Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance PeriodJacob, P. L.
History
Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period
Jacob, P. L.
Clothing and dress; Manners and customs; Middle Ages; Renaissance
To these severe instructions upon the management of servants, the
bourgeois adds a few words respecting their morality. He recommends that
they be not permitted to use coarse or indecent language, or to insult one
another (Fig. 61). Although he is of opinion that necessary time should be
given to servants at their meals, he does not approve of their remaining
drinking and talking too long at table: concerning which practice he
quotes a proverb in use at that time: "Quand varlet presche à table et
cheval paist en gué, il est temps qu'on l'en oste: assez y a esté;" which
means, that when a servant talks at table and a horse feeds near a
watering-place it is time he should be removed; he has been there long
enough.
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Hôtel des Ursins, Paris, built during the
Fourteenth Century, restored in the Sixteenth, and now destroyed.--State
of the North Front at the End of the last Century.]
The manner in which the author concludes his instruction proves his
kindness of heart, as well as his benevolence: "If one of your servants
fall sick, it is your duty, setting everything else aside, to see to his
being cured."
It was thus that a bourgeois of the fifteenth century expressed himself;
and as it is clear that he could only have been inspired to dictate his
theoretical teachings by the practical experience which he must have
gained for the most part among the middle class to which he belonged, we
must conclude that in those days the bourgeoisie possessed considerable
knowledge of moral dignity and social propriety.
It must be added that by the side of the merchant and working
bourgeoisie--who, above all, owed their greatness to the high functions of
the municipality--the parliamentary bourgeoisie had raised itself to
power, and that from the fourteenth century it played a considerable part
in the State, holding at several royal courts at different periods, and at
last, almost hereditarily, the highest magisterial positions. The very
character of these great offices of president, or of parliamentary
counsel, barristers, &c., proves that the holders must have had no small
amount of intellectual culture. In this way a refined taste was created
among this class, which the protection of kings, princes, and lords had
alone hitherto encouraged. We find, for example, the Grosliers at Lyons,
the De Thous and Seguiers in Paris, regardless of their bourgeois origin,
becoming judicious and zealous patrons of poets, scholars, and artists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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