Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/165

Rh a lottery. When a prince was making a solemn entry, the altars at the corners of the streets, loaded with the precious reliquaries of the town and served by prelates, might be seen alternating with dumb shows of pagan goddesses or comic allegories.

Nothing is more characteristic in this respect than the fact of there being hardly any difference between the musical character of profane and sacred melodies. Till late in the sixteenth century profane melodies might be used indiscriminately for sacred use, and sacred for profane. It is notorious that Guillaume Dufay and others composed masses to the theme of love-songs, such as “Tant je me déduis,” “Se la face ay pale,” “L’omme armé.”

There was a constant interchange of religious and profane terms. No one felt offended by hearing the Day of Judgment compared to a settling of accounts, as in the verses formerly written over the door of the audit office at Lille.

A tournament, on the other hand, is called “des armes grantdisime pardon” (the great indulgence conferred by arms) as if it were a pilgrimage. By a chance coincidence the words mysterium and ministerium were blended in French into the form “mistère,” and this homonymy must have helped to efface the true sense of the word “mystery” in everyday parlance, because even the most commonplace things might be called “mistère.”

While religious symbolism represented the realities of nature and history as symbols or emblems of salvation, on the other hand religious metaphors were borrowed to express profane sentiments. People in the Middle Ages, standing in awe of royalty, do not shrink from using the language of adoration in praising princes. In the lawsuit about the murder of Louis of Orleans, the counsel for the defence makes the shade of the duke say to his son: “Look at my wounds and observe that