Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/217

Rh shape as when it was represented in an allegory on the stage. One of his revelations deals with the future reformation of the Church, such as fifteenth-century theology was hoping for: a Church cleansed from the evils that stained it. The spiritual beauty of this purified Church was revealed to his vision in the form of a superb and precious garment, with marvellous colours and ornaments. Another time he sees the persecuted Church: ugly, anæemic, enfeebled. God warns him that the Church is going to speak, and Denis then hears the inner voice as though it proceeded from the person of the Church quasi ex persona Ecclesiae. The figurative form that thinking assumes here is so direct and so sufficient to evoke the desired associations, that no need is felt to explain the allegory in detail. The idea of a splendid garment is fully adequate to express spiritual purity; thought here has resolved itself into an image, just as it can resolve itself into a melody.

Let us recall once more the allegorical personages of the Roman de la Rose. To us it requires an effort to picture to ourselves Bel-Accueil, Doulce Mercy, Humble Requeste. To the men of the Middle Ages, on the other hand, these figures had a very vivid æsthetic and sentimental value, which put them almost on a level with those divinities which the Romans conceived out of abstractions, like Pavor and Pallor, Concordia, etc. To the minds of the declining Middle Ages, Doux Penser, Honte, Souvenirs, and the rest, were endowed with a quasi-divine existence. Otherwise the Roman de la Rose would have been unreadable. One of the figures passed even from its original meaning to still more concrete signification: Danger in amorous parlance meant the jealous husband.

Allegory is often called in to express a thought of particular importance. Thus the bishop of Chalons, wishing to address a very serious political remonstrance to Philip the Good, gives it an allegorical form and presents it to the duke at Hesdin on Saint Andrew’s Day, 1437. "Haultesse de Signourie," chased out of the Empire, having first fled to France, next to the court of Burgundy, is inconsolable, and complains of being harrowed there, too, by "Carelessness of the prince, Feebleness of counsel, Envy of servants, Exaction of the subjects," to drive away which it will be necessary to oppose "Vigilance of the prince," etc., to them. In short, the whole political