especially in request among a fourteenth- | earlier Middle Ages, when hot baths were century rural population. It may be interesting to examine a few of the remedies employed. Rheumatism, that special misery of those that work in the wintry fields, was treated externally by the application of a plaster of cordials and gums spread on a thin piece of silk. The part affected was also rubbed with an ointment (costing seven sols) made of four ounces of turpentine and two ounces of white wax, one ounce of resin, one ounce of myrrh, two ounces of bol d'Arménie, and two ounces of oil of roses; it was then covered with a sheet of wadding. Complaints of the skin were treated by an unguent composed of a quarter of a pound of mallow, a quarter of a pound of white wax, a quarter of a pound of olive oil, an ounce of incense, and an ounce of turpentine; as well as by medicated baths. Sulphur was also freely used. Aniseed was given as a specific against indigestion, with camomile, quassia amara, camphor, and essence of cinnamon. Coughs and colds were cured by a sudorific tea of rose and camomile; by a milk of almonds mixed with starch and sugar, almost exactly resembling the delicious looch of modern France; by an infusion of pectoral flowers (mallow, violet, etc.), as well as gum arabic and barley sugar.t In severe cases the physicians of the Middle Ages administered the famous theriac of Nero, the Theriacus Andromachi, composed of opium powdered with some tannic bitter substance, of sulphate of iron, and of twoand-forty active aromatic essences, such as turpentine, Cingalese cinnamon, valerian, citron, rose, etc. A laborer at Bloxham, in Oxfordshire, was treated for bronchitis in 1387, with a syrup of oxymel and squills.§ Disorders of the intestines were pretty generally combated by starch water, alum, and the astringent bol d'Arménie; senna tea was also an ingredient in the humblest medicine-chest. Besides the remedies we have mentioned, cordials of cinnamon, camphor, resin, and oil of pinks, electuaries of liquorice, dried prunes, and honey of roses were constantly employed. Oxide of zinc mixed with camphor was also given, but I do not know in what especial case. The hot bath and the vapor bath were highly esteemed, though less frequent, perhaps, than in the hourly cried through all the streets of Paris. Still in the fourteenth century there was no town at all considerable without at least one établissement de bains. We find in the "Registers of the Châtelet" that a hot bath was a somewhat expensive luxury, costing several sols. The prolonged warm baths in honor at the court of Charles VI. were a scandal to the Church, and are denounced in the famous sermon of Jacques le Grand. Besides the remedies we have quoted, it must be allowed that others more fantastic were occasionally used, especially at court and in the treatment of great personages. But our agricultural laborers, who thought twice before they changed their silver sou, were not accessible to fashionable quackery. In all the ac counts of Bonis, we find only two receipts that are patently unreasonable, and these are the most expensive. One of them is a powder of ground seed-pearls, the other an ointment of honey of roses, olive oil, white wax, and "half an ounce of mummy.' But the cold creams and cosmetics of the present day are not always conspicuous for science; we might find nostrums as inefficacious on the shelves of Madame Georgine Champbaron. And indeed it may be doubted whether the most fantastic remedies of the Middle Ages were not sometimes as successful against the nervous maladies in which they were most often used, as the Lourdes water, the hypnotizing-mirrors, and the various patent medicines so capriciously infallible in our century. The poor and needy, with their humble, painful, every-day disorders, knew, then as now, the virtues of friction and wadding against lumbago; the peppermint tea that calms the colic; the plas ter of boiled poppy-heads applied against the raging tooth. The old man, struggling with his asthma, had almost as good an opiate; the feverish child, tossing under its doubled blanket, a potion almost as sudorific as we should find in any country place to-day. Apart from their special virtues, the medicines of the Middle Ages had a very high hygienic value. They were unusually powerful prophylactics. In an earlier article on the "Workmen of Paris," published in this review, I have quoted from the minutes of the institut-pasteur a series of experiments made by MM. Cadiac and Meunier establishing the intense and unrivalled microbicide powers of Cingalese cinnamon; while the oil of pinks, the essences of valerian, thyme, a son citron, rose, etc., employed in almost every | grammar. The ideal of every peasant mediæval recipe, are each and all more was to have a son in the Church hostile to the microbe than the iodoform treatment employed against typhoid fever in the Paris hospitals to-day. I advance this assertion with all due discretion, since I have never made any single experiment, and am not in a position to control the opinion of experts; but since the vanguard of science admits so high a value in the drugs employed by our benighted ancestors, we may allow that the pleasantries in vogue on the subject are possibly overstated or misplaced. If the fourteenth-century village was less ill off than we are apt to imagine it in regard to the medicines of the body, it appears that the training of the mind was less absolutely non-existent in the rural class than it has been our habit to assert. Many of the laborers on the farms of Bonis could sign their names, though probably their science in writing ended there. But every tenant-farmer, in an age when the accounts of tenant and landlord were peculiarly complicated, was obliged to know a certain amount of book-keeping; doubtless the steward was often more learned than his lord. Hedge-schools were common;* in every considerable village, if not in every hamlet, there was a schoolmaster, appointed generally by the patron of the village living. There was a certain regulated number of parish schools in every county, and this number might not be exceeded; our ancestors never could be brought to recognize the advantages of competition. Certain texts, however, prove the existence of unauthorized hedgeschools, promptly quashed as soon as they came to the knowledge of the authorities. The Great Plague, which so changed the face of Europe, diminished education by carrying off the schoolmasters. The Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis remarks that, after the epidemic of 1348, there were not enough teachers for the requirements of the houses, hamlets, and castles of his country. Thus the sons of the men who fought at Crecy grew up, though richer, more ignorant than their fathers. The schools of the fourteenth century were not entirely free; and as a certain proportion of their profits went to the patron, he filled up the gaps as soon as possible. The village priest was often the schoolmaster, and the instruction was always chiefly religious; but the boys were also taught the rudiments of Latin * Joubert, p. 60. But see especially for this subject the masterly passage of M. Léopold Delisle, "L'Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age," p. 175, et seq. who might become abbot, bishop, chancellor, cardinal. It was their one great chance of rising in the world. But in every kingdom of the spirit, many are called, few chosen. Of the dozen or so boys who went to every village school with a dim idea that perhaps by-and-by they might in their turn become a parish priest, or enter some religious order, a fair proportion became stewards or laborers. Some, no doubt, persevered in their original intention; some went to the town, or, tiring of grammar, listed for a soldier; but alas, we meet a good many of them in the "Registers of the Châtelet." Perhaps who knows? - these ne'er-dowells were the most useful of them all, for their dispositions in the court of justice give us many curious lights on mediæval education. Thus, for example, one Jehannin de la Montaigne, a wandering mason, accused of horse stealing, invokes the privilege of clergy, asserting that he was tonsured at the age of eight years old when he went to school and learned his psalter - car auparavant qu'il aprenist son dit métier de maçon, il avait esté avec plusieurs enfans d'icelle ville de Château Regnault à l'escole de la dite ville et avoit aprins jusqu'à son Donnet' et Catonnet;' et lors il savait bien lire."† This "Donnet" 99 "Donat or was the grammatical treatise of the famous Ælius Donatus, who flourished in the fourth century, and whose elucubrations were very popular throughout the ten following centuries. "Catonnet," a schoolbook equally universal, was one century older; it was a paraphrase of the distiches of the once celebrated Dionysius Cato. To-day, as you see, we scarcely know his name. 66 The names of these two guides to knowledge were known to Jehannin de la Montaigne, but his knowledge went no further. After a judicious course of torture, he was taken to the kitchen (as was the custom of that guileful age), placed in a comfortable chair before a cosy fire, with a warm mantle round his shoulders and a glass of wine in his hand. Many criminals, obstinate to screw and pulley, succumbed to these more deceiving influences, especially as they succeeded the chill and dismal hour of execution (the torture of the fourteenth century was far less diabolic than that of ages more re It will be remembered that in the Third Order of St. Francis special provision is made for laymen who can read, evidently a considerable class. † Registres du Châtelet, ii 103. fined, but it was uncomfortable and rheumatic-pails of icy water being dashed from time to time upon the dislocated patient). Well, to return to Jehannin, whom we choose as an example from a crowd of fellow-sinners - he confessed, as he sat by the kitchen fire, that he was no more a priest than the cook. "But," added he, "a tonsure is convenient in judicial circumstances. Many of my companion masons had tonsures, and it was they who advised me to get one also, which they said I could do without prejudice, as I have really been to school and could read and write well enough when I left it. Therefore I went to the village and had myself tonsured par un barbier, et non aultrement." That confession was the end of friend Jehannin, who swung forthwith from the neighboring gallows. "Il n'avoit aucuns biens." ing from the thirteenth century, which are almost always in accordance with the actual population, we may suppose that it has not increased by more than half; we must allow about that proportion, since mediæval churches, built for sanctuary, were large enough to shelter all the vil lagers, with the most valuable of their furniture, in war-time. If, however, such villages as have come down to us are not immensely larger, still it must be admitted that numerous new communes have arisen on land that was covered then by bog or forest. On the other hand many villages called into life by the plenty and peace that followed the last Crusade of Saint Louis disappeared utterly in the long disaster of the Hundred Years' War. The king's tax-gatherers jolted through the country collecting the hearth-tax; again and again The courts of the Châtelet were literally they found, beside the ruined steeple, a encumbered with these sham clerks, who few tumbling beams, an empty stockyard impeded the course of justice by assert- still paven; nothing more. Another vil. ing a non-existent benefit of clergy. Not lage had vanished. The ordonnances of one of them when confronted in the courts the kings of France during the first twenty of justice with a psalter and a primer years of Charles V. are painfully eloquent could read, write, spell a Pater, or say by of this continuous depopulation of the heart a Latin prayer. This, however, country. The wars against the English proves nothing against the system of ed-on the frontiers of Normandy and Gasucation, which was probably excellent. cony accomplished the same end as the The School Board manager of the present cruel repression of the Peasants' Revolt day, in an age of unexampled science, in the centre, or the sackings and plunderknows how easily a boy may pass through ings of the captains of adventure round half-a-dozen years of reading, writing, Rheims, round Orleans, and on the borarithmetic, geometry, astronomy, botany, ders of Provence. I have dismissed many physical chemistry, Biblical exegesis, and tragedies in a single phrase; but how in all the other necessities that no modern a few lines shall I indicate the terrible ploughboy is complete without; and yet position of the peasants? Their grandhe emerges as ignorant as he went in. fathers had dwelt in little hamlets almost Nota bene, the boys nowadays stay at under shelter of the town, in whose palischool till twelve, or sometimes fourteen; saded suburbs every winter, they, with in those days they left at eight or ten. their families, their harvest and their furIt is probable that "Donnet " and "Caton-niture, thronged for asylum. Moreover, net did not penetrate deeply into the in that earlier age, ruled by firm principles average inner consciousness. But all still confidently trusted, the peasant was were not as ignorant as the good-for-noth- little less sacred than the priest. All ings who came before the courts of law classes recognized the holiness, the aufor purse-slitting and horse-lifting; these thority of him who sows and reaps the one may probably take as a natural selec-grain that is the life of all. No usurer tion of the unfittest. M. Delisle, in his might take in pledge the ploughshare, the Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age," beasts that draw it, nor the corn as yet gives some delicious examples of the unthrashed. Four days a week, in peace demi-Latinity of the learned peasant, time as in war time, from every Wedneswhich unfortunately I have not got by day night till Monday at sunrise, the heart. "Truce of God" forbade the men-at-arms to traverse field or sheep-walk; moreover, at any time the peasant, threatened by marauders, was safe if he fled to his plough and laid his hand upon it; whoso touched the iron that furrowed the earth was inviolable and the plough was as sure The population of the rural districts of fourteenth-century France varied terribly according to the progress of the Hundred Years' War. It is difficult to form any very accurate idea of the actual numbers. But from the size of the churches remain a sanctuary as the church. But in the thirteenth century the rural populations, overcrowded round their country towns, pushed further and further into the area of moor and forest, till their clearings, far afield, were beyond reach of their earlier centre. In their new home they clustered all year long round the church they raised and under protection of the manor. And the years of peace continued and the population swelled. Thus from each Châtel lerie sprang new off-shoots; distant hamlets that had forgotten the necessity of a sword arm to shelter them, paying tribute to their lord, but too far from his fortress to receive any efficient aid in war-time. When the great English war broke out and the long years of invasion, these peasants learned to feel their loneliness. True, their neighbors were little better off; for after Crecy, and after Poictiers, the greater part of the seigneurs of France were either dead or in the hands of the English. The ransom they had to raise was all their tenants knew of them; bitter songs and proverbs began to fly from mouth to mouth. "Ten of them will cry surrender to the sound of an Englishman's voice a mile away!" cried Hodge, indig. nant. Poor Hodge, other miseries were in store for him. The Great Plague, which had emptied the country after Crecy ("la tierce partie du monde mourust"), came again, following Poictiers. When at last the epidemic passed away (having doubled the rate of wage in less than ten years), and the farmer prepared himself to face new economic conditions, he was confronted with other dangers. The truce that had followed Poictiers had brought a momentary peace, and hope began to flourish with the primroses. But the peace that came in the wake of the battles of the fourteenth century was crueller than war. The engagements were no longer fought solely by the armed chivalry of a kingdom; the system of regular armies was as yet unknown. In this cruel time of transition, war was chiefly made by the aid of mercenary captains, who led in the pay of the highest bidder their troops of adventurers. When the war was over the men who had fought in it could not vanish into air. The nobles rode home to their castles, the peasants to their farms; but the bulk of their army, the bands of mercenaries, remained hovering with the vultures round the battlefield of yesterday. They were hungry and must eat; they must find a See D. Bessin, Concilia, part i., p. 78, quoted by Delisle, p. 116. lodging somewhere; and their habit was to plunder. So east and west, north and south, the companies went riding as to a tourney; but chiefly they made their way to the rich, unravaged centre; there they soon took thirteen towns, with many fortresses and castles. Readers who remember the terrible chapters in which Froissart describes the depredations of the mercenaries throughout all the centre of France, and down through Gascony to Provence, must, in perusing this article, very often have dissented from my cheerful picture of the life of fourteenth-century villagers. They remember the despair and the extermination of the Jacques of Brie; they count up the villages marked in some ordnance as disappeared; they recall the ballads of Eustache Deschamps describing the sack of Vertus, and think how many a flourishing little town and what innumerable villages shared its fate : side, a deserted town, tottering walls where If you wish to see poverty, a ruined country the fire has been, miserable homes, and a more miserable population-go to Vertus! The English have left everything in flames. There you can have at your good pleasure a horse all skin and bone, a broken bed with foul sheets, and, when you take your walks abroad, the amusement of the ruined housetops tumbling round your ears. Henceforth the farms round Vertus shall be abandoned; the vineyards are neglected and no man tends the plants. This first year after the sack there will be few wages paid and those uncertain. The man who was wont to speak loud will learn to speak low. Our town exists no more, and 'twill be long before her walls are built again.* All this is true; and we shall never know in how many villages the sleeping peasants awoke one night to the dreaded tramp of armed horsemen, to the blare of trump and fife, to the sheen of moonlit armor, and the presence of the redoubtable company in their midst. Bretons, axe in hand, Gascons armed with_lances, the Genoese crossbowmen, the English with their bows and arrows, the Lombards with their knives; they were all as well known as the French -all prayed against and watched for throughout the land of France. The sharpest sighted villager would look out for days in the steeple to give the alarm to his fellows when the first of the horsemen rode up from the horizon; then women, children, men, would throng_to the appointed hiding-place in the brake, Eustache Deschamps, Ballades, edition du Marquis de Queux de St. Hilaire. Ballade 835. T bringing with them such treasure as was still left unburied. Happy those who could thus escape in time, and for whom no crueller fate was in store than to find on the morrow a heap of red ashes where once their village stood! Y règne en grand autorité. On fait labours en abondance. Honorés sont les anciens . Chacun dist que c'est grand pitié.* In fact the "Accounts of the Merchant Bonis," published by M. Forestier, as well as the different documents exhumed by M. Léopold Delisle, M. Siméon Luce, and the invaluable "Registers of the Châtethe Duke de la Trémoille, together with let," show us everywhere, in the gloomiest years and the most desolated districts, a normal state of what we can only call well being. this respect. But the accounts of Bonis Yet, how shall we believe it? Though all this was true, although in the north especially, the general ruin introduced disastrous habits of mortgage and usury; although taxes, heavier every year, were expected of the very men who had seen their crops burnt in the stockyard and their vineyards trampled under foot; notwithstanding the epidemic of misery that raged between the battle of Crecy and the The peasants ate more and of better coronation of Charles V., the country-sides (a good deal too freely, as M. Delisle refood, drank more freely of wine and cider retained their astonishing vitality. True, in many districts most of the young men fortable garments, afforded their wives marks), wore more costly and more comwent off to the wars ("Nous aymons mieux and daughters richer ornaments and trinfaire le gallin-gallant que labourer sans kets than, in the same rank and class, they rien avoir," as Gerson heard them say) could afford to-day. The "Registers of with a natural preference for plundering the Châtelet" are especially precious in over being plundered. They only pushed a little further the work begun by the Great Plague. The wages of the remaining laborers became so high that it was easy for them to recover even from total True, the wattled cottage was razed to the ground, but the paved yard remained. The peasant knew that his treasure was safe in the keeping of some man of trustsome merchant of the walled city when it was not buried in some box or glove three feet to the west of the wild cherry-tree, far enough from home to remain unsuspected by the company. most of the harvest was destroyed the remainder sold for an extravagant price; and the hunger of the poor in town was at least the farmers' gain. Then Charles V., the unparalleled king, sent off the companies to Spain, to Lombardy, well out of the way. In 1375 our poet takes heart and makes an ironical ballad, in which the companies lament the good order of the kingdom. ruin. If In the disastrous years preceding the accession of Charles V., the price of corn doubled. show us a still more favorable symptom: the amount of saving effected by all classes, the lands and herds constantly acquired by farm laborers and domestic servants. Subject to overwhelming disasters, decimated by plague and invasion, the poor in those days were at least well paid, well fed, and warmly clad. Perhaps the poor were those that suffered least. The sudden and unparalleled rise in the price of labor did not affect them, or affected them only favorably. the large landed proprietor, left untouched The Great Plague which, indirectly, ruined the peasant farmer. He and his kind prospered, laid by their savings, and bought, rood by rood, the lands of the diminished noble. No other circumstance the ruin of Feudalism. The long wars prepared so insidiously or so absolutely had left the great nobles penniless and threadbare; their fall was accomplished by the rise in the rate of wage. They could no longer afford to work their im mense estates. But of their flight to the towns, of their desperate rivalry with the burghers, and of the slow, continuous growth of a strong middle class in town and country, I have here no time to speak. In the words of a contemporary — that is another story. A. MARY F. ROBINSON. (Madame JAMEes DarmestetER.) Eustache Deschamps, ii. |