HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES
AND
CONTESTED EVENTS.

L’histoire n’est le plus souvent,

et surtout à distance, qu’une fable

convenue, un qui pro quo arrangé

après coup, et accepté.

(Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis.

Tome 6ᵐᵉ, p. 8.)

Les vérités se succèdent du pour

au contre à mesure qu’on a plus de

lumières.

(Pascal).

HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES

AND

CONTESTED EVENTS.

By OCTAVE DELEPIERRE, LL.D., F.S.A.

SECRETARY OF LEGATION TO THE KING OF THE BELGIANS.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

1868.

[The right of translation is reserved.]

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

The age in which we live seems remarkable for its appreciation of men of renown, and for the homage rendered to them. Societies that are still in their youth are liable to be dazzled by the superficial wonders of historical tradition, and to allow their admiration to be easily taken captive; but an epoch ripened by experience, and by a long habit of literary criticism, should rather reserve its enthusiasm for ascertained facts, and for such deeds of renown as are beyond the pale of doubt and discussion. Thus we find in the present day a marked predilection, not only as a matter of general utility but also from a sense of justice, for a keen research into every doubtful point of history. Nations as well as individuals need the maturity of time to appreciate at their real value the actions and the traditions of past ages.

The art of writing history has two very distinct branches, the combination of which is essential to the production of a complete historian. A research into, and a criticism of, events with no other aim than to elicit truth, is one branch of the historical art; the other is the resolution to interpret, to describe, to give to each event its full signification and colouring; to put that life into it in fact which belongs to every human spectacle. It is only the first part of the task that we propose to undertake in these essays.

Seneca has said that we must not give too ready credence to hearsay, for some disguise the truth in order to deceive, and some because they are themselves the victims of deception. Other Greek and Latin writers have also warned us against a too ready faith in popular traditions. How many errors bequeathed to us by the historians of antiquity owe their enlarged growth, ere they reached us, to their passage through the middle ages.

De Quincy tells us that if a saying has a proverbial fame, the probability is that it was never said. The same opinion may be held of a great many so-called historical facts which are perfectly familiar even to the ignorant, and yet which never happened.

The French critic Lenglet du Fresnoy, in his work “L’Histoire justifiée contre les Romans,” has devoted about 100 pages to historical doubts; but he only touches the surface of the subject. Many years before Niebuhr, the Abbé Lancellotti published at Venice in 1637, under the title of “Farfalloni degli antichi Storici,” a curious volume, now rare, in which he exposes the many absurd stories taught in schools as history. The book contains more than a hundred of these fictions, and was translated into French by T. Oliva 1770.

Du Pan, in his Recherches sur les Américains, says that Montezuma sacrificed annually twenty thousand children to the idols in the temples of Mexico. In such assertions the improbability and exaggeration are so self-evident that it is needless to dwell upon them.

“Books,” says the Prince de Ligne, “tell us that the Duke of Alba put to death by the hands of the executioner in the Low Countries eighteen thousand gentlemen, while the fact is that scarcely two thousand could have been altogether collected there.

Who is there who now believes in the story of Dionysius the Tyrant becoming a schoolmaster at Corinth?[1]

Even in the time of Titus Livius there was so much doubt as to the truth of the legend of the Horatii and the Curiatii, that he writes, one cannot tell to which of the two contending people the Horatii or the Curiatii[2] belonged. Yet this cautious historian relates in another place how Hannibal fed his soldiers on human flesh to give them energy and courage. Mr. Rey[3] has carefully studied the origin of the heroic fable of the death of Regulus, and has exposed its fallacy.

In comparatively modern times also, how many delusions do we find worthy of ancient history. The story of the Sicilian Vespers,[4] for instance, and the episode concerning Doctor Procida, who far from being a principal in the massacre, was not even present at it. We may also mention some of the anecdotes of Christopher Columbus:[5] the fable of the egg that he is said to have broken, in order to make it stand upright: the account of his anxiety, amounting to agony, among his mutinous crew, to whom he had faithfully promised a sight of land—all of which has been disproved by M. de Humboldt in his Examen critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie.

The history of England also furnishes many examples of similar credulity. Without entering upon the murder of King Edward’s children, which story has been discussed by Walpole, may we not cite the death of the Duke of Clarence, who for four centuries was believed to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey?—an error exposed by John Bayley in “The historic Antiquities of the Tower of London.”

We may cite again the often-mooted question of the exhumation of the body of Cromwell, and of the outrages committed on his remains by order of Charles II:[6] the interesting but imaginative picture of Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters, while, if we may believe Doctor Johnson, he never even allowed them to learn to write. Modern historians, however, are often equally incorrect. Among them we may quote the poet laureate Southey, who was guilty of a remarkable perversion of facts regarding one of the wisest men of the 19th century.

In an article in the Quarterly Review (Vol. XXXIX. p. 477. April 1829) entitled, State and Prospects of the Country, we are told that Conrad, a monk of Heresbach, had pronounced in presence of an assembly, an anathema against Greek, saying that: “a new language had been discovered called Greek, against which it was necessary to guard, as this language engendered every species of heresy; just as all they who learned Hebrew, infallibly became Jews.”

This curious anecdote was repeated in La Revue Britannique, No. 46. p. 254, whence it found its way into a note of the Poème de la Typographie of M. Pelletier (1 vol. 8ᵛᵒ. Genève, 1832) and the mistake was republished in many other books. Now the real fact is, that Conrad of Heresbach had never been a monk, but was a confidential counsellor of the Duke of Cleves, and that, far from prohibiting the study of the ancient languages, he was one of the savans of the 16th century who shewed the greatest zeal in encouraging a taste for their culture. It is he himself who, in order to expose the ignorance of the clergy of that period, relates, that he heard a monk from the pulpit pronounce the anathema on the Greek language which we have mentioned above. So easy is it, by distorting facts, to make or mar a reputation!

When we reflect on the innumerable errors daily propagated by books, we have cause to be alarmed at the strange confusion in which all literature may find itself a few centuries hence. It is very possible that historical events will be even more difficult of proof than before the invention of printing, which may consequently have served to augment disorder and perplexity rather than to have assisted in the promotion of truth and accuracy. In a recent number of the Constitutionnel, in a feuilleton supposed to be from the pen of M. de Lamartine, it is stated that: “The tombs of great poets inspire great passions. It was at Tasso’s tomb,” he says, “that Petrarch, during his first absence, nourished his regretful remembrance of Laura!” Now Petrarch died in 1374, and it was more than two hundred years afterwards (in 1581) that Tasso published his first edition of the Gerusalemme Liberata!

We should not know where to stop if we attempted to bring forward examples of all the improbable and the untrue in history. We shall confine ourselves therefore to the examination of a few of the most universally accredited facts, the truth of which, to say the least, is extremely doubtful.

We at one time entertained the project of reconstructing the critical work of the Abbé Lancelotti already mentioned, by enlarging its scope. This rare and scarcely known book (Farfalloni degli antichi Storici) would have served us as a basis, upon which we should have proceeded to review history in general. It would have been an instructive and a pleasant task to demolish falsehood in order to arrive at truth; to set aside, in good faith, worn out platitudes, deeds of heroism resting on no proof whatsoever, and crimes wanting the confirmation of authenticity; but when we set ourselves to estimate its extent, we shrank from so laborious an undertaking.

In working out the subject, we should have related, with Henry Schnitzler (De la colonisation de l’ancienne Grèce), and with Schœll (la littérature grecque), that Cecrops the Egyptian had imposed upon us when he pretended to come out of Egypt, as did Cadmus when he professed to arrive from Phœnicia.

The Abbé Barthélemy (Voyage du jeune Anarcharsis) would have enlightened us on the memorable battle of Thermopylæ, where Leonidas, instead of resisting the Persians with three hundred men, commanded, according to Diodorus, at least seven thousand—or even twelve thousand, if we may believe Pausanias. We should have exposed the fabulous part of the history of Sappho, by following Mr. C. F. Neue (Sapphonis Mytilinææ fragmenta) and M. J. Mongin, in his remarkable article on this poetess in l’Encyclopédie nouvelle; and the learned Spon (Miscellanies) would have explained to us the pretended tub of Diogenes. Other innumerable errors would have been brought before the reader, for we have only cited a very small portion of the programme.

Alfred Maury (Revue de Philosophie) would have convinced us that Cæsar never said, and never would have said, to the pilot “Why do you fear? You have Cæsar and his fortunes on board,” &c.

On all these subjects an analytical work would be of great use, and for the benefit of those who might be induced to undertake such a task, we proceed to point out the principal chapters in the work of Lancelotti.

1) Zaleucus submitted to have one of his eyes put out, in order to save his son from the loss of both his eyes.

2) The people living near the cataracts of the Nile are all deaf.

3) The army of Xerxes drained the rivers on its passage, to satisfy its thirst.

4) In Egypt the women occupy themselves in commerce while the men remain at home to manufacture cloth.

5) The account given by Titus Livius of the resolution of the Roman senators at the taking of Rome by the Gauls.

6) Agriculturists, or tillers of the ground, are declared consuls and dictators by the Romans.

7) The Lake of Thrasymene takes fire.

8) The philosopher Anaxarchus bit off his tongue and spat it in the face of the tyrant.

9) In a combat between Aëtius and Attila, the blood of the soldiers killed and wounded flowed in such torrents that the dead bodies were swept away by it.

10) Ten Roman virgins, at the head of whom was Clelia, after having been sent as hostages to the king Porsenna, returned to Rome by swimming across the Tiber.

11) Æschylus killed by a tortoise dropped upon his head by an eagle.

12) In the school of Pythagoras the disciples kept silence during the space of five years.

13) A grapestone caused the death of Anacreon; and the senator Fabius was choked by a hair in his milk.

14) Mutius-Scævola burned his hand to shew his fortitude.

15) Among the Spartans all men lived in common and ate in public on the same spot.

16) That the young girls in Sparta occupied themselves in public duties, perfectly naked.

17) Lycurgus permitted the young men in his republic to practise the art of stealing.

18) Lycurgus forbade the use of gold and silver money in his republic. He allowed iron coins to be made, of a very large size.

19) Lycurgus was the originator of the concise, sententious language generally termed laconic.

20) Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf, and Cyrus by a bitch.

21) The exploits of Horatius-Cocles.

22) The dumb son of Crœsus, perceiving a soldier about to kill his father, suddenly recovered his speech.

23) The history of Lucretia, such as historians have related it.

24) Democritus and Heraclitus.

25) The poverty of the grandees of Rome.

26) Curtius leaping on horseback into the gulf.

27) Draco, the Athenian legislator punished idleness with death.

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES.

B. C. 306.

In the elementary works for the instruction of young people, we find frequent mention of the Colossus of Rhodes.

The statue is always represented with gigantic limbs, each leg resting on the enormous rocks which face the entrance to the principal port of the Island of Rhodes; and ships in full sail passed easily, it is said, between its legs; for, according to Pliny the ancient, its height was seventy cubits.

This Colossus was reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, the six others being, as is well known, the hanging gardens of Babylon, devised by Nitocris wife of Nebuchadnezzar; the pyramids of Egypt; the statue of Jupiter Olympus; the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; the temple of Diana at Ephesus; and the Pharos of Alexandria, completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1303.

Nowhere has any authority been found for the assertion that the Colossus of Rhodes spanned the entrance to the harbour of the island and admitted the passage of vessels in full sail between its wide-stretched limbs. No old drawing even of that epoch exists, when the statue was yet supposed to be standing; several modern engravings may be seen, but they are mere works of the imagination, executed to gratify the curiosity of amateur antiquarians, or to feed the naive credulity of the ignorant. Nevertheless, the historian Rollin, several French dictionaries, and even some encyclopedias, have adopted the fiction of their predecessors.

A century ago, the Comte de Caylus, a distinguished French archeologist, found fault with his countrymen for admitting this fiction into the school books[7] for young people, but he sought in vain to trace its origin.

Vigenère, in his Tableaux de Philostrate, is supposed to have been the first who ventured to make an imaginary drawing of the Colossus. He was followed by Bergier and Chevreau,[8] the latter adding a lamp to the hand of the statue. A fictitious Greek manuscript, quoted by the mythologist Du Choul,[9] further adorns the Colossus by giving him a sword and lance and by hanging a mirror round his neck.

The Count Choiseul-Gouffier, in his Picturesque journey through Greece, published about the year 1780, declares the Colossus with the outstretched legs to be fabulous.

He says: “This fable has for years enjoyed the privilege so readily accorded to error. It is commonly received, and discarded only by the few who have made ancient history their study. Most persons have accepted without investigation an assertion which is unsupported by any authority from ancient authors.”

Nevertheless the Belgian Colonel Rottiers, and the English geologist Hamilton,[10] do not yield to this opinion, but endeavour still to place the site of the statue at the entrance to one of the smaller harbours of the island, scarcely forty feet wide. Rottiers goes even further, and gives a superb engraving of the Colossus, under the form of an Apollo, the bow and quiver on his shoulders, his forehead encircled by rays of light, and a beacon flame above his head.

Polybius is the first among the ancient writers who mentions the Colossus of Rhodes, in enumerating the donations received by the inhabitants of the island after the fearful earthquake they experienced about 223 years before Christ. “The Rhodians,” says he, “have benefited by the catastrophe which befell them, owing to which, not only the huge Colossus, but innumerable houses and a portion of the surrounding walls were demolished.” Then follows a list of the rich gifts they received from all parts. Among the benefactors of the town of Rhodes, Polybius mentions the three kings, Ptolemy III. of Egypt, Antigonos Doson of Macedonia, and Seleucus of Syria, father of Antiochus.

The elder Pliny records that the Colossus, after having stood for fifty-six years, was overthrown by an earthquake, and that it took Charès of Lindos, to whom the Rhodians had entrusted its re-construction, twelve years to complete his task.

It is probable that the statue of Minerva, from 50 to 60 feet in height, which was designed and partly executed by Phidias for the Acropolis at Athens, served as a model for Charès, not only for the material, but for the conception of the Colossus and for the site on which it stood.

Minerva was the patroness of Athens as the sun-god Helios was the patron of the island of Rhodes.

About 150 years before Christ a certain Philo-Byzantius wrote a short treatise on the seven wonders of the ancient world.[11] In it he gives an explanation of the construction of the Colossus, but nowhere speaks of the extended legs under which vessels in full sail entered the port, nor of the beacon light. On the contrary, he mentions one sole pedestal, which was of white marble. Moreover, the statue was said to be 105 feet in height, and the great harbour entrance, according to modern research, was 350 feet wide; it could not therefore possibly reach across this space.

Lastly, if the statue had stood at the entrance of the great harbour, the earthquake must have overthrown it into the sea, whereas Strabo and Pliny tell us that its fragments remained for a considerable time embedded in the earth, and attracted much attention by their wonderful size and dimensions.

The following is the real truth concerning the Colossus. Towards the year 305 before Christ, Demetrius Poliorcetes laid siege to Rhodes, and the inhabitants defended themselves with so much bravery, that after a whole year of struggle and endurance, they forced the enemy to retire from the island.

The Rhodians, inspired by a sentiment of piety, and excited by fervent gratitude for so signal a proof of the divine favour, commanded Charès to erect a statue to the honour of their deity. An inscription explained that the expenses of its construction were defrayed out of the sale of the materials of war left by Demetrius on his retreat from the island of Rhodes.

This statue was erected on an open space of ground near the great harbour, and near the spot where the pacha’s seraglio now stands; and its fragments, for many years after its destruction, were seen and admired by travellers.

This explanation is still further supported by the fact, that a chapel built on this ground in the time of the Templars is named Fanum Sancti Ioannis Colossensis.

We have seen that Strabo, who wrote and travelled during the reigns of the first two Roman emperors, was, after Polybius, the earliest author who mentions the fall of the Colossus of Rhodes, and that very concisely. Pliny enters into somewhat fuller details, and speaks of the dimensions of the mutilated limbs. “Even while prostrate,” says he, “this statue excited the greatest admiration; few men could span one of its thumbs with their arms, and each of its fingers was as large as an ordinary full-sized statue. Its broken limbs appeared to strangers like caverns, in the interior of which were seen enormous blocks of stone.”

From this time we find no further mention whatever of these fragments, but it is remarkable that towards the end of the second century after Christ some writers speak of a colossal statue at Rhodes as still existing. It is possible that one was again constructed, but of smaller dimensions. Indeed, Leo Allazzi tells us that the Colossus of Rhodes was reconstructed under the Emperor Vespasian.

Alios Aristides, who flourished between the years 149 and 180 of the Christian era, wrote a panegyric on the island of Rhodes, on the occasion of another earthquake which happened there under the reign of Antoninus Pius. He alludes to demolished monuments, but he consoles the inhabitants by telling them, that at any rate all vestiges of their former grandeur have not disappeared, and that they will not be obliged, as in the former disaster [that of B. C. 407], to rebuild the greater part of their town. He reminds them that, on the contrary, the two basins of the port still remain, as well as the theatre, the gymnasium, and the great bronze statue.

This passage is certainly not very clear, and it remains to be proved if the author here speaks of the Colossus which had been restored and had escaped the earthquake, or of some other bronze statue.

Pausanias, who wrote shortly after Aristides, speaks also in two places of the earthquake in the time of Antoninus, without making any mention of the Colossus; but in a description of Athens, he alludes in terms of great admiration to a temple of Jupiter built by Adrian, and he adds: “The emperor consecrated to it a magnificent statue of the god, which surpassed all other statues except the Colossus of Rhodes and of Rome.”

The author could hardly have made this comparison if there had only existed in his time fragments of the Colossus of Rhodes.

Lastly, the satirist Lucian makes frequent mention of the Colossus, and he even introduces it in a dialogue of the assembled gods.

It is probable, therefore, judging from these passages from Aristides, Pausanias, and Lucian, that, at the epoch in which they lived, the Colossus of Rhodes had been restored or reconstructed; for if during four centuries past the fragments had been lying in the dust, these writers would not have thus expressed themselves.

A long time after the fall of the Roman empire, the island of Rhodes was conquered by the general-in-chief of the caliph Othman, in the 7th century of the Christian era; and then mention is once more made of a Colossus in metal. “This last memorial of a glorious past was not respected by the conqueror,” says the Byzantine history; “the general took down the Colossus, which stood erect on the island, transported the metal into Syria, and sold it to a Jew, who loaded 980 camels with the materials of his purchase.”

Such is the account given by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetos, and confirmed by that of Theophanes, Zonaras, and others. As to the fable of the ancient Colossus between whose gigantic limbs ships in full sail were believed to have passed, we are disposed to think that it originated at the time of the Crusades, when the inhabitants of Rhodes must have amused themselves by relating to the new-comers all sorts of incredible stories of their past grandeur.

We can refer those who may still be anxious for further details on the Colossus of Rhodes, to a treatise on the subject by Carl Ferdinand Lüders, in which the fiction of the extended limbs is completely disposed of; but this treatise contains such an array of learned accessories, more germanico, that few will probably have the patience to read it through.

BELISARIUS.

A. D. 565.

The imagination of poets, painters, and sculptors, backed by one of Marmontel’s novels, has helped to make of an apocryphal tradition a matter of history which has been believed in by the many, who are ever open-mouthed to receive the marvellous upon trust.

This tradition relates to the general Belisarius, the conqueror of the Vandals, who, after having been falsely accused of treason, is said to have been deprived of his sight by the Emperor Justinian, and to have been reduced to such a state of poverty that he was compelled to beg his bread in the streets of Constantinople.

No contemporary historian mentions these circumstances; but they have been repeated age after age without examination, and several learned men of repute, such as Volaterranus, Pontanus, &c., have helped to propagate the error in the literary world.

In the 16th century it was so unquestionably accepted by the Italians, that they gave the name of Belisarius begging to a beautiful ancient statue then in the Borghese museum, which Winckelmann, in his Histoire de l’Art, has proved to be no other than a statue of Augustus propitiating Nemesis.

Between the years 1637 and 1681, this fable was made the subject of several tragedies. In the following century Marmontel composed and published his romance of Belisarius, the conception of which arose from an engraving that came into his possession. In his Memoirs he himself thus explains the circumstance:

“I had received a present of an engraving of Belisarius taken from the fine picture of him by Van Dyck. My eyes were continually attracted to the face, and I was seized with an irresistible desire to treat this interesting subject in prose; and as soon as the idea took possession of me, the pains in my chest and lungs seemed to leave me as if by magic. The pleasure of composing my story, the care I took in arranging and developing it, occupied my mind so entirely, that I was drawn away from all thoughts of self.”

The novel was so successful that it was translated into almost every language of Europe, and three successive editions appeared. But the really ludicrous part of the story is, that in the preface to the edition of 1787, the author declares that he has followed from first to last the account given by Procopius, while in fact the details presented by this contemporary of Belisarius in the five first chapters of his Secret History are diametrically opposed to the picture drawn by Marmontel.

Thus then the fiction of blind Belisarius begging was quickly propagated, and was helped on by the artist David, who painted in 1781 his celebrated picture of the general. Again, in the reign of Napoleon I., M. Jouy wrote a tragedy on this subject, but he only obtained permission to bring it out in 1825, and thanks to the immense talent of Talma it was very well received. M. Jouy, in his preface, showed his ignorance as an historian by saying, “I have kept faithfully to the facts, details, and characters authorised by history.”

Lastly, this error appears in modern times in a Turkish tradition, and is noticed by Feller in his Universal Biography. “There is shown to this day,” says he, “a prison in Constantinople called the Tower of Belisarius. It stands on the borders of the sea, on the road from the castle of the seven towers to the seraglio. The common people say that the prisoners let down a small bag at the end of a string to solicit alms from the passers-by, saying: “Date obolum Belisario quem Fortuna evexit, Invidia oculis privavit.”

After having traced as briefly as possible the origin of this fable, we will dwell for a moment on the manner in which the best and most learned critics have treated it.

The hackneyed story of Belisarius, blind and begging, was unknown to all contemporary authors without exception. Not one can be quoted as having mentioned so remarkable a circumstance. From the 6th to the 12th century, no writer who speaks of this great general ever alludes to his blindness or to his poverty.

The French historian Le Beau, in his “Histoire du bas Empire,” says: “The fall of Belisarius gave rise to a ridiculous story which has been for 600 years repeated by poets and prose writers, but which all well-informed authors have agreed in refuting.”

The real fact, drawn from the best sources, and recorded by Gibbon, is this:

About two years after the last victory of Belisarius over the Bulgarians, the Emperor Justinian returned in bad health from a journey to Thracia. There being a rumour of his death, a conspiracy was formed in the palace, but the conspirators were detected, and on being seized were found to have daggers hidden under their garments. Two officers of the household of Belisarius were accused, and torture induced them to declare that they had acted under the secret instructions of their chief. Belisarius appeared before the council, indignant and undaunted. Nevertheless, his fidelity, which had remained unshaken for forty years, availed him nothing. The emperor condemned him without evidence; his life was spared, but his fortune was sequestrated, and from December 563 to July 564 he was guarded as a prisoner in his own palace. At length his innocence was acknowledged, and his freedom and honours were restored; but death, which might possibly have been hastened by grief and resentment, removed him from the world within a year of his liberation.

About 600 years after this event, John Tzetzes, poet and grammarian, born in Constantinople, attempted in ten bad Greek verses to draw a picture of Belisarius deprived of sight and penniless. The tale was imported into Italy with the manuscripts of Greece, and before the close of the 15th century it was taken up by more than one learned writer and universally believed.

The credulity of the multitude is such, that they still persist in ignoring the refutation of Samuel Schelling (Dissertatio historica de Belisario, Witteb. 1665, in 4ᵗᵒ), of Th. Fr. Zeller (Belisarius, Tubing. 1809, in 8ᵛᵒ), of Roth (Ueber Belisar’s Ungnade, Bâle 1846, in 8ᵛᵒ) and many others.

In a note to Gibbon’s History edited by W. Smith LL.D., we see that two theories have been started in modern times to account for the fable of the beggary of Belisarius. The first is that of Le Beau, who supposes that the general was confounded with his contemporary John of Cappadocia. This prætorian prefect of the East, whose crimes deserved a thousand deaths, was ignominiously scourged like the vilest of malefactors, clothed in rags and transported in a bark (542) to the place of his banishment at Antinopolis in Upper Egypt, and this ex-consul and patrician was doomed to beg his bread in the cities which had trembled at his name.

The second supposition is that of Mr. Finlay (History of the Byzantine Empire), who suggests that the story took its rise from the fate of Symbatius and Peganes, who, having formed a conspiracy against Michael III., in the 9th century, were deprived of their sight and exposed as common beggars in Constantinople.

It is not likely, however, that the fate of men in the ninth century should have been confused with that of individuals in the sixth.

It is right to add, that Lord Mahon, in his Life of Belisarius, argues in favour of the tragic fate of Justinian’s celebrated general. “But,” observes Dean Milman, “it is impossible to obtain any satisfactory result without contemporary evidence, which is entirely wanting in the present instance.” These words from the learned Milman lead us to suppose that he rejects the authority of Procopius, who accompanied Belisarius as counsellor and secretary in his Eastern wars, in Africa, and in Italy, as he himself informs us; and who, in his Anecdota,[12] devotes five chapters to the life and misfortunes of Belisarius, without saying one word either of his blindness or of his abject poverty.

Ernest Renan, in his Essais de morale et de critique, has also examined into the trustworthiness of the Secret History of Procopius, and he arrives at the opinion, that this author had only exaggerated the crimes of the wicked century in which Justinian lived. He would then have been the last to soften the disgrace incurred by Belisarius.

At the time of the fall of Napoleon I., a popular song written by Népomucène Lemercier on Belisarius, became more than ever in vogue, as it contained allusions to the misfortunes of the companions in arms and soldiers, attached to the emperor. At all the Bonapartist reunions they sang:

“Un jeune enfant, un casque en main,

Allait quêtant pour l’indigence,

D’un vieillard aveugle et sans pain,

Fameux dans Rome et dans Byzance;

Il disait à chaque passant

Touché de sa noble misère,

Donnez une obole à l’enfant

Qui sert le pauvre Bélisaire!”

In France this ballad contributed greatly to keep up a belief in the fabulous story which we have here examined.

THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY.

A. D. 640.

Ptolemy-Soter, chief of the dynasty of the Lagides, laid the foundation of the Alexandrian library. It was afterwards enlarged by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus and his successors; and from this celebrated repository the city of Alexandria derived the title of “Mother of Books.”

There is much difference of opinion as to the number of works contained in this library. Instead of 54,800 volumes as asserted by St. Epiphanes, or 200,000 according to Josephus, Eusebius tells us, that at the death of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 100,000 volumes were collected in it.

The building was situated to the east of the large sea-port, near the city of Canopus, and became a prey to the flames when Julius Cæsar, who was besieged in that part of the town in which the museum stood, ordered the fleet to be set on fire. The wind unfortunately carried the flames to the neighbouring houses and to the locality of the Bruchion, close to the site of the valuable library.

Lucan, in his Pharsalia, has described this conflagration with much spirit:[13]

“On one proud side the lofty fabric stood

Projected bold into the adjoining flood;

There, fill’d with armed bands, their barks draw near,

But find the same defending Cæsar there:

To every part the ready warrior flies,

And with new rage the fainting fight supplies;

Headlong he drives them with his deadly blade,

Nor seems to be invaded, but to invade.

Against the ships Phalaric darts he aims,

Each dart with pitch and livid sulphur flames.

The spreading fire o’erruns their unctuous sides,

And nimbly mounting, on the topmast rides:

Planks, yards and cordage feed the dreadful blaze;

The drowning vessel hisses in the seas;

While floating arms and men promiscuous strew’d,

Hide the whole surface of the azure flood.

Nor dwells destruction on their fleet alone,

But driven by winds, invades the neighbouring town:

On rapid wings the sheety flames they bear,

In wavy lengths, along the reddening air.

Not much unlike the shooting meteors fly,

In gleamy trails athwart the midnight sky.

Soon as the crowd behold their city burn,

Thither all headlong from the siege they turn;

But Cæsar, prone to vigilance and haste,

To snatch the just occasion ere it pass’d,

Hid in the friendly night’s involving shade,

A safe retreat to Pharos timely made.”

Orosius tells us that 400,000 volumes were destroyed by the fire: “So perished,” says he “this monument of the learning and labour of the ancients, who had amassed the works of so many illustrious men.” “Monumentum studiique curæque majorum qui tot ac tanta illustrium ingeniorum opera congesserant.”[14]

Cleopatra was not insensible to the loss of so great a treasure, and Antony, to console her, presented her with the whole collection of books made by the king of Bithynia at Pergamus, to the number of 200,000 volumes. These books, with the few that had escaped the flames, formed the second library, and were placed in the Serapeon, or temple of Serapis, which from that time became the resort of all learned men. In A. D. 390, the fanatic Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, worthy of being the friend of the tyrant Theodosius, took advantage of the protection of that Emperor to disperse the library of the Serapeon, and to drive out the savans who assembled there. He overthrew the temple itself and built a church on its ruins which bore the name of the Emperor Arcadius. It would thus appear that the oldest and most extensive libraries of Alexandria ceased to exist before the 5th century of the Christian era. Nevertheless, there is still an opinion maintained among learned men that the immense collection made by the Ptolemies was destroyed by the Arabs in the 7th century.[15]

Several writers, with Gibbon at their head, have rejected this notion. Reinhart published at Göttingen in 1792 a special dissertation on the subject. It was Gregorius Bar-Hebræus, better known under the name of Abulpharadje, elected primate of the East in 1264, who gave the earliest account of the burning of the library at Alexandria, in a chronicle he published in Syriac, and afterwards translated into Arabic at the solicitation of his friends.

He says: “John the grammarian came to Amrou, who was in possession of Alexandria, and begged that he might be allowed to appropriate a part of the booty. ‘Which part do you wish for,’ asked Amrou. John replied, ‘The books of philosophy which are in the treasury (library) of kings.’ Amrou answered that he could not dispose of these without the permission of the Emir Al-Moumenin Omar. He wrote to the Emir, who replied in these terms: ‘As to the books you speak of, if their contents are in conformity with the Book of God (the Koran) we have no need of them; if, on the contrary, their contents are opposed to it, it is still less desirable to preserve them, so I desire that they may be destroyed.’ Amrou-Ben-Alas in consequence ordered them to be distributed in the various baths in Alexandria, to be burnt in the stoves; and after six months, not a vestige of them remained.”[16]

How open is this unlikely story to objection! In the first place, John of Alexandria was dead before the city was taken, on the 21st December 640.

D’Herbelot, in his Bibliothèque Orientale, tells us that at that period four thousand baths existed in Alexandria. What a multitude of volumes it must have required to supply fuel for them for the space of six months! And then the absurdity of attempting to heat baths with parchment!!!

Renaudot was the first in France who threw a doubt on this story in his Histoire des Patriarches d’Alexandrie. “It merely reposes,” says he, “on Eastern tales, and these are never to be relied upon.”

Kotbeddin, in his History of Mecca, from which de Sacy quotes an extract in his Notes des Manuscrits, Vol. IV. p. 569, relates seriously, that at the taking of Bagdad by Hulagou the destroyer, of the empire of the Caliphs, the Tartars threw the books belonging to the colleges of this city into the river Euphrates, and the number was so great, that they formed a bridge, over which foot-passengers and horsemen went across!

Besides Abulpharadi, two other eastern writers give an account of the destruction of the library: Abd-Allatif and Makrizi; but they only go over the same ground as their predecessors.

These three writers (of the 12th, the 13th, and the 15th centuries) are the less to be relied upon as no other eastern historians who speak of the conquest of Egypt by the Arabians, mention the loss of their great repository by fire.

Eutyches, the patriarch of Alexandria, who lived in the 10th century, and who enters into details of the taking of this city by the Arabians; Elmacin, who, in the 13th century, recounts the same fact; and Aboulfeda, who at about the same period gives a description of Egypt, completely ignore this remarkable and important event.

How is it that the Greek authors, who were so incensed against the Saracens, omit to speak of this conflagration authorised by Omar?—and that after centuries of silence Abulpharadi is the first who opens his lips on the subject? And it is still more surprising that this writer did not mention the anecdote in his Chronicle, published in Syriac, but that he only added it while translating his work into Arabic at the latter end of his life.

The Caliphs had forbidden under severe penalties the destruction of all Jewish and Christian volumes, and we nowhere hear of any such work of destruction during the first conquests of the Mahommedans.

Quite at the beginning of the 5th century, Paulus Orosius, a disciple of St. Jerome, mentions, on his return from Palestine, having seen at Alexandria the empty book-cases which the library had formerly contained.

All these arguments brought forward by Assemanni, by Gibbon, by Reinhard, and many others, do not appear to have convinced M. Matter, although he admits in his Histoire de l’École d’Alexandrie, that a certain amount of courage is necessary to maintain the opinion of the existence of an extensive collection of books at the commencement of the conquest.

“There are two points beyond dispute,” says he, “in this question. The first is, that Alexandria possessed during the 5th and 6th centuries, after the destruction of the Serapeon, a library of sufficient importance to contain many valuable literary works. The next is, that these works, far from being limited to religion and theology, as Gibbon supposes, included various branches of study; of this we cannot entertain a doubt when we reflect on the later productions of the school of Alexandria.”

In order to establish his argument, Matter enters into long details. “Gibbon himself,” he says, “would have admitted later that Amrou might have burned other works in Alexandria besides those on theology.”

Two orientalists, Langlès and de Sacy, have adopted a very similar opinion. “It is incontestable,” says the former, “that on the entrance of the Mahommedans, a library still existed at Alexandria, and that it fell a prey to the flames.”[17]

De Sacy allows that the story told by Abulpharadi is very probable, and proves that at that period the Mahommedans did demolish libraries and destroy books, in spite of the law against any such destruction.

At any rate this opinion has only been adopted by a small minority, and Amrou is generally exonerated from having been the destroyer of the Alexandrian Library.

POPE JOAN.

A. D. 855.

Is it true that a woman succeeded in deceiving her cotemporaries to the extent of elevating herself to the pontifical throne?

Did a catastrophe ensue which afforded a proof of her sex as unexpected as indisputable?

If there is no foundation for this tale, how comes it that it has been so long accepted as authentic by writers whose attachment to the Roman church is perfectly sincere?

Such are the questions that we here propose to ourselves, and which have been recently treated by two Dutch literati, Mr. N. C. Kist, professor at the university of Leyden, in a work published in 1845; and Mr. J. H. Wensing, professor at the seminary of Warmond, who has written a refutation of Mr. Kist’s work in a thick volume of more than 600 pages, printed at the Hague.

I will proceed to give a brief sketch of the circumstances as presented to us by reliable authors.

After the death of Leo IV., in the year 855, the Roman people proceeded, according to the custom of that period, to the nomination of a sovereign pontiff. The choice fell upon a foreigner who had for some years been resident in the eternal city. He was held in high repute, as well for his virtues as for his talents. This stranger was a woman of English origin, born in Germany, who had studied in France and Greece, and who in the disguise of a man had baffled all detection. Raised to the pontifical throne, she assumed the name of John VIII., and governed with exemplary wisdom, but in private life was guilty of irregularities which resulted in pregnancy. She endeavoured to conceal her situation, but on the occasion of a great religious festival she was seized with sudden pains in the midst of a procession, and, to the astonishment and consternation of the crowd, gave birth to a child who instantly expired. The mother herself died upon the spot, succumbing to the effects of pain, terror, and shame.

This is the most widely spread version; it has however been asserted that the female pope, “la papesse,” survived her mischance, and ended her days in a dungeon.

Anastatius, deacon and librarian of the Roman church, was living at this period, and collected numerous materials for a history of the sovereign pontiffs. He composed a series of their biographies under the title of “Liber Pontificalis,” and affirms that he was present at the election of the Popes from Sergius III. to John VIII., that is to say from 844 to 882. He must then have been a witness to the catastrophe of Joan. Now he makes no mention of it, but, in his work, Pope Benedictus III. follows immediately after Leo IV. An occurrence of so extraordinary a nature must necessarily have struck him. It has indeed been pretended that he did make mention of it, but that his account was suppressed by defenders of the church, and that in some manuscripts it is still to be found. Nevertheless these manuscripts, very scarce and incorrect, only contain one phrase to the purpose, which is met with for the first time in the writings of the 14th century. It is moreover accompanied by an expression of doubt (ut dicitur) and there is at the present time scarcely any enlightened critic but would regard it as an interpolation of the copyist.

The silence of Anastatius admits therefore of but one interpretation.

It is not until two hundred years after the alleged date of the event that the first mention of it is found in the Chronicon of Marianus Scotus, who was born in Scotland in 1028, and died at Mayence in 1086. He says: “Joan, a female, succeeded Pope Leo IV. during two years, five months, and four days.” A contemporary of Marianus Scotus, Godfrey of Viterbo, made a list of the sovereign pontiffs, in which we read between Leo IV. and Benedict III., “Papissa Joanna non numeratur” (the female Pope does not count).

We must come to the 13th century to find in the Chronicon of Martinus Polonus, Bishop of Cosenza in Calabria, some particulars respecting the female Pope Joan.[18] At this period a belief in the truth of her existence is spread abroad, and the evidences become more numerous, but they are little else but repetitions and hear-says; no details of any weight are given.

David Blondel,[19] although a Protestant clergyman, treated the story of Pope Joan as a fable. The English bishop John Burnet is of the same opinion, as well as Cave, a celebrated English scholar. Several other learned men have amply refuted this ancient tradition. Many have thought to sustain the romance of Marianus against the doubt excited by a silence of more than 200 years, by asserting that the authors who lived from the year 855 to 1050, refrained from making any mention of the story on account of the shame it occasioned them; and that they preferred to change the order of succession of the Popes by a constrained silence, rather than contribute, by the enunciation of an odious truth, to the preservation of the execrable memory of the woman who had dishonoured the papal chair. But how is it possible to reconcile this with the other part of the same story, that the Roman court was so indignant at the scandal, that, to prevent a repetition of it, they perpetuated its remembrance by the erection of a statue, and the prohibition of all processions from passing through the street where the event had happened. What shadow of truth can exist in things so totally contradictory?

Moreover, Joseph Garampi[20] has proved beyond dispute, that between the death of Leo IV. and the nomination of Benedict III., there was no interval in which to place Pope Joan, and the most virulent antagonists of the court of Rome make no mention of her.

In 991 Arnolphus, bishop of Orleans, addressed to a council held at Reims, a discourse in which he vehemently attacked the excesses and turpitudes of which Rome was guilty. Not a word, however, was said on the subject of Joan. The patriarch of Constantinople, Phocius, who was the author of the schism which still divides the Greek and Latin churches, and who died in 890, says nothing respecting her.

The Greeks, who after him maintained eager controversies against Rome, are silent respecting Joan.

It is clear that the author who first speaks of this event, after a lapse of two centuries, is not worthy of credit, and that those who, after him, related the same thing, have copied from one another, without due examination.

Whilst rejecting as apocryphal the legend under our consideration, some writers have at the same time sought to explain its origin.

The Jesuit Papebroch, one of the most industrious editors of the Acta Sanctorum, thinks that the name “papesse” was given to John VII., because he shewed extreme weakness of character in the exercise of his functions.

The Cardinal Baronius starts an hypothesis of the same kind, but this conjecture is somewhat far-fetched.

A chronicle inserted in the collection of Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, contains an anecdote that has some analogy with our subject.

A patriarch of Constantinople had a niece to whom he was much attached. He disguised her in male attire and made her pass for a man. At his death he recommended her to his clergy, without divulging the secret of her sex. She was very learned and virtuous, and was elected Patriarch. She remained eighteen months on the throne, but the Prince of Benevent, having become acquainted with the truth, denounced the fraud at Constantinople, and the patriarchess was immediately expelled.

This anecdote was very generally reported and credited in Italy in the 11th century, for Pope Leo IX., in a letter of 1053, written to the Patriarch of Constantinople, expresses himself thus:—

“Public report asserts as an undeniable fact, that in defiance of the canons of the first council of Nice, you Greeks have raised to the pontifical throne, eunuchs, and even a woman.”

At this period Rome had not yet begun to occupy herself with the legend of Joan, which was scarcely spread abroad in Germany. If in the East there had been any idea of the scandal of the female Pope, which was afterwards so prevalent, the reproach of Leo IX. would undoubtedly have been turned against himself.

We give another explanation: “The strangest stories have always their foundation in some truth,” says Onuphrius Panvinius, in his notes upon Platina: “I think that this fable of the woman Joan takes its origin from the immoral life of Pope John XII., who had many concubines, and amongst others Joan, who exercised such an empire over him that for some time it might be said it was she who governed. Hence it is that she was surnamed “papesse,” and this saying, taken up by ignorant writers and amplified by time, has given birth to the story which has had such wide circulation.

We find in the history of the Bishop of Cremona, Luitprand,[21] that the love of John XII. for his concubine Joan went so far that he gave her entire cities, that he despoiled the church of St. Peter of crosses and of golden chalices in order to lay them at her feet; and we are told that she died in childbed.

This death is a remarkable circumstance. In it we may trace the source of the most striking event in the story of Pope Joan.

ABELARD AND ELOISA.

A. D. 1140.

We had already collected many notes with the intention of examining critically the celebrated history of these two lovers of the 12th century, when we read an article by Mr. F. W. Rowsell in the St. James’s Magazine for October 1864, in which he gives a sketch of the lives of both of them. The writer has succeeded in condensing into half a dozen very amusing pages a complete résumé of the leading events in their history; only he has followed the commonly received opinion held by many English and French historians who have taken up the subject, and he does not enter into a critical examination of several points at issue.

Everybody knows how great an attraction the monument erected to the memory of Eloisa and Abelard is to the crowds who visit the cemetery of Père la Chaise, recalling to their minds the letters full of love and passion written by Eloisa, which have elicited so many imitations both in prose and verse in England and in France.

The history of the two lovers being true as a whole, we are far from wishing to take away from the sympathy that their constancy and hapless love so well deserve. Our only object is to separate the true from the false, and to show that the celebrated letters imputed to Eloisa were not written by her at all, and that the tomb in Père la Chaise is altogether a modern construction.

Abelard, born in 1079, died in 1164, and Eloisa survived him upwards of twenty years, dying in 1184.

The works and correspondence of Abelard were published for the first time in 1616 by the learned Duchesne, and we therein find three letters from Eloisa to Abelard and four from Abelard to Eloisa. These are the letters on which Pope, in England, and Dorat, Mercier, Saurin, Colardeau, &c., in France, founded their poems.

Out of these seven letters, four only can strictly be termed the amatory correspondence of the two lovers. The remainder, and those that have been brought to light and published in later years, are pious effusions which contain no trace whatever of those passionate emotions which pervaded the four other letters. We must remind the reader that the oldest manuscript existing of these epistles is nothing more than an alleged copy of the originals made one hundred years after the death of Eloisa. It is preserved in the library of the town of Troyes, and belongs to the latter half of the 13th century.

A modern French historian, M. Henri Martin, having written some pages in a melodramatic style on these letters of Eloisa, a critic, M. de Larroque,[22] pointed out to him the error into which he had fallen, they having evidently been composed some years after the death of the heroine.

The learned Orelli published in 4ᵗᵒ at Zurich, in 1841, what may be termed the memoirs of Abelard, entitled, Historia Calamitatum: also the seven letters of the two lovers.

In the preface to this work, Orelli declares, that on many grounds he believes that these letters, so different from such as might have been expected from Eloisa, were never written by her. The grounds, which Orelli omits to state, are supplied by M. Lalanne in “La Correspondance Littéraire” of the 5th December 1856.

In order to arrive at a clear perception of the improbabilities and contradictions contained in these epistles, all the bearings of the case should be kept well in mind.

In the Historia Calamitatum, Abelard opens his heart to a friend who is in affliction and whom he endeavours to console by drawing a counter picture of his own misery. The writer relates his life from his birth; his struggles and his theological triumphs; his passion for Eloisa, the vengeance of Fulbert, her uncle, the canon of Paris; his wandering life since he assumed the cowl in the abbey of St. Denis; the foundation of the convent of the Paraclete, where he received Eloisa and the nuns of the convent of Argenteuil; and lastly his nomination as Abbé of the monastery of St. Gildas, where the monks more than once conspired against his life.

This is about the only document we possess regarding the life of Abelard, for it is remarkable that the contemporary writers are singularly concise in all that concerns him. Otho, bishop of Freisingen, who died in 1158, is the only one who makes even an allusion to the vengeance of Fulbert; and he expresses himself so vaguely that his meaning would be incomprehensible were we not able to explain it by the help of the Historia Calamitatum.

According to these memoirs, Abelard was thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age when he became enamoured of Eloisa, who was then sixteen or seventeen years old. He introduced himself into the household of the Canon Fulbert, was appointed professor to the young girl, and soon became domesticated in the family. Eloisa, becoming soon after pregnant, fled to Brittany, where she gave birth to a son. She afterwards returned to Paris, and after frequent negotiations between Fulbert and Abelard, the lovers were at length married, but the marriage was kept secret.

The rest is known. Abelard, fearfully mutilated, became a monk in the abbey of St. Denis, and at his bidding, to which she was ever entirely submissive, Eloisa took the veil in the convent of Argenteuil.

These events occupied about the space of two years, and bring us to 1118 or 1119.

In a council held in Paris ten years later (1129) a decree was passed expelling Eloisa and the other nuns from the convent of Argenteuil, which the Abbé Suger had claimed as being a dependance of the Abbaye de St. Denis.[23]

This expulsion coming to the ears of Abelard, he offered the nuns an asylum in the Paraclete, which he had lately founded, and which he soon after made over to them as a gift.

Pope Innocent II. confirmed this gift in 1131. Abelard speaks further, in his Historia Calamitatum, of events befalling a year later, and of his return to the abbey of St. Gildas. We see therefore that this memoir, written with much care and attention, cannot have been published before 1133, and perhaps even long after that. Abelard was then in his fifty-fourth year and Eloisa in her thirty-second or thirty-third. About fourteen years had elapsed since both had embraced the monastic life: in the meanwhile they had met and had spent more or less time together in the Paraclete between 1129 and 1132.

Let us now enquire if the subject matter contained in these seven letters, all of which were written after the latter date (a fact that should be carefully noted) agrees with that which has preceded.

The amorous correspondence of the lovers is confined to four letters. The first is written by Eloisa. She says, that if she writes to Abelard at all, it is that she has by accident seen the Historia Calamitatum; and in order to convince him that she has read it, she touches briefly on each circumstance recorded in it, every one of which must have been only too familiar to them both.

Does the reader think this a natural or a probable style of commencement? Does it not denote something artificial in the composition? Farther on she complains that Abelard has forsaken her: “her to whom the name of mistress was dearer than that of wife, however sacred this latter tie might be.”[24]

And finally she adds: “Only tell me if you can, why, since we have taken the monastic vows, which you alone desired, you have so neglected and forgotten me that I have neither been blessed by your presence nor consoled by a single letter in your absence. Answer me, I beseech you, if you can, or I may myself be tempted to tell you what I think, and what all the world suspects.”[25]

This letter, full of passionate reproach, contains contradictions and improbabilities perceptible to all who have read that which has preceded.

Let us first call attention to the style, which is hardly to be explained. The passionate expressions of Eloisa would have been quite natural in the first years that followed her separation from Abelard, but fourteen years had elapsed—fourteen years of monastic life to both one and the other.

She appeals to a man of fifty-four years of age, cut off for the space of fourteen years from all intercourse with her, worn out by his theological contests, his wandering life, and the persecutions of which he had been the victim; and who prays only, according to his own letters, “for eternal rest in the world to come.” But nothing checks the flow of her passion, which she pours out with a vehemence the more remarkable as proceeding from a woman of whom Abelard had not long since written, in his Historia Calamitatum: “All are alike struck by her piety in the convent, her wisdom, and her incomparable gentleness and patience under the trials of life. She is seldom to be seen, but lives in the solitude of her cell, the better to apply herself to prayer and holy meditation.”

But the continuation seems even more incomprehensible.

Admitting, which is somewhat difficult, that Eloisa had not seen Abelard since his severe affliction until his reception of her in the Paraclete in 1129, on her expulsion from Argenteuil, is it at all certain that they did meet then, and that moreover the frequency of their interviews gave rise to scandalous reports which obliged them again to separate? How then can Eloisa complain that since their entrance upon a religious life (that is to say since 1119) she has “neither rejoiced in his presence, nor been consoled by his letters?” And she wrote this in 1133 or 1134! It is incredible that these lines should have been penned by her.

The second letter of Eloisa is not less ardent than the first. She mourns in eloquent language over the cold tone of sadness pervading the answer sent to her by Abelard. She reverts at some length to the cruel cause of their separation, and deplores her misfortune in such unequivocal terms, that we think it better to give her words in their original latin. “Difficillimum est a desideriis maximarum voluptatum avellere animum. ... In tantum vero illæ quæs pariter exercuimus amantium voluptates dulces mihi fuerunt ut nec displicere mihi nunc, nec a memoria labi possint.

“Quocumque loco me vertam, semper se oculis meis cum suis ingerunt desideriis. Nec etiam dormienti suis illusionibus parcunt. Inter ipsa missarum solemnio, obscæna earum voluptatum fustasmata ita sibi penitus miserrimam captivant animam ut turpitudinibus illis magis quam orationi vacem. Quæ cum ingemiscere debeam de commissis, suspiro potius de amissis; nec solum quæ egimus, sed loca pariter et tempora in quibus hæc egimus ita tecum nostro infixa sunt animo, ut in ipsis omnia tecum agam, nec dormiens etiam ab his quiescam. Nonnunquam et ipso motu corporis, animi mei cogitationes deprehenduntur, nec a verbis temperant improvisis ... castam me prædicant qui non deprehenderunt hypocritam.”[26]...

These expressions, scarcely equalled by the delirium of Sappho, succeed at length in rekindling the expiring passion of Abelard. He replies by quotations from Virgil, from Lucanus, and by passages from the Song of Solomon. To convince her that their sorrows are not unmerited, he reminds her on his side of their past pleasures, and among others, of a sacrilegious interview held in the refectory of the convent of Argenteuil, where he had visited her in secret.

He then, and more than once, enlarges in praise of eunuchs, and ends by enclosing a prayer he has composed for her and for himself.

This closes the amorous correspondence, for in the next letter Eloisa declares her resolution, to which she remains firm, of putting a restraint on the ardour of her feelings, although she cannot at the same time refrain from quoting some equivocal lines from Ovid’s Art of Love.

We must here once more ask whether, circumstanced as these two lovers were, and taking into consideration the piety and resignation apparent in all the writings of Abelard, he being at the time fifty-four years of age, and Eloisa thirty-three—and after fourteen years’ separation, it is credible or possible that the letters we have quoted, letters in which all modesty is laid aside, should have been written by Eloisa? Allowing that she had preserved Abelard’s correspondence, is it easy to suppose that Abelard, continually moving from place to place, should have preserved hers to the day of his death, so that their letters might eventually be brought together?—letters, too, breathing an ardour so compromising to the reputation of both?

Is it likely that Eloisa should have kept copies of her own letters, the perusal of which, it must be confessed would not have tended to the edification of the nuns?

Remember also that all these events occurred in the first half of the 12th century, in an age when it was very unusual to make collections of any correspondence of an amorous nature.

We can then only arrive at the same conclusion as Messieurs Lalanne, Orelli, Ch. Barthélemy, and others, viz. that the correspondence which has given such renown to the names of Abelard and Eloisa as lovers, is in all probability apocryphal.

M. Ludovic Lalanne has another supposition, which is curious, and which appears to us not to be impossible:

“These letters,” says he, “are evidently very laboured. The circumstances follow each other with great regularity, and the vehement emotions that are traceable throughout, do not in any wise interfere with the methodical march of the whole. The length of the letters, and the learned quotations in them from the Bible, from the fathers of the church, and from pagan authors, all seem to indicate that they were composed with a purpose and with art, and were by no means the production of a hasty pen. Eloisa, we must remember, was a woman of letters, and a reputation for learning was of great value in her eyes. Did she, who survived her lover upwards of twenty years, wish to bequeath to posterity the memory of their misfortunes, by herself arranging and digesting at a later period, so as to form a literary composition, the letters that at divers times she had written and received? Or has perhaps a more eloquent and experienced pen undertaken the task? These are questions difficult to resolve. Anyhow, the oldest manuscript of this correspondence with which we are acquainted, is upwards of a hundred years posterior to the death of Eloisa. It is, as we have already said, the manuscript of the library of the town of Troyes.”

Let us now proceed to examine the authority for the so-called tomb of these lovers in the cemetery of Père la Chaise.

Two learned archæologists will enlighten us on the subject. Monsieur Lenoir,[27] in his Musée des Monuments français, and Monsieur de Guilhermy, in an article of the Annales Archéologiques de Didron for 1846.

During the French Revolution of 1792, the convent of the Paraclete, founded by Abelard, was sold. In order to protect the remains of the lovers from desecration, which was too common in those days, some worthy inhabitants of Nogent-sur-Seine, took possession of the coffins and deposited them in the church of that town. Seven years later M. Lenoir obtained the permission of the minister to transfer these remains to Paris, and it occurred to him at the same time, that it would be expedient to enclose them in a tomb of the period in which the lovers had lived. He was told that in the chapel of the infirmary of Saint Marcel-les-Chalons, Peter the Venerable had erected a monument to Abelard. Several denied this fact; but be that as it may, Monsieur Lenoir obtained possession of part of this monument, which had been purchased by a physician of the town in order to save it from destruction. M. Lenoir then constructed a monument with the fragments of a chapel of the abbey of St. Denis, and, as he tells us, placed the sarcophagus, which was of the style of architecture in vogue in the 12th century, in a room of the museum entrusted to his care.

The following information given by M. de Guilhermy[28] will show us how far M. Lenoir succeeded in his architectural device, and how far the sarcophagus contains the actual remains of Abelard and Eloisa:

“How many illusions,” says M. de Guilhermy, “would vanish into thin air if the pilgrims who came to visit the shrine of these celebrated lovers in the cemetery of Père la Chaise only knew, that in the construction of the sepulchral chapel there is not one single stone from the abbey of the Paraclete. The pillars, the capitals, the rose-works, which decorate the facings of the tomb belonged to the abbey of St. Denis. It does not require a very practised eye to discover that the sculptures are not in harmony, and were never intended to form a whole. It was the former director of the Musée des Monuments Français, who conceived the idea of putting together some fragments placed at his disposal, and with these to erect a monument worthy of receiving the bones of the two illustrious lovers of the 12th century.

“A wooden case sealed with the republican seal of the municipality of Nogent-sur-Seine, carried to Paris in 1799 the remains which were taken out of the grave in the Paraclete; but before depositing them in their new asylum, it was thought necessary to satisfy the amateurs of relics of this nature. The republicans opened the box, and all that was left of the bodies after a period of six hundred years was stolen out of it.” M. de Guilhermy says that: “Actually a tooth of Eloisa was offered for sale at the time. At any rate it was in the following manner that the tomb of Abelard was completed. A bas-relief which represented the funeral procession of Louis, the eldest son of Louis IX. of France, was taken from St. Denis, and it was decided that for the future this piece of sculpture should do duty for the mausoleum of Abelard. Two medallions, the work of a second-rate artist of the 16th century, represented Abelard with curled mustachios, and Eloisa under the form of a half-naked woman.”

“But this is not all. On the sarcophagus are two recumbent figures. One is draped in priestly robes and was purloined from one of the numerous cloisters demolished in Paris; the other is the statue of some noble lady in the costume and style befitting the 14th century, which once reclined on a tomb in the chapel of St. Jean de Beauvais in Paris.”

It is as well to recall such details as these in order to expose errors which, unless refuted, would from their long standing end by being accepted as truths. But after reading all the circumstances narrated above, can it be believed that Monsieur Guizot, who is so well acquainted with the real facts, or who at any rate ought to be acquainted with them, should, in order to gratify the public taste for sentiment, write as follows in the preface to a translation of the letters of Abelard and Eloisa:[29]

“Vingt-et-un ans après la mort d’Abailard, c’est-à-dire en 1163, agée de 63 ans, Héloïse descendit dans le même tombeau. Ils y reposent encore l’un et l’autre, après six cent soixante-quinze ans, et tous les jours de fraiches couronnes, déposées par des mains inconnues, attestent pour les deux morts la sympathie sans cesse renaissante des générations qui se succèdent!”

It would be difficult to find a more inflated style with which to decorate an historical error.

WILLIAM TELL.

A. D. 1307.

Formerly an historical fact needed only the authority of tradition to be generally received and duly established; but in the present day the critic is not so easily satisfied, and insists upon proof as a basis for his belief.

In the field of history we meet with many contested points, but it is rare to find an error persistently maintained during five hundred years, in spite of the refutation of innumerable authors.

This is the case with the tale of William Tell, which is nothing more nor less than a northern saga that has been adopted and repeated from generation to generation.

The revolution which took place in Switzerland in 1307 gave rise to the legend of the Swiss hero, and, from that time to the present, writers have continually endeavoured to expose its unsound basis, but the public, equally pertinacious, have insisted on believing in its truth.

The study of historical and popular legends is the study of a peculiar phase of the human mind, and is one of the aspects under which the history of a people should be considered.

All epochs of ignorance or superstition have been remarkable for a strong belief in the marvellous. The object of belief may vary, but the disposition to believe is the same.

In order to place the history of William Tell as clearly as possible before the reader, let us in the first place turn to the writings of the old Swiss chroniclers. Conrad Justinger, who died in 1426, is one of the most ancient. He was chancellor of the city of Bern, and the composition of a chronicle of this canton was committed to him. It does not extend beyond the year 1421.

Melchior Russ, registrar at Lucerne in 1476, copies word for word in his chronicle the narrative of Conrad Justinger concerning the political state of the Waldstätten, their disputes with the Hapsburg dynasty, and the insurrection of the country.

The Bernese chronicler attributes the insurrection of the Alpine peasantry to the services required and the heavy burdens imposed upon them by the house of Hapsburg, and to the ill-treatment the men, women, and girls endured from the governors of the country. In support of this accusation Melchior Russ cites an example; he says: “William Tell was forced by the seneschal to hit with an arrow an apple placed on the head of his own son, failing in which, he himself was to be put to death.” It is here that Russ takes up the narrative of Justinger, and continues the history of Tell in a chapter entitled: “Adventure of Tell on the Lake.”

“Tell resolved to avenge himself of the cruel and unjust treatment he had long endured from the governor and the magistrates. He went into the canton of Uri, assembled the commune, and told them with sobs of emotion of the tyranny and persecution to which he was every day exposed. His complaints coming to the ears of the governor, he ordered Tell to be seized, to be bound hand and foot, and to be carried in a boat to a fortified castle situated in the centre of the lake. During the passage across a violent tempest arose, and all on board, giving themselves up for lost, began to implore the aid of God and of the saints. It was suggested to the governor that Tell, being vigorous and skilled in nautical matters, was the only one likely to help them out of their danger. Aware of their imminent peril, the governor promised that Tell’s life should be spared if he succeeded in landing all the passengers in safety. On his promising to do so he was set free, and manœuvred so well that he steered close to a flat rock, snatched up his cross-bow, leapt ashore at one bound, and, aiming at the governor, shot him dead. The crew were home away in the boat, which Tell had quickly pushed off from the shore, and he regained the interior, where he continued to excite the people to rebellion and to revolt.”

We will now quote from Peterman Etterlein, another chronicler, whose work was first published at Bâle in 1507:

“Now it happened one day that the seneschal (or governor), named Gressler (or Gessler), came to the canton of Uri, and ordered a pole to be fixed on a spot much frequented by the people. A hat was placed on the top of the pole, and a decree was published commanding every passer-by to do homage to the hat as if the governor himself stood there in person. Now there was in the canton a worthy man named William Tell, who had secretly conspired with Stöffacher and his companions. This man passed and repassed several times in front of the pole and the hat without saluting them. The official on guard reported the circumstance to his master, who, when he became acquainted with this act of insubordination, summoned Tell to his presence, and demanded the reason of his disobedience. “My good Lord,” said Tell, “I could not imagine that your Grace would attach so much importance to a salute; pardon me this fault, therefore, and impute it to my thoughtlessness. Now William Tell was the most skilful crossbowman that it was possible to find, and he had pretty children whom he tenderly loved. The governor said to him: ‘It is reported that thou art a celebrated archer; thou shalt give me a proof of thy skill in bringing down with thine arrow an apple placed on the head of one of thy children. If thou dost not hit it at the first trial it shall cost thee thy life.’

“It was in vain that Tell remonstrated with the governor; he refused to relent, and he himself placed the apple on the head of the child. Thus driven by hard necessity, Tell first took an arrow which he slipt under his doublet, and then took another which he fitted to his bow. Having prayed to God and to the holy Virgin to direct his arm and to save his son, he brought down the apple without wounding the child. The governor had perceived that he concealed the first arrow, and questioned him as to his reason for so doing, and after much hesitation on the one part and terrible menaces on the other, Tell confessed that if he had struck his child, he should have shot the governor with the second arrow. Well, replied Gessler, I have promised thee thy life and I will keep my word, but since I am acquainted with thy evil intentions, I will confine thee in a place where thou wilt never see the sun nor the moon, and where thou wilt no longer have it in thy power to attempt my life. He immediately ordered his attendants to seize Tell, and he embarked with them and the prisoner for his castle of Küssenach, where he resolved to shut up his victim in a dark tower. Tell’s arms were placed in the stern of the boat, close to the governor.”

As in the preceding narrative, a storm arises, and Tell, to whom the care of the vessel is confided, leaps upon a rock, lies in ambush in a hollow through which the governor must pass to reach his castle, and kills him with an arrow from his bow.

The other chroniclers have followed the same story, sometimes modifying it and at others subjecting it to a critical examination. Now there are four different views existing of this tradition of William Tell. The first admits the authenticity of the legend in all its details, as it is believed in the canton of Uri.

The second admits the existence of Tell, his refusal to do homage to the hat, his voyage on the lake, and the tragical end of Gessler; but it rejects the story of the apple.

According to the third view, William Tell is believed to have existed and to have made himself remarkable by some daring exploit; but this exploit was not connected with the plans of the conspirators, and consequently exercised no influence over the formation of the Swiss confederation.

The fourth view supposes the tradition of William Tell to be a mere fable, an afterthought, unworthy of being inserted in any history of Switzerland.

We know of no chronicle anterior to those of Melchior Russ and Petermann Etterlein that records the events of which the tradition of William Tell is composed. And so great a difference is perceptible between the two histories, that it would be presumption to maintain that the one emanates from the other, or that they have been drawn from a common source.

However it is far from being the fact that all the historical works written by the cotemporaries of this hero have been destroyed or buried in oblivion. Freudenberger, in his Danish Fable, has cited several of them. Franz Guillimann, in his work De rebus Helveticis, published at Fribourg in 1598, inserted the history of William Tell, although he regarded it as a mixture of fiction and probable facts, or rather as a conventional truth that does not bear examination; for he casts a doubt upon the very existence of the personage whose memory the Swiss people honour as their liberator.

In one of his letters, addressed to Goldast, 27th March 1607, he writes thus: “You ask me what I think of the history of William Tell: here is my answer. Although in my Helvetian Antiquities I have yielded to the popular belief in introducing certain details connected with that tale, still when I look more closely into it, the whole thing appears to me to be a pure fable; and that which confirms me in my opinion is, that up to this time I have never met with any writer anterior to the 15th century who alludes to any such history. It appears to me that all the circumstances have been invented to foment the hatred of the confederate states against Austria. I could produce my reasons for supposing this story of Tell to be a fabrication; but why should we waste time on such a subject?”