The Mediaeval Mind (Volume 1 of 2) / A History of the Development of Thought and Emotion in the Middle Ages :: BOOK III THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: THE SAINTS

BOOK III THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL: THE SAINTS

CHAPTER XV

THE REFORMS OF MONASTICISM

Mediaeval Extremes; Benedict of Aniane; Cluny; Citeaux’s Charta Charitatis; The Vita Contemplativa accepts the Vita Activa

The present Book and the following will set forth the higher manifestations of the religious energies of the Middle Ages, and then the counter ideals which knights and ladies delighted to contemplate, and sometimes strove to reach. In religious as well as mundane life, ideals admired and striven for constitute human facts, make part of the human story, quite as veritably as the spotted actuality everywhere in evidence. The tale of piety is to be gathered from those efforts of the religious purpose which almost attain their ideal; while as a comment on them, and a foil and contrast, the deflections of human frailty may be observed. Likewise the full reality of chivalry lies in its ideals, supplemented by the illuminating contrast of failure and oppression, making what we may call its actuality. The emotional element, reviewed in the last chapter, will for the time be dominant.

Practice always drops below the ethical standards of a period. The contrast appears in the history of Greece and Rome. Yet in neither Greece nor Rome could there exist the abysms of contradiction which disclose themselves after the conversion of western Europe to the religion of Christ.

And for the following reasons. Greek and Roman standards were finite; they regarded only the mortal happiness of the individual and the terrestrial welfare of the State. To Greek thought the indefinite or limitless was as the monstrous and unformed; and therefore abhorrent to the classic ideals of perfection. Again, Greek and Roman standards demanded only what Greek and Roman humanity could fulfil in the mortal life of earth. But the Christian ideal of conduct assumes the universal imperfection and infinite perfectibility of man. It has constant regard to immortality, and eternity is needed for its fulfilment. Moreover, whether or not Christ’s Gospel set forth any inherent antagonism between the fulness of mortal life and the sure attainment of heaven, its historical interpretations have never effected a complete reconcilement. They have always presented a conflict between the finite and the eternal, unconceived and unsuspected by the pagan ethics of Greece and Rome.

This conflict dawned in the Apostolic age. During the patristic period it worked itself out to a formulated opposition between the world and the City of God. Of this, monasticism was the chief expression. Nevertheless, pagan principle and feeling lived on in the reasonings and characters of the Church Fathers. The Roman qualities in Ambrose, the general survival of antique greatness in Augustine, preserved them from the rhetorical hysteria of Jerome and the exaggeration of phrase which affects the writings of Gregory the Great.[432] With the decadence preceding, and the confusion following, the Carolingian period, antique qualities passed away; and when men began again to think and feel constructively, there remained no antique poise to restrain the strife of those mighty opposites—the joys of life and the terrors of the Judgment Day.

This conflict, inherent in mediaeval Christianity, was in part a struggle between temporal desires which many men approved, and their renunciation for eternal joy. From this point of view it was a conflict of ideals, though, to be sure, life’s common cravings were on one side, and often unideally turned the scale. We are not immediately concerned, however, with this conflict of ideals; but with the contrasts presented between the actual and the ideal, between conduct and the principles which should have controlled it. The opposition between this life and eternity is mentioned in order to make clear the tremendous demands of the Christian ethical ideal, and the unlikelihood of its fulfilment by mediaeval humanity. So one may perceive a reason why the Middle Ages were to show such extremes of contrast between principles and practices. The standards recognized as holiest countered the natural lives of men; and for that reason could be lived up to only under transient spiritual enthusiasm or by exceptional people. Monasticism held the highest ideals of Christian living, and its story illustrates the continual falling away of conduct from the recognized ideal.

Without regard to the contrast between the ideal and the actual, the Middle Ages were a period of extremes—of extreme humility and love as well as cruelty and hate. Such extremes may be traceable to a certain unlimited quality in Christian principles, according to which no man could have too much humility or Christian love, or could too strenuously combat the enemies of Christ. To be sure, an all-proportioning principle of conduct lay in man’s love of God, answering to God’s love which encompassed all His creatures. But such proportionment is difficult for simple minds, and many of the extremes which meet us in the Middle Ages were directly due to the simplicity with which mediaeval men and women carried out such Christian precepts as they were taken with, in disregard of all else that commonly balances and conventionalizes human lives.

For this reason also the Middle Ages are picturesque and poetic. Nothing could be more picturesque and more like a poem than the simple absoluteness with which St. Francis interpreted and lived out his Lord’s principle of love, and made universal application of his Lord’s injunction to the rich young man, to go and sell his goods and give to the poor, and then come follow Him. This particular solution of the problem of God’s service was taken by Francis, and by many another, as of general application, and was literally carried out; just as Francis with exquisite simplicity carried out other precepts of his Lord in a way that would be foolishness were it not so beautiful.

There was no contrast between conduct and principle in the life of Francis; and in other men conduct might agree with such principles as they understood. Many a rustic layman, many a good knight, fulfilled the standards of his calling. Many a parish priest did his whole duty, as he thought it. And many a monk and nun lived up to their monastic regula, if indeed never satisfying the inner yearning of the soul unquenchably striving for perfection. Indeed, for the monk ever to have been satisfied with himself would have meant a fall from humility to vainglory.

The precepts of the Gospel were for every man and woman. Nevertheless, the same rules of living did not apply to all. In this regard, mediaeval society falls into the two general divisions of clergy and laity, meaning by the former all persons making special profession of religion or engaged in the service of the Church.[433] This would include anchorites and monks (also the conversi[434] or lay-brethren) and the secular clergy from the rank of bishop downward. To such (excepting seculars below the grade of sub-deacon) the rule of celibacy applied, as well as other ascetic precepts dependent on the vows they had taken or the regulations under which they lived. Conversely, certain rules like those relating to the conduct of man and wife would touch the laity alone.

A general similarity of principle pervaded the rules of conduct applying to all orders of the clergy, secular and regular.[435] Yet there was a difference in the severity of the rules and the stringency of their application. The mediaeval code of religious ethics applied in its utter strenuousness only to monks and nuns. They alone had seriously undertaken to obey the Gospel precept, esto perfecti; and they alone could be regarded as living the life of complete Christian militancy against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The trials, that is to say the temptations, of this warfare could be fully known only to the monk. “Tentatio,” says Caesar of Heisterbach, “est militia,” i.e. warfare; it is possible only for those who live humanly and rationally, after the spirit, which is to say, as monks; “the seculars (i.e. the clergy who were not monks) and the carnal (i.e. the laity) who walk according to the flesh, are improperly said to be tempted; for as soon as they feel the temptation they consent, or resist lukewarmly, like the horse and the mule who have no understanding.”[436]

We have spoken of the inception of monasticism, and of its early motives,[437] which included the fear of hell, the love of Christ, and the conviction of the antagonism between pleasure and that service which opens heaven’s gates. Such sentiments were likely to develop and expand. The fear of hell might be inflamed and made visible by the same imagination that festered over the carnality of pleasure; the heart could impassion and extend the love of Christ through humanity’s full capacity for loving what was holiest and most lovable; and the mind could attain to an overmastering conviction of the incompatibility of pleasure with absolute devotion. Through the Middle Ages these motives developed and grew together, until they made a mode of life, and fashioned human characters into accord with it. Century after century the lives of thousands fulfilled the monastic spirit, and often so perfectly as to belie humanity’s repute for frailty. Their virtues shunned encomium. Record was made of those whose mind and energy organized and wrought, or whose piety and love of God burned so hotly that others were enkindled. But legion upon legion of tacit lives are registered only in the Book with seven seals.

Monastic abuses have usually spoken more loudly than monastic regularity. In Christian monasticism there is an energy of renovation which constantly cries against corruption. Its invective reaches us from all the mediaeval centuries; while monastic regularity has more commonly been unreported. It is well to bear this in mind when reading of monastic vice. It always existed, and judging from the fiery denunciations which it awakened, it was often widely prevalent. In fact, the monastic life required such love of God or fear of hell, such renunciation of this world, its ambitions, its lusts and its lures, that monks were likely to fall below the prescribed standards, and then quickly into all manner of sin, from lack of the restraints, or outlets, of secular life.

Consequently the most patent history of monasticism is the history of its attempts to reform and renew itself. Its heroes come before us as reformers or refounders, whose endeavour is to reinstitute the perfect way, impassion men anew to follow it, by added precepts discipline them for its long ascents, and so occupy them in the practice of its virtues that all distracting impulses shall perish. Their apparent endeavour (at least until the day of Francis of Assisi) is to renew a life from which their contemporaries have fallen away. And yet through all there was unconscious innovation and progress.

The greater part of the fervent piety of the Middle Ages dwelt in cloisters, when not drawn forth unwillingly to serve the Lord in the world. Mediaeval saints were, or yearned to be, monks or nuns. Consequently monastic reforms, as well as attempts to raise the condition of the secular clergy, emanated from within monasticism. Its own rules of living had been set from within by Benedict of Nursia, and others who were monks. There was much irregularity at first; but the seventh and eighth centuries witnessed the conflict between different types of monastic organization, and then the general victory of the Benedictine regula. This was also a victory for monastic reform; for moral looseness, accompanied by heathenish irregularities, easily penetrated cloisters when not protected by a common and authoritative rule. As it was, the energy of Benedictine uniformity seemed exhausted in the contest.

But a Benedictine refounder arose. This was the high-born Witiza of Aquitaine, the ascetic virtuosity of whose early life had won him repute. Assuming the name of Benedict, he established a monastery on the bank of the little Aniane, in Aquitaine, in the year 779. His foundation flourished in righteousness and increased in numbers, till it drew the attention of Alcuin and Charlemagne to its abbot. Benedict was given the task of reforming the monasteries of Aquitaine. Afterwards Louis the Pious extended his authority; till in 817 a reforming synod, over which he presided, was held at Aix, and the king’s authority was attached to its decrees. All Frankish monasteries were therein commanded to observe the regula of Benedict of Nursia, with many further precepts set by him of Aniane, aggravating the severity of the older rule; for example, by enforcing a more rigid silence among the monks when at labour, and restricting their intercourse with the laity. Great stress was laid upon the labours of the field. There was little novelty in the work of this reorganizer, with his consistent ascetic contempt for profane literature. His labours were typical of those of many a monastic reformer after him, who likewise sought to re-establish the strictness of the old Benedictine rule, and in fact added to its austerities.

The next example of reform is Cluny, founded in the year 910. Its cloister discipline followed the regula of Benedict with the additions decreed by the synod of Aix. Under Odo (d. 942) Majolus (d. 994) and Odilo (d. 1048) it rose to unprecedented power and influence. Mainly because of the winning and commanding qualities of its abbots, it received the support of kings and popes; its authority and privileges were increased, until it became the head of more than three hundred cloisters distributed through France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. In ecclesiastical policy it stood for decency and reform, but without giving extreme support to either emperor or pope. Balance and temperance characterized its career. It was a monastic organization which by precept and example, and by the wide supervising powers it received from the papacy and from temporal authorities, promoted regularity and propriety of life among monks, and also among the secular clergy. The “reforms of Cluny” do not represent any specific intensifying of monastic principles, but rather the general endeavour of the better elements in Burgundian and French monasticism to overcome the crass secularization of the Church, within and without the cloister. Cluny’s influence told generally against monastic degradation, rather than in favour of any special ascetic or ecclesiastic policy. The prevailing simony, the clerical concubinage, the rough and warlike ways of bishops and abbots were all corruptions standing in the way of any monastic or ecclesiastical improvement; and Cluny opposed them, in moderation however, and with considerable acquiescence in the apparently necessary conditions of the time.[438]

After the comparative strictness of its first abbots, Cluny’s discipline moderated almost to laxity; and the interests of the rich and magnificent monastery became elegant and somewhat secular. It still maintained monastic decencies while not going beyond their demands. Its face was no longer set against comfortable living, nor against art and letters. And the time came when fervent spirits demanded a more uncompromising attack upon the world and the flesh.

Such came from Citeaux (near Dijon), where a few monks founded a struggling monastery in 1098. Its fortunes were small and feeble until the time of its third abbot, the Englishman, Stephen Harding (1109-1134), whose genius set the lines of Citeaux’s larger destinies. Her great period began when, shortly after Harding’s entrance on his abbacy, there arrived a band of well-born youths, led by one Bernard. Then of a truth the cloister burned with ardour. Its numbers grew, and Bernard was sent with a Cistercian band to found a daughter monastery at Clairvaux (1115).

Like Stephen Harding, Bernard was an ascetic, and the Cistercian Order represents a stern tightening of the reins which Cluny left lying somewhat slackly upon the backs of her stall-fed monks.[439] Controversies arose between the Cluniac Benedictines and the Cistercian Benedictines insisting on a stricter rule. Bernard himself entered into heated controversy with that great temperate personality of the twelfth century, Peter the Venerable, Cluny’s revered lord.The original regula of Benedict provided an admirable constitution for the single monastery, but no plan for the supervision of one monastery by another. The mediaeval advance in monastic organization consisted in the authoritative supervision of subordinate or “daughter” foundations by the superior or primal monastery of the Order. The Abbot of Cluny exercised such authority over Cluniac foundations, as well as over monasteries which, at the instance of the secular lord of the land, had been reorganized by Cluny.

The Cistercian Order represents a less monarchical, or more decentralized subordination, on a plan similar to the feudal principle of sub-infeudation, whereby the holder of the fief owed his duties to his immediate lord, who in turn owed duties to his own lord, still above him. Thus in the Cistercian Order the visitatorial authority over each foundation was vested in the immediate mother abbey, rather than in the primal abbey of Citeaux, from which the intervening mother abbey had gone forth.

This plan was formulated by Stephen Harding’s Charta Charitatis,[440] the charter of the Cistercian Order and a monument of constructive genius. Apparently mindful of the various privileges recognized by the feudal system, it begins by renouncing on the part of the superior monastery all claim to temporal emolument from the daughter foundations: “Nullam terrenae commoditatis seu rerum temporalium exactionem imponimus.” “But for love’s sake (gratia-charitatis) we desire to retain the care of their souls; so that should they swerve from the holy way and the observance of the Holy Rule, they may through our solicitude return to rectitude of life.”

Then follows the command that all Cistercian foundations obey implicitly the regula of Benedict, as understood and practised at Citeaux, and that all follow the customs of Citeaux, and the same forms of chant and prayer and service (for we receive their monks in our cloister, and they ours), “so that without discordant actions we may live by one love, one rule, and like practices (una charitate, una regula, similibusque vivamus moribus).” A short sentence follows, forbidding all monasteries and individual monks to accept from any source any privilege inconsistent with the customs of the Order.

So the Charta enjoined a uniformity of discipline. Wise and temperate provision was made for the enforcement of the same when necessary by the immediate parent monastery of the delinquent foundation. “Whenever the Abbot of Citeaux comes to a monastery to visit it, its abbot shall make way for him, and he shall there hold the office of abbot. Yet let him not presume to order or conduct affairs against the wishes of its abbot and the brethren. But if he sees that the precepts of the Regula or of our Order are transgressed, let him seek to correct the brethren with the advice and in the presence of the abbot. If the abbot be absent, he may still proceed.” Once a year the Abbot of Citeaux, in person or through one of his co-abbots, must visit all the monasteries (coenobia) which he has founded, and if more often, the brethren should the more rejoice. Likewise must the four primary abbots of La FertÉ, Pontigny, Clairvaux, and Morimond, together visit Citeaux once a year, at such time as they may choose, except that set for the annual meeting of the general Chapter. At Citeaux also, let any visiting abbot be treated as if he were abbot there.

“Whenever any of our churches (monasteries) by God’s grace so increases that it is able to found another brotherhood, let the same relationship (definitio) obtain between them which obtains between us and our cofratres, except that they may not hold an annual Chapter; but rather let all abbots come without fail every year to the annual Chapter at Citeaux.

“At which Chapter let them take measures for the safety of their souls; if in the observance of the holy Regula or the Order, anything should be amended or supplemented, let them ordain it; let them re-establish the bond of peace and love among themselves.”

The annual Chapter is also given authority to correct any abbot and settle controversies between abbots; but when an abbot appears unworthy of his charge, and the Chapter has not acted, it is the duty of the abbot of his mother church to admonish him, and, upon his obduracy, summon other abbots and move for his deposition. Thus the Charta Charitatis apportioned authority among the abbots of the Order, providing, as it were, a mutual power of enforcement in which every abbot had part. One notices also that the Charta is neither monarchical nor democratic, but aristocratic; for the abbots (not the Abbot of Citeaux alone) manage and control the Order, and without any representation of the monks at the annual Chapter.[441] The Charta Charitatis seems a spiritual mirror of the feudal system.

Mediaeval monasticism, whether cloistered or sent forth into the world, was predominantly coenobitic or communal. Yet through the Middle Ages the anchorite or hermit way of life was not unrepresented. Both monk and hermit existed from the beginning of Christian monasticism; they recognized the same purpose, but employed different means to achieve it. For their common aim was to merit the kingdom of heaven through the suppression of sense-desires and devotion to spiritual righteousness. But the communal system recognized the social nature of man, his essential weakness in isolation, and his inability to satisfy his bodily wants by himself. Thus admitting the human need of fellowship and correction, it deemed that man’s spiritual progress could be best advanced in a way of life which took account of these facts. On the other hand, anchoritism looked rather to man’s self-sufficiency alone with God—and the devil. It held that man could best conquer his carnal nature in solitude, and in solitude best meditate upon his soul and God. The society of one’s fellows, even though they be likeminded, is a distraction and a hindrance. Obviously, the devoted temper has its variants; and some souls will draw from solitude that strength which others gain from support and sympathy.

Both the coenobitic and the hermit life were, from the time of their inception, phases of the vita contemplativa. Yet more active duties had constantly been recognized, until at last monasticism, in an ardour of love for fellow-men, broke from the cloister and went abroad in the steps of Francis and Dominic. Even this active and uncloistered monasticism drew its strength from its hidden meditation, and, strengthened from within itself, entered upon the vita activa, and practised among men the virtues which it had acquired through contemplation and the quiet discipline of the cloister. So if we people of the world would have understanding of the matter, we must never forget that at its source and in its essence the monastic life is a vita contemplativa, whether the monastic man, as a member of a fervent community, be sustained through the support of his brethren and the counsel or command of his superior, or whether, as an anchorite, he seclude himself in solitude. And the essence of this vita contemplativa is not to do or act, but to contemplate, meditate upon God and the human soul. By one line of ancestry it is a descendant of Aristotle’s ??? ?e???t????. But its mightier parent was the Saviour’s manifestation of God’s love of man and man’s love of God. From this source came the emotional elements (and they were the predominant and overwhelming) of the Christian vita contemplativa, its terror and despair, its tears and hope, and its yearning love. Through these any Hellenic calm was transformed to storm-tossed Christian ecstasy.

Monastic quietism might at any time be drafted into Christian militancy. In the crises of the Church, or when there was call to go forth and convert the heathen or the carnal, both monk and hermit became zealots in the world. Yet important and frequent as these active functions were, they were not commanded by the Benedictine regula, either in its original form or in its many modifications, Cluniac, Cistercian, or Carthusian; hence they were not treated as part of the monastic life. There was to come a change. The vita contemplativa was to take to itself the vita activa as a regular and not an occasional function of perfect Christian piety. An evangelization of monasticism, according to the more active spirit of the Gospel, was at hand. The monastic ideal was to become humane and actively loving. In principle and theory, as well as practice, Christian piety was no longer to find its entire end and aim in contemplation, in asceticism, in purity: it was regularly henceforth to occupy itself with a loving beneficence among men.

Some of the ardent beginnings of this movement did not receive the sanction of the Church. The Poor of Lyons, the Humbled Folk (Humiliati) of Lombardy, the Beghards of LiÉge, were pronounced to be heretics. Predominantly lay and ecclesiastically somewhat bizarre, they were scarcely monks. Yet these irregular evangelists of the latter part of the twelfth century were forerunners of that chief evangelizer of Monasticism, Francis of Assisi.[442]

The life of Francis, as all men know, fulfilled the current demands of monasticism. He lived and taught obedience, chastity, humility, and a more absolute poverty than had been before conceived. With respect to the first three virtues, it was only through his loving way of living them that Francis set anything new before his brethren. As for the last, it may be said that monks had always been forbidden to own property; only the monastery or the Order might. Francis’s absolute acceptance of poverty comes to us as inspired by the command of Christ to the rich young man: Go and sell all, and give to the poor, and then come follow me. But had no Christian soul read this before and accepted it absolutely? The Athanasian Life of St. Anthony, at the very beginning of Christian monasticism, has the same account; he too gave up all he had on reading this passage. But then he fled to the desert, while Francis, when he had given up all, opened his arms to mankind. In accordance with his brotherly and social evangelization of monasticism, Francis modified certain of its practices. He removed restrictions upon intercourse among the brethren, and took away the barriers, save those of holiness, between the brethren and the world. Then he lifted the veil of silence from the brethren’s lips. They should thenceforth speak freely, in love of God and man. So monasticism stepped forth, at last uncloistered, upon its course of love and teaching in the world.

In spite of the temperamental differences between Francis and Dominic, and in spite of the different tasks which they set before their Orders, the analogy between Franciscans and Dominicans was fundamental; for the latter, as well as the former, regularly undertook to evoke the vita activa from the vita contemplativa. The Dominicans were to preach and teach true Christian doctrine, and as veritable Domini canes destroy the wolves of heresy menacing the Christian fold.

Dominic received from Pope Honorius III., in 1217, the confirmation of his Order, as an Order of Canons according to the Regula supposed to have been taught by Augustine. The Preaching Friars were never cloistered by their regula, any more than were the Minorites. Two or three years later, Dominic added, or emphasized anew, the principle of voluntary poverty, not only in the individuals but in the Order as a corporate whole. Whencesoever he derived this idea—whether from the Franciscans, or because it was rife among men—at all events it was not his originally; for Dominic had accepted at an earlier period the one-sixth of the revenues of the Bishop of Toulouse. This he now renounced, and instead accepted voluntary poverty.

It was not given to Dominic to love as Francis loved. Nor was he an incarnate poem. But it was in the spirit of Christian devotion that he undertook and laid upon his Order the performance of active duties in the world, especially of preaching true doctrines for the salvation of souls. Dominic took no personal part in the Albigensian blood-shedding; and he was not the founder of the Inquisition, although his Order was so soon to be identified with it. He was a theologian, a teacher, and an ardent preacher; a devoted man, given to tears. Almost the only words we have from him are those of his Testament: “Caritatem habete, humilitatem servate, paupertatem voluntariam possedete.”[443]

CHAPTER XVI

THE HERMIT TEMPER

Peter Damiani; Romuald; Dominicus Loricatus; Bruno and Guigo, Carthusians

To contemplate goodness in God, and strain toward it in yearning love, is the method of the Christian vita contemplativa. In this way the recluse cultivates humility, patience, purity, and love, and perfects his soul for heaven. And herein, in that it is more undistracted and more undisturbed, lies the superiority of the solitary life over the coenobitic.

Yet this conceived superiority is but the reason and the conscious motive for the solitary life. The call to it is felt as well as intellectually accepted. It is temperament that makes the recluse; his reasons are but his justification. In solitude he lives the reaches of his life; from solitude he draws his utmost bliss. To leave it involves the torture of separation, and then all the petty pains of unhappy labour and distasteful intercourse with men. “Whoever would reach the summit of perfection should keep within the cloister of his seclusion, cherish spiritual leisure, and shudder at traversing the world, as if he were about to plunge into a sea of blood. For the world is so filthy with vices, that any holy mind is befouled even by thinking about it.”[444]

Here speaks the hermit temper, by the mouth of a supreme exponent. If Hildebrand, who compelled all men to his purposes, kept Peter Damiani in the world, that ascetic soul did not cease to yearn for the hermit life. His skilful pen served it untiringly. Its temper, its merits, and its grounds, appear with unique clarity in the writings of him who, sore against his will, was the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia.[445]

“The solitary life is the school of celestial doctrine and the divine arts (artes divinae),” says Damiani, meaning every word. “For there God is the whole that is learned. He is also the way by which one advances, through which one attains knowledge of the sum of truth.”[446] To obtain its benefits, it must be led assiduously and without break or wandering abroad among men: “Habit makes his cell sweet to the monk, but roving makes it seem horrible.... The unbroken hermit life is a cooling refreshment (refrigerium); but, if interrupted, it seems a torment. Through continued seclusion the soul is illuminated, vices are uncovered, and whatever of himself had been hidden from the man, is disclosed.”[447]

Peter argues that the hermit life is free from temptations (!) and offers every aid to victory.

“The wise man, bent on safeguarding his salvation, watches always to destroy his vices; he girds his loins—and his belly—with the girdle of perfect mortification. Truly that takes place when the itching palate is suppressed, when the pert tongue is held in silence, the ear is shut off from distractions and the eye from unpermitted sights; when the hand is held from cruel striking, and the foot from vainly roving; when the heart is withstood, that it may not envy another’s felicity, nor through avarice covet what is not its own, nor through anger sever itself from fraternal love, nor vaunt itself arrogantly above its fellows, nor yield to the ticklings of lust, nor immoderately sink itself in grief or abandon itself wantonly to joy. Since, then, the human mind has not the power to remain entirely empty, and unoccupied with the love of something, it is girt around with a wall of the virtues.

“In this way, then, our mind begins to be at rest in its Author and to taste the sweetness of that intimacy. At once it rejects whatever it deems contrary to the divine law, shrinks from what does not agree with the rule of supernal righteousness. Hence true mortification is born; hence it comes that man kissing the Cross of his Redeemer seems dead to the world. No longer he delights in silly fables, nor is content to waste his time with idle talk. But he is free for psalms and hymns and spiritual songs; he seeks seclusion, he longs for a hiding-place; he avoids the monastery’s conversation-rooms and rejoices in nooks and corners; and that he may the more freely attend to the contemplation of his Creator, so far as he may he declines colloquy with men.”[448]

“In fine,” says Damiani, in another treatise, “our entire conversion, and renunciation of the world, aims at nothing else than rest. This rest is won through the man’s prior discipline in the toils of strife, in order that when the tumult of disturbance ceases, his mind, through the grace of contemplation, may be translated to gaze upon the face of truth. But since one attains to this rest only through labour and conflict, how can one reach it who has not gone down into the strife? By what right can one enter the halls of the King who has not traversed the arena before the doors?”[449]

“It further behoves each brother who with his whole heart has abandoned the world, to unlearn and forget forever whatever is injurious. He should not be disputatious as to cookery, nor clever in the petty matters of the town; nor an adept in rhetoric’s jinglings, or in jokes or wordplay. He should love fasts and cherish penury; he should flee the sight of man, restrain himself under the censorship of silence, withdraw from affairs, keep his mouth from idle talk, and seek the hiding-place of his soul, and in such hiding be on fire to see the face of his Creator. Let him pant for tears, and implore God for them by daily prayer.”

With this last sentence Damiani makes his transition to the emotional side of the Christian vita contemplativa. He will now pour himself out in a rhapsody of praise of tears, which purify and refresh the soul, and open it to the love of God.

“From the fire of divine love rises the grace of contrition (gratia compunctionis), and again from the contrition of tears (ex compunctione lacrymarum) the ardour of celestial yearning is increased. The one hangs from the other, and each promotes the other; while the contrition of tears flows from the love of God, through tears again our soul burns more fervidly toward the love of God. In this reciprocal and alternating action, the soul is purged of the filth of its offence.”[450]

Elsewhere Damiani suggests how the hermit may acquire the “grace of tears”:

“Seclude thyself from the turmoil of secular affairs and often even from talk with thy brethren. Cut off the cares and anxieties of mundane action; clear them away as a heap of rubbish which stops the fountain’s flow. As water in a cavern of the earth wells up from the abyss, so sadness (tristitia) wells in a human heart from contemplation of the profundity of God’s Judgment, and yet will not flow forth in tears if checked by the clods of earthly hindrance. Sadness is the material of tears. But in order that the veins of this fount may flow more abundantly, do thou clear away all obstacles of secular business—and other matters also, as I know from experience. Even spiritual zeal in the punishment of delinquents, and the labour of preaching, and like matters, holy as they are and commanded by divine authority, nevertheless are certainly obstacles to tears.

“So if you would attain the grace of tears, you must even curb the exercise of spiritual duties, eliminate malice, anger, and hatred, and the other pests from your heart. And do not let your own accusing conscience dry up the dew of tears with the aridity of fear. Indeed the confidence of holiness (sanctitatis fiducia) and a conscience bearing witness to its own innocence, waters the pure soul with the celestial rivulets of grace, softens the hardness of the impure heart, and opens the floodgates of weeping.”[451]“Many are the ways,” says Damiani in words sounding like a final reflection upon the solitary life—“many are the ways by which one comes to God; diverse are the orders in the society of the faithful; but among them all there is no way so straight, so sure, so unimpeded, so free from obstacles which trip one’s feet, as this holy life. It eliminates occasions for sin; it cultivates the greatest number of virtues by which God may be pleased; and thus, as it removes the opportunities of delinquency, it lays upon good conduct the added strength of necessity’s insistence.”[452]

Peter Damiani, exiled from solitude, found no task more grateful than that of writing the Life of his older contemporary, St. Romualdus, the founder of Camaldoli and other hermit communities in Italy. That man had completely lived the life from which the Church’s exigencies dragged his biographer. Peter put himself, as well as his best literary powers, into this Vita Romualdi, and made it one of the most vivid of mediaeval Vitae sanctorum. If Romuald was a hermit in the flesh, Damiani had the imagination to make the hermit spirit speak.[453]

“Against thee, unclean world, we cry, that thou hast an intolerable crowd of the foolish wise, eloquent as regards thee, mute as to God. Wise are they to do evil; they know not how to do good. For behold almost three lustra[454] have passed since the blessed Romualdus, laying aside the burden of flesh, migrated to the heavenly realm, and no one has arisen from these wise people to place upon the page of history even a few of the lessons of that wonderful life.”

The tone of this prologue suggests the kind of lessons found by the biographer in the Life of Romuald. He was born of an illustrious Ravenna family about the year 950. In youth his devout mind became conscious of the sinfulness of the flesh. Whenever he went hunting, as was his wont, and would come to a retired nook in the woods, the hermit yearning came over him—and in love, says Damiani, he was prescient of what he was later to fulfil in deed.

His father chanced to kill a neighbour in knightly brawl; and for this homicide the son entered the monastery of St. Apollinaris in Classe, to do forty days’ penance for his parent. This introduction to the cloister had its natural effect on such a temper. Goaded by a vision of the saint, Romuald became a monk. He soon showed himself no easy man. His harsh censure of the brethren’s laxities caused a plot to murder him, the first of many attempts upon his life.

Three years he dwelt there. Then the yearning for perfection drove him forth, and, for a master, he sought out a hermit named Marinus, who lived in the Venetian territory, a man well meaning, but untaught as to the method of the hermit life. He and his disciple would issue from their cell and wander, singing together twenty psalms under one tree, and then thirty or forty under another. The disciple was unlettered, and the master rude. Romuald experienced intolerable tedium from straining his fixed eyes upon a psalter, which he could not read. He may have betrayed his ennui. At all events Marinus, grasping his rod in his right hand, and sitting on his disciple’s left, continually beat him, and always on the left side of his head. At length Romuald said humbly: “Master, if you please, would you henceforth beat me on the right side, as I have lost the hearing of my left ear.”

In the neighbourhood there dwelt a duke whose rapacity had brought him into peril. It happened that the abbot of a monastery situated not far from Chalons-sur-Marne in France came pilgrimaging that way, and the duke took counsel of him. The two hermits were also called; and the advice to the duke was to flee the world. So the whole party set forth, crossed the Alps, and travelled to the abbot’s monastery. There the duke became a monk, while Romuald and Marinus dwelt as solitaries a little way off.From this time Romuald increased in virtue, far outstripping all the brethren. He supplied his wants by tilling the soil, and fasted exceedingly. He sustained continual conflicts with the devil, who was always bringing into his mind the loves and hates of his former life in the world.

“The devil would come striking on his cell, just as Romuald was falling asleep, and then no sleep for him. Every night for nearly five years the devil pressed crosses upon his feet, and weighted them with the likeness of a phantom weight, so that Romuald could scarcely turn on his couch. How often did the devil let loose the raging beasts of the vices! and how often did Romuald put them to flight by his dire threats! Hence if any of the brethren came in the silence, knocking at his door, the soldier of Christ, always ready for battle, taking him for the devil, would threaten and cry out: ‘What now, wretch! what is there for thee in the hermitage, outcast of heaven! Back, unclean dog! Vanish, old snake!’ He declared that with such words as these he gave battle to malignant spirits; and with the arms of faith would go out and meet the challenge of the foe in a neighbouring field.”

Marvellously Romuald increased his fasts and austerities, after the manner of the old anchorites of Egypt.[455] Miraculous powers became his. But news came of his father which drew him back to Italy. That noble but sinful parent had entered a monastery where, under the persuasion of the devil, he was soon sorry for his conversion, and sought to return to the world. Romuald decided to go to his perishing father’s aid. But the people of the region hearing of it, were distressed to lose a man of such spiritual might. They took counsel how to prevent his departure, and with impious piety (impia pietate) decided to send men to kill him, thinking that since they could not retain him alive, they would have his corpse as a protection for the land (pro patrocinio terrae). Knowing of this, Romuald shaved his head, and as the murderers approached his cell in the dusk of morning, he began to eat ravenously. Thinking him demented, they did him no injury. He then set forth, staff in hand, and walked from the centre of Gaul, even to Ravenna. There finding his father still seeking to return to the world, he tied the old sinner’s feet to a beam, fettered him with chains, flogged him, and at length by pious severity so subjugated his flesh that with God’s aid he brought his mind back to a state of salvation.[456]

Thus far Romuald’s life affords striking illustration of the fact that prodigious austerities and the consequent repute for miracles were the chief elements in mediaeval sainthood; also of the fact that the saint’s dead body might be as good as he. But while he lived, Romuald was much more than a miracle-working relic. He was a strong, domineering personality. It was soon after he brought his father back to the way of holiness that the old man saw a vision, and happily yielded up the ghost. The son continued to advance in his chosen way of life and in the elements of character which it fostered. He became a prodigious solitary; one to whom men and their ways were intolerable, and who himself was sometimes found intolerable by men. Even his appearance might be exceptional:

“The venerable man dwelt for a while in a swamp (near Ferrara). At length the poisonous air and the stench of the marsh drove him out; and he emerged hairless, with his flesh puffed and swollen (tumefactus et depilatus), not looking as if belonging to the genus homo; for he was as green as a newt.”[457]

Such a story displays the very extravagance of fleshly mortification. It has also its local colour. But one should seek its explanation in the grounds of the hermit life as set forth by Peter Damiani. Then the incidents of Romuald’s life will appear to spring from these hermit motives and from the hermit temperament, which became of terrible intensity with him. Also the egotism, so frequently an element of that temperament, rose with him to spiritual megalomania:

“One day (apparently in the latter part of his life) some disciples asked him, ‘Master, of what age does the soul appear, and in what form is it presented for Judgment?’ He replied, ‘I know a man in Christ, whose soul is brought before God shining like snow, and indeed in human form, with the stature of the perfect time of life.’ Asked again who that man might be, he would not speak for indignation. And then the disciples talked it over, and recognized that he was certainly the man.”[458]

In another part of the Vita, Damiani, having told of his hero’s sojourn with a company of hermits who preferred their will to his, thus continues: “Romuald, therefore, impatient of sterility, began to search with anxious eagerness where he might find a soil fit to bear a fruitage of souls.” It was his passion to change men to anchorites: he yearned to convert the whole world to the solitary life. Many were the hermit communities which he established. But he could not endure his hermit sons for long, nor they him. His intolerant soul revolted from the give and take of intercourse. Such intolerance and his passion to make more converts drove him from place to place. He seemed inspired with a superhuman power of drawing men from the world. Now

“therefore he sent messengers to the Counts of Camerino. When these heard the name of Romuald they were beside themselves with joy, and placed their possessions, mountains, woods, and fields at his disposal, to select from. He chose a spot suited to the hermit way of living, intrenched amid forests and mountains, and affording an ample space of level fruitful ground, watered with crystal streams. The place was called of old the Valley of the Camp (Vallis de Castro), and a little church was there with a convent of women who had turned from the world. Here having built their cells, the venerable man and his disciples took up their abode.

“And what fruitage of souls the Lord there won through him, pen cannot describe nor tongue relate. From all directions men began to pour in, for penance and to bequeath in pity their goods to the poor, while others utterly forsook the world and with fervent spirit hastened to the holy way of life. For this most blessed man was as one of the Seraphim, himself burning with the flame of divine love, and kindling others, wherever he went, with the fires of his holy preaching. Often, while speaking, a vast contrition brought him to such floods of tears that, breaking off his sermon, he would flee anywhere for refuge, like one demented. And also when travelling on horseback with the brethren, he followed far behind them, always singing psalms, as if he were in his cell, and never ceasing to shed tears.”[459]

In that age, the hopes and fears and wonderment of men looked to the recluse as the perfected saint. No wonder that those Italian lands, so blithely sinful and so grievously penitent, were moved by this volcanic tempest of a man, fierce, merciless to the flesh, convulsed with scorching tears, famed for austerities and miracles. He lashed men from their sins; men feared before one whose presence was a threat of hell. Said the Marquis of Tuscany: “Not the emperor nor any mortal man, can put such fear in me as Romuald’s look. Before his face I know not what to say, nor how to defend myself or find excuses.” And the biographer adds that “of a truth the holy man had this grace from the divine favour, that sinners, and especially the great of this world, quaked in their bowels before him as if before the majesty of God.”[460]

But some men hated, and especially those of his own persuasion who could not endure his harshness. From such came attempts at murder, from such also came milder outbreaks of detestation and revolt. No other founder of ascetic communities seems to have been so rebelled against. He went from the Valley of the Camp to Classe, where a simoniac abbot attempted to strangle him; then he returned, but not for long, for the abbot established in his place rejected his reproofs, and maligned him with the lords of the land. “And in that way,” says Damiani, “the tall cedar of Paradise was cast forth from the forest of earthly men.”[461]

His next sojourn was Vallombrosa, where after his decease one of his disciples was to found a famous cloister. From that nest in the Tuscan Apennines, he went to dwell permanently on the Umbrian mount of Sytrio. At this point his biographer proceeds:

“Whoever hears that the holy man so often changed his habitation, must not ascribe this to the vice of levity. For the cause of these changes was that wherever he stayed, an almost countless crowd assembled, and when he saw one place filled with converts he very properly would appoint a prior and at once hasten to fill another.

“In Sytrio what insults and what indignities he endured from his disciples! We will set down one instance, and omit the rest for brevity. There was a disciple named Romanus, noble by birth, but ignoble by deed. Him the holy man for his carnal impurity not only chided by word but corrected with heavy beatings. That diabolic man dared to retort with the fabrication of the same charge, and to bark with sacrilegious mouth against this temple of the Holy Spirit, saying forsooth that the holy man was spotted with this same infection. The rage of the disciples broke out immediately against Romuald. All were his enemies: some declared that the wicked old man ought to be hanged from a gallows, others that he should be burned in his cell.

“One cannot understand how spiritual men could have believed such wickedness of a decrepit old man, whose frigid blood and aridity of attenuated frame would have forbade him, had he had the will. But doubtless it is to be deemed that this scourge of adversity came upon the holy man by the will of Heaven, to augment his merit. For he said himself that he had foreknown it with certainty in the solitude which he had left just before, and had come with alacrity to undergo this shame. But that false monkish reprobate who brought the charge against the holy man, afterwards became Bishop of Noceria through simony, and in the first year of his occupancy, saw, as he deserved, his house with his books and bells and the rest of his sacred paraphernalia burned; and in the second year, the divine sentence struck him and he wretchedly lost both his dignity and his life.

“In the meanwhile the disciples put a penance on the holy man as if he had been guilty, and deprived him of the right to celebrate the holy mysteries. He willingly accepted this false judgment, and took his penance like a culprit, not presuming to approach the altar for well-nigh six months. At length, as he afterwards told his disciples, he was divinely commanded to celebrate mass. On the next day, when proceeding with the sacrifice, he became rapt in ecstasy, and continued speechless for so long a time that all present marvelled. When afterwards asked the reason of his delay, he replied: ‘Carried into heaven, I was borne before God; and the divine voice commanded me, that with such intelligence as God had set in me, I should write and commend for use a Commentary on the Psalms. Overcome with terror, I could only respond: so let it be, so let it be.’ For this reason the holy man made a Commentary on the whole Psalter; and although its grammar was bad, its sense was sound and clear.”[462]

Various attempts were made in the Middle Ages to render the hermit life practicable, through permitting a limited intercourse among a cluster of like-minded ascetics, as well as to regulate it under the direction of a superior. In Italy, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the picturesque energy of the individual hermit is prodigious, while in the north, as in the establishment of the Carthusian Order, the organization is better, the result more permanent, but the imaginative and consistent extravagance of personality is not there. In the hermit communities founded by Romuald there was a prior or abbot, invested with some authority. Yet the organization was less complete than in coenobitic monasteries; for Romuald’s hermit methods sought to minimize the intercourse among the brethren, to an extent which was scarcely compatible with effective organization. An idea of these communities may be had from Damiani’s description of one of them:

“Such was the mode of life in Sytrio, that not only in name but in fact it was as another Nytria.[463] The brethren went barefoot; unkempt and haggard; they were content with the barest necessaries. Some were shut in with doomed doors (damnatis januis), seemingly as dead to the world as if in a tomb. Wine was unknown, even in extreme illness. The attendants of the monks (famuli monachorum) and those who kept the cattle, fasted and preserved silence. They made regulations among themselves, and laid penances for speaking.”[464]

For seven years Romuald lived at Sytrio as an inclusus, shut up in his cell, and preserving unbroken silence. Yet though his tongue was dumb his life was eloquent. He lived on, setting a shining example of squalor and austerity, eating only vile food, and handing back untouched any savoury morsel. His conflicts with the devil continued; nor was he ever vanquished. Advancing years intensified his aversion to human society and his passion for solitude. In proportion as he made his ways displeasing to men, his self-approval was enhanced.[465] A solitary death kept tally with the temper of a recluse life.

“When he saw his end draw near he returned to the Valley of the Camp, and had a cell with an oratory prepared, in which to immure himself and keep silence until death. Twenty years before, he had foretold to his disciples that there he should attain his peace; and had declared his wish to breathe forth his spirit with no one standing by or bestowing the last rites. When this cell of immurement (reclusorium) was ready, the mind in Romuald was so that it scarcely could be imprisoned. But his body grew heavy with the increasing ills of extreme age, and the hard breathing of tussis. Yet not for this would the holy man lie on a bed or relax his fasts. One day his strength gradually forsook him, and he found himself sinking with fatigue. So as the sun was setting he directed two brothers who stood by to go out and shut the door of his cell after them. He told them that when the time came for them to celebrate the matin hymns at dawn, they might return. Unwillingly they went out, but did not go at once to rest; and waited anxiously, concealing themselves by the master’s cell. After a while, as they listened intent and could hear no movement of his body nor any sound of his voice, correctly conjecturing what had happened, they broke open the door, rushed in and lighted the light; and there, the blessed soul having been transported to heaven, they found the holy corpse supine. It lay as a celestial pearl neglected, but hereafter to be placed with honour in the treasury of the King.”[466]

The spiritual unity which lies beneath the actions of Romuald should be sought in the reasons and temper of the hermit life. To perfect the soul for its passage to eternity is the fundamental motive. Monastic logic convinces the man that this can best be accomplished through withdrawal from the temptations of the world; and the hermit temper draws irresistibly to solitude. The only consistent social function left to such a man is that of turning the steps of his fellows to his own recluse path of perfection. Romuald’s life manifests such motives and such temper, and also this one function passionately performed. We see in him no love of kind, but only a fiery passion for their salvation. Also we see the absorption of self in self with God, the harsh intolerance of other men, the fierce aversions and the passionate cravings which are germane to the hermit life.

Physical self-mortification is the element of the hermit life most difficult for modern people to understand. Yet nothing in Romuald extorted more entire admiration from his biographer than his austerities. And if there was one man on earth whom Peter admired as much as he did Romuald, it was a certain mail-coated Dominicus, a virtuoso in self-mortification. He exhibits its purging and penitential motives. Scourging purifies the body from carnality; that is one motive. It also atones for sins, and lessens the purgatorial period after death; this is another. There is a third which is rooted rather in temperament than in reason. This is contrition; the contrite heart may love to flagellate itself in love of Him who suffered sinless.

Dominicus was surnamed Loricatus because he wore a coat of mail against the attacks of the devil through the frailties of the too-comfortable flesh. In his youth, family influence had installed him in a snug ecclesiastic berth. As he reached maturity and bethought himself, the sense of this involuntary simoniacal contamination filled him with remorse. He abjured the world and became a member of the hermit community of Fonte Avellana, where Damiani exercised the authority of prior. Yet the latter looked on Dominic as his master, whom he admired to the pitch of marvel, while regretting that he lacked himself the strength and leisure to equal his flagellations. So Peter was enraptured with this wonder of a Dominic, and wrote his biography, which deserved telling if, as Peter says, his entire life, his tota quippe vita, was a preaching and an edification, instruction and discipline (praedicatio, aedificatio, doctrina, disciplina).

One descriptive passage from it will suffice:

“I am speaking of Dominic, my teacher and my master, whose tongue indeed is rustic, but whose life is polished and accomplished (artificiosa satis et lepida). His life indeed preaches more effectively by its living actions (vivis operibus) than a barren tongue which inanely weighs out the balanced phrases of a bespangled urbanity (phaleratae urbanitatis). Through a long course of gliding years, girt with iron mail, he has waged truceless war against the wicked spirits; with cuirassed body and heart always ready for battle, he marches eager warrior against the hostile array.

“Likewise it is his regular and unremitting habit, with a rod in each hand every day to beat time upon his naked body, and thus scourge out two psalters. And this even in the slacker season. For in Lent or when he has a penance to perform (and he often undertakes a penance of a hundred years), each day, while he plies himself with his rods, he pays off at least three psalters repeating them mentally (meditando).

“The penance of a hundred years is performed thus: With us three thousand blows satisfies a year of penance; and the chanting (modulatio) of ten psalms, as has often been tested, admits one thousand blows. Now, clearly, as the Psalter consists of one hundred and fifty psalms, any one computing correctly will see that five years of penance lie in chanting one psalter, with this discipline. Now, whether you take five times twenty or twenty times five you have a hundred. Consequently whoever chants twenty psalters, with this accompanying discipline, may be confident of having performed a hundred years of penance. Herein our Dominic outdid those who struck with only one hand; for he, a true son of Benjamin, warred indefatigably with both hands against the lawless rebels of the flesh. He has told me himself that he easily accomplished a penance of a hundred years in six days.”[467]

This loricated Dominic was conscious of his virtuosity. We find him at the beginning of a certain Lent, requesting the imposition of a penance of a thousand years! Again, he comes after vespers to Damiani’s cell to tell him that between morning and evening he has broken his record by “doing” eight psalters! And once more we read of his coming troubled to his master, saying: “You have written, as I have just heard, that in one day I chanted nine psalters with corporeal discipline. When I heard it, I turned pale and groaned. ‘Woe is me,’ I said; ‘without my knowledge, this has been written of me, and yet I do not know whether I could do it.’ So I am going to try again, and I shall certainly find out.”[468]Dominic probably derived more pleasure than pain from his scourgings. For besides the vanity of achievement, and some ecstasy of contrition, the flesh itself turns morbid and rejoices in its laceration. Yet such austerity is pre-eminently penal, and is initially impelled by fear. With Dominic, with Romuald, with Damiani, the fear of hell entered the motives of the secluded life. To observe this fear writ large in panic terror, we turn to the old legend regarding the conversion of Bruno of Cologne, the founder of the Carthusian Order. The scene is laid in Paris, where (with much improbability) Bruno is supposed to be studying in the year 1082. One of the most learned and pious of the doctors of theology died. His funeral had been celebrated, and his body was about to be carried to the grave, when the corpse raised its head and cried aloud with a dreadful voice: “Justo Dei judicio accusatus sum.” Then the head fell back. The people, terror-stricken, postponed the interment to the following day, when again, as before, with a grievous and terrible voice the corpse raised its head and cried: “Justo Dei judicio judicatus sum.” Amid general terror the interment was again postponed to the next day, when, as before, with a horrible cry the corpse shrieked: “Justo Dei judicio condemnatus sum.”

At this, Bruno, impressed and terrified, said to his friends: “Beloved, what shall we do? Unless we fly we shall all perish utterly. Let us renounce the world, and, like Anthony and John the Baptist, seek the caves of the desert, that we may escape the wrath of the Judge, and reach the port of salvation.” So they flee, and the Carthusian Order, with its terrific asceticism, begins.[469]

This story, aside from its marvellous character, does not harmonize with the more authentic facts of Bruno’s life. It is, however, a striking expression of the ascetic fear; it also reflects psychologic truth. Who but the man himself knows the naughtiness of his own heart? its never-to-be disclosed vile and morbid thoughts? The modern may realize this. Hamlet did. And it was just such a phase of self-consciousness as the mediaeval imagination would transform into a tale of horror. Bruno himself had been a learned doctor, a teacher, and the head of the cathedral school at Rheims; he had been a zealous soldier of the Church. In all this he had not found peace. The profession of a doctor of theology, even when coupled with more active belligerency for the Church, afforded no certain salvation. The story of the Paris doctor may have symbolized the anxieties which dwelt in Bruno’s breast, until under their stimulus the yearnings of a solitary temper gathered head and at last brought him with six followers to Carthusia (la grande Chartreuse), which lies to the north of Grenoble. 1084 is the year of its beginning.

It was a hermit community, the brethren living two by two in isolated cells, but meeting for divine service in a little chapel. Camaldoli may have been the model. Bruno wrote no regula for his followers, and the practices of the Order were first formulated by Guigo, the fifth prior, in his Consuetudines Cartusiae, about the year 1130.[470] These permit a limited intercourse among the brethren, for the service of God and the regulation of their own lives. Yet the broader object was seclusion. Not only severance from the world, but the seclusion of the brethren from each other, in solitary labour and contemplation, was their ideal. The asceticism of these Consuetudines is of the strictest. And somehow it would seem as if in the Carthusian Order the frailties of the spirit and the lusts of the flesh were to be permanently vanquished by this set life of labour, meditation, and rigid asceticism. Carthusia nunquam reformata, quia nunquam deformata, remained true century after century. This long freedom from corruption was partly due to the lofty and somewhat exclusive character of the brotherhood. Carthusia was no broad way for the monastic multitude. Its monks were relatively few and holy, the select of God. Men of devout piety, they must be. It was also needful that they should be possessed of such intellectual endowment and meditative capacity as would with God’s grace yield provision for a life of solitary thought.

The intellectual piety of Carthusia finds its loftiest expression in the Meditationes of this same prior Guigo,[471] the form of which calls to mind the Reflections of Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus. In substance they reflect Augustine’s intellectual devoutness and many of his thoughts. But they seem Guigo’s very own, fruit of his own reflection; and thus incidentally they afford an illustration of the general principle that by the twelfth century the Middle Ages had made over into themselves what they had drawn from the Fathers or from the pagan antique. Guigo’s Meditations possess spiritual calm; their logic is unhesitating; it is remorselessly correct, however incomplete may be its premises or its comprehension of life’s data. Whoever wishes to know the high contemplative mind of monastic seclusion in the twelfth century may learn it from this work. A number of its precepts are given here for the sake of their illustrative pertinency and intrinsic merit, and because our author is not very widely known. He begins with general reflections upon Veritas and Pax:

“Truth should be set in the middle, as something beautiful. Nor, if any one abhors it, do thou condemn, but pity. Thou indeed, who desirest to come to it, why dost thou spurn it when it chides thy faults?

“Without form and comeliness and fastened to the cross, truth is to be worshipped.

“If thou speakest truth not from love of truth but from wish to injure another, thou wilt not gain the reward of a truthspeaker but the punishment of a defamer.

“Truth is life and eternal salvation. Therefore you ought to pity any one whom it displeases. For to that extent he is dead and lost. But you, perverse one, would not tell him the truth unless you thought it bitter and intolerable to him. You do still worse when in order to please men you speak a truth which delights them as much as if it were lies and flattery. Not because it displeases or pleases should truth be spoken, but as it profits. Yet be silent when it would do harm, as light to weak eyes.

“Blessed is he whose mind is moved or affected only by the perception and love of truth, and whose body is moved only by his mind. Thus the body, like the mind, is moved by truth alone. For if there is no stirring in the mind save that of truth, and none in the body save that from the mind, then also there is no stirring in the body save from truth, that is from God.

“Thou dost all things for the sake of peace, toward which the way lies through truth alone, which is thine adversary in this life. Therefore either subject thee to it or it to thee. For nothing else is left thee.

“The lake does not boast because it abounds in water; for that is from the source. So as to thy peace. Its cause is always something else. Therefore thy peace is shifting and inconstant in proportion to the instability of its cause. How worthless is it when it arises from the pleasingness of a human face!

“Let not temporal things be the cause of thy peace; for then wilt thou be as worthless and fragile as they. You would have such a peace in common with the brutes; let thine be that of the angels, which proceeds from truth.

“The beginning of the return to truth is to be displeased with falsity. Blame precedes correction.

“In the cares which engage thee for thy salvation, no service or medicine is more useful than to blame and despise thyself. Whoever does this for thee is thy helper.

“Easy is the way to God, since it advances by laying down burdens. Thou dost unburden thyself so far as thou deniest thyself.

“When anything good is said of thee, it is but as a rumour regarding which thou knowest better.

“Consider the two experiences of filling and emptying (ingestionis et egestionis); which blesses thee more? That burdens thee with useless matters; this disburdens thee. To have had that is to have devoured it altogether. Nothing remains for hope. So in all things of sense. They perish all. And what of thee after these? Set thy love and hope on what will not pass.

“Bestial pleasure comes from the senses of the flesh; it is diabolic, a thing of arrogance, envy, and deceit; philosophic pleasure is to know the creature; the angelic pleasure is to know and love God.

“When we take our pleasure from that from which brutes draw pleasure—from lust like dogs, or from gluttony like swine—our souls become like theirs. Yet we do not shudder. I had rather have a dog’s body than his soul. It would be more tolerable if our body changed to bestial shape, while our soul remained in its dignity, that is, in the likeness of God.

“Readily man entangles himself in love of bodies and of vanity; but, willy, nilly, he is torn with fear and grief at their dissolution. For the love of perishable things is as a fountain of useless fears and sorrows. The Lord frees the poor man from the mighty, by loosing him from the fetter of earthly love.

“The human soul is tortured in itself as long as it can be tortured, that is, as long as it loves anything besides God.

“Thou hast been clinging to one syllable of a great song, and art troubled when that wisest Singer proceeds in His singing. For the syllable which alone thou wast loving is withdrawn from thee, and others succeed in order. He does not sing to thee alone, nor to thy will, but His. The syllables which succeed are distasteful to thee because they drive on that one which thou wast loving evilly.

“All matters which are called adverse are adverse only to the wicked, that is, those who love the creature instead of the Creator.

“If in any way thou art tormented by fear, or anger or hate or grief of any kind, lay it to thyself, that is, to thy concupiscence, ignorance, or sloth. And if any one wishes to injure thee, lay that to his concupiscence. Thy distress is evidence of thy sin in loving anything destructible, having dismissed God. Thou dost grieve over the ruined show; lay it to thee and thine error because thou hast been cleaving to things that may be broken.

“He seeks a long temptation who seeks a long life.

“What God has not loved in His friends—power, rank, riches, dignities—do not thou love in thine.

“Snares thou eatest, drinkest, wearest, sleepest in; all things are snares.

“We are exiles through love and wantonness and inclination, not through locality; exiles in the country of defilement, of dark passions, of ignorance, of wicked loves and hates.

“In so far as thou lovest thyself—that is, this temporal life—so far dost thou love what is transitory.

“Adverse matters do not make thee wretched, but rather show thee to have been so; prosperity blinds the soul, by covering and increasing misery, not by removing it.

“Every one ought to love all men. Whoever wishes another to show special love toward him is a robber, and an offender against all.

“Mixed through this body, thou wast wretched enough; for thou wast subject to all its corruptions, even to the bite of the flea or the sorunculus. This did not suffice thee. Thou hast mixed thyself up with other quasi bodies, the opinion of men, admiration, love, honour, fear and the like. When these are harmed, pain comes to thee, as from bodily hurt. Thy honour is hurt when contempt is shown thee; and so with the rest. Think also thus regarding bodily forms.

“Unless thou hast despised whatever men can do to thwart or aid thee, thou wilt not be able to contemn their disposition toward thee, their hate and love, their opinions, good or bad.

“Why dost thou wish to be loved by men?

“Who rejoices in praise, loses praise.

“Who is pained or angered by the loss of any temporal thing, shows himself worth what he has lost.

“No thing ought to wish to be loved as good, unless it blesses its lover in the very matter for which it is loved. But no thing does this if it needs its lover, or is helped by loving or being loved by another. Most cruel, then, is the thing which wishes another to place affection and hope on it when it cannot benefit that other. The devils do this, who wish men to be engrossed in their service instead of God’s. So cry to thy lovers, Cease, ye wretched, to admire or respect or honour me; for I, miserable wretch, can neither aid myself nor you, but rather need your aid.

“So far as in thee is, thou hast destroyed all men, for thou hast put thyself between them and God, so that gazing on thee and ignoring God, they might admire and praise thee alone. This is utterly profitless to thee and them, not to say destructive.

“Whatever form thou dost enjoy is as the male to thy mind. For thy mind yields and lies down to it. Thou dost not assimilate it, but it thee. Its image endures, like an idol in its temple, to which thou dost sacrifice neither ox nor goat, but thy rational soul and thy body, to wit, thy whole self, when thou enjoyest it.

“See how, as in a wine-shop, thou dost prostitute thine as a venal love, and to the measure of pay weighest thyself out to men. In this wine-shop he receives nothing who gives nothing. And yet thou wouldst not have that which thou dost sell, unless freely from above it had been given to thee who gave nothing. Therefore thou hast received thy pay.

“To be empty and removed from God is to make ready for lust.

“Who wishes to enjoy thee in thyself, deserves from thee the thanks of flies and fleas who suck thy blood.

“This is the very sum of human depravity to forsake the better, which is God, and to regard the lesser and cleave to them by delighting in them—these temporalities!

“The beetle as it flies sees everything, and then selects nothing that is beautiful or wholesome or durable, but settles down upon dung. So thy soul in mental flight (intuitu pervolans) surveying heaven and earth and whatever is great and precious therein, cleaves to none of these, but embraces the cheap and dirty things occurring to its thought. Blush for this.“When thou pleadest with God not to take from thee something to which thou cleavest by desire, it is as if an adulteress caught by her husband in the act, should not ask pardon for her crime, but beg him not to interrupt her pleasure. It is not enough for thee to go wantoning from God, but thou must incline Him to save and approve the things in which thou takest delight to thy undoing—the forms of bodies, their savours and their colours.

“The poverty of thine inner vision of God, purblind as thou art, although He is there, makes thee willing to go out of doors from thine own hearth, refusing to linger within thyself, as in the dark. So thou hast nothing to do but go gaping after the external forms of bodies and the opinions of men. Thou dost carry thyself in this world as if thou hadst come hither to gaze and wonder at the forms of bodies.

“May God be gracious to thee, that the feet of thy mind may find no resting-place, so that somehow, O soul, thou mayest return to the Ark, like Noah’s dove.

“Prosperity is a snare, adversity the knife that cuts it; prosperity imprisons us from the love of God; adversity breaks the dungeon in pieces.

“Since you are taken only by pleasure, you should shun whatever gives it. The Christian soul is safe only in adversity. From what thou cherishest God makes thee rods.

“The only medicine for every pain and torment is contempt for whatever in thee is hurt by them, and the turning of the mind to God.

“As many carnal pleasures as thou spurnest, just so many snares of the devil dost thou escape. As many tribulations—especially those for truth’s sake—as thou dost flee, so many salutary remedies thou spurnest.

“In hope thou mayest cherish the unripened grain; thus love those who are not yet good, Be such toward all as the Truth has shown itself toward thee. Just as it has sustained and loved thee for thy betterment, so do thou sustain and love men in order to better them.

“You are set as a standard to blunt the darts of the enemy, that is, to destroy evil by opposing good to it. You should never return evil for evil, except very medicinally; which is not to return evil but good.

“If to cleave to God is thine whole and only good, thine whole and only evil is separation from Him.

“Who loves all will be saved without doubt; but who is loved by men will not for that reason be saved.”

The unity of these Meditations lies in the absolute manner in which the meditating soul attaches itself to God as its whole and only good. Herein Guigo’s thoughts are Augustinian. One notes their clear intellectual tone. Nothing lures the thinker from his aim and goal of God. He abhors whatever might distract him; and as to all except God and God’s commands, he is indifferent. Guigo detests impermanence as keenly as did the Brahmin and Buddhist meditators of India. He has as high regard as any Indian or Greek philosopher for a life of thought. But there are differences between the Carthusian prior and the Greek or Indian sage. Guigo’s renunciation does not (from his standpoint) penetrate life as deeply as Gotama’s; for Guigo renounces only things comparatively insignificant, so utterly transient are they, so completely they pale before the light of his goal of God. Therein shall lie clearer attainment than lay at the end of any Indian chain of reasoning. So note well, that Guigo, like other Christians, is not essentially a renouncer, but one who attains and receives.

The difference between him and the Greek is also patent. The source of his blue lake of thought is not himself, but God. Although calm and sustained by reason, he is rationally the opposite of self-reliant, and so the opposite of the ideal Stoic or Aristotelian. God is his Creator, the source of his thoughts, the loadstar of his meditations, the all-comprehending object of his desire.

We find in Guigo further specific elements of Christian asceticism, which sharpen his repugnances for the world of transient phenomena. Those phenomena mostly contain elements of sin: all pleasure is temptation and a snare; adversity keeps the soul’s wings trimmed true. So the main content of passing mortal life, while not evil in itself, is so charged with temptation and allure, that it is worthy only of avoidance. The transient, the physical, the brutal, the diabolic—one shades into the next, and leads on to the last. Have none of them, O soul! They are snares all.

Of course, Guigo has the specific monkish horror of sexual lust, that chief of fleshly snares. But he goes further. With him all particular, disproportionate love is wrong; love no one, and desire not to be loved, out of the proportionment of the common love which God has for all His creatures: so love you, and not otherwise. Others, even women, attained this standard. In the legend, St. Elizabeth of Hungary gives thanks that she loves her own children no more than others’. She is no mother, but a saint. So Guigo will love all—love indeed? one queries. Thus also will he have others hold themselves toward him, lest he be a stumbling-block in their or his salvation.

Yea, salvation! If indeed this monk shall not have attained that, of a truth he would be of all men most miserable—save for the quiet, thought-filled calm which is his inner and his veritable life. It is a calm not riven by the storms which drove the soul of Peter Damiani. God was not less to Guigo; but the temperaments of the two men differed. Not beyond or out of one’s nature can one love or yearn, or even know the stress of storm.

CHAPTER XVII

THE QUALITY OF LOVE IN SAINT BERNARD

Through the prodigious power of his personality, St. Bernard gave new life to monasticism, promoted the reform of the secular clergy and the suppression of heresy, ended a papal schism, set on foot the Second Crusade, and for a quarter of a century swayed Christendom as never holy man before or after him. An adequate account of his career would embrace the entire history of the first half of the twelfth century.[472]

The man who was to move men with his love, and quell the proud with fear, had, as a youth, a graceful figure, a sweet countenance, and manners the most winning. Later in life he is spoken of as cheerfully bearing reproaches, but shamefaced at praise, and his gentle manners are again mentioned.

“As a helpmeet for his holy spirit, God made his body to conform. In his flesh there was visible a certain grace, but spiritual rather than of the flesh. A brightness not of earth shone in his look; there was an angelic purity in his eyes, and a dove-like simplicity. The beauty of the inner man was so great that it would burst forth in visible tokens, and the outer man would seem bathed from the store of inward purity and copious grace. His frame was of the slightest (tenuissimum), and most spare of flesh; a blush often tinged the delicate skin of his cheeks. And a certain natural heat (quidquid caloris naturalis) was in him, arising from assiduous meditation and penitent zeal. His hair was bright yellow, his beard reddish with some white hairs toward the end of his life. Actually of medium stature, he looked taller.”[473]

This same biography says:

“He who had set him apart, from his mother’s womb, for the work of a preacher, had given him, with a weak body, a voice sufficiently strong and clear. His speech, whatever persons he spoke to for the edifying of souls, was adapted to his audience; for he knew the intelligence, the habits and occupations of each and all. To country folk he spoke as if born and bred in the country; and so to other classes, as it he had been always occupied with their business. He was learned with the erudite, and simple with the simple, and with spiritual men rich in illustrations of perfection and wisdom. He adapted himself to all, desiring to gain all for Christ.”[474]

Bernard was born of noble parents at the Chateau of Fontaines, near Dijon, in the year 1090, and was educated in a church school at Chatillon on the Seine. It is an ofttold story, how, when little more than twenty years of age, he drew together a band formed of his own brothers, his uncle, and his friends, and led them to Citeaux,[475] his ardent soul unsatisfied so long as one held back. Three years later, in 1115, the Abbot, Stephen Harding, entrusted him with the headship of the new monastery, to be founded in the domains of the Count of Troyes. Bernard set forth with twelve companions, came to Clara Vallis on the river Aube, and placed his convent in that austere solitude.

Great were the attractions of Clairvaux (Clara Vallis) under Bernard’s vigorous and loving rule. Its monks increased so rapidly and so constantly that during its founder’s life sixty-five bands were sent forth to rear new convents. Meanwhile, Bernard’s activities and influence widened, till they seemed to compass western Christendom. He had become a power in the politics of Church and State. In 1130 he was summoned by Louis le Gros practically to determine the claims of the rival Popes Innocent II. and Anacletus II. He decided for the former, and was the chief instrument of his eventual reinstatement at Rome. Before this Bernard’s health had been broken by his extreme austerities. Yet even the lamentable failure of the Second Crusade, zealously promoted by him, did not break his power over Europe, which continued unimpaired until his death in 1153.

This active and masterful man was impelled by those elements of the vita contemplativa which formed his inner self. First and last and always he was a monk. Had he not been the very monk he was, he would not have been the dominator of men and situations that he proved himself to be. Temperament fashions the objects of contemplation, and shapes the yearning and aversions, of great monks. The temperamental element of love—the love of God and man, with its appurtenant detestations—made the heart of Bernard’s vita contemplativa, and impassioned and empowered his active faculties. It was the keynote of his life: in his letters it speaks in words of fire, while other writings of the saint analyze this great human quality with profundity and truth. In these he renders explicit the modes of affection which man may have for man and above all for God; he sets them forth as the path as well as goal of life on earth, and then as the rapt summit of attainment in the life to come. Through all its stages, as it flows from self to fellow, as it rises from man to God, love still is love, and forms the unifying principle among men and between them and God.

Let us trace in his letters the nature and the power of Bernard’s love, and see with what yearning he loved his fellows, seeking to withdraw them from the world; and how his love strove to be as sword and armour against the flesh and the devil. By easy transition we shall pass to Bernard’s warning wrath, flung against those who would turn the struggling soul aside, or threaten the Church’s peace; then by more arduous, but still unbroken stages, we may rise to the love of Jesus, and through love of the God-man to love of God. We shall realize at the close why that last mediaeval assessor of destinies, whose name was Dante Alighieri, selected St. Bernard as the exponent of the blessed vision which is salvation’s crown in the paradise of God.[476]

The way of life at Clara Vallis might discourage monks of feeble zeal. Among the brethren of these early days was one named Robert, a cousin of the Abbot, seemingly of weak and petulant disposition. Soon he fled, to seek a softer cell in Cluny, the great and rich monastery to which his parents appear to have dedicated him in childhood. For a while Bernard suppressed his grief; but the day came when he could endure no longer Robert’s abandonment of his soul’s safety and of the friend who yearned for him. He stole out of the monastery, accompanied by a monk named William. There, in the open (sub dio), Bernard dictated a long letter to be sent to the deserter. While the two were busy, the one dictating, the other writing, a rainstorm broke upon them. William wished to stop. “It is God’s work; write and fear not,” said Bernard. So William wrote on, in the midst of the rain; but no drop fell on him or the parchment; for the power of love which dictated the letter preserved the parchment on which it was being written.[477]

Whoever has read this letter in its own fervent Latin will not care to dispute this miracle, for which it stands first in the collection of Bernard’s correspondence. Bernard does not recriminate or argue in it; his love shall bring the young monk back to him. Yes, yes, he says to all that the other has urged regarding fancied slights and persecution:

“Quite right; I admit it. I am not writing in order to contend, but to end contention. To flee persecution is no fault in him who flees, but in him who pursues; I do not deny it. I pass over what has happened; I do not ask why or how it happened. I do not discuss faults, I do not dispute as to the circumstances, I have no memory for injuries. I speak only what is in my heart. Wretched me, that I lack thee, that I do not see thee, that I am living without thee, for whom to die would be to live; without whom to live, is to die. I ask not why thou hast gone away; I complain only that thou dost not return. Come, and there shall be peace; return, and all shall be made good.“It was certainly my fault that thou didst go away. I was too austere with thy young years, and treated thee inhumanly. So thou saidst when here, and so I hear thou dost still reproach me. But that shall not be imputed to thee. I never meant it harshly, I was only indiscreet. Now thou wilt find me different, and I thee. Where before thou didst fear the master, thou shalt now embrace the companion. Do not think that I will not excuse any fault of thine. Dost thou wish to be quite free from fault? then return. If thou wilt forget thy fault I will pardon it; also pardon thou me, and I too will forget my fault.”

Bernard then argues long and passionately against those who had led the young man away and received him with such blandishments at Cluny; and passionately he argues against the insidious softening of monastic principles.

“Arise, soldier of Christ, arise, shake off the dust, return to the battle whence thou hast fled, and more bravely shalt thou fight and more gloriously triumph. Christ has many soldiers who bravely began, stood fast and conquered; He has few who have turned from flight and renewed the combat. Everything rare is precious; and thou among that rare company shalt the more radiantly shine.

“Thou art fearful? so be it; but why dost thou fear where there is no fear, and why dost thou not fear where everything is to be feared? Because thou hast fled from the battle-line, dost thou think to have escaped the foe? It is easier for the Adversary to pursue a fugitive than to bear himself against manful defence. Secure, arms cast aside, thou takest thy morning slumbers, the hour when Christ will have arisen! The multitude of enemies beset the house, and thou sleepest. Is it safer to be caught alone and sleeping, than armed with others in the field? Arouse thee, seize thy arms, and escape to thy fellow-soldiers. Dost thou recoil at the weight of thy arms, O delicate soldier! Before the enemy’s darts the shield is no burden, nor the helmet heavy. The bravest soldiers tremble when the trumpet is heard before the battle is joined; but then hope of victory and fear of defeat make them brave. How canst thou tremble, walled round with the zeal of thy armed brethren, angels bearing aid at thy right hand, and thy leader Christ? There shalt thou safely fight, secure of victory. O battle, safe with Christ and for Christ! In which there is no wound or defeat or circumvention so long as thou fleest not. Only flight loses the victory, which death does not lose. Blessed art thou, and quickly to be crowned, dying in battle. Woe for thee, if recoiling, thou losest at once the victory and the crown—which may He avert, my beloved son, who in the Judgment will award thee deeper damnation because of this letter of mine if He finds thee to have taken no amendment from it.”

“It is God’s work,” said Bernard to the hesitating scribe. These words suggest the character of the love which inspired this letter. He loved Robert as man yearns for man; but his motive was to do God’s will, and win the young man back to salvation. In after years this young man returned to Clara Vallis.

It was Bernard’s lot to write many letters urging procrastinators to fulfil their vows,[478] or appealing to those who had laid aside the arms of austerity, perhaps betaking themselves to the more worldly life of the secular clergy. This seems to have been the case with a young canon Fulco, whom an ambitious uncle sought to draw back to the world, or at least to a career of sacerdotal emolument. In fact, Fulco at last became an archdeacon; from which it may be inferred that in his case Bernard’s appeal was not successful. He had poured forth his arguments in an ardent letter.[479] Love compels him to use words to make the recipient grieve; for love would have him feel grief, that he might no longer have true cause for grief—good mother love, who can cherish the weak, exercise those who have entered upon their course, or quell the restless, and so show herself differently toward her sons, all of whom she loves. This letter, like the one to Robert, concludes with a burning peroration:

“What dost thou in the city, dainty soldier? Thy fellows whom thou hast deserted, fight and conquer; they storm heaven (coelum rapiunt) and reign, and thou, sitting on thy palfrey (ambulatorem), clothed in purple and fine linen, goest ambling about the highways!”

Bernard also wrote letters of consolation to parents whose sons had become monks, or letters of warning to those who sought to withdraw a monk from his good fight. In one instance, his influence had made a monk of a youth of gentle birth named Godfrey, to his parents’ grief. So Bernard writes to them:

“If God makes your son His also, what have you lost, or he? He, from rich, becomes richer, from being noble, still more illustrious, and what is more than all, from a sinner he becomes a saint. It behoved him to be made ready for the Kingdom prepared for him from the foundation of the world, and for this reason it is well for him to spend with us his short span of days, so that clean from the filth of living in the world, earth’s dust shaken off, he may become fit for the heavenly mansion. If you love him you will rejoice that he goes to his Father, and such a Father! He goes to God, but you do not lose him; rather through him you gain many sons. For all of us who belong to Clara Vallis have taken him to be our brother and you for our parents.

“Perhaps you fear this hard life for his tender body—that were to fear where there is nothing to fear. Have faith and be comforted. I will be a father to him and he shall be my son until from my hands the Father of Mercies and God of all consolation shall receive him. Do not grieve; do not weep; your Godfrey is hastening to joy, not to sorrow. A father to him will I be, a mother too, a brother and a sister. I will make the crooked ways straight, and the steep places plain. I will so temper and provide for him that as his spirit profits, his body shall not want. So shall he serve the Lord in joy and gladness, and shall sing before Him, How great is the glory of the Lord.”[480]

Young Godfrey was a daintily nurtured plant. For all the Abbot’s eloquence he did not stay in Clara Vallis. The world drew him back. It was now for the saint to weep:

“I grieve over thee, my son Godfrey; I grieve over thee. And with reason. For who would not lament that the flower of thy youth which, to the joy of angels, thou didst offer unsullied to God in the odour of sweetness, is now trampled on by demons, defiled with sins, and contaminated by the world. How could you, who were called by God, follow the devil recalling thee? How could you, whom He had begun to draw to Himself, withdraw your foot from the very entry upon glory? In thee I see the truth of those words: ‘A man’s foes are they of his own household.’ Thy friends and neighbours drew near and stood up against thee. They called thee back into the jaws of the lion and the gates of death. They have set thee in darkness, like the dead; and thou art nigh to go down into the belly of hell, which now is ravening to devour thee.

“Turn back, I say, turn back, before the abyss swallows you and the pit closes its mouth, before you are engulfed whence you shall not escape, before, bound hand and foot, you are cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, before you are hurled into darkness, shut in with the darkness of death.

“Perhaps you blush to return, where you have only now fallen away. Blush for flight, and not for turning to renew the combat. The conflict is not ended; the hostile arrays have not withdrawn from each other. We would not conquer without you, nor do we envy you your share of the glory. Joyful we will run to thee, and receive thee in our arms, crying: ‘It is meet to make merry and be glad; for this our son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.’”[481]

Who knows whether this letter brought back the little monk? Bernard wrote so lovingly to him, so gently to his parents. He could write otherwise, and show himself insensible to this world’s pestering tears. To the importunate parents of a monk named Elias, who would drag him away from Clara Vallis, Bernard writes in their son’s name thus:

“To his dear parents, Ingorranus and Iveta, Elias, monk but sinner, sends daily prayers.

“The only cause for which it is permitted not to obey parents is God; for He said: ‘Whoso loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.’ If you truly love me as good and faithful parents, why do you molest my endeavour to please the Father of all, and attempt to withdraw me from the service of Him, to serve whom is to reign? For this I ought not to obey you as parents, but regard you as enemies. If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I go to my Father and yours. But what is there between you and me? What have I from you save sin and misery? And indeed the corruptible body which I carry I admit I have from you. Is it not enough that you brought miserable me into the misery of this hateful world? that you, sinners, in your sin produced a sinner? and that him born in sin, in sin you nourished? Envying the mercy which I have obtained from Him who desireth not the death of a sinner, would you make me a child of hell?

“O harsh father! savage mother! parents cruel and impious—parents! rather destroyers, whose grief is the safety of the child, whose consolation is the death of their son! who would drag me back to the shipwreck which I, naked, escaped; who would give me again to the robbers when through the good Samaritan I am a little recovering from my wounds.

“Cease then, my parents,” concludes the letter after many other reproofs, “cease to afflict yourselves with vain weeping and to disquiet me. No messengers you send will force me to leave. Clara Vallis will I never forsake. This is my rest, and here shall be my habitation. Here will I pray without ceasing for my sins and yours; here with constant prayer will I implore that He whose love has separated us for a little while, will join us in another life happy and inseparable,—in whose love we may live forever and ever. Amen.”[482]

If Bernard was severe toward those who threatened some loved person’s weal, his anger burned more fiercely against those whom he deemed enemies of God. Heavy was his hand upon the evils of the Church: “The insolence of the clergy—to which the bishop’s neglect is mother—troubles the earth and molests the Church. The bishops give what is holy to the dogs, and pearls to swine.”[483]

Likewise, fearlessly but with restraint arising from his respect for all power ordained of God, Bernard opposes kings. Thus he writes to Louis the Fat, in regard to the election of a bishop, with many protests, however, that he would not oppose the royal power—for which we note his reason: “If the whole world conspired to force me to do aught against kingly majesty, yet would I fear God, and would not dare to offend the king ordained by Him. For neither do I forget where I read that whosoever resisteth power, resisteth the ordinance of God.” But—but—but—continues the letter, through many qualifyings which are also admonitions. At last come the words: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, even for thee, O king.” Thereupon the saint does not fail to speak his mind.[484]

Bernard’s fiercest denunciations were reserved for heretics and schismatics, for Abaelard, for Arnold of Brescia, for the Antipope Anacletus—were they not enemies of God? Clearly the saint saw and understood these men from his point of view. Thus in a letter to Innocent II.[485] he sums up his attitude towards Abaelard: “Peter Abaelard is trying to make void the merit of Christian faith, when he deems himself able by human reason to comprehend God altogether. He ascends to the heavens and descends even to the abyss! Nothing may hide from him in the depths of hell or in the heights above! The man is great in his own eyes—this scrutinizer of Majesty and fabricator of heresies.” Here was the gist of the matter. That a man should be great in his own eyes, apart from God, and teach others so, stirred Bernard’s bowels.[486]

Of Arnold, the impetuous clerical revolutionist and pupil of Abaelard, Bernard writes with fury: “Arnold of Brescia, whose speech is honey and whose teaching poison, whom Brescia vomited forth, Rome abhorred, France repelled, Germany abominates, Italy will not receive, is said to be with you.”[487] Again, Bernard rejoices with great joy when he hears that the anti-pope who divided Christendom was dead.[488]

It is pleasant to turn back to Bernard’s lovingness and mercy. His God would not condemn those who repented; and the saint can be gentle toward sinners possibly repentant. He urges certain monks to receive back an erring brother: “Take him back then, you who are spiritual, in the spirit of gentleness; let love be confirmed in him, and let good intention excuse the evil done. Receive back with joy him whom you wept as lost.”[489] In another letter he urges a countess to be more lenient with her children;[490] and there is a story of his begging a robber from the hands of the executioners, and leading him to Clara Vallis, where he became at length a holy man.[491]

So one sees Bernard’s severity, his gentle mercy, and the love burning within him for his fellows’ good. Such were the emotions of Bernard the saint. The man’s human heart could also yearn, and feel bereavement in spite of faith. As his zeal draws him from land to land, he is home-sick for Clara Vallis. From Italy, in 1137, fighting to crush the anti-pope, a letter carries his yearning love to his dear ones there:

“Sad is my soul, and not to be consoled, until I may return. For what consolation save you in the Lord have I in an evil time and in the place of my pilgrimage? Wherever I go, your sweet recollection does not leave me; but the sweeter the memory the more vexing is the absence. Alas! my wandering not only is prolonged but aggravated. Hard enough is exile from the Lord, which is common to us all while we are pilgrims in the body. But I endure a special exile also, compelled to live away from you.

“For a third time my bowels are torn from me.[492] Those little children are weaned before the time; the very ones whom I begot through the Gospel I may not educate. I am forced to abandon my own, and care for the affairs of others; and it is not easy to say whether to be dragged from the former, or to be involved in the latter is harder to bear. Thus, O good Jesus, my whole life is spent in grief and my years in groaning! It is good for me, O Lord, to die, rather than to live and not among my brothers, my own household, my own dearest ones.”[493]

Bernard had a younger brother, Gerard, whom he deeply loved. In 1138 he died while still young, and having recently returned with Bernard from Italy. Bernard, dry-eyed, read the burial-service over his body; so says his biographer wondering, for the saint was not wont to bury even strangers without tears.[494] No other eyes were dry at that funeral. Afterwards he preached a sermon;[495] it began with restraint, then became a long cry of grief.

The saint took the text from Canticles where he had left off in his previous sermon—“I am black, but comely, as the tents of Kedar.” He proceeded to expound its meaning: the tents are our bodies, in which we pilgrims dwell and carry on our war. Then he spoke of other portions of the text—and suddenly deferred the whole subject till his next sermon: Grief ordains an end, “and the calamity which I suffer.”

“For why dissemble, or conceal the fire which is scorching my sad breast? What have I to do with this Song, I who am in bitterness? The power of grief turns my intent, and the anger of the Lord has parched my spirit. I did violence to my soul and dissembled till now, lest sorrow should seem to conquer faith. Others wept, but with dry eyes I followed the hateful funeral, and dry-eyed stood at the tomb, until all the solemnities were performed. In my priestly robes I finished the prayers, and sprinkled the earth over the body of my loved one about to become earth. Those who looked on, weeping, wondered that I did not. With such strength as I could command, I resisted and struggled not to be moved at nature’s due, at the fiat of the Powerful, at the decree of the Just, at the scourge of the Terrible, at the will of the Lord. But though tears were pressed back, I could not command my sadness; and grief, suppressed, roots deeper. I confess I am beaten. My sorrow will out before the eyes of my children who understand and will console.

“You know, my sons, how just is my grief. You know what a comrade has left me in the path wherein I was walking. He was my brother in blood and still closer by religion. I was weak in body, and he carried me; faint-hearted, and he comforted me; lazy, and he spurred me; thoughtless, and he admonished me. Whither art thou snatched away, snatched from my hands! O bitter separation, which only death could bring; for living, thou wouldst never leave me. Why did we so love, and now have lost each other! Hard state, but my fortune, not his, is to be pitied. For thou, dear brother, if thou hast lost dear ones, hast gained those who are dearer. Me only this separation wounds. Sweet was our presence to each other, sweet our consorting, sweet our colloquy; I have lost these joys; thou hast but changed them. Now, instead of such a worm as me, thou hast the presence of Christ. But what have I in place of thee? And perhaps though thou knewest us in the flesh, now that thou hast entered into the power of the Lord, thou art mindful only of His righteousness, forgetting us.

“I seem to hear my brother saying: ‘Can a woman forget her sucking child; even so, yet will I not forget thee.’ That does not help, where no hand is stretched out.”

Bernard speaks of Gerard’s unfailing helpfulness to him and every one, and of his piety and religious life. He feels the cares of his life and station closing around him, and his brother gone. Then he justifies his grief, and pours it forth unrestrained. Would any one bid him not to weep? as well tell him not to feel when his bowels were torn from him; he feels, for his flesh is not brass; he grieves, and his grief is ever before him:

“I confess my sorrow. Will some one call me carnal? Certainly I am human, since I am a man. Nor do I deny being carnal, for I am, and sold under sin, adjudged to death and punishment. I am not insensible to punishments; I shudder at death, my own or others’. Mine was Gerard, mine! He is gone, and I feel, and am wounded, grievously!

“Pardon me, my sons; or rather lament your father’s state. Pity me, and think how grievously I have been requited for my sins by the hand of God. Though I feel the punishment, I do not impugn the sentence. This is human; that would be impious. Man must needs be affected towards those dear to him, with gladness at their presence, with sorrow at their absence. I grieve over thee, Gerard, my beloved, not because thou art to be pitied, but because thou art taken away. May it be that I have not lost thee, but sent thee on before! Be it granted me some time to follow whither thou art gone; for thou hast joined the company of those heavenly ones on whom in thy last hours thou didst call exultingly to praise the Lord. For thee death had no sting, nor any fear. Through his jaws Gerard passed to his Fatherland safe and glad and exulting. When I reached his side, and he had finished the psalm, looking up to heaven, he said in a clear voice: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ Then saying over again and again the word, ‘Father, Father,’ he turned his joyful face to me, and said: ‘What great condescension that God should be father to men! What glory for men to be sons of God and heirs of God!’ So he rejoiced, till my grief was almost turned to a song of gladness.

“But the pang of sorrow calls me back from that lovely vision, as care wakens one from light slumber. I grieve, but only over myself; I lament his loss to this household, to the poor, to all our Order; whom did he not comfort with deed and word and example? Grievously am I afflicted, because I love vehemently. And let no one blame my tears; for Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. His tears bore witness to His nature, not to His lack of faith. So these tears of mine; they show my sorrow, not my faithlessness. I grieve, but do not murmur. Lord, I will sing of thy mercy and righteousness. Thou gavest Gerard; thou hast taken him. Though we grieve that he is gone, we thank thee for the gift.

“I bear in mind, O Lord, my pact and thy commiseration, that thou mightest the more be justified in thy word. For when last year we were in Viterbo, and he fell sick, and I was afflicted at the thought of losing him in a strange land and not bringing him back to those who loved him, I prayed to thee with groans and tears: ‘Wait, O Lord, until our return. When he is restored to his friends, take him, if thou wilt, and I will not complain.’ Thou heardest me, God; he recovered; we finished the work thou hadst laid on us, and returned in gladness bringing our sheaves of peace. Then I was near to forget my pact, but not so thou. I shame me of these sobs, which convict me of prevarication. Thou hast recalled thy loan, thou hast taken again what was thine. Tears set an end to words; thou, O Lord, wilt set to them limit and measure.”[496]

We may now turn to Bernard’s love of God, and rise with him from the fleshly to the spiritual, from the conditioned to the absolute. There is no break; love is always love. More especially the love of Christ, the God-man is the mediating term: He presents the Godhead in human form; to love Him is to know a love attaching to both God and man.

Guigo, Prior of the “Grande Chartreuse,” whose Meditations have been given,[497] was Bernard’s friend, and wrote to him upon love. Bernard replies: “While I was reading it, I felt sparks in my breast, from which my heart glowed within me as from that fire which the Lord sent upon the earth!” He hesitates to suggest anything to Guigo’s fervent spirit, as he would hesitate to rouse a bride quiet in the bridegroom’s arms. Yet “what I do not dare, love dares; it boldly knocks at a friend’s door, fearing no repulse, and quite careless of disturbing your delightful ease with its affairs.” Bernard is here speaking of love’s importunate devotion; his words characterize the soul’s importuning of God:

“I should call love undefiled because it keeps nothing of its own. Indeed it has nothing of its own, for everything which it has is God’s. The undefiled law of the Lord is love, which seeks not what profits itself but what profits many. It is called the law of the Lord, either because He lives by it, or because no one possesses it save by His gift. It is not irrational to speak of God as living by law, that law being love. Indeed in the blessed highest Trinity what preserves that highest ineffable unity, except love?”

So far, Bernard has been using the word charitas. Now, in order to indicate love’s desire, he begins to use the words cupiditas and amor.[498] When these yearning qualities are rightly guided by God’s grace, what is good will be cherished for the sake of what is better, the body will be loved for the soul’s sake, the soul for God’s sake, and God for His own sake.

“Yet because we are of the flesh (carnales) and are begotten through the flesh’s concupiscence, our yearning love (cupiditas vel amor noster) must begin from the flesh; yet if rightly directed, advancing under the leadership of grace, it will be consummated in spirit. For that which is first is not spiritual, but that which is natural (animale); then that which is spiritual. First man loves (diligit) himself for his own sake. For he is flesh, and is able to understand nothing beyond himself. When he sees that he cannot live (subsistere) by himself alone, he begins, as it were from necessity, to seek and love God. Thus, in this second stage, he loves God, but only for his own sake. Yet as his necessities lead him to cultivate and dwell with God in thinking, reading, praying, and obeying, God little by little becomes known and becomes sweet. Having thus tasted how sweet is the Lord, he passes to the third stage, where he loves God for God’s sake. Whether any man in this life has perfectly attained the fourth stage, where he loves himself for God’s sake, I do not know. Let those say who have knowledge; for myself, I confess it seems impossible. Doubtless it will be so when the good and faithful servant shall have entered into the joy of his Lord, and shall be drunk with the flowing richness of God’s house. Then oblivious to himself, he will pass to God and become one spirit with Him.”[499]

So one sees the stages through which love of self and lust of fellow become love of God. A responsive emotion attends each ascending step in the saint’s intellectual apprehension of love—as one should bear in mind while following the larger exposition of the theme in Bernard’s De deligendo Deo.[500]

The cause and reason for loving God is God; the mode is to love without measure: “Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est; modus, sine modo diligere.” Should we love God because of His desert, or our advantage? For both reasons. On the score of His desert, because He first loved us. What stint shall there be to my love of Him who is my life’s free giver, its bounteous administrator, its kind consoler, its solicitous ruler, its redeemer, eternal preserver and glorifier? On the other hand, “God is not loved without reward; but He should be loved without regard to the reward. Charitas seeks not its own. It is affection and not a contract; it is not bought, nor does it buy. Amor is satisfied with itself. It has the reward, which is what is loved. True love demands no reward, but merits one. The reward, although not sought by the lover, is due him, and will be rendered if he perseveres.”

Bernard proceeds to expound the four stages or grades (gradus) of love:

“Love is a natural affection, one of the four.[501] As it exists by nature, it should diligently serve the Author of nature first of all. But as nature is frail and weak, love is compelled by necessity first to serve itself. This is carnal love, whereby, above everything, man loves himself for his own sake. It is not set forth by precept, but is rooted in nature; for who hates his own flesh? As love becomes more ready and profuse, it is not content with the channel of necessity, but will pour forth and overspread the broad fields of pleasure. At once the overflow is bridled by the command, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ This is just and needful, lest what is part of nature should have no part in grace. A man may concede to himself what he will, so long as he is mindful to provide the same for his neighbour. The bridle of temperance is imposed on thee, O man, out of the law of life and discipline, in order that thou shouldst not follow thy desires, nor with the good things of nature serve the enemy of the soul, which is lust. If thou wilt turn away from thy pleasures, and be content with food and raiment, little by little it will not so burden thee to keep thy love from carnal desires, which war against the soul. Thy love will be temperate and righteous when what is withdrawn from its own pleasures is not denied to its brother’s needs. Thus carnal love becomes social when extended to one’s kind.

“Yet in order that perfect justice should exist in the love of neighbour, God must be regarded (Deum in causa haberi necesse est). How can one love his neighbour purely who does not love in God? God makes Himself loved, He who makes all things good. He who founded nature so made it that it should always need to be sustained by Him. In order that no creature might be ignorant of this, and arrogate for himself the good deeds of the Creator, the Founder wisely decreed that man should be tried in tribulations. By this means, when he shall have failed and God have aided, God shall be honoured by him whom He has delivered. The result is that man, animal and carnal, who knew not how to love any one beside himself, begins for his own sake to love God; because he has found out that in God he can accomplish everything profitable, and without Him can do nothing.

“So now for his own interest, he loves God—love’s second grade; but does not yet love God for God’s sake. If, however, tribulation keeps assailing him, and he continually turns to God for aid, and God delivers him, will not the man so oft delivered, though he have a breast of iron and a heart of stone, be drawn to cherish his deliverer, and love Him not only for His aid but for Himself? Frequent necessities compel man to come to God incessantly; repeatedly he tastes and, by tasting, proves how sweet is the Lord. At length God’s sweetness, rather than human need, draws the man to love Him. Thereafter it will not be hard for the man to fulfil the command to love his neighbour. Truly loving God, he loves for this reason those who are God’s. He loves chastely, and is not oppressed through obeying the chaste command; he loves justly, and willingly embraces the just command. That is the third grade of love, when God is loved for Himself.

“Happy is he who attains to the fourth grade, where man loves himself only on account of God. Thy righteousness, O God, is as the mountain of God; love is that mountain, that high mountain of God. Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord? Who will give me the wings of a dove and I will fly away and be at rest. Alas! for my long-drawn sojourning! When shall I gain that habitation in Zion, and my soul become one spirit with God? Blessed and holy will I call him to whom in this mortal life such has been given though but once. For to be lost to self and not to feel thyself, and to be emptied of thyself and almost to be made nothing, that pertains to heavenly intercourse, not to human affection. And if any one among mortals here gain admission for an instant, at once the wicked world is envious, the day’s evil disturbs, the body of death drags down, fleshly necessity solicits, corruption’s debility does not sustain, and, fiercest of all, brotherly love calls back! Alas! he is dragged back to himself, and forced to cry: ‘O Lord, I suffer violence, answer thou for me’ (Isa. xxxviii. 14); ‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Rom. vii. 24).

“Yet Scripture says that God made all things for His own sake; that will come to pass when the creation is in full accord with its Author. Therefore we must sometime pass into that state wherein we do not wish to be ourselves or anything else, except for His sake and by reason of His will, not ours. Then not our need or happiness, but His will, will be fulfilled in us. O holy love and chaste! O sweet affection! O pure and purged intention of the will, in which nothing of its own is mingled! This is it to be made God (deificari). As the drop of water is diffused in a jar of wine, taking its taste and colour, and as molten iron becomes like to fire and casts off its form, and as the air transfused with sunlight is transformed into that same brightness of light, so that it seems not illumined, but itself to be the light, thus in the saints every human affection must in some ineffable mode be liquefied of itself and transfused into the will of God. How could God be all in all if in man anything of man remained? A certain substance will remain, but in another form, another glory, another power.”

Hereupon St. Bernard considers how this fourth grade of love will be attained in the resurrection, and “perpetually possessed, when God only is loved and we love ourselves only for His sake, that He may be the recompense and aim (praemium) of those who love themselves, the eternal recompense of those who love eternally.”

Christ is the universal Mediator between God and man, not only because reconciling them, but as forming the intervening term, the concrete instance of the One suited to the comprehension of the other. Such thoughts and sentiments as commonly apply to man, when they are applied to Christ become fit to apply to God. Herein especially may be perceived the continuing identity of love, whether relating to human beings or to God. The soul’s love of Christ is mediatorial, and symbolic of its love of God. All of which Bernard has demonstrated with conjoined power of argument and feeling in his famous Sermons on Canticles.[502]

The human personality of Christ draws men to love Him, till their love is purged of carnality and exalted to a perfect love of God:

“Observe that the heart’s love is partly carnal; it is affected through the flesh of Christ and what He said and did while in the flesh. Filled with this love, the heart is readily touched by discourse upon His words and acts. It hears of nothing more willingly, reads nothing more carefully, recalls nothing more frequently, and meditates upon nothing more sweetly. When man prays, the sacred image of the God-man is with him, as He was born or suckled, as He taught or died, rose from the dead or ascended to heaven. This image never fails to nerve man’s mind with the love of virtue, cast out the vices of the flesh and quell its lusts. I deem the principal reason why the invisible God wished to be seen in the flesh, and, as man, hold intercourse with men, was that He might draw the affections of carnal men, who could only love carnally, to a salutary love of His flesh, and then on to a spiritual love.”

Conversely, the Saviour’s example teaches men how they should love Him:

“He loved sweetly, wisely, and bravely: sweetly, in that He put on flesh; wisely, in that He avoided fault; bravely, in that He bore death. Those, however, with whom He sojourned in the flesh, He did not love carnally, but in prudence of spirit. Learn then, Christian, from Christ how to love Christ.”

Bernard shows how even the Apostles failed sometimes to love Him according to His perfect teaching and example:

“Good, indeed, is this carnal love,” he concludes, “through which a carnal life is shut out; and the world is despised and conquered. This love progresses as it becomes rational, and perfected as it becomes spiritual.”[503]

From his own experiences Bernard could have spoken much of the winning power of Jesus, and could have told how sweetly it drew him to love his Saviour’s steps from Bethlehem to Calvary. The fifteenth sermon upon Canticles is on the healing power of Jesus’ name.

“Dry is all food for the soul unless anointed with that oil. Whatever you write is not to my taste unless I read Jesus there. Your talk and disputation is nothing unless that name is rung. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, joy in the heart. He is medicine as well. Is any one troubled, let Jesus come into the heart and thence leap to the lips, and behold! at the rising of that bright name the clouds scatter and the air is again serene. If any one slips in crime, and then desponds amid the snares of death, will he not, invoking that name of life, regain the breath of life? In whom can hardness of heart, sloth, rancour, languishment stand before that name? In whom at its invocation will not the dried fount of tears burst forth more abundantly and sweetly? To what fearful trembler did the power of that name ever fail to bring back confidence? To what man struggling amid doubts did not the clear assurance of that name, invoked, shine forth? Who despairing in adversity lacked fortitude if that name sounded? These are the languors and sickness of the soul, and that the medicine. Nothing is as potent to restrain the attack of wrath, or quell the tumour of pride, or heal envy’s wound, or put out the fire of lust, or temper avarice. When I name Jesus, I see before me a man meek and humble of heart, benignant, sober, chaste, pitying, holy, who heals me with His example and strengthens me with aid. I take example from the Man, and draw aid from the Mighty One. Here hast thou, O my soul, an herb of price, hidden in the vessel of that name, bringing thee health surely and in thy sickness failing thee never.”

This is a little illustration of Bernard’s love of the Christ-man, a love which is ever taking on spiritual hues and changing to a love of the Christ-God. Christians, from the time of Origen, had recognized the many offices of Christ, the many saving potencies in which He ministered unto each soul according to its need. And so Bernard preaches that the sick soul needs Christ as the physician, but that the saintly soul has other yearnings for a more perfect communion.

This perfect communion, this most complete relationship which in this mortal life a soul can have with Christ, with God, had been symbolized, likewise ever since the time of Origen, by the words Bride and Bridegroom, and the Song of Songs had furnished the burning phrases. With surpassing spirituality Bernard uses the texts of Canticles to set forth the relationship of the soul to Christ, of man to God. The texts are what they are, burning, sensuous, fleshly, intense, and beautiful—every one knows them; but in Bernard’s sermons flesh fades before the spirit’s whiter glow.

“O love (amor), headlong, vehement, burning, impetuous, that canst think of nothing beyond thyself, detesting all else, despising all else, satisfied with thyself! Thou dost confound ranks, carest for no usage, knowest no measure. In thyself dost thou triumph over apparent opportuneness, reason, shame, council and judgment, and leadest them into captivity. Everything which the soul-bride utters resounds of thee and nothing else; so hast thou possessed her heart and tongue.”[504]

What Bernard here ejaculates as to the overwhelming sufficiency of love, he sets forth finally in a sustained and reasoned passage, in which man’s ways of loving God are cast together in a sequence of ardent thought and image. He has been explaining the soul’s likeness to the Word. Although it be afflicted and defiled by sin, it may yet venture to come to Him whose likeness it retains, however obscured. The soul does not leave God by change of place, but, in the manner of spiritual substance, by becoming depraved. The return of the soul is its conversion, in which it is made conformable to God.

“Such conformity marries the soul to the Word, whom it is like by nature, and may show itself like in will, loving as it is loved. If it loves perfectly it weds. What more delightful than this conformity, what more desirable than this love, through which thou, O soul, faithfully drawest near to the Word, with constancy cleavest to the Word, consulting Him in everything, as capable in intellect as audacious in desire. Spiritual is the contracting of these holy nuptials, wherein always to will the same makes one spirit out of two. No fear lest the disparity of persons make but a lame concurrence of wills: for love does not know respect. The name love comes from loving and not from honouring. He may honour who dreads, who is struck dumb with fear and wonder. Not so the lover. Love aboundeth in itself, and derides and imprisons the other emotions. Wherefore she who loves, loves, and knows nothing else. And He who is to be honoured and marvelled at, still loves rather to be loved. Bridegroom and Bride they are. And what necessity or bond is there between spouses except to be loved and love?

“Think also, that the Bridegroom is not only loving but very love. Is He also honour? I have not so read. I have read that God is love; not that He is honour, or dignity. God indeed demands to be feared as Lord, to be honoured as Father, and as Bridegroom to be loved. Which excels the rest? Love, surely. Without it, fear is penal, and honour graceless. Fear is slavish till manumitted by love; and the honour which does not rise from love is adulation. To God alone belong honour and glory; but He will accept neither unless it is flavoured with love’s honey.

“Love asks neither cause nor fruit beyond itself. I love because I love; I love that I may love. A great thing is love. Among all the movements, sensations, and affections of the soul, it is the only one wherein the creature can make a return to its Author. If God be angry with me, shall I likewise be angry with Him? Nay, I will fear and tremble and beseech. If He accuse me, I will make no counter-charge, but plead before Him. If He judge me, I will not judge but worship. And when He saves me, He asks not to be saved by me; nor does He who frees all ask to be freed of any one. Likewise if He commands, I obey, and do not order Him. Now see how different it is with love. For when God loves, He wishes only to be loved; He loves with no other end than to be loved, knowing that those who love are blessed with love itself.“A great thing is love; but there are grades in it. The Bride stands at the summit. Sons love, but they are thinking of their inheritance. Fearing to lose that, they honour, rather than love, him from whom they expect it. Love is suspect when its suffrage appears to be won by hope of gain. Weak is it, if it cease or lessen with that hope withdrawn. It is impure if it desires anything else. Pure love is not mercenary: it gains no strength from hope, nor weakens with lack of trust. This love is the Bride’s, because she is what she is by love. Love is the Bride’s sole hope and interest. In it the Bride abounds and the Bridegroom is content. He seeks nothing else, nor has she ought beside. Hence he is Bridegroom and she Bride. This belongs to spouses which none else, not even a son, can attain. Man is commanded to honour his father and mother; but there is silence as to love. Which is not because parents are not to be loved by their sons; but because sons are rather moved to honour them. The honour of the King loves judgment; but the Bridegroom’s love—for He is love—asks only love’s return and faith.

“Rightly renouncing all other affections, the Bride reposes on love alone, and returns a love reciprocal. And when she has poured her whole self out in love, what is that compared with the perennial flood of that fountain? Not equals in abundance are this loving one and Love, the soul and the Word, the Bride and Bridegroom, creature and Creator—no more than thirst equals the fount. What then? shall she therefore despair, and the vow of the would-be Bride be rendered empty? Shall the desire of this panting one, the ardour of this loving one, the trust of this confiding one be baffled because she cannot keep pace with the giant’s course, in sweetness contend with honey, in mildness with the Lamb, in whiteness with the Lily, in brightness with the Sun, in love with Him who is love? No. For although the creature loves less, because she is less, yet if she loves with her whole self, nothing lacks where there is all. Wherefore, as I have said, so to love is to have wedded; for no one can so love and yet be loved but little, and in mutual consent stands the entire and perfect marriage.”[505]

Who has not marvelled that the relationship of marriage should make so large a part of the symbolism through which monks and nuns expressed the soul’s love of God? Historically it might be traced to Paul’s precept, “Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church”; still more potently it was derived from the Song of Songs. But beyond these almost adventitious influences, did not the holy priest, the monk, the nun, feel and know that marriage was the great human relationship? So they drew from it the most adequate allegory of the soul’s communion with its Maker: differently according to their sex, with much emotion, and even with unseemly imaginings, they thought and felt the love of God along the ways of wedded union or even bridal passion.[506]

CHAPTER 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.”

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.

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