceforth he was settled in a home of his own over Aldgate. He became increasingly prosperous as a
1 My reason for having, rather unfairly, traversed Mr Manly’s argument, since it appears in a book of public lectures which he modestly says is not for specialists, is that it is a theory about which he seems fairly confident. He expounds it so clearly that I do not think I can have mistaken his arguments, in spite of the popular form in which they are cast. This question of Chaucer’s education is one where the literary and administrative historians meet on common ground, and it is one on which, therefore, stress must inevitably be laid in this address. I read with delight Mr Manly’s invigorating book, which I regard as an excellent illustration of the way our knowledge of Chaucer has been amplified and humanised by the researches of a host
of workers into the records of the state. Among these Professor Manly and his colleague, Professor Rickert, occupy places of distinction.
Interature and Learning in the English Civil Service 385
landed proprietor and justice of the peace in Kent, and, though never knighted, he was elected loco militis to represent Kent in the memorable parliament of 1386 at which the baronial opposition be- gan their attack upon prerogative government by the impeachment of the chancellor, the earl of Suffolk. I have no doubt that Chau- cer’s presence in parliament was part of a policy which Edward III and Richard II handed on to later generations. I mean the policy of securing the complacency of the Commons by the infusion of a liberal sprinkling of courtiers and placemen among their ranks. In 1386, however, such precautions were to no purpose. The lords and commons drove Suffolk from office, and it is most unlikely that Chaucer, though he sat, or at least drew pay, for sixty-one days’ attendance at that parliament, ever raised a voice on behalf of the unpopular minister. In his Hous of Fame (ll. 652-660) he has for once deviated from the impersonal note which characterises nearly all his writings, by describing how, indifferent to distractions, social or political, he divided his life betwéen his work in his office and his literary pursuits at home:
For whan thy labour doon al is,
And hast y-maad thy rekeninges,
In stede of reste and newe thinges,
Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon;
And also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another boke
Till fully daswed is thy loke,
And livest thus as an hermyte, Although thyn abstinence is lyte.
Chaucer’s prudence did not, however, keep him long in his posts. Before the end of 1386, a fresh storm burst, provoked by the reluc- tance of the king to carry out the wishes of the parliament which had driven the earl of Suffolk from the chancery. The reforming com- missioners appointed by that parliament answered the king’s action by greater activity in purging the administration of undesirable ele- ments. It was doubtless the result of their energy that in December Chaucer lost his two posts in the customs and was reduced to such financial straits that he had to give up his house in Aldgate and barter his pension for an advance of cash. Yet his prudential absten-
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tion from politics may have lightened his fall, for he never seems to have lost his position, somewhat nominal, I imagine, latterly, in the royal household, and his little pensions from the exchequer and the duchy of Lancaster enabled him to live somehow.
Very different was the fate of a brother man of letters, Thomas Usk, in status a clerk, but engaged mainly in the public service, being in turn secretary to John Northampton, the turbulent mayor of London (whom he betrayed), king’s sergeant-at-arms, and under- sheriff of Middlesex. He was, therefore, if not quite a civil servant, engaged in official work. He was a literary man, too, being, as Dr Henry Bradley has proved, the author of that Testament of Love, which in precritical days was ascribed to Chaucer. Usk, whose re- peated treachery to his masters had lost him all his friends, was one of the culprits whom the Merciless Parliament of 1388 condemned to a cruel end. The chronicler expatiates on the piety shown by this victim of the angry estates. As he was dragged to his doom, he recited the penitential psalms, the Te Deum, and other incentives to devotion at the hour of death, among them, curiously enough, being the Athanasian Creed. He was strung up on the gallows and cut down immediately, when still conscious. His subsequent behead- ing was so mishandled by a clumsy executioner that it was only after thirty strokes of the sword that his sufferings were brought to an end. The fate of this poet turned politician may well have con- vinced his friend Chaucer of the wisdom of holding aloof from poli- tics and ostentatiously proclaiming his indifference to all but the daily official task and the literary pursuits of his leisure hours. There is no civil servant, clerical or lay, depicted in the great gallery of portraits drawn in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
We must now turn to a later stage of Chaucer’s official career. His worst trials were soon over, but for some time it was thought prudent to keep him out of the way. On July 5, 1387, he had letters of protection to go for a year to Calais in the retinue of the captain of the town.' However, he was back in England before the end of
1 This is a new fact due to a discovery of Professor E. Rickert, first revealed in her paper in the Times Literary Supplement (September 27, 1928). Though I was of course unaware of
it when this address was delivered, it rounds off the statement as to Chaucer’s disgrace so well that I have ventured to incorporate it in my narrative.
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the year, and, in 1389, the successful assertion by the king of his right to choose his own ministers was soon followed by Chaucer’s restoration to place. He was not put back in his old offices, but his appointment in 1389 as clerk of the king’s works made him the suc- cessor of William of Wykeham in the post which led his predecessor to greatness both in church and state. Chaucer soon took advantage of the not unusual permission to appoint a deputy, but in 1391 he lost his controllership and was again in financial difficulties. Hence- forth, he ceased to be a civil servant, for subsequent office, such as the deputy keepership of a forest in Somerset, he owed technically, not to the crown, but to the young earl of March. His other means of support were pensions, which were small under Richard II and became adequate only when the accession of Henry of Lancaster was at once followed by marks of royal favour that enabled the poet to end his life in comfort in a home, under the shadow of the palace, and within the precincts of the great abbey wherein he was buried. Whether Chaucer’s troubles in his public career were accentuated, as some of his biographers suggest, by his unbusinesslike ways which made further promotion difficult, it is hard to say. But chequered as was his official record, it had this importance that it gave him the leisure to write what the world will not willingly let die. But we know his public career only in outline and from official documents. The rule of reticence as to his personal affairs and his political atti- tude, already laid down by him in 1384, was never broken. Yet his position at court had this advantage for his stock that it gave to Thomas Chaucer, whom I cannot but regard as his son, a rich wife and a great estate in Oxfordshire, an almost permanent position as ‘knight’ of that shire in parliament, and ultimately the speakership of the Commons at the period of their greatest activity under the early Lancastrians. The marriage of Thomas’ daughter Alice to William de la Pole, earl and afterwards duke of Suffolk, raised the granddaughter of the poor poet to the highest circle of the nobility, and Alice’s son’s marriage to Edward IV’s sister might have made her grandson heir to the throne, but for the Tudor revolution. Altogether, this is not a bad record for an official whose father was a tradesman in the city of London. And yet people still talk of the Middle Ages as the
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time of the domination of an hereditary caste. Even the lay official could find opportunities for his kin, hardly surpassed by the direct avenue to power and position afforded by the church.
In the literary circle of which Chaucer was the chief star, many lesser lights revolved. Some at least among them had administrative affinities of a kind. Among them some have been inclined to place Ralph Strode, common sergeant of the City of London, though he, even more than Thomas Usk, was an officer of the city rather than of the state. But this depends on identifying the scholastic Oxford writer, Wycliffe’s opponent, Chaucer’s ‘philosophic Strode’, with this successful lawyer, and fathering him in addition with the author- ship of anonymous poems of rare poetic quality. Sir Israel Gollancz has not hesitated to maintain for some thirty years that there was only one Ralph Strode who did all these things. My sympathies go with him, but my intelligence does not allow me to have implicit faith in the identification. All one can say is that if the one Ralph Strode did all these things he was a very remarkable man. But I find it hard to believe that a clerk of established position would leave the uni- versity, start a new career as a common lawyer, abandon his clergy for a wife and a family, and find time to write poetry in his leisure. Something more positive than conjuncture is necessary to carry con- viction. More relevant to us is that literary dining-club called the ‘Court of Good Company,’ which included Thomas Hoccleve among its members and was entertained at dinner on May Day, 1410, by Henry Somner, chancellor of the exchequer, still a civil servant at that period, and not the political minister that he has become in these later days. Chaucer was already dead, but we may feel sure that he would not in his lifetime have been lacking at such a feast. Let us now turn to his disciple Hoccleve, for in him alone we can study in detail the literary career of a civil servant of more ordinary calibre.
Chaucer’s stages as a civil servant bear but little relation to his literary career. But with Hoccleve we are at last able to go beyond the bare catalogue of appointment to offices and payment of salaries and pensions, which constitute all our knowledge of Chaucer as a public servant. The reason is that in strong contrast to his master's reticence, Hoccleve was the most garrulous, self-centred, and auto-
Literature and Learning in the English Civil Service 389
biographical of poets, ever ready, when his arid muse refused him impersonal inspiration, to write about himself, his office, his work, his pleasures, and, above all, his misfortunes. Though these excur- sions into autobiography give us rather a low opinion of Hoccleve, we owe him a debt of gratitude for enabling us to visualise the men- tality and career of an ordinary civil service clerk of the later Middle Ages. He was, for something like forty years, one of the four clerks of the privy seal, who, under the keeper of the seal, were the chiefs of the secondary secretariat, called the office of the privy seal. He was important enough to have at least one subordinate clerk working under him, and zealous enough to wear out his energy and health on the dreary monotony of endless official correspondence. His lot was the harder since matrimony cut him off from the society of his brother clerks and debarred him from all ecclesiastical preferment. Accord- ingly, he had to continue at his dull task until old age and ill health compelled him to retire on a small pension, very irregularly paid. He was always lamenting in his verse the hardships and monotony of the life of a professional scribe. Yet he was clearly a keen official, for we can study in the British Museum a large manuscript, written with his own hand, wherein he sets down in businesslike fashion common forms and examples of every kind of writ and bill that ema- nated from the privy seal office. Thus the administrative historian obtains from this literary source the precious information which en- ables him to go beyond the common forms of the record and realise the sort of life led by the ordinary official of the later Middle Ages. It is a good illustration of the interdependence of one branch of mediaeval study on another, and a striking vindication of the func- tion of the Mediaeval Academy of America, in bringing together all sorts of mediaevalists into a single society.’
1 An address cannot, in the nature of things, have its statements proved by references. Now that it is published it has not appeared to me to be worth while to ‘document’ it elabo- rately. The quotations and works referred to are easily identifiable from the text. Authority for most of the statements of fact which have been made will be found scattered in the foot- notes of the four volumes already published of my Chapters in Mediaeval Administrative History.
Reference tc them will be made easier when the last of the two final volumes appears, which will include a detailed index to the whole work. I hope that these will not be long delayed.
Lonpon, ENGLAND
THE ORGAN IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
By HELEN ROBBINS BITTERMANN
HE chroniclers to the contrary,’ the first organ brought into Western Europe was not the one included among other gifts
sent to Pepin, King of the Franks, by messengers from the eastern Emperor, Constantinus Copronymus, in 757. For two centuries at least, the organ had been used in connection with the church service in Gaul; * and for six centuries before that, it had been in demand as a solo instrument on feast days and on similar occasions in the Roman Empire.* Emperors had improvised on it.‘ It had blared paeans of victory for successful contestants in the games.*° Wealthy men had eaten their dinners to its noisy accompaniment.’ Poets
1 Thus the Annales Mettenses Priores, anno 757 (ed. B. Simson, p. 49). Cf. Annales regni Francorum, anno 757 (ed. F. Kurze, p. 14); Annales Laurissenses, anno 757 (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS., 1, 140); Annales Sangallenses Maiores (ibid., 74).
2 Fortunatus, Carmina, ii, 9 (Mon. Germ. Hist., AA., x1, 39) and Carmina, iii, 9 (ibid., 60); also his life of St Germain, bishop of Paris, c. 14 (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS. Rer. Mer., vu1, 382); Vita Sollemnis Episcopi Carnoteni (ibid., 316, 1. 10); Vita Caesarii Episcopi Arelatensis (ibid., 111, 496); Vita Landeberti Episcopi Traiectensis Vetustissima (ibid., v1, 379 ff.); Vita Desiderii Episcopi Viennensis (ibid., v11, 644). For references to its early use in England, see the Vita Wilfridi I Episcopi Eboracensis Auctore Stephano (ibid., v1, 201), and Aldhelm’s riddle on the organ in J. H. Pitman, The Riddles of Aldhelm (Yale Studies in English, xvi, 1925), p. 101. Erika von Erhardt-Siebold has commented upon the latter in Die Lateinischen Rétsel der Angelsachsen (Heidelberg, 1925), pp. 120-131. See also the fourth stanza of the hymn on the martyrdom of Gengulf (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS. Rer. Mer., v11, 170).
3 Petronius, Satyricon, c. 36 (ed. F. Biicheler, Berlin, 1904, p. 24); Caius Lucilius, Aetna, ll. 292-299 (Siegfried Sudhaus, Aetna erkldrt, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 20-21); Tertullian, De Anima, c. 14 (Opera Omnia (ed. Franz Oehler, Leipzig, 1853-54), 11, 576); St Augustine, Commentary on Psalm 56 (Patr. Lat., xxxv1, 671) and Commentary on Psalm 150 (ibid., xxxviI, 1964); Claudian, Panegyricus Dictus Manlio Theodoro Consul (Mon. Germ. His, AA., x, 187, 1. 311 ff.); Epithalamium Laurentii (ibid., 406).
4 Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, vi, 41 (Loeb Classical Series, p. 164); ibid., vi, 54 (ibid., p. 182); ‘Heliogabalus,’ c. 32 (Historiae Augustae Scriptores (ed. H. Peter, Leipzig, 1865), 1, 225); ‘Alexander Severus,’ c. 27 (ibid., 1, 247); ‘Gallienus II,’ c. 46 (Ibid., 11, 87).
5 For reproductions of contortionates of Nero’s reign on which victors of such contests are represented as standing by hydraulic organs and holding fans or flabelli, see C. F. Abdy Williams, The Story of the Organ (London, 1903), pp. 4, 5; ibid., Appendix A, p. 207.
6 Sidonius Apollinaris complimented Theoderic II for the simplicity of his meals, adducing as evidence that ‘there was no noise of hydraulic organ, or choir with its conductor intoning a set piece,’ which would seem to indicate that such had been the practice. (Epistolae, i, n. 2 (Patr. Lat., tv111, 449).)
390
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 391
mentioned it in their songs.’ So it is no novelty imported into the west from Byzantium with which we are dealing, but an instrument well known to the musicians of the Roman Empire.
Form oF THE Earty MEDIAEVAL ORGAN
It must not be imagined that these organs resembled the modern instrument in form or in sound. The nearest modern approximation would be a calliope. Indeed, the first instrument was nothing more than an inverted vase, open at the top, to which a trumpet was attached. When water was pumped into the vase, air was forcibly driven through the trumpet, which gave out a blast of sound. This was the invention of Ctesibus, a barber living in Alexandria in the second century B.c.? Such was the principle of the hydraulus, the first actual organ devised. Its inventor was a pupil of Ctesibus, Hero of Alexandria.’ And such remained the principle of the hy- draulus.
The pipes were arranged upright in a row and were held in that position by a cross bar. They stood over a channel of water which, when agitated, forced air out of all the pipes at once. The method
of playing was to close all pipes but the one to be sounded, by the palms of the hands. This is the type of organ described by Julian the Apostate in his epigram on the organ. He said:
A strange growth of reeds* do I behold. Surely they sprang on a sudden from another brazen field, so wild are they. The winds that wave them are none of ours, but a blast leaps forth from a cavern of bull’s hide
1 Fortunatus, ‘De nauigio suo,’ Carmina, x, 9, 1. 53 (Mon. Germ. Hist., AA., x1, 243); Corippus, In Laudem Iustinii, 111, 1. 72 (ibid., 111, 189), and Iohannides, iv, 1. 577 (ibid., 51).
2 Vitruvius, De Architectura, ix, 1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912, pp. 218, 219).
3 Pneumatica et Automata, i, 42 (W. Schmidt, Herons von Alexandria Druckwerke und Automatentheater (Leipzig, 1889), 1, 193). Hero also devised an organ dependent for power on a small windmill.
4 It should be explained that this is a play on words. As the Latin canna (reed) was also used for ‘organ pipe,’ regardless of the material used, so here the term means both ‘reed’ and ‘pipe.’ It is this fact which has led to misapprehension on the part of translators. Al- though I have used W. C. Wright’s translation for the most part, I have had to take the liberty of changing the last sentence. Wright’s sentence read originally: ‘... stands there and handles the keys that pass the word to the pipes; then the keys leap lightly, and press forth the melody.” Here xavévas should be taken in its original meaning, ‘rod’ or ‘pipe,’ to give a proper picture.
392 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
and beneath the well-bored pipes travels to their roots. And a dignified person, with swift-moving fingers of the hand, stands there and feels the yielding rods of pipes, and they, gently dancing, press out song."
The limitations of such an instrument must have been trying to the performer. Indeed, it is to be wondered that the organ became popular at all. The number of notes possible was few, at the most seven or eight.? This meant at once that the instrument was limited in size,’ and that the variety of tones was not great. Such tones as there were must have been harsh and shrill, totally unlike any tone now associated with the organ. In the first place, the pipes were rela- tively small in diameter and short, in order that the performer might shut off more or less completely the air in all the pipes but those to be sounded. This meant that the tones produced were of necessity high in pitch. In the second place, the abrupt, forcible escape of air from the pipes precluded any possibility of a mellow, sweet tone. Indeed, the resemblance of this early type of organ to the modern bagpipe, in tonal quality, at least, would be striking. There would be this difference; however: whereas the bagpipe is capable of sound- ing a sprightly air, this early organ was confined to melodies of a slow, measured rhythm. Variation here would be very awkward of achievement, if not impossible. Yet, if variety of tone and measure were not possible, it must not be thought that performances on the organ were fraught with monotony. Whatever the range of melody or tempo, there was ever present the danger of uneven pressure in the pipes. Now, an organ pipe will rise in pitch from one to two octaves, be the pressure increased ever so slightly. Similarly, if the pressure is decreased, the pitch will fall. The hazards involved in trying to follow a set melody must have introduced an element of adventure into the performance of the simplest scale. It is this fact which makes it almost certain that this organ was used only as a solo instrument, particularly since Greek and Roman music was
1 Opera, iii, 306 (Loeb Classical Library, transl. W. C. Wright).
2 The hydraulus of Hero had eight pipes, as does the instrument reproduced by Williams, op. cit., pp. 4, 5. :
3 Athanaeus refers to a small portable organ capable of being transported from place to place: Deipnosophistae, iv, 174a (ed. and transl. C. B. Gulick, Loeb Classical Library, Athanaeus, 11 (1928), 290, 291).
1
Natic fort-2
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 393
largely melodic and not harmonic in form.’ Where pressure was so uncertain, accompaniment on an hydraulus of the primitive type would have been a hazardous undertaking and extremely discon- certing to the soloist.
In time, changes were made which remedied the more serious faults of this early instrument. The most serious problem, the pro- vision of a keyboard, had been solved as early as the first century a.p. by Vitruvius.? This organ was not immediately adopted to the ex- clusion of the old. As late as the fourth century, Julian the Apostate described an instrument of the more primitive type. However, the new model persisted,’ and no essential changes were made in its construction until the end of the eleventh century. The mechanism of the organ described by Vitruvius is practically identical with that furnished by Theophilus and Ruger, who wrote in the latter part of the eleventh century.‘ It is true that an attempt was made, prob- ably in the fourth century, to produce a more even pressure in the pipes by abolishing the use of water and by substituting a pair of bel- lows to furnish air pressure. In this type of organ, one of the pair would act as an air reservoir while the other forced the air through
the pipes. Coussemaker reproduces such an organ, represented on an obelisk erected by Theodosius the Great.® Grove’s Dictionary of
1 César Saerchinger, ‘The Music of the Ancient Greeks,’ The Art of Music (New York: National Society of Music, 1915), 1, 97; Guido Alder, Handbuch der Musikgeschichte (Frank- fort-am-Main, 1924), p. 31.
2 Loe. cit.
* H. J. Moser describes the finding of a mosaic at Neming bei Sierck on the Mosel which dated from the second century. On it was pictured a hydraulus with twelve pipes: Geschichte der Deutschen Musik (Stuttgart: J. B. Cotta, 1926), p. 59. A hydraulus was also discovered in the ruins of Carthage. It was made in A.D. 120 by the potter Possessor, whose name is inscribed on its side. The instrument is now in the Musée Lavigérie at Carthage (F. H. Martens, ‘The Organ from the Earliest Times to the Present,’ The Art of Music, v1, 398).
* Theophili et Rugeri Presbyteri et Monachi libri III, de Diuersis Artibus (ed. R. Hendry, London, 1847). An English translation of the treatise on organ building is found in G. A. Audsley, The Art of Organ Building (London, 1905), 1, 23 ff. The page references to the treatise which will follow, will be to this translation.
Of the earlier improvements of the organ we know little. Archimedes seems to have made some (Vitruvius, op. cit., i, 1; Tertullian, loc. cit.). Kathleen Schlesinger has shown that the germ of many of the most important parts of the organ had been discovered before the Christian era (‘Researches into the Origins of the Organs of the Ancients,’ Sammelbdnde d. Int. Mus. Ges., 11 (1900-01), 167 ff).
5 ‘Essai sur les Instruments au Moyen Age,’ Annales Archéologiques (Paris, 1845), 11, 277.
394 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
Music shows a similar pneumatic organ, now at the Museum of Arles, which dates from the ninth century.’ So the pneumatic organ seems to have been at least in existence in these early centuries? Yet its existence is not of great importance. The mechanism both of the hydraulus and of the pneumatic organ was essentially the same except for the means adopted for the creation of an even air pressure.
The invention of the keyboard had far-reaching consequences, whether the instrument to which it was attached were hydraulus or pneumatic organ. It made possible the inclusion in the range of the instrument of all the notes then used, and increased the volume of the tone produced from two to three times. Since the change effected was so tremendous, it might not be amiss to describe it. The lower end of each pipe was enclosed in a small, shallow box. The bottom of each box was movable, sliding in grooves cut for the purpose. In this slide, there was a hole corresponding exactly in size to the pipe inserted in the box. When the slide was pushed in, the hole fitted under the lower orifice of the pipe, thus permitting air to be forced into the pipe, which then sounded. In this way, the pipes could be controlled separately. The slide was returned to its place by a
spring, on the removal of the finger. In order that the slide might not be drawn out too far, a copper-headed nail was fixed immediately behind the tongue or handle of the slide. Such was the mechanism of the organ from the time of Vitruvius to the last half of the eleventh
century.® Now, what did this mean? Imprimis, the range of the organ was
no longer restricted to the number of pipes which could be covered
1 3d ed., H. C. Colles, 111, 736.
2 It is thought that the organ described by St Augustine was of the pneumatic variety since no mention is made of the hydraulic apparatus: ‘All musical instruments are called organs. Not only is that instrument called an organ which is large and blown by beilows, but also whatever one is adapted for song . . . is called an organ’ (Patr. Lat., xxxvi, 671).
3 Compare the descriptions of Vitruvius (loc. cit.) and of Theophilus and Ruger (see n. 4, p. 393 above). It will be noticed that whereas Vitruvius uses a spring made of bone, Theophilus and Ruger have advanced to a spring made of metal. See also the description of an organ attributed to Bede in the eighth century in the Interpretatio Psalterii Artis Cantilenae included among the Opera Dubia et Spuria (Patr. Lat., xc111, 1102C), and the passage in the Musicae Disciplinae, cap. 3 of Aurelian of Réomé (Martin Gerbert, Scriptures Ecclesiastici de Musica, Sacra (St Blasien, 1784), 1, 33, col. 1).
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 395
by the palms of the player. In the model of Vitruvius’ organ recon- structed by the Rev. F. W. Galpin,' there are nineteen pipes, which accommodate the six modes described by Anonymous.’ This is ob- viously the instrument described by Optatian:
These verses are the form of the instrument on which one can bring forth variegated songs, and whose sounds escape from round, open pipes of brass, and whose length increases regularly. Below the pipes are placed the levers * by which the hand of the artist, opening or closing at will the conduits of wind, gives out a well-rhythmed, agreeable melody. Water, placed beneath the pipes and agitated by air pressure, which takes the labor and efforts of several youths, gives the necessary assorted sounds to the music. At the least movement, the levers, opening the pipes, can express
1 For a description and plates of Galpin’s organ, see Williams, op. cit., Appendix B, pp. 210-2138, and his Story of Organ Music (London, 1905), p. 5,n.1. The latter reference is to ‘An Exhibition of Musical Instruments, Manuscripts, and Printed Books, held in 1904 by the Worshipful Company of Musicians at Fishmongers’ Hall,’ at which Galpin exhibited and played his instruments.
2 Fr. Bellermann, ed., Anonymi Scriptio de Musica (Berlin, 1841), p. 36. The modes in their diatonic form would be roughly represented by the modern scales with the following signatures:
(a) (b)
aed
a ———F ——
Sz
-o-
(d)
(c) p~ % ln. C7 IZ ———F H ee ——# ao oe
(f)
” 6. rat — ——— ee 5 oO
oa (a) Hyperlydian; (6b) Hyperiastian; (c) Lydian; (d) Phrygian; (e) Hypolydian; (f) Hypophrygian.
* The Latin term is plectra, which has the literal meaning of a ‘short stick with which the strings of a stringed instrument were struck.’ Apparently the term lingua, later used to desig- nate the sliders, had not yet come into use. Linguae remained the technical term to describe the sliders until the end of the eleventh century, when the spring-box mechanism superseded the slider-box.
396 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
rapid and vigorous songs, or a calm and simple melody, or yet again, by the power of rhythm and melody, can inspire a religious terror."
In this case it is an hydraulus which is being described. As for the pneumatic organ, there is the description commonly attributed to
Bede:
The organ is built like a tower out of divers pipes from which a very rich voice is produced by a blast from the bellows, and in order that 2 seemly modulation may order it, it is built with certain wooden tongues (pro- truding) from the interior which, when the trained fingers of the masters restrain them, produce a sublime, sweet song.”
Such an arrangement was a great improvement over the more primitive type of organ. Instead of being confined to seven or eight tones, the entire range then in use was available. To us, two octaves would seem a painfully limited scope with which to deal. But to the ears of the mediaeval man, they sufficed; and many are the references to the delightful music they produced.*
The monotony of the early organ music was decreased not only by an increase in the number of notes available, but also by the variation in tempo now possible. No longer was the artist confined to the slow, stately melodies inevitable when only one note at a time was allowed to escape from the set of pipes before him. Optatian tells us of ‘rapid and vigorous songs’ which are ‘well-rhythmed.’ This description is of great significance. Disregarding for the moment the great swiftness of execution possible under the new arrangement, the fact that a melody could be ‘well-rhythmed’ is of momentous importance in the development of organ music. Melodies played on the primitive organ could not have had rhythm as we understand it to-day. Each note must have had a value almost equal to that of every other note. The changes in rhythm which make for variation
1 Patr. Lat., x1x, 429, 430. See also Cassiodorus i, Epistola, no. 45 (Patr. Lat., xix, 510A).
2 Loc. cit. See also his Didascalia Genuina (Patr. Lat., xc, 140) and the Musica Practica among his Opera Dubia et Spuria (ibid., 922B).
3 In this connection, it may be interesting to note that as late as Palestrina (d. 1594), the range of notes for any single voice was limited. Palestrina usually confined himself to an interval of nine notes for any one voice. See for example, his Adoramus Te (ed. Gustav Schirmer, no. 6091) or his Sicut Ceruus (ibid., no. 3509).
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 397
could not have been possible with the organ described by Julian the Apostate. But with the slider-box arrangement, a quick, irregular change could be made from slider to slider, and a well-defined rhythm could be attained. I use the term ‘could’ advisedly. It must have been no mean task te attain perfection on such an instrument. Each slider resembled its fellows. There were no ‘black’ keys to orient the player, and the practice of lettering the sliders did not come into use before the eleventh century.' Yet once the ‘geography’
1 The organ of Theophilus and Ruger was thus lettered (op. cit., c. 82, p. 25). The use of letters to indicate the notes of the scale is usually attributed to Guido d’ Arezzo (see his De Disciplina artis musicae in Martin Gerbert’s Scriptores, 11, 4). However, F. Salvador-Daniel, The Music and Musical Instruments of the Arab (ed. H. G. Farmer, London, 1914), p. 49, and after him, H. G. Farmer (ibid., n. 38, p. 241), believe that Guido merely abbreviated the names formerly used, which were the first letters of the Arabic alphabet: aitf, ba or bim, gim, dal, hé, vau, and zain. The practice of lettering sliders persisted at least until the fifteenth century. Michael Praetorius reproduces the keys of the Brunswick organ dating from 1456 and so lettered (Syntagma Musicus, 1618, reprinted 1884, 11, 117).
The claim that the Arabs also introduced the solfeggio is of long standing. (For writers adhering to this position, see H. G. Farmer, ‘The Arabian Influence on Musical Theory,’ Journal of the Asiatic Society, London, 1925, Part I, p. 8, n. 2.) Farmer states, however, that he is unable to trace this material in any of the Arabian musical manuscripts which he has consulted. He says, ‘In comparing the names of the Arabic notation with that of the European solfeggio, one cannot help being struck with the phonetic likeness. At the same time, the present writer has not seen any other example of the Arabic alphabet used in this sequence for musical] notation.’ (ibid., 9). He then gives the Arabian form and that attributed to Guido:
Arabian — Mim Fa Sad Lim Sin Dél Ra
Guidonian— Mi Fa Sol La (Si) Do\ Re Ut f
The usual tale is that Guido found those particular syllables by taking the first syllable of each line of a hymn writtten by Paul the Deacon for the festival of St John the Baptist.
Thus:
UT queant laxis REsonare fibris MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum SOLue polluti LAbii reatum Sancte Ioannes While granting the possibility that such actually was the case, it would seem to me more logical to assume that Guido, in some fashion aware of the solmistic use of those letters of the Arabian alphabet, used Paul’s hymn as a memory device, and in so doing, changed Do to Ut. Gerard Vossius mentioned the following distich as having been written shortly after the time of Guido in order to impress the syllables upon the mind of the learner: ‘Cur adhibeo tristi numeros cantumque labori? UT REleuet MIserum FAtum SOLitosque LAbores.’
398 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
of the keyboard was mastered, swift execution was possible.! So Claudian says: ‘Who, with a light touch, produces great sounds, calls forth with a wandering finger the innumerable voices of the brazen field, and through a beam-like lever within, rouses the labor- ing waters to song.”
But not only was range increased, but volume also. By placing more than one pipe on each slider, the sound could be increased in direct proportion to the number of pipes added.* How successful these organs were in increasing the volume of sound poured out, we may judge from numerous sources. An Arabian writer, [khwan al-Safa, said that it was a terrible thing to hear, so terrible that the Byzantines used it in time of war to disconcert the enemy.* There is also the classic reference of Ammianus Marcellinus, who bears wit- ness to the tendency to build ‘bigger and better’ hydrauli in the fourth century — an attempt by no means limited to organs, if we may believe that historian.’ Of interest, also, in this connection, is the letter to one Dardanus, attributed to Jerome.® Entitled De Diversibus Generibus Musicorum, it contains the description, among other instruments, of an organ reputed to be in Jerusalem. This remarkable instrument had twelve pairs of bellows, fifteen pipes of bronze, a wind reservoir made of two elephant hides, and possessed the faculty of being heard at a distance of a thousand paces — in
(De Quatuor Artibus Popularibus (Amsterdam, 1650), cited in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 111, 804.)
Now it seems to me that the hymn of St John the Baptist, like this distich, formed a happy mnemonic device. Why otherwise should Guido have selected that particular hymn or those particular syllables? Although Farmer has found no other reference to such a deliberate use of the Arabian alphabet, until further revelation I prefer to consider the syllables used by Guido as an adaptation of the Arabian, and his use of Paul’s hymn a mnemonic device rather
than the origin of the European solfeggio. 1 Williams’ account of Galpin’s performance on his hydraulus substantiates this state
ment (The Story of the Organ, p. 5).
2 Panegyricus Dictus Manlio Theodoro Consul (Mon. Germ. Hist., AA., x, 187, 1. $11 ff.).
3 In the organ described by Theophilus and Ruger (p. 393, n. 4 above), two or three pipes were used for each note.
4 H. G. Farmer, ‘Byzantine Musical Instruments in the Ninth Century,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (London, 1925), Part 0, p.6. See also his Two Eastern Organs (London: Harold Reeves, 1928), p. 28. For combinations of chords on the orgars used by the Muslims to obtain divers emotional effects, see ibid., p. 35.
5 Rerum Gestarum, xiv, 6, 18 (ed. Charles Clark, Berlin, 1910, 1, 16).
6 Patr. Lat., xxx, 219.
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 399
other words, of being audible at the Mount of Olives when played in Jerusalem. One cannot take such a description too seriously.’ Its chief importance lies in the fact that it would indicate that large organs were being built in the fourth century and that they possessed a greater value of tone than those constructed prior to the invention of the slider-box organ. However, one must not assume that organs built prior to the fourth century were always small, portable affairs. The evidence we have points to instruments of good size,? and we may be specific at least in one instance. Judging from the reproduc- tion of the hydraulus built by Possessor in the second century, which is 77s inches by 27 inches, it must have been about 10 feet by 4 feet.*
The reader may feel that overmuch space has been devoted to description of the organ of the early Christian centuries. But such a procedure seems essential, since the organ of those early centuries remained the organ of the early Middle Ages. It is now clear that the early mediaeval organ was of three types. There was the model which had no keyboard and which must have been used as a solo instrument because its accuracy of tone was highly problematical.
This organ was capable of producing music only of a slow, measured, monotonous type, because the performer had at his disposal but seven or eight notes and because the nature of the instrument made the reproduction of a rhythmed melody exceedingly awkward. The notes played were probably of equal value. This type of organ per- sisted down to the fourth century, being gradually replaced by the
1 It is amusing to note how seriously this description was taken by the later mediaeval writers. For example, Hrabanus Maurus practically copied the passage verbatim and pre- sented it as a picture of the organ of the Hebrews (De Uniuerso, xviii, 4, in Patr. Lat., cx1, 496D). In addition, he copied the allegorical interpretation placed upon it by Jerome, namely, that the two elephant hides represented the Old and the New Testaments, the twelve bellows the apostles, and the fifteen pipes the patriarchs and the prophets, and elaborated still further upon the theme. This tendency to use elaborate allegorical figures in mediaeval literature should be emphasized; since many writers, following Martin Gerbert (De Cantu et Musica Sacra a Prima Ecclesiae Aetate usque ad Praesens Tempus (Saint Blasien, 1774), 1, 212), belittle the importance of such a description as Jerome’s purely on the ground of its allegorical treatment. In view of the almost universal habit in the Middle Ages of speaking in allegory, such a judgment seems illogical.
2 See above, p. 390, n. 5; p. 393, n. 5, and 394, n. 1; p. 395, n. 1.
5 See p. 393, n. 3, above.
400 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
other two types. These were alike in their construction except in the method used to provide air pressure. The one, which used a system of water pressure, was called an hydraulus; the other, which depended on two (or more) pairs of bellows, was called a pneumatic organ. On both of these organs, the execution of a rhythmed melody was made possible since the use of sliders permitted the performer to vary the value of the notes played. Varying tempos were used, and the volume of tone produced probably approached that of the modern organ, whose roll is so characteristic that it is difficult for the modern mind to conceive of an organ without the ‘organ tone.’
Until the eleventh century there was no variation in tone in the pipes themselves. They were made chiefly of copper,' brass, or wood,’ which was sometimes gilded.‘ But there is no evidence prior to the eleventh century that the various metals were mixed in order to obtain different qualities of tone.° We may thus imagine an organ, say from the fourth to the eleventh centuries, as possessing a pure ‘organ tone’ capable of great crescendos and of delicate diminuendos and also capable of producing music with rhythm and of variable tempo. In short, the early mediaeval organ sounded not unlike those to which our grandfathers were accustomed, if we exclude all tonal qualities but that known as the ‘diapason.’
1 Vita S. Oswaldi Archiepiscopi Eboracensis, xxvii, 66 (AA SS, vit, saec. v, 734). See also Theophilus and Ruger, op. cit.. c. 82, p. 24.
2 Cf. the descriptions of Julian the Apostate, p. 391 above, and of Optatian, p. 395 above.
3 Theophilus and Ruger, c. 82, p. 24.
4 Aldhelm, De Laudibus Virginum, 1. 73 (ed. R. Elwald, Mon. Germ. Hist., AA. (Berlin, 1919), xv, 356; ibid., in Patr. Lat., uxxx1x, 240 B).
5 Although Theoderet noted that a change in materials of the pipes produced a change in tonal quality (De Prouwidentia Oratio, iii, in Patr. Graec., txxx111, 590 A), there seems to have been nothing definitely constructed with such a principle in mind until’the eleventh cen- tury. In the treatise of Theophilus and Ruger, it is indicated that different finishes of the pipes would produce different qualities of tone (c. 82). Also, it was known at that time that a fuller tone could be produced by a wide opening in the pipe, whereas a more delicate sound was produced by a narrower one (ibid.). However, I have not been able to discover the use of such a principle prior to this statement of the eleventh century.
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
Tue PLace oF THE ORGAN IN MEDIAEVAL RITUAL
Now that the general form and tone of the early mediaeval organ have been established as best they may be under the circumstances, let us turn to the uses to which this instrument was put. Of its secular use, something is known. Sidonius Apollinaris mentioned it as a solo instrument at dinners.' Corippus indicated it in connection with other instruments,’ as did the writer of the Epithalamium Lau- rentit,> a contemporary of Claudian’s, who enumerated it with other instruments employed in a wedding procession. Sedulius Scottus in the ninth century also indicated it as an instrument to be used on joyful occasions.‘ So it seems that in secular uses in the Roman Empire and during the Middle Ages, the organ was employed both as a solo instrument and in connection with other instruments. The greatest use of the organ in secular fétes seems to have been in By- zantium. In the Western Empire, after the sixth century, references to the organ in civil ceremony are scarce, and there is little to be found outside of definitions, descriptions, vague allusions, and oc- casionally a reference to its use in connection with the church service. In Byzantium, however, the organ seems to have replaced the orchestra in the great civil ceremonies.® Thus, in a féte given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (913-959) for the Saracen ambas- sadors, the opening phrases of each musical composition were sound- ed by organs of gold and of silver. The organ did not accompany the voices, which performed a capella, but played a sort of introduction. Again, according to Thibaut, the ceremonial of the Byzantine em- perors contains several mentions of the organ. Apparently the in- strument was used in the circus to herald the entrance or exit of the emperor and to do homage to Blues or Greens. This information is quite in accord with what has already been found on the subject. Theodosius apparently had an organ,’ and the two old organs of
1 See p. 390, n. 6 above. 2 See p. 391, n. 1 above.
3 Mon. Germ. Hist., AA., x, 406.
* Carmina, ii, no. 28 (Mon. Germ. Hist., PP., 111, 192).
5 P. Johannés Thibaut, Rerue d’ Histoire et de Critique Musicales, 1 (1901), no. 4, 174-175. § Ibid. 7 See p. 393 above.
402 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
Theophilus (ca. 829) were remarkable enough to excite comment many years later when Constantine Manasses made mention of them in his Compendium Chronicon.' Reference has already been made to the many other passages concerning the organ in Roman times.
But what was the position of the organ in the mediaeval church? It is commonly held that the organ was first introduced into the mass by Pope Vitalian in the seventh century. This assertion was first made by Platina in his De Vita et Moribus Summorum Ponti- ficum Historia,? and was incorporated by Praetorius into his Syn- tagma Musicus.* From there the tradition spread into most reputable histories of music, although Coussemaker indicated that he con- sidered such an interpretation of the phrase ‘as they wished’ (ut quid uolant) dubious and took issue with the reading.‘ The tradi- tion is charming, but unfortunately not authentic. The organ was used in connection with church services as early as the sixth century. And since no distinction was made between the organ and other instruments, it will not be amiss to indicate the status of instruments in general in the church service in the preceding centuries.
It seems fairly clear that in the early church, that is, prior to the fourth century, what service there was, was extremely simple in form and was largely unaccompanied by musical instruments. Clement of Alexandria, writing in the second century, said that only one instrument, the Word of God, was to be used in honoring him.’ And Justin Martyr said definitely that instruments were excluded from the church, only the simple chant being allowed.® At this time, when Christianity was a forbidden religion, and Christians a perse- cuted sect, there was good reason for keeping the religious assemblies simple and inconspicuous.’ But in the fourth century the situation
1 Patr. Graec., cxxvit, 400.
2 1530, p. 99: ‘But Vitalian being intent upon divine worship, composed an ecclesiastical rule and ordered the singing, joining to the consonance (as they wished) the organ.
3 11, 107. 4 Ibid., 278.
5 Paedagogi, ii, 4 (Patr. Graec., vi11, 442).
® Quaestiones e: Responsiones ad Orthodozos, § 107 (Patr. Graec., v1, 1354).
7 There seems to be reason to suppose that even at this early date instruments were used to accompany the prayers. Papadopoulos makes this inference, although he does not say on what sources he bases his judgment (G. Papadopoulos, ‘Ioropixy érioxéanors ris Butar- Twijs éxxAno.acrixfs wovoixis amo Tay &mocro\Kev xpbvwr Trev xa’ yas (Athens, 1904), p.3).
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 403
changed. Christianity became a religio licita, and restraint gave way to widespread extravagance.' The movement toward decoration and ornamentation did not stop with the interior of the church, but made itself felt in the very service itself.2_ The early Fathers substantiated this statement. It seems to be true that the tendency was to elimi- nate any type of music which would turn the mind toward worldly thought or make an appeal to the senses. Thus, St Augustine, in discussing the use of psalms in the service, is dismayed to find him- self swayed by the music rather than by the thought portrayed, and censures himself severely for having yielded to a sensuous pleasure.* But in the time of Athanasius, the group of heretics called Miletians accompanied hymns by a clapping of hands and dance movements,‘ a custom usual in the East. Eusebius speaks of the use of musical instruments, the cithara in particular, as an accompaniment to the psalms.° And Chrysostom, in his Commentary on Psalm 150, said that the cithara and lyre ‘were then tolerated because of their weak- ness, and because they stirred them up to love and harmony . . . and because by such inducements they were led to a high pitch of zeal.’ Thus, certain instruments were used even in the early days of Chris-
tianity as an accompaniment for the voices in the singing of psalms and hymns. This practice died out in the Eastern Church, where to this day church-music is unaccompanied by instruments of any form.’ The organ in particular was used in Byzantium only for purely secular purposes.* The practice of using the organ as a part of church-music pertained exclusively to the Western Church.
1 J. W. Thompson, An Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages (New York: The Century Company, 1928), p. 69.
? Peter Wagner, Introduction to the Gregorian Melodies (2d ed., trans]. Agnes Orme and E. G. P. Wyatt, London: Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society (1901) p. 7).
® Confessions, x, 35.
* Theodoret, Compendium Haereticarum Fabularum, iv, 7 (Patr. Graec., tXxxitt, 426). See also iv, 11.
5 Commentary on Psalm 91 in Patr. Graec., xx111, 1170 A.
® Patr. Lat., tv, 497.
7 Papadopoulos, op. cit., pp. 2, 3, 10, 11. There seems to be evidence that in the early church, because of certain apostolic precepts, baptism was refused any one who played either the cithara or the lyre (ibid., 11).
8 Thanks to careful editing, there has been preserved on the manuscript of Julian the Apostate’s epigram (see p. 391 above) a most intriguing note which states that the poem was composed during a procession when the young author was leaving the Church of the Holy
404 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
We know that in the West the organ eventually became the supreme liturgical instrument, but that prior to the fourth century only the cithara and the lyre were permitted, since their use was sup- posed not to turn the mind from sacred thoughts. Thus at some period the organ must have been introduced, and the evidence seems to indicate that that period was the eleventh century.
From the sixth century on, there is much evidence to show that the organ was used on ecclesiastical occasions when a chorus of voices formed part of the service. Thus we have it as an accompany- ing instrument for voices during processions of all types: on feast days,' on funeral occasions,’ as a part of a grand ceremonial, or in a processional to a mass. We are fortunate in possessing graphic descriptions of the latter two examples.
The first is found in the Vita Landeberti Episcopi Traiectensis Vetustissima, on the occasion of the interment of a saint.’ After Bishop Cugubert, accompanied by priests, deacons, and other mem- bers of the clergy, had clothed the body in rich vestments and sealed it in a sepulchre, ‘then finally, all the people left the town on their knees, the chorus of psalms accompanied by a great crashing
of cymbals and by the organ, which gave out a song of most agreeable modulations.’
There are several examples of the use made of the organ in the processional to the mass. One of the most striking is that of For- tunatus.‘ He describes the coming of dawn and the gathering of the men for the coming service. The turbulence of their coming gives
Apostles in Constantinople (see p. 306, n. 1, in the Loeb Classical Library edition). This evi- dently occurred when Julian was a lad in Constantinople and before his apostasy. It would be interesting could one assume that the epigram was suggested te the young man by the organ within the church just left. Unfortunately the note does not tell us that. And since the tendency of the Eastern Church is against such a use of the organ, I am afraid that we must pass by the reference as a tantalizing but inconclusive bit.
1 Vita Sollemnis Episcopi Carnoteni (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS. Rer. Mer., v11, 316); also Vita S. Oswaldi Archiepiscopi Eboracensis, xxvii, 66 (Jean Mabillon, AA SS, vu, saec. v, p. 734: ‘et diebus festis sollium spiramento fortiore pulsati, praedulcem melodiam et clangorem longius resonantem ediderunt’). See also Cauensis coenibii dedicatio in AA SS Boll., 4 Mar., vu, 34, 6, and St Bruno, Carthusianorum Institutor, pt. 1: Commentary on Psalm 150 (Patr. Lat., ci11, 1420;).
2 Vita Desiderii Episcopi Viennensis (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS. Rer. Mer., 111, 644).
3 Mon. Germ. Hist., SS. Rer Mer., vu1, 379 ff.
* Carmina, ii, no. 9 (Mon. Germ. Hist., AA., x1, 39).
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 405
way to an ordered chorus. Step by step the procession moves, the song swelling as it advances. Now the strings of the psalterium join their song to that raised by human voices. The tinkle of cymbals, the dry roll of tympana add color to the music. And then the pipe organ blares forth its ocean of sound from its large pipes, and the words of the song, repeated again and again by the men’s voices, follow the melody of the instrument.
The De Ecclesiasticis Offictis of Amalarius, presbyter of Metz, gives a similar picture. According to his statement, the congregation was gathered in the church, the men standing on the southern side, the women, veiled,' on the northern.’ Into the half-gloom of the church moved the procession of the clergy, bishop, deacons, sub- deacons, acolytes, magnificent in white, scarlet, and gold, preceded by lighted candles and swinging censers. As they came, the majestic words of the Psalmist rang out: ‘Praise ye the Lord. . . . Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp . . . praise him with stringed instruments and organs.’ Praise him upon the loud cymbals. . . . Praise ye the Lord.’ And as they sang, cymbals, trumpets, psalterium, organ rang out. Slowly, with
great dignity, the procession moved down the left side of the church, and on reaching the altar, the bishop began the mass.
Furthermore, there is reason to believe that the organ accom- panied the singing of hymns,‘ and especially the psalms.°*
1 iii, 2 (Patr. Lat., cv, 1104 D).
* Tbid., 1105 A.
3 The presence of the word ‘organs’ in Psalm CL should not confuse the reader. The original term was ‘ugab’ (33): Sacred Book of the Old Testament (ed. J. Wellhausen, Leipzig, 1895), which has been generally translated as ‘pipes.’ In the Greek Testament translated from the Septuagint, the term used is épyavq, with the usual meaning of ‘instruments’ (H. B. Swete, ed., Old Testament in Greek, u (Cambridge, 1922), 414), which Jerome translated ‘organo’ (Biblia Sacra secundum vulgatam Clementinam (ed. P. M. Hetzenauer, Ratisbon, 1922), 11. The English rendition ‘organs’ has, therefore, an archaic significance, and should be read ‘pipes’ or ‘instruments’; see NED., s. v. ‘ organ,’ sb,? 2b.
4 Versus in Canticis Canticorum de Deo Sanctaeque Ecclesiae, no. 31, stanza 17 (Mon. Germ. Hist., Poet. Lat., tv, ii, 624); Appendix ad Ermoldum: versus ad Pueros (ibid., 1, 92- 93); Bede, Interpretatio Psalterii (Patr. Lat., xcu1, 1101 B).
5 Sedulius Scottus, Carmina, ii, no. 63 (Mon. Germ. Hist., PP., 111, 219); Bibliothecarum et Psalterium Versus VI ad Karolum Caluum (ibid., 262); Radbotus, Carmina, iv (ibid., rv, 188, 1. 82); Codicis Bernensis CCCLVIII Sylloga: ‘De Musica,’ (ibid., 255, 1. 47). See also p. 403, n. 5, above.
406 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
Whether the organ was used in the mass proper,’ however, is another question. There seems reason to believe that such was not the case prior to the twelfth century. Indeed, there is positive evidence to the contrary. Take, for example, the De Ecclesiasticis Offictis and the Eclogae de Officio Missae ? of Amalarius, presbyter of Metz. These two works contain an exact description of the mass as it was said at Metz and at the court of Louis the Pious, at whose command, indeed, the two works were written. They are of no little significance, for at Metz was probably found the Gregorian tradition in its purest form in the ninth century. We know that Gregory the Great is reputed to have founded a Schola Cantorum at Rome in which singers were trained and sent into Gaul, Germany,’ and England.‘ More specifically, we know that Pepin and Charlemagne imported from this school singing-masters at various times.’ In 787 Charlemagne brought into Gaul two singing-masters, of whom one, Theodore, went to Metz, the other going to Soissons.® The in- ability of the Franks to sing disgusted the two Italians, but through the expenditure of much effort the standards of Metz were raised to such a point that they were considered the highest in Gaul.’ These same Romans seem to have brought organs with them.* Now, Amalarius wrote his two works about 825 a.p. The ordinary of the mass prescribed by him probably represented the Gregorian tradition jn the purest form then available. He stated categorically that the
1 Although the organ seems to have been used as an accompaniment for hymns and psalms, and although these two musical forms may have been part of the mass, the fact that the organ was so used is in itself no guarantee that the organ was used as an accompaniment to voices during the mass, since both hymns and psalms were used in non-liturgical services.
2 Patr. Lat., cv, 1315-33.
3 John the Deacon, S. Gregorii Magni Vita, ii, 7 (Patr. Lat., uxxv, 91); Codex Carolinus, no. 41 (Mon. Germ. Hist., Epistolae, 111, 553-554).
4 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, ii, 20 (ed. C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896), 1, 126), and iv, 16 [18] (pp. 240-242).
5 Pope Paul I wrote to Pepin regarding monks sent to Rome and Rouen to learn how to sing psalms in the Roman fashion (Codex Carolinus, no. 41, cited in note 3 above).
6 Annales Laurissense3, anno 787 (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS., 1, 170, 1. 58); John the Deacon, op. cit., c. 8 and 9 (p. 91); Ekkehard IV, Casus S. Galli, c. 3 (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS., 1, 102).
7 Annales Laurissenses, anno 787, loc. cit., p. 171, 1.40. See also the Monk of St Gall, De Carolo Magno, i, 10 (P. Jaffé, Bib. Rer., tv, p. 641).
8 Monk of St Gall, De Ecclesiastica Cura Caroli Magni, i, 20 (André Duchesne, Historiae Francorum Scriptores (Paris, 1636-1649).
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 407
singers at Metz — and consequently at the court of Louis the Pious —used no instruments to accompany their chanting.’ There is similar evidence for monastic foundations, although the Regulae of the period made no specific provision against the use of the instru- ment. Thus, the monks of Fulda, who followed the Benedictine Rule,’ did not use the organ at all in their services. The monks of Casale were definitely prohibited from either learning or teaching the organ.‘ The commentator in the Migne edition of the Rule also indicated that the ancient customs of Monte Cassino forbade the construction of organs without the permission of the head of the chapter.°®
Consequently, it seems probable that although the organ was well established in Gaul as an accompanying instrument for chants used when a great number of voices were singing, as in processions, and in the singing of psalms and hymns, it was not used as such in the service of the mass from the eighth to the eleventh centuries. It seems to have been used to indicate to the choir the pitch on which to begin a chant. Amalarius says that at Metz the trumpet was so used.’ But when the organ was present in the church, I have no hesitation in attributing this function to it. It will be remembered that such was the practice in Byzantium, where the organ had a specific part to play in great civil festivals.*
Were it not for the fact that the organ was not used as an accom- panying instrument on civil occasions in Byzantium, there might be reason to suspect a liturgical rule prohibiting its use in the western mass, since it was used on non-liturgical occasions and not in the mass. In view of the Byzantine custom, however, we must turn elsewhere for an example of its omission.
1 ‘Our singers hold neither cymbals nor lyres nor cithara in their hands, nor any other kind of musical instrument’ (De Ecclesiastica Officiis, iii, 3, p. 1106 D).
2 Vita S. Sturmi, c. 14 (Mon. Germ. Hist., 11, 371).
3 S. Pater Benedictus, Regula Commentata, c. 19 (Patr. Lat., uxv1, 476 A).
4 Ibid. (p. 475 D).
5 Ibid.
6 Vita Caesarii Episcopi Arelatensis in Mon. Germ. Hist., SS. Rer. Mer., 111, 496.
7 Liber de ordine antiphonarii, 1 (Patr. Lat., cv, 1247).
8 See pp. 18-20 above. Papadopoulos makes the interesting suggestion that the organ was used while practicing although not at the performance itself (op. cit., pp. 11, 12).
408 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
When one considers the many references to the thunderous qual- ity of the early organ music,' and to the use made of it when the voices singing were many in number,’ one is led to suspect that while the tremendous emotional quality of the organ tone was recognized at an early date, the main reason for its exclusion from the music of the mass was that it was unfitted to accompany either a single voice or a small number of voices.* This may have been because of its great size. Large organs continued to be built throughout the early period, if we may judge from the classic example of the great Winchester organ, built in the tenth century. It is reported that this instrument required seventy men to keep up a proper air pressure, and that the volume of sound given out by it was terrifying to hear.‘ Indeed, as late as the twelfth century, Aelred, Abbot of Rievaux, protested that the organ was no fit instrument for use in the church service because of the terrific noise it made.’ But the reason may also have been that it was too awkward mechanically to permit its use. When the mechanism of the organ was improved sufficiently so that it could be used to accompany voices in small numbers, it seems to have been introduced into the mass. Thus we find Honorius of Autun referring
to it as part of the service in the first half of the twelfth century,' and justifying its use by scriptural citation.’ Balderic, archbishop of Dol in the twelfth century, indicated its use, and defended the instrument against those who complained of the noise it made by saying that if it thumped and wheezed, the fault was as much lack of care as the nature of the instrument itself.* Reiner of St Laurent °
1 Thus the descriptions of Julian the Apostate (p. 391 above); Jerome (p. 398 above); Optatian (p. 395 above); Ammianus Marcellinus (p. 398 above); Sidonius Apollinaris (p. 390, n. 6 above); Fortunatus (p. 404 above); Bede (p. 396 above); Ikhw4n al-Safa (p. 398 above). See also Aldhelm’s riddle on the organ (p. 390, n. 2 above), and Wolstan, Prologue to Vita S. Swithuni (Jean Mabillon, AA SS, vu, 5 saec., p. 617). 2 See pp. 404-405 above.
3 It is perhaps not insignificant that to this day the term used to designate unaccompanied vocal music is ‘a capella.’
4 Wolstan, op. cit., p. 31, n. 3. For other examples of the building of large organs, see p. 14 above.
5 Speculum Charitatis, ii, 23 (Patr. Lat., cxcv, 571).
6 ‘Then they sang the sequence with voice and organ’ (Gemmae animae, c. 77, in Patr. Lat., cuxxvit, 567 D). 7 Ibid., c. 189 (ibid., 587 D).
8 Epistola ad Fiscamneses, c. 7 (Patr. Lat., cLxv1, 1177).
® De Claris Scriptoribus Monasterii Sui, ii, 7 (Patr. Lat., cctv, 31).
The Organ in the Early Middle Ages 409
and William of Malmesbury ! testified to the sweetness of its tone. And in the thirteenth century, Johannes Aegidius said that the organ alone was used in the music of the mass.”
This change in attitude toward the organ is not surprising if one remembers the changes in construction which took place in the eleventh century. At that time it was known that different finishes on the pipes would produce differing qualities of tone,’ and that the delicacy of the sound emitted would be in proportion to the size of the opening in the pipe itself.‘ But in addition to these improvements in the quality of the organ tone, noticeable in the eleventh century, the first step toward an improvement in the action of the keys since the first century A.D. was made at that time. The spring-box mecha- nism was introduced in the last quarter of the eleventh century,° the slider-box keyboard gradually disappeared, and the modern keyboard, with black and white keys, slowly came into being. This was the first great change in organ construction since the time of Vitruvius, a thousand years before. Instead of pushing and pulling tones out of the great organ, they were pressed out, in the same way that they are to-day. The corresponding ease of execution is too obvious to require emphasis. With such changes in the construction of the instrument, changes which not only altered the quality of its tone but also increased the ease with which it could be played, the gradual use of the organ as an accompanying instrument in the mass seems to be explained. Its previous exclusion was based on practical rather than on liturgical grounds. When it no longer drowned out the voices, the inspiration roused by its tones was freely recognized and made use of.
As might be expected, the changes evolved were not sudden or precipitate. By the tenth century a new interest in the organ and organ construction was being evinced, and in the monasteries. The first treatises on organ construction written since the time of Vitru- vius were written by Odo, the great abbot of Cluny,® by Notker
1 Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (Rolls Series, No. 52, p. 429).
* ‘in proses, and in sequences and hymns’ (Martin Gerbert, Scriptores, cit. supra, 11, 388).
> See p. 400, n. 5 above. 4 Ibid.
5 Such was the construction of the Magdeburg organ, apparently erected about this time. Audsley quotes Seidel on this point (op. cit., p. 28).
§ M. Gerbert, Scriptores, 1, 303.
Ps gh) OP
BIW *2y
IED 2 IE ONE PENS
410 The Organ in the Early Middle Ages
Balbulus,' by Hucbald,’ by Bernelin* — all of them monks. Dunstan in England not only was noted as a performer on the organ, but also furnished many churches and monasteries with instruments,‘ Ethelwold, abbot of Abingdon and later bishop of Winchester, con- structed an organ with his own hands.* Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II) was also noted as a builder of organs,’ being reputed among other things to have constructed an organ operated by steam.’ When pope, Gerbert established a studio of organ construction at Rome where was practised the art which he seems to have learned when a monk at Bobbio. When his former professor, Gerhard, abbot of Aurillace, wrote requesting an organ of him, he replied regretfully that the unsettled conditions in Italy would not permit the fulfil- ment of the request.* The matter seems to have bothered him somewhat; for in 987, the year of Gerhard’s death, he wrote to Ray- mond, Gerhard’s successor, saying that the organ was on the way, but that he could say nothing as to the whereabouts either of the organ or of the monk sent in charge of it. And finally, it is recorded that Earl Elwin presented an organ to the convent of Ramsay on which he spent thirty pounds in copper pipes.’°
Thus, the interest in the organ, evident from the time of Notker Balbulus in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, bore fruit in the improvements of the eleventh. And in the following century the organ as a liturgical instrument came into its own, to replace, by the thirteenth century, all other instruments formerly used in the
mass.
1d. 912 (M. Gerbert, 1, 107). 2 Ibid., 147-148. 3 Ibid., 329.
4 William of Malmesbury, Vita Sancti Dunstani, i, 4 (Rolls Series, No. 63, p. 257) and Gesta Pontificium Anglorum (Rolls Series, No. 52, p. 407). Dunstan was not the first to intro- duce organs into England as has so often been claimed. See Vita Wilfridi I Episcopi Ebora- censis Auctore Stephano (Mon. Germ. Hist., SS. Rer. Mer., v1, 201).
5 Historia Monasterii de Abingdon, ii (Rolls Series, No. 2, p. 278).
6 Epistolae, nos. 70, 91, 92, 163, in Julien Havet, Collection de Textes pour servir a I’ Etude et a l’ Enseignement de I’ Histoire (Paris, 1889), vol. v1.
7 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ii, 168 (Patr. Lat., cuxx1x, 1140).
8 Epistolae, no. 70, p. 67. ® Ibid., no. 91, p. 83.
10 Vita S. Oswaldi Archiepiscopi Eboracensis, xxvii, 66 (Jean Mabillon, AA SS, vu,
5 saec., 734).
Co.tumsus, OHIO
THE COVERS OF THE LORSCH GOSPELS
By CHARLES RUFUS MOREY!
Il. Tue Cover IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MuseuM
HAT was originally the anterior cover of the Lorsch Gospels
was acquired from the Webb Collection in 1866. It had previously belonged to the Leven and Soltikoff Collections. The first mention of it occurs in the catalogue of the Leven sale of 1853, in which an illustration of the plaque shows it without the silver gilt mounts which it possessed when it passed to the museum in South Kensington. Graeven * pointed out that these mounts were added later in imitation of those which adorned the Vatican cover before its recent dismounting.
As was stated in the first article, the manuscript of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, of which the South Kensington plaque ap- parently formed the cover, was probably separated from the other two Gospels that are now in the Vatican in the latter part of the fifteenth century. What happened to the first two Gospels then is not known. They may have been taken to Heidelberg with the rest of the library of Lorsch in 1555 and lost to sight in the sack of Hei- delberg in 1622; in any case they were to be found, minus the ivory cover, in the possession of Cardinal Bishop Migazzi in Vienna during the first half of the eighteenth century, and are now in the Bathy- aneum in Karlsburg, Hungary.
The plaque was dismounted in 1927 for examination of the backs of the panels, which have now been more suitably mounted. The backs (Plate I) revealed nothing of interest (with the exception of D), save the letters A, B, C, D, E in Gothic script scratched on the panels as assembly-marks, which may well date from the rebinding
! Studies in the Art of the Museo Cristiano of the Vatican Library, edited by C. R. Morey and E. Baldwin Smith, No. 4. The first part of this study, on the Vatican cover, appeared in SpecuLum for January, 1928 (vol. 11, no.1). The writer of the present article is much in- debted to Margaret H. Longhurst for the data concerning the history, description, and meas- urements of the cover in the Victoria and Albert Museum; see also Miss Longhurst’s Catalogue
of Carvings in Ivory, Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1927), Part 1, p. 62.
2 Byzantin. Zeitschr. x (1901), 15. 411
412 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
of the fifteenth century recorded in a note at the end of the Vatican portion of the manuscript. On the edge of D near the three large binding holes that correspond to the similar holes of the Vatican cover, mentioned in the first article, are two grooved slots running inwards, with peg-holes wherewith to fix hinges of metal, leather, or vellum. No corresponding holes or slots are to be found in the Vati- can cover, and their situation on panel D of the South Kensington cover is not symmetrical to its present center. The inference of this is that the binding which they served was not that of the covers but of panel D before it was cut down and reused as part of the present cover; consular diptychs were sometimes hinged in this way, and it is possible that this panel, like the lower panel of the Vatican cover, was recut from the leaf of an antique diptych.
The flanges at the top, bottom, and inner edges of the three central panels, which, as in the case of the Vatican cover were dovetailed into grooves in the bottom edge of the upper panel, in the upper edge of the lower, and from left to right on the vertical axis, have been everywhere cut off. The extent to which the carved surfaces also have suffered by this cutting may be judged from Plate 1, which reproduces the five panels dismounted. It will be seen that the lower feet and draperies of the flying angels of the upper panel (A) have been cut through, and that in the lower panel (£) the cutting has taken off the end of the building beside Joseph, the tip of Mary’s couch, half the finial of the tower to the right of the Child’s crib, and the tip of the staff carried by the angel who performs the an- nunciation to the shepherds. In fact this panel must have been more sharply cut back along its upper horizontal edge than the upper panel on its lower edge, for the latter retains a good part of its raised border, while this has disappeared in the case of the lower panel. The central panel (C) has also suffered: if one compares the bases of the columns that support the arch sheltering the Madonna with that of the right column beside Zacharias in the right-hand panel (B), or with the base of the corresponding colonnettes of the central panel of the Vatican cover, it is evident that we must restore a plinth beneath each base, which would considerably lengthen the panel and give the Madonna a more satisfactory position in symmetry
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The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 413
with its dimensions. The lateral panels have lost at the top little more than the flanges, since the raised border here must have been a narrow one if we may judge from the corresponding ones on the Vatican cover; at the bottom they have lost not only their flanges but something of the carved surface as well, since it is inconceivable that the big toe of the Baptist’s left foot (panel D) originally pro- jected as now over the edge. The question arises whether this diago- nal cutting at the bottom of the side-panels B and D is parallel to the original edge, or whether the original lower edge of these panels was horizontal as in the case of the Vatican cover; this involves as well the original shape of the bottom panel E.
At this point it will be well to examine the evidence afforded by the holes left in the panels, and the comparative dimensions of the Vatican and South Kensington covers. The holes are indicated on the accompanying diagram (Plate m1) as they appear on the backs of the panels, and may be explained as follows:
1. Holes due to attachment of mounts, mediaeval or modern.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8? 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 2?, 3?, 4? 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13 1, 2, 3? . Holes in D for binding: 1, 2, 3. . Holes in D for pegs to fasten tabbed hinges: 5, 9. . Holes made for pegs to secure dovetails and apparently used later to hold iron plates added to strengthen dovetails. A. 6,7, 9? (7 has iron nails in it; 6 and 9 have pegs of ivory or bone.) B. 2,8
Cc. 1 D. 4,12
All the holes except those otherwise noted are filled with plaster or glue probably inserted when the modern metal mounts were added; these were affixed to the wooden backing and not nailed
414 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
through the ivories as was the case with the Vatican cover, which accounts for the much smaller number of holes in the South Kensing- ton panels. The holes enumerated in section 4 above are surrounded by red coloring, as also is the case with A 8, B 3, and C 2, 3, 4. This red stain, analyzed, shows the presence of iron and is probably rust from iron plates or nails added either when the dovetails became weak or when they were cut away; in the latter case this must have happened before the final reduction of the bottom panel E, since no stains appear on this.
It will be seen from the above that panel E has no holes for dove- tailing that can be relied upon to determine the shape of its upper edge. As to the relative dimensions of the Vatican and South Ken- sington covers, it is necessary to compute the over-all measurements of the latter, since, unlike the Vatican cover, it was separated into its constituent panels in the modern mounting which imbedded each of them in its own sunken compartment of the wooden backing. The dimensions in centimeters of the panels, as thus cut down and separately affixed to the mounting, are as follows: !
A. H.68 W. 26.5 B. H. on outside edge 25.5; on inside 22.6 W. 8.2 C. H. 22.5 W. 103 D. H. on outside edge 25.0; on inside 22.5 W. 7.4 E. H. 7.1 W. 26.5
If the bottom panel was originally of its present shape, the over-all original height of the cover would equal the sum of the heights of A, C, and E, or cm. 36.4. If on the other hand we assume an origi- nally rectangular shape, the lateral panels must also have had rect- angular lower termination, and the central panel must have been longer. In this case to approximate the over-all height we must add to the previous figure half the averaged difference between the ex- treme and minimum heights of the side panels, or about 1.35 cm., which brings the over-all height to ca. 37.75.
Something may be added no doubt to this dimension to make up
1 The thickness of the panels is 6.7 mm.; that of the Vatican cover about 7.0 mm. The ivory is split in several places and small pieces have been renewed in panels A and C.
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The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 415
for the cutting of the upper edge of the lower panel E, indicated by the clipping of the finial of the tower to the right of the manger. The maximum width of the South Kensington cover is 26.5 cm.; that of the Vatican cover is 27.5 cm. If the centimeter’s difference between these widths, due to the cutting down laterally of the South Kensing- ton cover, be added to the over-all height to compensate for vertical shortenings, our figure is brought to 38.75 cm., while the height of the Vatican cover is 37.7 cm. On the other hand, the cutting-down of the panels in the lateral dimension has contracted its width much more than the cutting in the vertical sense has diminished its height, for in the former case the dimension is the width of the top panel whose set-offs have been removed on the short sides; in the latter case the trimming has removed little more than the flanges of the dovetails which do not contribute to the over-all height. The slight trimming of the upper edge of the lower panel E may be estimated to have reduced the height of this panel half a centimeter; adding this to the over-all heights above arrived at, we get the figures 36.9, assuming panel E to have had its upper edge bevelled as at present, and 38.25 if it and the lower edges of the lateral panels were originally rectangular. The difference from the height of the Vatican panel is in the one case cm. 0.8, in the other, cm. 0.55.
This is not very conclusive in favor of either shape for the lower panel, but it at least shows that the height of the South Kensington cover, restored on this basis, offers no more difficulty than if we should assume an original shape of the lower and lateral panels cor- responding to that exhibited at present. We have, however, the missing plinths of the colonnettes flanking the Virgin in the central panel C to show that this panel was originally longer. In view of this it is necessary to conclude that the front cover (South Kensing- ton) of the Lorsch Gospels was made up to correspond to the restored posterior cover (Vatican), and owes to this the peculiar shape of its panels, which in the case of the Vatican cover was due to the em- ployment (after its lower corners were diagonally cut back) of the upper panel of an antique five-part plaque, and the fitting of the lateral panels thereto. The present shape of the South Kensington lower panel, the bias lower termination of the lateral panels, and the
416 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
cutting off of the central panel at the bottom, may then be ascribed to the modern workman who mounted the panels in the wooden backing from which they were recently removed. The amputations were obviously done with a view to reducing the juncture-lines of the plaque as a whole to symmetry.
The carver of the South Kensington cover is to be distinguished from his confrére who restored the Vatican plaque as using fuller and more complicated folds of drapery, with not so narrow a grooving in their indication. He was the more positive personality of the two, using bolder curves in line and surface and a somewhat more pro- nounced relief. His upper panel displays two flying angels supporting a medallion which incloses a beardless long-haired bust of Christ, with crossed and fluted nimbus. In the central panel the Virgin sits holding the cross-nimbed Child on her bosom and her left arm. On the left lateral panel stands the Baptist holding in his left hand an unrolled scroll. The figure in the right lateral panel is Zacharias, apparelled as high priest and holding a censer and incense box. The lower panel depicts the Nativity, with Joseph seated, the Virgin re- clining on a very perpendicular mattress, and a crib which takes the form of the porch of a basilica and shelters the full figures of the ox and ass as well as the Child. Separated from the Nativity by a round tower is the Annunciation to the Shepherds, performed by an angel who holds a long sceptre with trefoil-tip and speaks to three shep- herds standing and sitting beside their flock.
Graeven, in the above-cited article in the Byzantinische Zeit- schrift, made clear the derivation of the Lorsch book-covers from an East Christian model, and in the preceding article on the Vatican cover it was shown that the East Christian model in question must have been a five-part diptych of which one piece has actually sur- vived in the upper panel of the Vatican cover. Inasmuch as the upper panel of the South Kensington cover reproduces the scheme of this piece, it can safely be assumed to copy the corresponding panel of the original diptych, save in the Christ-bust with long hair falling in tapering locks on the shoulders, which replaced a short- haired Christ of the Alexandrian original, as was pointed out in the
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The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 417
preceding article with reference to the Christ of identical aspect who occupies the central panel of the Vatican cover. The early Christian parallels for the three central figures of the South Kensington plaque were well collected by Graeven, who compared them quite properly with the Virgin, Baptist, and Zacharias figuring among the precursors of Christ in a well-known miniature of the Cosmas Indicopleustes of the Vatican Library. A somewhat better parallel for Zacharias is afforded by the mosaic which depicts him in the apse of the cathedral of Parenzo (sixth century) and dresses him in lacerna as in our ivory instead of the chlamys represented in the miniature; the mosaic also gives him similar foot-gear (Plate tv, 1). It is note- worthy also that the Madonna in the apse at Parenzo furnishes an excellent parallel for that of the South Kensington cover, and that the Baptist and Zacharias are represented in separate panels of the frieze below her. Graeven notes that the mediaeval copyist has left clues to his period in rendering Zacharias’ censer with a lid, and globular in shape, — according to him this form occurs first in the Bible of Charles the Bald,— and in the uninscribed scroll of the Baptist, accounted for by Graeven in the assumption that the an- tique original showed a Greek inscription on the scroll which the copyist was unable to read. Adolf Goldschmidt,' however, believes that the scroll was left empty for the painting of the Baptist’s motto Ecce agnus Dei.
The above variations from the original are slight and give us no further indication of the date of the copyist than that he worked in post-antique times. The lower panels, however, both of the Vatican and South Kensington covers, are much more informative on this point. Graeven pointed out the East Christian motif which the Nativity retains in representing Mary as reclining on a mattress instead of sitting, as she is depicted in the Nativity groups of the Latin sarcophagi. He might have added that the peculiarly vertical placing of the mattress is a characteristic of ivories commonly classi- fied as Alexandrian and Coptic (Plate rv, 2).? So also is the sym-
! Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sdchsischen Kaiser (Berlin,
1914-26), vol. 1, no. 12. 2 See M. Schmid, Die Darstellung der Geburt Christi in der bildenden Kunst (Stuttgart, 1890),
nos. 53-58.
418 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
metrical placing of the ox and ass, which on the sarcophagi are usually standing together on one side of the crib (Plate rv, 3), These motifs and the annexed Annunciation to the Shepherds were no doubt derived from the East Christian and presumably Alexan- drian original from which the central panels were copied, but in the style of the figures and the architecture with which the carver has embroidered his scenes we find him no careful copyist as he was in the other panels, but a child of his mediaeval period.
The protruding eyes, the hunched-up posture of Joseph, the awk- ward angularity of the Virgin’s drapery, and the barbaric masks given to the shepherds — these are the indications that the artist, working in the reduced scale of his lower panel, has indulged here more freely his native style. On the Vatican cover the lower panel shows the same relapse into mediaevalism. Here again we find the Teutonic masks, the awkward movement, and the absence of antique flow of drapery; a further symptom of mediaeval date is the change of the peak of the Phrygian cap of the Magi into a knob.
Most of all, however, does the transformation of the Early Chris- tian model came forth in the architectural embroidery of the scenes — as Graeven duly noted. In the Nativity, for instance, the artist has not only added to the putative Alexandrian Nativity (which like all East Christian Nativities must have depicted the manger without shelter) the Latin shed which is the constant feature of the Birth in the sarcophagi, but has made this into the porch of an elaborate rectangular structure, whose top he has shingled with diamond- shaped tiles instead of the tegulae and imbrices of an antique roof.
Now this introduction of anything more in the way of a building than a mere arcade, into the background of the Nativity composition, is an innovatiori that is characteristic of mediaeval ivories (and less frequently of miniatures) of the tenth century and later.’ It is true
1 Examples:
Ivories: Antwerp, Coll. M. van den Bergh, x1 century (Goldschmidt, op. cit., vol. 11, no. 95); Berlin, museum, ca. 1100 (Goldschmidt, 11, 173 b); ibid., second half of x1 century (Gold- schmidt, 11, 79); ibid., x century (Goldschmidt, 1, 58); Bonn, Provincial Museum, x century (Goldschmidt, 1, 109); Brussels, Museum of Decorative Arts, x century (Goldschmidt, 1, 117); Cologne, Museum of Decorative Arts, second half of xm century (Goldschmidt, 11, 10);
Darmstadt, Grand-ducal Museum, x1 century (Goldschmidt, m1, 103); Florence, Museo Na- zionale, middle of x1 century (Goldschmidt, 1, 35); London, British Museum, ca. 900 (Gold-
.
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ANVHdldf ‘ALIAILVN ‘NOLLVIONONNY ALIAILVN ‘TANV AUOAT ‘WadSayY HSILINg ‘LUGO XAGOD “ASIA,
The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 419
that a Nativity in the Carolingian Psalter of Utrecht is placed before a large rotunda, but the latter occupies the position which is fre- quently filled with an architectural composition in the miniatures of this manuscript, and seems to be no integral part of the icono- graphic tradition followed in the scene, which is that of the ‘open-air’ Nativity used in the Christian East. The closest parallel to the structure behind the crib on the South Kensington cover is fur- nished by the building that stands in the center of a city-wall behind the manger of the Nativity in a miniature of the Codex Egberti of the end of the tenth century (Plate v, 1).
This city-wall is a motif that appears in Carolingian art very frequently, being especially prominent in the miniatures of the Utrecht Psalter. Interesting use of it is also made to enclose episodes of the life of Christ in miniatures at Diisseldorf (Landesbibliothek B, 113).! Later, however, the original spatial concept was lost, and we find the city-wall employed in the illogical fashion of a decorative rather than localizing background, as in the miniature of the Codex Egberti. Still more indicative of later date than the ninth century is the employment of its distecta membra in the form of the detached towers that once constituted the corners of the wall. Such is prob- ably the turris gregis, thus labelled in the miniature of the Codex Egberti, and the one that appears behind the angel of the Annuncia- tion to the Shepherds on the South Kensington panel; such also are the four towers dotted through the scenes of the Magi on the lower panel of the Vatican cover.
schmidt, 1, 159); Manchester, John Rylands Library (Goldschmidt, 1, 27); Melk, church, second half of x1 century (Goldschmidt, 11, 105); ibid., of the same date (Goldschmidt, 11, 104); Miinster, episcopal museum, first half of x1 century (Goldschmidt, 1, 47); Osnabriick, cathe- dral treasury, second half of x1 century (Goldschmidt, m, 102); Paris, Louvre, rx-x century (Goldschmidt, 1, 95).
Miniatures: St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 340, x1 century, Merton, Buchmalerei in St Gallen, pl. txxvu, 1; Trier, public library, Codex Egberti, 977-993, Kraus, Cod. Egberti, Pl. v, 1; Utrecht, University Library, Psalter, Facsimile, pl. 177.
The above examples do not include those Nativities in which one or more little late Hellen- istic cities appear above the scene, e.g. in the Evangeliary of Otto m1, Munich (Leidinger, Miniaturen aus Handschr. der kgl. Hof. und Staatsbibl. in Miinchen, 1, pl. 17); in the Pericope- book (ibid., v, pl. 8); in the Paliotto of Milan (A. Venturi, Storia dell’ Arte Italiana (Milan, 1901-28), vol. 1, fig. 167); and on an ivory book-cover of the Harrach Collection in Schloss Hradek (Goldschmidt, 1, 18).
1 Jahrb. d. Vereins v. Alterthumsfr. im Rheinl., Heft uxxu.
420 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
The illogical later use of the city-wall is admirably illustrated in an ivory panel of the British Museum (Plate v, 2), where the attend- ant Joseph is seated near the reclining Virgin as on our book-cover, but outside the wall. If one compares the towers of this city-wall — with their single narrow window interrupting the band about their middle, and their termination in a conical roof capped with a ball — with the towers of the lower panel of the Vatican cover, especially the one to the right of Herod, the derivation of these curiously de- tached pieces of architecture is not far to seek.
The panel of the British Museum was related to the Lorsch book- covers by Goldschmidt, who pointed out the strong resemblance of the Epiphany of the London plaque to that of the Vatican cover, in the similar star, in the shape and striation of the headgear of the Magi, in the rendering of the gifts in the bowls they offer Jesus, and in the attitude of Mary and the Child. The facial types throughout the London panel are almost identical with those of the lower panels of our book-covers, and it was doubtless the pronounced mediaeval- ism of these masks that prompted Goldschmidt to give a dating ‘tx-x century’ to the London panel although he dated the Lorsch book-covers in the ninth. One wonders if, had the lower panels of our book-covers been considered as isolated monuments without the disturbing accuracy of the copies from the antique in the upper panels to confuse the eye, Dr Goldschmidt might not have left open for them also the possibility of a dating in the tenth century.
Now there are several other ivories in Goldschmidt’s ‘Ada’ group, which he also dates along with the Lorsch book-covers in the ninth century,' that show remarkable affinity in style with our plaques of the Vatican and the Victoria and Albert Museum. This affinity is most conspicuous in the case of a book-cover in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum at Berlin (Plate v1, 1), which not only closely resembles the
1 Not included in this group are some apparently modern imitations of the central reliefs of the Lorsch covers in the Stossmayer Collection at Agram (Goldschmidt, vol. 1, nos. 15, 16), and a similar copy of one of the angels of the Vatican cover in the Grand-ducal Museum at Darmstadt. Graeven in Jb. Preuss. Kunsts., xx1 (1900), 76, illustrates a triptych with modern copies on its wings of the two standing saints of the Victoria and Albert cover. Another modern imitation is in the Cathedral Treasury at Auxerre. I am indebted to Miss Longhurst
for the above data.
The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 421
style of our plaques in the type of Christ, but betrays identical man- nerisms, such as the ‘mustache’ mouth, and the hooking of the central lobe of the acanthus leaves over the rod-border. Another closely related ivory may be seen in Plate v1, 2, a St Michael in the Public Library at Leipzig, carved on the back of the leaf of a consular diptych, like the lower panel of the Vatican cover, and singularly allied to the angels of the Vatican cover in the fluting of his nimbus, in the incision of the drapery-folds into the form, and their rippling edges. Certain passages in the Michael are identical with some in the Vatican panels, e.g. the curves incised below the knee and the gathering of the skirts by a loop that falls across the calf of the leg. Compare also the fingers of the Deztera Domini that touch St Michael’s nimbus with the fingers of the John and Zacharias on the South Kensington cover.
The pearled bands that follow the outline of St Michael’s legs have their counterpart in those in the corresponding position on the knee and legs of Zacharias. But a closer parallel still is afforded by a third related ivory, viz. the fragment of an Ascension in the Grand- ducal Museum at Darmstadt (Plate v1, 3), where not only does the same pair of bands appear on the robes of the Virgin, but with the same incised pattern that ornaments the bands on the tunic of Zach- arias. Here also, on the head of St Peter to the left of the Virgin, we find our characteristic shallow-fluted nimbus. Here too we find the heavy incised locks ending in corkscrew curls that are the cus- tomary rendering of hair in our ivories, as well as the loops across the legs, and the incisions beneath the knees. The apostle to the right of the Virgin has the same sash-like fold of his mantle across his waist that we find in the dress of the flying angels in the upper panel of the South Kensington cover.
The same method of rendering the hair is found on two plaques, one in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, representing the Crucifixion, the other with the scene of Easter Morn in the Bargello at Florence, which together form a diptych-leaf (Plate vu, 1) that once, according to Kéhler,' fitted into the cover of a Gospel-book of the beginning of the ninth century (Vienna, Hofbibliothek Cod. 1193). Goldschmidt
1 Cited by Goldschmidt, op. cit., vol. 1, no. 8.
422 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
advances reasons (the similar measurements of the depressions on the backs, the equivalence in height, and the suitability of the Ascension as pendant to the Crucifixion- and Sepulchre-scene) for considering the Ascension of Darmstadt as possibly the pendant leaf of the Berlin-Florence plaque. But he makes the significant remark that, even if this be true, the Darmstadt plaque is not by the hand that carved the other leaf, being ‘flatter in relief, and more precise and sharp in its lines.” The Darmstadt ivory in fact for- malizes and concentrates the mannerisms of the Berlin-Florence leaf; note, for instance, how the folds that curve and falter in the latter become sweeping and decisive in the former; how the heavy, squat forms of the one are lengthened and attenuated in the other; how the coarse and irregular modelling of flesh and hair in the Berlin- Florence leaf, that owes its very crudity to a lingering grasp of antique form, is transformed in the Darmstadt plaque into a pleasing stylization. The frank way in which the Darmstadt master cuts into the bodies to carve his drapery folds, the subtle sense of pattern with which he concentrates his drapery accents and contrasts them with the smooth surfaces with little regard for reality, show that he is of a generation that would not compromise decorative effect by too close imitation of antique relief.
The contrast above described points less, for the Darmstadt relief, to a relation of contemporary pendant to the Berlin-Florence leaf than to a later period. Let us follow this suggested solution with reference to the next number of our group of ivories linked with the Lorsch book-covers, viz. the enigmatic Virgin seated under an arch borne on palm-colonnettes, holding cross and spindles, that adorns a plaque in the Morgan collection of the Metropolitan Mu- seum (Plate vu, 2). The artist who carved this plaque had a hand less firm than that which gave its vigorous and virile line to the Leipzig Michael, and his draperies multiply and complicate their folds in a fashion resembling the convolutions of the Madonna’s robes in the South Kensington cover, but he betrays his community of school or date with the Leipzig craftsman by the curious armlets that the Virgin wears in common with St Michael, and the similar beaded band that follows the outer surface of the leg in both cases.
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The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 423
The construction also of the heavy face of the Virgin is similar to that of the Michael; more specific resemblance may be found in the heavy-lidded eyes, and the ‘mustache’ upper lip.
Iconographically, the figure is unique; the spindles held in the left hand mark her as the Virgin without much question, but the cross-sceptre is a feature also found in the only other figure in medi- aeval art that approaches this, viz. the crowned and nimbed female with cross and book who is enthroned in a miniature of the Sacra- mentary of Heidelberg (Plate vir, 3), and is generally accepted as a representation of the Church. Is it possible that the strange figure on the Morgan ivory owes its puzzling conception and attributes to an effort on the part of the carver to produce a variation on the theme of the miniature-painter of the Heidelberg Sacramentary?
This query is not quite so academic as it seems. The Morgan ivory happens to be the ‘only one of the existing ivories of the Caro- lingian-Ottonian period’! to fit exactly the depression in the cover of the Gero-codex at Darmstadt, so called because it was illuminated for Gero, archbishop of Cologne from 969 to 976.2, The manuscript was not executed at Cologne, however, but in the monastery at Reichenau, as was also the Sacramentary of Heidelberg, which is admittedly a contemporary product of the same scriptorium. If the Morgan ivory belongs to the original binding of the Gero-codex, it also was presumably carved at Reichenau, and its Virgin might have been adapted from the miniature of the Sacramentary while both manuscripts were still in the scriptorium. It is true that Goldschmidt prefers to consider the Morgan ivory as of ninth-century date, to correspond with the ‘Ada’ group in which he places it, and as a plaque from an earlier book-cover reused by the binder of the Gero- codex. Schmidt found support for this in the six large holes in the Morgan plaque; if nails or pegs were once driven through these, they have left no trace on the leather backing of the present cover of the manuscript, from which Schmidt concludes that they must date from the earlier fastening of the plaque to its original book-cover. This
1 Goldschmidt, op. cit., no. 12. * Darmstadt, Grand-ducal Library, No. 1948. Cf. A. Schmidt, Die Miniaturen des
Gero-codex (Leipzig, 1924).
424 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
explanation curiously overlooks the placing of the holes; each of them is bored through the carved relief in a manner incomprehen- sible if considered part of the original design. The holes must cer- tainly date from a later reémployment of the plaque.
There is nothing of a physical nature, then, to prevent us from supposing the Morgan plaque to be the one designed for the binding of the Gero-codex; it might be an earlier plaque adapted to the pur- pose, but we have the curious coincidence of its central motif with the miniature of the Heidelberg Sacramentary in favour of a date contemporary with the Sacramentary and with the manuscript into whose cover it fits, viz. the third quarter of the tenth century.! This, be it noted, is a dating which overlaps the administration of the Abbot Salmann of Lorsch, who tres libros ex ebore et argento miri- fice uetustari fecit: in the preceding article we have seen that it is difficult not to see among these three volumes the Gospels of Lorsch whose posterior cover in the Vatican was restored ex ebore at least.
Now we are not at all at the end of our coil that has involved so far the Sacramentary of Heidelberg, the Gero-codex, and its putative cover-plaque in the Morgan collection of the Metropolitan Museum. Let us look at the three miniatures reproduced on Plate vin. No. 1 is a well-known miniature of the enthroned Saviour in that portion of the Lorsch Gospels now in the Bathyaneum of Karlsburg, Hun- gary. This is repeated, with simplification, in a miniature (no. 2) of the Gero-codex, and again, with more simplification, in the Heidel- berg Sacramentary (no. 3). The relation of the three miniatures has long been known, and variously explained as due (1) to a monastic tradition active in widely separated monasteries such as Lorsch and the Reichenau scriptoria which produced nos. 2 and 3; (2) to pattern- books circulated among the monastic scriptoria; (3) to a sketch made by a Reichenau artist who visited Lorsch.? Waiving the question whether the Heidelberg miniature is derived from that of the Lorsch
1 Schmidt’s contention (op. cit., p. 37) that the absence of the episcopal title and the phrase Basilicaz Petri custos applied to Gero in the dedicatory verses on fol. 8 of the Gero- codex indicate that he received the book before his ordination as archbishop in 969, seems to
involve too much reliance on mediaeval poetical phraseology as an historical source. 2 See Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 56 ff.
The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 425
Gospels or indirectly through the miniature of the Gero-codex, Kohler ' has recently settled the matter by proving beyond doubt that this and other miniatures of the Gero-codex are directly imi- tated from the Lorsch Gospel-book, and that apparent discrepancies between the Lorsch miniatures and those of the Darmstadt manu- script find their origin in other miniatures of the ninth-century manu- script. It is evident, then, that in the third quarter of the tenth century, when the Gero-codex was in process of illustration, the Lorsch codex was in Reichenau.
Why was it there? It seems reasonable to suppose that it was there by order of Abbot Salmann, sent up from Lorsch as one of the tres libros, to undergo the restoration of its covers — which was dem- onstrated as far as the Vatican cover is concerned in the preceding article. Reichenau in the latter half of the tenth century was the centre par excellence of the best artistic work in Germany. K. Kiinstle’s Kunst des Klosters Reichenau (Freiburg, 1924) lists the achievements of the island’s ateliers in this period; they were par- ticularly noteworthy in the field of illumination of manuscripts, but it is inconceivable that the manuscripts written and illuminated at Reichenau should have been sent elsewhere to be bound, which in turn implies ateliers of metal- and ivory-workers. Goldschmidt * has assigned a number of ivories to a school which he calls ‘Milan- Reichenau’ mainly because of the great probability of the existence on the monastic isle of such ateliers. The position which the Abbey at this time occupied in Europe as the leading artistic centre is made clear by the requisition by Pope Gregory V, on the occasion of the investiture of a new abbot of Reichenau in 998, of three products of the scriptorium’s skill — a Gospel-book, a Sacramentary, and an Epistolary.
Let us pursue the path thus indicated, seeking further possible recruits for our group of ivories that may be assigned to the Reich- enau atelier. It is worthy of note that the broad circular glory, orna- mented and treated in the manner of a border, which surrounds the
1 Festschrift Clemen (Diisseldorf, 1920), pp. 255 ff. 2 Op. cit., vol. u, nos. 1-20.
426 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
Christ in the three miniatures reproduced on Plate vin, is a rare motif elsewhere in Carolingian and Ottonian art, wherein the glory commonly assumes an elliptical form. It is of some significance, then, not only that the miniatures of the Gero-codex and of the Heidelberg Sacramentary copied this peculiar motif, with variations, in their imitations of the Lorsch miniature, and that the latter of the two Reichenau painters repeated it in his picture of the ‘Church’ (Plate vu, 3), but also that it recurs in somewhat flattened form in an ivory book-cover in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge (Plate rx, 1), again surrounding the Saviour in majesty. It is an inferior work, but its slovenly carving of hair, features, and drapery betrays nevertheless a relationship with the Christ of the Vatican cover, having in common with it the pleating of the tunic on the breast, the fluted nimbus, and the upper lip like a mustache. Gold- schmidt ' dates the ivory in the ninth century, but remarks that it decorates the cover of a tenth-century Gospel-book from Chateau- Cambresis in Hainault. Again he must resort to the hypothesis of reémployment of an earlier ivory in the binding of a manuscript of the tenth century, to retain the dating of his ‘Ada’-group.
The difficulties besetting a dating in the ninth century of our group of ivories are seen to be many. In the first place, we must assume that the passage in the Lorsch chronicle recording Salmann’s restoration of the binding of three codices has no reference to the covers of the Lorsch Gospels, although it is clear that they are the product of such a restoration. Second, we must close our eyes to the stylistic difference which these ivories manifest when compared with other members of the ‘Ada’-group, and to their manifest affinity with Ottonian works; compare, for instance, the Leipzig Michael (Plate v1, 2) with the archangel to the upper right in the fresco of the Last Judgment at Burgfelden, dated by Kiinstle ca. 1000° (Plate rx, 2). We must waive the fact that the Fitzwilliam Christ and the Morgan Virgin, both belonging to the group, also belong to covers of manuscripts of the tenth century. We must ignore the coincidence that the Lorsch Codex was at Reichenau in the third
1 Op. cit., vol. 1, no. 7. 2 Die Kunst des Klosters Reichenau (Freiburg, 1924), p. 15.
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The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 427
quarter of the tenth century while the Gero-codex was receiving there its illustration, and the plausible explanation that it was there for the restoration of its covers. We must find also some other way to explain the use of architecture in the lower panels of both covers in a manner that is more consistent with the practice of the tenth and eleventh centuries than with that of the ninth.
On the other hand, this curious catena of data may be without difficulty explained by the following reconstruction of the history of the Lorsch book-covers. The Lorsch Gospels were written in the early ninth century,’ and may with probability be identified with the Euangelium scriptum cum auro pictum habens tabulas eburneas, mentioned as No. 1 in the oldest catalogue of the Lorsch library, of the first half of the ninth century. Its ivory covers were two five-part plaques of Alexandrian style of the late fifth century.? By the time of Abbot Salmann (972-998) these ancient plaques had become worn out to an extent that necessitated the entire renewal of the front cover, and the renewal of all but the upper panel of the back cover. The book was sent to Reichenau to be repaired, between 972 (Sal- mann’s accession) and 976. We know it was at Reichenau before the latter date, because some of its miniatures were copied in the lec- tionary illuminated for Gero, archbishop of Cologne, who died in 976. The posterior cover was restored by cutting away the splintered lower corners of the ancient upper panel, and adapting the new lateral panels thereto by a bias cutting. The front cover was carved entirely anew, but arranged also with a bevelled upper panel so as to present an appearance symmetrical with its pendant. The com- positions of both covers, save in the case of the lower panels, followed closely the fifth-century carvings of the original covers; to guide himself in this copying, the artist of the Vatican cover drew a sketch of the head and arm of the original Christ on the back of one of his panels. For his lower panel he used and cut down a consular diptych of Anastasius (A.D. 517). The adherence of the artist of the South Kensington cover to his early East Christian model was demon-
strated by Graeven.
1 Kohler, op. cit., p. 260. 2 Cf. SpecuLum, m1 (1928), 71-74.
428 The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels
The carving was done by monastic sculptors of Reichenau, of the same school that produced the ivory plaque that was fitted into the cover of the Gero-codex, the plaque with the enthroned Christ that decorated the tenth-century manuscript from Chateau-Cambresis, the Berlin plaque of the same subject, the Leipzig Michael, the As- cension of Darmstadt, and the book-cover in the British Museum that shows so close a resemblance in its Nativity and Epiphany to the same scenes on the lower panels of the Lorsch covers. Indeed it is in these lower panels that our carvers most clearly betrayed their date and style, introducing elaborate architecture into compositions in true Ottonian manner, and dismembering the Carolingian walled city into a series of towers.
Thus is explained the curious historical and stylistic relation that transpires between the miniatures of the Lorsch Gospel-book, the imitation thereof in the Gero-codex and the Sacramentary of Heidelberg, the Morgan and Fitzwilliam ivories, the restoration of bindings by the Abbot Salmann, and the covers of the Lorsch codex. The result is that we must eliminate from the ‘Ada’-group the ivories above discussed, as being products of Reichenau of the latter part of the tenth century. Further study may add further members to the Reichenau group, and still further diminish the ‘Ada’-school. What further subtraction from the ‘Ada’ ivories should be made in favor of the Reichenau group, and whether the ‘Ada’-group will still hold together after such subtraction is made, is a problem whose solution will doubtless be undertaken by other students. It will suffice here to have given an archaeological justification for the re- moval from the ‘Ada’-group of a group of ivories which have never seemed properly to belong to the ninth century, and have always awakened comparison rather with the less antique but more virile style of the Ottonian period — and specifically with that of the great centre of monastic art of the end of the tenth century to which the above discussion has assigned them, viz. the isle of Reichenau.'
1 Goldschmidt himself (op. cit., 1, 8) was not unconscious of this distinction, but attributes the discrepancy in style within the ‘group’ to ‘grissere und geringere Einfiihlung in einen
iilteren auswiirtigen Stil.’ He thus explains the difference between the flying angels of the upper panel of the Vatican cover and the corresponding pair on that of the Victoria and Albert
The Covers of the Lorsch Gospels 429
Museum — a distinction very penetratingly developed by him, but due as we have seen to an actual difference of five centuries in date, since the Vatican angels belong to the antique model from which the carvers of the rest of the covers drew their inspiration. No keener isola- tion of the style of our Reichenau ivories from the rest of the ‘Ada’-group could be given than the following which is quoted from Goldschmidt, apropos of the Darmstadt Ascension (PI. vi, 8): ‘. . . tritt bei Diimpfung des Plastischen das Liniengefiihl mit viel grisserer Sicherheit und griésserem Selbstbewusstsein hervor. Allein schon die lange Kurve der Mariengestalt, gegen welche die horizontalen Faltenbiindel auslaufen ist dafiir bezeichnend. Selbst die Figuren scheinen sich zu durchflechten. . . . Dasselbe liisst sich vom herrlichen Leipziger St Michael sagen, dessen Gewandfalten sich um das linke Bein und um den Lanzenschaft verknoten. Hiufung der linearen Motive, miglichster Reichtum an Gegenbewegungen und Durch- kreuzungen sind eine Tendenz des Stiles.’
PrinceToN UNIVERSITY
ON THE TEXT OF THE SPECULUM STULTORUM
By JOHN HENRY MOZLEY
I
HOMAS WRIGHT, in his edition of Nigel Wireker’s Speculum
Stultorum for the Rolls Series (No. 59), used three MSS, which he called A, B, and C, and one printed edition, P. With the incuna- bula of this work I hope to deal at another time; for the present I am concerned only with the MSS, and the readings of P need not trouble us at the moment.’
A is Harleian 2422, a thirteenth-century MS., containing only this work and lacking the last 350 lines or so, i.e., about eight leaves. It has the prose preface, and is well equipped with paragraph headings.
B is Arundel 23, a fifteenth-century MS. in a beautiful Italian Renaissance hand recalling the best style of the twelfth century. It likewise has lost several leaves, the gap covering pp. 41-59 of Wright’s edition, nearly 440 lines, and it ends in the middle of a page, 36 lines too soon (‘condicione sui’), with ‘Explicit Burnellus’ follow- ing. The initial letters of paragraphs are in blue, but there are no headings, except in the passage describing the different religious orders (Wr., pp. 82 ff.).
C is a fourteenth-century MS. of the Cotton collection, Titus A xx, and a sad contrast to the foregoing, so far as appearance and legibility are concerned. Except for the prose preface, which is alto- gether lacking, the poem is complete. It is bound up with a great many others, including five poems attributed to Walter Map, and as many chiefly patriotic, by Robert Baston, and same Goliardic verse; towards the end of the collection comes a work entitled ‘De Norfol- ciensium moribus, seu descripcio Norfolcie per monachum quendam Petroburgensem,’ followed by ‘Descripcionis illius impugnacio,’ which may throw some light on its provenance (see p. 440 below).
1 It may be added that Wright does not trouble to state what his MSS are; it is only by an incidental note that one learns that P is a printed edition. A, B, and C are all in the British
Museum, the only British Museum MSS of this work, in fact, until the purchase of Additional
$8665 some 20 years ago. 430
On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum 431
Not much can be said of the provenance of the other two MSS; in A there are no indications, at least that I have noticed. B belonged (15th or early 16th century) to Thomas Jakes; its contents smack of the library of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, for Nigel is repre- sented by another poem, a short account of a miracle, and there are incidents in the life of St Thomas; the Speculum, again, is followed by a few lines written by some enemy of Nigel and a later hand notes that the writer feared that Nigel would succeed to the arch- bishopric on the death of Archbishop Richard (d. 1184).!
Generally speaking, Wright’s text is that of A, with the readings of B, C, and P given as variants below. A is rarely departed from, and only in obvious cases of error (mostly spelling or grammar, sometimes metre): e.g., Wright, p. 11, arata (arato A), p. 20, surri- puere (subrupuere A), p. 22, resoluere (soluere A), p. 25, expedit armento (armenti A), p. 30, precipito (precipita A), where Wright himself has done no better, p. 36, Lyaeum (Lienum A), p. 44, cuique libet (curlibet A), p. 49, putauit (peraddat A, with parabat in margin), p. 86, timore (timere A), p. 91, licttumque (lutumque A), etc. The reading pre- ferred is usually that of one or both of the other MSS, but sometimes
he perversely or by sheer error inserts a reading of his own, e.g., precipito, putauit (precipiti, parabat BC); the readings of P are fre- quently given, especially during the lacuna in B, C being generally in agreement with A.
Errors are not infrequent in Wright’s edition, e.g.:
p. 5, n. 18, et ut .. . persuadeat ‘only in B’ is in AC also
p- 8, Il. 19, 21, sic, iste Wr.: sicut, item AB
p- 11, 1. 11, magis Wr.: nugis MSS (error from ‘magis’ in preceding line)
p- 13, n. 1, B quoted wrongly as reading ‘risus’ for ‘fastus.’
p- 15, ll. 1, 26, medicint . . . quam Wr.: medici . . . quamque MSS
p- 19, n. 8, B reads ‘magis’ not ‘maius’ (last word of pentameter)
p. 24, 1. 28, posset Wr.: possit MSS
p- 26, n. 2, for ‘A’ read ‘B’
1 It is held by many that these lines are by Nigel himself, who is modestly disclaiming any wish to succeed.
432 On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
p. 28, 1. 30, annona (penultimate word of pentameter) with n. ‘amonia’ interlined . . . in A: A’s reading is ‘anona,’ with ‘amo- af interlined
p. 34, 1. 5, necnon de cauda colubrae Wr. necnon et cauda, etc. A
p. 36, 1. 4, cotidina Wr.: cotidiana MSS
p. 41, 1. 23, anget Wr.: angit MSS
p. 79, 1. 26, remaneat Wr.: me maneat A
p. 84, 1. 3, commodant Wr.: comodant A
p-
97, 1. 12, quae me nocere solent A (retained by Wr. against
scansion) p. 98, 1. 15, obex Wr.: apex MSS
These are some fair specimens, mostly errors of carelessness, and of ignorance of metre or of the quantity of syllables.
With regard to the rubric headings to the different pargraphs, Wright includes many from P, which he encloses in square brackets. The rest are much the same in A and C, but they are mostly omitted by B.
The variations in C from the reading of A are unimportant; examples are: p. 11, Willelme A: Guilleime C, Uluxes A: Ulyzes C, fuit A: fuerit C; p. 12, sapuit A: sapit C, sceptrumque A: sceptraque C; p. 17, damula ceruus A: danila cerua C; p. 21, frut A: sua C; p. 23, uespes, oestres A: uespas, oestros C; p. 24, sinet, spreuit A: sinit, sper- nit C’; p. 35, Falerna A: Salerna C; p. 41, aures (corr. auras) A: aures (wrong reading) C; p. 48, cistra A: sistra C; p. 49, celer et . . . peraddat (parabat in margin) A: celarat . . . peraddat (both wrong) C; p. 50, quid sit ego A: quid sim ego C; p. 56, citam (corr. in mg. to cupit) A: sitam t. cupit C; p. 66, seu peluis (ceu i. sicut over seu) A: seu pellis C; p. 97, me nocere solent A: nocuere mihi C; p. 104, quod uile despiciunt A: uile quod d. C. On the whole C is not very helpful and may be for the most part disregarded.’
Besides the three MSS used by Wright there exist several others in England, and it will be convenient here to set down a list of such as I have so far discovered, and the letters by which I propose to designate them:
1 Except, of course, where A fails, from Wr., p. 133, to the end.
On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
I. Fuuzity CoLuatep
Bodleian 761, date shortly after 1360 (see P. Meyer in Romania, xxxvit [1908], 509), has two large lacu-
Bodleian 851, date last quarter of fourteenth century (see M. R. James in Introduction to Map, De Nugis Curtalium, Anecd. Oxon. 1914, p. vi) has same two lacunae as E (iii) B. M. Additional 38665, early fifteenth century (iv) Lambeth 357, fifteenth century, akin to (i) and (ii) . .
II. Partity CoLuatep
(v) Bodleian 780, fifteenth century, akintoEandF.. . (vi) Bodleian 496, fifteenth century, akin to E and F . (vii) Digby 27, fifteenth century, akin to E and F
Ill. Nor ExamInep
(viii) All Souls 37, ca. 1400
(ix) Trin. Coll. Dublin 440, fourteenth — fifteenth centuries (D) (x) | Lincoln Cathedral Library 105, fourteenth century . . (M) (xi) Lincoln Cathedral Library 191, fifteenth century (1st half) (N)
These are all the MSS that I have been able to discover in
England. TEXT
A glance at Wright’s text is enough to show that B’s readings differ very markedly from those of A and C. This divergence is continued in the MSS EFL on the one hand (= B), and K on the other (= AC). GHI, on the whole, so far as I have examined them, support EFL. About DJMN I cannot speak as yet.
Two points must be mentioned: (1) Some of the MSS have a long interpolation following p. 95, ‘psalmatis absque metro’ in Wright’s edition, 198 lines in GJ, 228 in D, 244 in K (this informa- tion about D I owe to the kindness of the Trinity College librarian, Mr J. Gilbart Smyly). It extends the list of religious orders satirised
434 On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
by Burnellus, including Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinian Friars and Carmelites,' all founded since the author’s date; further, K has 14 more lines following ‘fratre manere licet’ (p. 96), which summarise the points of the orders dealt with. From the fact that the MSS which have most lines are earlier than those that have fewer it would seem that either the latter omitted part of what they found in the former, or both classes derived from one original, the former (DK) supplementing it, and the latter (GJ) not. The inter- polation is not in J. (2) Two fourteenth-century MSS and one of the fifteenth century have two considerable lacunae; these are EF and L. The missing lines are from Wright, p. 97, ‘Fluctuat in dubiis’ to p. 124, ‘pronus in omne malum.’ In F, however, the lacuna extends to p. 125, ‘magnificare solent,’ but after p. 129 F returns to p. 124, ‘Hinc est quod,’ and proceeds to ‘magnificare solent,’ then has p. 126, ‘Obfuit augmentum’ to ‘deficiuntque cito,’ then p. 130, ‘ Talibus ex- emplis’ to ‘spreta iacent.’ The second lacuna in all three MSS com- prises all that follows the line ending ‘spreta zacent’ to the end of the poem. All three MSS must almost certainly derive from the same original, which probably was lacking in a number of leaves; one may even make a guess at the number of leaves missing: the scribe of F omitted 20 lines which he inserted soon after discovering his mistake, showing that the lines were in his original; how did he come to omit the lines? There is no cause such as homoioteleuton to explain his passing from a line ending ‘quam statuere mihi’ to one ending ‘magnificare solent’; indeed, he might have been expected to begin again two lines lower down, after a line ending ‘sepe referre mihi.’ The most likely cause seems to be that he missed a whole page, perhaps in turning he missed the verso and began on the fol- lowing recto; if, then, there were 20 lines to a page (A has 22) and 40 to a leaf, since 786 lines have been omitted in the lacuna, we may say that 20 leaves were missing, which would allow for space taken up by rubric headings.
The relation of GI and of BH to this assumed original is not so clear. The latter MSS have no gaps except the last 36 lines, but the readings are generally the same; we may assume that the original
1 The Carmelites did not spread into Europe before about 1238.
On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum 435
was copied before the loss of its leaves, and that BH are late de- scendants. The former (GJ) have both got the interpolation from some other MS., whether independently, or one of them copying the other; further, G only has the poem down to Wr., p. 106, 1. 18, ‘dissimulante diu,’ and no more, while I has that, and also p. 124, ‘hine est quod,’ to 130, ‘spreta iacent.’ In other words the first lacuna in I is shorter by 268 lines, otherwise the MS. resembles EFL; we might then suppose that the original had been copied when only 13 of its leaves were missing, the extra 268 lines filling seven leaves of 19 lines to a page (two pages having 20), that this copy had produced I, and that the scribe of G copied J down to ‘dissimulante diu’ and there stopped; or conversely that the scribe of I copied G as far as he could, and then got pp. 124-130 from either EFL or a similar MS.
Whatever actually happened, it seems most likely that some common original must be postulated for EFL and BHGI, though the fifteenth-century MSS, except L, tend to vary from EF, while still for the most part differing from ACK. The readings of this original seem to bear in many cases the character of a revision of the text represented by A.
Another explanation of the lacunae in EFL may be as follows: the text of these MSS represents the earliest form of the work, and the missing passages are additions. In support of this hypothesis may be urged (1) that the text runs on quite naturally from Wr. p. 97, ‘nec ultra uel citra possum quam statuere mihi,’ to p. 124, “hine est quod statui me tradere religiont,’ and (2) that what intervenes is in the nature of an interpolation, very similar, in fact, to the admit- ted interpolation of the MSS DK, etc. Burnellus has finished his satiric review of the religious orders; he meets Galienus, and, after expressing his disgust both with his former life and with the schools, goes on (as in EFL) ‘hinc est quod,’ etc. But in the received text we have another long tirade against the Roman Court, against kings, against bad priests and pontiffs, abbots, priors, religious in general, and laymen, to which is joined a fable of the Crow, the Cock, and the Sparrow-hawk. This passage, therefore, may quite well be an addition, though probably from the pen of Nigel himself, as it ap- pears in the thirteenth-century MS., and is not noticeably different
436 On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
in style from the rest of the book. (3) With regard to the second lacuna, from Wr. p. 130, to the end, here too there is a long passage that seems to be an addition, the story of Bernard and Dryanus. Bernardus is the master of Burnellus, but the tale has nothing to do with Burnellus at all, nor with the moral of the Speculum. It seems more likely that the work in its earliest form ended at Wr. p- 134, ‘Talia Burnello secum meditante Cremonam intrat, et est domino subditus ipse suo.’ Now this comes about four pages (in Wright) after the ending of EFL, so that we would have to assume that their original had lost 112 lines, or (if the conjecture as to the number of lines in a page of that original is correct) three leaves. (4) Again, the story of Bernardus and Dryanus is in the lost part of A; it may, consequently, never have been in A at all, and that MS. may have lost only the 18 lines from p. 133, ‘sed wice conuersa,’ to p. 134, ‘subditus ipse suo,’ i.e., one leaf only. (5) This theory is to some extent supported by the prose preface, which contains a rough summary of the contents of the work; it will be found that nearly all the incidents are mentioned there up to the satire on the religious orders (the only one not alluded to is the story of the in- gratitude of the magistrate, pp. 73 ff.), but that there is no hint of criticism of anyone else besides monks; it is true that the story of the three goddesses, pp. 125 ff., is not alluded to, but it seems unlikely that there should have been no mention in the preface of the long story of Bernard and Dryanus, if it had formed part of the original work.
If this hypothesis be admitted (and I do not consider it as any- thing more), then EFL must be descended from a copy of the work in its earlier form, before the additional tirade against kings and clergy was added to the satire on the orders, and before the story of Bernard and Dryanus was added at the end. As to these additions, all we can say is that the former must, the latter may, have been added before the date of the thirteenth-century MS. A.
I append a list of readings, which represent the two different families, ACK on one hand, and EFL on the other. In their main differences from ACK the latter (EFL) are followed by BH and GI, but probably a more detailed examination would show that these
On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
437
four MSS present considerable variations from EFL, partly inde- pendent, partly returning to ACK:
3 in summo et uero salutari ACK 4 inseri ACK mancipatus ACK
5 audiat ACK quid contigerit narrando taliter
declarat ACK
7 qui in aliquo leuiter seu grauiter possent nocere ACK
9 penam discendo et operam perdit impensam AC cum pena... et impensam K
11 reuoluo ACKLI nunc habet ACK mutus erit ACK 12 prodigiosus ACKFI opis ACK quid tibi si cauda ACKF 18 placet ACK 19 esto quod hinc .. .. mihiom. ACK 20 quoque .... nunc ACK
subtraxit ACKL castigat ACK nociuior AC uicinior K timenda AC tunc munda ACK ue mihi quod ego nunc cunctis AC cunctis ego nunc K ademisset ACKI
28 mihi dum coniuncta ACK
29 pariter conturbat oester ACK stimulant mordent ACK
et sapientie inniti salutari FBI inferri FBI
deputatus FBI
audito FBI
quid contigerit narrat FBI
nec aliquid infirmum putant uel sine robore quod aliquo tempore uel in minimo possit nocere FBGI
literas discendo operam perdit et impensam F' scholas frequentando literis et o.p. et expensas GI _pe- nam om. B
recordor EF BH
non habet EFLBHGI
mutus erat (stultus L) EFLBHI
prodigiosos ELBH
opem EF BHI (ipse L)
quid si cauda tibi ELBHI
patet EFLI prius BH
extant in EFLBHI
quaque ....tunc LB quaque.... cum
EF quoque , .. nunc H
subtraheret EFB
sepeliuit EFLBG
nocentior EFLBGI
tremenda EFLBGI
preterita EFLBGI
me miseram quod ego cunctis EFLBGI
adhesisset BH
dum me comitata EFLB
pecudum turbator oester EFLB-
GHI stimulos acuunt EFLBGI
.. nunc J quaque...
438 On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
30 ipsa ACK
31 mundana ACK
32 noli tardare pedester ACK 33 flamine ACK
36 exacuatur ... cedat ACK
37 nec tamen inuenit que cupiebat ibi ACK
38 nomen Burnellus mihi stat ACK
39 excepto ACKEFI
41! soli AC
60 qui iacet hic iaceat qui bibit ille bibat ACK
restabat nulla quam ACK 61 dare uicem ACK 64 diu laborabat AC diuque labo- rat K
65 periitque labor sed et omne ACK caude superinstituende ACK
66 longo . . . stamina parte ACK
uena meo ACK 70 cornua uana ACK
71 nil ergo uitii debet adesse ACK
74 quos et pudor ipse parentum ACK
75 sumptis AC 76 seruus certissimus ACK couplet om. ACKF parem ACK
78 uicina ACK
alone, in that group.
ila EFLB
discreta EFLBI
nocuit differre paratis EF LBGI
stamine EFLBI
exacuetur EFLB cedit ELB
orbe quod in toto non fuit usque pe- tens EFLBHGI (urbe, tota corr. fr. toto F)
nomine Burnellus dicor EFLBI domine...., FG
accepto LBH
solo EFLBK
qui iacet ille bibat qui bibit ille iacet E couplet om. F qui bibit ille L q-b.i. luat B
unica restabat que EF LB (uinea B)
reddo uicem EFLB
diuque laborans EFLB
periit labor omnis et omne EF LB
c.s. inficienda EFL (insicienda B)
longe mea famina parte EFLB (parce E longa B)
uena puto EFLB
monstrua membra LB (menstrua EF)
quidnam uirtutis debet abesse EFL (ad—B)
simul et p.i. parentum E (-tes L esse F)
spretis EFLBK
tuus immo tuissimus EFLB quam bene reddemus. . . referre uicem
ELB patrem_ ELB (-is F)
uienna EFLB
1 After p. 41 leaves have been lost from B till p. 59; I hope to give fuller evidence for GHI when I am able to examine them more thoroughly; the readings that follow concern EFLB
oS eo @& emiiiean so
denc
Cam
439
On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
surripuit uerbum quod fuit ante meum EF (mihi LB)
esse magis ELB partitur et omnibus EFB (in L)
nomen subripuit urbis ubi studui ACK
esse graues ACKF
paribusque in omnibus A (peri- bet C paribus sed K)
facio nisi quod deseruio ACK
om. ACK
om. ACK
om. ACK
ficti . furti ACKL
trilustralis ACK (K has a gloss
quindecenalis)
88 uota sacrata ACK
89 non semper pinguibus uti ACK 90 protexit ACK
91 lex noua lutumque AC
facio quorsum deseruio EFLB ...parit EFLB quamque semel . . . loqui EFLB
cellarum numerus
qua facie .. . pedem EFLB falsi . . , ficti EFB claustralis EFL
iura sacrata EFL (uita s. B) non spernunt p.u. EFLB tegebat EFLBK
lex est licitumque EFLB
93 ignitum studium ACB stadium K
94 harum sunt quedam steriles et quedam parturientes A om. harum CK
97! me nocere solent A nocuere mihi CK flagella ACK dat schola sed pascit AC dat
in girum stadium EF gira L
harum sunt quedam steriles quedam parientes EFLB
cruciare solent EFZ mihi ferre solent B flagellat EFLB
sed schola depascit EFLB
schola deposcit K
DISTRIBUTION OF THE MANUSCRIPTS
(1) Ancient Libraries. The Speculum Stultorum was written at Canterbury, and we are therefore not surprised to find this work in the ancient Catalogues of Libraries there.? The following items may be quoted: Library of Christ Church, No. 545, Speculum Stul- torum (bound up with a number of other treaties); St Augustine’s Abbey, No. 871, Speculum Stultorum (bound up with other treatises
1 Here follows the long lacuna in EFL; it is perhaps hardly necessary to add further evi- dence for the short passage, p. 124 to p. 130.
2 See Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover, pp. lviii, 67, 290, 407, ed. M. R. James, Cambridge, 1903.
440 On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
etc., including Planctus Anglie de morte Simonis de Montisfortis, De laude Regis Anglie et wictoria Scocie et ingressu in Flandriam, Laus Francorum, Passio Francorum secundum flandrenses, etc.). This MS. is found in a catalogue of about 1497, and from its con- tents seems to date at earliest from the beginning of the reign of Edward III, i.e., the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Both these MSS contain the Speculum at the beginning of a num- ber of treatises, and this is the case too with C, also a fourteenth- century MS. C also resembles the St Augustine’s MS. in having a number of patriotic poems, an account of ‘Quomodo comes Glouernie fuerit occisus apud Strivelin’ (Bannockburn, 1314), ‘Rhythmus de bello Scocie,’ ete. The provenance of C, however, is more likely farther north, as it contains poems by Robert Baston, Prior of Scar- borough about 1310 (we are told that he was admitted to hear con- fessions in Lincoln diocese in 1318), and also the description of Norfolk already mentioned. With regard to the latter, the addition of ‘per monachum quemdam Petroburgensem’ points rather to a neigh- boring locality than to Peterborough itself, and this is confirmed by an examination of the ancient catalogue (late fourteenth century) of Peterborough Abbey Library,' where there is no mention of the Speculum, but where there is a ‘Descripcio Northfolcie’ (Nos. 280, 4) with no such addition. C, therefore, may come from some monastery in the neighborhood of Peterborough, or from Scarborough itself.
To return to Canterbury, the St Augustine’s catalogue has an allusion to the preface in its note that the first word of the second folio was ‘affectat’ (in prohemio Sp. St.), i.e., the MS. had the prose preface, which is lacking in C (op. cit. 290).
Dover Priory, according to a catalogue dated 1389, had two copies of the Speculum, one with, one without, the prose preface (Nos. 105 fol. 58a, 106 fol. 127a), the first beginning ‘Dilecto et in Xto’ as A does. Other works of Nigel were well represented there. There is no mention of the work in the fourteenth-century catalogue of the Austin Friars’ Library at York and only a wrong reference to it in the ancient index to the catalogue of Syon Monastery (‘Nigellus
1 Ed. M. R. James in Transactions of Bibliographical Society, Supplement No. 5 (1926), pp. 71, 72.
pr
On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum 441
gramaticus in Sp. St. metrice cum epistula eiusdem’); in the catalogue itself the book does not appear.’
The fifteenth-century MS. at Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library appears in a Catalogue dated ca. 1450, but apparently not the fourteenth-century MS.? Lastly, there is no reference to the work in old lists of MSS in the Library of St Edmund’s Abbey at Bury.*
(2) With regard to the provenance of existing MSS: Dr James has kindly given me the following information about Lambeth 357 (L) from his forthcoming edition of the MSS of that library. It came to Lambeth, he thinks, by way of Mr Theyer of Cooper’s Hill, Glou- cestershire, from Lanthony, but may have been at one time in Ire- land, as it contains an office of St Kenan, of Denelek or Duleek Priory, a dependency of Lanthony. Concerning Bodleian 851 (F), we know that the MS. comes from Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire (see ref. above to Anecd. Oxon.). Bodleian 761 (E) was perhaps the property of the family physician of the Bohuns (Earls of Hereford), and originally compiled for Thomas de Walmesford, a dependant of the family, and rector of Sherfield (1328) and of Much Lees (1335). It contains also, however, the copy of a deed awarding a pension to a canon of Godchester in Essex (1355). P. Meyer dates the MS. at 1360 or very soon after.‘ B. M. Additional 38665 (K) comes from the Augustinian Priory of Kenilworth (the first four items have to do with that order), by way of the Copes of Bramshill. All Souls’ 37 (J) gives no information except that one item was written by one Henricus Penworthin, which suggests the West of England. Bodleian 496 (H) has a treatise written by a monk of Glastonbury for that monastery, also a poem by a Carthusian monk on Bishop Fleming of Lincoln; the Speculum seems, however, to be in a different hand from the other contents (see Madan, 2.1, p. 236). Of the remaining MSS (Digby 27, Bodleian 780, Trin. Coll., Dublin 440, and Lincoln 105, GIDM) I have at present no information. Of Harleian 2422 (A), Arundel 23 (B), and Titus Axx (C) I have spoken above.
1 See M. R. James in Fasciculus J. W. Clark dicatus, 1909, and M. Bateson, Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery, Isleworth (Cambridge, 1898), p. 236.
2 R. M. Woolley, Catalogue of MSS at Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library (London, 1927),
p. Xii. 3 M. R. James, Proceedings of Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1895. * Romania, xxxvui (1908), 509.
442 On the Text of the Speculum Stultorum
Another point may be noticed here; it may be a mere coincidence that both C and F contain Michael of Cornwall’s long and popular poem against Henry of Avranches, entitled in C ‘Versus Michaelis Blanuagu (?) Cornubiensis contra Henricum Abricensem,’ and in F ‘Versus Magistri Michaelis Cornubiensis contra Magistrum Henricum Abrincensem coram domino Hugone Abbate Westmonasterii et aliis,’ while in the Catalogue of Christ Church, Canterbury, the same MS. that contains the Speculum also has, as the next item, ‘Laus Cornubie edita a M. Michaele de eadem.’ What the connection is, is not clear, but Master Michael of Cornwall, or Henry of Avranches may have been connected with the part of England whence those MSS (C and F) come, i.e., the eastern Midlands, perhaps after being at Canterbury.’
1 See J. C. Russell, ‘Master Henry of Avranches as an International Poet’ Specuum, 11 (1928), 41-43, for discussion of this literary controversy.
Kentons, HASLEMERE, SURREY
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MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY EXCAVATIONS AT CLUNY
By KENNETH JOHN CONANT Research Associate in Archaeology of the Mediaeval Academy of America
IV
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ABBEY CHURCH
RCHAEOLOGICAL study in the modern sense is now about
two centuries old. In that time a wonderful mass of data has been assembled, which is constantly being added to; and the gather- ing and interpretation of such data has reached the status of a true science. We may smile now at the mistakes of an earlier day, when the proportions of the Doric order of the Parthenon were adversely criticized because they do not conform to the rules laid down by Vitruvius; when the present cathedral of Paris was accepted as a construction of the ninth century. Encyclopaedic collections of photographs and drawings made within the last seventy or eighty years, taken in connection with a vast amount of research by local archaeologists and others whose circumstances have given them a larger field, make it possible to place a very large part of all archaeo- logical monuments in date and style, by influences, and often by authorship as well.
In the field of mediaeval archaeology an immense amount of work has been done on the subject of dating; so much, indeed, that the controversies are generally concerned with a decade or two, or, at most, half a century. To those who may think that differences of this order really have little historical importance, a modern instance may be cited: an error of twenty-five years in one direction would place the Woolworth Building in New York before the inven- tion of the steel-skeleton office building, while twenty years in the other direction would place it among the new towers now being built by methods much changed in the interval, and designed according to a new grammar of architectural form. The student interested in
443
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MEDIAEVAL ACADEMY EXCAVATIONS AT CLUNY
By KENNETH JOHN CONANT Research Associate in Archaeology of the Mediaeval Academy of America
IV
Tue SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ABBEY CHURCH
RCHAEOLOGICAL study in the modern sense is now about
two centuries old. In that time a wonderful mass of data has been assembled, which is constantly being added to; and the gather- ing and interpretation of such data has reached the status of a true science. We may smile now at the mistakes of an earlier day, when the proportions of the Doric order of the Parthenon were adversely criticized because they do not conform to the rules laid down by Vitruvius; when the present cathedral of Paris was accepted as a construction of the ninth century. Encyclopaedic collections of photographs and drawings made within the last seventy or eighty years, taken in connection with a vast amount of research by local archaeologists and others whose circumstances have given them a larger field, make it possible to place a very large part of all archaeo- logical monuments in date and style, by influences, and often by authorship as well.
In the field of mediaeval archaeology an immense amount of work has been done on the subject of dating; so much, indeed, that the controversies are generally concerned with a decade or two, or, at most, half a century. To those who may think that differences of this order really have little historical importance, a modern instance may be cited: an error of twenty-five years in one