SOURCE: Lewis, C. S. “Allegory.” The Allegory of Love, pp. 98-109. New York: Oxford University Press: New York, 1958.

[In the following excerpt, Lewis analyses the Anticlaudianus as a secular rather than a religious work, noting that its importance lies in the influence it exerted on writers like Castiglione and Spenser.]

The Anticlaudianus¹ of Alanus ab Insulis is a work in every respect inferior to the De Mundi Universitate, and may be described as nearly worthless except from the historical point of view. From that point of view it is important. It was written to be a kind of pendant to Claudian's In Rufinum. In that glorified lampoon Claudian had tried to give an original turn to the abuse of an enemy by a setting of the allegorical mythology which was congenial to his age. In the opening of his first book Allecto is introduced lamenting the return of the golden age, and the consequent diminution of her old empire, under Theodosius. An infernal council is summoned and Megaera carries the proposal of entrusting to her nursling Rufinus the championship of the cause of evil. Alanus reverses the idea and describes the creation of a perfect man by Natura as her champion against Allecto; and hence the title anti-Claudian. Since the perfect man, at the end of the poem, proves his mettle in combat against the vices, the poem may be described as a Psychomachia with a lengthy introduction; and Alanus, like Prudentius, probably believed himself to be composing an epic. The work is written throughout in hexameters and always couched in the same monotonous rhetoric. It is a principle with Alanus that whatever is worth saying once is worth saying several times. Thus ‘she thinks about the way to heaven’ becomes

She thinks, inquires, devises, seeks, elects
What way, or path, or road may guide her steps
To high heav'n and the Thunderer's secret throne.(2)

‘She bids them make a chariot’ becomes

She bids, commands, orders, enjoins, begs one
Of those in Wisdom's train, with hand and heart
And faith and zeal and sweat and toil to effect
The carriage into being of her carriage.(3)

But no quotation can do justice to the effect of the book as a whole. Those who have read it to the end—a small company—and those only, can understand how speedily amused contempt turns into contempt without amusement, and how even contempt at last settles into something not far removed from a rankling personal hatred of the author. Nor are the vices of the style redeemed, as their much more pardonable counterparts were redeemed in Bernardus, by any real profundity or freshness in the matter. Once or twice, when he is describing external nature, the author shows a trace of real feeling; once or twice, in moral passages, he attains a certain dignity; for the rest this book is one of the melancholy kind that claim our attention solely as influences and as examples of a tendency.

Natura, the story says, once resolved to sum up in a single crowning work all the goodness that lay scattered among her creatures. But her old anvil was worn away and the task beyond her powers. Therefore she called her sisters to council, in her secret place. Thither they came—Concord and Youth, Laughter who clears the clouds of the mind, and Reason who is the measure of good: Honesty, Prudence, Good Faith, and that Virtue par excellence (for she is called Virtus simply).

Who scatters wealth and pours her gifts abroad
Nor lets her treasure basely fust in ease.(4)

Last of all came Nobility. To these Natura opened her heart. In all her works she saw nothing that was wholly blessed. The old stain could not be removed; but still it might be possible to make one work which could redeem the whole, and be the mirror of themselves. In the meantime, they knew that her decrees were scorned by mortals and Tisiphone triumphed on the earth. To this the Virtues replied that such a project showed the divine wisdom of the speaker, but that among themselves there was no power to perform it. Let Prudence and Reason be dispatched to heaven to ask of God a soul for the perfect man. Prudence at first was coy (‘Fluctuat haec, se nolle negat nec velle fatetur’),⁵ but Concord overruled her. A chariot was built and to it they yoked the five horses whose names are Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch, and the two virtues ascended in it to heaven, passing as they went, the aerios cives quibus aer carcer.⁶ On the brow of the world they met Theology, who unyoked Hearing and setting Prudence on his back—for Reason could come no farther—conducted her to the throne of the Almighty; to whom she offered her prayer, representing the ill treatment which she and her sisters now suffered on earth, and rounding all off with the cogent argument

A neighbour's house on fire imperils thine.(7)

God then called Noys to bring him an exemplar out of her treasury and impressed its likeness with his seal upon the new soul which he gave to Prudence. She rejoined her sister Reason whom she found waiting at the celestial frontier, and the two returned together to the house of Natura. A perfect body was fashioned and united to the soul gumphis subtilibus,⁸ and the Virtues in turn endowed the man with their choicest gifts. Only Nobility could do nothing until he had visited his mother Fortune and secured her goodwill. Meanwhile Fame had carried as far as Hell the tidings of this new creation. Allecto summoned the infernal peers, whose deliberations were so effective that the new man was scarcely living before an army of vices was advancing to attack him. The whole concludes with the psychomachy, and the victory of the perfect man ushers in the golden age.

The importance of this work, whose literary merits I have already denied, is twofold. In the first place it conferred new prestige on the allegorical method, of which it was a specimen more attractive to that age than any of its predecessors. It was the last word in poetic style as style was then understood. It was longer and more encyclopaedic than the Psychomachia. It was a good deal easier and more popular than Bernardus. In the second place, it is significant by reason of its moral content: as a document of the ‘humanism’ of Chartres, as the celebration of a tertium quid between the courtly and the religious conceptions of the good life, it is perhaps more important than the De Mundi Universitate itself. For when we come to examine in detail the perfect man presented by Alanus, we find much that accords ill, by any strict standard, with the theological framework of the poem. The Virtues who are summoned to his making are purely secular virtues. If Fides appears, it is made clear that Fides means ‘good faith’—the virtue that keeps promises and plays fair in friendship—and not ‘Faith’ in the Christian sense.⁹ If Pietas appears, Pietas means ‘Pite’ and not piety.¹⁰ And among the virtues we find some whom a very moderate ascetism might exclude from that title altogether, such as Favor (popularity), Risus, and Decus;¹¹ and others whom no philosophy can treat as virtues at all, such as Copia, Juventus, and Nobilitas.¹² Again, in the psychomachy which concludes the whole we find among the army of the vices such unexpected champions as Pauperies, Infamia, and Senectus:¹³ characters very proper to be excluded from the garden of Amor—as ‘Poverte’ and ‘Elde’ are excluded in the Romance of the Rose—but very oddly included among ‘vices’ from the theologian's point of view. Is it not, then, apparent that Alanus is depicting not so much a perfect man by the standards of the Church as a ‘noble and virtuous gentleman’ according to the standards of chivalry? Is not Alanus, in fine, to be numbered less among the followers of Prudentius than among the predecessors of Castiglione, of Elyot, and of Spenser? We have already seen that he appropriates the common name of Virtus to the typically courtly virtue of Largesse; and the scene in which the Virtues adorn the new man puts the question beyond doubt. He is not complete without Nobilitas, though Nobilitas admittedly depends upon Fortuna.¹⁴Fides, in words later to be echoed by Guillaume de Lorris, recommends to him the choice of a confidant:

To whom he may entrust his complete self,
Lay bare his mind and speak his perfect will
Showing the secret places of the heart.(15)

—advice much more useful to a gentleman than to a saint. Ratio, in direct defiance of the gospel teaching, recommends to him moderation, not abstinence, as regards the desire for fame:

Not swayed with popular applause, nor yet
Spitting it out, unless it bear the stamp
Of flattery and would purchase wealth for words;
It smacks too much of sour austerity
To scorn all fame.(16)

Modestia, who turns out to be none other than the old Hellenic and Provençal virtue of mesura, actually gives him lessons in deportment, and even in hairdressing:

Let not the hair, too wanton-fine, appear
Like woman's bravery and belie the man.
Nor too unkempt, lacking its due regard,
Lest that proclaim thee by its tangled shock
In thy fresh years too philosophical.(17)

We do wrong to laugh at such a passage. Once we have decided to describe, not the perfect man, but the perfect gentleman, we cannot stop short of these externals, which are, as a matter of fact, included in the character: a really exhaustive treatise on music must range from aesthetic philosophy to methods of fingering, and the same defence holds good for Castiglione when he doubles the roles of Platonic philosopher and dancing master. But while Alanus thus stands side by side with Castiglione, and indeed fills up the concept of virtue with purely secular and courtly excellences, it is of the essence of his work that he does so with no slightest sense of rebellion or defiance. The courtesy of the Troubadours, of Andreas, of Chrétien, was a truancy. Behind the courtly scale of values rose the unappeasable claims of a totally different and irreconcilable world: it was to this truancy and insecurity that the courtly life owed half its wilful beauty and pathos. But Alanus is equally serious in his theological passages and in his notes on deportment. He acknowledges no breach; for the naturalism of Chartres has given him a tertium quid that can moderate both the rigours of theology and the wantonness of the court. Goodness does not mean asceticism; knighthood does not mean adultery. Both are brought together under the law of Natura who is the vicar of God and essentially good. It is not a question of grace redeeming Nature: it is a question of sin departing from Nature. The position is summed up in the advice given by Honestas to the perfect man:

Let him love Nature who would flee from vice,
Eschew what guilt or naughty will brought forth
And to his breast clasp all that Nature made.(18)

It is in this that the true value of Alanus consists. I do not say he has effected a real reconciliation between the two ideals of the Middle Ages. The rift went deeper than he thought. He assumes, rather than makes, a peace. But he is at least trying to be a whole man, and however the elements of his synthesis may hereafter fall apart, they will retain some mark of their brief union. The courtly ideal is becoming, as Arnold would have said, more ‘possible’, and for that reason more potent: if you will, more insidious. Its long hold upon the vernacular poetry, its adaptability to some future compromise, are now assured.

It is a relief to turn from the Anti-Claudian to its author's more famous work the De Planctu Naturae, the ‘Plaint of Kind’.¹⁹ Here we are back in the metres and proses of Boethius; and in laying aside the pretentious epic form, Alanus lays aside the most intolerable vices of his style. He is still a fantastic and over-decorated writer; but he is aiming chiefly at sweetness and richness of effect, whereas in the Anti-Claudian he had aimed at grandeur. But sweetness tolerates barbarism as grandeur does not. There can be bizarre luxury, though there is no bizarre grandeur. It is the difference between excess in a sham Gothic railway hotel and excess in a hot house; and every one knows that while the first is a mere burden, the second is pardonable, and even, in some moods, not unpleasing. The Plaint has, moreover, the enormous advantage of being comparatively short. The story may be told in a few words. Nature appears to the author and laments the unnatural vices of humanity; the Virtues come to share their grievance with hers; and Genius is ordered to pronounce an anathema against the offenders.²⁰ That is the whole matter. The importance of the theme, for our purpose, clearly lies in the advantage to which Nature appears in such a setting; and, with Nature, natural love. The earthly Cupid, after being for ages contrasted with the celestial Cupid, suddenly finds himself in contrast with an infernal Cupid. This time it is his turn to be the respectable character; the righteous indignation is on his side. Such is the inevitable result of Alanus' choice of subject, and it is the only result. The reader who expects either prurience or prophetic denunciation will be disappointed. There is nothing so cold, so disinterested, as the heart of a stylist; and I believe that Alanus was tempted to this peculiar theme by the endless opportunities which it offered for fantastic grammatical metaphor about the proper relations of masculine and feminine, or subject and predicate in the grammar of Venus.²¹ Agreeably with time's common way of punishing, these conceits are now the author's chief disgrace; but because, hidden in the rhetorician, there was, after all, a real, though wayward, lover of nature, the Plaint still has a claim on our attention above and beyond its historical significance. As the book is difficult to read, and rather more difficult to buy, I have ventured to translate two passages, both of them elaborations of hints furnished by Bernardus. The first describes the coming of Natura and the ἱερòς γάμος of the world at her approach:

‘The virgin, as I have before signified, at her first coming forth out of the coasts of the heavenly region into the hovel of the world passible, was borne in a glassy coach, and was drawn of Juno's own birds, not managed with any yoke, but joined thereto of their proper will and election. A certain man also that with his height overtopped both the virgin and her coach, whose countenance smacked not of vile earthliness but rather of the Godhead's privity, as though he should succour the insufficiency of her sex feminine, did guide its course with measurable regiment. To the beholding of whose beauty when I had (as it were) drawn together the soldiers of mine eyes, that is, the rays visual; the same, not daring to issue out in the face of so great a majesty, and being blunted with the strokes of his splendour, betook themselves for fear into the tents of mine eyelids. At the coming of the said virgin you would a thought that all the elements, as though they then renewed their kinds, did make festival. The heaven, to lighten (as it were) the maid's journey with his candles, gave order to his stars that they should shine beyond their wont; wherefore methought the daylight marvelled at their hardihood who durst so insolently be seen in his presence. Phoebus also, putting on a jollier countenance than he was used, poured forth all the riches of his light and made a show of it to meet her; and to his sister (from whom he had taken away the garniture of his beaming), giving her back again the garment of jocundity, he bade that she should run to meet such a queen as was now come among them. The air, putting off his weeping clouds, with serene and friendly cheer smiled upon her where she came, and whereas he was before grieved with the raging of Aquilo, now popularly took his ease in the bosom of Favonius. The birds, moved by a certain kindly inspiration, rejoicing with the plausive playing of their pinions, showed unto the virgin a worshipping countenance. Juno forsooth that before had scorned the kissings of Jupiter, was now with so great joy made drunken, that by a darting prologue of her glances she set her husband on fire for pleasing passages of love. The sea also that before was enraged with stormy waves, at the maid's coming made an holiday of peace and swore an everlasting calm; for Aeolus, lest they should move their wars (more than civil) in the virgin's presence, bound in their prisons the tempestuous winds. The fishes, even, swimming up to the eyebrows of the waves, so far forth as the lumpish kind of their sensuality suffered them, foretold by their glad cheer the coming of their lady; and Thetis, being at play with Nereus, bethought her that time to conceive another Achilles. Moreover certain maidens, the greatness of whose beauty was able not only to steal away the reason from a man but to make those in heaven also to forget their deity, coming forth out of places where streams sprang, brought unto her gifts of pigmentary's nectar, making as they should offer tithes to their newcome queen. And truly, the earth, that before lay stripped, by winter's robbery, of her garnishments, made shift to borrow from the largesse of the spring a scarlet smock of flowers, lest in the dishonour of her old clouts she might not decently be seen before the virgin.’²²

Here everything is sophisticated, everything is ‘classical’ and pedantic; but the decorations do not completely obscure the note of delight. The author is intoxicated not only with his style but with his subject; his worst excesses serve only to show how wildly the new love of the visible world ‘wantoned in its prime’, and if we have here a wilderness it is a ‘wilderness of sweets’. The passage may be compared with one of those old tapestries where the richness of the material suggests indoor luxury, but the forms, nearer viewed, reveal, however faintly, the stir and morning airs of a hunting scene. But the Plaint has passages of a more masculine beauty than this, as my next quotation shows:

‘Consider, quoth she, how in this world, as in some noble city, Reason is set up and established by the measurable governance of the commonweal's majesty. In Heaven, as in the castle of an earthly city, the eternal Emperor eternally hath his throne, from whom eternally goeth forth his edict that the notions of things single be written in the book of his providence. In the Air, that is, in the middle parts of the city, there liveth in arms an heavenly host of angels, the which with delegated service doth diligently exercise its watch over men. And man, truly, as an alien that dwelleth without the city wall, refuseth not his obedience to those angelic knights. Therefore in this commonweal God commandeth, the angel operateth, the man obeyeth. God by commandment maketh man, the angel by operation bringeth him to being, the man by obedience remaketh himself again … of the which right ordinate commonweal the likeness is within man also reflected. In the castle of whose head Sapience sitteth and is at rest as an empress, unto whom, as to a goddess, the residue of his powers as half-goddesses do obey. For his power of engin, and his force logical, and his virtue memorial of things passed, having their habitations in divers chambers of his head, are ever busied about their obedience to her. In the heart, forsooth, that is, in the middle parts of the city, Magnanimity hath her house; who having received the order of knighthood under the reign of Wisdom, doth by operation fulfil whatsoever things that governance deliberateth. But the reins, which is as much as to say the parts without the wall, permit a dwelling in the uttermost region of the body to lustful pleasures, which serve the will of Magnanimity, neither dare they set themselves against her commandment. Therefore in this commonweal, Sapience beareth the part of one commanding, Magnanimity hath the likeness of one operating, Lust showeth the image of one obeying.’²³

The ideas derive, of course, from Bernardus, and ultimately from Plato, but they are set forth with conviction and with dignity, and here, at least, the greatness of the matter keeps the rhetorician within the bounds of mesura. Such a passage shows us how well Alanus might often have written if he had had the fortune to stumble upon better models or the individuality to resist bad ones. As it is, he remains an author in whom there is much more to blame than to praise; but no one who has plodded doggedly through him will wholly regret the time he has spent.

Notes

1. I have used the text printed by Wright in his Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century. The poem is also to be found in Migne's Patrologia.

2. Anticlaudianus, Dist. ii, cap. vi. 6 (Wright, p. 303):

   Cogitat, exquirit, studet, invenit, eligit ergo
   Quae via, quis callis, quae semita, rectius ipsam
   Deferet ad superos arcanaque regna Tonantis.

3. Ibid. Dist. ii, cap. vii. 3:

   Ordinat, injungit, jubet, imperat, orat ut instans
   Quaelibet illarum comitum, comitante Sophia
   Corpore, mente, fide, studeat, desudet, anhelet,
   Instet et efficiat ut currus currat ad esse.

   (Wright, p. 304.)

4. Anticlaudianus, Dist. i, cap. ii. 11:

                       Quae spargit opes, quae munera fundit,
   Quam penes ignorat ignavam gaza quietem.

   (Wright, p. 274.)

5. Ibid. Dist. ii, cap. iv. 6 (p. 297 Wright).

6. Ibid. Dist. iv, cap. v. 4 (Wright, p. 338); cf. Chaucer, Hous of Fame, ii. 930, 986.

7. Ibid. Dist. vi, cap. vi. 19: ‘Nam tua res agitur paries dum proximus ardet (Wright, p. 375). The daring theology of this never crossed the poet's mind: a proverb was regarded as a rhetorical beauty.

8. Ibid. Dist. vii, cap. ii. 4 (Wright, p. 384.)

9. Anticlaudianus, Dist. vii, cap. vii (Wright, pp. 394, 395).

10. Ibid. Dist vii, cap. vi. 69 et seq. (Wright, p. 393, Succedens Pietas, &c.).

11. Ibid. Dist. i, cap. ii (Wright, p. 274).

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid. Dist. ix, Pauperies, cap. ii, Infamia, cap. 3, Senectus, cap. 4 (Wright, pp. 414, 416, 417).

14. Ibid. Dist. viii, cap. viii. ix; Dist. viii, cap. i, 2. (Wright, pp. 396-403.)

15. Ibid. Dist. vii, cap. vii. 28:

    Quaerat cui possit se totum credere, velle
    Declarare suum, totamque exponere mentem,
    Cui sua committat animi secreta latentis.

    (Wright, p. 395.)

16. Ibid. Dist. vii, cap. iv. 26:

    Nec petat impelli populari laude, nec ipsam
    Respuat oblatam nisi sit velata colore
    Hypocrisis verbo quaerens emungere lucrum:
    Nam nimis austerum redolet qui despicit omnem
    Famam.

    (Wright, p. 388.)

17. Anticlaudianus, Dist. vii, cap. iii. 32: (Wright, p. 387.)

    Ne cultu nimio crinis lascivus adaequet
    Femineos luxus sexusque recidat honorem,
    Aut nimis incomptus iaceat, squalore profundo
    Degener et iuvenem proprii neglectus honoris
    Philosophum nimis esse probet.

18. Ibid. Dist. vii, cap. v. 7:

    Ut vitium fugiat Naturam diligat, illud
    Quod facinus peperit damnans, quod prava voluntas
    Edidit, amplectens quidquid Natura creavit.

    (Wright, p. 389.)

19. Also in Wright, op. cit.

20. See App. I.

21. De Planctu, Prosa V. 40 et seq. (Wright, pp. 475 et seq.)

22. De Planctu Naturae, Prosa II. 11 ff. (Wright, pp. 445 ff.). A faintly sixteenth-century flavour seemed to me the only method of representing in English the quality of the original, which neither modern nor Chaucerian prose could reproduce. If an historical justification for my choice is demanded, I can claim that certain characteristics of Euphuism are already present in Alanus. The antithesis and the playing with words in the following are noteworthy: ‘Eius opus sufficiens, meum opus deficiens. Eius opus mirabile, meum opus mutabile. Ille mei opifex operis, ego opus opificis. Ille operatur ex nihilo, ego mendico ex aliquo. Ille suo operatur numine, ego operor illius sub nomine.’ (Prosa III, Wright, p. 455.) A complete translation of the Plaint has been published by Mr. Moffat (Yale Studies in English, 1908); it is greatly to be regretted that the limits of his book did not allow him to accompany it with a text and commentary.

23. Ibid. Prosa III. 108 et seq. (Wright, pp. 452 et seq.)