Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/38

16 the history of Abelard and the legend of Tannhäuser. More and more as we come to mark changes, and distinctions of temper, in what is often in one all-embracing confusion called the middle age, this rebellious element, this sinister claim for liberty of heart and thought, comes to the surface. The Albigensian movement, connected so strangely with the history of Provençal poetry, is deeply tinged with it. A touch of it makes the Franciscan order, with its poetry, its mysticism, its illumination, from the point of view of religious authority, justly suspect. It influences the thoughts of those obscure prophetical writers, like Joachim of Flora, strange dreamers in a world of flowery rhetoric of that third and final dispensation of a spirit of freedom, in which law has passed away. Of this spirit Aucassin and Nicolette contains perhaps the most famous expression; it is the answer Aucassin makes when he is threatened with the pains of hell, if he makes Nicolette his mistress.

'En paradis qu'ai-je à faire ? répondit Aucassin. Je ne me soucie d'y aller, pourvu qui j'aie seulement Nicolette, ma douce mie, qui j'aime tant. Qui va en paradis, sinon telles gens, comme je vous dirai bien? Ces vieux prêtres y vont, ces vieux boiteux,