Monk and Knight. A tale

Front matter

Monk-anD'Knigh' ' A TALE ERASMUS • T. NELSON A: SONS Z0NJ302T. /■: DINHf-RttH Ar STJXW- YO ILK Monk and Knight 21 ZaU By FRANK W. GUNSAULUS T. NELSON AND SONS London and Edinburgh ©Contents. PROEM, ... ... ... ... . ... 9 I. ENTERTAINING ANGELS UNAWARES, ... ... 25 II. STRANGERS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS, ... ... 33 III. A RECOGNIZED GUEST, ... ... ... 40 IV. AT AN ENGLISH ABBEY, ... ... ... 47 V. UNPLEASANT VISITORS, ... ... ... 55 VI. A NOVICE AND FUGITIVE, ... ... ... 69 VII, A FRENCH CHATEAU, ... ... ... ••• 75 VIII. THE KING UNDER GOVERNANCE,... ... .. 82 IX. WITCHES AND KNIGHTS, ... ... ... 91 X. A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND A YOUNG KING, ... ... 102 XI. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH, ... ... •■■ 110 XII. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH, ... ... ■■■ 118 XIII. FADING FACTS AND LIVING DREAMS, ... ... 124 XIV. A VISITOR AT GLASTONBURY, ... ■•• ••■ 134 XV.

A SHAKING FAITH, ... ■•• ••• ■■■ 14~ XVI. AT LUTTERWORTH AGAIN, ... ■•■ ■-■ 155 XVII. A WALDENSIAN OF THE RENAISSANCE, ... ... 161 XVIII. MAIDEN AND NOVICE, ... •■■ ••■ ••■ 168 XIX. HOLY COMMUNION, ... •■• ■•■ " 178 XX MARIGNANO, ... ••• •■ ■" "" l88 CONTENTS. VI XXI. POPE, KING, AND KNIGHT, ... ... ... 198 XXII. UNRENEWED FRANCE, ... ... ■•■ 206 XXIII. THE WHITE PEAK AMID DARK CLOUDS, ... 211 XXIV. EASTER AT GLASTONBURY', ... ■■■ ••■ 220 XXV. THE GROWING PROBLEM, . . .' ... ... 227 XXVI. AN IMPASSABLE ABYSS, ... ••■ -■■ 235 XXVII. AN UNCHAINED BOOK, ... ... 248 XXVIII. AN UNCHAINED BOOK, ... ... ... 257 XXIX. VIAN THE PYTHAGOREAN, ... ... ... 263 XXX. A CALL UPON THE CARDINAL, , ... ... 276 XXXI. THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, ... ... 281 XXXII. JEALOUSY AND MAGNIFICENCE, ... ... 2S8 XXXIII.

LOVE AND LEARNING, ... ... ... 294 XXXIV. AN UNHORSED KNIGHT, ... ... ... 303 XXXV. TWO LETTERS, ... ... ... ... 308 xxxvi. Gerard's account of worms, ... ... 317 XXXVII. A VICTORY AND A DEFEAT, ... ... ... 328 XXXVIII. A VIRTUOSO'S STATESMANSHIP, ... ... 338 XXXIX. "AUREUS LIBELLUS," ... ... ... 343 XL. THE ETERNAL CITY, ... ... ... 348 XLI. A NEW POPE, ... ... ... ... 357 XLII. THE COURT AND THE VISION, ... ... 365 XLIII. PYTHAGOREANISM AT SIR THOMAS MORE'S, ... 373 XLIV. THE SACRIFICE OF BAYARD, ... ... ... 3S1 XLV. PAVIA, ... ... ... ... ... 385 XLVI. LA TORRE, ... ... ... ... 302 XLVII. A HEART'S DISCONTENT, ... ... ... 400 XLVIII. SPIRITUAL ENVIRONMENTS, ... ... ... 40G XLIX. A BELEAGUERED CASTLE, ... ... ... 414 L. A DISCARDED FAVOURITE, ... ... ... 403 LI. THE ZEAL OF HERESY, ... ... ...

Chapter I. Entertaining Angels Unawares

: " Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not ; in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled Mothers with infants down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant ; that from these may grow A hundredfold who having learned thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe. " Milton. ALONG red wave of splendour ran swiftly across the summit of the stainless peak which towered just behind the simple dwelling of Gaspar Perrin. The whole year had been one of such agony that every night the quivering crimson on the mountain top seemed to have been drained from human hearts.

Gaspar sat with the sweetest of little children in his lap, her golden hair playing against his honest breast, as the Alpine breezes, which could not be entirely shut out, toyed tenderly with its beauty. It was midwinter, 1509 of the years of grace; but it would have been impossible to one possessed with a faith less strong and sublime than that of this stalwart Waldensian to have thought of that anguish-laden year as "a year of grace." Terrible as had been the efforts of the dominant ecclesiastical power, under the guidance of Innocent VIII., to root out and abolish the Waldensians in Italy, France, and Germany more than twenty years before, and far more general, this year had marked the very height of papal intolerance and churchly cruelty as they raged in that lovely valley. Many years before, the ancestors of Gaspar had led their little ones with flock and herd to this spot, that the walls which God himself had upraised might protect them.

The family had that intelligence and experience which made them tremble at the name of the Holy Church. Long ago they had learned that when his Holiness had conferred upon their Swiss neighbours the title of "Protectors of the Liberties of the Church," the Pope held those words to signify something very different from that which the study of the Scriptures and purity of life had made them mean amid the leaping waters, the clear sunshine, and the immutable crags of Switzerland. This year had enabled them to read for themselves infallible signs of the spirit which demanded a reformation on every hand. No longer could the simplest villager or the most solitary moun taineer content his enthusiasm of opposition to Rome by informing it with the memory of what some chance traveller from France or Germany had related to him, in whispers, of the wrongs which under papal protection held carnival.

The fire was glowing and blowing into a fury, from fuel cut at his own door. The year 1509 had been so decisive that it had lifted many a less sensitive and positive man than was Gaspar Perrin over into the prodigious movement called the Reformation. He had just fed the little girl her evening meal of goat's milk and bread, and was looking into one of those unsubstantial and yet real worlds which lie behind and often within the world of sense. It was along that line where memory and imagination confront each other — the one looking backward and the other looking forward — that Gaspar's mind was travelling. He was beholding how indivisible these realms — the very dwelling-places and haunts of these two faculties — seem to be, as his recollections went back but a few months to the hour when there were two little children for him to feed at eventide ; and as his fancies filled the pathless days and nights of imagination with the presence and wanderings of the child whom he had lost, grief took possession of him.

Gaspar's life was more solitary than ever before, now that the little Ami had been captured and carried away ; and as he thought of it, a big tear ran down his great rough cheek, and fell, like a drop of liquid silver, amid the hair of gold. His had been a life in whose lights and shadows there had been much pathos and poetry. Born here, in the midst of these scenes, his youth had been nurtured upon the most vitalizing food for mind and spirit. His father, Henri Perrin, had feared and loved Almighty God ; and this made him a freeman in his very soul. Henri's religious life had been influenced by the inspiring name and works of Peter Waldo of Lyons. His youth was that of a Waldensian at Lyons ; and his manhood had been passed in the mountains, in constant expectation that, being a leader of the Waldensians, his place of residence would be found out and his life sacrificed.

For thirty years the father of Gaspar had endured poverty and exile with never a murmur. For a generation he had gladly confessed to his joy in the mountain solitudes, as he remembered how, as a layman, he had consecrated the sacrament, and how, as an honest man, he had once refused to obey a priest of vicious habits. He had told Gaspar of coming events, the prophecy of which the son had not forgotten when, in 1487, his own sister fell under the cruel crusade of Alberto de CapitaneL For him, when Gaspar was only a boy, the priest had gone, and the guide, or Barbe, had become his minister. In his ecclesiastical vocabulary, character had long ago eclipsed ordination. Purgatory he denied absolutely, and fasts and festivals he abhorred ; and Gaspar had grown up to hear the tread of great coming events in his father's animated conversations.

These convictions Gaspar had at once learned to make his own. He had not his father's calmness of temper ; and his eyes soon beheld scenes so atrocious that one day he found himself hurried into Italy by having obeyed his own indignant impulse to restrain their foe and his desire to save his friends; and in 1506 he appeared fixed as an exile in Venice, having failed in his effort, utterly broken in hope and very poor in purse. He had soon married an Italian woman of singular mental freedom, who had accepted him suddenly, after an honest but stormy discussion of her religious views with her father, who was then a penniless count. Gaspar was at the time employed as a workman in a press-room in Venice — a press-room of which the world shall always preserve the chronicle — and was doing well, when his wife died and left Gaspar with two little children alone in the great world.

When that dreadful event fell upon the life of this husband and father, and he looked upon his little ones through such tears as blunders and poverty never may extract from human eyes, he was only at the beginning of such a strife with his wife's father, Count Aldani Neforzo, as was sure to end in his leaving Venice. No effort or threatenings of the count, who had already forsaken his daughter, could persuade this Waldensian to obtain or to per mit — if possible to prevent — prayers for the dead. Together they had lived in a truer and deeper faith. She should be respected in her opinions and piety, now that death had intervened. The count brandished weapons of the most effective sort against the humble but heroic pressman. Poor and ill-tempered as was the count, his pedigree and undoubted loyalty to the Church made the priesthood of Venice his agents and slaves.

Even the great employer of Gaspar could do nothing, though he should lose the finest workman in Europe — the servant who in 1502 had suggested the dolphin and anchor for title-pages, the hand which was bringing to Venice the scholars from every quarter who had seen the matchless "Demosthenes" of 1504. Assassination, in the person of a closely-covered priest, glared at Gaspar one night as he passed from the printing-room into the street. The powers of the Church in Venice were determined to crush the Waldensian ; and one day Gaspar had sold to his illustrious employer a beautiful manuscript, for which he had traded his rings to a sailor from Constantinople ; and with his children he hurried back, by aid of the funds thus obtained, to the old home in the mountains. Here in his mountain home we have found him, at the opening of this chapter.

His wife's dust lay in Venice ; his hands were a testimony to the fact that the printer had been lost in the herds man, and the falling tear bore witness to the new sorrow which had befallen him. He was living with the memory of a spring clay which seemed only yesterday. Never had the valley appeared so beautiful as on that morning of which the herdsman was then thinking, in whose dewy loveliness he had started forth with little Ami and his baby sister to find the missing goats. After he left the little roof which had sheltered him and the two children, it was a joy to watch the happy boy bound over the dashing streams which worried their way amidst the rocks, and to pluck the fairest flowers for the child, whom, for love's sake, Gaspar carried in his arms. They had not gone far, until the father's hand was full of flowers, before which the little girl's eyes were in an ecstasy.

They were strangely-coloured orbs of loveliness. The variety of their colour bespoke a many-sided and rich nature. The father could behold everything within them which in any way influenced or grew out of the solitary but seething intellectual life which he was living. Nothing so holds the two realms — that of revelation which satisfies, that of mystery which charms and inspires — as human eyes behind and within which lives a soul. Gaspar saw in that child the whole majestic movement which he felt in his own breast. He had named her Alke, " yearning;" and in those peculiarly eloquent eyes there was such longing, in her very cry such a per sistent and hopeful struggle seemed to be uttering itself, so often in her babyhood she seemed to be gathering invisible sheaves from ideal harvest fields, so constantly now the lucent depth of her eye was but an indication of how far beyond her environment it sent its searching aspiration, that he was sure that she had been well named.

The tremendous energies of the Renaissance were leaping lightning-like about the printing-room of Aldus Manutius, in Venice, when he quitted work that night to go home and call her Alke ! The resistless cry of the human soul for light and leading, which was then echoing over Germany and Switzerland, was pathetic in its longing, as he pressed her to his breast on the night her mother died, and felt in his very soul that this child was somehow bound up in destiny with the soul's demand — Alke, "yearning." Love had been wedded to learning, and religion had been allied with reform, in that name ; and the child had a piteous sacredness that morning, when the little boy, with proud affection, placed in her baby fingers a fringed gentian, blue as the sky above. And Gaspar wondered if all the tumult and strife of many swift and antagonistic streams would ever press upon the brain and strain the heart of Alke.

As he felt the grandeur of the crisis at which he knew Europe had arrived, he unconsciously kissed the rosy lips of the child in his arms, called the boy from the edge of the abyss down into whose deeps he was gazing, and kissed him likewise, again and again, and then he stood listening for the wandering goats. Alas, what a thrill of pain shot through his very soul as he kissed that strong and beautiful boy ! It was the strange horror of impending danger which made him kiss him the second time. Gaspar could now detect that same pain about his heart still, as he sat there on that winter night, thinking it all over. He remembered so vividly his saying to the baby, " Ami, dear little brother, Ami ! " and looking at the innocent ignorance of Alke. He was not disappointed either; for the child did smile, drop her fringed gentian, and she patted the boy's cheek.

Ami was twelve years of age on that very day, and the father could not forget how he sat on a rock, which he saw had fallen lately from the height above, beholding the two playing together — the boy so proud of the love with which this sweet three-year old caressed him. He remembered it all. The walk to the cottage O of his friend, Nirval Arnaud's home, where the little Alke was left with the old grandmother, — the whole past was so real that now and then, as he sat there, his feet moved, and the child on his breast was wakeful. The enthusiasm of Ami's spirit, and the ardour of his more boyish imaginations, had heard the goats up the mountain-side ; but oh, the terrible cry of the mountaineers as a few of them shouted the news of the attack ! Even yet it almost lifted Gaspar from his seat as he remembered it.

It was the third charge of the papal cohorts within a year upon the Waldensians. Down they came, without pity, robbing the homes of fathers and sons, burning cottages, stabbing old men suspected of heresy, sparing only the aged women and the infants ■all in the name of the Holy Church ! Gaspar lived it all over again as he sat with Alke in his arms ; and the tear which fell into the golden hair was only one of a multitude which had fallen from the eyes which on that fatal day beheld one of that cohort — a French soldier who was clad as a knight — seize the terrified boy, who clung to his wounded father, tear him away, and, strapping the child to his saddle, ride afar toward the valley, while the hills echoed with the hoof-beats of his horse and Ami's pathetic crying. Ami was lost. The great gashes upon Gaspar's fore-arms were testimonies of the fierceness of the struggle.

The child had died on the way to Paris ; so Gaspar had found out on his own recovery. Ami thereafter had been but a holy memory, a stolen hope. The infernal power which had captured his boy and panted for Gaspar's life was left — so was Alke ; so also the Lord God Omni potent. After all, he was not alone. It had grown dark while Gaspar had recalled these events ; and the little golden head had fallen over upon the strong arm, which now lifted her a trifle without disturbing the delicious sleep into which the child had fallen. " How beautiful it is," thought Gaspar, " that, at least for a time in this life, a human being may fall asleep in the very presence of sleepless forces which arrange revolutions!" And just as he had muttered this to his half-wakened soul, he saw through the shadows which fell thickly upon the snows two men on horseback approaching his door.

Little did the Waldensian know that the word " revolution," which had just escaped his lips, would never be pronounced in after centuries save with the recollection of one of those tired travellers, and that he who was to be his guest that night had already done something to loosen the vast masses which would sweep, like the avalanche which Gaspar saw the day before, over the enormous area of human thought, and leave it ready for fresh growths and a new civilization. As the strangers neared the cottage, Gaspar slowly arose ; and with the tenderness of a mother, he put the little child on the cot nearest the open fire, which threw its streams of brilliant light out on the snow when he opened the door.

Chapter II. Strangers And Fellow-citizens

" True dignity abides with him alone Who, in the hour of silent thought, Can still suspect and still revere himself." Wordsworth. '""PWO travellers," said the servant, who had alighted, "who JL are not sure of their way, and who will hope to find the best pass through the mountains by day, beseech you, good friend, to allow them to remain with you until morning." Gaspar had once been lost in those mountains ; and his ex perience and sympathy opened his heart and home. But before he could say a single word, his mind was employing itself in detecting tones in that voice like those he had heard so often at Venice, on the liquid streets, in the boats, and especially in the printing-room of Aldus. It was not light enough for him to at tempt to make new acquaintances or to identify old ones, but he had certainly noticed a familiar method of pronunciation.

" What I have," said Gaspar, " is certainly at the disposal of any who on such a night and in such deep snows travel these mountain roads. Will you both come into my cottage 1 " " I must thank you, my kind man ! " said the other traveller, in dignified and somewhat lofty tones. " This surely is not courtesy, but the very essence of humanity." As he alighted, Gaspar was thinking where he had heard that voice. A hundred Venetians might have pronounced words as did the servant, who spoke first ; but he had never but once heard a voice so full of culture, so eloquent with refinement, so suggestive (362) of quiet power, as that which had just spoken — never but once ; and then in that dear old press-room at Venice, when one day with his eminent master, Aldus, he had looked, with one who was a stranger to him at that hour, at a rare manuscript.

" It cannot be," whispered Gaspar, "that I have lost my wits in this solitude, and that this memory of Venice makes my very ears its victim." " I will attend to the horses very soon, when I am a little warmed," said the servant ; and behind the master, who walked slowly and with evident weakness, he came into the little home which fairly glowed with welcome. " Strangers that you are," said the host, " I can promise you some food, if it will not offend you to partake with me of bread made by my own hands ; " and he made his way toward a huge jar which contained the provisions of the home. A two-branched candlestick of peculiar beauty stood by the little sundial with which the child had been amused that after noon ; and it soon bore two lights which revealed many more of the curious and interesting contents of this interior.

" Where couldthis mountaineer have obtained such a piece of household furniture as this ? " silently queried the dignified stranger, as he beheld saucepans piled upon a metal boiler, and by its side a ewer of Oriental origin, and a pitcher on which had been copied with artistic accuracy the scene of the burning of Girolamo Savonarola in St. Mark's, Florence. "This," added he, in the silence of his thoughts, "is more like Florence than anything I have seen since leaving ; " and speaking aloud, he said, " My good friend, I beg you know that whatever you have will be gratefully eaten by one so dependent on your hospitality and so fond as I am of your Piedmontese food." Forthwith Gaspar produced a loaf of acorn bread, and pro ceeded to make a stew of rabbit and herbs, the very odour of which was a full meal to the youth, who by this time had provided for the horses.

" Never was prince better fed," was the remark of the older traveller, as he was half startled by finding beneath his hands, on the table where stood the bowl which Alke had but just emptied, a copy, exquisite, clear, and especially well-bound, of the " Herone et Leandro " of Musæus, printed by Aldus in 1494. Could it be possible that he was in a fairy realm t The only copy he had seen, outside of that famous printing-room of Aldus, was held carefully in the hand of Lorenzo de Medici's intellectual counsellor and vicegerent, Pico della Mirandola. He dropped his bit of acorn bread which he was eating, as his mind turned from that poor man's home, with its smells of bacon, bouilleux, pot pourri, and garlic, to the palace of Lorenzo, where the learned and elegant Pico pored over his costly cabalistic manuscripts, and patted gently the " Herone et Leandro," with which Aldus Manu tius had favoured him.

It was now the turn of the stranger to wonder where in the world he had aforetime seen this man, his host. Something about the man took him back to the press-room of Aldus. He could almost see him there, amidst the newly-discovered manuscripts and the workmen. Then, the drawing on the pitcher, — that was the Florence of Savonarola's day, an excited, mob-ruled, offensive Florence, from which every characteristic of the wondering man turned away. " Ah," he thought, " Savonarola's death pictured in this man's home ! I see it all. He is a Waldensian ! I am in the home of one of the men who have for so long made this furor about reforming the Church." He was thinking it over, while the youth who was his attendant was making some general remarks about the city of Turin and the snows which they had encountered on their way, when at length something occurred which made him sure that the roof of a radical and intense Waldensian was over his head.

The door had opened, and without ceremony a wild-eyed, ill tempered old woman had entered, holding a huge wooden cross before her noisy tongue. She did not notice either of the strangers, but proceeded to berate the man of the house with bitterness and curses, while she attempted to pound him with this pious emblem. " Stop ! " said Gaspar in a loud whisper. " Don't wake little Alke ; she is just asleep. I will give you justice. Away with your missile ! " as she threw it at him with all her power. "I'll have you cursed by the priest on the hill; and Saint Bridget herself will dry up your cows, and little Alke will starve ! I'll tell the holy friars that you're heretical, and you'll be burned alive ! " This last sentence she fairly shouted, while the baby slept sweetly, and the kind but irritated Gaspar pushed her toward the door, and gently held her with one hand, while with his other strong hand he gathered up the pieces of the broken cross.

Soon he had compelled her to leave her curses behind. "My friends," said the host, after he had closed the door, "I know you must feel that you have found an insecure lodging for the night. I am sure I cannot help this noisy creature from visiting me in this way. I must tell you, and I believe you," looking straight at the dignified stranger, who had his hand on the " He rone et Leandro," — " I believe you are a gentleman of intelligence : this woman is — or rather let me begin with myself — I am not of her faith, as you see. She was my only help and the child's guardian, while I looked after the herds. I resolved yesterday to dis miss her. You may not share my opinions about matters of faith and doctrine, but I am not a believer in Saint Bridget, nor do I fear her influence with my cows. This woman had begun to teach my little child what are to me the superstitions of men."

Gaspar had gone farther than he had meant to go. These men might be spies, the forerunners of another of Leo's legions of extermination. He saw it all ; but he faltered not. He was about to tell them what had occurred, when the man, whose hand had rested uneasily upon the book, spoke, — " My worthy host, will you fear not ? But — you are a Wal densian ! " "I am," answered Gaspar, and he looked the heroic soul he was, — " I am; and I am so much a hater of these monkish mutter ings, that when this woman sat milking in the cow-house, saying, 'God and Saint Bridget bless you ! ' in order that she might save her head and the milk, I resolved to do the milking myself." The stranger was astonished at his humorous and vigorous language, and again the press-room of Aldus came before his eyes; but he took up the other picture with Saint Bridget in the foreground.

" I shall be permitted to say that your confession of faith is safe in my keeping. We are not spies of the Holy Church ; and on my soul, I am glad to be lost, if I may stay with such a frank heretic until morning. I can imagine that one who cares for a thing of this kind," holding up the book, " cannot fear the male dictions of Saint Bridget." Gaspar had forgotten to put this book back in its place, with other most precious volumes ; and he was disconcerted when he saw the excited eye of his guest, as he held the little volume in his trembling hand. The mountaineer now became quite oblivious of the incident with the discharged servant, though he knew such an event as her discharge would probably arouse the priests to arrange another attack. He was fascinated with the sight of a man who understood the significance of such a fact as the discov ery of that book in these scenes ; he was also sure that he had seen that same eye kindle at least once before amidst associations of learning.

For the moment Gaspar was tongue-tied. He did not dare to ask the name of his guest ; and he had resolved to hide his own identity, if possible. Surely there was enough beside their own names which these two men could talk about. " Will you let me know just where we are?" asked the youth. " We set out from Turin ; and we are only sure of one thing — that we are glad to be here, although, as my master says, we are lost in the mountains." Gaspar quickly saw that here were a scholar and his student, who were gracefully accepting the inevitable annoyances of such an experience ; and he was resolved to be interesting and instructive as far as possible. He summoned his rusty scholarship to the task. " This mountain," said he, " is the Vesulus of Virgil. Do you remember?" " Indeed ! " interrupted the master ; and with greatest interest he quoted the words, — " De Montibus altis Actus aper, multa Vesulus quem pinifer annos Defendit."