Christian faith, and this was not considered at all irreverent or impious. Deschamps speaking of "Jupiter come from paradise," Villon calling the Holy Virgin "high goddess," the humanists referring to God in terms like "princeps superum" and to Mary as "genetrix tonantis," are by no means pagans. Pastorals required some admixture of innocent paganism, by which no reader was duped. The author of the Pastoralet who calls the Celestine church at Paris "the temple in the high woods, where people pray to the gods," declares, to dispel all ambiguity, "If, to lend my Muse some strangeness, I speak of the pagan gods, the shepherds and myself are Christians all the same." In the same way Molinet excuses himself for having introduced Mars and Minerva, by quoting "Reason and Understanding," who said to him: "You should do it, not to instil faith in gods and goddesses, but because Our Lord alone inspires people as it pleases Him and frequently by various inspirations."
The purity of Faith was more seriously threatened when, as in the following lines, a certain respect for pagan cults, and notably of sacrifices, is manifested.
"Des dieux jadis les nations gentiles
Quirent l'amour par humbles sacrifices,
Lesquels, posé que ne fussent utiles,
Furent nientmoins rendables et fertiles,
De maint grant fruit et de haulx bénéfices,
Monstrans par fait que d'amour les offices
Et d'honneur humble, impartis où qu'ils soient
Pour percer ciel et enfer suffisoient."[1]
This is a stanza of the Dit de Vérité, the best poem of Chastellain, which was inspired by his fidelity to the duke of Burgundy, and in which, forgetting his ordinary grandiloquence a little, he gives free rein to his political indignation.
To find paganism, there was no need for the spirit of the waning Middle Ages to revert to classic literature. The pagan spirit displayed itself, as amply as possible, in the Roman de la
- ↑ Formerly the gentile nations of the gods Craved love by humble sacrifices, Which, taken for granted that they were useless, Were nevertheless profitable and prolific Of much important fruit and of high benefits, Which shows by facts that offices of love And of humble homage, rendered wherever they were, Were sufficient to pierce heaven and hell.
