Val d'Arno Part 9

What she did understand by it, we will try to ascertain in the course of next lecture.

LECTURE VIII.

FRANCHISE.

191. In my first lecture of this course, you remember that I showed you the Lion of St. Mark's with Niccola Pisano's, calling the one an evangelical-preacher lion, and the other a real, and naturally affectionate, lioness.

And the one I showed you as Byzantine, the other as Gothic.

So that I thus called the Greek art pious, and the Gothic profane.

Whereas in nearly all our ordinary modes of thought, and in all my own general references to either art, we a.s.sume Greek or cla.s.sic work to be profane, and Gothic, pious, or religious.

192. Very short reflection, if steady and clear, will both show you how confused our ideas are usually on this subject, and how definite they may within certain limits become.

First of all, don't confuse piety with Christianity. There are pious Greeks and impious Greeks; pious Turks and impious Turks; pious Christians and impious Christians; pious modern infidels and impious modern infidels. In case you do not quite know what piety really means, we will try to know better in next lecture; for the present, understand that I mean distinctly to call Greek art, in the true sense of the word, pious, and Gothic, as opposed to it, profane.

193. But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don't run away with the notion that I necessarily mean to oppose _Christian_ and Greek.

You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man's veins, with Christian feeling in a man's breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths; unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or when every other name is equally detested by both.

I want you to-day to examine with me that essential difference between Greek and Gothic temper, irrespective of creed, to which I have referred in my preface to the last edition of the "Stones of Venice," saying that the Byzantines gave law to Norman license. And I must therefore ask your patience while I clear your minds from some too prevalent errors as to the meaning of those two words, law and license.

194. There is perhaps no more curious proof of the disorder which impatient and impertinent science is introducing into cla.s.sical thought and language, than the t.i.tle chosen by the Duke of Argyll for his interesting study of Natural History--'The Reign of Law.' Law cannot reign. If a natural law, it admits no disobedience, and has nothing to put right. If a human one, it can compel no obedience, and has no power to prevent wrong. A king only can reign;--a person, that is to say, who, conscious of natural law, enforces human law so far as it is just.

195. Kinghood is equally necessary in Greek dynasty, and in Gothic.

Theseus is every inch a king, as well as Edward III. But the laws which they have to enforce on their own and their companions' humanity are opposed to each other as much as their dispositions are.

The function of a Greek king was to enforce labour.

That of a Gothic king, to restrain rage.

The laws of Greece determine the wise methods of labour; and the laws of France determine the wise restraints of pa.s.sion.

For the sins of Greece are in Indolence, and its pleasures; and the sins of France are in fury, and its pleasures.

196. You are now again surprised, probably, at hearing me oppose France typically to Greece. More strictly, I might oppose only a part of France,--Normandy. But it is better to say, France, [1] as embracing the seat of the established Norman power in the Island of our Lady; and the province in which it was crowned,--Champagne.

[Footnote 1: "Normandie, la franche." "France, la solue;" (chanson de Roland). One of my good pupils referred me to this ancient and glorious French song.]

France is everlastingly, by birth, name, and nature, the country of the Franks, or free persons; and the first source of European frankness, or franchise. The Latin for franchise is libertas. But the modern or c.o.c.kney-English word liberty,--Mr. John Stuart Mill's,--is not the equivalent of libertas; and the modern or c.o.c.kney-French word liberte,--M. Victor Hugo's,--is not the equivalent of franchise.

197. The Latin for franchise, I have said, is libertas; the Greek is [Greek: *eleupheria*]. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea is precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation therefore accurately translates the word of the other: [Greek: *eleupheria*]--libertas--franchise--reciprocally translate each other.

Leonidas is characteristically [Greek: *eleupheros*] among Greeks; Publicola, characteristically liber, among Romans; Edward III. and the Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common idea, which the words express, as all the careful scholars among you will know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from the slavery of pa.s.sion. To be [Greek: *eleupheros*], liber, or franc, is first to have learned how to rule our own pa.s.sions; and then, certain that our own conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against all resistance, whether of counter-opinion, counter pain, or counter-pleasure. To be defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the adversary's threat, and the harlot's temptation,--this is in the meaning of every great nation to be free; and the one condition upon which that freedom can be obtained is p.r.o.nounced to you in a single verse of the 119th Psalm, "I will walk at liberty, for I seek Thy precepts."

198. Thy precepts:--Law, observe, being dominant over the Gothic as over the Greek king, but a quite different law. Edward III. feeling no anger against the Sieur de Ribaumont, and crowning him with his own pearl chaplet, is obeying the law of love, _restraining_ anger; but Theseus, slaying the Minotaur, is obeying the law of justice, and _enforcing_ anger.

The one is acting under the law of the charity, [Greek: *charis*] or grace of G.o.d; the other under the law of His judgment. The two together fulfil His [Greek: *krisis*] and [Greek: *agapae*].

199. Therefore the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the kinghoods of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who judge infallibly, and divide arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity and compa.s.sion, and his arithmetic is in largesse,

"Whose moste joy was, I wis, When that she gave, and said, Have this."

So that, to put it in shortest terms of all, Greek law is of Stasy, and Gothic of Ecstasy; there is no limit to the freedom of the Gothic hand or heart, and the children are most in the delight and the glory of liberty when they most seek their Father's precepts.

200. The two lines I have just quoted are, as you probably remember, from Chaucer's translation of the French Romance of the Rose, out of which I before quoted to you the description of the virtue of Debonnairete. Now that Debonnairete of the Painted Chamber of Westminster is the typical figure used by the French sculptors and painters for 'franchise,' frankness, or Frenchness; but in the Painted Chamber, Debonnairete, high breeding, 'out of goodnestedness,' or gentleness, is used, as an English king's English, of the Norman franchise. Here, then, is our own royalty,--let us call it Englishness, the grace of our proper kinghood;--and here is French royalty, the grace of French kinghood--Frenchness, rudely but sufficiently drawn by M.

Didron from the porch of Chartres. She has the crown of fleur-de-lys, and William the Norman's s.h.i.+eld.

201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it been in Greek, it would have been [Greek: *elevtheria*]. Being in Latin, what do you think it must be necessarily?--Of course, Libertas. Now M.

Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,--full of sense and intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,--one of a nation for whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished,--he is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at the word libertas through his spectacles;--can't understand, being a thoroughly good antiquary, [1] how such a virtue, or privilege, could honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;--rubs his spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter; stamps it, to make surer still;--and at last, though in a greatly bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of 'La Liberte' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberte!" "On lit parfaitement libertas."

[Footnote 1: Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly say, however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal Palace of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of sculpture.]

202. Not so, my good M. Didron!--a very different personage, this; of whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so plainly, 'Libertas, at non liberalitas,' liberalitas being the Latin for largesse, not for franchise.

This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in their pa.s.sionate or vital nature; in the _animal_ and _inbred_ part of them;--Cla.s.sic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now, what opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus and Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between Theseus and Edward III, as theologians; as dreaming and discerning creatures, as didactic kings,--engraving letters with the point of the sword, instead of thrusting men through with it,--changing the club into the ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings; what is, thus, the difference between them?

Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word,--lovers of the [Greek: *Logos*], or Word, by which the heavens and earth were made. What logos, _about_ this Logos, have they learned, or can they teach?

203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek; but with this difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of his skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist of him.

Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?

This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death?

There is another change going on at the same time,--body perhaps subjecting itself to spirit.

I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple enough. Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and sufficient,--a religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very curious and rude; Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us now,--partly always so, even to them.

204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its manliness,--becomes Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate and feeble, it inherits all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of its mystery; and it is converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is it altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its animal energy.

Certain spiritual phenomena are possible to the weak, which are hidden from the strong;--nay, the monk may, in his order of being, possess strength denied to the warrior. Is it altogether, think you, by blundering, or by disproportion in intellect or in body, that Theseus becomes St. Athanase? For that is the kind of change which takes place, from the days of the great King of Athens, to those of the great Bishop of Alexandria, in the thought and theology, or, summarily, in the spirit of the Greek.

Now we have learned indeed the difference between the Gothic knight and the Greek knight; but what will be the difference between the Gothic saint and Greek saint?

Franchise of body against constancy of body.

Franchise of thought, then, against constancy of thought.

Edward III. against Theseus.

And the Frank of a.s.sisi against St. Athanase.

205. Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead of, 'This is the faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved,' 'This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep faithfully, _it_ shall be saved.'

Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of natural science in which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzantine, and the affection of the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign of law, and a cricket as singing under the compulsion of caloric.