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came from the Holy Land, showed to the Christian people their brethren of the East, struggling against the sultans of Egypt and Damascus ; when they endeavored to excite their sympathy for the young colonies of Edessa, Tripoli, and Antioch, founded at the price of their fathers' blood; and, above all, when they made Jerusalem speak, Jerusalem, again polluted by the infidels, then were kings borne away by the people, and obliged to yield before the will of the devout and heroic multitude. Their political combinations could not resist the murmuring population, which demanded an account of their delays. It was not from the circle of courts, but from the heart of countries, that proceeded those cries of enthusiasm and of faith," Jérusalam, Jérusalem! Dieu le veut ! il le faut !"* So then it was not merely in the decline of the minstrel's art that the wandering harper might

Tune to please a peasant's ear,

The harp a king had loved to hear.

For there was an union of feeling and even of taste, and a community of enjoyments among the high and low. The same poet, who devoted his genius to instruct princes and nobility, paid an equal regard to the wants of the poor, of artisans and country laborers, who are all severally addressed by Simon Bougouine, in his famous Poem of the Young Prince conquering the Kingdom of Good Renown.† John Bouchet, who wrote so many chivalrous books, in his Epistles gives instruction to all classes of men, from the throne to the cabin: the ploughman is taught with as much detail as the prince; the knightly author disdains no state, not even that of the young scholar in the University of Poitiers, nor that of the printer and bookseller. The gentle Symphorien Champier also, in his "Nef des Princes et des Batailles de Noblesse," gives instruction, useful and profitable, to all kinds of people, to teach them how to live and die well.§ In fact, there is no feature of the heroic character, in the middle ages, of which we find more explicit notice, than its Christian affection for the poor, and its scrupulous delicacy in defending them from injustice, as in the instance related by Don Diego Savedra Faxarda, of the king, Don Alonzo VII. who no sooner discovered that an outrage had been committed upon a poor laborer by a certain noble, than he flew in disguise with such speed to inflict punishment, that it was executed before the guilty oppressor knew that he had been discovered. Don Fernando, the Catholic, did nearly the same thing when he set out secretly from Medina to Salamanqua, where he seized Rodriguez Maldonat, who had been guilty of oppression in the fortress of Monleon.

The very maxims of nobility had a tone of spirituality, which had been infused into them by the Catholic religion, and which tended to soften the distinction

* Le Correspondant, 43. Gouget, Tom. X. 169. Ibid. Tom. XI. 303. § Ibid. X. 216. | Mariana, Hist. Hisp.

between rich and poor. "Nobility," says the knight, who argues with the clerk, in a famous book of chivalry, "proceeds at first from nobleness of manners and virtue. Richesses ne peuvent toller ne donner noblesse ; car richesse sont de

soy

viles; et ce qui est vil ne peut aucun nobiliter ;" and riches are vile, because he who hath them" est toujours angoisseux et en soucy."

But whatever may be thought as to the political situation in these ages of the poor, to whom is promised a spiritual, not a material recompense, there can be no doubt but that the sentence from the mount was fully verified, which pronounces them to be blessed. The moderns, indeed, would hear poverty speaking in her own defence, with far more impatience than did Blepsidemus and Chremulus. Nevertheless, her arguments, as stated in that old play, are unanswerable, even in the school of political economists. The best answer that they can make to her, would be in the unblushing confession of Blepsidemus,-" Truly, by Hercules, I wish to be rich and to feast with my children and my wife, and then, washed and adorned, proceeding from the bath, to spurn at laborers and at poverty. "† "The rich man," as is observed in the Platonic dialogue," has power to commit crimes which the poor man is prevented from accomplishing; the powerful can commit crimes which the infirm are unable to act; riches and power are therefore evils, so far as they give means of operations to the will which is inclined to evil."

When Zeno heard that the ship was lost, in which was all his property, he said, "You do well, O fortune, driving me to the scrip and to a life of philosophy!" Oh, how deeply were these truths felt by Christians in ages of faith! and with what sweetness and conviction are they expressed by them! Will you hearken to one of that family whom t! cord girt humbly? "The falcon, when she is too full, will not know her master: so it was with the prodigal son. Riches did separate him from God, and poverty brought him home again." This is what Father Diego de Stella remarks, in his work on the Contempt of the World. "Contemplate our Lord," says St. Bonaventura, "seated at the well, waiting for the return of his disciples with food, and see with what humility and condescension he speaks to that poor woman of Samaria, and contemplate his frugality ; for the disciples were to return with food, but where was he to eat it? At the side of the well, or by a stream or fountain, and this you may believe was his custom, through poverty and simplicity of life.. He had no exquisite dainties, no curious vessels, no delicate wine, but pure water from that fountain or rivulet."T The ancients, even in their blind unhappy state, were yet sensible of the blessedness of the very circumstances which are now deemed the evils of poverty :

*Le Songe du Vergier.

Aristoph. Plutus, 613.

+ Eryaias. S Plutarch, de exsilio. On the Contempt of the World, by F. Diego de Stella, of the order of St. Francis; translated from the Spanish. St. Omers, 1622. Part i. 87.

Meditationes vitæ Christi, cap. xxxi.

"Yet was their manner then but bare and playne;
For th' antique world excesse and pryde did hate,

Such proud luxurious pompe is swollen up but late."

"It seemed," as Cicero says, "an evident thing, and nature herself daily taught them, quam paucis, quam parvis rebus egeat, quam vilibus."* There was the supper of Xenocrates, which was enough to teach men that they had no need of riches, and that bribery could not stain their souls. The laws of Crete, given by Minos, or by Jove himself, and those of Lycurgus, as Cicero observes, trained youth to virtue by labor, and hunger, and thirst, and cold.‡ Plato introduces a speaker, who praises the discipline observed by the Lacedemonian youth, and expressly commends their practice of going barefooted in winter, and of their sleeping under the stars without a bed, and having no servants to wait upon them, wandering over the country by night and by day; and in reply to the question of an Athenian, he says that "valor and a manly spirit are not evinced merely by resisting fear and pain, but by overcoming desires, and pleasures, and luxury."§ Is it not strange that men professing to be Christians should attempt to condemn the same state of manners, when resulting from Christian discipline, poverty and simplicity? "The best discipline for the body," says Plato, "is that simple and Homeric economy, which corresponds to the tone of the simplest music, ἡ βελτίστη γυμναστικὴ ἀδελφή τις ἂν εἴη τῆς ἁπλῆς μουσικῆς; for simplicity in music produces temperance and wisdom in the soul, and in gymnastic discipline, health in the body." The learned physicians of the middle age came to the same conclusion. Cardan describing the great importance of moderation, and even austerity as to food and drink, observes, that it is by such discipline that the manners of youth can be preserved from evil, and adds a remarkable allusion to the custom of his time, saying,-"This may be easily seen in the children of nobility so well brought up, merely on account of this spare diet, for it is not by stripes that they are restrained. I have never seen a young person abstemious in food who perished, unless through an accident; but such boys, when otherwise well brought up, generally arrive with glory at great old age." These habits were called into constant exercise by the ordinary engagements of life. Thus, when Madame de Chantal used to be on a journey, she always chose the poorest houses for her lodging; she used to eat with the poor of their common hard fare, and thus found sources of spiritual perfection, in the very circumstances which fill our modern travellers with such bitter disgust.**

The sons of noble houses did not attempt to introduce the luxurious banquets of a city among the wild mountains and woods, where they loved to dwell. They would have used the words of Tityrus to their welcomed friend, "How sweet

* Tuscul. V. 35.

Tuscul. V. 32.

Ibid. Lib. II. 34.

De Legibus, Lib. I.

| De Repub. Lib. III. ¶ Prudentia Civilis, Cap. xxxix. ** Vie de Mde. de Chantel, par Marsollier, Tom. II. 294.

to rest nere with me this night under the green boughs, and partake of fruit and milk, the fare of these goatherds. And now the smoke rises from the roofs of the distant village, and the lengthening shadows fall from the lofty mountains.”

"There are some kinds of men and families," says Cardan, "which are altogether immovable and inaccessable to any suggestion of treason. Such are the German and Helvetian nations, the Cardan family, and others, in towns which educate their children in a hard and simple manner."*

Don Diego Savedra Faxardo, in his Instruction of a Christian Prince, uses the coral growing out of the sea as an emblem of beauty and force, to be a model to kings and nobles. Sprung from the midst of the waves, beaten by the tempests, it grows hard in suffering, and impervious and fit for the most precious purposes of men while the rose perishes at the first blast. The effect of the two modes of education was seen in the lives of the Don John II. and Don Fernando the Catholic; the one educated in the palace, the other in the country; the one by women, the other among men; the one became despicable to the whole world, the other the object of general admiration. This it was which made Don Ferdinand the saint give a hard and manly education to his sons.† Ribadeneira, in his Princeps Christianus, shows that a soft and delicate education is the cause why men are not active and robust, and that the Christian discipline, as observed in Catholic states, tends to produce strong and valiant men, by commending coarse food and raiment, poverty, temperance, and labor. This may now seem physically untrue, "Sed nos umbris, deliciis, otio, languore, desidiâ animum infecimus; opinionibus, maloque more delinitum mollivimus."§ In the middle ages, the greatest men did not wish, on ordinary occasions, to be distinguished in dress from the poor. It is easy now to talk of dressing according to our rank, but St. Francis said well, "It is very difficult for those who are arrayed in silk, and adorned with jewels, to put on Jesus Christ."|| Job, David, and all the old saints, did often wear vile apparel, and Christians of old did esteem it wisdom to use it on the ordinary occasions of life. It was this which Dante thought worthy of being remembered in Paradise, where, alluding to the simple dress of the Florentines, he says,—

I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad

In leathern girdle, and a clasp of bone:

-The sons I saw

Of Nerli, and of Vecchio, well content

With unrobed jerkin; and their good dames handling

The spindle and the flax. T

The great Basil had only one suit of clothes, and all the riches which were found

Frudentia Civilis, Cap. lxxiii.

Lib. II. cap. 39.

The Instruction of a Christian Prince, Lib. I. 29.

Cicero, Tuscul. V. 27.

Le sacré Mont d'Olivet, ou le Paradis de la Religion du Seraphique Père St. François, par F. Elzeare L'Archer. Paris, 1614.

Canto XV.

"Of what use are these little When I am on horseback,

in his possession on his death were a crucifix, as St. Gregory Nazienzen relates. St. Chrysostom lays great stress upon the danger of wearing fine apparel, and shows its inconsistency with the apostolic precept. "I admire," he says, in writing to Olympias, " that admirable simplicity in your dress, in which you have so much resemblance to the poor." The old writers of chivalrous romance are fond of that trait in the great Sir Perceval, that he would never abandon the good hempen shirt that his mother made for him, and their heroes are generally as fond of going without shoes or stockings as Socrates and his friend Aristodemus, of whom we read avvпódητos àεí.* Socrates would go barefoot in frost and snow, ἀνυπόδητος ἀεί. and use no other dress but his ordinary one, so that the very soldiers thought that he did it to shame them. This was the spirit of our great heroes. Charlemagne, who hated distinction in dress, used to complain of being obliged sometimes to wear a cloak made more for decoration that use. cloaks? We cannot be covered by them in bed. they cannot defend me from the wind and rain, and when we retire for other occasions, I am starved with cold in my legs." If in our times there should be any one among the great like Vespasian, not distinguished in dress from persons of the lowest rank, there is too often reason to fear that it will only be as Tacitus adds, "Si avaritia abesset, antiquis ducibus par." It was the same with respect to the employments in which men of all ranks were willing to engage. The sons of kings and nobles served at the table of their fathers or lords, and were ready to discharge any office, however servile. There was but one word to signify the servants who rubbed down the horses, and all young noblemen under the dignity of knight, both being called from the stable or the shield which they carried for their master. Albertus Magnus places it among the signs of true humility to converse with poor companions, and assist them in their work, and follow their customs.§ And the sons of our great Catholic ancestors thought this no dishonor. They never forgot the discipline of their college, where no distinctions were allowed on account of birth or fortune. St. Bonaventura, general of the order of St. Francis, and the seraphic doctor, was washing the vessels of the convent when they came to present him with the hat of a cardinal; which he caused to be hung upon a hook in the kitchen until he had finished his employment.|| This sounds strangely, but there is never any justice in drawing an inference from the thoughts and manners of men in these later times, when we are endeavoring to estimate the minds of Christians in ages of faith. It would be far safer to have regard to what was done by several of the wise ancients, who, as Alcibiades said of Socrates, seemed always to despise what the world most esteemed, riches and honors, so that he never appeared aware whether a man were rich, or had any public honors or privileges, for which the multitude might count him happy, but he thought all

* Plato Symposium. + Chron. S. Gall. Hist. Lib. II. 5. Le sacré Mont d'Olivet, 648.

De Paradis. Animæ, c. 2.

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