MAHAUT, COUNTESS OF ARTOIS 



only seemed to add lustre to the work she had 

 set herself to do. 



Mahaut was religious, artistic, and literary. 

 All these characteristics, together with the 

 circumstance of wealth, she inherited, and right 

 well did she make use of her inheritance. 



Being religious, and living in an age when the 

 frenzy for crusading had subsided and when archi- 

 tecture was the ruling passion, she expended her 

 zeal in building religious houses and hospitals. 



Being artistic, she made her favourite castle 

 at Hesdin, and the town around its walls, a 

 centre of art life. Here, seemingly, she favoured 

 all the arts, including to a certain extent music, 

 then still in its infancy, for although she 

 apparently had no regular minstrel or minstrels 

 in her employ as was customary in the houses 

 of the noblesse, she seems to have engaged them 

 for Church festivals and sundry fetes, and we 

 know that on one occasion she hired a minstrel 

 to soothe her sick child with the sweet soft 

 music of the harp, thus suggesting that she 

 herself had felt the power of music to minister 

 to both body and soul. 



Being literary, Mahaut collected what MSS. 

 and books she could, and the list of them serves 

 to show what might be found in a library of the 

 early fourteenth century. Her religious books 

 included a Bible in French, 1 a Psalter, a Gradual, 

 various Books of Hours for private devotion, 



1 The Bible was first translated into French, and reduced in size 

 so that it could be carried in the hand, between 1200 and 1250. 



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