Life in a Medieval City (21 page)

Et son très-doux, très-doux regarder,

Finirois mon martyre.

Mais las! mon coeur je n’en puis ôter,

Et grand affolage

M’est d’espérer:

Mais tel servage

Donne courage

A tout endurer.

Et puis, comment, comment oublier

Sa beauté, sa beauté, son bien dire,

Et son très-doux, très-doux regarder?

Mieux aime mon martyre.

[Could I forget her gentle grace,

Her glance, her beauty’s sum,

Her voice from memory efface,

I’d end my martyrdom.

Her image from my heart I cannot tear;

To hope is vain;

I would despair,

But such a strain

Gives strength the pain

Of servitude to bear.

Then how forget her gentle grace,

Her glance, her beauty’s sum,

Her voice from memory efface?

I’ll love my martyrdom.]

Thibaut is a prince; Chrétien de Troyes was (probably) a clerk; Geoffroi de Villehardouin was a noble. But there is another native Troyen writer, in 1250 just embarking on his career, who is a plain burgher. “Rutebeuf” (Rough-ox) he calls himself, and his verses have little in common with the polished elegance of Chrétien or the tender passion of Thibaut. Rutebeuf describes real life—mostly his own.

Dieus m’a fait compagnon à Job,

Qu’il m’a tolu à un seul cop

Quanques j’a voie.

De l’ueil destre, dont mieus veoie,

Ne voi je pas aler la voie

Ne moi conduire…

Car je n’i voi pas mon gaain.

Or n’ai je pas quanques je ain,

C’est mes domages.

Ne sai se ç’a fait mes outrages;

Or devendrai sobres et sages

Après le fait,

Et me garderai de forfait.

Mais ce que vaut? Ce est ja fait;

Tart sui meüs,

A tart me sui aperceüs

Quant je sui en mes las cheüs.

C’est premier an

Me gart cil Dieus en mon droit san

Qui pour nous ot paine et ahan,

Et me gart l’ame.

Or a d’enfant geü ma fame;

Mes chevaus a brisié la jame

A une lice;

Or veut de l’argent ma norrice

Qui me destraint et me pelice

Pour l’enfant paistre,

Ou il revendra braire en l’estre…

[God has made me a companion for Job,

Taking away at a single blow,

All that I had.

With my right eye, once my best,

I can’t see the street ahead,

Or find my way…

I can’t earn a living,

I enjoy no pleasures,

That’s my trouble.

I don’t know if my vices are to blame;

Now I’m becoming sober and wise,

After the fact,

And will keep from doing wrong,

But what good is that? It’s done now.

I’m too late.

I discovered too late

That I was falling into a trap.

It’s the first of the year.

May God who suffered pain for us

Keep me healthy.

Now my wife has had a child;

My horse has broken his leg

On a fence,

Now my nurse is asking for money,

She’s taking everything I’ve got

For the child’s keep,

Otherwise he’ll come back home to yell…]

Thibaut and Rutebeuf are not only widely sung and recited, but published. By 1250 books are multiplying spectacularly, even though every single book must be copied by hand. During the Dark Ages book copying took refuge in the monasteries, but now it is back in town. Schools and universities supply a market for textbooks, and copyists are therefore often located in the neighborhood of the cathedral or university, but they do more than copy texts. They also serve as secretaries, both for the illiterate and for those who want a particularly fine handwriting in their correspondence.

A copyist sits in a chair with extended arms across which his writing board is placed, with the sheets of parchment held in place by a deerskin thong. His implements include a razor or sharp knife for scraping, a pumice, an awl, a long narrow parchment ruler, and a boar’s tooth for polishing. He works near the fire, or keeps a basin of coals handy to dry the ink, which is held in an oxhorn into which he dips a well-seasoned quill. The oxhorn fits into a round hole in the writing board, with a cover.

The copyist begins by scraping the parchment clean of scales and incrustations, smoothing it with the pumice, and marking out lines and columns with ruler and awl. Then he sets to work. Some of his productions may be ornate works of art—Latin psalters or French romances, in gold, silver, and purple ink, with initials overlaid with gold leaf. Bound in ivory and metal covers mounted on wood, these elaborate volumes are fabulously expensive. By far the greater number of books consist of plain, legibly written sheets bound in plain wooden boards, perhaps with untooled leather glued over for extra protection. Students often bind several books together under the same covers. Even these cheaper books are expensive, owing not only to the cost of parchment but to the enormous labor involved in their production. It takes about fifteen months to copy the Bible. Books are valuable pieces of property, often pawned, and rented out as well as sold. Students are the chief renters. When a student rents a book he usually does so in order to copy it. He pays rent by the
pecia—
sixteen columns of sixty-two lines, each with thirty-two letters, renting for a penny or halfpenny. An industrious student can create his own library, but it is a work of long night watches. Across the bottom of the last page of many a book is written
Explicit, Deo Gratias
(“Finished, thank God”). Some students end with a more jocular flourish: “May the writer continue to copy, and drink good wine” “The book finished, may the master be given a fat goose” “May the writer be given a good cow and a horse” “For his pen’s labor, may the copyist be given a beautiful girl” “Let the writer be given a cow and a beautiful girl.”

Books are kept not on open shelves but in locked chests. Students who borrow are cautioned not to scratch grooves in the margin with their fingernails or to use straws from the lecture floor as placemards. A Jewish ethical treatise warns that a man must not express his anger by pounding on a book or by hitting people with it. The angry teacher must not hit the bad student with a book, nor should the student use a book to ward off blows.