Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/172

146 of unshaken faith and of a deeply religious culture. The same people who in their daily life mechanically follow the routine of a rather degraded sort of worship will be capable of rising suddenly, at the ardent word of a preaching monk, to unparalleled heights of religious emotion. Even the stupid sin of blasphemy has its roots in a profound faith. It is a sort of perverted act of faith, affirming the omnipresence of God and His intervention in the minutest concerns. Only the idea of really daring Heaven gives blasphemy its sinful charm. As soon as an oath loses its character of an invocation of God, the habit of swearing changes its nature and becomes mere coarseness. At the end of the Middle Ages blasphemy is still a sort of daring diversion which belongs to the nobility. “What!” says the nobleman to the peasant in a treatise by Gerson, “you give your soul to the devil, you deny God without being noble?” Deschamps, on his part, notices that the habit of swearing tends to descend to people of low estate.

People make a pastime of coining new and ingenious oaths, says Gerson: he who excels in this impious art is honoured as a master. Deschamps tells us that all France swore first after the Gascon and the English fashion, next after the Breton, and finally after the Burgundian. He composed two ballads in succession made up of all the oaths then in vogue strung together, and ended with a pious phrase. The Burgundian oath was the worst of all. It was, Je rente Dieu (I deny God), which was softened down to Je renie de bottes (boots). The Burgundians had the reputation of being abominable swearers; for the rest, says Gerson, the whole of France, for all her Christianity, suffers more than any other country from the effects of this horrible sin, which causes pestilence, war and famine. Even monks were guilty of mild swearing. Gerson and d’Ailly expressly call upon the authorities to combat the evil by renewing the strict regulations everywhere, but imposing light penalties which may be really exacted. And a royal decree of 1397, in fact, re-established the old ones of 1269