A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [205]
Guilty passions, faithless spouses, agonies of childbirth, frail nuns and pregnant abbesses, adulterous queens, cruel deaths of children made up the plots. All humanity—proud cardinals and beggars, bailiff and butcher’s wife, Jews, innkeepers, riotous students, knights, wood-cutters, midwives, village fools—were the characters. The Virgin befriended and forgave them all, even the mother of a Pope who is so swollen with pride that she thinks herself greater than the Mother of God. After appropriate punishment, she too receives grace.
God in the plays was costumed in a white robe with gilt wig and beard and gilded face, angels had gilded wings, Herod had a black beard and Saracen’s robes, devils and demons wore grisly masks, horns, forked tails, and body suits covered with horsehair. Often they ran through the audience to pinch and frighten the spectators.
Apocalypse, never far out of mind, was enacted in the Day of Judgment and the Harrowing of Hell when Christ goes down to lead Adam and the prophets out to Paradise. Anti-Christ appears at his appointed time, traditionally fixed at three and a half years before the Last Judgment. Born of Satan’s seduction of a woman of Babylon, and instructed in all the demonic arts, he gains such power that kings and cardinals pay him homage until he is overthrown at Armageddon in the triumph of good over evil. The saved are separated from the damned, and angels empty the vials of wrath.
A Lollard preacher in England, seeking to justify the 14th century stage, said that men and women seeing the Passion of Christ and his saints would be moved to “compassion and devotion, weeping bitter tears, not scorning God but worshiping.” Seeing how the Devil moved people to lechery and pride and made them his servants to bring them to Hell, they would be converted to “good living,” therefore the playing of miracles “turneth men to bileve and not perverteth.” Perhaps unconvinced by his own argument, he added reasonably that men must have some recreation and it was better, or at least less evil, that they took it in the playing of miracles than by other “japes.”
The siege of Jerusalem played before the Emperor broke away from previous subject matter to present for the first time the re-enactment of a historical event. Its technical marvels and verve of staged battle were breathtaking. The crusaders’ ship, complete with mast, sail, and flying banners, was propelled down the hall so “lightly and softly” as actually to seem to be moving on water. Knights, wearing the correct heraldry if not costumes of nearly 300 years before, poured from the ship to assault the reconstructed battlements of Jerusalem. From a painted Moslem tower a muezzin chanted the wailing Arabic prayer. Saracens in turbans flashed wicked scimitars, crusaders were thrown from siege ladders, the onlookers gazed in wonder, stirred by the beauty and excitement to enthusiasm for a new crusade—which indeed was the purpose of the performance. The leading propagandist of crusade, Philippe de Mézières, was much admired by the King, who had appointed him a member of the Royal Council and tutor of his son.
Next day provided still another wonder. A specially constructed boat, fitted like a residence with halls, chambers, fireplaces, chimneys, and a court bed, was provided to convey the royal party half a mile down the river to the new palace of the Louvre. The Emperor was visibly impressed. Charles showed him the reconstructions by which he had transformed the old fortress into a “true royal palace”—windows and wide staircase, chapels, gardens, frescoes, paneled rooms, as well as the original weapons room, where arrows were fashioned and women feathered the shafts. After dinner the faculties of the University were presented to the Emperor, who responded in Latin to a formal address by the University’s chancellor.
Charles’s ultimate purpose, the apotheosis of his case against England, was reached the following