The evils of our present exaggerated individualism are universally

admitted. Men are united upon all points except those involving moral

responsibility. While it is quite clear that in matters of science we

are willing to trust to authority, on the other hand, in the more

complex and easily perverted order of ideas (involving as they do the

gravest consequences), every man is endowed with infallibility. This

is simply an inversion of the natural order. The normal and rational

order is preserved by Catholicity. With the Catholic Church religious

truth as the basis of morality is a tradition whose bearing upon human

science and politics always requires fresh application and is

co-extensive with the possibility of human growth. But while this

application of principle is left to individual effort and furnishes

the proper exercise of the intellect, the excesses of individualism

are always to be counteracted by a living authority. The ability of

the church to maintain her unity has been demonstrated and perfected

in its operation by the storms which the last three centuries have

launched against her. The opposition to her, on the contrary, has

brought about its own destruction. If the absurdities of modern

individualism are to be remedied, the cure lies in an earnest

consideration of the claims of Christianity. Protestantism, though a

grievous calamity, has served to settle for ever all those questions

concerning the supreme source of doctrinal authority which had been

raised by the intrigues of the secular power in the middle age. Now it

is no longer possible to confuse the sentiment of obedience to

authority by reference to unlawful sources. The attack of modern

governments upon the church tends still further to circumscribe the

limits of secular power, and to define clearly that which belongs to

Cæsar and that which belongs to God.

The stability and permanence of Catholic thought are maintained in

great measure by the prerogatives of the spiritual power, which

promulgates and guards the divine tradition committed to its care. But

the real power which that tradition exercises is its truth and its

conformity with facts. The divine revelation is made to reason. It

supposes a rational being. It is accepted on rational and convincing

evidence, and becomes operative in virtue of divine grace. Its aim is

to elevate and ennoble human nature and to heal its infirmities. In

fulfilling this mission it acts in harmony with God’s other works,

always above and with reason, but never against it. It puts no

obstacle in the way of human science, which, as the Vatican Council

declares, can only contradict revelation by being incomplete or by

misinterpreting divine truth. It encourages labor in its development

of nature as a means of discipline and as furnishing the necessary

condition of peace and civilization. It stimulates art to search after

beauty as a means of showing the necessity and embellishing the truth

of heavenly doctrine. It is true that the Catholic faith does not

permit the intellect to repose in any one of these occupations as its

sole end. In the light of divine truth science and art are united by a

synthesis; and the rest which faith forbids the soul to take in

earthly pursuits is denied by its own nature. The synthesis which

faith provides is sought restlessly and eagerly by the mind. Modern

thought, which has been turned away from Catholicity, searches vainly

for some principle of unity.

The faith which redeemed the ancient world and prepared the germs of

that degree of civilization that has not been wholly destroyed by

Protestantism, was in no respect like the withering, soul-destroying

horrors of Calvinism. The doctrines which supplied matter for the

intense intellectual life of the middle age, which corrected Aristotle

and piled tome after tome of the close, serried reasoning of St.

Thomas Aquinas, was in accord with human reason, vindicated the

dignity and powers of man, and stimulated him with fresh vigor in

every sphere of science, poetry, and art. Scholasticism was nothing

else than an effort of human reason to demonstrate the reasonableness

of Christianity. The present generation is so grossly ignorant of

those eight hundred years of most intense life which formed

Christendom that it is not capable of appreciating their influence and

still less their character. But whoever will read the _proœmium_ of

the _Summa Contra Gentiles_ of the “Angel of the Schools” will see the

difference between the constructive doctrine of the middle age and the

reactionary delusions of the sixteenth century—the bitter fruit of

that splendid revival of paganism. Protestantism, viewed as a system

of doctrine, was simply an extravagant caricature of the

supernaturalism of the Catholic Church. As a system of morality it was

nothing else than the emancipation of the passions from the restraints

imposed by Christianity. Having destroyed the necessary conditions of

faith by denying authority, it presented the ideas of grace and

sanctification in such a distorted manner as to render sacraments

unnecessary and unmeaning, to do away with free will, merit, and

natural goodness—in a word, to abolish human nature. Wherever the

heirs of the so-called Reformers have revolted from the unnatural task

of propagating their religious system they have left mankind, not

simply bewildered by the darkness whence it has emerged, but without

the heavenly guidance which genuine Christianity provides. It has

robbed men of the light of heavenly doctrine, and has furthermore

stripped them of the aid of the sacramental system, the means of the

action of divine grace and of the growth of supernatural life, without

which natural virtue and natural intelligence cannot long endure in

purity.

The present state of our people calls for what Protestantism has not.

Justification by faith could not save its first professor from

breaking his vows and debauching another person equally bound; nor

will its influence increase by repeating his famous dictum, _Pecca

fortiter sed crede fortius_. The evanescence of genuine fanaticism on

the part of evangelical religion is no guarantee of a better state of

morals. Our people have got beyond simply _believing_ and _feeling_;

they wish to _do_ right, but they are gradually coming to acknowledge

that man cannot _do_ right without _knowing_ what he ought to do,

viz., what is right; and the best and wisest will confess that they do

not know what they ought to do, and that they can see nothing in the

future from whence they may expect to learn. Whether they will be

content to review the evidences of Catholicity we know not. Many are

doing so, but the intense worldliness of the day is not favorable to

serious thought on the part, of the multitude. Should, however, the

authority of true Christianity be revealed to, and accepted by, them,

we may justly expect a development of the utmost significance in the

history of the world.

Catholicity not only preserves and restores the Christian truth of

which men have been robbed by the heresies of the Reformation, but it

preserves, sanctifies, and makes fruitful the natural goodness which

remains in the individual, the race, and the nation. But above all

things it applies those principles of natural justice and purity which

are now so seriously jeopardized.

An unjust man can console himself, when transmitting his dishonest

gains to his descendants, by reflecting that he is to be justified by

faith alone. This has been done to our certain knowledge, and

doubtless every New Englander can recall similar cases. A man who

admits the injustice of his transactions can find ways of forgetting

his indebtedness. The fraudulent bankrupt can revel in the wealth of

his wife and children. Even the thief who admits in the abstract the

obligation of restoring that which he has stolen, without the

assistance of the confessional is too apt to cling to that which he

has once acquired.

We want, first, to hear the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of

restitution in the place of maudlin denunciation of “carnal

righteousness.” We want to have it well understood that no amount of

exalted emotion will relieve the guilty thief until he has handed over

his ill-gotten goods. We do not say that the neglect of this doctrine

is the cause of the special cases of corruption which come before our

eyes; but we freely assert that the spread of dishonesty is due to

nothing less than the ineptitude and fatuity of Protestantism in this

respect.

We further assert our conviction that no amount of preaching will

change the present widespread disregard of the rights of property.

These must be enforced in the private life of each man, backed by a

supernatural principle. The means which the Catholic Church has

provided for the support and assistance of the individual conscience

is the confessional. This it is which has created the very sentiment

of honesty that is now dying out among us for want of it. Antiquity

did not possess this sentiment. The Greeks encouraged stealing and

made a god of theft. The Romans acknowledged only the claims of

hospitality and the force of law. Our barbarian ancestors grew and

thrived upon piracy and pillage. It was no abstract or speculative

doctrine which overcame their savage traits and established the new

sentiment which condemns successful villany; nor will the present

decay of honesty be arrested by any system which divorces it from the

institution that has brought it into existence.

The most fatal symptom, however, of our lapse into paganism reveals

itself in that department of morality in which the struggle is carried

on with the most lawless of human passions. The morality of

Protestantism offered no assistance to the individual in this conflict

between reason and the excesses of that instinct which is at once the

most necessary and at the same time the least governable. Developments

such as Mormonism and the Oneida Community, the increasing frequency

of divorce, and the freedom with which the maxims of the ancient

Christian morality are questioned, are sufficient to illustrate the

decay of fixed principles of morality. Such results are not strange

when we recall the actual conduct of the founders of Protestantism.

Nor is it unreasonable to expect a certain amount of laxity in an

intellectual movement which constitutes each individual his own

supreme judge and teacher of morals; but the worst is that the very

source of purity is thoroughly vitiated. In ancient Christianity the

laws of chastity were clearly defined, peremptory, and plainly set

before the intellect. Modern individualism, having begun by denying

man’s responsibility and asserting his necessary depravity, has placed

the rule of virtue, not in reason, but in instinct. The old morality

was a sentiment based upon dogmatic conviction. The modern

Neo-protestantism has nothing upon which to depend for its purity of

life except the natural feelings of modesty and shame. The very idea

of attempting to subject sexual instinct to reason is scouted as an

absurdity by popular writers. The license taken by those whose

occupation is to amuse the public every day increases in

shamelessness. Art, whether pictorial or dramatic, will not listen to

any suggestion of restraint, and the natural sentiment upon which our

virtue rests is constantly being weakened.

It is foolishly supposed that this species of disorder, having gone to

certain lengths, will at last return to rational limits. It is with

some such notion that the enthusiasts, who profess to see in popular

education a panacea for all evils, expatiate upon the future. This,

however, is mere thoughtlessness. The development of the nervous

temperament in the system of a nation is no remedy for this moral

illness; on the contrary, the reverse is true. The result is the most

dangerous form of sensuality. When an intense and excitable organism,

quick in its intellectual movements, eager in its appreciation of

beauty, is left to follow its own instincts in the application of

wealth, we have the nearest approach to the ancient classic type of

culture. The recent development of American art is a source of

universal remark. Here the successful artist finds golden

appreciation. The diva of the lyric stage, the painter and sculptor,

meet with substantial welcome. The growing taste for beauty of line is

well known and acknowledged. Extravagance in dress is becoming a

national weakness. There is every indication that the next century

will witness in our descendants a race more elegant in its tastes,

more intense in its enjoyment of every form of beauty, than even the

heirs of European refinement—a generation as unlike the ungainly type

of Brother Jonathan as an Athenian of the age of Pericles was

dissimilar to the rude Pelasgic fisherman of the Hellespont. We think

of Greece most commonly in her æsthetic character and influence; but

we must not forget that her immorality as recorded in history was

hideously dark. The product of her sensuous and overwrought knowledge

and enjoyment of nature spread with her literature and art. They

brought death to the strong and vigorous race which had overcome the

world. The annals of Suetonius and Tacitus, the calm records of

current facts, are too obscene to bear circulation among ordinary

readers of our day. The literature of their time has to be expurgated

before it is fit to be perused by youthful students. The crimes which

are charged by the apostle in his terrible invective against the

heathen culture, which are rehearsed by Terence and Aristophanes,

satirized by Juvenal, laughed at by Horace, celebrated in the flowing

measures of Anacreon, Ovid, and Catullus, and coldly set down by

historians as the public acts of the cultivated classes—these

frightful excesses live to-day, with all their unnatural beastliness,

in the exquisitely-wrought marbles and frescos of Pompeii.

There was never a case in which either a nation or an individual was

cured of this species of corruption by increasing the æsthetic

faculties and amplifying the temptations of wealth. But, it is urged,

education gives the rising generation the ability to read, and

therefore puts it in the way of acquiring sound instruction. Let it be

understood that we believe no parent has a right to deny this

instruction to his children; but we bespeak on the part of all earnest

men the utmost attention to the practical issue of this theory, in

order that they may see how incomplete it is as a safeguard to the

virtue of the youth now growing up. What is the nature of our popular

literature? Upon what sort of reading is the newly-acquired art

exercised? What is the ratio of books which furnish useful instruction

to those works whose aim is solely to amuse and excite the

imagination? And of the latter class, what is the proportion between

the harmless and noxious publications? Those who receive only

elementary instruction practically go to school in order to learn to

read novels and the trashy and immoral periodicals whose costly

illustrations and increasing number amply prove the increasing demand

for them. The influence of the press is necessary and indispensable,

but there is nothing in our literature which will in any degree

restrain the tendencies of our civilization.

We wish it were possible to use language of sufficient force to

express the reality of our perilous condition; for our people have

already gone far enough in this direction to excite the utmost alarm.

The moral corruption of New England is such as to threaten with

extinction the vigorous race which originally inhabited it. The

medical profession of this country is so profoundly impressed with the

constant decrease in the birthrate of the native stock and with its

marked physical decadence, that essays on these subjects are to be

seen in every scientific periodical.

Ten years ago Dr. Storer called attention to the fact that, as far

back as 1850, the natural increase of the population, or the excess of

births over deaths, was by those of foreign origin, and that

subsequently the ratio in favor of foreign parents was constantly on

the increase. “In other words,” he says, “it is found that, in so far

as depends upon the American and native element, and in the absence of

the existing immigration from abroad, the population of our older

States, even allowing for the loss by emigration, is stationary or

decreasing.” Dr. Storer did not hesitate to attribute this fact to the

criminal destruction of human life or to the suppression of the family

by those whose natural instincts ought to procure its conservation.

The evidences of this widespread evil are before us in every daily

issue of the press.

The demands of pleasure, the numerous inducements to women to find

their occupation outside of domestic life, and to shrink from the

duties and cares of maternity—none of those temptations which furnish

the occasion of this crime are to be met by increasing the size and

beauty of our public schools or by providing the children of the poor

with elegant accomplishments. Nor will the result be more favorable if

the privilege of the elective franchise is added to the other

extra-domestic responsibilities of American women. What, then, is to

save us when marriage, if recognized, has ceased to be a desirable

state, when luxury and nervous development have subjected the chastity

of single life to the severest temptation, and when our inherited

morality has vanished in the process of our growth?

If the native American race is not going to die out, it must learn

from foreigners the secret of their vitality. Christianity has, in the

confessional, the means of applying not only sacramental grace to the

fallen and repentant, but of securing them from further disorder. Dr.

Storer has told the country very plainly that “the different frequency

of the abortions depends, not upon a difference in social position or

in fecundity, but in the religion.” In other words, the cultivated

American is far below the ignorant immigrant in morality; and the

reason of this is that the immigrant referred to is a Catholic and his

employer is not.

Dr. Storer proceeds to observe: “It is not, of course, intended to

imply that Protestantism, as such, in any way encourages or, indeed,

permits the practice of inducing abortion; its tenets are

uncompromisingly hostile to all crime. So great, however, is the

popular ignorance regarding this offence that an abstract morality is

here comparatively powerless.” This touches the fundamental truth

involved in the whole discussion—“an abstract morality” never can

prove effective against any concrete evil. But the doctor further

expresses his conviction, drawing the legitimate conclusion and

stating the fact: “And there can be no doubt that the Romish

ordinance, flanked on the one hand by the confessional and by

denouncement and excommunication on the other” (he has previously

quoted from the pastoral of a Catholic prelate), “has saved to the

world thousands of infant lives.”

The American people is beginning to perceive that wealth and culture

without true morality mean ruin. If it does not perceive that

Protestantism is the cause of its present corruption, it at least

confesses that its inherited religion is powerless to remedy the evils

of the day. We cannot ask it to reject its false guide much faster

than it is doing. We cannot tell how soon it will be able to receive

the divine truth of Christianity. It will be no pleasure to us to have

the old faith vindicated by the destruction of this people.

We beg to be allowed to preserve our Catholic population and to keep

them pure and faithful, at least until non-Catholics can offer

something which will meet their own contingencies. If this demand be

persistently disregarded and our honest attempt to save ourselves be

misconstrued into an assault upon others, we will do the best we can,

at all events.

But, in the meantime, let all earnest men admit the reality of danger.

Do not let attention be absorbed by particular manifestations of a

disease which is universal. The evils which threaten our life will not

be removed by retrenchment of government expenses, or by a temporary

destruction of party tyranny, or by an ostentatious simplicity in

official circles, or by “justification by faith,” or by pietistic

feeling, or by acting out individual crotchets, or even by sound moral

doctrine in an abstract form, but by the living truth of God, taught

by him through human lips, applied by him with divine efficacy through

the ministry of human hands. The truth which has saved the ancient

world and has produced all that is desirable in modern civilization is

alone able to preserve our nation in its future growth.

A FRENCH NOVEL.[69]

This title will prove a disappointment to those who only associate the

idea of a French novel with that typical production of vicious and

feverish literature to which the fiction-mongers of France have so

long accustomed us, and whose corrupt influence has made itself felt

far beyond the limits of the nation which gives it birth. Our present

purpose is not to discuss one of those pernicious books, but to

consider one which rises as far above their level by its artistic

beauty and literary merits as by the nobler tone of its morality. A

novel by a Catholic writer, impregnated from first to last with the

spirit and principle of the faith, full of noble sentiments, and yet

as amusing and as exciting as any “naughty” novel; a book where all

the good people, even the holy people, are as charming, witty, odd, or

fascinating as if they were anything but holy; a book that conveys in

the characters and scenes it brings before us a great moral lesson,

and which at the same time absorbs and excites us as powerfully as the

cleverest novel of the sensational school, with its inevitable murders

and forgeries and double marriages—the appearance of a novel such as

this is surely an event that it behoves us to examine closely as the

curious literary phenomenon which it is.

Mrs. Augustus Craven’s last work, _Le Mot de l’Enigme_, which, under

the title of _The Veil Withdrawn_, appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD

simultaneously with its issue in the _Correspondant_ of Paris, is

known to most of the readers of the present article, but we would ask

them if, when enjoying its persual, they have sometimes stopped to

consider what a genuine achievement the book was, and how pregnant

with promise for the lighter Catholic literature of the future? Any

book by the author of the _Récit d’une Sœur_ is sure to command a wide

audience in Europe and America among readers of different languages

and creeds; but there are reasons why _The Veil Withdrawn_ should meet

with a specially triumphant welcome from us Catholics, for it is in

truth a triumph over prejudices whose narrow and tyrannical rule have

hitherto been fatal to Catholic fiction. The _Récit d’une Sœur_, the

peerless story that stands unrivalled amidst the literature of the

world, taught many lessons to our day, but no one, perhaps, more

important, considering its possible results, than that which it

conveyed to Catholic writers—namely, that religion, in its most ardent

form and its most rigid application, is compatible with the tenderest

romance; that human hearts and imaginations, far from being chilled or

fettered by the sublime truths of the faith, are kindled and enlarged

by their influence; that human passions come into play as powerfully

in souls ruled by the divine law as in those that reject and defy it,

the only difference being that to the former they are weapons used in

noble warfare, servants and auxiliaries, whereas to the others they

are tyrants that strike only to destroy. The loves of Alexandrine and

Albert revealed this secret to the world, and this alone would have

sufficed to immortalize the _Récit_. No romance ever reached the skyey

heights to which these lovers soared; and yet, while their hearts sang

their sweet love-song together, their souls were fixed on God,

dreaming of heaven, where their love was to find its perfect

consummation, scorning the pitiful meed of earthly happiness, unless

it might lead them to the secure possession of the eternal bliss of

which this was but the transient foretaste. “_Pour la vie, c’est trop

court!_”[70] was Alexandrine’s reply when Albert asked her for the

ring on which the words were graven, _Pour la vie!_ And such should be

the motto of all love worthy of the name.

This pure key-note is struck and sustained with a master-hand

throughout the whole story of _The Veil Withdrawn_, and the success

with which the principle it enunciates has been forced into the

service of art is the point which we would invite Catholic writers in

all countries to consider attentively. Our grand mistake, as a rule,

is to assume that Catholic literature, in order to be true to its

mission, must be constantly talking of holy things, bringing forward

pious maxims and practices; that the heroes and heroines of its

stories must be pious people, or else very wicked people whose final

cause is the glorification of the pious ones who are to convert them;

it must never deal openly with the great problems of life, never

grapple with its deepest mysteries, never describe men and women as

they ordinarily exist around us—human beings endowed at their birth

with the fatal inheritance of Adam, with mighty capabilities for good

and evil, with passions and instincts that have to work out their

issue to ruin or to endless victory; souls where all the forces are

clashing in deadly and desperate strife—these things are forbidden

ground to the Catholic novelist. He may tread timidly on the outskirts

of the battle-field, but he must not venture into the thick of the

fight; he must not lift the veil and let us look upon the scene where

this momentous combat is going forward, where nature and grace and all

the allied enemies of the human heart are wrestling and striving in

fierce war. These things would not be “edifying”; they would not be

fit reading for young girls; they might put ideas into their heads and

excite their imaginations. And why, we ask, is it invariably taken for

granted that Catholic writers only write for young girls? Are there no

Catholic men in the world? It might be urged, with better show of

reason, that young girls are not obliged to read novels at

all—stories, yes; but novels do not form any necessary part of their

education. These are intended for men and women—people who have found

out the “answer to the riddle,” learned some of the dark and painful

lessons of life; who turn to the pages of a novel to find an hour’s

harmless recreation, if nothing more, and to forget the dull round of

care and vexing realities in the amusement or excitement of imaginary

troubles and joys. We are far from saying that the novel has no higher

purpose than this; but if it claimed no other, this, in itself, is a

legitimate one. Human nature must have relaxation. The most ascetic

saints sought recreation of some kind from the strain of work and

contemplation. Still more must ordinary mortals seek it; and as

novel-reading has become one of the easiest and most popular forms of

mental diversion, it is of the highest importance that it should be of

good and wholesome quality. Now, a novel is neither good nor wholesome

when it ignores the canons of art, and eschews the true study of human

nature, and confines itself to pretty commonplaces and pious allusions

and exemplary sentiments exchanged between namby-pamby people who are

represented as in a state of society which, practically, has no

prototype in real life, where strong passions and conflicting

interests and fierce temptations have no existence, but where all

difficulties are adjusted by a pious suggestion offered at the right

moment by a friend or a book. Grown-up men and women will not be put

off with this sort of thing, be they ever such good Catholics; when

they take up a novel, they do so for interest or amusement, and, for

lack of better, they fall back on the real novels, sensational or

otherwise.

This is a lamentable state of things, and as fatal to Catholic writers

as to their readers. It is this false idea of the character and

requirements of Catholic literature which has brought it to the low

ebb at which it now is among English-speaking Catholics, in spite of

the growing numbers of a cultivated and intelligent audience. Every

one recognizes the fact, and many deplore it, but no one has the

courage to attempt the remedy. It would require, indeed, something

more than any effort of individual influence to break down the

prejudices and puerile traditions that fence in the authorized field

of Catholic fiction in the present day, and it is difficult to say

which calls for strongest denunciation—the prohibition which excludes

certain subjects, or the large license given to the use of others. The

Catholic novelist is forbidden to strike the deep, vibrating chords of

nature and of souls, but he believes himself free to handle the most

sacred subjects, to preach and moralize to the top of his bent. It is

hard to speak of this folly as dispassionately as we should wish; but

looking at it with all possible indulgence, is there not something in

the stupid conceit and self-complacent audacity of it that may justly

rouse indignation? We see grave men, who have graduated in the

schools, give up long years to the study of sacred science, in order

that they may some day be competent to speak worthily on these high

themes, that they may learn how to balance the relations of right and

wrong, and define the limits of temptation and sin, of cause and

effect; and when, with knowledge ripened by study and meditation, they

venture to write, it is in a spirit of great reverence and in fear and

trembling. On the other hand, we see incompetent laymen, young ladies

and young gentlemen fresh from school, utterly inexperienced, but well

supplied with the boldness of inexperience and incompetence, dipping a

dainty pen into a silver inkstand and proceeding to discourse in a

novel of pious subjects—of prayer, and temptation, and sacraments, and

priests and the priestly character, and controversial subjects—as

flippantly as they might discuss the merits of a new opera or a new

costume. And they fancy, forsooth, that this is doing good and giving

edification! They imagine that it is enough to mention sacred subjects

and emit pious or quasi-pious sentiments in order to reach the human

heart and strike the _sursum corda_ on its springs! One could afford

to laugh at the silly delusion, if the danger did not lie so close to

the folly of it. A moment’s reflection and a little humility would

suffice to convince these well-meaning persons of their mistake. Many

of them might really attain their end of edifying if they had only the

sense to confine themselves within the range of their powers. If a

beginner, or one endowed with a delicate sense of music but limited

musical ability, should attempt to perform one of Beethoven’s glorious

sonatas, he would only irritate us by spoiling the masterpiece; but if

the same person wisely contented himself with playing some simple air,

he might afford genuine and unalloyed pleasure, touching some chord of

feeling in the listener’s heart, evoking, mayhap, sweet memories of

childhood, sacred and long forgotten. Few things provoke the disgust

of an intelligent reader, pious or not, more than to come upon

religious platitudes in a book ostensibly written to amuse; and the

prospect of meeting with this kind of thing at every page is

sufficient to prejudice him against a book which bears a Catholic name

on the title-page. Even the name of a Catholic publisher brands it at

first sight as “dull and silly.” Here, as elsewhere, the cause and

effect react upon each other, and the puerile tone and absence of

artistic treatment in the author, by failing to gain the favor and

attention of the public, paralyzes the most energetic efforts of

Catholic publishers, and those few Catholic writers who can command a

wider audience are unavoidably driven to the Protestant publishers in

order to secure a hearing.

Is it too much to say that a Catholic novelist who would successfully

break through these narrow-minded and false theories, and courageously

inaugurate a new reign in Catholic fiction, would be conferring a

great benefit on our generation? We claim for Mrs. Augustus Craven the

merit of having achieved this feat. The mission which she began in the

_Récit d’une Sœur_ was successfully continued in _Fleurange_, and may

be said to triumph completely in _The Veil Withdrawn_. Her last novel

is a book which appeals as strongly to the interest of the unbeliever

and the heretic as of the most fervent Catholic. The moral lesson it

conveys may be accepted or not, just as the reader pleases; it is

there, brilliantly and powerfully delivered; but, like so many

messages broadly written on the face of nature or faintly whispered to

our hearts, we may hearken or we may close our ears to it, as we

choose; the story still remains one of enthralling interest, full of

tenderest romance, of fiery passion, of picturesque description, of

sparkling repartee, of gay and pathetic and thrilling situations. With

the skill of a real artist the author lifts the curtain and bids us

look into the hearts of our fellow-creatures; she touches the hidden

springs, reveals the dubious motives, evil sometimes blending with

good so closely that it requires the finest analysis to discern their

true proportions, to decompose the elements, and show where and how

far each in turn prevails.

The two characters who stand out from the canvas as the leading

figures in the picture are brought face to face in the most terrible

conflict that human hearts can know. Ginevra—not a child, not a placid

convent maiden suspecting no life beyond her “narrowing nunnery

walls,” but a woman with a strong, impassioned soul—is first

inebriated with the pure wine of permitted happiness; the cup is

dashed from her, and she tries to clutch it in defiance and despair.

It eludes her still. She beholds her happiness wrecked, her life

blighted, at the very outset. She does not take her rosary, and, with

conventional propriety, accept the ruin of her young life with the

resigned spirit and smiling countenance of a saint; far from it. The

evil that is in her starts into activity and makes a fierce fight

against her cruel lot. She plunges into the whirl of society, and

tries to drown her misery in such consolations as excitement and

gratified vanity can give. We follow her step by step in the perilous

career, now trembling at her rashness, now rejoicing at her escape,

but never, in the bottom of our hearts, believing that she will prove

unworthy of her nobler self.

Let us glance over the story, not to analyze its merits as a work of

high art and moral philosophy, but simply to review it in the light of

a novel characteristic of our times and full of the stir of

nineteenth-century life.

It opens at Messina, in an old palazzo, where Ginevra, blossoming out

in her fifteenth summer, sits watching the sea through the half-closed

window, listening to the wave sobbing on the beach, unconscious and

dreamy, but already vibrating to the “low music of humanity” that

stirs the unwakened pulses of her heart. She rivets our attention at

the first glance as a creature whose beauty, sensitiveness, and

dormant energy of character contain all the elements of some high

romance. The description of her home and its inmates forms a charming

and animated picture. Fabrizio, the learned and somewhat austere

father; Bianca, the mother, with her tenderly brooding love; Livia,

the sister, at first so misjudged, but destined to rise to such

prestige amidst them all; Ottavia, the fussy, superstitious, devoted

old nurse; Mario, the sombre and jealous-tempered brother—they all

come before us with the reality of living characters whom we love,

fear, or suspect as they gradually reveal themselves. The episode of

the flower flung from the window in a moment of frolic and girlish

vanity, and which leaves so deep a mark on Ginevra’s life, is cleverly

introduced and prepares us for the retribution which awaits the poor

child’s innocent misdemeanor. Her life glides on peacefully in the old

frescoed saloon, where she cons her book and tends her nightingales,

until one day, while high perched on a stool, ministering to her

singing bird, the old majordomo flings the door wide open and in a

sonorous voice announces _Sua eccellenza il Duca di Valenzano_!

Ginevra starts, and so does the reader; for he knows instinctively

that this visitor is the fairy prince of the story, destined to make

the golden-haired maiden supremely happy or supremely miserable.

Ginevra’s confusion, at being discovered by this illustrious intruder

in such an awkward attitude and so childishly engaged, is charmingly

described. She knows not whether to be terrified or delighted when the

handsome duke goes forward and assists her to descend from her aerial

standpoint. But old Don Fabrizio knows what to feel about it, and

surveys the group in the embrasure of the window with a glance of

stern displeasure. This high-born client of his has nothing in common

with Don Fabrizio’s daughter, and it is with undisguised reluctance

that the proud lawyer obeys the duke’s request to introduce him to the

_signorina_.

And now the story is fairly afloat, and we follow it with an interest

that grows in proportion as the plot advances, rising in dramatic

power at every chapter. We know that Valenzano is not to be trusted,

that he has in him all the elements of a faithless lover and a cruel

husband; but we surrender ourselves all the same to the charm of his

manner, his genius, his irresistible fascinations. The love-making is

as warm as the author dares to make it in a country where the freedom

of Anglo-Saxon courtship is unknown, and where the course of true love

runs smoothly between the contracting families on one side and the

family lawyers on the other. Ginevra goes forth to her new life with a

mixture of delight and fear that are like the foreshadowing of the

flickered destiny that awaits her, and Livia’s voice strikes like a

note of painful warning in the concert of the family joy and triumph

and congratulation, when she reminds Ginevra that “marriage is like

death”—a thing that we wait and watch for, but never know until we

have passed the gates and it is too late to turn back. The description

of the bridal festivities, when she goes home to her husband’s palace,

and, worn out by the grandeur and the glare, takes refuge alone in the

quiet starlight, and removes the circlet of glittering jewels from her

brow, that cannot bear the pressure any longer, presents one of those

pictures of life in the great Italian world that Mrs. Craven excels in

depicting.

Life has now become like an enchanted dream to Ginevra. But the first

touch of the awakening reality is not long delayed. One night, when

the moon was high in the blue heavens and flooding earth and sea with

a mystic glory, Ginevra and Lorenzo were sitting on the terrace,

listening to the water lapping on the shore, to the nightingales

trilling in the ilex groves; the young wife, hushed into silence by

the ecstatic beauty of the scene, laid her hand upon her husband’s arm

and whispered to him, “Let us lift up our hearts in prayer for one

moment, and give thanks for all this beauty.” Lorenzo bent on her a

look of tenderest love, and then murmured with a smile, as if

answering the poetic folly of a child,

“‘Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei guardava.’[71]

Thine eyes are my heaven, Ginevra. I feel no need to raise my own any

higher.” A cold chill like the first suspicion of a great sorrow crept

over the young wife. But Lorenzo quickly chased it away, and she tries

to banish the memory of it. But we do not forget it. Slight as the

incident is, it has all the import of the first growl of the distant

thunder, the small patch of cloud, “no bigger than a man’s hand,” upon

the summer sky, that are the certain forerunners of the storm.

But the storm will not burst just yet, and meantime we follow Ginevra

in her brilliant career, first travelling here and there with her

husband, and finally enthroned as a queen in her delightful world at

Naples. The first thing that makes us tremble for her is Lorenzo’s

startled exclamation of anger—was it?—when he comes upon Donna

Faustina’s card amongst those that are left at the young duchess’

door, and the latter, in surprise, asks what it means. He turns it off

adroitly, and Ginevra dismisses it from her mind. The interval that

follows is bright with incident and pictures of society in Naples and

in Paris. We see Lorenzo at work in his studio, where Ginevra sits to

him as a model for his Vestal, and where his rapturous admiration of

her beauty makes her recoil instinctively as from a homage unworthy of

her, too much “of the earth earthly.” And yet this husband, who is

almost an unbeliever, who smiles with indulgent fondness on his wife’s

ardent piety, is glad enough that she should have religion to guard

her from the perils that beset her on all sides; he recognizes the

power and utility of her faith, and is careful not to shock it or to

let her see how little he really shares it. Lando, the cousin and boon

companion of the duke, now comes upon the scene, and for a time we

side with Ginevra in her dislike and suspicion of him; but soon we

find out our mistake, and acknowledge that, in spite of his loose

principles and wild ways, he is kind-hearted and a stanch and loyal

friend to Ginevra. He does his best to save both her and Lorenzo,

though to the last he is unable to understand why any woman in her

right mind should care so much more for her husband’s love than for

his fortune, and why the ruin of the latter should be as nothing to

her compared to even a passing breach in the former. The scene at the

concert, where she first detects Lorenzo at a card-table, and it

breaks upon her that her husband is a gambler, is finely introduced,

and the conversation of Lando with the terrified young wife is

admirably drawn. But we know that the real crisis in her peace and

happiness has yet to come, and we hurry on till Donna Faustina enters.

Lorenzo disarms us, and almost gains our sympathy for this evil genius

of Ginevra, by the frankness with which he tells her story to the

latter; but the relations between all three, as he now tries to

establish them, are radically false, and it requires no prophetic eye

to foresee how they must end. What barrier have either Faustina or

Lorenzo to stem the torrent of passion when it breaks loose—outraged

love and desire of revenge on her side, and on his the embers of a

love that he fancies dead, but which it only needs the vanity of his

own undisciplined nature and the spell of her guilty passion to fan

into a livelier flame than ever? While the storm is rapidly rising in

this direction, Gilbert de Kergy crosses Ginevra’s path; but she is

yet far from suspecting that he is the messenger of fate to her, the

one who is to exercise a supreme influence in her life and call out

its energies in her soul’s defence with a courage that till now has

never been demanded of her. We know how the battle is sure to go with

Ginevra, as we foresee the issue with Lorenzo and Faustina. We see the

force that will ensure the victory in the one case, just as we see how

the want of it must lead to slavery and surrender in the other. And

here again the skill and power of the author triumph and afford a

striking contrast to the old system we have denounced. She never

moralizes, or reminds us that Lorenzo, being a bad Christian, who

never goes to Mass or the sacraments, is certain to fall, and that

Ginevra, in spite of passions that sway her heart with such relentless

power, will come safe out of it because of that restraining force

which, like a mysterious presence, rules her even when she is

unconscious of it—the author does not say these things; she proves

them by making her characters demonstrate their truth and act out

their conclusions. We will quote the passage where Gilbert and Ginevra

part, only to meet again in those sweet and tempting days at Naples.

Gilbert has been lecturing on his travels with an eloquence that

carried away his hearers. Then Ginevra says:

“I remained seated near the mantelpiece, and fell into a

dreamy silence, while Diana sat down to the piano. She began

to execute, with consummate art, a nocturne of Chopin’s,

which sounded to me like the expression, the very language,

of my own thoughts.… I woke up from my reverie with a

strange thrill, and blushed to the very roots of my hair;

for in lifting my eyes I met those of Gilbert fixed upon me,

and mine were full of tears. I brushed them away quickly,

and muttered something about the effect Chopin’s music

always had on my nerves, and then rose and drew near to the

piano, where Diana continued to pass her hands in rapid

changes over the keys.… Gilbert remained silent and pensive

in the place where I had left him, following me with his

eyes, and perhaps trying to guess the real cause of my

emotion.… When the time had come for me to go, and Mme. de

Kergy clasped me to her heart, I no longer strove to repress

my tears.… Gilbert gave me his arm and conducted me to my

carriage without speaking. As I was entering it, he said in

a voice that faltered slightly:

“‘Those whom you are leaving are greatly to be pitied,

madam.’

“‘I am still more to be pitied,’ I replied, and my tears

flowed freely.

“He was silent for a moment, and then he said:

“‘As for me, I have the hope of seeing you again; for I

shall come to Naples, … _if I dare_.’

“‘And why should you not dare? You will be received and

welcomed as a friend.’

“He made no reply, but when he had placed me in the

carriage, and I held out my hand to him to say adieu, he

murmured in a low voice: _Au revoir!_’”

And he keeps his word. He goes to Naples and meets Ginevra at a ball,

whither she has rushed, half mad with despair and jealousy, reckless

of everything resolved to drown the anguish of her heart in the

intoxication of gayety and the adulation of the world, that until now

she had carelessly despised. It was the night after the masked ball at

the Festina, where, on the impulse of the moment, she and her

beautiful friend Stella went as dominos to join in the fun and mystify

their friends a little. Ginevra recognized Lorenzo’s stately figure

the moment she entered the ball-room, and, terrified at finding

herself alone in the crowd, seized hold of his arm, clinging to him in

silence. Lorenzo, deceived by the color of her domino, mistakes her

for Faustina, whom he is expecting. He stoops low and whispers a

tender welcome in her ear. Ginevra, with a stifled cry, starts from

him and rushes frantically from the scene. The next night, with the

delirium of this discovery upon her, she goes forth in her loveliest

attire to dispute the palm of beauty with the rest.

“I had my diamonds and pearls brought out, and I gave

precise directions as to how I intended to wear them; this

done, long before the time came I began my toilet and spent

an endless time over it. So many women seem to take pleasure

in making a triumphant entry into a ball-room, I said to

myself, and in being flattered and admired, why should I not

taste of this pleasure as well as they? I am beautiful, I

know that—very beautiful even. Why should I not attract and

indulge my vanity and coquetry like other women?”

And she does attract, and her vanity is satisfied to overflowing. Her

beauty and the dazzling splendor of her jewels create a perfect furore

the moment she appears. She announces her intention of dancing, and

the noblest cavaliers in the room are at her feet in a moment,

quarrelling for the honor of her hand. Never was the triumph of a

coquette more complete than Ginevra’s. Her youth and its instinctive

love of pleasure vindicated themselves for a time, and she enjoyed her

success to the full; but as the night wore on nobler instincts

asserted themselves, worthier voices made themselves heard above the

din of this ardent and puerile vanity, and Ginevra feels the cold

chill of remorse stealing over her; a sense of vague misfortune takes

possession of her and stills her feverish gayety like a touch of ice.

Her last partner leads her to her seat, and she sinks into it

exhausted and miserable.

“At the same moment,” she says, “I heard near me a voice

well known though well-nigh forgotten—a voice at once calm,

strong, and sweet, but which now sounded slightly sarcastic.

‘Although I cannot aspire to the honor of dancing with the

Duchess de Valenzano, may I hope that she will deign to

recognize me?’

“I turned around quickly. The speaker who stood there and

thus addressed me was Gilbert de Kergy.”

The ordinary French novelist had here a fine opportunity for bringing

matters to a crisis between Ginevra and Gilbert; but the present

author uses it differently. Gilbert does not take advantage of the

temporary madness of Ginevra to gain influence over her and beguile

her from her allegiance to Lorenzo, faithless and cruel as he is.

Gilbert is far too noble for this, and his first feeling, on beholding

his ideal in this dangerous and unworthy atmosphere, is one of censure

and poignant regret. Neither he nor Ginevra is of the conventional

type of defaulters; both are good, high-principled, and brave; they

are both practical Christians, and the idea of betraying their duty to

God and to their own honor would have revolted them had it presented

itself in its naked horror. But it did not. The approach was gradual,

imperceptible. And here we have a great truth illustrated—one which it

is customary in Catholic authors to ignore practically, if not

theoretically: The possession of the faith and the practice of

religion do not act as opiates on human beings, deadening their hearts

and annihilating nature, and lifting them to a secure region where the

great temptations of life cannot reach them, or where, if they do,

they glide off harmless as arrows glance from the steel cuirass of the

soldier. Ginevra is pure and true as ever woman was who vowed at the

altar “that most solemn vow that a woman can utter”; she was,

moreover, genuinely pious. Gilbert was the very ideal of manly

chivalry and honor and goodness, an accomplished type of the Christian

gentleman; but neither he nor she was fireproof when the time of trial

came. He loved Ginevra before he knew it; and she, forsaken,

humiliated, stung in her love and her wifely pride, is thrown into his

constant companionship, not by her seeking, but through one of those

accidents to which women of her class and circumstances are liable

every day. She is grateful for Gilbert’s brotherly regard, she admires

his noble life and his sentiments, so true, so different from those of

other men; she is grateful to him for the frank rebuke which he spoke

out at the ball when she was drifting she knew not whither. Step by

step the friendship grows to a tenderer feeling, and at last

culminates in a love whose depth and power Ginevra does not even

suspect, so gradual has been its development. We tremble for her; but

even when we see her tottering blindfold on the edge of the abyss, we

feel certain she will never take the fatal plunge. All this is

depicted with infinite delicacy and rare psychological skill.

Livia now reappears upon the scene as one of the visible forces that

are guarding Ginevra along the slippery road. Livia is one of the most

striking and carefully drawn of the subordinate characters. It is

worth mentioning _en passant_ that here, as elsewhere, Mrs. Craven

breaks boldly through the time-honored traditions of the Catholic

novelist. The holier and more spiritual-minded her _dramatis personæ_,

the brighter, more sympathetic and accessible they are. Stella, the

heroic friend in days of sorrow, so gifted, so beautiful, so untainted

with the spirit of the world where she lives and moves—Stella has the

high animal spirits of a school-girl, the glad heart—_le sang joyeux_,

as she herself calls it—of a happy child. Livia, who in her father’s

home was pensive almost to melancholy, the moment she embraces the

austere rule of the cloister, spending her days in the contemplation

of heavenly things, grows as merry as a lark. Joy is henceforth the

keynote and regulator of her life; we have no trace of the downcast

face and solemn, mournful voice that have hitherto been characteristic

of pious people in novels. No one pulls long faces here, or whines or

sighs, except it may be those who have forsaken the fountain where

true joy has its spring, to drink of the poisoned waters of this

world’s pleasures, of sin, ambition, or folly. How winning, too, is

Livia’s tender interest in the gay life of her brilliant young sister!

She has not closed her heart against the actors on the world’s stage

outside her convent gates, but keeps her sympathies wide open to all

life and all humanity beyond them.

“‘Gina mia, you don’t tell me everything,’ she says one day

that Ginevra is conversing with her through the grating. ‘Is

it that you think I take no interest in your life now?’

“‘It is not only that, Livia, but it is difficult to talk

about such trivial, foolish things in presence of these bars

and looking at you as you stand behind them.’

“‘Nay, it is always good for me to hear you and for you to

talk to me,’ replied Livia. ‘It is true that when Aunt

Clelia comes here with her daughters, I put on a severe

countenance now and then, and tell them pretty plainly what

I think of the world; … but I must say that my aunt bears me

no malice for it, for she counts on my vocation to get good

husbands for Mariuccia and Teresina.… She does not look upon

me as “_jettatrice_” at all now, I can tell you!’

“She laughed so merrily as she spoke that I could not help

exclaiming with envy and surprise:

“‘Livia, how happy you are to be so gay!’”

The sense of humor, so essential to preserve the balance in true

mental power, is not wanting in this story. Donna Clelia is lightly

and brightly touched. She is everywhere true to herself;

self-important, silly, and good-natured, she and her daughters are

redeemed from hopeless vulgarity as much by their _naïveté_ and

naturalness as by the sheer inability of the author to depict

vulgarity—a fact which we notice without comment, leaving our readers

to decide whether it be a merit or a fault. Donna Clelia’s intense

satisfaction at being able to parade “my niece, the duchess” is one of

those touches that throw a character into striking relief. Her

enthusiasm for the “view” from the _baronessa’s_ house, where “not a

donkey-boy, nor a cart, nor a horse, nor a man, nor a woman could pass

in the narrow street but you saw them so plainly you could tell the

pattern of their clothes,” gives us the measure of her artistic

perceptions, while her raptures over the situation “with the church on

one side and the new theatre on the other … _figurateir!_ so that the

_baronessa_ can let herself into the church on the right, and through

a passage into her box in the theatre on the left,” is equally

characteristic of the manners and minds of the society around her. The

description of the splendid pageant of the Carnival, passing under

Donna Clelia’s balcony, is as spirited a bit of picturesque writing as

we have come upon for a long time. But we hurry on through these gay

and vivid scenes, impatient for the crisis that is at hand between

Gilbert and Ginevra. Nothing, so far, had prepared our heroine for its

approach.

“Apparently,” says Ginevra, “and in reality, our intercourse

was precisely what it had always been; every word he said to

me might have been said before the whole world. I felt, it

is true, that he spoke to me as he did not speak to any one

else, and I, on my side, spoke to no one as I did to him. We

were seldom alone, but every evening, in the drawing-room or

on the terrace, he managed to converse with me for a moment

or two when no one was by. He did not disguise from me that

these stolen moments were to him the most enjoyable of the

evening, and I knew they were the same to me. From time to

time something indefinable in his voice, in his glance, even

in his silence, made me shudder as at some threat of danger.

But as he had never swerved by so much as a word from the

position he had assumed towards me—that of a friend—my

slumbering conscience did not awake!”

The awakening, however, came at last. The immediate occasion of it was

an eruption of Vesuvius, which is described with a dramatic power

worthy, if possible, of the sublime and terrible subject. The mountain

is on fire; the lava streams forth from a rent in its side, and,

strong and pitiless as fate, flows on over vineyards and villages and

smiling gardens, spreading desolation before it. Ginevra, with a large

party of friends, goes out to witness the magnificent spectacle from a

safe eminence. She and Gilbert are thrown together and climb to the

top of a hillock overlooking the scene of the conflagration. The

flames rose on all sides as in some vengeful apocalypse, high,

fantastic, awful. Ginevra could not take away her eyes from the sight,

but gazed on it as on some mysterious apparition that held her

spell-bound. At last she exclaimed:

“‘This is truly _la città dolente_! We have before our eyes

a faithful picture of the last day!’

“Gilbert did not answer. He was a prey to some emotion more

poignant than mine, and, in glancing towards him in the

lurid glare of the fire, I was frightened by the change in

his features and their strange expression. ‘Would to

heaven,’ he muttered at last, ‘that it were so in reality,

and that the last day were come for me! Yes, I wish I could

die here, on this spot, near you and worthy of you!’

“In spite of the appalling scene around us, in spite of the

roar of the detonations thundering above the dull noise of

the lava, the accent of his voice struck upon my ear, and

his words made my heart leap up with an emotion mingled with

terror.

“‘You are growing giddy,’ I said, and my voice trembled.

‘Take care; the effect of looking long at this is sometimes

to draw one on to the abyss.’

“‘Yes, Donna Ginevra,’ he replied in the same strange tone,

‘you are right; I am giddy and I am walking on to the abyss.

I know it. I exposed myself rashly; I presumed too much on

my strength.’

“The look which he fixed upon me in pronouncing these words

gave them a meaning which it was impossible to

misunderstand. It was no longer Gilbert who was speaking to

me; it was no longer the man to whom I fancied I had granted

only the safe privileges of a friend. The bandage which I

had wilfully placed upon my eyes fell off in an instant,

and, in the sudden emotion which followed, the sight of the

roaring flames that encircled us, the certain peril to which

one step further would lead us, appeared to me as the exact

representation of the danger to which I had madly exposed my

honor and my soul! For one moment I covered my face with my

hands, not daring to utter a word. At last I said in a voice

of supplication:

“‘Monsieur de Kergy, cease to look upon the fire that

surrounds us; lift up your head and see how, far above this

hell, the night is calm and beautiful!…’

Gilbert’s eyes followed mine and remained for some time

fixed upon the peaceful stars, that seemed, indeed, as far

away from the terrible convulsion of nature as from that

which was agitating our souls. Mine felt the need of a

mighty help, and I murmured in a low voice, and with a

fervor which had long been absent from my prayers: ‘O my

God! have pity upon me.’ A long silence ensued, and then

Gilbert said in a voice that was low and tremulous:

“‘Will you forgive me, madame? Will you trust yourself to me

to lead you from this place?’

“‘Yes, I will trust you,’ I replied. ‘But let us make haste

to leave it, for it is dangerous.…’

“‘Do not fear,’ he said in a tone that had resumed its

wonted calmness; ‘we must make haste, but the only danger

would be if you were to become frightened. Give me your

hand.’

“He would have taken it, but I hesitated and made an

involuntary movement, as if I meant to descend without his

help.

“‘In the name of Heaven,’ he said quickly, and trembling

with agitation, ‘don’t refuse my assistance in this

extremity! You cannot do without it; you _must_ give me your

hand!’

“His voice was now almost imperious; I gave him my hand,

and, grasping his arm firmly with the other, we descended

the hill slowly together.”

But although this first victory is the sure guarantee of the ultimate

one, Ginevra has a fierce battle yet to fight. Perhaps it will be

better that our cursory notice of the story should, however, end here,

and that we should leave our readers to discover the sequel for

themselves: how the same strong hand which held Ginevra safe on the

brink of the precipice led her faithfully through the peril, and

brought her back, not only to the inward peace which follows every

generous renunciation, every conquest over self, but how it finally

won back her husband’s love, crowning them both with a joy such as

they had never known in the days of their early happiness. The fitness

of Lorenzo’s punishment, the wreck of his fortune through one passion

and the vengeance brought upon his selfish pride by the other, is

worked out with a constructive art of no mean order. The minor

characters and their parts are carefully finished and satisfactorily

disposed of. Livia to the last shines like a sweet, pure star above

the horizon of Ginevra’s stormy life, pointing onwards and upwards

with faithful hand, never too strong for pity or too far removed for

sympathy, sorrowing with those who mourn, rejoicing with those who

rejoice. Her interview with Ginevra after the fearful ordeal through

which the latter has passed, when she comes like one who has been

“saved, but through fire,” to seek consolation in the peaceful

atmosphere of the convent, rises to a high degree of power. We are

strongly tempted to quote the scene between Padre Egidio and Ginevra,

but it is almost too sacred to be made matter of critical comment, and

would lose, moreover, much in effect by being detached from the

complete frame, and especially from the crucial experiences which

prepared Ginevra’s soul for that touch of the divine hand which healed

and strengthened and uplifted her in one instant. Such an episode can

only be appreciated in its proper place as part of a whole which

justifies and glorifies it. The close of the story is full of deep

pathos.

It is significant that this novel, which is recognized as the herald

of a new era in Catholic literature, should have made its appearance

at the same time in France and in America. May we not venture to infer

from the coincidence that America, in harmony with sound Catholic

teaching, placing greater confidence in human nature, may aid in

redeeming Catholic English fiction, and prove to the world that the

faith does not paralyze the imagination, but elevates it; leaving the

novelist at liberty to deal with the deepest problems of life, to

disport himself freely in the wide realms of fancy, nature, and the

world, and, guided and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, to grasp

with a firm hand and turn to the best account all those things that

come within the scope and province of art?

[69] _Le Mot de l’Enigme_—_The Veil Withdrawn_. By Madame

Craven. Translated by permission. New York: The

Catholic Publication Society. 1875.

[70] “_For life_, is too short!”

[71] “Beatrice gazed upwards, and I on her did gaze.”

—DANTE.

CHARITAS PIRKHEIMER.[72]

“Good and evil fortune are to a brave man as his right hand and his

left: he uses either equally well.”—_Saying of S. Catherine of Sienna._

Charitas Pirkheimer, the eldest daughter of John Pirkheimer and

Barbara Löffelholz, was born on the 21st of March, 1466. Her family

was a distinguished one in the annals of Nuremberg, her native town,

one of those old free cities of Germany whose burghers, as Æneas

Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., once said, were better lodged and

more daintily fed than the kings of Scotland. Among the citizens of

Nuremberg there was a kind of prescriptive aristocracy or patriciate

composed of those families technically called “_Rathsfähig_”—that is,

capable of being elected members of the ruling body or council of the

little republic. Of those whose names occur again and again in this

history one of the most ancient was that of the Pirkheimer, who, for

at least a hundred and fifty years before the birth of Charitas, had

been celebrated for their learning, piety, and statesmanship. Upright

and honorable in their private life, as well as in the execution of

their public trusts, they were looked up to by all, and their women no

less than their men were distinguished for strength of character, love

of learning, and solid, enlightened piety.

Nuremberg was at that time a centre of art and letters. Her youths

went to Italy and studied at the old universities of Padua and

Bologna, whence they brought back the prevailing enthusiasm for

classical lore; the new art of printing had found in her citizens

discerning patrons; the streets were full of the beautiful houses of

the rich merchants; churches and monasteries adorned with treasures of

sacred art abounded, as even to this day the passing tourist can see;

Albert Dürer, Adam Krafft, and Peter Vischer made their native city

known far and wide in the world of art; while Regiomontanus drew his

astronomical instruments from Nuremberg and published his works there,

and his disciple, Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger by birth, discovered

the sea-route to the East Indies. Literature was even more firmly

established, and John Pirkheimer himself instituted a sort of academy

after the model of those of the Italian princes. Wilibald, his only

son and the last of his name, continued his work and became famous as

the friend or patron of nearly all the renowned men of learning of his

time.

Among these refining influences Charitas grew up, and early showed her

enthusiasm for “polite” studies. The historians of Nuremberg,

Lützelberger and Dr. Lochner, both Protestants, have left high

testimony of the breadth of her intellect and the great consideration

in which she was held by men of all parties. The latter calls her “a

gifted, enlightened, pious, and prudent woman, who has conferred

lasting honor on the Convent of St. Clare,” and who “deserves a high

degree of respect for the firmness and dignity with which she

withstood the storm of the Reformation, which to her and her community

was a sorrowful event.” Lützelberger, in a lecture delivered at

Nuremberg, said to his Protestant audience:

“The Reformation was a deep grief to her pious heart,

accustomed as it was to the gentle amenities of convent

life, and, if we would judge her aright, we must put

ourselves entirely in her circumstances. But this done, she

will appear to us peculiarly worthy of respect and

consideration as a gifted and conscientious opponent of the

new religion.… Both by speech and in writing did she oppose

all attempts to convert her; and even if we differ from her,

we cannot but admire her earnest conviction, her prudence

and understanding, and especially the patience which she

added to her other virtues.”

Her father, John, was at the time of her birth a doctor of civil law

(the degree had been conferred at the University of Padua), and was

shortly after called to the service of the Bishop of Eichstädt,

William of Reichenau, as counsellor, in which capacity he also for

some years served the Duke of Bavaria and the Archduke of Austria at

their respective courts at Munich and Innsbrück. He was also often

sent as envoy and representative to other courts, after which services

he returned to his native city and died there, a member of the

council. Of his seven daughters only one married—Juliana, the

youngest; the rest all took the veil. Charitas and Clara were joined

in a lifelong friendship in the Convent of St. Clare in Nuremberg. By

all accounts the former seems to have entered the convent at the age

of twelve, whether as a novice or a scholar we are not told. The

convent had existed as a Clarist institution for two hundred years,

when some nuns of Söflingen, near Ulm, had introduced the Franciscan

rule; but the building, which was several centuries old, had been

tenanted before by a community of Sisters of St. Mary Magdalen. All

the nuns, with very few exceptions, were Nurembergers by birth and

descent (this was a condition of their admittance); and as each

generation of every illustrious family was represented by one or two

members, the convent had become peculiarly a cherished local

institution, whose welfare was closely connected with that of the

town. One of the council was charged with its temporal concerns, and

gifts and bequests were often made to it by the citizens. It was also

the school where the young girls of patrician family were mostly

educated.

A model of strict observance and reformed rule, it was under the

spiritual direction of the barefooted Franciscans, who, in the middle

of the fifteenth century, under the protection of Pope Eugenius IV.,

had, in a time when discipline was relaxed in many of the houses of

their order, taken up their abode in Nuremberg and put things upon the

old ascetic footing ruled by the great reforming saint, Francis of

Assisi.

Apollonia Tucher was Charitas’ best and dearest friend. They lived

together more than fifty years, and died within a few months of each

other. Through her Charitas also learnt to know and appreciate Sixtus

Tucher, her cousin, the provost of St. Lawrence, also a prominent man

in those days. Apollonia was at that time prioress and Charitas a

teacher in the convent school. The provost kept up a regular

correspondence with the two nuns, of which unfortunately one part has

been lost; but all _his_ letters are preserved, and were first

translated into German by his nephew, Christopher Scheurl, and

dedicated to a successor of his at St. Lawrence—Provost George Behaim.

His advice to Charitas and her friend was a great boon, and now and

then he would send little presents, such as gilt lanterns for the

church, which he always accompanied by some symbolical warning. Among

other things, he once reminded them that the convent life alone was

not enough to save their souls. “There is no other way to deserve the

eternal Fatherland,” he says, “but by industriously keeping all God’s

commandments.” He also furnished them with books, a _Commentary on the

Liturgical Hymns and Sequences_, 1494, _and_ 1506, and the _Discourse

of St. Augustine on the Siege of Hippo_. This was sent apropos of a

siege in 1502 which Nuremberg suffered at the hands of the Margrave

Casimir, and during which three hundred brave and noted burghers, all

heads of families, lost their lives. On the occasion of her father’s

death, in 1501, he writes to Charitas:

“Therefore we must not sorrow when a man has deserved to

return from a strange land to his own country, from an inn

to his own house, from work to rest, from death to life,

from time to eternity, and especially when he has, by a

blessed exchange, accumulated many good works; for we are

all like unto merchants sent into this pilgrimage of earth,

that with temporal goods we may buy and win eternal life.”

This learned and holy man died at the age of forty-six, in 1507, but

not before he had seen his friend Charitas chosen abbess of St. Clare.

She was only thirty-eight, but her strength of character made the

choice unanimous; and if the nuns could have foreseen what a stormy

time they would soon have to tide over, they would have congratulated

themselves still more on their good sense in electing her. From

henceforth she was the heart and soul of the convent: the nuns looked

to her for advice, support, and comfort; the council saw in her a

distinguished, learned, and enlightened countrywoman, the example not

only of her own community, but of those in the neighborhood who

followed her lead. One of the first events that marked her rule was

the attack of the plague which visited Nuremberg in 1505 and laid low

one of her own spiritual family. She insisted upon nursing the sick

nun, notwithstanding the remonstrances of her anxious sisters, and was

rewarded by the recovery of the patient. In those years of peace and

prosperity the convent fully vindicated its claim to being a house of

happy labor. Besides the instruction given to the young girls of the

city, the nuns were occupied in various artistic works, such as

illumination, copying, and embroidery. Their particular industry was

the manufacture of carpets and tapestries for hangings. They fulfilled

orders for public and civic buildings, as well as for private

families, and once the town council gave the imperial regalia into

their hands for putting in order for the coronation of Charles V. at

Aix-la-Chapelle. Nuremberg had the care of these venerated garments,

and was jealous of its reputation; so that the nuns felt a high

responsibility in being allowed to handle and repair such treasures.

They carefully mended and re-embroidered the white dalmatic, and lined

other pieces of the imperial dress, until they were fit to do honor to

the care of the city of Nuremberg. The convent had also a library of

some note for that time, the Scriptures and the fathers of the church

forming the principal part of it. Charitas’ favorite among the latter

was St. Jerome. She was solicitous concerning the daily reading of the

Scriptures, both in Latin and in German, which was done in common as

well as in private—a fact which she brought to her own defence in the

evil days that followed. She might truly say that she stood on

evangelical ground; for, as she wrote to the learned but scarcely

Christian Celtes, she saw in Scripture the “field of the Lord, whence

learning must draw the kernel from the shell, the spirit from the

letter, oil from the rock, and blossoms from the thorn.”

She had much to do also to manage the temporal concerns of her house.

The town demanded a yearly account of her stewardship; and in every

report made by the council on her administration there is nothing but

praise and recognition of her business talents. She corresponded with

a circle of lettered friends whom she knew through her brother

Wilibald, and these literary friendships form one of the most

interesting phases of her life. Conspicuous among her friends was her

brother himself, the friend of Albert Dürer, who has left us a

portrait of him, the correspondent of Erasmus, the polished man of

letters, the scholar of two Italian universities, for some time the

head of the council of the republic, and the leader of the Nuremberg

contingent in the war with Switzerland (1499). This last office he

held when he was only twenty-nine, and he afterwards became the

historian of the war. When the first beginnings of the Reformation

disturbed and excited all thoughtful minds in Germany, he looked upon

them as simple moral reforms, a renewal of ancient fervor and

discipline. But as the true nature of the changes heralded by Luther

broke upon him, he separated himself from the movement and rallied to

the side of the church doctrines so ruthlessly attacked. He proved a

great support to his sister in the days when the convent was under the

ban of the triumphant Reformers of Nuremberg, and his opinion of the

classical studies which some of the atheistic _literati_ would fain

have exalted as the _only_ learning fit for civilized men was clearly

expressed in these words: “It is not my belief that Christian

knowledge is incomplete without heathen literature. God forbid! Divine

Wisdom needs no human inventions, and it is possible to attain to the

highest point of theology without the help of Plato and Aristotle.”

Wilibald was accustomed to write to his sister in Latin, as Sixtus

Tucher also did, and Charitas’ style, notwithstanding her lowly

opinion of her own proficiency, was such as to do honor to her

education. He often sent her presents of books—for instance, the Hymns

of Prudentius, the Christian poet, and some writings of her favorite

doctor, St. Jerome. Later on he dedicated to her the works of

Fulgentius, which he had edited. Both Charitas and her sister Clara

were great admirers of Erasmus and diligently read his German

translation of the New Testament (in 1516), as well as some works of

the famous scholar Reuchlin (1520). To the former Charitas excused

herself from writing “on account of her bad Latin,” but sent him many

complimentary messages through her brother, and both he and Reuchlin

spoke of her in high terms in their letters to Wilibald. Clara also

was marvellously fond of books, and playfully told her brother that

there was nothing she envied out of her convent except his library.

The women of the Pirkheimer family all seem to have been distinguished

for their love of art and books. Catherine, Charitas’ niece, was

almost a transcript of her aunt and showed a wonderful strength of

character. The abbess’ married nieces were earnest and generous women,

a great support to the convent in the evil days that followed; and her

sister Sabina, the abbess of a Benedictine monastery on the Danube,

was a patroness of sacred art, the friend of Dürer, who sent her

designs for her illuminations and took great interest in the school of

miniature-painting established in her community.

Celtes was one of Charitas’ correspondents, and dedicated to her his

compilation of the works of Roswitha, the poet-nun of Gandersheim in

the tenth century. On the occasion of his being attacked by robbers

she writes him a letter of condolence, in which, in the style of the

day, she alludes to “the precious treasure of true wisdom, which is

the noblest and only possession wherein consolation may be found”; but

at another time she thinks it due to her conscience to speak to him of

a higher wisdom, and says:

“Your worthiness, of which I am a humble follower, will

pardon me for being also a lover of your salvation, and

therefore do I beseech you from my heart, not, indeed, to

give up worldly knowledge, but to add to it that higher one

which will lift you from the writings of the heathen to the

sacred books, from the earthly to the heavenly, from the

creature to the Creator. For although no kind of knowledge

or experience ordained of God is to be despised, yet a

virtuous life and the study of theology is to be considered

above everything; for man’s mind is weak and may err, but

true faith and a good conscience can never err.”

Christopher Scheurl, a clever jurist and called the Cicero of

Nuremberg, who had learnt letters at the University of Bologna,

dedicated his book on “The Use of the Mass” (_Utilitates Missæ_) to

Charitas, and sent it to her from Bologna, where it was printed in

1506, through his uncle, Sixtus Tucher. In his dedication Scheurl says

that in all his life he has only known two women—the pious Cassandra

of Venice and Charitas of Nuremberg—who “for their gifts of mind and

fortune, their knowledge and high station, their beauty and their

prudence, could be compared to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi,

and to the daughters of Lælius and Hortensius.” He praises her that,

following the example of her illustrious ancestors, she has preferred

“the book to the wool and the pen to the spindle,” and proved her high

degree of mental culture by such remarkable letters as he had seen and

received.

Albert Dürer was also often in communication with the sister of his

friend Wilibald. He, with the administrator of the convent, Kaspar

Nützel, and another companion, had gone in 1518 to the Reichstag at

Augsburg, where the painter was to take the old Emperor Maximilian’s

portrait. They wrote her a joint account of their doings there, which

she received in the same jesting spirit as it was written; for she

says she “cried for laughing” when she read it. She also touches on

the political questions of the day, and playfully gives them each his

lesson to learn in Augsburg. The convent administrator was to admire

in the Swabian Confederation “an example of strict observance”; the

secretary of the council, Lazarus Spengler, was to observe “the

apostolical life in common” of the members; and the painter to take

note of the fine buildings for which Augsburg was famous, in case they

might some day want good designs for the rebuilding of the convent

choir. She also bade them not to forget the “little gray wolf” among

the stately black and white habits of the religious of Augsburg (her

nuns wore a gray habit), and alluded to the three men as the captive

“sand-hares”—a name given to the burghers of Nuremberg, first in

scorn, but now become a mere jest.

Charitas’ mind was like a diamond of many facets; she was no angular,

sour ascetic, narrow in her sympathies and petrified in her

prejudices, but a genuine, warm-hearted woman, with as much love for

innocent mirth on the one hand as for the widest researches of

learning on the other. With her the words of her contemporary, Abbot

Trithemius, were true—“To know is to love”—and her affection for her

own family, no less than her appreciation of the intellectual movement

of the age, is shown in her voluminous correspondence. She and her

brother often exchanged little simple domestic presents, and she

delighted to send him sweetmeats, preserves, and cakes made in the

convent, often with her own or her nieces’ hands.

But she was not destined to end her life in these pleasant and

peaceful interchanges of friendship. The storm was brewing, and the

“new learning,” or new doctrine, as it was called, was beginning to

take formidable proportions and go far beyond the needed reforms which

Pope Adrian VI., one of the noblest men who ever sat in the apostolic

chair, so anxiously recommended to the nuncio Chieregati on the

occasion of the Reichstag at Nuremberg in 1522. Charitas grieved to

see holy things indiscriminately attacked, often with unworthy motives

cloaked by the convenient plea of conscience and zeal for the Gospel,

and grieved still more to hear no voice among her learned friends

raised in defence of all she held dear. At last, however, Jerome

Emser, licentiate of canon law at Leipsic, and private secretary of

Duke George of Saxony, published a masterly defence of the old faith,

and Charitas eagerly read it through and caused it to be read aloud to

the nuns during meals. The sisters and the abbess of the Convent of

St. Clare at Eger, who had sent her Emser’s writings, begged her to

acknowledge them in a letter to the author, which she accordingly did,

writing in fervent, unconstrained terms and thanking him in the name

of her sixty sisters and all other convents of her order. But this

letter fell into other hands, and in a distorted, mutilated shape, and

accompanied by a malicious commentary on its sentiments and motives,

was published by an enemy of Emser and Charitas. Even her brother

Wilibald, who had not yet seen through the real motives of the

Reformers, was vexed at her taking part in the fray, and told her she

had better have held her tongue. This was the beginning of a teasing

persecution of pin-pricks which gradually became serious and well-nigh

insupportable as years went on. Her brother, when he had fully rallied

to the Catholic party, had left the council and could be of little

practical use to his sister, while the majority of the council were

decidedly hostile. The convent’s administrator especially used his

station and authority only to torment the poor nuns. Charitas at this

time began to keep a diary, of which her biographer has made good use.

Dr. Lochner, the historian of Nuremberg, recognizes that many evil

deeds were done in the name of religion; and as to the case of the

Convent of St. Clare, he says that “it was the victim of that force

which at many times clothes itself in the garb of a moral and divine

reform, without being any the less mere force, the right of the

strongest.”

In 1524 Charitas says:

“There came to the convent many strangers, men and women,

but especially the latter, to tell the nuns the new things

that were being taught from the pulpit, and to represent to

them what a ‘damnable’ state was that of the religious life,

and how impossible it was for them to be saved in the

cloister, adding most unceremoniously that nuns were all the

devil’s creatures. Many citizens spoke threateningly of

withdrawing their relatives from the convent, whether the

persons in question wished it or no.”

As may be supposed, these attacks made no impression on the sisters;

but the town council, ready enough now to seize upon any pretext,

ascribed their steadfastness to the influence of their spiritual

directors, the Franciscans, and ordered the convent to be put under

the control of the new preachers. Charitas immediately drew up a

petition, which was approved by the community, in which she

represented to Kaspar Nützel, the administrator, that this was the

first time for forty-five years that she had seen her sisterhood in

grief, and went on to beseech him, as he had always been her friend

and supporter in temporal matters, so, now that she required his help

more than ever, he would not fail her in this spiritual distress. She

likewise wrote to Jerome Ebner, another of the highest dignitaries of

the council, whose daughter Katharine was one of her community; and to

Martin Geuder, her brother-in-law, to whom she touchingly appealed on

the ground of the innocence and evangelical character of the community.

“I beg of you,” she says, “do not allow yourself to be

persuaded by those who untruly say that the clear word of

God is hidden from us; for, by the grace of God, this is not

so. We have the Old and New Testaments here as well as you

who are out in the world; we read it day and night, at

meals, in the choir, in Latin and in German, in common and

in private. By God’s grace we know well the holy Gospels and

St. Paul’s Epistles, but still I think he is more

praiseworthy who fulfils the Gospel’s precepts in his

actions than he who has them always on his lips, but does

not act up to them.” She continues: “We desire to be no

burden or offence to any one; but if any one can point out

an abuse, let him do so, and we will gladly reform it. For

we acknowledge ourselves to be weak creatures, who may go

easily astray, and who do not dare to take pleasure in good

works. We only ask that no one shall do us wrong and

violence, and that we shall not be forced to do that which

we consider a disgrace and against our eternal salvation.”

Charitas’ former petition to Nützel was now supplemented by a more

formal petition of the convent, addressed to the town council. She

protested against the violent change meditated, and repelled the idea

of submitting to spiritual directors imposed by the republic; she

asked the councillors why they should object to a few women

voluntarily living in common, and besought them not to root up a

time-honored institution which was so intimately connected with the

annals of their native city. Part of the council was decidedly in

favor of less violent measures, and by the advice of these members the

intrusion of Lutheran directors was put off for a time and affairs

left to take their own course; but the lull was but momentary. People

still besieged the convent, threatening its inmates and disseminating

scandalous rumors in the town, and the poor nuns lived in daily fear

of some outbreak. This was in the Advent of 1524, and in March, 1525,

the storm broke loose again.

One of those frequent and useless disputations on the subject of

religion which made such a characteristic feature of the

sixteenth-century movement took place at Nuremberg at the beginning of

March. Eight religious of the Carmelite, Franciscan, and Dominican

orders took the Catholic side against seven preachers of the Lutheran

doctrines (among them the famous Osiander) under the leadership of the

prior of the Augustinians at Nuremberg. The debate lasted for eleven

days, or five sessions, without any shadow of an accommodation

appearing possible, and at the sixth session the Catholic doctors gave

in a written statement to the effect that the affair had become a

discussion such as by imperial mandate was strictly forbidden, and

that, as there was no impartial judgment to be looked for, the

presidents of the _colloquium_ being known adherents of the new

doctrines, they thought it best to retire from the useless conflict.

The council, however, had attained its end, and prepared an

opportunity for formally introducing the new religion into the

republic. The convents and monasteries were ordered to give up their

rule and the members to enter the world again. Four of the male

communities did as they were bid; the Dominicans and Franciscans still

refused to comply. The former were compelled to leave in 1543, and the

latter stood their ground till the last brother died. They were,

however, forbidden to preach and hear confessions, and the direction

of both convents of women, St. Clare and St. Catherine, was taken from

them.

The first open attack on St. Clare was made five days after the

religious disputation, on the 19th of March, 1525. A deputation from

the council demanded admittance into the interior of the convent, and,

though Charitas pleaded the “enclosure” and offered to gather the

community at the grated window through which it was customary to speak

with strangers and men, she was forced to accede to their demand and

admit the councillors into the winter refectory. The two

representatives began with a honeyed address, telling the assembled

nuns that, now the light of the Gospel was fully manifested in the

city, it were a shame that they alone should be denied the privilege

of seeing it. Therefore a learned and distinguished preacher, Herr

Poliander, of Würzburg, would impart to them this knowledge, and, the

Franciscans being removed, the council would provide the nuns with

suitable confessors. The abbess heard them out, and then retorted that

her nuns were well stored with Gospel knowledge, which had been

clearly preached to them before, and that the connection between their

order and the Franciscans was of long date and authorized by papal and

imperial decrees, but that, if they were to suffer violence in this

matter, God and their conscience urged them to declare that it was so,

and that they protested against such violence being used. The

councillors said that, since they objected to secular[73] priests as

confessors, they might choose one of the Augustinians (who had

apostatized), since they too were “religious.” But Charitas answered:

“If we are to have religious, why not leave us the Franciscans? We

know and honor them and have had long experience of them; but as to

the order you name, we also know how lax its discipline has grown.”

“Nay,” said the councillors, “you will soon not have that to complain

of; for these brothers will doff their cowls and enter into another

state.”

To which the abbess replied: “That is no comfort to us. They could

only teach us to follow their example; and as they have taken to

themselves wives, they would have us take husbands. God forbid!”

The useless conversation was carried on some time longer, and on

Charitas asking the reason why the council so oppressed her

sisterhood, and whether they had committed any offence, the

councillors were forced to allow that the “council knew of no offence

or abuse on their part, but, on the contrary, only of honor,

diligence, and modesty,” but that in other communities it was not

always so, and the new laws must be enforced everywhere alike. The

very next day Poliander, the Lutheran preacher, came for the first

time to preach to the reluctant nuns, while on the 21st of March the

Franciscans were allowed to pay their charges a farewell visit,

administer the sacraments, say Mass, and preach. This was the last

time the nuns enjoyed these holy privileges; henceforward the dying

were deprived of the Viaticum and Extreme Unction, and Mass was no

longer said in the convent chapel. On the 22nd Charitas assembled a

chapter of her nuns, which decided on presenting a second petition to

the council, and the abbess sent to ask Kaspar Nützel to come in

person to the convent. He consented and sent her a friendly message,

but it was clear he expected submission. He came and set before the

community the advantages of gracefully giving way and the evil they

would entail on themselves by resistance; but Charitas answered to the

point: that, although he had spoken in friendly terms, he had not

mentioned the real subject of the dispute—_i.e._, the question of who

should be the convent’s spiritual directors. “We see,” she said, “that

every means is being used to drive us to accept the new doctrines, but

until the whole church accepts them neither will we. Nothing will part

us from the fellowship of the universal church nor from the vows we

have vowed unto God.” She then offered to let the administrator ask

each nun her opinion separately during her own absence; but Nützel saw

that this would be useless, and even refused to take the petition,

whereupon the abbess read it aloud before him. The gist of it was

contained in the prayer that, in the name of the Gospel-freedom which

the times had so extolled, no violence should be done to the

consciences of the nuns. They begged also that if their confessor was

taken from them, at least no one should be imposed upon them in his

place. But it was evidently in vain, although Nützel reluctantly

pledged himself to represent their case to the council. Before he left

the convent, however, he attempted to cajole the abbess out of her

firm resistance to his wishes, and, taking her aside, begged her to

put her authority and influence on his side, telling her that she

might personally do much to prevent even bloodshed, and that, if he

could only win her over, he would think himself sure of the city and

the neighborhood. Indeed, many pinned their faith to her steadfastness

and looked to her example for support in their own temptations. But

neither flattery nor threats could win her over, nor even the hint

that by her obstinacy she would confirm others in contumacy, and bring

upon her native town the vengeance of the peasants who had risen in

arms against the Catholics. To this she answered calmly that it was

well known that the peasants had risen because, in the midst of this

new preaching of fraternity and evangelical freedom, they saw a way to

abolish the custom of vassalage, and meant forcibly to possess

themselves of that which their richer brethren were so glibly prating

of in theory. As the second petition had remained without effect,

Charitas drew up a third, a model of clearness and logic. Quoting St.

Paul, she said, “I can do all things in Him who is my strength,” and

she again assured the council that nothing would drive the sisters out

of the church. This paper was signed by all the nuns. She also asked

through Nützel for a secular priest, a holy man of the name of

Schröter, for a confessor, since the council was determined that the

Franciscans should no longer serve the convent; but this prayer was

also refused.

Things grew worse and worse. Poliander preached vile and opprobrious

sermons to the poor nuns, upbraiding and accusing them; and when he

left Würzburg, two others, Schleussner and Osiander, succeeded him and

preached regularly three times a week in the chapel. A sharp and

degrading watch was kept over the nuns, as the council suspected them

of stopping their ears with cotton-wool or exercising other petty

devices to escape the words of the distasteful sermons. This continued

throughout Lent, and the violence of the preachers inflaming the

passions of the people, the nuns lived in daily fear of seeing the

latter put into execution their frequent threat of burning down the

convent. The serving-girls could hardly go out of the house in safety

to purchase provisions, and the friends of the nuns had to use all

manner of subterfuges to be able to visit them in peace, while every

knock at the door frightened the poor women as if it heralded their

doom. But worse was yet to come. On the 7th of June three of the

councillors, Fürer, Pfinzing, and Imhof, visited the convent and laid

before the nuns five propositions with which the council demanded

instant compliance: an inventory was to be taken of all the convent

possessions, a laxer rule introduced, the religious dress laid aside,

the grated window replaced by a common one of glass, and free

permission granted to every nun to leave if she chose, taking with her

whatever dowry she had brought to the convent, or a suitable

remuneration for the services done during her stay there. Charitas

wisely showed a disposition to yield in minor matters, in which she

knew that the council would find means at any rate to force her

compliance, but on the matter of the religious vows she stood firm,

answering:

“In so far as my sisters owe me any personal obedience and

consideration, I am ready to forgive them the debt, but I

cannot absolve them from vows vowed unto the Lord; for what

are we poor creatures that we should lay hands on the things

that are God’s?”

The council allowed her four weeks to make up her mind to these

changes, and promised, in case of compliance, to protect the convent;

but if these conditions were resisted, neither the house nor the nuns

would be either protected or supported. Charitas called a chapter

together and announced her determination to have nothing to do with an

“open convent,” at the same time asking the sisters’ opinion on the

council’s proposal. The nuns unanimously (there were nearly sixty of

them) declared that they did not wish to be “made free” after the

council’s pattern of freedom; they meant to keep to their vows and

maintain their rule, and begged the abbess not to forsake them. She

then swore to stand by them as long as they would stand by their vows,

and exhorted them to steadfast courage and fervent prayer. Her friends

in the council, seeing that their influence was too weak to help the

convent, advised her to consent to the lesser propositions, and

accordingly the inventory was quietly made and handed over to the

authorities; the grating was taken down, and, at Wilibald Pirkheimer’s

suggestion, some part of the nuns’ habit was dyed black and assumed

only at the parlor window and in the gardens, while in the private

parts of the house the usual gray garb was worn. But the nuns

steadfastly refused to change the rule or to consider themselves

absolved from their vows, and, unless they were to be forcibly ejected

from the convent, there was no possibility of carrying out these two

important changes. But the council was prepared for anything, and soon

even this last violent act was publicly enforced.

Dame Ursula Tetzel had already tried some months before, with the help

of her brothers, to get her daughter Margaret, who had been for nine

years in the convent, to leave it and come home; but the girl herself

vigorously resisted the attempt, and Charitas represented it to the

mother as an infringement of the rights of the convent. Things had

marched rapidly enough since then to enable Dame Tetzel to renew the

attempt with more certainty of success; and accordingly she, with the

wives of the two councillors, Ebner and Nützel, who had each a

daughter in the convent, determined to take their children home at all

hazards. They gave the nuns a week’s notice, and on the 14th of June

appeared with a number of their male relations in two large

conveyances or wagons. A great crowd had collected round the convent

door, and a considerable excitement prevailed; the street and the

churchyard were full. Charitas, on her side, had requested two of the

councillors, Pfinzing and Imhof, to be present as witnesses of the

disgraceful scene she foresaw. The young nuns, respectively nineteen,

twenty, and twenty-three years old, fell on their knees before the

abbess, weeping and entreating her not to let them be taken away. They

even wished to hide themselves; but this, of course, Charitas forbade

and led the girls with her to the chapel where they had taken their

vows. She prayed and wept with them, and hesitated taking them over

the threshold into the presence of their mothers; but the latter came

into the chapel and violently upbraided their children, who with tears

piteously begged to be left alone. Katharine Ebner especially spoke in

eloquent tones for more than an hour, and, as the councillors

afterwards said, “She spoke no word that was weak or useless, but

talked with such force and cogency that every word weighed a pound.”

Her mother stormed, and Held, the brother of Dame Nützel, threatened

her “like an executioner,” but Katharine continued speaking in her own

behalf and that of her friends: “Here will I stand and not move one

step; and if you employ force, I will complain to God in heaven and

every man upon earth.” She was rudely dragged forward, but, stretching

her arms towards the abbess, cried out: “Dear mother, do not let me be

driven away from you!” Four persons, however, seized hold of her, and

amid loud cries on all sides she was dragged over the threshold of the

chapel, where she and Margaret Tetzel fell over each other, the latter

having her foot crushed in the crowd. Dame Ebner followed her daughter

with angry threats, telling her that if she did not go willingly she

would fling her down the stairs and break her head on the pavement

below. At last poor Charitas could stand it no longer and took refuge

in her cell, while the councillors who had witnessed the scene

declared that, had they foreseen such a sad sight, they would not have

come for a world of money, and never again would they lend the

sanction of their presence to such violent proceedings.

The poor young nuns were put in the wagons and driven away, but they

still cried out to the crowd that they were suffering violence and

demanded to be taken back to their convent. Dame Ebner got so incensed

that she struck her daughter on the mouth, and the poor girl bled all

the way home. There were many in the crowd who cried “Shame!” and

would gladly, had they dared, have attempted a rescue, but the strong

hand of the “trained bands” of Nuremberg was not to be defied in vain.

Charitas never saw her spiritual children again, but she heard from

time to time that they were still unchanged in their feelings. Clara

Nützel ate nothing for four days after she was taken away, and day and

night cried to be taken back again.

This scene of violence made a great stir at the time and awakened much

sympathy for the convent, and at least it had this good effect: that

no more forcible abductions were attempted. Some time later one nun,

Anna Schwarz, whose sisters had left the other convent of Nuremberg,

St. Catherine, left St. Clare of her own accord; she was the only one

who voluntarily gave up her vows. In this case, however, her mother

was not well pleased and by no means urged her to leave. The community

was now reduced to fifty-one members, and of these none henceforward

left the convent, unless by the call of God to a better and more

peaceful life.

In the following autumn Melanchthon visited Nuremberg, and, though

their views now differed, his friendship with Pirkheimer was not

weakened. He inquired into the state of affairs, and, together with

the administrator, Nützel, visited the convent and had a long

conversation with the abbess. She says in her diary: “He was more

gentle and discreet in his speech than any of the new teachers I have

met before”; and, indeed, she had long had the greatest esteem for the

young and ripe Greek scholar.

“He spoke much of the new doctrines,” she continues; “but

when I told him that we did not place our hope in our own

works, but solely in the grace of God, he replied that in

that case we might be saved in the cloister quite as well as

in the world. Indeed, we agreed in the main on all points,

except concerning the vows, which he holds not to be

binding, but yet strongly disapproved of the violence that

had been done to the nuns to force them to give up their

vows. He took leave of us in a very friendly manner, and

afterwards strongly reproved the administrator and the other

councillors for having forbidden the Franciscans to

celebrate divine service at St. Clare, and having dragged

the children out of the convent against their will; indeed,

he told them that, between themselves, he considered that

therein they had committed a grievous sin.”

Charitas dated from his visit a quieter state of things and the

cessation of many petty persecutions on the part of Kaspar Nützel. She

says of Melanchthon in her diary: “I hope God sent this man to us at

the right time; …” and later in a letter she writes thus of the

administrator: “Would to God every one were as discreet as Master

Philip; we might then hope to be rid of many things that are very

vexatious.”

Although the three young nuns were not restored to the convent, their

parents, smarting under the many insinuations made against their

conduct, conveyed to the abbess, through Sigismund Fürer and Leonard

Tucher, a formal acknowledgment of their satisfaction at the “manner

in which the girls had been brought up and their health cared for”;

while the two men added of their own accord that as to the girls they

must tell the truth—_i.e._, that if it depended upon them, they would

be back at the convent before evening. Kaspar Nützel himself said the

same thing to the abbess, thanking her for the care bestowed on his

daughter’s physical and moral well-being, and acknowledging himself

indebted to the convent for this favor. But, better than this, he soon

wrote a letter in which he distinctly stated that he regretted having

several times “overstepped his legitimate authority in his attempts to

convert her to the new doctrines,” and promised that in future he

would attend with peculiar zeal at least to the temporal concerns of

the convent. Their possessions had, however, been so curtailed during

these troublous times that they almost literally subsisted on alms.

On All Souls’ day, 1527, the same two councillors who had witnessed

the forcible taking away of the young nuns two years before, and two

other associates, were commissioned to institute a domiciliary

visitation in the convent and to speak in private with each sister,

with a view to elicit their grievances and give them a chance of

speaking freely. The poor nuns were very much frightened at the

proposal, but Charitas only made this remonstrance:

“Worthy masters,” she said, “you are somewhat vehement

confessors. It has pleased our rulers to abolish private

confession to one man, and now you require us poor women to

confess to four men at once, and lay open to them all our

spiritual needs!” And as the men were rather staggered, she

continued: “You say many abuses among us have come to the

ears of the council. We should like to hear them detailed.

We have been driven and oppressed like worms for three

years, and would gladly, if we could, have hidden ourselves

under a stone like worms; but if we have offended in

anything, let it be clearly brought home to us.”

The men looked at each other, and one said: “This point is not yet

settled”; while another asked helplessly: “What am I to say? I do not

understand the matter.” At last they went through the form of

examining each nun alone and separately, and got tired and left off

when they had examined thirty-nine. The preacher Osiander once held a

discussion with Charitas for four hours without any result but both

parties remaining stronger in their own belief; and on another

occasion, when Dr. Link, formerly an Augustinian, and now preacher at

the hospital, sent her a controversial pamphlet, she answered him in

writing, argument for argument, and made all who saw her defence

marvel at the clearness of her logic and the ease of her style. He had

put himself forward as an example (doubtless because he had been, like

her, a religious), but she answered:

“Forgive me if I do not care to follow the example of any

man; our example is Christ, and, even if we were to look for

models among men, it would be strange if we sought for them

among living men while such men as St. Augustine, St.

Jerome, St. Cyprian, and others are set aside and disowned.”

Later on she again wrote to him:

“If God does not inspire us with love for your new faith, we

cannot of ourselves force our hearts to it. We should

deceive ourselves and do violence to our conscience (which

is wrong) if we were to listen to the threats or persuasions

of men. It is no luxurious life, God knows, that keeps us in

our convent; neither is it any belief that simply to have

taken the veil assures salvation. We do not place our hope

in the conventual rule, but in the mercy of God and his only

Son. I hold none of my nuns back against their will; if they

choose to leave, they are free to do so. I only ask that

they should not be forced to do it, as has happened already

on one occasion.”

Towards the end of 1528 came a time of negative peace for the nuns,

and, as the “silver wedding” or jubilee of the abbess fell about

Christmas time, the convent prepared itself for a modest festival in

honor of this event. It was the first time that an abbess had held her

office for so many years, and the celebration was looked upon with so

much the more interest that no former abbess had gone through such

stirring and troublous times during the period of her abbess-ship. The

festival was put off till Easter, 1529, and was long remembered by the

nuns as one of their few red-letter days. Their friends from the town

sent them presents of wine, fruit, cakes, and preserves, and

Pirkheimer and Dame Ursula Kramer, his neighbor, both sent their plate

to adorn the nuns’ table on the occasion. This pleased the simple

women immensely, and Katharine, Charitas’ niece, wrote in glowing

terms to her father, giving him an account of the festivities of the

day. We will quote a few passages from her letter:

“In the morning the whole community came to the mother, each

sister bearing a torch, and the prioress put a crown upon

her head and led her to the choir, where we said the Office

for the day and then sang the Mass as best we could. Then

the mother took the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle

and exposed it, and the community knelt to adore it and make

a spiritual communion. We comforted ourselves with the words

of St. Augustine: _Crede et manducasti_ (Believe, and thou

hast eaten). The mother then sat by the altar, and one by

one we all went up to her and embraced her, … and she had

her hands full of rings, and gave each of the sisters one as

a pledge of their renewed espousals with their Bridegroom

and of their resolve to be true to him; … although it has

not been the custom hitherto with us, the mother thought

that, considering these exceptionally sad years, it would be

a remembrance of the obedience and earnestness with which we

have hung together through these vicissitudes.… Then we took

the mother to table, … and you, dear father, have proved

yourself a generous host. The sisters said, ‘Oh! that Master

Pirkheimer were here to see how we are enjoying his good

gifts’; and your plate and Dame Kramer’s delighted us also

mightily.… At last, at night, we had a little dance. The old

nuns danced as well as the young ones. Mother Apollonia

Tucher, who has been fifty-seven years in the convent, took

hold of me and turned me round; … and the dance was so

hearty that the mother said, ‘Dear children, spare my

tables.’”

This was the last joyful event of Charitas’ life. Three months after

this festival her niece Crescentia, Pirkheimer’s daughter, died, and

the wicked tongues of the town took occasion to wag against the nuns,

accusing them of worrying her to death; but Pirkheimer himself put

down these scandalous rumors by publicly thanking the community for

the care bestowed on his child, and by making a special gift to the

convent in recognition of it. He also singled out the sisters who had

had special care of his daughter during her illness, and sent them

tokens of his gratitude; and, not content with this, he left the

convent fifty gulden in his will, which they received after his death.

Another cross befell the abbess in the loss of reason of two of her

nuns—a circumstance of which her enemies did not fail to make good

use; but, the two sisters being perfectly harmless, except at long

intervals, no removal was necessary, and they went about their common

duties peacefully until their death.

In 1530 Charitas lost her well-beloved brother Wilibald, which was a

sad break-up to her; but before he died he published an _Apology for

the Convent of St. Clare_, which greatly comforted, if it did not

help, the nuns. But the council contemptuously overlooked this as it

had done all previous petitions.

Two years after her brother’s death the noble Charitas Pirkheimer

followed him to a better land, and her sister Clara was chosen abbess

in her stead. Her friend Apollonia Tucher died within a few months, on

the 15th of January, 1533, and the new abbess the following month,

whereupon her niece Katharine became abbess and ruled the community

for thirty years. She was the last abbess but one; for towards the end

of the century the last nun died and the convent reverted to the

town.[74] But the good fight had been fought, and the noble defeat

only brought fresh and eternal honor on the name of the Clarist Order;

for, as says Montaigne, “There are defeats that dispute the palm with

victories,” and Lacordaire comments thus on the saying: “This noble

axiom applies no less to moral than to military defeats, and we should

never tire of inculcating the principle that as long as honor and

conscience are safe, so long also is fame deserved.”

[72] _Charitas Pirkheimer, Abbess of St. Clare at

Nuremberg._ By Franz Binder. Herder, Freiburg im

Breisgau. The biographer, Franz Binder, has compiled

the life of Charitas, which we have condensed in the

present article, from trustworthy sources, the

principal ones being the _Works of Wilibald

Pirkheimer_, in Latin, published at Frankfort in 1610;

MS. letters of the Pirkheimer family preserved in the

town library at Nuremberg; Charitas’ own diary,

published at Bamberg in 1852; Dr. Lochner’s _Biography

of Celebrated Nurembergers_, published in 1861; and

other less important and shorter works in which passing

reference is made to the events of Charitas’ life.

[73] Literally _lay priests_, but, we think, referring to

seculars.

[74] The church of St. Clare at Nuremberg remained for a

long time closed. It was then opened again and soon

afterwards given over to Protestant worship. It was

subsequently used for commercial purposes, as a

magazine of wares, a market-place, and place for local

exhibitions, and finally as a barracks. In 1854 it was

given back to the Catholics of Nuremberg as their

second church. In the following year its restoration

was begun, and on May 13, 1857, the Church of St. Clare

was publicly consecrated anew for Catholic worship.

MYSTERIES.

“It might have been.” We say it oft,

With aching heart, with streaming eyes;

We grope with eager, outstretched hands

After another’s slighted prize.

We call a life a wasted life.

O mourning souls! be not too sure.

Out of great darkness may come light,

And, after evil, hearts grow pure.

God only knows. We leave to him

The things that are not what we would,

And trust that in his own good time

He will do that which he sees good.

His will be done. The quivering lips

Must say it, though with bitter tears.

_His will!_ It is enough, enough

To hush our murmurs, soothe our fears.

He overrules all pain and sin,

Makes dire disgrace work out his word.

Poor souls, bow down before his might

And trust all myst’ries with the Lord.

ARE YOU MY WIFE?

BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS

VI.,” ETC.