La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages. Jules Michelet

Few women were taken in there, being accounted not worth their keep. The romances of chivalry altogether belie the truth. It is remarkable, indeed, how often the literature of an age expresses the very opposite of its manners, as, for instance, the washy theatre of eclogues after Florian,[24] during the years of the Great Terror.

      The rooms in these castles, in such at least as may be seen to-day, speak more plainly than any books. Men-at-arms, pages, footmen, crammed together of nights under low-vaulted roofs, in the daytime kept on the battlements, on narrow terraces, in a state of most sickening weariness, lived only in their pranks down below; in feats no longer of arms on the neighbouring domains, but of hunting, ay, and hunting of men; insults, I may say, without number, outrages untold on families of serfs. The lord himself well knew that such an army of men, without women, could only be kept in order by letting them loose from time to time.

      The awful idea of a hell wherein God employs the very guiltiest of the wicked spirits to torture the less guilty delivered over to them for their sport—this lovely dogma of the Middle Ages was exemplified to the last letter. Men felt that God was not among them. Each new raid betokened more and more clearly the kingdom of Satan, until men came to believe that thenceforth their prayers should be offered to him alone.

      Up in the castle there was laughing and joking. “The women-serfs were too ugly.” There is no question raised as to their beauty. The great pleasure lay in deeds of outrage, in striking and making them weep. Even in the seventeenth century the great ladies died with laughing, when the Duke of Lorraine told them how, in peaceful villages, his people went about harrying and torturing all the women, even to the old.

      These outrages fell most frequently, as we might suppose, on families well to do and comparatively distinguished among the serfs; the families, namely, of those serf-born mayors, who already in the twelfth century appear at the head of the village. By the nobles they were hated, jeered, cruelly plagued. Their newborn moral dignity was not to be forgiven. Their wives and daughters were not allowed to be good and wise: they had no right to be held in any respect. Their honour was not their own. Serfs of the body, such was the cruel phrase cast for ever in their teeth.

In days to come people will be slow to believe, that the law among Christian nations went beyond anything decreed concerning the olden slavery; that it wrote down as an actual right the most grievous outrage that could ever wound man’s heart. The lord spiritual had this foul privilege no less than the lord temporal. In a parish outside Bourges, the parson, as being a lord, expressly claimed the firstfruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the husband.[25]

It has been too readily believed that this wrong was formal, not real. But the price laid down in certain countries for getting a dispensation, exceeded the means of almost every peasant. In Scotland, for instance, the demand was for “several cows:” a price immense, impossible. So the poor young wife was at their mercy. Besides, the Courts of Béarn openly maintain that this right grew up naturally: “The eldest-born of the peasant is accounted the son of his lord, for he perchance it was who begat him.”[26]

      All feudal customs, even if we pass over this, compel the bride to go up to the castle, bearing thither the “wedding-dish.” Surely it was a cruel thing to make her trust herself amongst such a pack of celibate dogs, so shameless and so ungovernable.

A shameful scene we may well imagine it to have been. As the young husband is leading his bride to the castle, fancy the laughter of cavaliers and footmen, the frolics of the pages around the wretched poor! But the presence of the great lady herself will check them? Not at all. The lady in whose delicate breeding the romances tell us to believe,[27] but who, in her husband’s absence, ruled his men, judging, chastising, ordaining penalties, to whom her husband himself was bound by the fiefs she brought him—such a lady would be in no wise merciful, especially towards a girl-serf who happened also to be good-looking. Since, according to the custom of those days, she openly kept her gentleman and her page, she would not be sorry to sanction her own libertinism by that of her husband.

      Nothing will she do to hinder the fun, the sport they are making out of yon poor trembler who has come to redeem his bride. They begin by bargaining with him; they laugh at the pangs endured by “the miserly peasant;” they suck the very blood and marrow of him. Why all this fury? Because he is neatly clad; is honest, settled; is a man of mark in the village. Why, indeed? Because she is pious, chaste, and pure; because she loves him; because she is frightened and falls a-weeping. Her sweet eyes plead for pity.

In vain does the poor wretch offer all he has, even to her dowry: it is all too little. Angered at such cruel injustice, he will say perhaps that “his neighbour paid nothing.” The insolent fellow! he would argue with us! Thereon they gather round him, a yelling mob: sticks and brooms pelt upon him like hail. They jostle him, they throw him down. “You jealous villain, you Lent-faced villain!” they cry; “no one takes your wife from you; you shall have her back to-night, and to enhance the honour done you … your eldest child will be a baron!” Everyone looks out of window at the absurd figure of this dead man in wedding garments. He is followed by bursts of laughter, and the noisy rabble, down to the lowest scullion, give chase to the “cuckold.”[28]

      The poor fellow would have burst, had he nothing to hope for from the Devil. By himself he returns: is the house empty as well as desolate? No, there is company waiting for him there: by the fireside sits Satan.

      But soon his bride comes back, poor wretch, all pale and undone. Alas! alas! for her condition. At his feet she throws herself and craves forgiveness. Then, with a bursting heart, he flings his arms round her neck. He weeps, he sobs, he roars, till the house shakes again.

      But with her comes back God. For all her suffering, she is pure, innocent, holy still. Satan for that nonce will get no profit: the treaty is not yet ripe.

      Our silly Fabliaux, our absurd tales, assume with regard to this deadly outrage and all its further issues, that the woman sides with her oppressors against her husband; they would have us believe that her brutal treatment by the former makes her happy and transports her with delight. A likely thing indeed! Doubtless she might be seduced by rank, politeness, elegant manners. But no pains are ever taken to that end. Great would be the scoffing at anyone who made true-love’s wooing towards a serf. The whole gang of men, to the chaplain, the butler, even the footmen, would think they honoured her by deeds of outrage. The smallest page thought himself a great lord, if he only seasoned his love with insolence and blows.

      One day, the poor woman, having just been ill-treated during her husband’s absence, begins weeping, and saying quite aloud, the while she is tying up her long hair, “Ah, those unhappy saints of the woods, what boots it to offer them my vows? Are they deaf, or have they grown too old? Why have I not some protecting spirit, strong and mighty—wicked even, if it need be? Some such I see in stone at the church-door; but what do they there? Why do they not go to their proper dwelling, the castle, to carry off and roast those sinners? Oh, who is there will give me power and might? I would gladly give myself in exchange. Ah, me, what is it I would give? What have I to give on my side? Nothing is left me. Out on this body, out on this soul, a mere cinder now! Why, instead of this useless goblin, have I not some spirit, great, strong, and mighty, to help me?”

      “My darling mistress! If I am small, it is your fault; and bigger I cannot grow. And besides, if I were very big, neither you nor your husband would have borne with me. You would have driven me away with your priests and your holy water. I can be strong, however, if you please. For, mistress mine, the spirits in themselves are neither great nor small, neither weak nor strong. For him who wishes it, the smallest can become a giant.”

      “In what way?”

      “Why, nothing can be simpler. To make him a giant, you must grant him only one gift.”

      “What