FIFTEENTH CENTURY SAXON VISITATIONS BY JOHANN BUSCH

Three accounts of medieval visitations stand out in general interest above all others, the thirteenth century Norman visitations of Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen, described in his diary, the fifteenth century English visitations of Alnwick, Bishop of Lincoln, described in his Register[2117] and the almost contemporary German visitations of the Austin Canon and reformer Johann Busch, described in his Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum. Busch’s account is less formal and more literary than those of Rigaud and Alnwick; he sets out not to keep a journal, like the former, nor to record official documents, like the latter, but to look back in retrospect upon his work and to make for posterity a chronicle of the reforms connected with the congregation of Windesheim. For this reason, and because Busch was a remarkable man, his book will probably transcend the others in interest for the general reader; his account of the difficulties which he encountered is so vivid and at times so humourous, the sidelight thrown upon his own character shows him so admirable and yet so human.

Johann Busch was born in 1399 and in 1419 became a canon in the Austin monastery of Windesheim, a new foundation, famed for the strictness of its rule and already the head of a congregation of daughter houses. He has left an interesting account of the doubts and temptations which assailed him during his novitiate; they were the stormy dawn clouds of a day which was to become glorious in the annals of his order. During the next twenty years he held from time to time various posts in different houses of the reformed congregation; in 1431 he was attached to the nunnery of Bronopia, in 1436 he became Subprior of Wittenberg and in 1439 he went to SÜlte, near Hildesheim, where he was made Prior in the following year. He had therefore had considerable experience of monastic houses and it was when he became Prior of SÜlte that his great work as a reformer of monasteries began. He undertook it originally at the request of the Bishop and Chapter of Hildesheim, who were appalled at the decadence of monastic life in that diocese and anxious for the introduction of reforms on the model of Windesheim. His success in Hildesheim prompted Archbishop GÜnther of Magdeburg to invite him to carry the reforming movement into that diocese and in 1447 Busch became praepositus[2118] of the Neuwerk in Halle. This brought him to the notice of the Papal Legate Nicholas of Cues, who came to hold a provincial council in Magdeburg in 1451, and Nicholas, himself an ardent reformer, issued a general mandate empowering him to enter and reform the Austin monasteries of the provinces of Magdeburg, Mainz, Saxony and Thuringia. Unfortunately Busch now quarrelled with the Archbishop of Magdeburg and had to resign in 1454. He returned to Wittenberg and continued his campaign of reform, turning his attention specially to nunneries. Then, after a short sojourn at Windesheim he returned to SÜlte in 1459, where he remained until his death in 1480. He left behind him two books, a Chronicon Windeshemense, and the Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum, which between them give an invaluable account not only of the rise of Windesheim and of the reforming movement which emanated from it, but of the life and character of Busch himself[2119].

Book II of the Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum describes the reform of twenty-three nunneries and two houses of lay sisters, of which the great majority belonged to his own order of Austin Regular Canons[2120]. The work was not carried out without considerable opposition, not only from the nuns themselves, for the desire for reform seldom came from within the unreformed orders[2121], but also from their friends and kinsmen in the world, to whom they frequently appealed for help. Moreover certain ecclesiastical magnates, notably the Bishop of Minden, opposed and impeded reforms in their districts, and even when they submitted to such reforms lent them an indifferent and easily discouraged support. On the other hand Busch received his most powerful support from great ecclesiastics such as the Cardinal Legate Nicholas of Cues, the Archbishop of Magdeburg and the Bishops of Halberstadt and Hildesheim, and also from the superiors and chief inmates of houses belonging to the congregation of Windesheim, or already reformed under its influence. Men such as Rutger, prior of Wittenberg, were of the greatest assistance to him; they accompanied him as co-visitors and promoted his work in every possible way, while the reformed nunneries often provided him with nuns to dwell for a time in the houses which he was reforming and to teach their inmates how to comport themselves. Apart from such powerful ecclesiastical support Busch was particularly fortunate in the assistance which he received from the Dukes of Brunswick, Otto, William and Henry, who reigned during his lifetime. These nobles, especially Duke William, had the greatest esteem for Busch and not infrequently accompanied him on his visitations, lending the temporal intimidation of their arguments and armed retainers to his more spiritual menaces. The support of the secular arm was, indeed, necessary, in view of the opposition of lay kinsfolk to the reform of their daughters and sisters.

The monastic houses of Germany had by the fifteenth century fallen into great laxity of rule. The nuns seem to have lost all knowledge of how to perform the ordinary offices of convent life, in choir, chapter and frater, according to the rule, and Busch was often at pains to go carefully through the routine with them, teaching them what to do at each moment. This occasionally gave rise to some amusing scenes. At one of the first houses to be reformed, St Mary Magdalen near Hildesheim (1440), Busch and an elderly monk of SÜlte were teaching the nuns by ocular demonstration how to comport themselves in frater. Having arranged the sisters in seemly order Busch and brother John Bodiker began to intone Benedicite, after the fashion of reformed religious; but the nuns, who had not been accustomed to singing the Benedicite at table, all burst out laughing, instead of following. Busch and the brother, however, kept on until the nuns collected themselves and came in with bowed heads at the verse Gloria patri. Similarly when Busch was showing them how to confess their own and proclaim others’ faults in chapter (a custom which they had completely lost), brother John, acting the sinner, rose up among the sisters and cast himself flat upon the pavement, whereat “the astonished nuns fell to marvelling that such an old brother should seek thus to lie prone”[2122].

The most serious fault found by Busch, serious not only because it was a breach of one of the three substantial vows of monasticism, but because it brought in its train other and worse evils, was the ownership of private property. The nuns were almost universally proprietarie, owning money and annual rents, to say nothing of their own private cooking and dining utensils, for, as always, communal life had gone with individual poverty and the nuns provided their own meals and dined in familia. At Derneburg Busch describes the girls and women of the village coming up to the doors and windows of the house with bread and meat and cheese in sacks and baskets for the nuns to buy[2123]. It was his custom on visiting a house to demand that all the private possessions of the nuns should be brought and heaped up before him. Unwillingly they came with the charters reciting their private rents, the ready money from their purses and chests, the gold and silver rings, the coral paternosters, and all the pots and pans and basins, the cups and plates and spoons which they used for their private meals. All these Busch carefully noted down: “I marvelled,” he says on one occasion, when he had collected a particularly large heap from quite a small house, “how they could have collected from their parents and predecessors and reserved for themselves, as it were by right of inheritance, such a large number of utensils”[2124]. All the money, endowments and implements thus brought together Busch then handed over to the common treasury and store-room of the house.

This rooting out of private property gave rise to the bitterest opposition. The nuns had been wont to evade the charge of proprietas by the merest quibble, which Busch contemptuously swept away. They had deposited all their money and charters with the abbess and when they wanted any they had asked her for it; but she was merely the guardian of their private incomes, which were never merged in a common stock[2125]. When they found that this device was rejected by Busch, they did all they could to preserve their hoards. Sometimes they secretly sent their money out of the house before his arrival[2126]; sometimes they locked it up and tried to conceal it[2127]. The attitude of their kinsfolk also was a stumbling block. These gentlemen were willing enough to endow their own daughters and nieces, but not so willing to support the children of others by gifts which were turned to the common use. Thus it was the nuns who frequently protested that their house was too poor to permit of their living in common, since it was only by these individual endowments that they maintained their existence. It was therefore Busch’s practice, before completing the reformation of a house, to make the nuns obtain from their kinsfolk an undertaking to continue, and if possible to augment, the rents which they had been wont to give their relatives, on the threat of turning out the nuns and distributing them among other houses[2128]. The nobles and burghers of the district naturally wished to keep their kinswomen near them and the endowments were usually forthcoming. At St George (or Marienkammer) near Halle even this device did not result in a large enough income for the nuns; so Busch caused sermons to be preached in all the churches of the district, saying that because of their poverty the fathers of their order wished to distribute the nuns in other houses in the dioceses of Hildesheim and Halberstadt, but that they would be able to remain if they were helped by alms. Whereupon the townsfolk, out of pity for them, gave generously enough to support them for a whole year. Busch led the way himself, sending them openly two large cartloads of corn and a sack of cheeses, an example which was soon followed by the townsfolk, who had ample opportunity of observing the progress of the cart from Busch’s door to the gates of the convent, “for” (says he), “I lived on the eastern, they on the western side of the town.” Dr Paul, the praepositus of St Maurice, Halle, also helped with a cask of wine[2129].

Closely connected with the question of private property was the dowry system, against which Busch also set his face, for it was not only in itself contrary to the rule, but it was one method by which the nuns received those private endowments which they afterwards turned to their own uses:

Busch forbade the custom everywhere.

The nuns thus lived like seculars, performing the minimum number of services and owning private property. Like seculars also they loved to give that “fetis” pinch to their wimples, that elegant turn to their mantles, which changed the sombre habit of their order into the dress of a lady of fashion. Busch, in common with all the reformers of the later middle ages, has a great deal to say about their clothes. All the nuns of Saxony and Thuringia refused to crop their heads, and contented themselves with cutting their hair short at the neck[2131]. The nuns of WÜlfinghausen and Fischbeck wore long flowing white veils over their heads, so that it was hardly possible to recognise them as nuns[2132]. Those of St Cyriac’s appeared very pompously arrayed in long tunics and mantles, with tall peaked caps and flowing veils, “que non monialium sed domicellarum castrantium apparatum habuerunt”[2133]. The nuns of Barsinghausen

The nuns of the penitential order of St Mary Magdalen near Hildesheim wore

As might be expected laxity of rule and widespread proprietas brought immorality in their train and Busch in several cases mentions that a convent was ill-famed for incontinence. On the other hand this was by no means invariably the case. At WÜlfinghausen, for instance, Busch told the nuns that he had never heard a word breathed against their chastity[2136]. At Weinhausen, where the old abbess withstood reform so strenuously that she had to be removed by force, and where all the nuns possessed private incomes, he specially notes “these nuns observed well the vow of chastity, for their lady the old abbess ruled them very strictly, and they held her in great reverence and fear and called her ‘gracious lady,’ because of her high birth”[2137]. Moreover certain houses received reform so readily and became so soon models of good behaviour, that there cannot have been any very serious moral decay in them. But a passage in the course of Busch’s account of the reform of the Magdalenenkloster at Halle, shows his own opinion as to the relation between absolute immorality and lesser breaches of the rule, and shows in particular the important part which he held to be played by the vice of proprietas in the downward path of a nun. It is interesting also because in it he attributes a great deal of the decadence of nunneries to insufficient control by their pastors and above all to too infrequent visitation:

He ends with an eloquent plea for a closer watch to be kept over nuns by those responsible for their spiritual welfare.

Such were the main faults which Busch strove to abolish in bringing the nunneries under the reformed rule of Hildesheim. It remains to give some account of the difficulties which he encountered in the course of his work. In some houses he was well received; at Erscherde he says of the nuns:

and at St Martin’s, Erfurt, he says:

In other houses reform was not so easy. Busch was frequently impeded by old and obstinate members of a convent, who refused to accept a change in the routine which they had followed for so long. Such was the nobly born abbess of Weinhausen, who was over seventy years of age and had to be removed by force from the house, before any reforms could be carried out: “I found this way of life kept in this monastery forty years ago; this way have I served during as many years and this way and not otherwise will I continue to serve.” One cannot but pity the poor old lady, brought out of her house and forced to ascend the carriage which was to take her away, with Busch pulling her by one sleeve and the Abbot of St Michael by the other; and one is relieved to hear that she was allowed back again shortly afterwards, though forced to resign the position of Abbess[2141]. But Busch’s experience in reforming monasteries caused him to dread the opposition of men and women who had been long in religion. In the course of his panegyric on Fischbeck, which had been reformed from within by a remarkable Abbess, he says:

Besides the obstinacy of old members of the house Busch had also to contend with the occasional opposition of confessors or praepositi, who resented his interference in their domain. At the Magdalenenkloster at Hildesheim, their confessor, who had been with the nuns for eight years, desired to be released after the reformation of the house, saying to the praepositus: “I have been their confessor for so many years, yet nought do I receive from them, save one or two refections in three or four weeks. I would fain be free of them and let them get another confessor.” Busch comments significantly: “He said this, because when they were property-owners, they gave him many little gifts in money, and spices. Now, because they had no private property, they gave him nothing”[2143]. At the convent of White Ladies and at Marienberg the praepositus of the house did everything possible to hinder the reform[2144]. Moreover in several cases Busch had also to deal with the opposition of laymen, objecting either to the enclosure of their kinswomen, or to the abolition of private endowments, or merely supporting on general grounds the objections of the nuns.

The difficulties encountered by a fifteenth century German reformer are best estimated by giving an account of some of Busch’s adventures at recalcitrant houses. At his first attempt to reform Wennigsen in Hanover (1455) he had against him the Bishop of Minden and all the nobles of the neighbouring castles, but he was supported by William Duke of Brunswick and by the authority of the Council of Basel. Taking with him the Duke, his minister Ludolph von Barum and Rutger, Prior of Wittenberg, Busch went to the house and they all four entered the nuns’ choir. The Duke addressed the assembled sisters and bade them receive reformation, but they, crossing their hands above their breasts, replied: “We have all concluded together and sworn that we will not reform nor observe our rule. We beseech you not to make us perjured.” Twice the Duke sent them out to reconsider their decision and twice they made the same reply, finally throwing themselves on their faces on the ground, spreading out their arms in the form of a cross and intoning in a loud voice the antiphon “Media vita in morte sumus.” The visitors, however, thought they were singing “Revelabunt celi iniquitatem Iude” (used as a spell in the middle ages) and the Duke was terrified, lest he should lose all his possessions. But Busch said:

“If I were duke of this land I would rather have that song than a hundred florins, for there is no curse over us and over your land, but a benediction and heavenly dew, but over these nuns is a stern rebuke and the sign of their reformation. But we are few, being but our four selves, and the nuns are many. If they were to attack us with their distaffs and with stones hidden in their long sleeves, what should we do? Let us call in others to help.” Then the duke, going up alone to them said, “May what you sing be upon you and your bodies”; and to his servants who were standing with the nuns in the choir, he said, “come hither to us.”