Part 16 (1/2)
In all public processions in the open air the crowd (or rather, as we might say, the c.o.c.kneys of Paris), in their anxiety to see everything that was to be seen, would frequently obstruct all the public avenues, and so prevent the procession from pa.s.sing along. In consequence of this the Provosts of Paris on these occasions distributed hundreds of stout sticks amongst the sergeants, who used them freely on the shoulders of the most obstinate sight-seers (see chapter on Ceremonials). There was no religious procession, no parish fair, no munic.i.p.al feast, and no parade or review of troops, which did not bring together crowds of people, whose ears and eyes were wide open, if only to hear the sound of the trumpet, or to see a ”dog rush past with a frying-pan tied to his tail.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 168.--Free Distribution of Bread, Meat, and Wine to the People.--Reduced Copy of a Woodcut of the Solemn Entry of Charles V and Pope Clement VII into Bologna, in 1530.]
This curiosity of the French was particularly exhibited when the kings of the first royal dynasty held their _Champs de Mars_, the kings of the second dynasty their _Cours Plenieres_, and the kings of the third dynasty their _Cours Couronnees._ In these a.s.semblies, where the King gathered together all his princ.i.p.al va.s.sals once or twice a year, to hold personal communication with them, and to strengthen his power by ensuring their feudal services, large quant.i.ties of food and fermented liquors were publicly distributed among the people (Fig. 168). The populace were always most enthusiastic spectators of military displays, of court ceremonies, and, above all, of the various amus.e.m.e.nts which royalty provided for them at great cost in those days: and it was on these state occasions that jugglers, tumblers, and minstrels displayed their talents. The _Champ de Mars_ was one of the princ.i.p.al fetes of the year, and was held sometimes in the centre of some large town, sometimes in a royal domain, and sometimes in the open country. Bishop Gregory of Tours describes one which was given in his diocese during the reign of Chilperic, at the Easter festivals, at which we may be sure that the games of the circus, re-established by Chilperic, excited the greatest interest. Charlemagne also held _Champs de Mars_, but called them _Cours Royales,_ at which he appeared dressed in cloth of gold studded all over with pearls and precious stones. Under the third dynasty King Robert celebrated court days with the same magnificence, and the people were admitted to the palace during the royal banquet to witness the King sitting amongst his great officers of state. The _Cours Plenieres_, which were always held at Christmas, Twelfth-day, Easter, and on the day of Pentecost, were not less brilliant during the reigns of Robert's successors. Louis IX. himself, notwithstanding his natural shyness and his taste for simplicity, was noted for the display he made on state occasions. In 1350, Philippe de Valois wore his crown at the _Cours Plenieres_, and from that time they were called _Cours Couronnees_. The kings of jugglers were the privileged performers, and their feats and the other amus.e.m.e.nts, which continued on each occasion for several days, were provided for at the sovereign's sole expense.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 169.--Feats in Balancing.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Ma.n.u.script in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Thirteenth Century).]
These kings of jugglers exercised a supreme authority over the art of jugglery and over all the members of this jovial fraternity. It must not be imagined that these jugglers merely recited s.n.a.t.c.hes from tales and fables in rhyme; this was the least of their talents. The cleverest of them played all sorts of musical instruments, sung songs, and repeated by heart a mult.i.tude of stories, after the example of their reputed forefather, King Borgabed, or Bedabie, who, according to these troubadours, was King of Great Britain at the time that Alexander the Great was King of Macedonia. The jugglers of a lower order especially excelled in tumbling and in tricks of legerdemain (Figs. 169 and 170).
They threw wonderful somersaults, they leaped through hoops placed at certain distances from one another, they played with knives, slings, baskets, bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s, and earthenware plates, and they walked on their hands with their feet in the air or with their heads turned downwards so as to look through their legs backwards. These acrobatic feats were even practised by women. According to a legend, the daughter of Herodias was a renowned acrobat, and on a bas-relief in the Cathedral of Rouen we find this Jewish dancer turning somersaults before Herod, so as to fascinate him, and thus obtain the decapitation of John the Baptist.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 170.--Sword-dance to the sound of the Bagpipe.--Fac-simile of a Ma.n.u.script in the British Museum (Fourteenth Century).]
”The jugglers,” adds M. de Labedolliere, in his clever work on ”The Private Life of the French,” ”often led about bears, monkeys, and other animals, which they taught to dance or to fight (Figs. 171 and 172). A ma.n.u.script in the National Library represents a banquet, and around the table, so as to amuse the guests, performances of animals are going on, such as monkeys riding on horseback, a bear feigning to be dead, a goat playing the harp, and dogs walking on their hind legs.” We find the same grotesque figures on sculptures, on the capitals of churches, on the illuminated margins of ma.n.u.scripts of theology, and on prayer-books, which seems to indicate that jugglers were the a.s.sociates of painters and illuminators, even if they themselves were not the writers and illuminators of the ma.n.u.scripts. ”Jugglery,” M. de Labedolliere goes on to say, ”at that time embraced poetry, music, dancing, sleight of hand, conjuring, wrestling, boxing, and the training of animals. Its humblest pract.i.tioners were the mimics or grimacers, in many-coloured garments, and brazen-faced mountebanks, who provoked laughter at the expense of decency.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 171.--Jugglers exhibiting Monkeys and Bears.--Fac-simile of a Ma.n.u.script in the British Museum (Thirteenth Century).]
At first, and down to the thirteenth century, the profession of a juggler was a most lucrative one. There was no public or private feast of any importance without the profession being represented. Their mimicry and acrobatic feats were less thought of than their long poems or lays of wars and adventures, which they recited in doggerel rhyme to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. The doors of the chateaux were always open to them, and they had a place a.s.signed to them at all feasts. They were the princ.i.p.al attraction at the _Cours Plenieres_, and, according to the testimony of one of their poets, they frequently retired from business loaded with presents, such as riding-horses, carriage-horses, jewels, cloaks, fur robes, clothing of violet or scarlet cloth, and, above all, with large sums of money. They loved to recall with pride the heroic memory of one of their own calling, the brave Norman, Taillefer, who, before the battle of Hastings, advanced alone on horseback between the two armies about to commence the engagement, and drew off the attention of the English by singing them the song of Roland. He then began juggling, and taking his lance by the hilt, he threw it into the air and caught it by the point as it fell; then, drawing his sword, he spun it several times over his head, and caught it in a similar way as it fell. After these skilful exercises, during which the enemy were gaping in mute astonishment, he forced his charger through the English ranks, and caused great havoc before he fell, positively riddled with wounds.
Notwithstanding this n.o.ble instance, not to belie the old proverb, jugglers were never received into the order of knighthood. They were, after a time, as much abused as they had before been extolled. Their licentious lives reflected itself in their obscene language. Their pantomimes, like their songs, showed that they were the votaries of the lowest vices. The lower orders laughed at their coa.r.s.eness, and were amused at their juggleries; but the n.o.bility were disgusted with them, and they were absolutely excluded from the presence of ladies and girls in the chateaux and houses of the bourgeoisie. We see in the tale of ”Le Jugleor”
that they acquired ill fame everywhere, inasmuch as they were addicted to every sort of vice. The clergy, and St. Bernard especially, denounced them and held them up to public contempt. St. Bernard spoke thus of them in one of his sermons written in the middle of the twelfth century: ”A man fond of jugglers will soon enough possess a wife whose name is Poverty. If it happens that the tricks of jugglers are forced upon your notice, endeavour to avoid them, and think of other things. The tricks of jugglers never please G.o.d.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 172.--Equestrian Performances.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in an English Ma.n.u.script of the Thirteenth Century.]
From this remark we may understand their fall as well as the disrepute in which they were held at that time, and we are not surprised to find in an old edition of the ”Memoires du Sire de Joinville” this pa.s.sage, which is, perhaps, an interpolation from a contemporary doc.u.ment: ”St. Louis drove from his kingdom all tumblers and players of sleight of hand, through whom many evil habits and tastes had become engendered in the people.” A troubadour's story of this period shows that the jugglers wandered about the country with their trained animals nearly starved; they were half naked, and were often without anything on their heads, without coats, without shoes, and always without money. The lower orders welcomed them, and continued to admire and idolize them for their clever tricks (Fig.
173), but the bourgeois cla.s.s, following the example of the n.o.bility, turned their backs upon them. In 1345 Guillaume de Gourmont, Provost of Paris, forbad their singing or relating obscene stories, under penalty of fine and imprisonment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 173.--Jugglers performing in public.--From a Miniature of the Ma.n.u.script of ”Guarin de Loherane” (Thirteenth Century).--Library of the a.r.s.enal, Paris.]
Having been a.s.sociated together as a confraternity since 1331, they lived huddled together in one street of Paris, which took the name of _Rue des Jougleurs_. It was at this period that the Church and Hospital of St.
Julian were founded through the exertions of Jacques Goure, a native of Pistoia, and of Huet le Lorrain, who were both jugglers. The newly formed brotherhood at once undertook to subscribe to this good work, and each member did so according to his means. Their aid to the cost of the two buildings was sixty livres, and they were both erected in the Rue St.
Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Julian the Martyr. The chapel was consecrated on the last Sunday in September, 1335, and on the front of it there were three figures, one representing a troubadour, one a minstrel, and one a juggler, each with his various instruments.
The bad repute into which jugglers had fallen did not prevent the kings of France from attaching buffoons, or fools, as they were generally called, to their households, who were often more or less deformed dwarfs, and who, to all intents and purposes, were jugglers. They were allowed to indulge in every sort of impertinence and waggery in order to excite the risibility of their masters (Figs. 174 and 175). These buffoons or fools were an inst.i.tution at court until the time of Louis XIV., and several, such as Caillette, Triboulet, and Brusquet, are better known in history than many of the statesmen and soldiers who were their contemporaries.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 174.--Dance of Fools.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in Ma.n.u.script of the Thirteenth Century in the Bodleian Library of Oxford.]
At the end of the fourteenth century the brotherhood of jugglers divided itself into two distinct cla.s.ses, the jugglers proper and the tumblers.
The former continued to recite serious or amusing poetry, to sing love-songs, to play comic interludes, either singly or in concert, in the streets or in the houses, accompanying themselves or being accompanied by all sorts of musical instruments. The tumblers, on the other hand, devoted themselves exclusively to feats of agility or of skill, the exhibition of trained animals, the making of comic grimaces, and tight-rope dancing.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A Court-Fool, of the 15th Century.
Fac-simile of a miniature from a ms. in the Bibl. de l'a.r.s.enal, Th. lat., no 125.]
The art of rope dancing is very ancient; it was patronised by the Franks, who looked upon it as a marvellous effort of human genius. The most remarkable rope-dancers of that time were of Indian origin. All performers in this art came originally from the East, although they afterwards trained pupils in the countries through which they pa.s.sed, recruiting themselves chiefly from the mixed tribe of jugglers. According to a doc.u.ment quoted by the learned Foncemagne, rope-dancers appeared as early as 1327 at the entertainments given at state banquets by the kings of France. But long before that time they are mentioned in the poems of troubadours as the necessary auxiliaries of any feast given by the n.o.bility, or even by the monasteries. From the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century they were never absent from any public ceremonial, and it was at the state entries of kings and queens, princes and princesses, that they were especially called upon to display their talents.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 175.--Court Fool.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the ”Cosmographie Universelle” of Munster: folio (Basle, 1552).]
One of the most extraordinary examples of the daring of these tumblers is to be found in the records of the entry of Queen Isabel of Bavaria into Paris, in 1385 (see chapter on Ceremonials); and, indeed, all the chronicles of the fifteenth century are full of anecdotes of their doings.
Mathieu de Coucy, who wrote a history of the time of Charles VII., relates some very curious details respecting a show which took place at Milan, and which astonished the whole of Europe:--”The Duke of Milan ordered a rope to be stretched across his palace, about one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, and of equal length. On to this a Portuguese mounted, walked straight along, going backwards and forwards, and dancing to the sound of the tambourine. He also hung from the rope with his head downwards, and went through all sorts of tricks. The ladies who were looking on could not help hiding their eyes in their handkerchiefs, from fear lest they should see him overbalance and fall and kill himself.” The chronicler of Charles XII., Jean d'Arton, tells us of a not less remarkable feat, performed on the occasion of the obsequies of Duke Pierre de Bourbon, which were celebrated at Moulins, in the month of October, 1503, in the presence of the king and the court. ”Amongst other performances was that of a German tight-rope dancer, named Georges Menustre, a very young man, who had a thick rope stretched across from the highest part of the tower of the Castle of Macon to the windows of the steeple of the Church of the Jacobites. The height of this from the ground was twenty-five fathoms, and the distance from the castle to the steeple some two hundred and fifty paces. On two evenings in succession he walked along this rope, and on the second occasion when he started from the tower of the castle his feat was witnessed by the king and upwards of thirty thousand persons. He performed all sorts of graceful tricks, such as dancing grotesque dances to music and hanging to the rope by his feet and by his teeth. Although so strange and marvellous, these feats were nevertheless actually performed, unless human sight had been deceived by magic. A female dancer also performed in a novel way, cutting capers, throwing somersaults, and performing graceful Moorish and other remarkable and peculiar dances.” Such was their manner of celebrating a funeral.