Octave Delepierre

“ 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 Père la Chaise is altogether a modern construction. ”

“ After having exhausted all the resources of his imagination, he took it into his head to have an apple placed upon the head of the son of Egil. “From where thou standest,” said he to the archer, “thou must shoot down this apple.” Egil took an arrow from his quiver, tried its point, and laid it by his side. He then took a second arrow, rested it on the string of his bow, took aim, and struck the apple in such a manner that the arrow and the apple both fell to the ground. This trial of skill still lives in the memory of the people. ”

“ The Scotch historian, with a sublime indifference [Pg 133] to facts, informs us that Charles V., in the last six months of his life, fell into the lowest depths of superstition. He describes him as seeking no other society but that of the monks; as continually occupied in singing hymns with them from the missal; as inflicting on himself the discipline of the scourge, and lastly, as desiring to rehearse his own obsequies. A desire which could only have originated in an enfeebled and diseased brain. Such are the events contained in the introduction to Robertson’s romance. ”

“ Formerly an historical fact needed only the authority of tradition to be generally received and duly established; but in the present day the critic is not so easily satisfied, and insists upon proof as a basis for his belief.
In the field of history we meet with many contested points, but it is rare to find an error persistently maintained during five hundred years, in spite of the refutation of innumerable authors.
This is the case with the tale of William Tell, which is nothing more nor less than a northern saga that has been adopted and repeated from generation to generation. ”

“ It was at Tasso’s tomb,” he says, “that Petrarch, during his first absence, nourished his regretful remembrance of Laura!” Now Petrarch died in 1374, and it was more than two hundred years afterwards (in 1581) that Tasso published his first edition of the Gerusalemme Liberata!
We should not know where to stop if we attempted to bring forward examples of all the improbable and the untrue in history. We shall confine ourselves therefore to the examination of a few of the most universally accredited facts, the truth of which, to say the least, is extremely doubtful. ”

“ All these details, which are derived from authentic documents in the archives of Simancas, bring Charles V. before us in his convent of Yuste in a very different light from that in which we have usually seen him. Neither must we picture to ourselves the convent in Estramadura as the gloomy and solitary residence it had been up to this time. It now became a centre of life and action. Couriers were continually arriving and departing. Every fresh event was immediately reported to the Emperor, whose opinion and whose commands were received and acted upon in all important matters. ”

“ Admitting, which is somewhat difficult, that Eloisa had not seen Abelard since his severe affliction until his reception of her in the Paraclete in 1129, on her expulsion from Argenteuil, is it at all certain that they did meet then, and that moreover the frequency of their interviews gave rise to scandalous reports which obliged them again to separate? How then can Eloisa complain that since their entrance upon a religious life (that is to say since 1119) she has “neither rejoiced in his presence, nor been consoled by his letters?” ”

“ Unfortunately, our poet, in all matters appertaining to his mistress, has intentionally, or by chance, only very vaguely mentioned, by allusions, or by figures of speech, dates or circumstances bearing reference to her. Besides the striking difference that exists on many points in the manuscripts which have served as foundations for the various editions of Petrarca, it must be confessed that nowhere have primary and incontrovertible facts been produced on which to ground a true and faithful biography of Laura. ”

“ Everybody knows how great an attraction the monument erected to the memory of Eloisa and Abelard is to the crowds who visit the [Pg 50] cemetery of Père 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. ”

“ Notwithstanding the improbability of this confession, seeing that Pope Urbanus did not mount the pontifical throne until after the death of Laura, we may still infer from it that in the first years of the 15th century a very exalted opinion was not entertained of the sincerity of Petrarca’s passion. The mention of all these circumstances, no doubt instigated Tomasini, who was the most devoted of Petrarch’s biographers, and who looked upon the poet almost as a saint, to adduce a reason for his remaining unmarried to the end of his life. ”

“ Endride at first asked to be excused from shooting; but the king refused, and Endride, being forced to obey, shot, and planted his arrow in that of the king, so that they were embedded the one in the other. The king, evidently piqued, said to Endride: “In truth thy skill is remarkable, but this trial is not decisive. Let thy sister’s son be brought, on whom thou hast once said all thy affections are concentrated. Let him serve as a mark for us, and let one of the chessmen be placed upon the head of the child.” The boy was brought and fastened to a stake. ”

“ It was here, under arrest, and pending the good will and pleasure of the Pope, that Galileo expiated his imaginary crime. On the 28th July 1640 he wrote to Deodati: “My definitive prison is this little villa, situated a mile from Florence. I am forbidden to receive the visits of my friends, or to invite them to come and converse [Pg 158] with me. My life is very tranquil. I often go to the neighbouring convent of San Matteo, where two of my daughters are nuns. I love them both dearly, especially the elder, who unites extraordinary intellectual powers to much goodness of heart.” ”

“ But nothing checks the flow of her passion, which she pours out with a vehemence the more remarkable as proceeding from a woman of whom Abelard had not long since written, in his Historia Calamitatum: “All are [Pg 57] alike struck by her piety in the convent, her wisdom, and her incomparable gentleness and patience under the trials of life. She is seldom to be seen, but lives in the solitude of her cell, the better to apply herself to prayer and holy meditation.” ”

“ During the French Revolution of 1792, the convent of the Paraclete, founded by Abelard, was sold. In order to protect the remains of the lovers from desecration, which was too common in those days, some worthy inhabitants of Nogent-sur-Seine, took possession of the coffins and deposited them in the church of that town. Seven years later M. Lenoir obtained the permission of the minister to transfer these remains to Paris, and it occurred to him at the same time, that it would be expedient to enclose them in a tomb of the period in which the lovers had lived. ”

“ In 1440, the people so firmly believed that Jeanne d’Arc was still alive, and that another had been sacrificed in her place, that an adventuress who endeavoured to pass herself off as the Maid of Orleans was ordered by the government to be exposed before the public on the marble stone of the palace hall, in order to prove that she was an impostor. ”

“ The imagination of poets, painters, and sculptors, backed by one of Marmontel’s novels, has helped to make of an apocryphal tradition a matter of history which has been believed in by the many, who are ever open-mouthed to receive the marvellous upon trust.
This tradition relates to the general Belisarius, the conqueror of the Vandals, who, after having been falsely accused of treason, is said to have been deprived of his sight by the Emperor Justinian, and to have been reduced to such a state of poverty that he was compelled to beg his bread in the streets of Constantinople. ”

“ The art of writing history has two very distinct branches, the combination of which is essential to the production of a complete historian. A research into, and a criticism of, events with no other aim than to elicit truth, is one branch of the historical art ”

“ A critic whom it is also important to read on this question, is Hisely, in his investigations into the sources whence the Swiss writers have drawn the history of William Tell. He explains at length the reasons that make him consider the absolute silence of Jean de Winterthür and of Conrad Justinger as an inexplicable enigma.
Hisely has pursued his researches without being prejudiced for or against the popular faith, but the result tends to show how little foundation there is for the story. ”

“ Thomas Keightley, in his Tales and Popular Fictions, and other English authors, adopt the latter sceptical opinion. “I confess,” says Keightley, “that I am not indisposed to regard the Beatrice of Dante, the Laura of Petrarca, the Fiammetta of Boccacio, and all those ladies with significant names, who were all first seen in passion week, and whose [Pg 95] lovers all survived them, as being more the creatures of air and of romance than of real flesh and blood.” ”

“ A valuable opportunity has been lost of clearing up the doubts which surround the trial of Galileo. In 1809 all the original documents relating to this suit were transmitted [Pg 154] from Rome to Paris with the papal archives, and it was intended to publish the whole in the form of a volume consisting of seven or eight hundred pages. Delambre, the historian of modern astronomy, while sending several extracts from these deeds to Venturi, one of Galileo’s biographers, attributes the oblivion into which this intention was suffered to fall, entirely to political motives. ”

“ The revolution which took place in Switzerland in 1307 gave rise to the legend of the Swiss hero, and, from that time to the present, writers have continually endeavoured [Pg 68] to expose its unsound basis, but the public, equally pertinacious, have insisted on believing in its truth.
The study of historical and popular legends is the study of a peculiar phase of the human mind, and is one of the aspects under which the history of a people should be considered. ”

“ To doubt was punished with death. Galileo was so imprudent as to address a long letter to Castelli, in which he sought to reconcile the words of scripture with the rotation of the earth as discovered by Copernicus. Copernicus had proved the fact previous to Galileo, but he had used the wise precaution to give his opinion only as an hypothesis, and in his work on the motion of the heavenly bodies, dedicated to Pope Paul III., he avoided wounding [Pg 150] any susceptibilities, taking especial care to separate theology from science. ”

“ According to the third view, William Tell is believed to have existed and to have made himself remarkable by some daring exploit; but this exploit was not connected with the plans of the conspirators, and consequently exercised no influence over the formation of the Swiss confederation.
The fourth view supposes the tradition of William Tell to be a mere fable, an afterthought, unworthy of being inserted in any history of Switzerland.
We know of no chronicle anterior to those of Melchior Russ and Petermann Etterlein that records the events of which the tradition of William Tell is composed. ”

“ What shadow of truth can exist in things so totally contradictory?
Moreover, Joseph Garampi [20] has proved [Pg 45] beyond dispute, that between the death of Leo IV. and the nomination of Benedict III., there was no interval in which to place Pope Joan, and the most virulent antagonists of the court of Rome make no mention of her.
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. ”

“ All this is in fact nothing but a tissue of errors, clearly disproved by existing authentic documents. The love of the marvellous, however, always inherent in the human mind, has fostered the adoption of this romance, to the exclusion of truth and veracity.
The name even of the monastery has been transformed. Sancho Martin, a Spanish gentleman, presented a small piece of land to some monks in 1408; a convent was built upon it which was called Yuste, from a small stream of that name that trickled down the rocks and watered the garden of the monks. ”