Read Ebook: Historical difficulties and contested events by Delepierre Octave

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Ebook has 311 lines and 38555 words, and 7 pages

The credulity of the multitude is such, that they still persist in ignoring the refutation of Samuel Schelling , of Th. Fr. Zeller , of Roth and many others.

It is not likely, however, that the fate of men in the ninth century should have been confused with that of individuals in the sixth.

In France this ballad contributed greatly to keep up a belief in the fabulous story which we have here examined.

THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY.

A. D. 640.

There is much difference of opinion as to the number of works contained in this library. Instead of 54,800 volumes as asserted by St. Epiphanes, or 200,000 according to Josephus, Eusebius tells us, that at the death of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 100,000 volumes were collected in it.

Several writers, with Gibbon at their head, have rejected this notion. Reinhart published at G?ttingen in 1792 a special dissertation on the subject. It was Gregorius Bar-Hebraeus, better known under the name of Abulpharadje, elected primate of the East in 1264, who gave the earliest account of the burning of the library at Alexandria, in a chronicle he published in Syriac, and afterwards translated into Arabic at the solicitation of his friends.

He says: "John the grammarian came to Amrou, who was in possession of Alexandria, and begged that he might be allowed to appropriate a part of the booty. 'Which part do you wish for,' asked Amrou. John replied, 'The books of philosophy which are in the treasury of kings.' Amrou answered that he could not dispose of these without the permission of the Emir Al-Moumenin Omar. He wrote to the Emir, who replied in these terms: 'As to the books you speak of, if their contents are in conformity with the Book of God we have no need of them; if, on the contrary, their contents are opposed to it, it is still less desirable to preserve them, so I desire that they may be destroyed.' Amrou-Ben-Alas in consequence ordered them to be distributed in the various baths in Alexandria, to be burnt in the stoves; and after six months, not a vestige of them remained."

How open is this unlikely story to objection! In the first place, John of Alexandria was dead before the city was taken, on the 21st December 640.

Besides Abulpharadi, two other eastern writers give an account of the destruction of the library: Abd-Allatif and Makrizi; but they only go over the same ground as their predecessors.

These three writers are the less to be relied upon as no other eastern historians who speak of the conquest of Egypt by the Arabians, mention the loss of their great repository by fire.

Eutyches, the patriarch of Alexandria, who lived in the 10th century, and who enters into details of the taking of this city by the Arabians; Elmacin, who, in the 13th century, recounts the same fact; and Aboulfeda, who at about the same period gives a description of Egypt, completely ignore this remarkable and important event.

The Caliphs had forbidden under severe penalties the destruction of all Jewish and Christian volumes, and we nowhere hear of any such work of destruction during the first conquests of the Mahommedans.

Quite at the beginning of the 5th century, Paulus Orosius, a disciple of St. Jerome, mentions, on his return from Palestine, having seen at Alexandria the empty book-cases which the library had formerly contained.

In order to establish his argument, Matter enters into long details. "Gibbon himself," he says, "would have admitted later that Amrou might have burned other works in Alexandria besides those on theology."

Two orientalists, Langl?s and de Sacy, have adopted a very similar opinion. "It is incontestable," says the former, "that on the entrance of the Mahommedans, a library still existed at Alexandria, and that it fell a prey to the flames."

De Sacy allows that the story told by Abulpharadi is very probable, and proves that at that period the Mahommedans did demolish libraries and destroy books, in spite of the law against any such destruction.

At any rate this opinion has only been adopted by a small minority, and Amrou is generally exonerated from having been the destroyer of the Alexandrian Library.

POPE JOAN.

A. D. 855.

Is it true that a woman succeeded in deceiving her cotemporaries to the extent of elevating herself to the pontifical throne?

Did a catastrophe ensue which afforded a proof of her sex as unexpected as indisputable?

If there is no foundation for this tale, how comes it that it has been so long accepted as authentic by writers whose attachment to the Roman church is perfectly sincere?

Such are the questions that we here propose to ourselves, and which have been recently treated by two Dutch literati, Mr. N. C. Kist, professor at the university of Leyden, in a work published in 1845; and Mr. J. H. Wensing, professor at the seminary of Warmond, who has written a refutation of Mr. Kist's work in a thick volume of more than 600 pages, printed at the Hague.

I will proceed to give a brief sketch of the circumstances as presented to us by reliable authors.

The silence of Anastatius admits therefore of but one interpretation.

David Blondel, although a Protestant clergyman, treated the story of Pope Joan as a fable. The English bishop John Burnet is of the same opinion, as well as Cave, a celebrated English scholar. Several other learned men have amply refuted this ancient tradition. Many have thought to sustain the romance of Marianus against the doubt excited by a silence of more than 200 years, by asserting that the authors who lived from the year 855 to 1050, refrained from making any mention of the story on account of the shame it occasioned them; and that they preferred to change the order of succession of the Popes by a constrained silence, rather than contribute, by the enunciation of an odious truth, to the preservation of the execrable memory of the woman who had dishonoured the papal chair. But how is it possible to reconcile this with the other part of the same story, that the Roman court was so indignant at the scandal, that, to prevent a repetition of it, they perpetuated its remembrance by the erection of a statue, and the prohibition of all processions from passing through the street where the event had happened. What shadow of truth can exist in things so totally contradictory?

In 991 Arnolphus, bishop of Orleans, addressed to a council held at Reims, a discourse in which he vehemently attacked the excesses and turpitudes of which Rome was guilty. Not a word, however, was said on the subject of Joan. The patriarch of Constantinople, Phocius, who was the author of the schism which still divides the Greek and Latin churches, and who died in 890, says nothing respecting her.

The Greeks, who after him maintained eager controversies against Rome, are silent respecting Joan.

It is clear that the author who first speaks of this event, after a lapse of two centuries, is not worthy of credit, and that those who, after him, related the same thing, have copied from one another, without due examination.

Whilst rejecting as apocryphal the legend under our consideration, some writers have at the same time sought to explain its origin.

The Cardinal Baronius starts an hypothesis of the same kind, but this conjecture is somewhat far-fetched.

"Public report asserts as an undeniable fact, that in defiance of the canons of the first council of Nice, you Greeks have raised to the pontifical throne, eunuchs, and even a woman."

This death is a remarkable circumstance. In it we may trace the source of the most striking event in the story of Pope Joan.

ABELARD AND ELOISA.

A. D. 1140.

Everybody knows how great an attraction the monument erected to the memory of Eloisa and Abelard is to the crowds who visit the cemetery of P?re la Chaise, recalling to their minds the letters full of love and passion written by Eloisa, which have elicited so many imitations both in prose and verse in England and in France.

The history of the two lovers being true as a whole, we are far from wishing to take away from the sympathy that their constancy and hapless love so well deserve. Our only object is to separate the true from the false, and to show that the celebrated letters imputed to Eloisa were not written by her at all, and that the tomb in P?re la Chaise is altogether a modern construction.

Abelard, born in 1079, died in 1164, and Eloisa survived him upwards of twenty years, dying in 1184.

The works and correspondence of Abelard were published for the first time in 1616 by the learned Duchesne, and we therein find three letters from Eloisa to Abelard and four from Abelard to Eloisa. These are the letters on which Pope, in England, and Dorat, Mercier, Saurin, Colardeau, &c., in France, founded their poems.

Out of these seven letters, four only can strictly be termed the amatory correspondence of the two lovers. The remainder, and those that have been brought to light and published in later years, are pious effusions which contain no trace whatever of those passionate emotions which pervaded the four other letters. We must remind the reader that the oldest manuscript existing of these epistles is nothing more than an alleged copy of the originals made one hundred years after the death of Eloisa. It is preserved in the library of the town of Troyes, and belongs to the latter half of the 13th century.

A modern French historian, M. Henri Martin, having written some pages in a melodramatic style on these letters of Eloisa, a critic, M. de Larroque, pointed out to him the error into which he had fallen, they having evidently been composed some years after the death of the heroine.

In order to arrive at a clear perception of the improbabilities and contradictions contained in these epistles, all the bearings of the case should be kept well in mind.

According to these memoirs, Abelard was thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age when he became enamoured of Eloisa, who was then sixteen or seventeen years old. He introduced himself into the household of the Canon Fulbert, was appointed professor to the young girl, and soon became domesticated in the family. Eloisa, becoming soon after pregnant, fled to Brittany, where she gave birth to a son. She afterwards returned to Paris, and after frequent negotiations between Fulbert and Abelard, the lovers were at length married, but the marriage was kept secret.

The rest is known. Abelard, fearfully mutilated, became a monk in the abbey of St. Denis, and at his bidding, to which she was ever entirely submissive, Eloisa took the veil in the convent of Argenteuil.

These events occupied about the space of two years, and bring us to 1118 or 1119.

This expulsion coming to the ears of Abelard, he offered the nuns an asylum in the Paraclete, which he had lately founded, and which he soon after made over to them as a gift.

Let us now enquire if the subject matter contained in these seven letters, all of which were written after the latter date agrees with that which has preceded.

Does the reader think this a natural or a probable style of commencement? Does it not denote something artificial in the composition? Farther on she complains that Abelard has forsaken her: "her to whom the name of mistress was dearer than that of wife, however sacred this latter tie might be."

And finally she adds: "Only tell me if you can, why, since we have taken the monastic vows, which you alone desired, you have so neglected and forgotten me that I have neither been blessed by your presence nor consoled by a single letter in your absence. Answer me, I beseech you, if you can, or I may myself be tempted to tell you what I think, and what all the world suspects."

This letter, full of passionate reproach, contains contradictions and improbabilities perceptible to all who have read that which has preceded.

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