The Sleepwalkers (45 page)

The
same
split
can
be
traced
through
the
most
heterogenous
fields
of
medieval
thought
and
behaviour.
Since
it
is
against
man's
nature
to
go
on
blushing
because
he
has
a
body
and
a
brain,
a
thirst
for
beauty
and
an
appetite
for
experience,
the
frustrated
half
took
its
revenge
through
extremes
of
coarseness
and
obscenity.
The
disembodied,
ethereal
love
of
the
troubadour
or
serving
knight
for
his
lady,
coexist
with
the
brutal
publicity
given
to
the
wedding
bed,
which
makes
marriages
resemble
public
executions.
The
fair
lady
is
compared
to
the
Goddess
of
Virtue,
but
is
made
to
wear
a
cast-iron
chastity
belt
on
her
sublunary
sphere.
Nuns
must
wear
shirts
even
in
the
privacy
of
their
baths,
because,
though
nobody
else,
God
can
see
them.
When
the
mind
is
split,
both
halves
are
debased:
earthly
love
sinks
to
the
animal
level,
the
mystic
union
with
God
acquires
an
erotic
ambiguity.
Confronted
with
the
Old
Testament,
the
theologians
save
the
phenomena
in
the
Song
of
Songs
by
declaring
that
the
King
is
Christ,
the
Shulamite
the
Church,
and
that
the
praise
for
various
parts
of
her
anatomy
refers
to
corresponding
excellences
in
the
edifice
that
St.
Peter
built.

Medieval
historians
must
also
live
by
double-think.
The
cosmology
of
the
age
explained
away
the
disorder
in
the
skies
by
ordered
motions
in
perfect
circles;
the
chroniclers,
faced
with
worse
disorder,
had
recourse
to
the
notion
of
perfect
chivalry
as
the
moving
force
of
History.
It
became
to
them

"...
a
sort
of
magic
key
by
the
aid
of
which
they
explained
to
themselves
the
motives
of
politics
and
of
history...
What
they
saw
about
them
looked
primarily
mere
violence
and
confusion...
Yet
they
required
a
form
for
their
political
conceptions
and
here
the
idea
of
chivalry
came
in...
By
this
traditional
fiction
they
succeeded
in
explaining
to
themselves,
as
well
as
they
could,
the
motives
and
the
course
of
history,
which
was
thus
reduced
to
a
spectacle
of
the
honour
of
princes
and
the
virtue
of
knights,
to
a
noble
game
with
edifying
and
heroic
rules."
¹⁸

The
same
dichotomy
is
carried
into
social
behaviour.
A
grotesque
and
rigid
etiquette
governs
every
activity,
designed
to
freeze
life
in
the
image
of
the
heavenly
clockwork,
whose
crystal
spheres
turn
on
themselves
yet
always
remain
in
the
same
place.

Humble
refusals
to
take
precedence
in
passing
through
a
door
take
up
a
quarter
of
an
hour,
yet
bloody
feuds
are
fought
for
that
same
right
of
precedence.
The
ladies
at
Court
pass
their
time
poisoning
each
other
with
words
and
philtres,
yet
etiquette

"not
only
prescribes
which
ladies
may
hold
each
other
by
the
hand,
but
also
which
lady
is
entitled
to
encourage
others
to
this
mark
of
intimacy
by
beckoning
them...
The
passionate
and
violent
soul
of
the
age,
always
vacillating
between
tearful
piety
and
frigid
cruelty,
between
respect
and
insolence,
between
despondency
and
wantonness,
could
not
dispense
with
the
severest
rules
and
the
strictest
formalism.
All
emotions
required
a
rigid
system
of
conventional
forms,
for
without
them
passion
and
ferocity
would
have
made
havoc
of
life."
¹⁹

There
are
mental
disorders
whose
victims
feel
compelled
to
walk
on
the
centres
of
flagstones,
avoiding
the
edges,
or
to
count
the
matches
in
the
box
before
going
to
sleep,
as
a
protective
ritual
against
their
fears.
The
dramatic
outbursts
of
mass-hysteria
during
the
Middle
Ages
tend
to
divert
our
attention
from
the
less
spectacular,
but
chronic
and
insoluble
mental
conflicts
which
underlie
them.
Medieval
life
in
its
typical
aspects
resembles
a
compulsive
ritual
designed
to
provide
protection
against
the
all-pervading
potato-blight
of
sin,
guilt,
and
anguish;
yet
it
was
unable
to
provide
it
so
long
as
God
and
Nature,
Creator
and
Creation,
Faith
and
Reason,
were
split
apart.
The
symbolic
prologue
to
the
Middle
Ages
is
Origen
cutting
off
his
private
parts
ad
gloriam
dei
;
and
the
epilogue
is
provided
by
the
parched
voices
of
the
schoolmen:
Did
the
first
man
have
a
navel?
Why
did
Adam
eat
an
apple
and
not
a
pear?
What
is
the
sex
of
the
angels,
and
how
many
can
dance
on
the
point
of
a
pin?
If
a
cannibal
and
all
his
ancestors
have
lived
on
human
flesh
so
that
every
part
of
his
body
belongs
to
somebody
else
and
will
be
claimed
by
its
owner
on
the
day
of
resurrection,
how
can
the
cannibal
be
resurrected
to
face
his
judgment?
This
last
problem
was
earnestly
discussed
by
Aquinas.