Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/81

Rh also confounded in the cult of the Nine Worthies (“les neuf preux”). The grouping of three pagans, three Jews, and three Christians in a sort of gallery of heroism is found for the first time in a work of the beginning of the fourteenth century, Les Vœux du Paon, by Jacques de Longuyon. The choice of the heroes betrays a close connection with the romances of chivalry. They are Hector, Cæsar, Alexander, Josuah, David, Judas Maccabæus, Arthur, Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon. Eustache Deschamps adopted the idea of the “neuf preux” from his master, Guillaume de Machaut, and devoted many of his ballads to the subject. The craving for symmetry, so strong in the Middle Ages, demanded that the series should be completed by counterparts of the female sex. Deschamps satisfied the demand by choosing from fiction and history a group of rather bizarre heroines. Among them we find Penthesilea, Tomyris, Semiramis. His idea was successful. Literature and tapestry popularized the female as well as the male worthies. Blazons were invented for them. On the occasion of his entry into Paris, in 1431, the English king, Henry VI, is preceded by all the eighteen worthies of both sexes. How popular the idea was, is attested by the parody which Molinet composed of the “nine worthies of gluttony.” Francis I still occasionally dressed himself “in the antique style,” in order to represent one of the worthies.

Deschamps went further. He completed the series of the nine worthies by adding a tenth, Bertrand du Guesclin, the brave and prudent Breton warrior to whom France owed her recovery from Crécy and Poitiers. In this way he linked the cult of ancient heroes to the budding sentiment of national military glory. His idea was generally adopted. Louis of Orleans had the statue of Du Guesclin, as tenth of the “preux,” erected in the great hall of the castle of Coucy. His special reason for honouring the constable’s memory was the fact that the latter had held him at the baptismal font and put a sword into his little hand.

The inventories of the Burgundian dukes enumerate curious relics of ancient and modern heroes, such as “the sword of Saint George,” with his coat of arms; “another war-sword which belonged to Messire Bertran de Claiquin”; “a big boar’s fang, said to be the fang of the boar of Garin le Loherain”;