A Short History of French Literature
centuries after the date of Mummolinus, that there is any trace of
regularly written vernacular discourses. When these appear in the
twelfth century the Provencal dialects appear to have the start of
French proper. Whether the forty-four prose sermons of St. Bernard which
exist were written by him in French, or were written in Latin and
translated, is a disputed point. The most reasonable opinion seems to be
that they were translated, but it is uncertain whether at the beginning
of the thirteenth or the middle of the twelfth century. However this may
be, the question of written French sermons in the twelfth century does
not depend on that of St. Bernard's authorship. Maurice de Sully, who
presided over the See of Paris from 1160 to 1195, has left a
considerable number of sermons which exist in manuscripts of very
different dialects. Perhaps it may not be illegitimate to conclude from
this, that at the time such written sermons were not very common, and
that preachers of different districts were glad to borrow them for their
own use. These also are thought to have been first written in Latin and
then translated. But whether Maurice de Sully was a pioneer or not, he
was very quickly followed by others. In the following century the number
of preachers whose vernacular work has been preserved is very large; the
increase being, beyond all doubt, partially due to the foundation of the
two great preaching orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. The existing
literature of this class, dating from the thirteenth, the fourteenth,
and the early fifteenth centuries, is enormous, but the remarks made at
the beginning of this chapter apply to it fully. Its interest is almost
wholly antiquarian, and not in any sense literary. Distinguished names
indeed occur in the catalogue of preachers, but, until we come to the
extreme verge of the mediaeval period proper, hardly one of what may be
called the first importance. The struggle between the Burgundian and
Orleanist, or Armagnac parties, and the ecclesiastical squabbles of the
Great Schism, produced some figures of greater interest. Such are Jean
Petit, a furious partisan, who went so far as to excuse the murder of
the Duke of Orleans, and Jean Charlier, or Gerson, one of the most
respectable and considerable names of the later mediaeval literature.
Gerson was born in 1363, at a village of the same name in Lorraine. He
early entered the College de Navarre, and distinguished himself under
Peter d'Ailly, the most famous of the later nominalists. He became
Chancellor of the University, received a living in Flanders, and for
many years preached in the most constantly attended churches of Paris.
He represented the University at the Council of Constance, and, becoming
obnoxious to the Burgundian party, sought refuge with one of his
brothers at Lyons, where he is said to have taught little children. He
died in 1429. Gerson, it should perhaps be added, is one of the numerous
candidates (but one of the least likely) for the honour of having
written the _Imitation_. He concerns us here only as the author of
numerous French sermons. His work in this kind is very characteristic of
the time. Less mixed with burlesque than that of his immediate
successors, it is equally full of miscellaneous, and, as it now seems,
somewhat inappropriate erudition, and far fuller of the fatal
allegorising and personification of abstract qualities which were in
every branch of literature the curse of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. Yet there are passages of real eloquence in Gerson, though
perhaps the chief literary point about him is the evidence he gives of
the insufficiency of the language in its then condition for serious
prose work.
[Sidenote: Moral and Devotional Treatises.]
[Sidenote: Translators.]
[Sidenote: Political and Polemical Works.]
This is indeed the lesson of most of the writing which we have to notice
in this chapter. Next to sermons may most naturally be placed devotional
and moral works, for, as may easily be imagined, theology and
philosophy, properly so called, did not condescend to the vulgar tongue
until after the close of the period. Only treatises for the practical
use of the unlearned and ignorant adopted the vernacular. Of such there
are manuals of devotion and sketches of sacred history which date from
the thirteenth century, besides numerous later treatises, among the
authors of which Gerson is again conspicuous. The most popular, perhaps,
and in a way the most interesting of all such moral and devotional
treatises, is the book of the Chevalier de la Tour Landry[142], written
in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. This book, destined for
the instruction of the author's three daughters, is composed of Bible
stories, moral tales from ordinary literature and from the writer's
experience, precepts and rules of conduct, and so forth; in short, a
Whole Duty of Girls. Most however of the works of this sort which were
current were, as may be supposed, not original, but translated, and
these translations played a very important part in the history of the
language. The earliest of all are translations of the Bible, especially
of the Psalms and the book of Kings, the former of which may perhaps
date from the end of the eleventh century. Translations of the fathers,
and of the Lives of the Saints, followed in such numbers that, in 1199,
Pope Innocent III. blamed their indiscriminate use. The translation of
profane literature hardly begins much before the thirteenth century. In
this it becomes frequent; and in the following many classical writers
and more mediaeval authors in Latin underwent the process. But it was
not till the close of the fourteenth century that the most important
translations were made, and that translation began to exercise its
natural influence on a comparatively unsophisticated language, by
providing terms of art, by generally enriching the vocabulary, and by
the elaboration of the peculiarities of syntax and style necessary for
rendering the sentences of languages so highly organised as Latin and
Greek. Under John of Valois and his three successors considerable
encouragement was given by the kings of France to this sort of work, and
three translators, Pierre Bersuire, Nicholas Oresme, and Raoul de
Presles, have left special reputations. The eldest of these, Pierre
Bersuire or Bercheure, a friend of Petrarch, was born in 1290, and
towards the end of his life, about 1352, translated part of Livy.
Nicholas Oresme, the date of whose birth is unknown, but who entered the
College de Navarre in 1348, and is likely to have been at that time
thirteen or fourteen years old, and who became Dean of Rouen and Bishop
of Lisieux, translated, in 1370 and the following years, the _Ethics_,
_Politics_, and _Economics_ of Aristotle (from the Latin, not the
Greek). He died in 1382. Oresme was a good writer, and particularly
dexterous in adopting neologisms necessary for his purpose. Raoul de
Presles executed translations of the Bible and of St. Augustine's _De
Civitate Dei_. All these writers furnished an enlarged vocabulary to
their successors, the most remarkable of whom were the already mentioned
Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier. The latter is especially
noteworthy as a prose writer, and the comments already made on his style
and influence as a poet apply here also. His _Quadriloge Invectif_ and
_Curial_, both satirical or, at least, polemical works, are his chief
productions in this kind. Raoul de Presles also composed a polemical
work, dealing chiefly with the burning question of the papal and royal
powers, under the title of _Songe du Verger_.
[Sidenote: Codes and Legal Treatises.]
It might seem unlikely at first sight that so highly technical a subject
as law should furnish a considerable contingent to early vernacular
literature; but there are some works of this kind both of ancient date
and of no small importance. England and Normandy furnish an important
contingent, the 'Laws of William the Conqueror' and the _Coutumiere
Normandie_ being the most remarkable: but the most interesting document
of this kind is perhaps the famous _Assises de Jerusalem_, arranged by
Godfrey of Bouillon and his crusaders as the code of the kingdom of
Jerusalem in 1099, and known also as the _Lettres du Sepulcre_, from the
place of their custody. The original text was lost or destroyed at the
capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187; but a new _Assise_, compiled
from the oral tradition of the jurists who had seen and used the old,
was written by Philippe de Navarre in 1240, or thereabouts, for the use
of the surviving Latin principalities of the East. This was shortly
afterwards enlarged and developed by Jean d'Ibelin, a Syrian baron, who
took part in the crusade of St. Louis. These codes concerned themselves
only with one part of the original _Lettres du Sepulcre_, the laws
affecting the privileged classes; but the other part, the _Assises des
Bourgeois_, survives in _Le Livre de la Cour des Bourgeois_, which has
been thought to be older than the loss of the original. These various
works contain the most complete account of feudal jurisprudence in its
palmy days that is known, for the still earlier Anglo-Norman laws
represent a more mixed state of things. It was especially in Cyprus that
the Jerusalem codes were observed. The chief remaining works of the
same kind which deserve mention are the _Etablissements de St. Louis_
and the _Livre de Justice et de Plet_, which both date from the time of
Louis himself; the _Conseil_, a treatise on law by Pierre de Fontaines,
who died in 1289, and the _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_ of Philippe de
Beaumanoir, who wrote in 1283. The legal literature of the fourteenth
century is abundant, but possesses considerably less interest.
[Sidenote: Miscellanies and Didactic Works.]
Last of all, before coming to prose fiction, a vast if not very
interesting class of miscellaneous prose work must be mentioned. The
word class has been used, but perhaps improperly, for classification is
almost impossible. Books of accounts and domestic economy of all sorts
(generally called _livres de raison_) were very common; treatises of all
kinds of more general character on household management abounded. We
have a _Menagier de Paris_, a _Viandier de Paris_, both of the
fourteenth century. But much earlier the orderly and symmetrical spirit
which has always distinguished the French makes itself apparent in
literature. The _Livre des Metiers de Paris_ of Etienne Boileau, dating
from the thirteenth century, gives a complete idea of the organisation
of guilds and trades at that time. An innumerable multitude of treatises
on the minor morals, on love, on manners, exists in manuscript, and in
rare instances in print. The _Tresors_, or compendious encyclopaedias,
which have already been noticed in verse, began in the thirteenth
century to be composed in prose, the most remarkable being that of
Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, who avowedly used French as his
vehicle of composition, because it was the most commonly read of
European languages. This book was written apparently about or before
1270. Nor did the separate arts lack illustration in prose. Medicine and
alchemy, astronomy and poetry, war and chess, had their treatises, while
Bestiaries and Lapidaries are almost as numerous in prose as in verse.
Finally, there is the important category of books of travel. There are a
certain number of voyages to the Holy Land[143]; some miscellaneous
travels mostly, though not universally, translated from the Latin; and
last, but not least, the great book of Marco Polo, which seems to have
been written originally in French, the author, when in captivity at
Genoa, having dictated it to Rusticien of Pisa, who also figures as a