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THE END OF
THE MIDDLE AGES
ESSAYS AND QUESTIONS IN HISTORY
BY
A. MARY F. ROBINSON
(_Madame James Darmesteter_)
LONDON
T FISHER UNWIN
26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
MDCCCLXXXIX
[Illustration]
DEDICATION.
[Illustration]
MY DEAR MR. SYMONDS,—_I send you a little book; different from the many
volumes, plump with documents and the dignity of History, which I
intended for you long ago. But, since I have no better thing to offer,
take—dear Master—these rough and scattered pages. For to whom, if not to
you, should I dedicate the book? When I look back, I see you at my side
in all my studies; for the last ten years, there is not one of them
which has not been confided to you, and, most of all, my dreams of
History. So that whatever I write belongs in some sort to you; but
especially this little volume of which we talked so much in your study
at Davos two years ago. Do you remember how you guided me through the
innumerable pages of Litta and of Muratori in quest of the secret of the
French Claim to Milan? We did not find much of that, but we found so
many better things; and, best of all, the happy hours which you
illuminated! Hours in which you evoked for me, as we plunged deeper and
deeper into your Chronicles, the great figures of the Past. At first
they rose before me, pale and mute—silent and immaculate as the white
recesses of your Alps; but, at the touch of your wand, they assumed
their ancient colour and consistence—the very smile, the gait, the
accent, the passions, that had moved them once beneath this sun that has
survived them; their voices magically issued out of the silent yellow
pages; the sound of their battles clashed anew along your windless
valleys and eagle-haunted mountain tops. And, once alive, they remained
alive for me._
_As I sat and wondered, a new desire awoke in me, an eager wish to seize
these brilliant apparitions, to strip them of their faded purple, to
strip them of their form and colour, to lay them bare to their innermost
tissue and catch the reason and the secret of their being._
_And, first of all, to understand exactly what they did, and when, and
why. Our beautiful chronicles were not always quite precise. I began to
see that what I wanted must be sought in manuscripts and foreign
archives. And, half afraid, I told you of my project for exchanging a
cheerful holiday in Switzerland against a week or two of dull research
in Paris. Since then I have worked long and hard, in Paris, in London,
in Florence, and the writing of dead hands has grown familiar to me; but
I have never forgotten that it was first in the solitude of your lofty
valley, that my task grew plain before my mind. And now to whom, if not
to you should I offer these scattered ruins of the thing undone—these
first ineffectual sketches of that_ History of the French in Italy,
_which still I mean to write? From Davos they took their flight; let
them seek the nest again!_
_If I had better profited by your lessons and your example, it would not
have been a mere sheaf of fragments that I should have offered you
to-day, but a Book, a solid and coherent whole consistently animated, in
all the complexity and the unity of its subject, by an epoch, an idea, a
man, or an event. Nothing else is really durable, permanently useful. It
is true that I have tried (and may the candour of this avowal excuse its
weakness!)—yes, I have tried, after the manner of essayists, to give an
apparent unity to my fragments by means of a title, large and
comfortable as the cloak of charity which covers in its vague expanse a
host of strangers._
_For, after all, what has Schwester Katrei to do with Charles VIII., or
Isotta of Rimini with Mechtild of Magdeburg? Shall I avow that the
volume is really the fragmentary essays towards two unwritten
histories—one of the house of Hohenstaufen, the other of the French in
Italy? Also I can imagine you remarking that, from the thirteenth
century to the sixteenth, my Middle Ages take long a-dying:_
“_Les gens que vous tuez se portent assez bien._”
_And you might add that in a book on the end of the Middle Ages, it is
strange to find not a line on the Loss of Constantinople, and not a
chapter on the invention of Printing or the Discovery of America._
_What can I do but acknowledge my incompleteness? Nay, I will even
confess to you that I have my private doubts whether the Middle Ages are
over yet—whether any period comes to an end at a given epoch, but does
not rather still subsist, diminished yet puissant, stealing in unnoticed
currents along the vast veins and secret fabric of the world. In many a
turn of thought and habit, in many a disregarded constitution—in May Day
and Manor Court, in the Land laws and the Judenhetze—the Middle Ages are
not over yet. Here and there they reappear and startle us in unexpected
corners. That form of Nature which we know as History is, like every
other evolution of Nature, too complex to be accurately fixed in words.
Words only give the vague surroundings; they are the ill-fitting,
ready-made clothes of a thought._
_Therefore, despite their official end, we may doubt whether we be done
with the Middle Ages. And yet you will agree with me that the personages
of my essays belong no longer wholly to the age in which they lived.
Something came to an end then; something slowly began. Race of Cain and
race of Abel, mystics lost in ecstasy, or captains of prey and
plunder,—yet Eckhart, the forerunner of Hegel, and the sinister
Giangaleazzo dreaming in a different fashion the dream of Count Cavour,
was each unconsciously a precursor of the Modern Age._
* * * * *
_The Beguines, bringing the dissolvent of mysticism to the authority of
Rome; the Pope, in quitting his true capital for Avignon; the Cardinals
by opening the Schism: these, between them, have invented the
Reformation.... Giangaleazzo Visconti, when he made his daughter of
Orleans his heir, prepared the battles of Marignano and Pavia, and
condemned Francis I. to his captivity in Spain. Even as the Feud of
Orleans and Burgundy began the long rivalry of Francis and the Emperor,
the great descendants of those angry houses.... Meanwhile the numerous
invasions of Italy under the Dukes of Orleans, and still later, the
triumphal journey of Charles VIII., brought back to France the splendour
of the Renaissance. Thus Hallam closes the Middle Ages with the taking
of Naples, in 1494. However this be, if you are indulgent, dear Master,
you may consider my essays a very humble and inadequate Introduction to
the study of your Sixteenth Century._
_Perhaps I am the only reader who will have learned anything from the
little book. And, after all, I am contented that it should be so. It is
so much pleasanter to learn than to instruct; and in learning one meets
with so many friends and helpers. I cannot tell you here of all who have
befriended me, but I must at least mention to you the names of Canon
Creighton, unfailing critic and sympathizer; of Mr. Bryce, who reached
out an experienced hand to me and spared me several more mistakes in
Feudal Law; of Mr. H.F. Brown of Venice, who procured me my Venetian
transcripts; of Professor Villari and Professor Paoli of Florence (it
was the latter who taught me Palæography); and of Comte Albert de
Circourt of Paris, in whom I have found a quite invaluable adviser and
correspondent,—for probably no historian in Europe is so familiar with
the Lombard schemes of Louis d’Orléans as he._
* * * * *
_To you I owe the largest debt of all. It is not only for the writing of
a book I thank you here--_
_Ever sincerely yours_,
A. MARY F. DARMESTETER.
CONTENTS.
[Illustration]
THE BEGUINES AND THE WEAVING BROTHERS.>
PAGE
In 1180, Lambert of Liége founds the first Beguinage; the 8
rapid spread of the Order; invention of the kindred
guild of the Beghards or Fratres Textores
In 1216 the invention of the Tertiary Orders of St. Dominic 12
and St. Francis supplies a monastic equivalent for
Beguinism
Beguinism is awhile preserved from decadence by the prestige 14
of Mechtild of Magdeburg
After her death, heresy and mysticism swiftly undermine 24
the Beguine Orders
Opinions of the Beguines 25
The Church resolves on their suppression 29
The plague of the Wandering Orders 30
The Beguines are absorbed into the Tertiary Orders 31
The Beguines of Strasburg join the Dominican Order 32
And heresy begins to appear among the Dominicans of 33
Strasburg
Meister Eckhart and his doctrines 33
Swester Katrei 34
The Beguines are suppressed; but their ideas, stealthily 38
kept alive in quiet places, burst out again in the XVI.
century
THE CONVENT OF HELFTA. >
Religious distinction of Thuringia in the 13th century 45
Gertrude of Helfta enters the Convent of Rodardesdorf 46
about 1234; arrival of her sister Mechtild
Life in the Convent 48
In 1251 Gertrude is elected Abbess 55
And removes the Convent to her Castle of Helfta 56
Mechtild of Magdeburg enters the Convent, 1265 57
The miracles of St. Gertrude 61
Death of Mechtild of Magdeburg 67
Illness of St. Gertrude 68
Her death 71
THE ATTRACTION OF THE ABYSS. >
The science of Mysticism 74
The bottom of the Soul 75
The Soul and God alone real, the world non-existent 75
The bottom of the Soul is Nothingness 8
God is the supreme Non-Existence 82
And created Matter _purum nihil_ 84
The world is Nothing 85
Superiority of the position of the Mystics to the position 87
of Theologians
THE SCHISM. >
The Pope comes to Avignon. The Popes remain there 95
seventy years. In 1377 the Pope re-enters Rome
Changed aspect of Rome 96
Robert of Geneva leads the Papal armies against the Italians 97
on revolt
Death of Gregory XI. The Conclave in Rome 97
Bartolommeo Prignano is elected 97
Triumph of the Italian party 98
The unpopularity of Prignano as Urban VI. 99
The rumour grows that his election was invalid. In 100
September, 1378, Robert of Geneva is elected Pope at
Fondi as Clement VII.
The Schism 100
VALENTINE VISCONTI. >
Birth of Valentine Visconti, 1366 102
Her parentage and childhood 103
The rise of her father, Giangaleazzo 104
Description of Valentine 107
Conquests of Giangaleazzo 110
Valentine Visconti is betrothed to Louis, only brother of 111
Charles VI. of France
Reasons for the marriage 112
The dowry of Valentine 113
Antagonism of Prince Louis to his uncle of Burgundy 115
Burgundy resists the marriage 116
Valentine arrives at Court 118
Description of the King and Orleans 119
Mediæval Paris 122
Ascendancy of Valentine over the King 127
Her husband acquires the Duchy of Orleans, 1391 128
The King goes mad 129
The people suspect Orleans 131
And say the Duke of Orleans is a wizard 133
Madness of the King 134
People say that Valentine is a witch, and that she and her 137
husband compass the King’s madness
Reasons for popular irritation against Valentine 138
Rivalry of France and Visconti in Genoa 139
Visconti and Orleans play into each other’s hands 140
The Kingdom of Adria 145
Death of Clement VII. 146
France checkmates Orleans and Visconti in Genoa 147
There is talk in France of a Lombard campaign 149
But the disaster of Nicopolis compels the French to keep 150
friends with Milan
Nicopolis 151
Tyranny of Orleans in France 156
Death of Giangaleazzo Visconti 162
Orleans leads an army into Lombardy 164
And suddenly returns to Paris 165
The King bestows on him the royal claim to Pisa 165
The Florentines take Pisa 167
And Orleans turns his ambition towards Luxemburg, to the 169
detriment of Burgundy
Orleans is murdered in Paris 170
Burgundy avows the deed 173
Valentine struggles to vindicate her husband’s memory 174
She dies broken-hearted 178
THE FRENCH CLAIM TO MILAN. >
Valentine Visconti brings the Milanese succession into the 181
House of Orleans
Her marriage contract provides that on extinction of male 184
descent she shall inherit Milan
The Duke of Milan thus disposes of an Imperial fief 186
Ambiguity of his conduct and intention 189
He intends to secure himself equally against France and 190
against the Empire
Unsubstantiality of Imperial power 192
The will of Giangaleazzo Visconti confirms the French claim 193
to Milan
Fate of the children of Valentine 196
Orleans and Angoulême, in 1441, send Dunois to Milan to 197
demand the restitution of Asti from their uncle Filippo
Maria Visconti
Illness of the Duke of Milan 199
The rival claims of his heirs 200
He talks of adopting the Dauphin Louis 202
Meanwhile Louis and Savoy plan the conquest of Milan 203
League between the Dauphin and the Duke of Milan 205
Death of the Duke of Milan 206
His will 207
The French prepare to assert the rights of Orleans 209
Raynouard du Dresnay begins the campaign 210
The Duke of Orleans arrives at Asti, October 17, 1447 213
He sends an embassy to Venice asking aid 215
The Venetians procrastinate 217
Intrigues of Savoy 220
The Venetians determine to assassinate Francesco Sforza 221
Suddenly the Milanese accept Sforza 229
His position as regards Orleans, and before the feudal law 231
The Venetians again determine to assassinate him 233
Efforts of Sforza to legalize his position 237
The Dauphin promises the Venetians to invade Italy, and 240
dispossess Sforza
In December, 1453, Venice incites the Dauphin to seize 241
the Milanese and expel Sforza—She professes her
readiness to aid him with men or money; or she will do
as much for the Duke of Orleans in the same undertaking.
(A note quotes Venetian documents to show how, about
the same time, Genoa, Milan, Venice, and Florence were
taking measures to secure Italy against invasion.)
In April, 1459, Venice makes peace with Sforza 242
Opposite policy of Charles VII. and the Dauphin 243
Death of King Charles VII. 245
Louis XI. becomes the firm ally of Sforza, but discards 245
Savoy, Orleans, Dunois, and Anjou
In December, 1463, Louis XI. cedes to Sforza the French 245
claim to Genoa
Death of Charles, Duke of Orleans 246
Death of Louis XI., August 30, 1483 247
January 16, 1484. Venice sends to Charles VIII. and to 250
the young Duke of Orleans pointing out the French
claim to Venice and to Naples
The Embassy is renewed in February; but a new peace in 251
Italy and the struggles of Orleans for the Regency in
France postpone any further plans for a French invasion
The invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. takes place in 1494 252
at the instigation, not of Naples, but of Milan
Illness detains Orleans at Asti, within a league or two of 252
Lodovico Sforza at Milan
Venice and Florence begin to intrigue with Orleans, and 254
suggest that the French take Milan instead of Naples
Giangaleazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, dies in prison 257
Rights of the Regent, Lodovico il Moro 257
A diploma from the Emperor declares him Duke 256, 257
The relation between the French and Lodovico Sforza 258
become strained
In March, 1495, Venice, Milan, the Emperor, Castile, and 260
Arragon unite in a league to expel the French, unless
they retire without offence
In June Orleans takes Novara 263
The blockade of Novara. Orleans is released by composition 264
Peace between France and the League is concluded in 265
October, 1495—The French evacuate Italy
Florence entreats Orleans to invade Italy, and insists upon 266
his rights to Milan, 1497
Orleans refuses to leave France 266
Death of Charles VIII. 267
Orleans becomes King of France as Louis XII. 267
Louis XII. conquers Lombardy, 1499 268
The Emperor confirms his victories, and annals the 269
privileges bestowed on Lodovico Sforza
Rights of Louis XII. and of Francis I. to Milan 269
The French lose Milan at the Battle of Pavia 270
Efforts to regain Milan, 1527-1536 271
The treaty of Crépy 271
The death of Charles II. of Orleans leaves Milan to the 272
Spaniards
THE MALATESTAS OF RIMINI. >
Carlo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, being childless, adopts his 274
dead brother’s three natural sons in 1427
And procures their legitimation before his death in 1429 275
He is succeeded by the eldest, Galeotto, a visionary ascetic 276
In 1430 Gismondo, his younger brother, drives back the 279
Papal armies and delivers Rimini, being at the time
twelve years of age
Galeotto expels the Jews 279
And dies 280
Gismondo succeeds, drives back the armies of Urbino and 281
Pesaro, betroths himself to the daughter of Carmagnola,
and marries Ginevra of Este, 1432
He rebuilds the Rocca, and becomes acquainted with Isotta 284
degli Atti
Character of Isotta 285
In 1440 the wife of Gismondo dies suddenly—In 1442 he 287
marries, not Isotta, but the daughter of Sforza
He rebuilds the church of Rimini in honour of Isotta 287
Architecture and decoration 287-294
Sudden death of Polissena Sforza 294
Triumphs and treacheries of Gismondo as a captain 295
He deserts from Arragon to Anjou 296
His reverses begin 296
At this moment his enemy, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, is 296
elected Pope, 1453
The effigy of Gismondo is buried in the streets of Rome, and 297
he is excommunicated
He seeks help in vain of the Angevines at Naples 297
He marries Isotta, and leaves her as Regent in Rimini 297
He hires himself to the Venetians, conducts the campaign 298
of the Morea, and brings home the bones of Gemisthus
Pletho in 1465
Ruin and death of Gismondo Malatesta 299
THE LADIES OF MILAN. >
Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza in 1476 300
The Duchess Bonne and her children leave the conduct of 300
affairs to Cecco Simonetta, secretary of the late Duke
and of his father, the great Francesco Sforza
Simonetta exiles the brothers of the late Duke 301
He falls out with the favourite of the Duchess, who 302
persuades her to recall her brother-in-law, Lodovico
il Moro
Lodovico returns secretly to Milan; beheads Simonetta 303
And shuts his two little nephews in the Tower 303
He rules Milan by the title of Regent, and exiles the 304
Duchess
His nephew, Giangaleazzo Sforza, marries Isabel of Arragon, 305
granddaughter of the King of Naples
Lodovico Sforza marries Beatrice d’Este, daughter of the 306
Duke of Ferrara
Jealousies of Beatrice and Isabel 306
Isabel appeals to Naples, and induces her father and 306
grandfather to declare war on Lodovico in defence of
the rights of Giangaleazzo
Lodovico invites the French to invade Italy in support of 307
the French claim to Naples, 1494
Death of the Duchess Beatrice, January, 1496 309
Sforza and Visconti portraits 312
THE FLIGHT OF PIERO DE’ MEDICI. >
Charles VIII. invades Italy, 1494 315
Enthusiasm of the people and of Savonarola for the 315-319
French
Savonarola 319
Piero Capponi 320
Piero de’ Medici 321
His light-minded and frivolous government leaves Florence 322
at the mercy of the French
Piero secretly leaves Florence and goes to make terms with 325
Charles VIII.
Assents to the extravagant demands of the King 331
Indignation of Florence 335
Piero is expelled the city 337
THE FRENCH AT PISA. >
Gabriel’ Maria Visconti, Lord of Pisa, declares himself the 340
vassal of the King of France, 1404
Marshal Boucicaut is sent as French Governor to Genoa, 341
1402
Character of Boucicaut 341
His schemes for capturing a town in Lombardy 341
But his allies, the Florentines, are too busy in laying 342
siege to Pisa
Louis of Orleans marches towards Lombardy, 1403 343
And suddenly returns to France 343
Boucicaut having accepted Visconti as the vassal of the 345
King for Pisa
The King transfers to Orleans all the royal rights on Pisa 345
Florence remonstrates with Boucicaut, her ally, asserting 345-8
that she has more right than the French have to Pisa
Meanwhile the Pisans expel Gabriel’ Maria Visconti, who 350
takes refuge at Genoa, and demands succour of the
French King, his liege lord
Boucicaut attempts to arrange affairs _a l’amiable_ 351
The Pisans refuse to accept Gabriel’ Maria, but offer to 351
give themselves directly to France, even as Genoa had
done before
Boucicaut induces Gabriel’ Maria to accept a compensation, 352
and sends a French garrison and a galley of provisions
to Pisa
The Pisans seize the crew of the galley, cast them into 352
prison, and provision the city for a long resistance at
Boucicaut’s expense
Visconti sells Pisa to the Florentines 353
Boucicaut persuades the King of France to accept the 354
Florentines as his vassals for Pisa
The King agrees and signs a treaty to that effect; yet in 365
the next year he declares Burgundy and Orleans Lords
of Pisa, and bids Boucicaut help them against the
Florentines. Boucicaut refuses
The Florentines take Pisa. Anger in France. The Duke of
Orleans casts the Florentine ambassadors into prison:
they are released by his widow after his death
Seventy years of slavery for Pisa 367
But when, in 1494, Charles VIII. of France invades Italy 368
He undertakes to maintain the Pisans in their liberties 369
The Pisans expel the Florentines, and constitute themselves 369
a Free Republic
Divided opinions in the camp of Charles 370
Charles solemnly swears to Florence that he will restore 371
Pisa on his return from Naples
The Pisans send an advocate to the King in Rome, beseeching 373
him not to deliver them to Florence
Louis de Ligny—Luxemburg, with other adherents of the 376
party of Orleans, favours the Pisans’ cause
Savonarola meets the King at Poggibonsi, and summons him 378
to return by Florence
But the King returns by Pisa, and does not yield the city, 380
The King promises to let the Florentines know his decision 385
so soon as he arrives at Asti
Meanwhile he leaves Entragues with a French garrison in 385
Pisa
The King, arrived at Turin, summons Entragues to yield 388
Pisa to the Florentines
Entragues refuses 390
He treats with the Pisans 391
Pisa becomes nominally a Free Republic 393
Distress of the French in Naples 394
Distress of Florence 395
Milan and Venice intrigue for Pisa 396
And Pisa never forgives the French her liberty 396
THE BEGUINES AND THE WEAVING
BROTHERS.[1]
I.
With the approach of the thirteenth century, the world awoke from its
long and dreamless sleep. Then began the age of faith, the miraculous
century, starving for lack of bread and nourished upon heavenly roses.
St. Louis and St. Elizabeth, Dominic the eloquent and the fiery
Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas and Francis the _glorioso poverello di Dio_,
proclaim the enthusiastic spirit of the age. It is an age of chivalry no
less in religion than in love, an age whose somewhat strained and
mystical conception of virtue is sweetened by a new strong impulse of
human pity. The world begins to see; and the green growth of the earth,
the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, become clear and noticeable
things in the eyes of the saints. The world awakes and feels. Jean de
Matha and Félix de Valois, gentlemen of Meaux, visit the prisons of
France, and redeem many hundred captives from Morocco. On all sides men
begin to love the sick, the poor, the sinful; even to long for sickness
and poverty, as if in themselves they were virtuous; even to wonder
whether sin and evil may not be a holy means for mortifying spiritual
pride. To rescue the captive, to feed the hungry, to nurse the leper, as
unawares Elizabeth of Hungary tended Christ in her Thuringian city—this
is the new ideal of mankind. And this age of feeling is no less an age
of speculation, of metaphysical inquiry, of manifold heresies and
schisms. No new Bernard stops with his earnest dogma the thousand
theories which everywhere arise and spread.
Footnote 1:
The principal sources for this and the two following articles are as
follows:—Mosheim, “Institutiones Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ;” Dr.
Schmidt’s “Strasburger Beginen-häuser im Mittelalter” and other pages
by this master of mediæval religious thought; Dr. Preger’s “Geschichte
der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter;” the volume on “Le Panthéisme
populaire au Moyen Age” of M. Auguste Jundt; Stockl’s “Geschichte der
Philosophie: Meister Eckhardt;” the writings on the School of
Alexandria of M. Vacherot and M. Barthélemy Saint Hilaire; Mr.
Vaughan’s “Half-Hours with the Mystics;” and last, not least, the
sermons of Eckhardt, the poems of Mechtild of Magdeburg, and the
meditations and lives of Saint Gertrude and Saint Mechtild of Helfta.
The modern age has begun. The saints of the preceding years had been men
of a more militant or monastic turn, dogmatic minds like Bernard of
Clairvaux, Norbert, Thomas à Becket. The era of charity and speculative
thought begins when the twelfth century is drawing near the close.
From the last year of the eleventh century until the Christians were
finally driven out of Syria in 1291, there had been scarcely a break in
the continual crusade. Throughout the twelfth century this enthusiasm of
pity for the dead Redeemer left in the hands of infidels was maintained
at fever heat. Later it was softened and widened by the new spirit of
charity towards ailing and erring humankind. But during the first
hundred years of the Holy War it absorbed all that was holiest and
purest, most ardent and noblest in European manhood. All went to fall
upon the fields of Palestine, or to return strangely altered after many
years. France, England, Germany, and Flanders, each in her turn
commanded the pious host; but just as these countries were glorious in
the East were they barren and empty at home. Whole districts of corn
land and pasture lapsed again into moss and marsh. Whole countrysides
were thinned of their hale and active men. A vast distress and indigence
spread over Europe. Those were hard years for desolate women. Their
spinning and broidery could not buy them bread, and bitter was the
effort to live until their bread-winners returned. Even when the armies
came back from Palestine there were many who did not return: many had
died of strange Asiatic pestilences, many had not survived the long
journey; the bones of some were bleached on the desert sand, and others
whitened in the sea. And some of them had gained the crown which every
pious soul then strove and yearned to win. They had fallen, as Mechtild
of Magdeburg wished to fall, their heart’s blood streaming under the
feet of heathen. And when the thinned and feeble ranks of the survivors
came to their own country, a very dreadful cry went up from all the
destitute widows in Europe.
Cruel indeed was their condition. Some, truly, sought for rest and quiet
in the cloister; but in those days the cloister was death to the world.
The charitable orders of Francis and Dominic were as yet undreamed of.
Only the great meditative orders offered absolute renunciation and
absolute seclusion. Timid and clinging hearts could not so utterly
forego their world; many busy energetic spirits felt no vocation for the
dreamy quiet of the cloistered nun. And for these the world was hard.
They must beg the bread which their labour could very seldom earn. One
dreadful trade indeed, which the desires of men leave ever open to the
despair of women, one trade found many followers. But there were pure
and holy women, and venerable women, and dying women, who could not live
in sin. And there might be seen in every market-place miserable and
hungry petitioners, crying, “For God’s sake, give us bread; bread for
the love of Christ!”
_Swestrones Brod durch Got._ Sisters of bread for the sake of God. The
name often strikes us in later writing. The singular title has become
familiar. For when we read of piteous uncloistered piety, and when we
read of humble merit rebuking the sins of arrogant Churchmen, and in the
account of strange mystical heresies, and in the lists of interdicts and
burnings, we shall often meet in the monkish Latin of Germany and
Flanders that outlandish phrase: we shall hear again of the _Swestrones
Brod durch Got_.
II.
In the year 1180, there lived in Liege a certain kindly, stammering
priest, known from his infirmity as Lambert le Bègue. This man took pity
on the destitute widows of his town. Despite the impediment in his
speech, he was, as often happens, a man of a certain power and eloquence
in preaching. His words, difficult to find, brought conviction when they
came. This Lambert so moved the hearts of his hearers that gold and
silver poured in on him, given to relieve such of the destitute women of
Liege as were still of good and pious life. With the moneys thus
collected, Lambert built a little square of cottages, with a church in
the middle and a hospital, and at the side a cemetery. Here he housed
these homeless widows, one or two in each little house, and then he drew
up a half-monastic rule which was to guide their lives. The rule was
very simple, quite informal: no vows, no great renunciation bound the
_Swestrones Brod durch Got_. A certain time of the day was set apart for
prayer and pious meditation; the other hours they spent in spinning or
sewing, in keeping their houses clean, or they went as nurses in time of
sickness into the homes of the townspeople. They were bidden to be
obedient; and to be chaste so long as they remained of the sisterhood,
but they might marry again at will with no disgrace. If rich women chose
to join the new and unsanctioned guild, they might leave a portion of
their riches to any heir they chose. Thus these women, though pious and
sequestered, were still in the world and of the world; they helped in
its troubles, and shared its afflictions, and at choice they might
rejoin the conflict.
Soon we find the name _Swestrones Brod durch Got_ set aside for the more
usual title of Beguines, or Beghines. Different authorities give
different origins for this word. Some, too fantastic, have traced the
name to St. Begge, a holy nun of the seventh century. Some have thought
it was taken in memory of the founder, the charitable Lambert le Bègue.
Others think that, even as the Mystics or Mutterers, the Lollards or
Hummers, the Papelhards or Babblers, so the Beguines or Stammerers were
thus nicknamed from their continual murmuring in prayer. This is
plausible; but not so plausible as the suggestion of Dr. Mosheim and M.
Auguste Jundt, who derive the word Beguine from the Flemish verb
_beggen_, to beg. For we know that these pious women had been veritable
beggars; and beggars should they again become.
With surprising swiftness the new order spread through the Netherlands
and into France and Germany. Every town had its surplus of homeless and
pious widows, and also its little quota of women who wished to spend
their lives in doing good, but had no vocation for the cloister. The
Beguinage, as it was called, became a home and refuge to either class.
Before 1250 there were Beguines, or Begging Sisters, at Tirlemont,
Valenciennes, Douai, Ghent, Louvain, and Antwerp in Flanders; at all the
principal towns in France, especially at Cambray, where they numbered
over a thousand; at Bâle and Berne in Switzerland; at Lübeck, Hamburg,
Magdeburg, and many towns in Germany, with two thousand Beguines at
Cologne and numerous beguinages in the pious town of Strasburg.
So the order spread, within the memory of a man. Lambert may have lived
to see a beguinage in every great town within his ken; but we hear no
more of him. The Beguines are no longer for Liege, but for all the
world. Each city possessed its quiet congregation; and at any sick-bed
you might meet a woman clad in a simple smock and a great veil-like
mantle, who lived only to pray and to do deeds of mercy. They were very
pious, these uncloistered sisters of the poor. Ignorant women who had
known the utmost perils of life and death, their fervour was warmer,
fonder, more illiterate than the devotion of nuns; they prayed ever as
being lately saved from disgrace and ruin and starvation. Their quiet,
unutterable piety became a proverb, almost a reproach; much as, within
our memories, the unctuous piety of Methodists was held in England. When
the child Elizabeth of Hungary fasted and saw visions in the Wartburg,
the Princess Agnes, her worldly sister-in-law, could find no more cruel
taunt than this: “Think you my brother will marry such a Beguine?” This
is in 1213, only eight-and-thirty years since Lambert built the first
asylum for the destitute widows of Liege.
III.
The success of the Beguines had made them an example; the idea of a
guild of pious uncloistered workers in the world had seized the
imagination of Europe. Before St. Francis and St. Dominic instituted the
mendicant orders, there had silently grown up in every town of the
Netherlands a spirit of fraternity, not imposed by any rule, but the
natural impulse of a people. The weavers seated all day long alone at
their rattling looms, the armourers beating out their thoughts in iron,
the cross-legged tailors and busy cobblers thinking and stitching
together—these men silent, pious, thoughtful, joined themselves in a
fraternity modelled on that of the Beguines. They were called the
Weaving Brothers. Bound by no vows and fettered by no rule, they still
lived the worldly life and plied their trade for hire. Only in their
leisure they met together and prayed and dreamed and thought. Unlettered
men, with warm undisciplined fancies, they set themselves to solve the
greatest mysteries of earth and heaven. Sometimes, in their sublime and
dangerous audacity, they stumbled on a truth; more often they wandered
far afield, led by the will-o’-the-wisp of their own unguided thoughts.
In the long busy hours of weaving and stitching they found strange
answers to the problems of human destiny, and, in their leisure,
breathless and eager, discussed these theories as other men discussed
their chance of better wage. Such were the founders of the great
fraternity of Fratres Textores, or Beghards as in later years the people
more generally called them. And their philosophy is so strangely
abstract and remote that we could not explain it, did we not know that
from time to time some secular priest or wealthy and pious laymen joined
the humble fraternity. And the priest would bring, to their store of dim
wonderings, the Alexandrian theories of the pseudo-Dionysius, then, in
all the monasteries of Christendom, deemed the very corner-stone of
sacred philosophy. We can imagine how eagerly these simple folk would
seize the hallowed fragments of Erigena and of the Areopagite, and how
they would treasure them as holy secrets in the depth of their tender
and mystical souls. We know that now and then a consecrated priest would
join the unsanctioned but pious order of the Beghards; it is no great
stretch of fancy to suppose that from time to time, some Crusader, fresh
from the East, would bring them his memory of Eastern theories; that
some scholar would add a line from Avicenna or Averroes. Through some
channel, it is evident, the Beghards received the last feeble stream of
Alexandrian theory. Their vague, idealistic pantheism is but an echo of
Plotinus and his school. From the monasteries, from the Arabian
commentators on Aristotle, or directly from the East, these fragments of
neoplatonist philosophy must have reached them; and out of them there
should be evolved, first of all, the great metaphysical heresies of the
Middle Ages; and, later on, the habit of mind that should produce the
German Reformation.
IV.
While the Beghards and the Beguines were slowly, imperceptibly nearing
the great abyss of heresy, the creation of two new orders at Rome
insidiously took from them the greater part of their prestige. Until the
Franciscans and Dominicans obtained the sanction of the Pope, the
beguinage had seemed the natural mean between the life of the cloister
and the life of the world. But the new charitable orders had all the
activity, the beneficence of the Beguines, and therewith the friendship
and protection of Rome. For some time longer the Beguines flourished,
still orthodox and reputable; but the order had received its death-blow
on the day when Francis and Dominic obtained the Papal sanction for
their Tertiary Orders of Penitence.
The tertiary orders of Dominic and Francis were a new departure from the
exclusive theories of Roman monasticism. They were invented for men and
women of holy life, married and still living in the world, who wished
for some nearer association with the Church than belongs to the ordinary
member of a congregation. They took their part in worldly joys and
sorrows, triumphs and failures; but they prayed longer than other
worldly folk, did more good works, looked more for heaven. The
institution of these orders was a wide breach in the barrier which
divides the cloister from the world, the sacred from the profane. They
were, in fact, as the reader has perceived, merely an hierarchic version
of those fraternities which the unconsecrated poor had made among
themselves: Beguines and Beghards protected by the Church.
Thus the idea of the secular beguinage was transformed into a sacred
thing. The example of the Beguines had been followed by the Church, who,
in consecrating these new orders, made an immense reform in the old
exclusive monastic ideal, a tremendous concession to the new democratic
spirit inspiring all men. Hitherto the cloister had been a refuge and
asylum from the noisy nations without. It had been as an ark, floating
over the stormy waters, offering safety indeed to those inside it, yet
not concerned with the clamorous multitude that drowned and struggled
beyond it in the increasing flood. The aim of Francis and of Dominic was
to quit this aloof and lofty shelter, to go and reprove the erring and
rescue the ignorant, to be the friend and brother of sinners and
publicans, of Magdalens and lepers, to revert, in fact, to the old
democratic ideal of the Christian Church. They were to be poor among the
poor, armed only with the armour of faith. They were to be in the world
the heralds of God. The sisters of the orders were to be humble women,
the brothers mendicant friars. At first they took no more from the world
than the wandering Beguines took in later days—only water, bread, and a
garment. But this strict rule of absolute poverty was soon removed, and
the Dominicans, at all events, were never destitute.
Each order had its different mission. The Dominicans, the preaching
brothers, should persuade the hard of heart, strengthen the failing,
console the desolate, warn the erring, and exterminate the heretic. Yet,
singularly enough, this most orthodox order, these watch-dogs of the
Lord, were to become in Germany a centre of mystical heresies. The order
of St. Francis, the Lesser Brothers, had a more tender and ecstatic
ideal. They went begging through the world, tending the sick, loving the
helpless, preaching to the birds and the fishes, full of a quaint
compassionate unworldliness, a holy folly. There were few hearts so hard
that, though unshaken by the storms of Dominic, they did not melt before
the sweet Franciscan sanctity. And so the two orders traversed the
world, twin forces and voices of pity. But the chivalrous and militant
pity of Dominic, eager to avenge the outraged Christ continually
crucified by infidels, too often took the form of wrath and burnings,
while Francis loved the erring with a simple human pity. In return the
world bestowed, and still bestows, upon him something of the wondering
compassionate reverence which Eastern nations give to the Pure Fool, the
man unsoiled by the wisdom of the world and still wrapped round with the
simplicity of God. Between them, the two orders were to divide the
Christian world. Sanctioned in the same year and under the same
hospitable rule of Augustine, they went out triumphantly upon their
different missions. Inspired, it is most probable, by the example of the
Beguines, they would soon absorb the secular order into their mighty
forces. And the real decline of Beguinism begins, not in 1250, when
first the secular fraternities became conspicuous for heresy, but on
that day of the year 1216 when the learned Dominic and the visionary
Francis met and embraced each other in the streets of Rome.
V.
At first the external position of the Beguines and the Beghards appeared
in no danger and no disadvantage. Their fraternity had always been a
secular fraternity; their condition of pious laymen was one which
offered sanctity with independence. The beguinages still thrived and
multiplied. In the Low Countries especially, and in Cambray, Strasburg,
and Cologne,—places where mysticism has ever been dear, and
ecclesiastical authority never a welcome yoke—Beguinism grew apace. But
there is no doubt that one great cause which for thirty years averted
the ruin of the secular fraternities was the presence in their midst of
one of the most remarkable women of her century; a woman who, to the
Beguines, was all that St. Elizabeth was to the Franciscans, or that
Catherine of Siena should become to the order of St. Dominic. This
gifted and singular creature was the prophetess Mechtild of Magdeburg.
We do not know the name of the castle where, in the year 1212, Mechtild
of Magdeburg was born. It cannot have been very far from the city which
was to be her refuge, and whose name she bears. The title of her father
is also lost; but it is certain she came of noble and courtly stock. Her
family were probably religious people, for we know that her brother
Baldwin became one of the Dominicans of Halle.
Mechtild was, as she herself recalls, the dearest of her parents’
children; and these courtly and pious Thuringian nobles seem to have
been as proud as they were fond of their little daughter. She received a
liberal education. Her book on the flowing light of Godhead is written
with an energy, sweetness, and variety of style strongly in contrast
with the Gertrudenbuch and the Mechtildenbuch of Helfta. The music of
her verse proves her familiar with the lyrics of the Minnesingers. They
may no doubt have visited her father’s castle. But the little Mechtild
did not dream of poetry and of knights-at-arms. It was later that she
would deplore the poor vain minstrels who in hell weep more tears than
there are waters in the sea.[2] Her thoughts in childhood were all for
the saints in heaven. When she was twelve years old, the little girl was
(as she records it) visited by the Holy Spirit; and from that moment she
desired to quit the world.
Footnote 2:
“Der viel arme Spielmann der mit hohem Mŭthe sündliche Eitelkeit
machen kann, der weint in der Hölle mehr Thränen denn alles Wassers
ist in dem Meer.” I like to give the reader a line of Mechtild’s
book—from what I have read of it, that is to say, in the pages of Herr
Preger and elsewhere—to show him the musical lilt of her style, the
emotional charm (foreshadowing Heinrich Suso), and a certain easy
lightness of heart I remember in no other mystical book, except in the
exquisite Fioretti di San Francesco.
It was a moment of intense spiritual exaltation, this year 1224. Close
at hand in the Wartburg the seventeen-year-old Landgravine Elizabeth was
exciting the wonder of her people by her pieties and sweet austerities.
The bread miraculously turned into heavenly roses, the leper whom she
tended transformed into the shining Christ, the stories of her visions
and her scourgings would certainly be familiar to the little Mechtild.
The Emperor Frederic II. was already collecting his nobles for his
ill-starred and heretic crusade. On Monte Laverna, in this very year,
St. Francis received the stigmata. Blanche of Castile and the child St.
Louis were ruling Paris as King Arthur might have ruled his court at
Camelot, by the authority of love and gentleness. At the same time the
ghastly prevalence of leprosy and pestilence, of war and hideous famine,
made the world as dreadful as heaven was desirable. Those who recall the
condition of Eisenach, as revealed by the life of St. Elizabeth, may
imagine the sights of human suffering which little Mechtild must have
encountered every day. And close by, in the vast woods of Prussia, dwelt
heathen folk who knew of nothing better than this cruel world. In that
very year some of the crusader knights had set out to conquer that pagan
kingdom. Thus with on one hand holy Thuringia and with heathen Prussia
on the other, with war, famine, and pestilence frequent petitioners at
her gates, it is not surprising that the little Mechtild shared the
spiritual fervours of her time, and longed to give herself to Heaven.
But she did not, like Gertrude and Mechtild of Hackeborn, enter a
convent in her infancy. Most likely she yielded to the entreaties of her
family, “of whom she was ever the dearest.” Year after year passed on,
and Mechtild still dwelt in her father’s castle. Yet, after that one
childish moment of ecstacy, the sweetness and honour of the world were
to her as vain and perishable things. And still she was not visited
again with trance or vision. She was no dreamer, this eager Mechtild,
but a vigorous and healthy girl, in the flower of her beautiful and
lusty youth, alert, passionate, with a mind awake to all the questions
and interest of the world around her. Such a nature is not by instinct a
mystical nature; but the strange contagion of the time had touched her,
and worked slowly through her innermost being. Stronger and stronger
grew the strenuous unworldly prompting: “_without sin, to be disgraced
before the world_.”
For eleven years the desire waxed and strengthened; for eleven years did
Mechtild combat this desire. Daily it grew more impelling, more
subduing. At last, in the year 1235, the year of the canonization of
Elizabeth, when Mechtild was twenty-three years old, she secretly left
her father’s house, and fled to Magdeburg. She left all behind
her—brothers and sisters, father and mother, “of whom she was the
dearest,” and the courtly honourable life, and the quiet happiness of
love and safety. _Frau Minne, ihr habt mir benommen weltlich Ehre und
allen weltlichen Reichthum!_ Everything indeed she left, to follow the
goading impulse of Sacred Love.
When she reached the strange city, when she had left far behind her the
distant home where even now her kinsmen would wonder, and miss her, and
make a search, when the night fell on her in Magdeburg, Mechtild desired
a shelter. Weary with her flight, she resolved to ask some nunnery to
lend her its asylum. Within those holy walls she could more truly yield
herself to God.
She knocked at a convent door, and begged for shelter, saying she
desired to become a nun. But the quiet sisters distrusted this
beautiful, travel-stained young woman of three-and-twenty, without
means, or friends, or reference, alone at night in the turbulent city
streets—this girl who, by her own confession, had fled her father’s
house. Soon those doors were closed against her. There were, however,
many convents in a great archiepiscopal city such as Magdeburg. To
convent after convent went the despairing girl, finding at each, no
doubt, rest for the limbs and food for the body, but in none of all of
them a home. For no religious house would admit this unfriended and
suspicious creature into its pure community. When the last doors had
closed upon her, Mechtild stood in the street, alone in Magdeburg. It
must have come upon her then, I think, that at last her great desire was
granted—_Without sin, she was disgraced before the world._
When Mechtild left her parents’ castle, she had chosen Magdeburg to be
her hiding-place, because in that town there lived a friend of her
family. She had thought to stay her heart upon the thought of this
unvisited friend, who might be her last resource in case of extremity.
But now the need was felt, Mechtild did not seek him. He would, she
knew, endeavour to persuade her from the path that she had chosen, and
Mechtild was in need of all her courage.