Part 2 (1/2)
It would be hard to say whether an unbroken tradition connects the signs of the Middle Ages with those of like name in cla.s.sical antiquity. Many a sign may have been invented anew. But that we have learned much directly from the old Romans in the field of hospitality is proved by a curious fact. The Bavarian Knodel, which every true Bajuware claims as an indigenous, national inst.i.tution, are prepared to-day exactly like the old Roman ”globuli,” after the recipes of Columella and Varro. Such, at least, is the a.s.surance of Herr von Liebenau in his interesting book on Swiss hospitality.
We remarked above that it was by their roads especially that the Romans extended their power over all the world. We must notice now briefly the Roman post-system, the ”cursus publicus,” whose coaches probably carried travelers from tavern to tavern like the modern mail-coaches. We must, however, curb the imagination of the reader with a reminder that practically only the state officials used this service. Not every country b.u.mpkin could mount with market-basket on his arm, to make a jolly journey over hill and dale to the sound of the echoing horn. Still the Emperor or his prefect could issue tickets to private persons; and furthermore, these persons could, under certain circ.u.mstances, get a sort of Cook's ticket, called ”diploma tractoria,” which included board and lodging as well as transportation. If the journey lay through a lonely region, where there were no private taverns to provide shelter for the night, the traveler might put up at the state inn (”mansio”) which the province was obliged to maintain at public cost, with all the necessities and comforts to which respectable Roman travelers were accustomed. One can well understand how, as the empire disintegrated, the provincials were glad to throw off this hated compulsory tax for the support of the state inn. It was not till the time of Charlemagne that the inst.i.tution was revived as a military-feudal service along the routes of the imperial army. Whether these Roman state inns displayed signs or not, we do not know. It is, however, very likely that they were distinguished by the sign of the Roman eagle, and so became the type of the later private eagle inns.
Here let us remark that the post-coaches of our own day, which seem to us an inst.i.tution dating from the Deluge, are a comparatively late invention. The first so-called ”land-coach” in Germany was established between Ulm and Heidelberg in the year 1683. Through all the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, we depended on mounted messengers, traveling cloister brothers, university students, and rare travelers to carry messages. In Wurttemberg, where we find to-day the most abundant reminders of the good old post-coach days, and consequently the finest old signs, bands of ”n.o.ble post-boys” are found, including the distinguished names of Trotha and Hutten.
That the common workman, even in the Roman days, had to use ”shank's mare” when he went traveling goes without saying. But the well-to-do burgher or trader who had no license to ride in the state post-coach rode on his horse or his high mule. Horse and saddle remained for centuries the only method of travel after the Roman roads had fallen into that state of dilapidation from which they fully recovered only in the days of Napoleon. One needs only to look at the coaches of princes in past centuries to see for what bottomless mud-bogs these lumbering vehicles were built. Montaigne rode on horseback from his home in Bordeaux to the baths of southern France and Italy, although he seems, from the entries in his diary, to have been very much afflicted with ”distempers.”
A late Roman relief found in Isernia (in Samnium)--a kind of tavern sign--shows us a traveler holding his mule by the bridle as he takes leave of the hostess and pays his account. The traveler has on his cloak and hood. The hood, even up to Seume's time (i.e., up to the end of the eighteenth century), was generally worn by travelers in Italy, and especially in Sicily: ”My mule-driver showed a tender solicitude for me,” wrote Seume, ”and gave me his hood. He could not understand how I dared to travel without one. This peculiar kind of dark-brown mantle with its pointed headgear is the standard dress in all Italy, and especially in Sicily. I took a great fancy to it, and if I may judge from this night's experience, I have a great inclination toward Capuchin vows, for I slept very well.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMANTAVERNSIGNFROMISERNIA]
We have had to confine ourselves in the treatment of ancient signs entirely to Roman examples, for we have very little knowledge of Greek signs. In fact, the tavern sign seems to have come late into Greece, through Roman influence. We hear of a tavern ”The Camel” at the Piraeus, also of a sailors' inn having the sign in relief: a boiled calf's head and four calf's feet.
We shall later see what an important part signs played in directing travelers in a city through the Middle Ages and even in modern times.
They took the place of house numbers and street names. In ancient Rome a whole quarter was often named after an inn, like the ”Bear in the Cap” (”vicus ursi pileati”). This is the longest-lived bear in history: he lives even to-day. An excellent German tavern guide, Hans Barth, writes in his delightful little book ”Osteria”: ”On the quay of the Tiber was the famous old inn of the Bear, where Charlemagne lodged, because the Cafarelli Palace was not yet built; where Father Dante frolicked with the p.u.s.s.y-cats; where Master Rabelais raised his famous b.u.mpers of wine.” In Montaigne's time the Bear was so frightfully stylish an inn, with its rooms hung with gilded leather, that the essayist stayed there only two days and then forthwith sought a private lodging.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Campana and Canone d'Oro Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy]
In modern Italy there are only a few interesting signs. The most delightful ones (the Golden Cannon, and the Bell) we found in the main street of the North Italian mountain town of Borgo San Dalmazzo. The ”White Horse” (”cavallo bianco”) was a little off the main street. The form of these was probably influenced by the proximity of Switzerland--a country very rich in beautiful signs.
Seume, who had the finest opportunity for studying taverns and signs in his walking tour from Leipzig to Syracuse, often mentions the name of his inn; as, for instance, ”h.e.l.l” in Imola, or the ”Elephant” in Catania. But there was only one Italian town in which the signs impressed him: that was Lodi. ”The people of Lodi,” he writes, ”must be very imaginative if one can judge them from their signs. One of them, over a shoemaker's shop, represents a Genius taking a man's measure--a motif which reminds one of Pompeii.”
Our excellent guide, who has an eye for everything picturesque, does not seem to have met much of interest from Verona to Capri. An exception was the ”Osteria del Penello,” in Florence, on the Piazza San Martino, a tavern established about the year 1500 by Albertinelli, the friend of Raphael. On the sign over the door was the jolly curly head of the founder, who, when the envy of his colleagues poisoned the work of his brush, here established a tavern. An inscription read: ”Once I painted flesh and blood, and earned only contempt; now I give flesh and blood, and all men praise my good wine.”
Barth also mentions, by the way, the characteristic wall-paintings of Italy that rest on the old Roman tradition and yet serve as tavern signs, like the ”Three Madonnas” of the Porta Pincia in Rome: ”A portal decorated with three pictures of the Mother of G.o.d leads into the green garden court.”
Lest the thought of a religious painting serving as a tavern sign should shock any of our readers, we hasten to turn to the study of religious hospitality and its emblems.
CHAPTER III
ECCLESIASTICAL HOSPITALITY AND ITS SIGNS
[Ill.u.s.tration: Lamm Erlenbach, Wurttemberg]
CHAPTER III
ECCLESIASTICAL HOSPITALITY AND ITS SIGNS
”Use hospitality one to another without grudging.”
I Peter IV, 9.
Rome was to conquer the northern Germanic world once more, not with the sword as had been the case in the olden days of a pagan Rome, but with the cross and its exponent, the monk. The northward surging wave of Roman Caesarism had been followed by the tidal wave, southward-roaring, of Germanic barbarians. The orderly life of one vast empire gave way to the restlessness and insecurity of the period of migration and a shattered empire. Not individuals but whole peoples go a-traveling with household goods and wife and children, whole towns and countries become their inns, the standard of the conquerors are their tavern signs. Then again flowing northward, progressing by insensible stages, comes the silent throng of monastic brotherhoods, the Benedictines in the van, who bring forth various orders from their midst, the Cistercians among others, who dig and reclaim the soil with their spades and later, as builders, dedicate it to their G.o.d, unknown and now revealed, with high-soaring monuments of wors.h.i.+p.
Undaunted by solitude, fearless of the wildness of desolate regions, they enter the forest primeval to clear it and establish quiet homesteads for themselves and their wors.h.i.+p; their doors are open to all those who pa.s.s their way. For had not St. Benedict, mindful of repeated apostolic admonitions to the bishops, included hospitality in the rules of his order? Therefore ere long there lacked not in any convent certain rooms given over to the comfort of the wayfarer, be it a ”hospitium,” a ”hospitale,” or a ”receptaculum.” Witness the Hospice of the Great St. Bernard in the Alps of the Vallais, named after the pious founder of that earliest of Occidental orders, part of the convent erected in the ninth century by the bishops of Lausanne, while the shelter on Mont Cenis is said to date back to a past equally remote. Beginning with the year 1000, convents likewise erect inns in the villages, outside of their immediate domains, leasing these against rental, while in the towns pilgrim inns, poor men's taverns, and ”Seelhauser” are endowed for the free housing of pilgrims and wayfarers, evolving later into town inns.
To the pilgrim, then, who wended his way to the tombs of saints, and, in the crusade times, to the holiest of graves in Jerusalem, mediaeval hospitality is mainly devoted. The crusaders were agents of especial power in the development of hospitality, since on his lengthy journey the pilgrim stood in need, not only of food and shelter, but also of convoy along roads perilous everywhere. The Knights of St. John set themselves these two tasks, to care for the pilgrims and escort them in safety, which is implied by their name ”fratres hospitales S.