XVIII. ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI[507]
Twenty-nine years after the death of St. Bernard, Francis was born in the Umbrian hill town of Assisi. The year was 1182. On the fourth of October 1226, in the forty-fifth year of his age, this most loving and best beloved of mediaeval saints breathed his last, in the little church of the Portiuncula, within the shadows of that same hill town.
Of all mediaeval saints, Bernard and Francis impressed themselves most strongly upon their times. Neither of them was pre-eminently an intellectual force--Francis especially would not have been what he was but for certain childlike qualities of mind which never fell away from him. The power of these men sprang from their personalities and the vivida vis (their contemporaries would have said, the grace of God) realizing itself in every word and act. Bernard’s power was more directly dependent upon the conditions of his epoch, and his influence was more limited in duration.
The reason is not far to seek. Both men were of the Middle Ages, even of those decades in which they lived. But Bernard’s strength was part of the medium wherein he worked and the evil against which he fought--the clerical corruptions, the heresies, the schisms and political controversies, the warfare of Christ with Mahomet,--all matters of vital import for his time, but which were to change and pass.
Francis, on the other hand, was occupied with none of these. He was no scourge of clerical corruptions, no scourge of anything; he knew nought of heresy or schism, nothing of politics or war; into the story of his life there comes not even a far-off echo of the Albigensian Crusade or the conflict between pope and emperor. His life appears detached from the special conditions of his time; it is neither held within them nor compelled by them, but only by its inner impulse. For it was not occupied with the exigencies of Italy and Germany, or Southern France, during that first quarter of the thirteenth century, when De Montfort was hurling the orthodox and brutal north upon the fair but heretical provinces of Languedoc, and when Innocent III. was excommunicating Otho IV., and Frederick II. was disclosing himself as the most dangerous foe the papacy had yet known. The passing turmoil and danger of the time did not touch this life; the man knew naught of all these things. He was not considering thirteenth-century Italians, Frenchmen, and Germans; he was fascinated with men as men, with the dumb brutes as fellow-creatures, and even with plants and stones as vessels of God’s loveliness or symbols of His Word; above all he was absorbed in Christ, who had taken on humanity for him, had suffered for him, died for him, and who now around, above, within him, inspired and directed his life.
So Francis’s life was not compassed by its circumstances; nor was its effect limited to the thirteenth century. His life partook of the eternal and the universal, and might move men in times to come as simply and directly as it turned men’s hearts to love in the years when Francis was treading the rough stones of Assisi.
On the other hand, Francis was mediaeval and in a way to give concrete form and colour to the elements of universal manhood that were his. He was mediaeval in complete and finished mode; among mediaeval men he offers perhaps the most distinct and most perfectly consistent individuality. He is Francis of Assisi, born in 1182 and dying in 1226, and no one else who ever lived either there and then or elsewhere at some other time. He is Francis of Assisi perfectly and always, a man presenting a complete artistic unity, never exhibiting act or word or motive out of character with himself.
From a slightly different point of view we may perceive how he was a perfect individual and at the same time a perfect mediaeval type. There was no element in his character which was not assimilated and made into Francis of Assisi. Anterior and external influences contributed to make this Francis. But in entering him they ceased to be what they had been; they changed and became Francis. For example, nothing of the antique, no distinct bit of classical inheritance, appears in him; if, in any way, he was touched by it--as in his joyous love of life and the world about him--the influence had ceased to be anything distinct in him; it had become himself. Likewise, whatever he may have known of the Fathers and of all the dogmatic possession and ecclesiastical tradition of the Church, this also was remade in Francis. Evidently such an all-assimilating and transforming individuality could not have existed in those earlier centuries when the immature mediaeval world was taking over its great inheritance from the pagan and Christian antique--those centuries when men could but turn their heritage of thought and knowledge this way and that, disturb and distort and rearrange it. Such an individuality as Francis could exist only at the climax of the Middle Age, at the period of its fullest strength and greatest distinction, when it had masterfully changed after its own heart whatever it had received from the past, and had made its transformed acquisitions into itself.
Francis is of this grand mediaeval climacteric. The Middle Ages were no longer in a stage of transition from the antique; they had attained; they were themselves. Sides of this distinctive mediaeval development and temper express themselves in Francis--are Francis verily. The spirit of romance is incarnate in him. Roland, Oliver, Charlemagne (he of the Chansons de geste), and the knights of the Round Table, are part of Francis;--his first disciples are his paladins. Again, instead of emperor or paladin, he is himself the jongleour, the joculator Dei (God’s minstrel).
And of all that had become Francis the greatest was Christ. He had not taken the theology of Augustine; he had not taken the Christ handed over by the transition centuries to the early Middle Ages; he had not adopted the Christ of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He took Jesus from the Gospel, or at least such elements of Jesus’ life and teaching as he felt and understood. Francis modelled his life on his understanding of Christ and His teaching. So many another saint had done; in fact, so must all Christians try to do. Francis accomplished it with completeness and power; he created a new Christ life; a Christ life partial and reduced from the breadth and balance of the original, yet veritable and living. Francis himself felt that his whole life was Christ-directed and inspired, and that even because of his own special insignificance Christ had chosen him to show forth the true Gospel life again--but chosen him indeed.[508]
Although the life of Francis appears as if detached from the larger political and ecclesiastical movements of the time, it yields glimpses of the ways and doings of the people of Assisi. We see their jealousies and quarrels, their war with Perugia, also their rustic readiness to jeer at the unusual and incomprehensible; or we are struck with instances of the stupid obstinacy and intolerance often characterizing a small community. Again, we see in some of those citizens an open and quick impulsiveness, which, at the sight of love, may turn to love. It would seem as if the harshest, most impossible man of all the town was Peter Bernardone, a well-to-do merchant whose affairs took him often from Assisi, and not infrequently to France.
Bernardone had a predilection for things French, and the child born to his wife while he was absent in France, he called Francis upon his return, although the mother had given it the name of John. The mother, whose name was Pica, may have been of Provençal or French blood. Apparently such education as Francis received in his boyhood was as much French as Italian. Through all his life he never lost the habit of singing French songs which he composed himself.[509]
The biographers assert that Francis was nourished in worldly vanity and insolence. His temperament drew him to the former, but kept him from the latter. For while he delighted in making merry with his friends, he was always distinguished by a winning courtesy of manner toward poor and rich. An innate generosity was also his, and he loved to spend money as he roamed with his companions about Assisi singing jovial choruses and himself the leader of the frolic. Bernardone did not object to his son’s squandering some money in a way which led others to admire him and think his parents rich; while Pica would keep saying that some day he would be God’s son through grace. A vein of sprightly fantasy runs through these gaieties of Francis’s, which we may be sure were unstained by any gross dissipation. Francis’s life as a saint is peculiarly free from monkish impudicity, free, that is, from morbid dwelling upon things sensual; which shows that in him there was no reaction or need of reaction against any youthful dissoluteness, and bears testimony to the purity of his unconverted years.[510]
In those days Francis loved to be admired and praised. He was possessed with a romantic and imaginative vanity. Costly clothes delighted him as he dreamed of still more royal entertainment, and fancied great things to come. His mind was filled with the figures of Romance; a knight would he be at least; why not a paladin, whom all the world should wonder at? So he dreamed, and so he acted out his whim as best he might on the little stage of Assisi; for Francis was a poet, and a poet even more in deed than in words. He was endowed with exquisite fancy, and he did its dictates never doubting. His life was to prove an almost unexampled inspiration to art, because it was itself a poem by reason of its unfailing realization of the conceptions of a fervent and beautiful imagination.
There came war with Perugia, a very hard-hitting town; and the Assisi cavaliers, Francis among them, found themselves in their neighbours’ dungeons. There some desponded; but not Francis. For in these careless days he was always gleeful and jocular, even as afterwards his entire saintly life was glad with an invincible gaiety of spirit. So Francis laughed and joked in prison till his fellow-prisoners thought him crazy, which no whit worried him, as he answered with the glad boast that some day he would be adored by all the world. He showed another side of his inborn nature when he was kind to a certain one of the captives whom the rest detested, and tried to reconcile his fellows with him.
It was soon after his release from this twelvemonth captivity that the sails of Francis’s spirit began to fill with still more topping hopes, and then to waver strangely. He naturally fell sick after the privations of a Perugia prison. As he recovered and went about with the aid of a staff, the loveliness of field and vineyard failed to please him. He wondered at himself, and suspected that his former pleasures were follies. But it was not so easy to leave off his previous life, and Francis’s thoughts were lured back again to this world’s glory; for a certain nobleman of Assisi was about to set out on an expedition to Apulia to win gain and fame, and Francis was inflamed to go with him. In the night he dreamed that his father’s house with its heaps of cloth and other wares was filled instead with swords and lances, with glittering shields, helmets and breastplates. He awoke in an ecstasy of joy at the great glory portended by this dream. Then he fitted himself out sumptuously, with splendid garb, bright weapons, new armour, and accoutrements, and in due time set forth with his fellow-adventurers.
Once more he wavered. Before reaching Spoleto he stopped, left the company, turned back on his steps, this time impelled more strongly to seek those things which he was to love through life. He was about twenty-three years old. It was his nature to love everything, fame and applause, power perhaps, and joy; but he had not yet loved worthily. Now his Lord was calling him, the voice at first not very certain, and yet becoming stronger. Francis seems to have seen a vision, in which the vanity of his attachments was made clear, and he learned that he was following a servant instead of the Lord. So his heart replied, “Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?” and then the vision showed him that he should return, for he had misunderstood his former dream of arms. When Francis awoke he thought diligently on these matters.
Such spiritual experiences are incommunicable, even though the man should try to tell them. But we know that as Francis had set out joyfully expecting worldly glory, he now returned with exultation, to await the will of the Lord, as it might be shown him. The facts and also their sequence are somewhat confused in the biographies.
On his return to Assisi, his comrades seem to have chosen him as lord of their revels; again he ordained a merry feast; but as they set forth singing gleefully, Francis walked behind them, holding his marshal’s staff, in silence. Thoughts of the Lord had come again, and withdrawn his attention: he was thinking sweetly of the Lord, and vilely of himself. Soon after he is found providing destitute chapels with the requisites for a decent service; already--in his father’s absence--he is filling his table with beggars; and already he has overcome his fastidious temper, has forced himself to exchange the kiss of peace with lepers, and has kissed the livid hands in which he presses alms.[511] He appears to have made a trip to St. Peter’s at Rome, where, standing before the altar, it struck him that the Prince of the Apostles was being honoured with mean offerings. So in his own princely way he flung down the contents of his purse, to the wonder of all. Then going without the church, he put on the clothes of a beggar and asked alms.
In such conduct Francis showed himself a poet and a saint. Imagination was required to conceive these extreme, these perfect acts, acts perfect in their carrying out of a lovely thought to its fulfilment, and suffering nothing to impede its perfect realization. So Francis flings down all he has, and not a measure of his goods; he puts on beggars’ clothes, and begs; he kisses lepers’ hands, eats from the same bowl with them--acts which were perfect in the singleness of their fulfilment of a saintly motive, acts which were likewise beautiful. They are instances of obsession with a saintly idea of great spiritual beauty, obsession so complete that the ridiculous or hideous concomitants of the realization serve only to enhance the beauty of the holy thought perfectly fulfilled.
One day at Assisi, passing by the church of St. Damian, Francis was moved to enter for prayer. As he prayed before the Crucifix, the image seemed to say, “Francis, dost thou not see my house in ruins? Rebuild it for me.” And he answered, “Gladly, Lord,” thinking that the little chapel of St. Damian was intended. Filled with joy, having felt the Crucified in his soul, he sought the priest and gave him money to buy oil for the lamp before the Crucifix. This day was ever memorable in Francis’s walk with God. His way had lost its turnings; he saw his life before him clear, glad, and full of tears of love. “From that hour his heart was so wounded and melted at the memory of his Lord’s passion that henceforth while he lived he carried in his heart the marks of the Lord Jesus. Again he was seen walking near the Portiuncula, wailing aloud. And in response to the inquiries of a priest, he answered: ‘I bewail the passion of my Lord Jesus Christ, which it should not shame me to go weeping through the world!’ Often as he rose from prayer his eyes were full of blood, because he had wept so bitterly.”[512]
It appears to have been after this vision in St. Damian’s Church that Francis went on horseback to Foligno, carrying pieces of cloth, which he sold there, and his horse as well. He travelled back on foot, and seeking out St. Damian’s astonished little priest, he kissed his hands devoutly and offered him the money. When, for fear of Bernardone, the priest would not receive it, Francis threw it into a box. He prevailed on the priest, however, to let him stay there.
What Bernardone thought of this son of his is better only guessing. The St. Damian episode brought matters to a crisis between the two. He came looking for his son, and Francis escaped to a cave, where he spent a month in tears and prayer to the Lord, that he might be freed from his father’s pursuit, so that he might fulfil his vows. Gradually courage and joy returned, and he issued from his cave and took his way to the town. Former acquaintances of his pursued him with jeers and stones, as one demented, so wretched was he to look upon after his sojourn in the cave. He made no reply, save to give thanks to God. The hubbub reached the father, who rushed out and seized his son, beat him, and locked him up in the house. From this captivity he was released by his mother, in her husband’s absence, and again betook himself to St. Damian’s.
Shortly afterward Bernardone returned, and would have haled Francis before the magistrates of the town for squandering his patrimony; but his son repudiated their jurisdiction, as being the servant of God. They were glad enough to turn the matter over to the bishop, who counselled Francis to give back the money which was his father’s. The scene which followed has been made famous by the brush of Giotto. The Three Companions narrate it thus:
“Then arose the man of God glad and comforted by the bishop’s words, and fetching the money said, ‘My lord, not only the money which is his I wish to return to him, but my clothes as well, and gladly.’ Then entering the bishop’s chamber, he took off his clothes, and placing the money upon them, went out again naked before them, and said: ‘Hear ye all and know. Until now I have called Pietro Bernardone my father; but because I have determined to serve God, I return him the money about which he was disturbed, and these clothes which I had from him, wishing only to say, “Our Father who art in heaven” and not “Father Pietro Bernardone.”’ The man of God was found even then to have worn haircloth beneath his gay garments. His father rising, incensed, took the money and the clothes. As he carried them away to his house, those who had seen the sight were indignant that he had left not a single garment for his son, and they shed tears of pity over Francis. The bishop was moved to admiration at the constancy of the man of God, and embraced him and covered him with his cloak.”[513]
Thus Francis was indeed made naked of the world. With joy he hastened back to St. Damian’s; and there prepared himself a hermit garb, in which he again set forth through the streets of the city, praising God and soliciting stones to rebuild the Church. As he went he cried that whoever gave one stone should have one reward, and he who gave two, two rewards, and he who gave more as many rewards as he gave stones. Many laughed at him, thinking him crazy; but others were moved to tears at the sight of one who from such frivolity and vanity had so quickly become drunken with divine love.
Francis became a beggar for the love of Christ, seeking to imitate Him who, born poor, lived poor, and had no place to lay His head. Not only did he beg stones to rebuild St. Damian’s, but he began to go from house to house with a bowl to beg his food. Naked before them all, he had chosen “holy poverty,” “lady poverty”[514] for his bride. He was filled with the desire to copy Christ and obey His words to the letter. According to the Three Companions, when the blessed Francis completed the church of St. Damian, his wont was to wear a hermit garb and carry a staff; he wore shoes on his feet and a girdle about him. But listening one day to Jesus’ words to His disciples, as He sent them out to preach, not to take with them gold, or silver, or a wallet, or bread, or a staff, or shoes, nor have two cloaks, Francis said with joy: “This is what I desire to fulfil with my whole strength.”[515]
The literal imitation of certain particular Gospel instances, and the unconditional carrying out of certain of Christ’s specially intended precepts, mark Francis’s understanding of his Lord. It is exemplified in the account of the conversion of Francis’s first disciple, as told by the Three Companions:
“As the truth of the blessed Francis’s simple life and doctrine became manifest to many, two years after his own conversion, certain men were moved to penitence by his example, and were drawn to give up everything and join with him in life and garb. Of these the first was Bernard of saintly memory, who reflecting upon the constancy and fervour of the blessed Francis in serving God, and with what labour he was repairing ruined churches and leading a hard life, although delicately nurtured, he determined to distribute his property among the poor and cling to Francis. Accordingly one day in secret he approached the man of God and disclosed his purpose, at the same time requesting that on such an evening he would come to him. Having no companion hitherto, the blessed Francis gave thanks to God, and rejoiced greatly, especially as Messer (dominus) Bernard was a man of exemplary life.
“So with exulting heart the blessed Francis went to his house on the appointed evening and stayed all night with him. Messer Bernard said among other things: ‘If a person should have much or a little from his lord, and have held it many years, how could he do with the same what would be the best?’ The blessed Francis replied that he should return it to his lord from whom he had received it.
“And Messer Bernard said: ‘Therefore, brother, I wish to distribute, in the way that may seem best to thee, all my worldly goods for love of my Lord, who conferred them on me.’
“To whom the saint said: ‘In the morning we will go to the Church, and will learn from the copy (codex) of the Gospels there how the Lord taught His disciples.’
“So rising in the morning, with a certain other named Peter, who also desired to become a brother, they went to the church of St. Nicholas close to the piazza of the city Assisi. And commencing to pray (because they were simple men and did not know where to find the Gospel text relating to the renouncing of the world) they asked the Lord devoutly, that He would deign to show them His will at the first opening of the Book.
“When they had prayed, the blessed Francis taking in his hands the closed book, kneeling before the altar opened it, and his eye fell first upon this precept of the Lord: ‘If thou wouldst be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.’ At which the blessed Francis was very glad and gave thanks to God. But because this true observer of the Trinity wished to be assured with threefold witness, he opened the Book for the second and third time. The second time he read, ‘Carry nothing for the journey,’ and the third time, ‘Who wishes to come after me, let him deny himself.’
“At each opening of the Book, the blessed Francis gave thanks to God for the divine confirmation of his purpose and long-conceived desire, and then said to Bernard and Peter: ‘Brothers, this is our life and this is our rule, and the life and rule of all who shall wish to join our society. Go, then, and as you have heard, so do.’
“Messer Bernard went away (he was very rich) and, having sold his possessions and got together much money, he distributed it to the poor of the town. Peter also complied with the divine admonition as best he could. They both assumed the habit which Francis had adopted, and from that hour lived with him after the model (formam) of the holy Gospel shown them by the Lord. Therefore the blessed Francis has said in his Testament: ‘The Lord himself revealed to me that I should live according to the model (formam) of the holy Gospel.’”[516]
The words which met the eyes of Francis on first opening this Gospel-book, had nearly a thousand years before his time driven the holy Anthony to the desert of the Thebaid. Still one need not think the later tale a fruit of imitative legend. The accounts of Francis afford other instances of his literal acceptance of the Gospels.[517]
After the step taken by Bernard and Peter, others quickly joined themselves to Francis, and in short time the small company took up its abode in an abandoned cabin at Rivo-torto, near Assisi. In a twelvemonth or more they removed to the little church of Santa Maria de Portiuncula (Saint Mary of the little portion).[518] In the meanwhile Francis had been to Rome and gained papal authorization from the great Innocent III. for his lowly way of life. It would be hard to describe the joyfulness of these first Gospel days of the brethren: they come and go, and pray and labour; all are filled with joy; gaudium, jucunditas, laetabantur, such words crowd each other in accounts of the early days. Their love was complete; they would gladly give their bodies to pain or death not only for the love of Christ, but for the love of each other; they were founded and rooted in humility and love; Francis’s own life was a song of joy, as he went singing (always gallice) and abounding in love and its joyful prayers and tears. What joy indeed could be greater than his; he had given himself to his Lord, and had been accepted. One day he had retired for contemplation, and as he prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” an ineffable joy and sweetness was shed in his heart. He began to fall away from himself; the anxieties and fears which a sense of sin had set in his heart were dispelled, and a certitude of the remission of his sins took possession of him. His mind dilated and a joyful vision made him seem another man when he returned and said in gladness to the brethren: “Be comforted, my best beloved, and rejoice in the Lord. Do not feel sad because you are so few. Let neither my simplicity nor yours abash you, for it has been shown me of the Lord that God will make of you a great multitude, and multiply you to the confines of the earth. I saw a great multitude of men coming to us, desiring to assume the habit and rule of our blessed religion; and the sound of them is in my ears as they come and go according to the command of holy obedience; and I saw the ways filled with them from every nation. Frenchmen come, and Spaniards hurry, Germans and English run, and a multitude speaking other tongues.”[519]
Thus far the life of Francis was a poem, even as it was to be unto the end; for, although the saint’s plans might be thwarted by the wisdom and frailty of men, his words and actions did not cease to realize the exquisite conceptions of his soul. But the volume of his life, from this time on, becomes too large for us to follow, embracing as it does the far from simple history of the first decades of his Order. Our object is still to observe his personality, and his love of God and man and creature-kind.
Francis’s mind was as simple as his heart was single. He had no distinctly intellectual interests, as nothing appealed to his mentality alone.[520] In his consciousness, everything related itself to his way of life, its yearnings and aversions. Whatever was unsuited to enter into this catholic relationship repelled rather than interested him. Hence he was averse to studies which had nothing to do with the man’s closer walk with God, and love of fellow. “My brothers who are led by the curiosity of knowledge will find their hands empty in the day of tribulation. I would wish them rather to be strengthened by virtues, that when the time of tribulation comes they may have the Lord with them in their straits--for such a time will come when they will throw their good-for-nothing books into holes and corners.”[521]
The moral temper of Francis was childlike in its simple truth. He could not endure in the smallest matter to seem other than as he was before God: “As much as a man is before God so much is he, and no more.”[522] Once in Lent he ate of cakes cooked in lard, because everything cooked in oil violently disagreed with him. When Lent was over, he thus began his first sermon to a concourse of people: “You have come to me with great devotion, believing me to be a holy man, but I confess to God and to you that in this Lent I have eaten cakes cooked in lard.”[523] At another time, when in severe sickness he had somewhat exceeded the pittance of food which he allowed himself, he rose, still shaking with fever, and went and preached to the people. When the sermon was over, he retired a moment, and having first exacted a promise of obedience from the monks accompanying him, he threw off his cloak, tied a rope around his waist, and commanded them to drag him naked before the people, and there cast ashes in his face; all which was done by the weeping monks. And then he confessed his fault to all.[524]
Francis took joy in obedience and humility. One of his motives in resigning the headship of the Order was that he might have a superior to obey.[525] However pained by the shortcomings and corruptions of the Church, he was always obedient and reverent. He had no thought of revolution, but the hope of purifying all. One day certain brothers said to him: “Father, do you not see that the bishops do not let us preach, and keep us for days standing idle, before we are able to declare the word of God? Would it not be better to obtain the privilege from the Pope, that there might be a salvation of souls?”
“You, brothers Minorites,” answered Francis, “know not the will of God, and do not permit me to convert the whole world, which is God’s will; for I wish first through holy obedience and reverence to convert the prelates, who when they see our holy life and humble reverence for them, will beg you to preach and convert the people, and will call the people to hear you far better than your privileges, which draw you to pride. For me, I desire this privilege from the Lord that I may never have any privilege from man except to do reverence to all, and through obedience to our holy rule of life convert mankind more by example than by word.”[526]
And again he said to the brothers: “We are sent to aid the clergy in the salvation of souls, and what is found lacking in them should be supplied by us. Know, brothers, that the gain of souls is most pleasing to God, and this we may win better by peace with the clergy, than by discord. If they hinder the salvation of the people, vengeance is God’s and He will repay in time. So be ye subject to the prelates and take heed on your part that no jealousy arise. If ye are sons of peace ye shall gain both clergy and people, and this will be more acceptable to God than to gain the people alone by scandalizing the clergy. Cover their slips, and supply their deficiencies; and when ye shall have done this be ye the more humble.”[527]
So Francis loved sancta obedientia as he called it. As a wise builder he set himself upon a rock, to wit, the perfect humility and poverty of the Son of God; and because of his own humility he called his company the Minorites (the “lesser” brethren).[528] For himself, he deemed that he should most rejoice when men should revile him and cast him forth in shame, and not when they revered and honoured him.[529]
Above all he loved his “lady poverty” and could not say enough to impress his followers with her high worth and beauty, and with the dignity and nobility of begging alms for the love of the Lord.[530] As a high-born lady, poor and beautiful, he had seen her in a vision, in the midst of a desert, and worthy to be wooed by the King.[531] In the early days when the brothers were a little band, Francis had gone about and begged for all. He loved them so that he dreaded to require what might shame them. But when the labour was too great for one man, so delicate and weak, he said to them: “Best beloved brothers and my children, do not be ashamed to go for alms, because the Lord made Himself poor for us in this world after whose example we have chosen the truest poverty. For this is our heritage, which our Lord Jesus Christ achieved and left to us and to all who, after His example, wish to live in holy poverty. I tell you of a truth that many wise and noble of this world shall join that congregation and hold it for an honour and a grace to go out for alms. Therefore boldly and with glad heart seek alms with God’s blessing; and more freely and gladly should you seek alms than he who offers a hundred pieces of money for one coin, since to those from whom you ask alms you offer the love of God, saying, ‘Do us an alms for the love of the Lord God,’ in comparison with which heaven and earth are nothing.”[532]
With Francis all virtues were holy (sancta obedientia, sancta paupertas). Righteousness, goodness, piety, lay in imitating and obeying his Lord. What joy was there in loving Christ, and being loved by Him! and what an eternity of bliss awaited the Christian soul! To do right, to imitate Christ and obey and love Him, is a privilege. Can it be other than a joy? Indeed, this following of Christ is so blessed, that not to rejoice continually in it, betokens some failure in obedience and love. Many have approved this Christian logic; but to realize it in one’s heart and manifest it in one’s life, was the more singular grace of Francis of Assisi. His heart sang always unto the Lord; his love flowed out in gladness to his fellows; his enchanted spirit rejoiced in every creature. The gospel of this new evangelist awoke the hearts of men to love and joy. Nothing rejoiced him more than to see his sons rejoice in the Lord; and nothing was more certain to draw forth his tender reproof than a sad countenance.
“Once while the blessed Francis was at the Portiuncula, a certain good beggar came along the way, returning from alms-begging in Assisi, and he went along praising God with a high voice and great jocundity. As he approached, Francis heard him, and ran out and met him in the way, and joyfully kissed his shoulder where he bore the wallet containing the gifts. Then he lifted the wallet, and set it on his own shoulder, and so carried it within, and said to the brothers: ‘Thus I wish to have my brothers go and return with alms, joyful and glad and praising God.’”[533]
“Aside from prayer and the divine service, the blessed Francis was most zealous in preserving continually an inward and outward spiritual gladness. And this he especially cherished in the brothers, and would reprove them for sadness and depression. For he said that if the servant of God would study to preserve, inwardly and outwardly, the spiritual joy which rises from purity of heart, and is acquired through the devotion of prayer, the devils could not harm him, for they say: So long as the servant of God is joyful in tribulation and prosperity, we cannot enter into him or harm him.... To our enemy and his members it pertains to be sad, but to us always to rejoice and be glad in the Lord.”[534]
Thus the glad temper of his young unconverted days passed into his saintly life, of which Christ was the primal source of rapture.
“Drunken with the love and pity of Christ, the blessed Francis would sometimes do such acts, when the sweetest melody of spirit within him boiling outward gave sound in French, and the strain of the divine whisper which his ear had taken secretly, broke forth in a glad French song. He would pick up a stick and, holding it over his left arm, would with another stick in his right hand make as if drawing a bow across a violin (viellam), and with fitting gestures would sing in French of the Lord Jesus Christ. At last this dancing would end in tears, and the jubilee turn to pity for the Passion of Christ. And in that he would continue, drawing sighs and groans, as, oblivious to what he held in his hands, he was suspended from heaven.”[535]
Francis had been a lover from his youth; naturally and always he had loved his kind. But from the time when Christ held his heart and mind, his love of fellow-man was moulded by his thought and love of Christ. Henceforth the loving acts of Francis moving among his fellows become a loving following of Christ. He sees in every man the character and person of his Lord, soliciting his love, commanding what he should do. He never refused, or permitted his followers to refuse, what was asked in Christ’s name; but it displeased him when he heard the brothers ask lightly for the love of God, and he would reprove them, saying: “So high and precious is God’s love that it never should be invoked save with great reverence and under pressing need.”[536]
Such a man felt strong personal affection. Pure and wise was his love for Santa Clara;[537] and a deep affection for one of his earliest and closest followers touches us in his letter to brother Leo. Not all of the writings ascribed to Francis breathe his spirit; but we hear his voice in this letter as it closes: “And if it is needful for thy soul or for thy consolation, and thou dost wish, my Leo, to come to me, come. Farewell in Christ.”
Francis’s love was unfailing in compassionate word and deed. Although cold and sick, he would give his cloak away at the first demand, till his own appointed minister-general commanded him on his obedience not to do so without permission; and he saw that the brothers did not injure themselves with fasting, though he took slight care of himself. On one occasion he had them all partake of a meal, in order that one delicate brother, who needed food, might not be put to shame eating while the rest fasted. And once, early in the morning, he led an old and feeble brother secretly to a certain vineyard, and there ate grapes before him, that he might not be ashamed to do likewise, for his health.[538]
The effect of his sweet example melted the hearts of angry men, reconciling such as had been wronged to those who had wronged them, and leading ruffians back to ways of gentleness. His conduct on learning of certain dissensions in Assisi illustrates his method of restoring peace and amity.
“After the blessed Francis had composed the Lauds of the creatures, which he called the Canticle of Brother Sun, it happened that great dissension arose between the bishop and the podestà of the City of Assisi, so that the bishop excommunicated the podestà, and the podestà made proclamation that no person should sell anything to the bishop or buy from him or make any contract with him.
“When the blessed Francis (who was now so very sick) heard this, he was greatly moved with pity, since no one interposed between them to make peace. And he said to his companions: ‘It is a great shame for us servants of God that the bishop and the podestà hate each other so, and none interposes to make peace.’
“And so for this occasion he at once made a verse in the Lauds above mentioned and said:
‘Praised be thou, O my Lord, for those who forgive from love of thee, And endure sickness and tribulation. Blessed are those who shall endure in peace, For by thee, Most High, shall they be crowned.’
“Then he called one of his companions and said to him: ‘Go to the podestà, and on my behalf tell him to come to the bishop’s palace with the magnates of the city and others that he may bring with him.’
“And as that brother went, he said to two other of his companions: ‘Go before the bishop and podestà and the others who may be with them, and sing the Canticle of Brother Sun, and I trust in the Lord that He will straightway humble their hearts, and they will return to their former affection and friendship.’
“When all were assembled in the piazza of the episcopate, the two brothers arose, and one of them said: ‘The blessed Francis in his sickness made a Lauds of the Lord from His creatures in praise of the Lord and for the edification of our neighbour. Wherefore he begs that you would listen to it with great devoutness.’ And then they began to say and sing them.
“At once the podestà rose, and with folded hands listened intently, as if it were the Lord’s gospel; this he did with the greatest devoutness and with many tears, for he had great trust and devotion toward the blessed Francis.
“When the Lauds of the Lord were finished, the podestà said before them all: ‘Truly I say to you that not only my lord-bishop, whom I wish and ought to hold as my lord, but if any one had slain my brother or son I would forgive him.’ And so saying, he threw himself at the bishop’s feet, and said to him: ‘Look, I am ready in all things to make satisfaction to you as shall please you, for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ and His servant the blessed Francis.’
“The bishop accepting him, raised him with his hands and said: ‘Because of my office it became me to be humble, and since I am naturally quick-tempered you ought to pardon me.’ And so with great kindness and love they embraced and kissed each other.
“The brothers were astounded and made glad when they saw fulfilled to the letter the concord predicted by the blessed Francis. And all others present ascribed it as a great miracle to the merits of the blessed Francis, that the Lord suddenly had visited them, and out of such dissension and scandal had brought such concord.”[539]
It would be mistaken to refer to any single pious sentiment, the saint’s blithe love of animals and birds and flowers, and his regard even for senseless things. It is right, however, for Thomas of Celano, as a proper monkish biographer, to say:
“While hastening through this world of pilgrimage and exile that traveller (Francis) rejoiced in those things which are in the world, and not a little. As toward the princes of darkness he used the world as a field for battle, but as toward the Lord he treated it as the brightest mirror of goodness; in the fabric he commended the Artificer, and what he found in created things, he referred to the Maker; he exulted over all the works of the hands of the Lord, and in the pleasing spectacle beheld the life-giving reason and the cause. In beautiful things he perceived that which was most beautiful, as all good things acclaim, He who made us is best. Through vestiges impressed on things he followed his chosen, and made of all a ladder by which to reach the throne. He embraced all things in a feeling of unheard of devotion, speaking to them concerning the Lord and exhorting them in His praise.”[540]
This was true, even if it was not all the truth. Living creatures spoke to Francis of their Maker, while things insensible aroused his reverence through their suggestiveness, their scriptural associations, or their symbolism. But beyond these motives there was in this poet Francis a happy love of nature. If nature always spoke to him of God, its loveliness needed no stimulation of devotion in order to be loved by him. His feeling for it found everywhere sensibility and responsiveness. He was as if possessed by an imaginative animism, wherein every object had a soul. His acts and words may appear fantastic; they never lack loveliness and beauty.[541]
“Wrapped in the love of God, the blessed Francis perfectly discerned the goodness of God not only in his own soul but in every creature. Wherefore he was affected with a singular and yearning (viscerosa) love toward creatures, and especially toward those in which was figured something of God or something pertaining to religion.
“Whence above all birds he loved a little bird called the lark (the lodola capellata of the vulgar tongue) and would say of her: ‘Sister lark has a hood like a Religious and is a humble bird, because she goes willingly along the road to find for herself some grains of corn. Even if she find them in dung she picks them out and eats them. In flying she praises the Lord very sweetly, as the good Religious look down upon earthly things, whose conversation is always in the heavens and whose intent is always upon the praise of God. Her garments are like earth, that is, her feathers, and set an example to the Religious that they should not have delicate and gaudy garments, but such as are vile in price and colour, as earth is viler than other elements.’”[542]
The unquestionably true story of Francis preaching to the birds is known to all, especially to readers of the Fioretti. Thus Thomas of Celano tells it: As the blessed Father Francis was journeying through the Spoleto Valley, he reached a place near Mevanium, where there was a multitude of birds--doves, crows, and other kinds. When he saw them, for the love and sweet affection which he bore toward the lower creatures, he quickly ran to them, leaving his companions. As he came near and saw that they were waiting for him, he saluted them in his accustomed way. Then wondering that they did not take flight, he was very glad, and humbly begged them to listen to the word of God; among other things he said to them: “My brothers who fly, verily you should praise the Lord your Maker and love Him always, who gave you feathers to clothe you and wings to fly with and whatever was necessary to you. God made you noble among creatures, prepared your mansion in the purity of air; and though you neither sow nor reap, nevertheless without any solicitude on your part, He protects and guides you.”
At this, those little birds as he was speaking, marvellously exulting, began to stretch out their necks and spread their wings and open their beaks, looking at him. He passed through their midst, sweeping their heads and bodies with his mantle. At length he blessed them, and with the sign of the cross gave them leave to fly away. Then returning gladdened to his companions, he yet blamed himself for his neglect to preach to the birds before, since they so reverently heard the word of God. And from that day he ceased not to exhort all flying and creeping things, and even things insensible, to the praise and love of their Creator.[543]
Thomas also says that above all animals Francis loved the lambs, because so frequently in Scripture the humility of our Lord is likened unto a lamb. One day, as Francis was making his way through the March of Ancona he met a goat-herd pasturing his flock of goats. Among them, humbly and quietly, a little lamb was feeding. Francis stopped as he saw it, and, deeply touched, said to the brother accompanying him: “Dost thou see this sheep walking so gently among the goats? I tell you, thus our Lord Jesus Christ used to walk mild and humble among Pharisees and chief priests. For love of Him, then, I beg thee, my son, to buy this little sheep with me and lead it out from among these goats.”
The brother was also moved with pity. They had nothing with them save their wretched cloaks, but a merchant chancing to come along the way, the money was obtained from him. Giving thanks to God and leading the sheep they had bought, they reached the town of Osimo whither they were going; and entering the house of the bishop, were honourably received by him. Yet my lord bishop wondered at the sheep which Francis was leading with such tender love. But when Francis had set forth the parable of his sermon, the bishop too was touched and gave thanks to God.
The following day they considered what to do with the sheep, and it was given over to the nuns of the cloister of St. Severinus, who received it as a great boon given them from God. Long while they cared for it, and in the course of time wove a cloak from its wool, which they sent to the blessed Francis at the Portiuncula at the time of a Chapter meeting. The saint accepted it with joy, and kissed it, and begged all the brothers to be glad with him.[544]
Celano also tells how Francis loved the grass and vines and stones and woods, and all comely things in the fields, also the streams, and earth and fire and air, and called every creature “brother”;[545] also how he would not put out the flame of a lamp or candle, how he walked reverently upon stones, and was careful to injure no living thing.[546]
There are two documents which are both (the one with much reason and the other with certainty) ascribed to Francis. Utterly different as they are, each still remains a clear expression of his spirit. The one is the Lauds, commonly called the Canticle of the Brother Sun, and the other is the saint’s last Testament. One may think of the Canticle as the closing stanza of a life which was an enacted poem:
Most High, omnipotent, good Lord, thine is the praise, the glory, the honour and every benediction;
To thee alone, Most High, these do belong, and no man is worthy to name thee.
Praised be thou, my Lord, with all thy creatures, especially milord Brother Sun that dawns and lightens us;
And he, beautiful and radiant with great splendour, signifies thee, Most High.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars that thou hast made bright and precious and beautiful.
Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Wind, and for the air and cloud and the clear sky and for all weathers through which thou givest sustenance to thy creatures.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Water, that is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.
Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire, through whom thou dost illumine the night, and comely is he and glad and bold and strong.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister, Our Mother Earth, that doth cherish and keep us, and produces various fruits with coloured flowers and the grass.
Be praised, my Lord, for those who forgive for love of thee, and endure sickness and tribulation; blessed are they who endure in peace; for by thee, Most High, shall they be crowned.
Be praised, my Lord, for our bodily death, from which no living man can escape; woe unto those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are they that have found thy most holy will, for the second death shall do them no hurt.
Praise and bless my Lord, and render thanks, and serve Him with great humility.[547]
The self-expression of the more personal parts of the Testament supplement these utterances:
“Thus the Lord gave to me, Brother Francis, to begin to do penance: because while I was in sins, it seemed too bitter to me to see lepers; and the Lord himself led me among them, and I did mercy with them. And departing from them, that which seemed to me bitter, was turned for me into sweetness of soul and body. And a little afterwards I went out of the world.
“And the Lord gave me such faith in churches, that thus simply I should pray and say: ‘We adore thee, Lord Jesus Christ, and in all thy churches which are in the whole world, and we bless thee, because through thy holy cross thou hast redeemed the world.’
“Afterwards the Lord gave and gives me so great faith in priests who live after the model of the holy Roman Church according to their order, that if they should persecute me I will still turn to them. And if I should have as great wisdom as Solomon had, and should have found the lowliest secular priests in the parishes where they dwell, I do not wish to preach contrary to their wish. And them and all others I wish to fear and honour as my lords; and I do not wish to consider sin in them, because I see the Son of God in them and they are my lords.
“And the reason I do this is because corporeally I see nothing in this world of that most high Son of God except His most holy body and most holy blood, which they receive and which they alone administer. And I wish these most holy mysteries to be honoured above all and revered, and to be placed together in precious places. Wherever I shall find His most holy names and His written words in unfit places, I wish to collect them, and I ask that they be collected and placed in a proper place; and all theologians and those who administer the most holy divine words, we ought to honour and venerate, as those who administer to us spirit and life.
“And after the Lord gave me brothers, no one showed me what I ought to do, but the Most High himself revealed to me that I ought to live according to the model of the holy Gospel. And I in a few words and simply had this written, and the lord Pope confirmed it to me. And they who were coming to receive life, all that they were able to have they gave to the poor; and they were content with one patched cloak, with the cord and breeches; and we did not wish to have more. We who were of the clergy said our office as other clergy; the lay members said ‘Our Father.’ And willingly we remained in churches; and we were simple (idiotae) and subject to all. And I laboured with my hands, and I wish to labour; and I wish all other brothers to labour. Who do not know how, let them learn, not from the cupidity of receiving the price of labour, but on account of the example, and to repel slothfulness. And when the price of labour is not given to us, we resort to the table of the Lord by seeking alms from door to door.
“The Lord revealed to me a salutation that we should say: The Lord give thee peace.”
Francis’s precepts for the brothers follow here. The last paragraph of the Will is: “And whoever shall have observed these principles, in heaven may he be filled with the benediction of the most high Father, and on earth may he be filled with the benediction of His beloved Son, with the most holy spirit Paraclete, and with all the virtues of the heavens and with everything holy. And I, Brother Francis, your very little servant, so far as I am able, confirm to you within and without that most holy benediction.”
XIX. MYSTIC VISIONS OF ASCETIC WOMEN
ELIZABETH OF SCHÖNAU; HILDEGARD OF BINGEN; MARY OF OGNIES; LIUTGARD OF TONGERN; MECHTHILD OF MAGDEBURG
We pass to matters of a different complexion from anything presented in the last few chapters. Thus far, besides Bernard and Francis, matchless examples of monastic ideals, there have been instances of contemplation and piety, with much emotion, and a sufficiency of experience having small part in reason; also hallucinations and fantastic conduct, as in the case of Romuald. The last class of phenomena, however, have not been prominent. Now for a while we shall be wrapt in visions, rational, imitative, fashioned with intent and plan; or, again, directly experienced, passionate, hallucinative. They will range from those climaxes of the constructive or intuitive imagination,[548] which are of the whole man, to passionate or morbid delusions representing but a partial and passing phase of the subject’s personality. Moreover, we have been occupied with hermits and monks, that is to say, with men. The present chapter has to do with nuns; who are more prone to visions, and are occasionally subject to those passionate hallucinations which are prompted by the circumstance that the Christian God was incarnate in the likeness of a man.
Besides the conclusions which the mind draws from the data of sense, or reaches through reflection, there are other modes of conviction whose distinguishing mark is their apparent immediacy and spontaneity. They are not elicited from antecedent processes of thought, as inferences or deductions; rather they loom upon the consciousness, and are experienced. Yet they are far from simple, and may contain a multiplicity of submerged reasonings, and bear relation to countless previous inferences. They are usually connected with emotion or neural excitement, and may even take the guise of sense-manifestations. Through such convictions, religious minds are assured of God and the soul’s communion with Him.[549] While not issuing from argument, this assurance may be informed with reason and involve the total sum of conclusions which the reasoner has drawn from life.
In devout mediaeval circles, the consciousness of communion with God, with the Virgin, with angels and saints, and with the devil, often took on the semblance of sense-perception. The senses seemed to be experiencing: stenches of hell, odours of heaven, might be smelled, or a taste infect the mouth; the divine or angelic touch was felt, or the pain of blows; most frequently voices were heard, and forms were seen in a vision. In these apparent testimonies of sight and hearing, the entire spiritual nature of the man or woman might set the vision, dramatize it with his or her desires and aversions, and complete it from the store of knowledge at command.
The visions of an eleventh-century monk named Othloh have been observed at some length.[550] Intimate and trying, they were also, so to speak, in and of the whole man: his tastes, his solicitudes, his acquired knowledge and ways of reasoning, joined in these vivid experiences of God’s truth and the devil’s onslaughts. One may be mindful of Othloh in turning to the more impersonal visions of certain German nuns, which likewise issued from the entire nature and intellectual equipment of these women.[551]
On the Rhine, fifteen miles north-east of Bingen, lies the village of Schönau, where in the twelfth century flourished a Benedictine monastery, and near it a cloister for nuns. At the latter a girl of twelve named Elizabeth was received in the year 1141. She lived there as nun, and finally as abbess, till her death in 1165. Like many other lofty souls dwelling in the ideal, she was a stern censor of the evils in the world and in the Church. The bodily infirmities from which she was never free, were aggravated by austerities, and usually became most painful just before the trances that brought her visions. Masses and penances, prayer and meditation, made her manner of approach to these direct disclosures of eternity, wherein the whole contents of her faith and her reflection were unrolled. Frequently she beheld the Saints in the nights following their festivals; her larger visions were moulded by the Apocalypse. These experiences were usually beatific, though sometimes she suffered insult from malignant shapes. What humility bade her conceal, the importunities of admirers compelled her to disclose: and so her visions have been preserved, and may be read in the Vita written by her brother Eckbert, Abbot of Schönau.[552] Here is an example of how the saint and seeress spoke:
“On the Sunday night following the festival of St. James (in the year 1153), drawn from the body, I was borne into an ecstasy (avocata a corpore rapta sum in exstasim). And a great flaming wheel flared in the heaven. Then it disappeared, and I saw a light more splendid than I was accustomed to see; and thousands of saints stood in it, forming an immense circle; in front were some glorious men, having palms and shining crowns and the titles of their martyrdoms inscribed upon their foreheads. From these titles, as well as from their pre-eminent splendour, I knew them to be the Apostles. At their right was a great company having the same shining titles; and behind these were others, who lacked the signs of martyrdom. At the left of the Apostles shone the holy order of virgins, also adorned with the signs of martyrdom, and behind them another splendid band of maidens, some crowned, but without these signs. Still back of these, a company of venerable women in white completed the circle. Below it was another circle of great brilliancy, which I knew to be of the holy angels.”
“In the midst of all was a Glory of Supreme Majesty, and its throne was encircled by a rainbow. At the right of that Majesty I saw one like unto the Son of Man, seated in glory; at the left was a radiant sign of the Cross.... At the right of the Son of Man sat the Queen of Kings and Angels on a starry throne circumfused with immense light. At the left of the Cross four-and-twenty honourable men sat facing it. And not far from them I saw two rams sustaining on their shoulders a great shining wheel. The morning after this, at terse, one of the brothers came to the window of my cell, and I asked that the mass for the Holy Trinity might be celebrated.
“The next Sunday I saw the same vision, and more: for I saw the Lamb of God standing before the throne, very lovable, and with a gold cross, as if implanted in its back. And I saw the four Evangelists in those forms which Holy Scripture ascribes to them. They were at the right of the Blessed Virgin, and their faces were turned toward her.”
And Elizabeth saw the Virgin arise and advance from out the great light into the lower ether, followed by a multitude of women saints, and then return amid great praise.
In another vision she saw the events of the Saviour’s last days on earth: saw Him riding into Jerusalem, and the multitude throwing down branches; saw Him washing the disciples’ feet, then the agony in the garden, the betrayal, the crowning with thorns, the spitting, the Lord upon the Cross, and the Mother of God full of grief; she saw the piercing of His side, the dreadful darkness,--all as in Scripture, and then the Scriptural incidents following the Resurrection. Upon this, her vision took another turn, and words were put in her mouth to chastise the people for their sins.
Apparently more original was Elizabeth’s vision of the Paths of God (the Viae Dei). In it three paths went straight up a mountain from opposite sides, the first having the hyacinthine hue of the deep heaven; the second green, the third purple. At the top of the mountain was a man, clad with a hyacinthine tunic, his reins bound with a white girdle; his face was splendid as the sun, his eyes shone as stars, and his hair was white; from his mouth issued a two-edged sword; in his right hand he held a key and in his left a sceptre. Elizabeth interprets: the man is Christ; and the mountain represents the loftiness of celestial beatitude; the light at the top is the brightness of eternal life; the three paths are the diverse ways in which the elect ascend. The hyacinthine path is that of the vita contemplativa; the green path is that of the religious vita activa; and the purple path is the way of the blessed martyrs.
There were also other paths up the mountain, one beset with brambles until half way up, where they gave place to flowers. This is the way of married folk, who pass from brambles to flowers when they abandon the pleasures of the flesh; for the flowers are the virtues which adorn a life of continence. Still other ways there were, for prelates, for widows, and for solitaries. And Elizabeth turns her visions into texts, and preaches vigorous sermons, denouncing the vices of the clergy as well as laity. In other visions she had seen prelates and monks and nuns in hell.
The visions of this nun appear to have been the fruit of the constructive imagination working upon data of the mind. Yet she is said to have seen them in trances, a statement explicitly made in the account of those last days when life had almost left her body. Praying devoutly in the middle of the night before she died, she seemed much troubled; then she passed into a trance (exstasim). Returning to herself, she murmured to the sister who held her in her arms: “I know not how it is with me; that light which I have been wont to see in the heavens is dividing.” Again she passed into a trance, and afterwards, when the sisters begged her to disclose what she had seen, she said her end was at hand, for she had seen holy visions which, many years before, God’s angel had told her she should not see again until she came to die. On being asked whether the Lord had comforted her, she answered, “Oh! what excellent comfort have I received!”
* * * * *
A more imposing personality than Elizabeth was Hildegard of Bingen,[553] whose career extends through nearly the whole of the twelfth century; for she was born in 1099 and died in 1179. Her parents were of the lesser nobility, holding lands in the diocese of Mainz. A certain holy woman, one Jutta, daughter of the Count of Spanheim, had secluded herself in a solitary cell at Disenberg--the mount of St. Disibodus--near a monastery of Benedictine monks. Drawn by her reputation, Hildegard’s parents brought their daughter to Jutta, who received her to a life like her own. The ceremony, which took place in the presence of a number of persons, was that of the last rites of the dead, performed with funeral torches. Hildegard was buried to the world. She was eight years old. At the same time a niece of Jutta also became a recluse, and afterwards others joined them.
On the death of Jutta in 1136, Hildegard was compelled to take the office of Prioress. But when the fame of the dead Jutta began to draw many people to her shrine, and cause a concourse of pilgrims, Hildegard decided to seek greater quiet, and possibly more complete independence; for the authority of the new abbot at the monastery may not have been to her liking. She was ever a masterful woman, better fitted to command than to obey. So in 1147 she and her nuns moved to Bingen, and established themselves permanently near the tomb of St. Rupert. From this centre the energies and influence of Hildegard, and rumours of her visions, soon began to radiate. Her advice was widely sought, and often given unasked. She corresponded with the great and influential, admonishing dukes and kings and emperors, monks, abbots, and popes. Her epistolary manner sometimes reminds one of Bernard, who was himself among her correspondents. The following letter to Frederick Barbarossa would match some of his:
“O King, it is very needful that thou be foreseeing in thy affairs. For, in mystic vision, I see thee living, small and insensate, beneath the Living Eyes (of God). Thou hast still some time to reign over earthly matters. Therefore beware lest the Supreme King cast thee down for the blindness of thine eyes, which do not rightly see how thou holdest the rod of right government in thy hand. See also to it that thou art such that the grace of God may not be lacking in thee.”[554]
This is the whole letter. Hildegard’s communications were not wont to stammer. They were frequently announced as from God, and began with the words “Lux vivens dicit.”
Hildegard was a woman of intellectual power. She was also learned in theology, and versed in the medicine and scanty natural science of an epoch which preceded the reopening of the great volume of Aristotelian knowledge in the thirteenth century. Yet she asserts her illiteracy, and seems always to have employed learned monks to help her express, in awkward Latin, the thoughts and flashing words which, as she says, were given her in visions. Her many gifts of grace, if not her learning, impressed contemporaries, who wrote to her for enlightenment upon points of doctrine and biblical interpretation; they would wait patiently until she should be enabled to answer, since her answers were not in the power of her own reflection, but had to be seen or heard. For instance, a monk named Guibert, who afterwards became the saint’s amanuensis and biographer, propounded thirty-eight questions of biblical interpretation on behalf of the monks of the monastery of Villars. In the course of time Hildegard replies: “In visione animae meae, haec verba vidi et audivi,” and thereupon she gives a text from Canticles with an exposition of it, which neither she nor the monks regarded quite as hers, but as divinely revealed. At the end of the letter she says that she, insignificant and untaught creature, has looked to the “true light,” and through the grace of God has laboured upon their questions and has completed the solutions of fourteen of them.[555]
In some of Hildegard’s voluminous writings, visions were apparently a form of composition; again, more veritable visions, deemed by her and by her friends to have been divinely given, made the nucleus of the work at length produced by the labour of her mind. Guibert recognized both elements, the God-given visions of the seeress and her contributory labour. In letters which had elicited the answers above mentioned, he calls her speculativa anima, and urges her to direct her talents (ingenium) to the solution of the questions. But he also addresses her in words just varied from Gabriel’s and Elizabeth’s to the Virgin:
“Hail--after Mary--full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the word of thy mouth.... In the character of thy visions, the logic of thy expositions, the orthodoxy of thy opinions, the Holy Spirit has marvellously illuminated thee, and revealed to babes divers secrets of His wisdom.”[556]
In answer to more personal inquiries from the deeply-interested Guibert, Hildegard (who at the time was venerable in years and in repute for sanctity) explains how she saw her visions, and how her knowledge of Scripture came to her:
“From infancy, even to the present time when I am more than seventy years old, my soul has always beheld this visio,[557] and in it my soul, as God may will, soars to the summit of the firmament and into a different air, and diffuses itself among divers peoples, however remote they may be. Therefore I perceive these matters in my soul, as if I saw them through dissolving views of clouds and other objects. I do not hear them with my outer ears, nor do I perceive them by the cogitations of my heart, or by any collaboration of my five senses; but only in my soul, my eyes open, and not sightless as in a trance; wide awake, whether by day or night, I see these things. And I am perpetually bound by my infirmities and with pains so severe as to threaten death, but hitherto God has raised me up.
“The brightness which I see is not limited in space, and is more brilliant than the luminous air around the sun, nor can I estimate its height or length or breadth. Its name, which has been given me, is Shade of the living light (umbra viventis luminis). Just as sun, moon, or stars appear reflected in the water, I see Scripture, discourses, virtues and human actions shining in it.
“Whatever I see or learn in this vision, I retain in my memory; and as I may have seen or heard it, I recall it to mind, and at once see, hear, know; in an instant I learn whatever I know. On the other hand, what I do not see, that I do not know, because I am unlearned; but I have had some simple instruction in letters. I write whatever I see and hear in the vision, nor do I set down any other words, but tell my message in the rude Latin words which I read in the vision. For I am not instructed in the vision to write as the learned write; and the words in the vision are not as words sounding from a human mouth, but as flashing flame and as a cloud moving in clear air.
“Nor have I been able to perceive the form of this brightness, just as I cannot perfectly see the disk of the Sun. In that brightness I sometimes see another light, for which the name Lux vivens has been given me. When and how I see it I cannot tell; but sometimes when I see it, all sadness and pain is lifted from me, and then I have the ways of a simple girl and not those of an old woman.”[558]
The obscure Latin of this letter gives the impression of one trying to put in words what was unintelligible to the writer. And the same sense of struggle with the inadequacies of speech comes from the prologue of a work written many years before:
“Lo, in the forty-third year of my temporal course, while I, in fear and trembling, was intent upon the celestial vision, I saw a great splendour in which was a voice speaking to me from heaven: Frail creature, dust of the dust, speak and write what thou seest and hearest. But because that thou art timid of speech and unskilled in writing, speak and write these things not according to human utterance nor human understanding of composition; but as thou seest and hearest in the heavens above, in the marvels of God, so declare, as a hearer sets forth the words of his preceptor, preserving the fashion of his speech, under his will, his guidance and his command. Thus thou, O man (homo), tell those things which thou seest and hearest, and write, not according to thyself or other human being, but according to the will of Him who knows and sees and disposes all things in the secrets of His mysteries.
“And again, I heard a voice saying to me from heaven: Tell these marvels and write them, taught in this way, and say: It happened in the year one thousand one hundred and forty-one of the incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God, when I was forty-two years old, that a flashing fire of light from the clear sky transfused my brain, my heart, and my whole breast as with flame; yet it did not burn but only warmed me, as the sun warms an object upon which it sheds its rays. And suddenly I had intelligence of the full meaning of the Psalter, the Gospels, and the other books of the Old and New Testaments, although I did not have the exact interpretation of the words of their text, nor the division of syllables nor knowledge of cases and moods.”
The writer continues with the statement:
“The visions which I saw, I did not perceive in dreams or sleeping, nor in delirium, nor with the corporeal ears and eyes of the outer man; but watchful and intent in mind I received them according to the will of God.”[559]
Hildegard spoke as truthfully as she could about her visions and the source of her knowledge, matters hard for her to put in words, and by no means easy for others to classify in categories of seeming explanation. Guibert may have read the work in question. At all events, his interesting correspondence with her, and her great repute, led him to come to see for himself and investigate her visions; for he realized that deceptions were common, and wished to follow the advice of Scripture to prove all things. So he made the journey to Bingen, and stayed four days with Hildegard. This was in 1178, about a year before her death. “So far as was possible in this short space of time, I observed her attentively; and I could not perceive in her any invention or untruth or hypocrisy, or indeed anything that could offend either us or other men who follow reason.”[560]
Springing from her rapt faith, the visions of this seeress and anima speculativa disclose the range of her knowledge and the power of her mind. The visions all were allegories; but while some appear as sheer spontaneous visions, in others the mind of Hildegard, aware of the intended allegorical significance, constructs the vision, and fashions its details to suit the spiritual meaning. This woman, fit sister to her contemporaries Hugo of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux, was ancestress of him who saw his Commedia both as fact and allegory, and with intended mind laboured upon that inspiration which kept him lean for twenty years.
Let us now follow these visions for ourselves, and begin with the Book of the Rewards of Life revealed by the Living Light through a simple person.[561]
“When I was sixty years old, I saw the strong and wonderful vision wherein I toiled for five years. And I saw a Man of such size that he reached from the summit of the clouds of heaven even to the Abyss. From his shoulders upward he was above the clouds in the serenest ether. From his shoulders down to his hips he was in a white cloud; from his hips to his knees he was in the air of earth; from the knees to the calves he was in the earth; and from his calves to the soles of his feet he was in the waters of the Abyss, so that he stood upon the Abyss. And he turned to the East. The brightness of his countenance dazzled me. At his mouth was a white cloud like a trumpet, which was full of all sounds sounding quickly. When he blew in it, it sent forth three winds, of which one sustained above itself a fiery cloud, and one a storm-cloud, and one a cloud of light. But the wind with the fiery cloud above it hovered before the Man’s face, while the two others descended to his breast and blew there.
“And in the fiery cloud there was a living fiery multitude all one in will and life. Before them was spread a tablet covered with quills (pennae) which flew in the precepts of God. And when the precepts of God lifted up that tablet where God’s knowledge had written certain of its secrets, this multitude with one impulse gazed on it. And as they saw the writing, God’s virtue was so bestowed upon them that as a mighty trumpet they gave forth in one note a music manifold.
“The wind having the storm-cloud over it, spread, with that cloud, from the south to the west. In it was a multitude of the blessed, who possessed the spirit of life; and their voice was as the noise of many waters as they cried: We have our habitations from Him who made this wind, and when shall we receive them? But the multitude that was in the fiery cloud chanted responding: When God shall grasp His trumpet, lightning and thunder and burning fire shall He send upon the earth, and then in that trumpet shall ye have your habitation.
“And the wind which had over it the cloud of light spread with that cloud from the east to the north. But masses of darkness and thick horror coming from the west, extended themselves to the light cloud, yet could not pass beyond it. In that darkness was a countless crowd of lost souls; and these swerved in their course whenever they heard the song of those singing in the storm-cloud, as if they shunned their company.
“Then I saw coming from the north, a cloud barren of delight, untouched by the Sun’s rays. It reached towards the darkness aforesaid, and was full of malignant spirits, who go about devising snares for men. And I heard the old serpent saying, ‘I will prepare my men of might and will make war upon mine enemies.’ And he spat forth among men a spume of things impure, and inflated them with derision. Then he blew up a foul mist which filled the whole earth as with black smoke, out of which was heard a groaning; and in that mist I saw the images of every sin.”[562]
These images now speak in their own defence, and are answered by the virtues, speaking from the storm-cloud, Heavenly Love replying to Love of this World, Discipline answering Petulance, Shame answering Ribaldry (the vice of the jongleours) after the fashion of such mediaeval allegorical debates. The virtues are simply voices; but the monstrous or bestial image of each sin is described:
“Ignavia (cowardly sloth) had a human head, but its left ear was like the ear of a hare, and so large as to cover the head. Its body and limbs were worm-like, apparently without bones; and it spoke trembling.”[563]
Hildegard explains the general features of her vision: God with secret inquisition, reviewing the profound disposal of His will, made three ways of righteousness, which should advance in the three orders of the blessed. These are the three winds with the three clouds above them. The first wind bears over it the fiery cloud, which is the glory of angels burning with love of God, willing only what He wills; the wind bearing over it the storm-cloud represents the works of men, stormy and various, done in straits and tribulations; the third way of righteousness, through the Incarnation of our Lord, bears above it a white and untouched virginity, as a cloud of light.[564]
Then Hildegard sees the punishments of those who die in their sins impenitent. They were in a pit having a bottom of burning pitch, out of which crawled fiery worms; and sharp nails were driven about in that pit as by a wind.
“I saw a well deep and broad, full of boiling pitch and sulphur, and around it were wasps and scorpions, who scared but did not injure the souls of those therein; which were the souls of those who had slain in order not to be slain.
“Near a pond of clear water I saw a great fire. In this some souls were burned and others were girdled with snakes, and others drew in and again exhaled the fire like a breath, while malignant spirits cast lighted stones at them. And all of them beheld their punishments reflected in the water, and thereat were the more afflicted. These were the souls of those who had extinguished the substance of the human form within them, or had slain their infants.
“And I saw a great swamp, over which hung a black cloud of smoke, which was issuing from it. And in the swamp there swarmed a mass of little worms. Here were the souls of those who in the world had delighted in foolish merriment (inepta laetitia).[565]
“And I saw a great fire, black, red, and white, and in it horrible fiery vipers spitting flame; and there the vipers tortured the souls of those who had been slaves of the sin of uncharitableness (acerbitas).
“And I saw a fire burning in a blackness, in which were dragons, who blew up the fire with their breath. And near was an icy river; and the dragons passed into it from time to time and disturbed it. And a fiery air was over both river and fire. Here were punished the souls of liars; and for relief from the heat, they pass into the river, and again, for the cold, they return to the fire, and the dragons torment them. But the fiery air afflicts only those who have sworn falsely.[566]
“I saw a hollow mountain full of fire and vipers, with a little opening; and near it a horrible cold place crawling with scorpions. The souls of those guilty of envy and malice suffer here, passing for relief from one place of torment to the other.
“And I saw a thickest darkness, in which the souls of the disobedient lay on a fiery pavement and were bitten by sharp-toothed worms. For blind were they in life, and the fiery pavement is for their wilful disobedience, and the worms because they disobeyed their prelates.
“And I beheld at great height in the air a hail of ice and fire descending. And from that height, the souls of those who had broken their vows of chastity were falling, and then as by a wind were whirled aloft again wrapped in a ligature of darkness, so that they could not move; and the hail of cold and fire fell upon them.
“And I saw demons with fiery scourges beating hither and thither, through fires shaped like thorns and sharpened flails, the souls of those who on earth had been guilty bestially.”[567]
After the vision of the punishment, Hildegard states the penance which would have averted it, and usually follows with pious discourse and quotations from Scripture. Apparently she would have the punishments seen by her to be taken not as allegories, but literally as those actually in store for the wicked.
It is different with her visions of Paradise. In Hildegard, as in Dante, descriptions of heaven’s blessedness are pale in comparison with the highly-coloured happenings in hell. And naturally, since Paradise is won by those in whom spirit has triumphed over carnality. But flesh triumphed in the wicked on earth, and hell is of the flesh, though the spirit also be agonized. Hildegard sees many blessed folk in Paradise, but all is much the same with them: they are clad in splendid clothes, they breathe an air fragrant with sweetest flowers, they are adorned with jewels, and many of them wear crowns. For example, she sees the blessed virgins standing in purest light and limpid splendour, surpassing that of the sun. They are clad “quasi candidissima veste velut auro intexta, et quasi pretiosissimis lapidibus a pectore usque ad pedes, in modum dependentis zonae, ornata induebantur, quae etiam maximum odorem velut aromatum de se emittebat. Sed et cingulis, quasi auro et gemmis ac margaritis supra humanum intellectum ornatis, circumcingebantur.”
This seems a description of heavenly millinery. Are these virgins rewarded in the life to come with what they spurned in this? What would the saint have thought of virgins had she seen them in the flesh clad in the whitest vestment ornamented with interwoven gold and gems, falling in alluring folds from their breasts to their feet, giving out aromatic odours, and belted with girdles of pearls beyond human conception? Could it be possible that the woman surviving in the nun took delight in contemplating the blissful things forbidden here below? However this may be, the quasi-s and velut-s suggest the symbolical character of these marvels. This indication becomes stronger as Hildegard, in language wavering between the literal and the symbolical, explains the appropriateness of ornaments and perfumes as rewards for the virtues shown by saints on earth. At last all is made clear: the Lux vivens declares that these ornaments are spiritual and eternal; gold and gems, which are of the dust, are not for the eternal life of celestial beings; but the elect are spiritually adorned by their righteous works as people are bodily adorned with costly ornaments. So one gains the lesson that the bliss of heaven can only be shown in allegories, since it surpasses the understanding of men while held in mortal flesh.[568]
These visions from Hildegard’s Book of the Rewards of Life may be supplemented by one or two selected from the curious and lengthy work which she named Scivias, signifying Scito vias domini (know the ways of the Lord). In this work, on which she laboured for nine years, the seeress shows forth the Church, in images seen in visions, and the whole dogmatic scheme of Christian polity. The allegories form the texts of expository sermons. For example, the first vision in the first Book is of an iron-coloured mountain, which is at once explained as an image of the stability of God’s eternal kingdom. The third vision is of a fiery, egg-shaped object, very complicated in construction, and devised to illustrate the truth that things visible and temporal shadow forth the invisible and eternal, in the polity of God.[569] In the fourth vision, globes of fire are seen to enter the human form at birth, and are then attacked by many whirlwinds rushing in upon them. This is an allegory of human souls and their temptations, and forms the text for a long discourse on the nature of the soul.
The fifth vision is of the Synagogue, the Mater incarnationis Filii Dei:
“Then I saw as it were the image of a woman, pale from the top to the navel, and black from the navel to the feet, and its feet were blood-colour, and had about them a very white cloud. This image lacked eyes, and kept its hands under its arm-pits. It stood by the Altar that is before the eyes of God, but did not touch it.”
The pale upper part of this image represents the prescience of the patriarchs and prophets, who had not the strong light of the Gospel; the black lower portion represents Israel’s later backslidings; and the bloody feet surrounded by a white cloud, the slaying of Christ, and the Church arising from that consummation. The image is sightless--blind to Christ--and stands before His altar, but will have none of it; and its slothful hands keep from the work of righteousness.[570]
The sixth vision is of the orders of celestial spirits, and harks back to the Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite. In the height of the celestial secrets Hildegard sees a shining company of supernal spirits having as it were wings (pennas) across their breasts, and bearing before them a face like the human countenance, in which the look of man was mirrored. These are angels spreading as wings the desires of their profound intelligence; not that they have wings, like birds; but they quickly do the will of God in their desires, as a man flees quickly in his thoughts.[571] They manifest the beauty of rationality through their faces, wherein God scrutinizes the works of men. For these angels see to the accomplishment of the will of God in men; and then in themselves they show the actions of men.
Another celestial company was seen, also having as it were wings over their breasts, and bearing before them a face like the human countenance in which the image of the Son of Man shone as in a mirror. These are archangels contemplating the will of God in the desires of their own intelligences, and displaying the grace of rationality; they glorify the incarnate Word by figuring in their attributes the mysteries of the Incarnation. This vision, symbolizing the angelic intelligence, is consciously and rationally constructed.
Perhaps the same may be said of the second vision of the second Book:[572]
“Then I saw a most glorious light and in it a human form of sapphire hue, all aflame with a most gentle glowing fire; and that glorious light was infused in the glowing fire, and the fire was infused in the glorious light; and both light and fire transfused that human form--all inter-existent as one light, one virtue, and one power.”
This vision of the Trinity, in which the glorious light is the Father, the human form is the Son, and the fire is the Holy Spirit, may remind the reader of the closing “vision” of the thirty-third canto of Dante’s Paradiso.
The third Book contains manifold visions of a four-sided edifice set upon a mountain, and built with a double (biformis) wall. Here an infinitude of symbolic detail illustrates the entire Christian Faith. Observe a part of the symbolism of the twofold wall: the wall is double (in duabus formis). One of its formae[573] is speculative knowledge, which man possesses through careful and penetrating investigation of the speculation of his mind; so that he may be circumspect in all his ways. The other forma of the wall represents the homo operans.
“This speculative knowledge shines in the brightness of the light of day, that through it men may see and consider their acts. This brightness is of the human mind carefully looking about itself; and this glorious knowledge appears as a white mist permeating the minds of the peoples, as quickly as mist is scattered through the air; it is light as the light of day, after the brightness of that most glorious work which God benignly works in men, to wit, that they shun evil and do the good which shines in them as the light of day.... This knowledge is speculative, for it is like a mirror (speculum) in which a man sees whether his face be fair or blotched; thus this knowledge views the good and evil in the deed done.”[574]
The Scivias closes with visions of the Last Judgment, splendid, ordered, tremendous, and rendered audible in hymns rising to the Virgin and to Christ. Apostles, martyrs, saints chant the refrains of victory which echo the past militancy of this faithful choir.
* * * * *
The visions of Elizabeth of Schönau and Hildegard of Bingen set forth universal dogmas and convictions. They show the action of the imaginative and rational faculties and the full use of the acquired knowledge possessed by the women to whom they came. Such visions spring from the mind--quite different are those born of love. Emotion dominates the latter; their motives are subjective; they are personal experiences having no clear pertinency to the lives of others. If the visions of Hildegard were object lessons, the blissful ecstasies of Mary of Ognies and Liutgard of Tongern were specifically their own, very nearly as the intimate consolation of a wife from a husband, or a lady from her faithful knight, would be that woman’s and none other’s.
One cannot say that there was no love of God before Jesus was born; still less that men had not conceived of God as loving them. Nevertheless in Jesus’ words God became lovable as never before, and God’s love of man was shown anew, and was anew set forth as the perfect pattern of human love. In Christ, God offered the sacrifice which afore He had demanded of Abraham: for “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.” That Son carried out the Father’s act: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” So men learned the final teaching: “God is love.”
A new love also was aroused by the personality of Jesus. Was this the love of God or love of man? Rather, it was such as to reveal the two as one. In Jesus’ teachings, love of God and love of man might not be severed: “As ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” And the love which He inspired for himself was at once a love of man and love of God.[575] Think of that love, new in the world, with which, more than with her ointment or her tears, the woman who had been a sinner bathed the Master’s feet.
This woman saw the Master in the flesh; but the love which was hers was born again in those who never looked upon His face. Through the Middle Ages the love of Christ with which saintly women were possessed was as impulsive as this sinner’s, and also held much resembling human passion. Their burning faith tended to liquefy to ecstatic experiences. They had renounced the passionate love of man in order to devote themselves to the love of Christ; and as their thoughts leapt toward the Bridegroom, the Church’s Spouse and Lord, their visions sometimes kept at least the colour of the love for knight or husband which they had abjured.[576]
At the height of the horrors of the Albigensian Crusade, in the year 1212, Fulco, Bishop of Toulouse, was driven from his diocese by the incensed but heretical populace. He travelled northward through France, seeking aid against these foes of Christ, and came to the diocese of Liége. There he observed with joy the faith and humility of those who were leading a religious life, and was struck by the devotion of certain saintly women whose ardour knew no bounds. It was all very different from Toulouse. “Indeed I have heard you declare that you had gone out of Egypt--your own diocese--and having passed through the desert, had reached the promised land--in Liége.”
Jacques de Vitry is speaking. His friend the bishop had asked him to write of these holy women, who brought such glory to the Church in troubled times. Jacques was himself a clever Churchman, zealous for the Church’s interests and his own. He afterwards became Bishop and Cardinal of Tusculum; and as papal legate consecrated the holy bones of her whom the Church had decided to canonize, the blessed Mary of Ognies, the paragon of all these other women who rejoiced the ecclesiastical hearts of himself and Fulco. Jacques had known her and had been present at her pious death; and also had witnessed many of the matters of which he is speaking at the commencement of his Vita of this saint.[577]
Many of these women, continues Jacques, had for Christ spurned carnal joys, and for Him had despised the riches of this world, in poverty and humility clinging to their heavenly Spouse.
“You saw,” says Jacques, again addressing Fulco, “some of these women dissolved with such a particular and marvellous love toward God (tam speciali et mirabili in Deum amoris affectione resolutas) that they languished with desire, and for years had rarely been able to rise from their cots. They had no other infirmity, save that their souls were melted with desire of Him, and, sweetly resting with the Lord, as they were comforted in spirit they were weakened in body. They cried in their hearts, though from modesty their lips dissimulated: “Fulcite me floribus, stipate me malis, quia amore langueo.”[578] The cheeks of one were seen to waste away, while her soul was melted with the greatness of her love. Another’s flow of tears had made visible furrows down her face. Others were drawn with such intoxication of spirit that in sacred silence they would remain quiet a whole day, ‘while the King was on His couch’ (i.e. at meat),[579] with no sense or feeling for things without them, so that they could not be roused by clamour or feel a blow. I saw another whom for thirty years her Spouse had so zealously guarded in her cell, that she could not leave it herself, nor could the hands of others drag her out. I saw another who sometimes was seized with ecstasy five-and-twenty times a day, in which state she was motionless, and on returning to herself was so enraptured that she could not keep from displaying her inner joy with movements of the body, like David leaping before the Ark. And I saw still another who after she had lain for some time dead, before burial was permitted by the Lord to return to the flesh, that she might on earth do purgatorial penance; and long was she thus afflicted of the Lord, sometimes rolling herself in the fire, and in the winter standing in frozen water.”[580]
But what need to say more of these, as all their graces are found in one precious and pre-excellent pearl--and Jacques proceeds to tell the life of Mary of Ognies. She was born in a village near Namur in Belgium, about the year 1177. She never took part in games or foolishness with other girls; but kept her soul free from vanity. Married at fourteen to a young man, she burned the more to afflict her body, passing the nights in austerities and prayer. Her husband soon was willing to dwell with her in continence, himself sustaining her in her holy life, and giving his goods to the poor for Christ’s sake.
There was nothing more marvellous with Mary than her gift of tears, as her soul dwelt in the passion of her Lord. Her tears--so says her biographer--wetted the pavement of the Church or the cloth of the altar. Her life was one of body-destroying austerities: she went barefoot in the ice of the winter; often she took no food through the day, and then watched out the night in prayer. Her body was afflicted and wasted; her soul was comforted. She had frequent visions, the gift of second sight, and great power over devils. Once for thirty-five days in silent trance she rested sweetly with the Lord, only occasionally uttering these words: “I desire the body of our Lord Jesus Christ” (i.e. the Eucharist); and when she had received it, she turned again to silence.[581] Always she sought after her Lord: He was her meditation, and example in speech and deed. She died in the year 1213, at the age of thirty-six. She was called Mary of Ognies, from the name of the town where a church was dedicated to her, and where her relics were laid to rest.
* * * * *
Emotionally, another very interesting personality was the blessed virgin, Liutgard of Tongern, a younger contemporary of Mary of Ognies. In accordance with her heart’s desire, she was providentially protected from the forceful importunities of her wooers, and became a Benedictine nun. After some years, however, seeking a more strenuous rule of life, she entered the Cistercian convent at Aquiria, near Cambray.[582]
Liutgard’s experiences were sense-realizations of her faith, but chiefly of her love of Christ. Sometimes her senses realized the imagery of the Apocalypse; as when singing in Church she had a vision of Christ as a white lamb. The lamb rests a foot on each of her shoulders, sets his mouth to hers, and draws out sweetest song. Far more frequently she realized within her heart the burning words of Canticles. Her whole being yearned continually for the Lord, and sought no other comfort. For five years she received almost daily visits from the Mother of Christ, as well as from the Apostles and other saints; the angels were continually with her. Yet in all these she did not find perfect rest for her spirit, till she found the Saint of saints, who is ineffably sweeter than them all, even as He is their sanctifier. Smitten as the bride in Canticles, she is wounded, she languishes, she pants, she arises; “in the streets” she seeks the Saints of the New Dispensation, and through “the broad places” the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. Little by little she passes by them “because He is not far from every one of us”; she finds Him whom her soul cherishes. She finds, she holds Him, because He does not send her away; she holds Him by faith, happy in the seeking, more happy in the holding fast.[583]
There are three couches in Canticles:[584] the first signifies the soul’s state of penitence; the second its state of warfare; the third the state of those made perfect in the vita contemplativa. On the first couch the soul is wounded, on the second it is wearied, on the third it is made glad. The saintly Liutgard sought her Beloved perfectly on the couch of penitence, and watered it with her tears, although she never had been stung by mortal sin. On the second couch she sought her Beloved, battling against the flesh with fasting and endeavour; with poverty and humility she overcame the world, and cast down the devil with prayer and remedial tears. On the third couch, which is the couch of quiet, she perfectly sought her Beloved, since she did not lean upon the angels or saints, but through contemplation rested sweetly only upon the couch of the Spouse. This couch is called flowery (floridus) from the vernal quality of its virtues; and it is called “ours” because common to husband and wife: in it she may say, “My Beloved is mine and I am His,” and, “I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is towards me.” Why not say that? exclaims the biographer, quoting the lines:
“Nescit amor Dominum; non novit amor dominari, Quamlibet altus amet, non amat absque pari.”
Thenceforth her spirit was absorbed in God, as drops of water in a jar of wine. When asked how she was wont to see the visage of Christ in contemplation, she answered: “In a moment there appears to me a splendour inconceivable, and as lightning I see the ineffable beauty of His glorification; the sight of which I could not endure in this present life, did it not instantly pass from my view. A mental splendour remains, and when I seek in that what I saw for an instant, I do not find it.”
A little more than a year before her death the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to her, with the look as of one who applauds, and said: “The end of thy labour is at hand: I do not wish thee longer to be separated from me. This year I require three things of thee: first, that thou shouldst render thanks for all thy benefits received; secondly, that thou pour thyself out in prayer to the Father for my sinners; and thirdly, that, without any other solicitude, thou burn to come to me, panting with desire.”[585]
The religious yearning which with Liutgard touches sense-realization, seems transformed completely into the latter in the extraordinary German book of one Sister Mechthild, called of Magdeburg.[586] The authoress probably was born not far from that town about the year 1212. To judge from her work, she belonged to a good family and was acquainted with the courtly literature of the time. She speaks of her loving parents, from whom she tore herself away at the age of twenty-three, and entered the town of Magdeburg, there to begin a life of rapt religious mendicancy, for which Francis had set the resistless example. Sustained by love for her Lord, she led a despised and homeless life of hardship and austerity for thirty years. At length bodily infirmities brought her to rest in a Cistercian cloister for nuns at Helfta, near Eisleben, where ruled a wise and holy abbess, the noble Gertrude of Hackeborn. Here Mechthild remained until her death in 1277. For many years it had been her custom to write down her experiences of the divine love in a book which she called The Flowing Light of God, in which she also wrote the prophetic denunciations, revealed to her to be pronounced before men, especially in the presence of those who were great in what should be God’s holy Church.[587]
“Frau Minne (Lady Love) you have taken from me the world’s riches and honour,” cries Mechthild.[588] Love’s ecstasy came upon her when she abandoned the world and cast herself upon God alone. Then first her soul’s eyes beheld the beautiful manhood of her Lord Jesus Christ, also the Holy Trinity, her own guardian angel, and the devil who tempted her through the vainglory of her visions and through unchaste desire. She defended herself with the agony of our Lord. For Mechthild, hell is the “city whose name is eternal hate.” With her all blessedness is love, as her book will now disclose.
Cries the Soul to Love (Minne) her guardian: “Thou hast hunted and taken, bound and wounded me; never shall I be healed.”
Love answers: “It was my pleasure to hunt thee; to take thee captive was my desire; to bind thee was my joy. I drove Almighty God from His throne in heaven, and took His human life from Him, and then with honour gave Him back to His Father; how couldst thou, poor worm, save thyself from me!”[589]
What then will love’s omnipotence exact from this poor Soul? Merely all. Drawn by yearning, the Soul comes flying, like an eagle toward the sun. “See, how she mounts to us, she who wounded me”--it is the Lord that is speaking. “She has thrown away the ashes of the world, overcome lust, and trodden the lion of pride beneath her feet--thou eager huntress of love, what bringest thou to me?”
“Lord, I bring thee my treasure, which is greater than mountains, wider than the world, deeper than the sea, higher than the clouds, more beautiful than the sun, more manifold than the stars, and outweighs the riches of the earth.”
“Image of my Divinity, ennobled by my manhood, adorned by my Holy Spirit, how is thy treasure called?”
“Lord, it is called my heart’s desire: I have withdrawn it from the world, withheld it from myself, forbidden it all creatures. I can carry it no farther; Lord, where shall I lay it?”
“Thou shalt lay thy heart’s desire nowhere else than in my divine heart and on my human breast. There only wilt thou be comforted and kissed with my spirit.”
Love casts out fear and difference, and lifts the Soul to equality with the divine Lover. Through the passion of love the Soul may pass into the Beloved’s being, and become one with Him: “He, thy life, died from love for thy sake; now love Him so that thou mayest long to die for His sake. Then shalt thou burn for evermore unquenched, like a shining spark in the great fire of the Living Majesty.”
These are passion’s vision-flights. But God himself points out the way by which the Soul that loves shall come to Him: she--the Soul--shall come, surmounting the need of penitence and penance, surmounting love of the world, conflicts with the devil, carnal appetite, and the promptings of her own will. Thereupon, exhausted, she shall yearn resistlessly for that beautiful Youth (Christ). He will be moved to come to meet her. Now her guardians (the Senses) bid her attire herself. “Love, whither shall I hence?” she cries. The Senses make answer: “We hear the murmur; the Prince will come to meet you in the dew and the sweet-bird song. Courage, Lady, He will not tarry.”
The Soul clothes herself in a garment of humility, and over it draws the white robe of chastity, and goes into the wood. There nightingales sing of union with God, and strains of divine knowledge meet her ears. She then strives to follow in festal dance (i.e. to imitate) the example of the prophets, the chaste humility of the Virgin, the virtues of Jesus, and the piety of His saints. Then comes the Youth and says: “Maiden, thou hast danced holily, even as my saints.”
The Soul answers: “I cannot dance unless thou leadest. If thou wouldst have me spring aloft, sing thou: and I will spring--into love, and from love to knowledge, and from knowledge to ecstasy, above all human sense.”
The Youth speaks: “Maiden, thy dance of praise is well performed. Since now thou art tired, thou shalt have thy will with the Virgin’s Son. Come to the brown shades at midday, to the couch of love, and there shalt thou cool thyself with Him.”
Then the Soul speaks to her guardians, the Senses: “I am tired with the dance; leave me, for I must go where I may cool myself.” The Senses bid her cool herself in the tears of love shed by St. Mary Magdalen.
“Hush, good sirs: ye know not what I mean. Unhindered, for a little I would drink the unmixed wine.”
“Lady, in the Virgin’s chastity the great love is reached.”
“That may be--with me it is not the highest.”
“You, Lady, might cool yourself in martyr-blood.”
“I have been martyred many a day.”
“In the counsel of Father Confessors, the pure live gladly.”
“Good is their counsel, but it helps not here.”
“Great safety would you find in the Apostles’ wisdom.”
“Wisdom I have myself--to choose the best.”
“Lady, bright are the angels, and lovely in love’s hue; to cool yourself, be lifted up with them.”
“The bliss of angels brings me love’s woe, unless I see their lord, my Bridegroom.”
“Then cool you in the hard, holy life that John the Baptist showed.”
“I have tried that painful toil; my love passes beyond that.”
“Lady, would you with love cool yourself, approach the Child in the Virgin’s lap.”
“That is a childish love, to quiet children with. I am a full-grown bride and will have my Bridegroom.”
“Lady, there we should be smitten blind. The Godhead is so fiery hot. Heaven’s glow and all the holy lights flow from His divine breath and human mouth by the counsel of the Holy Spirit.”
But the Soul feeling its nature and its affinity with God, through love, makes answer boldly: “The fish cannot drown in the water, nor the bird sink in the air, nor gold perish in the flame, where it gains its bright clarity and colour. God has granted to all creatures to follow their natures; how can I withstand mine? To God will I go, who is my Father by nature, my Brother through His humility, my Bridegroom through love, and I am His forever.”[590] Not long after this the Soul’s rapture bursts forth in song:
“Ich sturbe gern von minnen, moehte es mir geschehen, Denn jenen den ich minnen, den han ich gesehen Mit minen liehten ougen in miner sele stehen.”[591]
Mechthild’s book is heavy with passion--with God’s passionate love for the Soul, and the Soul’s passionate response. No speech between lovers could outdo the converse between them. God calls the Soul, sweet dove, dear heart, my queen; and with like phrase the quivering Soul responds upward, as it were, to the great countenance glowing above it. Throughout, there is passion and impatient yearning--or satisfaction. The pain of the Soul severed, not yet a bride, is deeper than the abyss, bitterer than the world; but her joy shall exceed that of seraphs, she, Bride of the Trinity.[592]
The Soul must surrender herself, and become sheer desire for God.[593] God’s own yearning has begotten this desire. As glorious prince, as knight, as emperor, God comes; also in other forms:
“I come to my Beloved As dew upon the flowers.”[594]
For each other are these lovers wounded, for each other these lovers bleed, and each to the other is joy unspeakable and unforgettable. From the wafer of the holy Eucharist, the Lamb looks out upon me “with such sweet eyes that I never can forget.”
“His eyes in my eyes; His heart in my heart, His soul in my soul, Embraced and untroubled.”[595]
No need to say that in the end love draws the Soul to heaven’s gate, which the Lord opens to her. All is marvellous; but, far more, all is love: the Lord kisses her--what else than love can the soul thereafter know or feel.[596]
Mechthild, of course, is what is called a “mystic,” and a forerunner indeed of many another--Eckhart, Suso, Tauler--of German blood. With direct and utter passion she realizes God’s love; also she feels and thinks in symbols, which, with her, never cease to be the things they literally are. They remain flesh and blood, while also signifying the mysteries of God. Jesus was a man, Mechthild a woman. Her love not only uses lovers’ speech, but actually holds affinity with a maid’s love for her betrothed. If it is the Soul’s love of God, it is also the woman’s love of Him who overhung her from the Cross.
XX. THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY
THE TESTIMONY OF INVECTIVE AND SATIRE; ARCHBISHOP RIGAUD’S REGISTER; ENGELBERT OF COLOGNE; POPULAR CREDENCES
The preceding sketches of monastic qualities and personalities illustrate the ideals of monasticism. That monastic practices should fall away, corruptions enter, and when expelled inevitably return, was to be expected. The cause lay in those qualities of human nature which may be either power or frailty. The acquisitive, self-seeking, lusting qualities of men lie at the base of life, and may be essential to achievement and advance. Yet a higher interpretation of values will set the spiritual above the earthly, and beatify the self-denial through which man ultimately attains his highest self, under the prompting of his vision of the divine. The sight of this far goal is given to few men steadily, and the multitude, whether cowled or clad in fashions of the world, pursue more immediate desires.
So human nature saw to it that monasticism should constantly exhibit frivolity instead of earnestness, gluttony instead of fasting, avarice instead of alms-giving, anger and malice instead of charity and love, lustfulness instead of chastity, and, instead of meekness, pride and vain-glory. The particular forms assumed by these corruptions depended on the conditions of mediaeval life and the position in it occupied by monks.
It has already been said that the standard of conduct for the secular clergy was the same in principle as that for monks, though with allowance made for the stress of a life of service in the cure of souls.[597] But always the cloister and the hermitage were looked upon as the abiding-places where one stood the best chance to save one’s soul: the life of the layman--merchant, usurer, knight--was fraught with instant peril; that of the secular clergy was also perilous, especially when they held high office. Dread of ecclesiastical preferment might be well founded; the reluctance to be a bishop was often real. This sentiment, like all feelings in the Middle Ages, took the form of a story, with the usual vision to certify the moral of the tale:
“It is told of a certain prior of Clairvaux, Geoffrey by name, that when he had been elected Bishop of Tournai, and Pope Eugene as well as the blessed Bernard, his own abbot, was urging him to take the office, he cast himself down at the feet of the blessed Bernard and his clergy, and lay prone in the form of a cross, and said: ‘An expelled monk I may be, if you drive me out; but I will never be a bishop.’ At a later time, as this same prior lay breathing his last, a monk who loved him well adjured him in the name of God to bring him news of his state beyond the grave, if God would permit it. Some time after, as the monk was praying prostrate before the altar, his friend appeared and said that it was he. When the monk asked him how he was faring, ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘by the grace of God. Yet verily it has been revealed to me by the blessed Trinity, that had I been in the number of bishops I should have been in the number of the reprobate and damned.’”[598]
Through the Middle Ages, Church dignities everywhere were secularized through the vast possessions, and corresponding responsibilities, attaching to them. The clerical situation varied in different lands, yet with a like result. The Italian clergy were secularized through participation in civic and papal business, the German through their estates and principalities. In France clerical secularization was most typically mediaeval, because there the functions and fortunes of the higher clergy were most inextricably involved in feudalism. Monasteries and bishoprics were as feudal fiefs: abbots as well as bishops commonly held lands from an over-lord, and were themselves lords of their sub-vassals who held lands from them. To the former they owed rent, or aid, or service; to the latter they owed protection. In either case they might have to go or send their men to war. They also managed and guarded their own lands, like feudal nobles, vi et armis. When the estates of a monastery, for example, lay in different places, the abbot might exercise authority over them through a local potentate, and might also have such a protector (vîdame, avoué, advocatus) for the home abbey. There was always a general feeling, often embodied in law or custom, that a Church dignitary should fight by another’s sword and spear. But this did not prevent bishop and abbot in countless instances in France, England, Germany, and Spain, from riding mail-clad under their seignorial banner at the head of their forces.[599]
Episcopal lands and offices were not inherited:[600] yet with rare exceptions the bishops came from the noble, fighting, hunting class. They were noblemen first and ecclesiastics afterwards. The same was true of the abbots. Noble-born, they became dignitaries of the world through investiture with the broad lands of the monastery, and then administrators by reason of the temporal functions involved. As with the episcopal or monastic heads, so with canons and monks. They, too, for the most part were well-born. They also were good, bad, or indifferent, warlike or clerkly, devoted to study, abandoned to pleasure, or following the one and the other sparingly. Many a holy meditative monk there was; and many a saintly parish priest, the stay of piety and justice in his village. The rude times, the ceaseless murder and harrying, uncertainty and danger everywhere, seemed to beget such holy lives.
Invectives, satires, histories, and records, bear witness to the state of the clergy. All diatribes are to be taken with allowance. Whoever, for example, reads Peter Damiani’s Liber Gomorrhianus against the foulness of the clergy, must bear in mind the writer’s fiercely ascetic temper, the warfare which the stricter element in the Church was then waging against simony and priestly concubinage, and the monkish phraseology so common to ecclesiastical indictment of frivolity and vice.
One cannot quote comfortably from the Gomorrhianus. St. Bernard furnishes more decorous denunciation:
“Woe unto this generation, for its leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy!--if that should be called hypocrisy which cannot be hidden because of its abundance, and through impudence does not seek to hide! To-day, foul rottenness crawls through the whole body of the Church. If a heretic foe should arise openly, he would be cast out and withered; or if the enemy raged madly, the Church might hide herself from him. But now whom shall she cast out, or from whom hide herself? All are friends and all are foes; all necessary and all adverse; all of her own household and none pacific; all are her neighbours and all seek their own interest. Ministers of Christ, they serve Antichrist. They go clothed in the good things of the Lord and render Him no honour. Hence that éclat of the courtesan which you daily see, that theatric garb, that regal state. Hence the gold-trapped reins and saddles and spurs--for the spurs shine brighter than the altars. Hence the splendid tables laden with food and goblets; hence the feastings and drunkenness, the guitars, the lyres and the flutes; hence the swollen wine-presses and the storehouses heaped and running over from this one into that, and the jars of perfumes, and the stuffed purses. ’Tis for such matters that they wish to be and are the over-seers of churches, deacons, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops. For neither do these offices come by merit, but through that sort of business which walketh in darkness!”[601]
Such rhetoric gives glimpses of the times, but also springs from that temper which is always crying hora novissima, tempora pessima. Invectives of this nature have their deepest source in the religious sense of the ineradicable opposition between this world and the kingdom of heaven. Yet luxury did in fact pervade the Church of Bernard’s time, and simony was as wide as western Europe. This crime was the offspring of the entire social state; it was part and parcel of the feudal system and the whole matter of lay investitures. One sees that simony was no extraneous stain to be washed off from the body ecclesiastic, but rather an element of its actual constitution. The eradication had to come through social and ecclesiastical evolution, rather than spasmodic reformation.
One may turn from the invectives of the great saint to forms of satire more frankly literary. The Latin poems “commonly attributed to Walter Mapes”[602] satirize with biting ridicule, through the mouth of “Bishop Golias,” the avarice and venality, the gluttony and lubricity of the Church, secular and monastic. In a quite different kind of poem the satire directs itself against the rapacity of Rome. She, head of the Church and Caput Mundi, is shown to be like Scylla and Charybdis and the Sirens.[603] These powerful verses anticipate the denunciation of the Roman papacy by the good Germans Walther von der Vogelweide and Freidank,[604] and, a century later, in the Vision of Piers Ploughman.
In this outcry against papal rapacity France was not silent. Most extreme is the “Bible” of Guiot de Provens: it satirizes the entire age, “siècle puant et orrible.” As it turns toward the papacy it cries:
“Ha! Rome, Rome, Encor ociras tu maint home!”
The cardinals are stuffed with avarice and simony and evil living; without faith or religion, they sell God and His Mother, and betray us and their fathers. Rome sucks and devours us; Rome kills and destroys all. Guiot’s voice is raised against the entire Church; neither the monks nor the seculars escape--bishops, priests, canons, the black monks and the white, Templars and Hospitallers, nuns and abbesses, all bad.[605]
One might extend indefinitely the list of these invectives, which, like the corruptions denounced by them, were common to all mediaeval centuries. From the testimony of more definite accounts one perceives the rudeness and cruelty of mediaeval life, in which the Church likewise was involved. In order to rise, it had to lift the social fabric. To this end many of its children struggled nobly, devoting themselves and sometimes yielding up their lives for the betterment of the society in which their lots were cast.
One of these capable children of the Church who did his duty in the high ecclesiastical station to which he was called was Eude Rigaud, or Odo Rigaldus, Archbishop of Rouen from 1248 to 1275, the year of his death. He was a scion of a noble house whose fiefs lay in the neighbourhood of Brie-Comte-Robert (Seine-et-Marne). In 1236 he joined the Franciscans, and then studied at Paris under Alexander of Hales, one of the Order’s great theologians. His first fame came from his preaching. As archbishop, he was a reformer, and abetted the endeavours of Pope Gregory IX. He was also a counsellor of Saint Louis, and followed him upon that last crusade from which the king did not return alive.[606]
The good archbishop was a man of method, and kept a record of his official acts. This monumental document exists, the Register of Rigaud’s visitations among the monks and secular clergy within his wide jurisdiction, between the years 1248 and 1269.[607] Consisting of entries made at the time, it is a mirror of actual conditions, presumably similar to those existing in other parts of France. Rigaud visited many monasteries and parishes where he found nothing to reform, and merely made a memorandum of having been there; wherever abuses were found, the entry expands to a statement of them and the measures taken for their remedy. Consequently one may not infer that the blameworthy or abominable conditions recorded in the particular instance obtained universally in Normandy. Occasionally Rigaud records in more detail the good condition of some monastery. A few instructive extracts may be given.
“Calends of October (1248). We were again at Ouville (Ovilla). We found that the prior wanders about when he ought to stay in the cloister; he is not in the cloister one day in five. Item, he is a drunkard, and of such vile drunkenness that he sometimes lies out in the fields because of it. Item, he frequents feasts and drinking-bouts with laymen. Item, he is incontinent, and is accused in respect to a certain woman of Grainville, and also with the wife of Robertot, and also with a woman of Rouen named Agnes. Item, brother Geoffrey was publicly accused with respect to the wife of Walter of Esquaquelon who recently had a child from him. Item, they do not keep proper accounts of their revenues. We ordered that they should keep better accounts.”[608]
Such an entry needs no comment. But it is illuminating to observe the strictness or leniency with which Rigaud treats offences. Doubtless he was guided by what he thought he could enforce.
Apparently near the Ouville priory, the archbishop was scandalized by the priest of St. Vedasti de Depedale, who was convicted of taking part in the rough ball-play, common in Normandy, in which game, as might easily happen, he had injured some one. “He took oath before us that if again convicted he would hold himself to have resigned from his church.”[609] Rigaud did not approve of these somewhat too merry games for his parish priests, who were not angels. The archbishop finds of the priest of Lortiey “that he but rarely wears his capa, that he does not confess to the penitentiarius, that he is gravely accused concerning two women, by whom he has had many children, and he is drunken.”[610]
Rigaud enters the cases of other parish priests as follows:
“We found that the priest of Nigella was accused as to a woman, and of being engaged in trade and of treating his father despitefully, who is patron of the church which he holds, and that with drawn sword he fought with a certain knight, with a riotous following of relatives and friends. Item, the priest of Basinval is accused as to a woman whom he takes about with him to the market-places and taverns. Likewise the priest of Vieux-Rouen is accused of incontinency, and goes about wearing a sword in shameless garb. Likewise the priest of Cotigines is a dicer and plays at quoits and frequents taverns, and is incontinent, and although corrected as to these matters, perseveres.”[611]
Sometimes accusations were brought to the archbishop by the suffering parishioners:
“Calends of August (1255). Passing through the village of Brai, the parishioners of the church there accused the rector of the church in our presence. They said that he went about in the night through the village with arms, that he was quarrelsome and scurrilous and abusive to his parishioners, and was incontinent.”
Summoning this priest before his ecclesiastical tribunal, the archbishop says, “We admonished him to abstain from such ill-conduct; or that otherwise we should proceed against him.”[612]
Either this priest or another of “Brayo subtus Baudemont,” named Walter, was subsequently deprived of his priesthood on his own confession as follows:
“He confessed that the accusation against him concerning a woman of his parish, which he had denied under oath, was supported by truth; item, he confessed in regard to a waxen image made to be used in divining; he confessed (various other incontinencies and his fatherhood of various children); item, he confessed his ill-repute for usury and base gain; he admitted that he had led the dances at the nuptials of a certain prostitute whom he had married.”[613]
Rigaud continually records accusations against parish priests, commonly for incontinency and drunkenness and generally unbecoming conduct, and sometimes for homicide.[614] But his own examinations kept out many a turbulent and ignorant clerk, presented by the lay patron for the benefice; and so he prevented improper inductions as he might. The Register gives a number of instances of crass illiteracy in these candidates, a matter to cause no surprise, for the feudal patrons of the living naturally presented their relatives. Some of these candidates appealed to Rome from the archbishop’s refusal, probably without success.[615]
A monk might be as bad as any parish priest:
“Brother Thomas ... wore gold rings. He went about in armour, by night, and without any monastic habit, and kept bad company. He wounded many clergy and laity at night, and was himself wounded, losing a thumb. We commanded the abbot to expel him; or that otherwise we should seize the place and expel the monks.”[616]
Life in a nunnery was the feminine counterpart of life in a monastery. There were good and bad nunneries, and nuns good and bad, serious and frivolous. Many had the foibles, and were addicted to the diversions, comforts, or fancies of their sex: they were always wanting to keep dogs and birds, and have locks to their chests!
“Nones of May (1250). We visited the Benedictine convent of nuns of St. Sauveur at Evreux. There were sixty-one nuns there. Sometimes they drank, not in the refectory or infirmary, but in their chambers. They kept little dogs, squirrels, and birds. We ordered that all such things be removed. They do not observe the regula. They eat flesh needlessly. They have locked chests. We directed the abbess to inspect their chests often and unexpectedly, or to take off the locks. We directed the abbess to take away their girdles ornamented with ironwork and their fancy pouches, and the silk cushions they were working.”[617]
Again, the picture is more terrible:
“Nones of July (1249). We visited the priory of Villa Arcelli. Thirty-three nuns are there and three lay sisters. They confess and communicate six times a year. Only four of the nuns have taken the vows according to the regula. Many of them had cloaks of rabbit-fur, or made from the fur of hares and foxes. In the infirmary they eat flesh needlessly. Silence is not observed; nor do they keep within the cloister. Johanna of Aululari once went out and lived with some one, by whom she had a child; and sometimes she goes out to see that child: she is also suspected with a certain man named Gaillard. Isabella la Treiche (?) is a fault-finder, murmuring against the prioress and others. The stewardess is suspected with a man named Philip de Vilarceau. The prioress is too remiss; she does not reprove. Johanna de Alto Villari kept going out alone with a man named Gayllard, and within a year had a child by him. The subprioress is suspected with Thomas the carter; Idonia, her sister, with Crispinatus; and the Prior of Gisorcium is always coming to the house for Idonia. Philippa of Rouen is suspected with a priest of Suentre, of the diocese of Chartres; Marguarita, the treasuress, with Richard de Genville, a clerk. Agnes de Fontenei, with a priest of Guerrevile, diocese of Chartres. The Tooliere (?) with Sir Andrew de Monciac, a knight. All wear their hair improperly and perfume their veils. Jacqueline came back pregnant from visiting a certain chaplain, who was expelled from his house on account of this. Agnes de Monsec was suspected with the same. Emengarde and Johanna of Alto Villari beat each other. The prioress is drunk almost any night; she does not rise for matins, nor eat in the refectory or correct excesses.”
The archbishop thereupon issues an order, regulating this extraordinary convent, and prescribing a better way of living. He threatens to lay a heavier hand on them if they do not obey.[618] This was what a loosely regulated nunnery might come to. We close with the sketch of a good monastery which had an evil abbot:
“Nones of August (1258). Through God’s grace we visited the monastery of Jumiéges. Forty-three monks were there, and twenty-one outside. All of these who dwelt there, except eleven, were priests (sacerdotes). We found, by God’s grace, the convent well-ordered in its services and observances, yet greatly troubled by what was said of the abbot within and without its walls. For opinion was sinister regarding him, and there, in full chapter, brother Peter of Neubourg, a monk of the monastery, leaping up, made shameful charges against him. And he read the following schedule: I, brother Peter of Neubourg, a monk of Jumiéges, in my name and in the name of the monastery and for the benefit of the monastery, bring before you, Reverend Father, Archbishop of Rouen, for an accusation against Richard, Abbot of Jumiéges, that he is a forger (falsarius) because he wrote or caused to be written certain letters in the name of our convent, falsely alleging our approval of them although we were absent and ignorant; and secretly by night he sealed them with the convent’s seal....”
The letters related to an important controversy in which the monastery was involved. Monk Peter offers to prove his case. A day is set for the hearing. But, instead, the very next day, in order to avoid scandal, the archbishop called the abbot before him and his counsellors; and
“We admonished him specially regarding the following matters: To wit: that he should not keep dogs and birds of chase; that he should send strolling players away from his premises; that he should abstain from extravagant expenses; that he should not eat in his own chambers; that he should keep from consorting with women altogether; that he should order his household decently; that he should lease out the farms as well as might be; that he should not burden the monks unduly; that he should be more in the convent with them, and bear himself more soberly. He made promises as to all these matters and took oath upon holy relics that if he failed to obey our admonition he should be held to do whatever we should decree in the premises.”[619]
Rigaud seems to have been lenient here, but may have known the wisest course to take.
A peaceful death terminated Rigaud’s long career. We may leave his diocese of Rouen, and travel north-easterly to the German archiepiscopal dukedom of Cologne for a very different example of a brave prelate who brought death upon himself.
The man who was chosen Archbishop of Cologne in 1216 was of the highest birth. It was Engelbert, son of Count Engelbert of Berg. A young nobleman, related by blood to the local powers, lay and ecclesiastic, and destined for Church dignities, would be quickly given benefices. Engelbert received such, and also was appointed Provost of the Cathedral. Strong of body, rich, he led a boisterous martial life, and took a truculent part in the political dissensions which were undoing the German realm. With his cousin, the Archbishop Adolph, he went over to the side of Philip of Suavia. For this the archbishop and his provost were deposed and excommunicated by Pope Innocent III. There ensued years of turbulence and fighting, during which Engelbert’s hand followed his passions. But with the turning of events in 1208 he was reconciled to the Pope, restored to his offices, and went crusading against the Albigenses in atonement for his sins. He stood by the young Frederick, then favoured by Innocent, and after some intervening years of proof, was, with general approval, elected Archbishop of Cologne. He was about thirty-one years old.
There had been power and bravery in the man from the beginning; and his faculties gained poise and gathered purpose through the stormy springtime of his life. Now he stood forth prince-bishop, feudal duke; a man strong of arm and clear of vision, steadfast against the violence of his brother nobles who oppressed the churches and cloisters within their lordships. The weak found him a rock of defence. Says his biographer, Caesar of Heisterbach:
“He was a defender of the afflicted and a hammer of tyrants, magnanimous and meek, lofty and affable, stern and gentle, dissembling for a time, and when least expected girding himself for vengeance. With the bishopric he had received the spiritual sword, and the material sword with the dukedom. He used either weapon against the rebellious, excommunicating some and crushing some by war.”
Under him archbishopric and dukedom prospered, their well-managed revenues increased, palaces and churches rose. No mightier prince of the Church, no stronger, juster ruler could be found. Said Pope Honorius after Engelbert’s death: “All men in Germany feared me from fear of him.” From the lay and German side is heard the hearty voice of Walther von der Vogelweide, no friend of priests! “Worthy Bishop of Cologne, happy should you be! You have well served the realm, and served it so that your praise rises and waves on high. Master of princes! if your might weighs hard on evil cowards, deem that as nothing! King’s guardian, high is your state, unequalled Chancellor!”[620]
Archbishop of Cologne, duke of its double dukedom, and Regent of the German realm, Engelbert was well-nigh Germany’s greatest figure during these years. If his arm was strong, his also was the spirit of counsel and wisdom. And although bearing himself as prince and ruler, he had within him the devotion and humility of a true bishop. Said one of Engelbert’s chaplains, speaking to the Abbot of Heisterbach: “Although my lord seems as of the world, within he is not as he appears outwardly. Know that he has many secret comfortings from God.”
The iron course of Engelbert’s life brought queryings to the monkish mind of his biographer. Caesar felt that it was not easy for any bishop to be saved; how much harder was it for a statesman-warrior-prelate so to conduct himself in the warfare of this world as to attain at last “the peace of divine contemplation.” Not thither did such a career seem to lead! But there was a way, or at least an exit, which surely opened upon heaven’s gate. This was the purple steep, the purpureum ascensum, of martyrdom. Caesar was not alone in thinking thus, as to the saving close of Engelbert’s career; for a devout and learned priest, who in earlier years had been co-canon with Engelbert, said to Caesar after the archbishop’s murder: “I do not think there was another way through which a man so placed (in statu tali positus) could have entered the door of the kingdom of heaven, which is narrow.”
Caesar tells the story of this martyrdom in all its causes and details of plot. That plot succeeded because it was the envenomed culmination of the hatred for the archbishop felt by the nobles--bishops among them too--whom he restrained with his authority and unhesitating hand. Frederic, Count of Isenburg, a kinsman of Engelbert as well as of the former archbishop, was the feudal warden of the nunnery of Essen, which he greedily oppressed. The abbess turned to Engelbert, as she had to his predecessor. The archbishop hesitated to proceed against a relative. So the abbess appealed to Rome. Papal letters came back causing Engelbert to take the matter up. He acted with forbearance and generosity; for he even offered to make up from his own revenues any loss the count might sustain from acting justly toward the nunnery. In vain. Frederic, so we read, would have none of his interference. The devil hardened his heart; and he began to incite his friends and kinsmen (who were also the kin of Engelbert) to a treacherous attack upon the man they could not openly withstand.
Rumours of the plot were in the air. Said a monk of Heisterbach to his abbot: “Lord, if you have any business with the archbishop, do it quickly, for his death is near.” Engelbert himself was not unwarned. A letter came to him revealing the matter. Upon reading it, he threw it in the fire. Yet he told its contents to his friend the Bishop of Minden, who was present. Said the latter: “Have a care for thyself, my lord, for God’s sake, and not for thyself alone, but for the welfare of your church and the safety of the whole land.”
The archbishop answered: “Dangers are all about me, and what I should do the Lord knows and not I. Woe is me, if I keep quiet! Yet if I should accuse them of this matter, they would complain to every one that I was fastening the crime of parricide on them. From this hour I commit my body and soul to the divine care.”
“Then taking the bishop alone into his chapel, he began to confess all his sins from his very youth, with a shower of tears that wetted all his breast, and, as we hope, washed the stains from his heart. And when the Lord of Minden said: ‘I fear there is still something on thy conscience which thou hast not told me,’ he answered: ‘The Lord knows that I have concealed nothing consciously.’ But thinking over his sins more fully, the next morning he took his confessor again into the same chapel and with meek and contrite soul and floods of tears confessed everything that had recurred to his mind. Then his conscience being clear, he said fearlessly: ‘Now let God’s will regarding me be done.’
“In the meanwhile some one was knocking at the door of the chapel. The archbishop would not let it be opened because his eyes were wet with tears. But the knocking continued, and it was announced that the bishops of Osnabrück and Münster (brothers of Count Frederic) were there. After he had dried his eyes and wiped his face, he allowed them to be shown in, and said when they had entered: ‘You lords both are kin of mine, and I have injured you in nothing, as you know well, but have advanced your interests, as I might, and your brother’s also. And look you, from all sides by word and letter I hear that your brother Count Frederic, whom I have loved heartily and never harmed, is devising ill to me and seeks to kill me.’
“They protested, trembling in their deceit: ‘Lord, may this never, never, be! You need have no fear; such a thought has never entered his heart. We all have been honoured and enriched and lifted up by you.’ Which last was true.”
This was after the festival of All Saints in the first days of November 1225; and Count Frederic, the better to conceal his purpose, came and accepted the archbishop’s terms. Together they set out from Cologne, the count knowing that the now unsuspecting Engelbert would stop the next day to dedicate a church at Swelm. So it turned out, and the count took that opportunity to excuse himself and rode off to set his men in ambush. Just then a widow rose up from the roadside, and demanded judgment as to a fief withheld from her. At once the archbishop dismounted, and took his seat as duke to hear the cause. It went against the widow, and in favour of him who sat as judge. But he said: “Lady, this fief which you demand is taken from you by decree and adjudged to me. But for the sake of God, pitying your distress, I relinquish it to you.”
The archbishop rode on. About midday Frederic came up again to see which way he was taking. Engelbert invited the count to pass the night with him. But he declined on some pretext, and rode away. The archbishop and his company proceeded on their road until the hour of vespers. Vespers were said, and again the count appeared. Observing him, a nobleman in Engelbert’s train said: “My lord, this coming and going of the count looks suspicious. For the third time he is approaching, and now not as before on his palfrey but on his war-horse. I advise you to mount your war-horse too.”
But the archbishop said that would be too noticeable, and there was nothing to fear. As the count drew near, they saw that the colour had left his face. The archbishop spoke to him: “Now, kinsman, I am sure you will stay with me.” He answered nothing, and they went on together. Suspicious and alarmed, some of the clergy and some of the knights withdrew, so that but a small company remained; for a good part of the episcopal household with the cooks had gone ahead to prepare the night’s lodgings.
It was dusk as they drew near the place of ambush. The count grew agitated, and was blaming himself to his followers for planning to kill his lord and kinsman, but they egged him on. Now the foot of the Gevelberg was reached, and the count said as they began to ascend, “My lord, this is our path.” “May the Lord protect us,” replied Engelbert, for he was not without suspicion.
The company was entering the hollow way leading over the summit of the mountain, when suddenly the followers of Frederic, who were ahead, turned on them, and others leaped from hiding, while a shrill whistle sounded, startling the horses. “My lord, mount your war-horse; death is at the door,” cried a knight. It was indeed. The archbishop’s company made no resistance, except the faithful noble who first had scented danger. The rest fled while the murderers rushed upon Engelbert, unable to turn in the narrow way, and struck at him with swords and daggers. One seized him by the cloak and the two rolled together on the ground; but the strong and active prelate dragged himself and his antagonist out of the roadway into a thicket. There he was again set upon by the mad crew, urged on by the count, and was hacked and stabbed to death. He breathed his last beneath an oak ten paces from the roadway.
There is no need to recount the finding of the gashed and stripped body, its solemn interment in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter’s at Cologne, the canonization of Engelbert, and the building of a chapel, succeeded by a cloister, to mark the place of his martyrdom. Nor need one follow with Caesar the banning of the murderers, and the unhappy ways in which their deaths made part atonement for the injury which their wicked deed had done the German realm.[621]
* * * * *
The ideals and shortcomings of monasticism were closely connected with popular beliefs. The monastic ideal had its inception in the thought of sin as entailing either purgatorial or everlasting punishment, and in the thought of holiness as ensuring eternal bliss. Whatever other motives participated, the knot of the monastic purpose was held in the jaws of this antithesis, which for itself drew form, colour, picturesqueness, from popular beliefs, and was made tangible in countless stories telling of purity and love and meekness impaired by lust and cruelty and pride, and of retribution avoided by some shifty supernatural adjustment of the sin. Such stories might be accepted as well by the learned as by the illiterate. The brooding soul of the Middle Ages, with its knowledge of humanity and its reaches of spiritual insight, was undisturbed by the crass superstitions so queerly at odds with its deeper inspiration--a remark specifically applicable to thoughtful or spiritually-minded individuals in the mediaeval centuries.
As we descend the spiritual scale, the crude superstitious elements become more prominent or apparently the whole matter. Likewise as we descend the moral scale; for the more vicious the individual, the more utterly will he omit the spiritual from his working faith, and the more mechanical will be his methods of squaring his conduct with his fears of the supernatural. Nevertheless, in estimating the ethical shortcomings of mediaeval superstitions, one must remember how easily in a simple mind all sorts of superstition may co-exist with a sweet religious and moral tone.
Sins unatoned for and uncondoned bring purgatorial or perpetual torment after death, even as holiness brings eternal bliss. But how were sins thought to come to men and women in the Middle Ages, and especially to those who were earnestly striving to escape them? Rather than fruit of the naughtiness of the human heart, they came through the malicious suggestions, the temptations, of a Tempter. They were in fine the machinations of the devil. This was the popular view, and also the authoritative doctrine, expressed, re-expressed, and enforced in myriad examples, by all the saints and magnates of the Church who had lived since the time when Athanasius wrote the life of Anthony in devil-fighting heroics.
Against the devil, every man had staunch allies; the readiest were the Virgin Mary and the saints, for Christ was very high above the conflict, and at the Judgment Day must be its final umpire. The object of the cunning enemy was to trip man into hell, an object hostile alike to God and man. Saintly aid enabled man to overcome the devil, or if he succumbed to temptation and committed mortal sin, there was still a chance to frustrate the devil’s plot, and save the soul by wiles or force. The sinner may use every stratagem to defeat the devil and escape the results of sins committed by himself, but prompted by his enemy. This was war and the ethics of war, in which man was the central struggling figure, attacked by the devil and defended by the saints. The latter also help man’s earthly fortunes, and devotion to them may ensure one’s welfare in this very palpable and pressing life of earth.
This popular and yet authoritative view of mortal peril and saintly aid is illustrated in the tales from sermons and other pious writings. In them any uncanny or untoward experience was ascribed to the devil. So it was in monkish Chronicles, Vitae sanctorum, Dialogi miraculorum, or indeed in any edifying writing couched in narrative form or containing illustrative tales. Throughout this literature the devil inspires evil thoughts, instigates crimes, and causes any unhappy or immoral happening. It is just as much a matter of course as if one should say to-day, I have a cold, or John stole a ring, or James misbehaved with So-and-so.[622] Any man might meet the devil, and if sinful, suffer physical violence from him. If any one disappeared the devil might be supposed to have carried him off. Details of the abduction might be given, or the whole matter take place before witnesses.
“A rich usurer, with little fear of God in him, had dined well one evening, and was in bed with his wife, when he suddenly leaped up. She asked what ailed him. He replied: ‘I was just snatched away to God’s judgment seat, where I heard so many accusations that I did not know what to answer. And while I waited for something to happen, I heard the final sentence given against me, that I should be handed over to demons, who were to come and get me to-day.’ Saying this, he flung on a coat, and ran out of the house, for all his wife could do to stop him. His servants, following, discovered him almost crazed in a church where monks were saying their matins. There they kept him in custody for some hours. But he made no sign of willingness to confess or make restitution or repent. So after mass they led him back toward his house, and as they came by a river, a boat was seen coming rapidly up against the current, manned apparently by no one. But the usurer said that it was full of demons, who had come to take him. The words were no sooner uttered, than he was seized by them, and put in the boat, which suddenly turned on its course and disappeared with its prey.”[623]
One observes that this usurer had received sentence at God’s tribunal, and the devils carried it out: the sentence gave them power. Any man may be tempted; but falls into his enemy’s power only by sinning. His yielding is an act of acquiescence in the devil’s will, and may be the commencement of a state of permanent consent. With this we reach the notion of a formal pact with the devil, of which there were many instances. But still the pact is with the Enemy; the man is not bound beyond the letter, and may escape by any trick. It is still the ethics of war; we are very close to the principle that a man by stratagem or narrow observance of the letter may escape the eternal retribution which God decrees conditionally and the devil delights in.
The sacraments prescribed by the Church were the common means of escaping future punishment. Confession is an example. The correct doctrine was that without penitence it was ineffective. But popularly the confession represented the whole fact. It was efficacious of itself, and kept the soul from hell. It might even prevent retribution in this life. Caesar of Heisterbach has a number of illustrative stories, rather immoral as they seem to us. There was, for instance, a person possessed (obsessus) of a devil who dwelt in him, and through his lips would make known the unconfessed sins of any one brought before him; but the devil could not remember sins which had been confessed. A certain knight suspected (quite correctly) a priest of sinning with his wife. So he haled him before this obsessus. On the way the priest managed to elude his persecutor for an instant, and, darting into a barn, confessed his sin to a layman he found there. Returning, he went along with the knight, and, behold, the sin was obliterated from the memory of the devil in the obsessus, and the priest remained undetected.[624]
Men and women sometimes escaped the wages of sin by the aid of a saint, but more often through the incarnate pity of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin and the saints were ready to take up any cause, however desperate, against the devil; which means that they were ready to intervene between the sinner and the impending punishment. People took kindly to these thoughts of irregular intervention, since everlasting torment for transient sin was so extreme; but a surer source of their approval lay in the incomplete spiritualization of the popular religion and its ethics.
To thwart the devil was the office of the Virgin and the saints. Their aid was given when it was besought. Sometimes they intervened voluntarily to protect a votary whose devotions had won their favour. The stories of the pitying intervention of the Virgin to save the sinner from the wages of his sin, and frustrate the devil, are among the fragrant flowers of the mediaeval spirit. Ethically some of them leave much to ask for; but others are tales of sweet forgiveness upon heart-felt repentance.
Jacques of Vitry has a story (scarcely fit to repeat) of a certain very religious Roman widow-lady, who had an only son, with whom she sinned at the devil’s instigation. She was a devoted worshipper of the Virgin; and the devil, fearing that she would repent, plotted to bring her to trial and immediate condemnation before the emperor’s tribunal, for her incest. When the widow knew of her impending ruin, she went with tears to the confessional, and then day and night besought the Virgin to deliver her from infamy and death. The day of trial came. Suddenly the accuser, who was the devil in disguise, began to quake and groan, and could not answer when the emperor asked what ailed him. But as the woman drew near the judgment seat, he uttered a horrid howl, exclaiming: “See! Mary is coming with the woman, holding her hand.” And in a fetid whirlwind he disappeared. “And thus,” says Jacques of Vitry, “the widow was set free through confession and the Virgin’s aid, and afterwards persevered in the service of God more cautiously.”[625]
Such a tale sounds immoral; yet there is some good in saving any soul from hell; and here there was repentance. Caesar of Heisterbach has another, of the Virgin taking the place of a sinning nun in the convent until she repented and returned. Again repentance and forgiveness make the sinner whole.[626]
The Miracles de Nostre Dame[627] are an interesting repertory of the Virgin’s interventions. These “Mysteries” or miracle plays in Old French verse are naïve enough in their kindly stratagems, by which the votary is saved from punishment in this life and his soul from torment in the next. The first “Miracle” in this collection runs thus: A pious dame and her knightly husband, from devotion to the Virgin Mary took the not unusual vow of married continence. But under diabolic incitement, the knight over-persuaded his lady, who in her chagrin at the broken vow devoted the offspring to the devil. A son was born, and in due time the devil came to claim it. Thereupon a huge machinery, of pope and cardinals, hermits and archangels, is set in motion. At last the case is brought before God, where the devils show cause on one side, and “Nostre Dame” pleads on the other. Our Lady wins on the ground that the mother could not devote her offspring to the devil without the father’s consent, which was not shown.
There is surely no harm in this pleasant drama; for the devil ought not to have had the boy. But there follow quite different “Miracles” of Our Lady. The next one is typical. An abbess sins with her clerk. Her condition is observed by the nuns, and the bishop is informed. The abbess casts herself on the mercy of Mary, who miraculously delivers her of the child and gives it into the care of a holy hermit. An examination of the abbess takes place, after which she is declared innocent by the bishop. But she is at once moved to repentance, and confesses all to him. In the bishop’s mind, however, the Virgin’s intervention is sufficient proof of the abbess’s holiness. He absolves her, and goes to the hermitage and takes charge of the child.[628]
Such is an example of the kindly but peculiar miracles, in which the Virgin saves her friends who turn to her and repent. Many other tales, quite lovely and unobjectionable, are told of her: how she keeps her tempted votaries from sinning, or helps them to repent:[629] or blesses and leads on to joy those who need no forgiveness. Such a one was the monk-scribe who illuminated Mary’s blessed name in three lovely colours whenever it occurred in the works he copied, and then kissed it devoutly. As he lay very ill, having received the sacraments, another brother saw in vision the Virgin hover above his couch and heard her say: “Fear not, son, thou shalt rejoice with the dwellers in heaven, because thou didst honour my name with such care. Thine own name is written in the book of life. Arise and come with me.” Running to the infirmary the brother found his brother dying blissfully.[630]
There are lovely stories too of passionate repentance, coming unmiraculously to those devoutly thinking on the Virgin and her infant Son. “For there was once a nun who forsook her convent and became a prostitute, but returned after many years. As she thought of God’s judgment and the pains of hell, she despaired of ever gaining pardon; as she thought of Paradise, she deemed that she, impure, could never enter there; and when she thought upon the Passion, and how great ills Christ had borne for her and how great sins she had committed, she still was without hope. But on the Day of the Nativity she began to think that unto us a Child is born, and that children are appeased easily. Before the image of the Virgin she began to think of the Saviour’s infancy, and, with floods of passionate tears, besought the Child through the benignity of His childhood to have mercy upon her. She heard a voice saying to her that through the benignity of that childhood which she had invoked, her sins were forgiven.”[631]
But enough of these stories. Nor is there need to enlarge upon the relic-worship and other superstitions of the Middle Ages. One sees such matters on every side. It was all a matter of course, and disapprovals were rare. Such conceptions of sin and the devil’s part in it affected the morality of clergy as well as laity. The morals of the latter could not rise above those of their instructors; and the layman’s religion of masses, veneration of relics, pilgrimages, almsgiving and endowment of monasteries, scarcely interfered with the cruelty and rapine to which he might be addicted.
XXI. THE WORLD OF SALIMBENE
At the close of this long survey of the saintly ideals and actualities of the Middle Ages, it will be illuminating to look abroad over mediaeval life through the half mystic but most observant eyes of a certain Italian Franciscan. The Middle Ages were not characterized by the open eye. Mediaeval Chronicles and Vitae rarely afford a broad and variegated picture of the world. As they were so largely the work of monks, obviously they would set forth only what would strike the monastic eye, an eye often intense with its inner vision, but not wide open to the occurrences of life. The monk was not a good observer, commonly from lack of sympathy and understanding. Of course there were exceptions; one of them was the Franciscan Salimbene, an undeniable if not too loving son of an alert north Italian city, Parma.
Humanism springs from cities; and it began in Italy long before Petrarch. North of the Alps there was nothing like the city life of Italy, so quick and voluble, so unreticent and unrestrained, open and neighbourly--neighbours hate as well as love! From Cicero’s time, from Numa’s if one will, Italian life was what it never ceased to be, urban. The city was the centre and the bound of human intercourse, almost of human sympathy. This was always true; as true in those devastated seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries as before or after; certainly true of the tenth and eleventh centuries when the Lombards and other Teuton children of the waste and forest had become good urban Italians. It was still more abundantly true of the following centuries when life was burgeoning with power. Whatever other cause or source of parentage it had, humanism was a city child. And as city life never ceased in Italy, that land had no unhumanistic period. There humanism always existed, whether we take it in the narrower sense of love of humanistic, that is, antique literature, or take it broadly as in the words of old Menander-Terence: “homo sum, humani nil a me alienum.”
Now turn to the close of the twelfth century, and look at Francis of Assisi. It is his humanism and his naturalism, his interest in men and women, and in bird and beast as well, that fills this sweet lover of Christ with tender sympathy for them all. Through him human interest and love of man drew monasticism from its cloister, and sent it forth upon an unhampered ministry of love. Francis (God bless him!) had not been Francis, had he not been Francis of Assisi.
A certain gifted well-born city child was five years old when Francis died. It was to be his lot to paint for posterity a picture of his world such as no man had painted before; and in all his work no line suggests so many reasons for the differences between Italy and the lands north of the Alps, and also so many why Salimbene happened to be what he was, as this remark, relating to his French tour: “In France only the townspeople dwell in the towns; the knights and noble ladies stay in their villas and on their own domains.”
Only the townspeople live in the towns, merchants, craftsmen, artisans--the unleavened bourgeoisie! In Lombardy how different! There knights and nobles, and their lovely ladies, have their strong dwellings in the towns; jostle with the townspeople, converse with them, intermarry sometimes, lord it over them when they can, hate them, murder them. But there they are, and what variety and colour and picturesqueness and illumination do they not add to city life? If a Lombardy town thronged with merchants and craftsmen, it was also gay and voluptuous with knights and ladies. How rich and fascinating its life compared with the grey towns beyond the Alps. In France the townspeople made an audience for the Fabliaux! The Italian town had also its courtly audience of knight and dame for the love lyrics of the troubadour, and for the romances of chivalry. In fact, the whole world was there, and not just workaday, sorry, parts of it.
Had it not been for the full and varied city life in which he was born and bred, the quick-eyed youth would not have had that fund of human interest and intuition which makes him so pleasant and so different from any one north of the Alps in the thirteenth century. A city boy indeed, and what a full personality! He was to be a man of human curiosity, a tireless sight-seer. His interest is universal; his human love quick enough--for those he loved; for he was no saint, although a Minorite. His detestation is vivid, illuminating; it brings the hated man before us. And Salimbene’s wide-open eyes are his own. He sees with a fresh vision; he is himself; a man of temperament, which lends its colours to the panorama. His own interest or curiosity is paramount with him; so his narrative will naïvely follow his sweet will and whim, and pass from topic to topic in chase of the suggestions of his thoughts.
The result is for us a unique treasure-trove. The story presents the world and something more; two worlds, if you will, very co-related: macrocosmos and microcosmos, the world without and the very eager ego, Salimbene. There he is unfailingly, the writer in his world. Scarcely another mediaeval penman so naïvely shows the world he moves about in and himself. Let us follow, for a little, his autobiographic chronicle, taking the liberty which he always took, of selecting as we choose.[632]
In the year 1221 Salimbene was born at Parma, into the very centre of the world of strife between popes and emperors--a world wherein also the renewed Gospel was being preached by Francis of Assisi, who did not die till five years later. But St. Dominic died the year of Salimbene’s birth. Innocent III., most powerful of popes, had breathed his last five years before, leaving surviving him that viper-nursling of the papacy, Frederick II., an able, much-experienced youth of twenty-two. Frederick was afterwards crowned emperor by Honorius III., and soon showed himself the most resourceful of his Hohenstaufen line of arch-enemies to the papacy. This Emperor Frederick, whom Innocent III., says Salimbene, had exalted and named “Son of the Church” ... “was a man pestiferous and accursed, a schismatic, heretic, and epicurean, who corrupted the whole earth.”[633]
Salimbene’s family was in high regard at Parma, and the boy naturally saw and perhaps met the interesting strangers coming to the town. He tells us that when he was baptized the lord Balianus of Sydon, a great baron of France, a retainer of the Emperor Frederick’s, “lifted me from the sacred font.” The mother was a pious dame, whom Salimbene loved none too well, because once she snatched up his infant sisters to flee from the danger of the Baptistery toppling over upon their house during an earthquake, and left Salimbene himself lying in his cradle! The father had been a crusader, and was a man of wealth and influence.
So the youth was born into a stirring swirl of life. These vigorous northern Italian cities hated each other shrewdly in the thirteenth century. When the boy was eight years old a great fight took place between the folk of Parma, Modena, and Cremona on the one side, and that big blustering Bologna. Hot was the battle. On the Carrocio of Parma only one man remained; for it was stripped of its defenders by the stones from those novel war-engines of the Bolognese, called manganellae. Nevertheless the three towns won the battle, and the Bolognese turned their backs and abandoned their own Carrocio. The Cremona people wanted to drag it within their walls; but the prudent Parma leaders prevented it, because such action would have been an insult forever, and a lasting cause of war with a strong enemy. But Salimbene saw the captured manganellae brought as trophies into his city.
Other scenes of more peaceful rejoicing came before his eyes; as in the year 1233, he being twelve years old. That was a year of alleluia, as it was afterwards called,
“to wit a time of peace and quiet, of joy, jollity and merry-making, of praise and jubilee; because wars were over. Horse and foot, townsfolk and rustics, youths and virgins, old and young, sang songs and hymns. There was such devotion in all the cities of Italy. And I saw that each quarter of the city would have its banner in the procession, a banner on which was painted the figure of its martyr-saint. And men and women, boys and girls, thronged from the villages to the city with their flags, to hear the preaching, and praise God. They had branches of trees and lighted candles. There was preaching morning, noon, and evening, and stationes arranged in churches and squares; and they lifted their hands to God to praise and bless Him forever. Nor could they cease, so drunk were they with love divine. There was no wrath among them, or disquiet or rancour. Everything was peaceful and benign; I saw it with my eyes.”[634]
And then Salimbene tells of all the famous preachers, and the lovely hymns, and Ave Marias; Frater So-and-so, from Bologna; Frater So-and-so from somewhere else; Minorite and Preaching friar.
One might almost fancy himself in the Florence of Savonarola. Like enough this season of soul outpour and tears and songs of joy first stirred the religious temper of this quickly moved youth. These were also the great days of dawning for the Friars. Dominic was not yet sainted; yet his Order of the Preaching Friars was growing. The blessed Francis had been canonized;--sainted had he been indeed before his death! And the world was turning to these novel, open, sympathetic brethren who were pouring themselves through Europe. Love’s mendicancy, envied but not yet discredited, was before men’s eyes and in men’s thoughts; and what opportunity it offered of helping people, of saving one’s own soul, and of seeing the world! We can guess how Salimbene’s temper was drawn by it. We know at least that one of these friars, Brother Girard of Modena, who preached at this jubilee in Parma, was the man who made petition five years later for Salimbene, so that the Minister-General of the Minorites, Brother Elias, being then at Parma, received the seventeen-year-old boy into the Order, in the year 1238.
Salimbene’s father was frantic at the loss of his heir. Never while he lived did he cease to lament it. He at once began strenuous appeals to have his son returned to him. Salimbene’s account of this, exhibits himself, his father, and the situation.
“He complained to the emperor (Frederick II.), who had come to Parma, that the brothers Minorites had taken his son from him. The emperor wrote to Brother Elias that if he held his favour dear, he should listen to him and return me to my father. Then my father went to Assisi, where Brother Elias was, and placed in his hands the emperor’s letter, which began: ‘In order to mitigate the sighs of our faithful Guido de Adam,’ and so forth. Brother Illuminatus, Brother Elias’s scribe, showed me this letter long afterwards, when I was with him in the convent at Siena.
“When the imperial letter had been read, Brother Elias wrote at once to the brethren of the convent at Fano, where I dwelt, that if I wished it, they should return me to my father without delay; but that if I did not wish to go with my father, they should guard and keep me as the pupil of his eye.
“A number of knights came with my father to Fano, to see the end of my affair. There was I and my salvation made the centre of the spectacle. The brethren were assembled, with them of the world; and there was much talk. My father produced the letter of the minister-general, and showed it to the brothers. When it was read, Brother Jeremiah, who was in charge of me, answered my father in the hearing of all: ‘Lord Guido, we sympathize with your distress, and are prepared to obey the letter of our father. Behold, here is your son; he is old enough; let him speak for himself. Ask him; if he wishes to go with you, let him in God’s name; if not, we cannot force him.’
“My father asked me whether I wished to go with him or not. I replied, No; because the Lord says, ‘No one putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.’
“And father said to me: ‘Thou carest not for thy father and mother, who are afflicted with many griefs for thee.’
“I replied: ‘Truly I do not care, because the Lord says, Who loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. But of thee He also says: Who loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Thou oughtest to care, father, for Him who hung on the cross for us, that He might give us eternal life. For it is himself who says: I am come to set a man against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes are they of his household.’
“The brethren wondered and rejoiced that I said such things to my father. And then my father said: ‘You have bewitched and deceived my son, so that he will not mind me. I will complain again of you to the emperor and to the minister-general. Now let me speak with my son apart from you; and you will see him follow me without delay.’
“So the brothers allowed me to talk with him alone; for they began to have a little confidence in me, because of my words. Yet they listened behind the wall to what we should say. For they trembled as a reed in water, lest my father should alter my mind with his blandishments. And not for me alone they feared, but lest my return should hinder others from entering the Order.
“Then my father said to me: ‘Dear son, don’t believe those nasty tunics[635] who have deceived you; but come with me, and I will give you all I have.’
“And I replied: ‘Go away, father. As the Wise Man says in Proverbs, Thou shall not hinder him to do right, who is able.’
“And my father answered with tears, and said to me: ‘What then, son, shall I say to thy mother, who is afflicted because of thee?’
“And I say to him: ‘Thou shalt tell her from me; thus says thy son: My father and mother have forsaken me, and the Lord hath taken me up; also (Jer. iii.): Thou shalt call me Father, and walk after me in my steps.... It is good for a man when he has borne the yoke from his youth.’
“Hearing all these things my father, despairing of my coming out, threw himself down in the presence of the brethren and the secular folk who had come with him, and said: ‘I give thee to a thousand devils, cursed son, thee and thy brother here who has deceived thee. My curse be on you forever, and may it commend you to the spirits of hell.’ And he went away excited beyond measure; while we remained greatly comforted and giving thanks to our God, and saying to each other, ‘They shall curse, and thou shalt bless.’ Likewise the seculars retired edified at my constancy. The brethren also rejoiced seeing what the Lord had wrought through me, His little boy.”
This whole scene presents such a conflict as the thirteenth century witnessed daily, and the twelfth, and other mediaeval centuries as well. The letters of St. Bernard set forth situations quite as extreme or outrageous, from modern points of view. And Bernard can apply (or shall we say, distort?) Scripture in the same drastic fashion. But these monks meant it deeply; and from their standpoint they were in the right with their quotations. The attitude goes back to Jerome; that a man’s father and mother, and they of his own household, may be his worst enemies, if they seek to hinder his feet set toward God. Of course we can see the sensible, worldly, martial father of the youth leap in the air and roll on the ground in rage; flesh and blood could not stand such turn of Scripture: Tell my weeping mother (who so longs for me) that I say my father and mother have forsaken me, and the Lord hath taken me up! This came to the Lord Guido as a maddening gibe; but Salimbene meant simply that his parents did not care for his highest welfare, and the Lord had received him into the path of salvation. It is all a scene, which should evoke our serious reflections--after which it may be permitted us to enjoy it as we will.
In his conscience Salimbene felt justified; for a dream set the seal of divine approval on his conduct.
“The Blessed Virgin rewarded me that very night. For it seemed to me that I was lying prostrate in prayer before her altar, as the brothers are wont when they rise for matins. And I heard the voice of the Blessed Virgin calling me. Lifting my face, I saw her sitting above the altar in that place where is set the host and the calix. She had her little boy in her lap, and she held him out to me, saying: ‘Approach without fear and kiss my son, whom yesterday thou didst confess before men.’ And when I was afraid, I saw that the little boy gladly stretched out his arms. Trusting his innocence and the graciousness of his mother, I drew near, embraced and kissed him; and the benign mother gave him to me for a long while. And when I could not have enough of it, the Blessed Virgin blessed me and said: ‘Go, beloved son, and lie down, lest the brothers rising from matins find thee here with us.’ I obeyed, and the vision disappeared; but unspeakable sweetness remained in my heart. Never in the world have I had such bliss.”
From this we see that Salimbene had sufficient mystic ardour to keep him a happy Franciscan. It made the otherworldly part of one who also was a merry gossip among his fellows. An inner power of spiritual enthusiasm and fantasy accompanied him through his life, giving him a double point of view: he looks at things as they are, with curiosity and interest, and ever and anon loses himself in transcendental dreams of Paradise and all at last made perfect.[636]
Although the father had devoted his son to a thousand devils, he did not cease from attempts, by persuasion and even violence, to draw him back into his own civic and martial world. So the young man got permission from the minister-general to go and live in Tuscany, where he might be beyond the reach of parental activities. “Thereupon I went and lived in Tuscany for eight years, two of them at Lucca, two at Siena, and four at Pisa.” He gained great comfort from converse and gossip of an edifying kind, as he fell in with those loving enthusiasts who had received their cloaks from the hand of the blessed Francis himself. At Siena he saw much of Brother Bernard of Quintavalle who had been the very first to receive the dress of the Order from the hand of its founder. Salimbene gladly listened to his recollections of Francis, who in this venerable disciple’s words might seem once more to walk the earth.
Yet Salimbene, still young in heart and years, could readily take up with the companionship of the ne’er-do-well vagabonds who frequently attached themselves, as lay brothers, to the Franciscan Order. He tells of a day’s outing with one of whose character he is outspoken but without personal repugnance:
“I was a young man when I dwelt at Pisa. One day I went out begging with a certain lay brother, a good-for-nothing. He was a Pisan, and the same who afterwards went and lived with the brothers at Fixulus, where they had to drag him out of a well which he had jumped into from some foolishness or desperation. Then he disappeared, and could not be found. The brothers thought the devil had carried him off. However that may have been, this day at Pisa he and I went with our baskets to beg bread, and chanced to enter a courtyard. Above, all about, hung a thick, leafy vine, its freshness lovely to see and its shade sweet for resting in. There were leopards there and other beasts from over the sea, at which we gazed long, transfixed with delight, as one will at the sight of the novel and beautiful. Girls were there also and boys at their sweetest age, handsome and lovely, and ten times as alluring for their beautiful clothes. The boys and girls held violas and cytharas and other musical instruments in their hands, on which they made sweet melodies, accompanied with gestures. There was no hub-bub, nor did any one talk; but all listened in silence. And the song which they chanted was so new and lovely in words and melody as to gladden the heart exceedingly. None spoke to us, nor did we say a word to any one. They did not stop singing and playing so long as we were there--and long indeed we lingered and could scarcely take ourselves away. God knows, I do not, who set this joyful entertainment; for we had never seen anything like it before nor could we ever find its like again.”
From the witchery of this cloud-dropped entertainment Salimbene was rudely roused as he went out upon the public way.
“A man met me, whom I did not know, and said he was from Parma. He seized upon me, and began to chide and revile: ‘Away scamp, away,’ he cried. ‘A crowd of servants in your father’s house have bread enough and meat; and you go from door to door begging bread from those without it, when you have enough to give to any number of beggars! You ought to be riding on a war-horse through Parma, and delighting people with your skill with the lance, so that there might be a sight for the ladies, and comfort for the players. Now your father is worn with grief and your mother from love of you, so she despairs of God.’”
Salimbene fended off this attack of carnal wisdom with many texts of Scripture. Yet the other’s words set him to thinking that perhaps it would be hard to lead a beggar’s life year after year until old age. And he lay awake that night, until God comforted him as before with a reassuring dream.
Pretty dreamer as he was, Salimbene can often tell a ribald tale. There was rivalry, as may be imagined, between the Dominicans (solemnes praedicatores) and the Minorites. The former seem occasionally to have concerted together so as to have knowledge of what their friends in other places were about. Then, when preaching, they would exhibit marvels of second sight, which on investigation proved true! A certain Brother John of Vicenza was a Dominican famed for preaching and miracles perhaps, and with such overtopping sense of himself that he went at least a little mad. Bologna was his tarrying-place. There a certain Florentine grammarian, Boncompagnus, tired of the foolery, made gibing rhymes about him and his admirers, and said he would do a miracle himself, and at a certain hour would fly with wings from the pinnacle of Sta. Maria in Monte. All came together at that hour to see. There he stood aloft, with his wings, ready, and the folk expectant, for a long time--and then he bade them disperse with God’s blessing, for it was enough for them to have seen him. They then knew that they had been fooled!
None the less the dementia of Brother John increased, so that one day at the Dominican convent in Bologna he fell in a rage because when his beard was cut the brothers did not preserve the hairs as relics. There came along a Minorite, Brother God-save-you, a Florentine like Boncompagnus, and like him a great buffoon and joker. To this convent he came, but refused all invitation to stay and eat unless a piece of the cloak of Brother John were given him, which was kept to hold relics. So they gave him a piece of the cloak, and after dinner he went off and befouled it, folded it up, and called for all to come and see the precious relics of the sainted John, which he had lost in the latrina. So they flocked to see, and were somewhat more than satisfied.[637]
No need to say that this Salimbene had a quick eye for beauty in both men and women; he is always speaking of so-and-so as a handsome man, and such and such a lady as “pulcherrima domina,” of pleasing ways and moderate stature, neither too tall nor too short. But one may win a more amusing side-light on the “eternal womanly” in his Chronicle, from the following: “Like other popes, Nicholas III. made cardinals of many of his relatives. He made a cardinal of one, Lord Latinus, of the Order of Preachers (which we note with a smile, and expect something funny). He appointed him legate to Lombardy and Tuscany and Romagnola.” Note the enactments of this cardinal-legate:
“He disturbed all the women with a ‘Constitution’ which he promulgated, to wit, that the women should wear short dresses reaching to the ground, and only so much more as a palm’s breadth. Formerly they wore trains, sweeping the earth for several feet (per brachium et dimidium). A rhymer dubs them:
‘Et drappi longhi, ke la polver menna.’
(‘The long cloaks that gather up the dust.’)
“And he had this to be proclaimed in the churches, and imposed it on the women by command; and ordered that no priest should absolve them unless they complied. The which was bitterer to the women than any kind of death! For as a woman said to me familiarly, that train was dearer to her than all the other clothes she wore. And further, Cardinal Latinus decreed that all women, girls and young ladies, matrons and widows, should wear veils. Which was again a horror for them. But they found a remedy for that tribulation, as they could not for their trains. For they made veils of linen and silk inwoven with gold, with which they looked ten times as well, and drew the eyes of men to lust all the more.”
Thus did the cardinal-legate, the Pope’s relative. And plenty of gossip has Salimbene to tell of such creatures of nepotism. “Flesh and blood had revealed” to the Pope that he should make cardinals of them; says he with a sort of giant sneer; “for he built up Zion in sanguinibus,” that is, through his blood-relatives! “There are a thousand brothers Minorites, more fit, on the score of knowledge and holiness, to be cardinals than they.” Had not another pope, Urban IV., made chief among the cardinals a relation whose only use as a student had been to fetch the other students’ meat from market?
It was a few years after this that Salimbene returned to his native town of Parma, near the time when that city passed from the side of the Emperor to that of the Pope. This was a fatal defection for Frederick, which he set about to repair, by laying siege to the turn-coat city. And the war went on with great devastation, and the wolves and other wild beasts increased and grew bold. Salimbene throws Eccelino da Romano on the scene, that regent of the emperor, and monster of cruelty, “who was feared more than the devil,” and had once burned to death “eleven thousand Paduans in Verona. The building holding them was set on fire; and while they burned, Eccelino and his knights held a tournament about them (circa eos).... I verily believe that as the Son of God desired to have one special friend, whom He made like to himself, to wit the blessed Francis, so the devil fashioned Eccelino in his likeness.”[638]
Salimbene tells of the siege of Parma at much length, and of the final defeat of the emperor, with the destruction of the stronghold which he had built to menace the city, and of all his curious treasures, with the imperial crown itself taken by the men of Parma and their allies. But before this, while the turmoil of the siege was at its height, in 1247, he received orders to leave Parma and set out for Lyons, where Innocent IV. at that time held his papal court, having fled from Italy, from the emperor, three years before. Setting out, he reached Lyons on All Saints Day.
“At once the Pope sent for me, and talked with me familiarly in his chamber. For since my leaving Parma he had received neither messenger nor letters. And he thanked me warmly and listened to my prayers, for he was a courtly and liberal man; ... and he absolved me from my sins and appointed me preacher!”
Our autobiographic chronicler was at this time twenty-six years old; his personality bespoke a kind reception everywhere. He soon left Lyons, and went on through the towns of Champagne to Troyes, where he found plenty of merchants from Lombardy and Tuscany, for there were markets there, lasting two months. So was it also in Provins, the next halting-place; from which Salimbene went on to Paris. There he stayed eight days and saw much which pleased him; and then, going back upon his tracks, he took up his journey to Sens, where he dwelt in the Franciscan convent, “and the French brethren entertained me gladly, because I was a friendly, cheerful youth, and spoke them fair.” From Sens he went south to Auxerre, the place which had been named as his destination when he left Parma. It was in the year 1248, and as he writes (how many years after?) there comes back to him the memory of the grand wines of Auxerre:
“I remember when at Cremona (in 1245) Brother Gabriel of that place, a Minorite, a great teacher and a man of holy life, told me that Auxerre had more vines and wine than Cremona and Parma and Reggio and Modena together. I wouldn’t believe him. But when I came to live at Auxerre, I saw that he spoke the truth. It is a large district, or bishopric, and the mountains, hills, and plains are covered with vines. There they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; but they send their wine by river to Paris, where they sell it nobly; and live and clothe themselves from the proceeds. Three times I went all about the district with one or another of the brothers: once with one who was preaching and affixing crosses for the Crusade of the French king (St. Louis); then with another who preached to the Cistercians in a most beautiful monastery; and the third time we spent Easter with a countess, who set before the whole company twelve courses of food, all different. And had the count been at home, there would have been a still greater abundance and variety. Now in four parts of France they drink beer, and in four, wine. And the three lands where the wine is most abundant are La Rochelle, Beaune, and Auxerre. In Auxerre the red wine is least regarded and is not as good as the Italian. But Auxerre has its white or golden wines, which are fragrant and comforting and good, and make every one drinking them feel happy. Some of the Auxerre wine is so strong that when put in a jug, drops appear on the outside (lacrymantur exterius). The French laugh and say that three b’s and seven f’s go with the best wine:
‘Le vin bon et bel et blanc, Fort et fer et fin et franc, Freit et fres et fourmijant.’
“The French delight in good wine--no wonder! since it ‘gladdens God and men.’ Both French and English are very diligent with their drinking-cups. Indeed the French have blear eyes from drinking overmuch; and in the morning after a bout, they go to the priest who has celebrated mass and ask him to drop a little of the water in which he has washed his hands into their eyes. But Brother Bartholomew at Provins has a way of saying it would be better for them if they would put their water in their wine instead of in their eyes. As for the English, they take a measure of wine, drink it out, and say: ‘I have drunk; now you’--meaning that you should drink as much. And this is their idea of politeness; and any one will take it very ill if the other does not follow his precept and example.”[639]
While Salimbene was living at Auxerre, in the year 1248, a provincial Chapter of the Franciscan Order was held at Sens, with the Minister-General, John of Parma, presiding. Thither went Salimbene.
“The King of France, St. Louis, was expected. And the brothers all went out from the house to receive him. And Brother Rigaud,[640] of the Order, Archbishop of Rouen, having put on his pontifical trappings, left the house and hurried toward the king, asking all the time, ‘Where is the king? where is the king?’ And I followed him; for he went alone and frantically, his mitre on his head and pastoral staff in hand. He had been tardy in dressing himself, so that the other brothers had gone ahead, and now lined the street, with faces turned from the town, straining to see the king coming. And I wondered, saying to myself, that I had read that these Senonian Gauls once, under Brennus, captured Rome; now their women seemed a lot of servant girls. If the King of France had made a progress through Pisa or Bologna, the whole élite of the ladies of the city would have met him. Then I remembered the Gallic way, for the mere townsfolk to dwell in the towns, while the knights and noble ladies live in their castles and possessions.
“The king was slender and graceful, rather lean, of fair height, with an angelic look and gracious face. And he came to the church of the brothers Minorites not in regal pomp, but on foot in the habit of a pilgrim, with wallet and staff, which well adorned his royal shoulder. His own brothers, who were counts, followed in like humility and garb. Nor did the king care as much for the society of nobles as for the prayers and suffrages of the poor. Indeed he was one to be held a monarch, both on the score of devotion and for his knightly deeds of arms.
“Thus he entered the church of the brethren, with most devout genuflections, and prayed before the altar. And when he left the church and paused at the threshold, I was next to him. And there, on behalf of the church at Sens, the warden presented him with a huge live pike swimming in water in a tub made of firwood, such as they bathe babies in. The pike is dear and highly prized in France. The king returned thanks to the sender as well as to the presenter of the gift. Then he requested audibly that no one, unless he were a knight, should enter the Chapter House, except the brethren, with whom he wished to speak. When we were met in Chapter, the king began to speak of his actions and, devoutly kneeling, begged the prayers and suffrages of the brethren for himself, his brothers, his lady mother the queen, and all his companions. And certain French brothers, next to me, from devotion and piety wept as if unconsolable. After the king, Lord Oddo, a Roman cardinal, who once was chancellor at Paris, and now was to cross the sea with the king, arose and said a few words. Then on behalf of the Order, John of Parma, the Minister-General, spoke fittingly, promising the prayers of the brethren, and ordaining masses for the king; which, thereupon, at the king’s request he confirmed by a letter under his seal.
“Afterwards, on that day, the king distributed alms and dined with the brethren in the refectory. There were at table his three brothers, a cardinal of the Roman curia, the minister-general, and Brother Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen, and many brethren. The minister-general, knowing what a noble company was with the king, had no mind to thrust himself forward, although he was asked to sit next the king. So to set an example of courtliness and humility, he sat among the lowest. On that day first we had cherries and then the very whitest bread; there was wine in abundance and of the best, as befitted the regal magnificence. And after the Gallic custom many reluctant ones were invited and forced to drink. After that we had fresh beans cooked in milk, fish and crabs, eel-pies, rice with milk of almonds and powdered cinnamon, broiled eels with excellent sauce; and plenty of cakes and herbs, and fruit. Everything was well served, and the service at table excellent.
“The following day the king resumed his journey, and I followed him, as the Chapter was over; for I had permission to go and stay in Provincia. It was easy for me to find him, as he frequently turned aside to go to the hermitages of the brothers Minorites or some other religious Order, to gain their prayers. And he kept this up continually until he reached the sea and took ship for the Holy Land.
“I remember that one day I went to a noble castle in Burgundy, where the body of the Magdalene was then believed to be. The next day was Sunday; and early in the morning came the king to ask the suffrages of the brethren. He dismissed his retinue in the castle, from which the house of the brothers was but a little way. The king took his own three brothers, as was his wont, and some servants to take care of the horses. And when genuflections and reverences were duly made, the brothers sought benches to sit on. But the king sat on the earth in the dust, as I saw with my eyes. For that church had no pavement. And he called us, saying: ‘Come to me, my sweetest brothers, and hear my words.’ And we made a circle about him, sitting with him on the earth; and his own brothers likewise. And he asked our prayers, as I have been saying. And when promise had been given him, he rose and went his way.”[641]
Is not this a picture of St. Louis, pilgrimaging from convent to convent, to make sure of the divine aid, and trusting, so far as concerned the business of the Holy Land, quite as much in the prayers of monks as in the deeds of knights? We have hardly such a vivid sight of him in Joinville or Geoffrey of Beaulieu.[642]
After this scene, the king proceeded on his way, to make ready for his voyage, and Salimbene went to Lyons, then down the Rhone to Arles, then around by sea to Marseilles, and thence to Areae, the present Hyères, which lies near the coast. Here to his joy he met with Brother Hugo of Montpellier whom he was seeking, the great “Joachite,” the great clerk, the mighty preacher and resistless disputer, whom he had not forgotten since the days, long before, when he had been in Hugo’s company and listened to his preaching at Siena. Even then, Minorites, Dominicans, and all men, had flocked to hear this small dark man, who seemed another Paul, as he descanted on the marvels of Paradise and the contempt one should feel for this world; but especially those Franciscans delighted in his preaching who were of the “spiritual” party, which sought to follow strictly the injunctions of the blessed Francis, and also cherished the prophesies of the enigmatical Joachim of Flora. To this Joachim was ascribed that long since vanished but much-bespoken Evangelium eternum, which appears to have been written years after his death under the auspices of John of Parma, Minister-General of the Franciscan Order.[643]
There was heresy in this book, with its doctrine of a still unrevealed, but everlasting Gospel of the Holy Ghost. Until its appearance the genuine utterances of Joachim were not prescribed, consisting as they did of prophecies, for example, as to the life of that monster Frederick II., and of denunciations of the pride and worldliness of ecclesiastics. Thus they fell in with the enthusiasms of the “spiritual” Franciscans, who still lived in an ecstasy of love and anticipation;--in the coming time some of them were to be dubbed Fratricelli, and under that name be held as heretics.
John of Parma was, of course, a “Joachite”; and “I was intimate with him,” says Salimbene, “from love and because I seemed to believe the writings of Abbot Joachim of the Order of the Flower.” John was likewise a friend (so strong a bond was the belief in the holy but over-prophetic Joachim) of Hugo of Montpellier, of whose manner and arguments we shall now let Salimbene speak.
“Once Hugo came from Pisa to Lucca, where the brothers had invited him to come and preach. He arrived at the hour for setting out for the cathedral service. And there the whole convent was assembled to accompany him and do him honour, and from desire to hear him too. And he wondered, seeing the brothers assembled outside of the convent door, and said: ‘Ah God! what are they going to do?’ The reply was, that they were there to do him honour, and to hear him. But he said: ‘I do not need such honour, for I am not pope. If they wish to hear, let them come after we have got there. I will go ahead with one companion, and I will not go with that band.’”
Hugo was worshipped by his admirers, and hated by those whom he disagreed with or denounced. Aside from his disputations in defence of Joachim, a sample of which will be given shortly, one can see what hate must have sprung from such invective as Salimbene reports him once to have addressed to a consistory of cardinals at Lyons, where the Pope then held court. Here is the story, quite too harsh for the respectable editors of the Parma edition of the Chronaca:
“The cardinals inquired of Brother Hugo for news (rumores). So he reviled them, as asses, saying: ‘I have no news, but a plenitude of peace in my conscience and before my God, who surpasses sense and keeps my heart and mind in Christ Jesus my Lord. I know that ye seek after news, and wait idle the live-long day. For ye are Athenians and not disciples of Christ. Of whom Luke says in the Acts: For all the Athenians and the strangers which were there had time for nothing else but to tell or hear some new thing. The disciples of Christ were fishers and weak men according to the world, but they converted the whole earth because the hand of the Lord was with them. They set forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them. But ye are those who build up Zion in blood (i.e. consanguinity) and Jerusalem in iniquity. For you choose your little nephews and relations for the benefices and dignities of the Church, and you exalt and make rich your clan, and shut out men good and fit who would be useful to the Church, and you prebendate children in their cradles. As a certain mountebank well has said: If with an accusative you would go to the Curia, you’ll take nothing if you don’t start with the dative! And another says, the Roman Curia cares not for a sheep without wool.’”
And with such like, Hugo continues a considerable space.
“Hearing these things the cardinals were cut to the heart and gnashed their teeth at him. But they had not the hardihood to reply; for the fear of the Lord came over them and the hand of the Lord was with him. Yet they wondered that he spoke to them so boldly; and finally it seemed best to them to slip out and leave him, nor did they question him, saying, as the Athenians to Paul: ‘We will hear thee again of this matter.’”[644]
Hugo’s invective is outdone by Salimbene’s closing scorn.
And now (to return to Salimbene’s journey) here at Hyères in the year 1248 many notaries and judges, and physicians and other men of learning, were assembled to hear Brother Hugo speak of the Abbot Joachim’s doctrines, and expound Holy Scripture, and predict the future. “And I was there to hear him; for long before I had been instructed in these teachings.” But there came two Preaching friars, and abode at the Franciscan house, since the Dominicans had no convent at Hyères. One was Brother Peter of Apulia, a learned man and a great speaker. After dinner a brother asked him what he thought of Abbot Joachim. He answered: “I care as much for Joachim as for the fifth wheel of a coach.”
Thereupon this brother hurried to Hugo’s chamber, and exclaimed in the presence of all the notables there: “Here is a brother Preacher who does not believe that doctrine at all.”
To whom Brother Hugo: “And what is it to me if he does not believe? Be it laid at his door; he will see it when trouble shall enlighten him. Yet call him to debate; let us hear of what he doubts.”
So, called, he came, very unwillingly, because he held Joachim so cheaply, and besides thought there was no one in that house fit to dispute with him. When Brother Hugo saw him he said: “Art thou he who doubts the doctrine of Joachim?”
Brother Peter replied: “Indeed I am.”
Then said Brother Hugo: “Hast thou ever read Joachim?”
Replied Brother Peter: “I have read and well read.”
To whom Hugo: “I believe thou hast read as a woman reads the Psalter, who does not remember at the end what she read at the beginning. Thus many read and do not understand, either because they despise what they read, or because their foolish heart is darkened. Now, therefore, tell me what thou wouldst hear as to Joachim, so that we may better know thy doubts.”
Thereupon there is question back and forth regarding the Scripture proofs of Joachim’s prophecies, for instance, those relating to Frederick’s reign. Brother Hugo dilates on Joachim’s holiness; explains the dark Scripture references, and brings in the prophecies of Merlin, anglicus vates, and talks of the allegorical, anagogical, tropological, moral and mystical, senses of Scripture. The discussion waxes hot. Peter begins to beat about the bush (discurrere per ambages), and declares it to be heretical to quote an infidel like Merlin. At which Hugo answers: “Thou liest, as I will prove multipliciter; for the writings of Balaam, Caiaphas, Merlin, and the Sybil are not spurned by the Church: ‘The rose gives forth no thorn, although the thorn’s daughter.’”[645]
Peter then turns to the sayings of the saints and the philosophers. But as Hugo was doctissimus in these, he at once twists him up and finishes him (statim involvit eum et conclusit ei). Hereupon Peter’s brother Preacher, an old priest and a good, sought to come to his aid. But Peter said, “Peace, be still.” For Peter knew himself vanquished, and began to praise Brother Hugo for his manifold wisdom.
“At this moment came a messenger from the ship’s captain, bidding the brothers Preachers hurry, and go aboard. When they had left, Brother Hugo said to the learned men remaining, who had heard the debate: ‘Take it not for evil, if we have said some things which ought not to have been said; for disputants often roam the fields of licence. Those good men glory in their knowledge, and speak what is found in their Order’s fount of wisdom, which is the Word of God. They also say that they travel among simple folk when they pass through the places of the brothers Minorites, where they are ministered to with loving charity. But by the grace of God these two shall no longer be able to say they have walked among the simple.’
“His auditors dispersed, edified and comforted, saying, We have heard wonderful things to-day. Later, that same day, the brothers Preachers returned, to our delight, for the weather proved unfit for sailing. After dinner, Brother Hugo conversed with them familiarly, and Brother Peter sat himself on the earth at Brother Hugo’s feet; nor was any one able to make him rise and sit on the bench on the same level with him, not even when Brother Hugo himself besought him. So Brother Peter, no longer disputing or contradicting, but meekly listening, heard honied words spoken by Brother Hugo, and worthy to be set down, but omitted here for brevity’s sake, as I hasten to record other things.”[646]
So Salimbene passes on, both in his Chronicle and in his journey, but though his steps lead deviously through the cities of Provence, they bring him back once more to Hyères and Hugo, at whose feet he sits and listens for a season in rapt admiration.
After this happy season, Salimbene returned to Genoa, and from that time on spent his life among the Franciscan brotherhoods of Italy. Henceforth his Chronicle is chiefly occupied with those wretched unceasing wars of northern Italy, Imperialists against Papists, and city against city--and with the affairs of the Franciscan Order. The story is now less varied, yet not lacking in picturesque qualities; and through it all we still see the man himself, although the man, as life goes on, seems to become more of a Franciscan monk, and less of an observer of human life. But he continues naïve. Thus he tells that one time, with some companions, he came to Bobbio, that famous book-lovers’ foundation of St. Columban, in the mountains north of Genoa: “and there we saw one of those water-pots of the Lord, in which the Lord made wine from water at the marriage at Cana, for it is said to be one of those: whether it is, God knows, to whom all things are known and open and naked.”
And again, some one brings him news of the state of France in the year 1251, when King Louis was a captive in Africa;[647] and thus he tells it:
“In this year a countless crowd of shepherds came together in France, saying that they would cross the sea to kill the Saracens and free the King of France. Many followed from divers cities of France, and no one dared stop them. For their leader said it was revealed to him of God that he must lead that multitude across the sea to avenge the King of France. The common folk believed him, and were enraged against the religious, especially the Preachers, because they had preached the Crusade and had ‘crossed’ men who were sailing with the king. And the people were angry at Christ, so that they dared blaspheme His blessed name. And when the Minorites and Preachers came seeking alms in His name, they gnashed their teeth at them and in their sight turned and gave the sou to some other beggar, saying, ‘Take this in Mahomet’s name, who is stronger than Christ.’”[648]
Of those Italian wars--rather feuds, vengeances, and monstrosities of hate--Salimbene can tell enough. He gives a ghastly picture of the fate of Alberic da Romano, brother of Eccelino, and tyrant indeed of Treviso.
“There he lorded it for many years; and cruel and hard was his rule, as those know who experienced it. He was a limb of the devil and a son of iniquity, but he perished by an evil death with his wife and sons and daughters. For those who slew them tore off the legs and arms from their living bodies, in their parents’ sight, and with them struck the parents’ faces. Then they bound the wife and daughters to stakes, and burned them; they were noble, beautiful virgins, nor in any way in fault. But their innocence and beauty did not save them, because of the hatred for the father and mother. Terribly had these afflicted the people of Treviso. So they came upon Alberic with tongs and ----”--
the sentence is too horrid for translation. But the chronicler goes on to tell that they destroyed his body amid gibes and insults and torments.
“For he had killed a blood-relative of this one, and that one’s father, son or daughter. And he had laid such taxes and exactions on them, that they had to destroy their houses. The very walls and beams and chests and cupboards and wine-vats they put in boats and sent to Ferrara to sell them and redeem themselves. I saw those with my eyes. Alberic pretended to be at war with his brother Eccelino, so as to do his evil deeds more safely; and he did not hold his hand from the slaughter of citizens and subjects. One day he hanged twenty-five prominent men of Treviso, who had done him no ill; because he feared they would! And thirty noble women, mothers, wives and daughters of these, were brought there to see them hanging; and he had these women stripped half naked, that those who were hanging might see them so. The men were hanged quite close to the ground; and he forced these women to go so close that their faces were struck by the legs and feet of those who were dying in anguish.”[649]
Such was the kind of devil-madness that might walk abroad in Italy in the Middle Ages. Let us relieve our minds by a story our friend tells of a certain boy placed in a Franciscan convent in Bologna, to become a monk.
“When asleep he snored so mightily, that no one could have peace in the same house with him, so horribly did he disturb those who slept as well as those who were at their vigils. And they made him sleep in the shed where wood and staves were stored, but even then the brothers could not escape, so did that voice of malediction resound through the whole place. And all the priests and wiseacres among the brothers met in the director’s chamber, to eject him from the Order because of his insupportable offence: I was there. It was decided to return him to his mother, who had deceived the Order, since she had known his defect before letting him go. But he was not returned to his mother, for the Lord performed a miracle through Brother Nicolas [a holy brother through whom God had worked other miracles as well]. This brother seeing that the boy was to be expelled for no fault, but for a natural defect, called him at daybreak to assist at mass. When the mass was finished, the boy as commanded knelt before him, back of the altar, hoping to receive some grace. Brother Nicolas touched his face and nose with his hands, in the wish to confer health upon him, if the Lord would grant it, and commanded him to keep this secret. What more? The boy at once was cured, and after that slept as quietly as a dormouse without annoying any brother.”[650]
Thus we have this Chronicle, rambling, incoherent, picturesque, with its glimpses of all this pretty world, for which our Salimbene, despite his cowl, has an uncloistered eye--its keenness for incident and circumstance undeflected by the inner sight with which it could also look on the invisible world. When Brother Salimbene was young and an enthusiastic Joachite, a strong motive of his wish to live on in the flesh was to see whether those prophecies regarding Frederick came true. Alas! for this purpose he lived too long: Frederick died before the prophecies were fulfilled, and with his death honest Salimbene had to put from him his darling trust in the words of Abbot Joachim of the Order of the Flower.