another exactly like it, the same prayer, the same lesson, always of
saints and martyrs; out of this life of forced privation, this
half-starved life of chants and broken dreams, who can wonder that
(Μορφή μία) visions, mysteries, scandals, witchcraft continually arose.
The two little children prospered in the convent which was at first
merely a school for them, and an excellent school. Gertrude, the silent,
studious, ambitious scholar, found there more books and better teachers
than she could have had at home; and, so long as her soul was set on
learning and studying, the homage paid her as a child set apart for God
only served as a spur to her ambition. “She ever would increase her
natural beauty of soul by saintly customs, adding to it the splendour
and the sweetness of all manner of flowered virtues, so that she should
be more pleasing in the eyes of every one,” says the chronicle in which
after her death the nuns of Helfta embalmed her virtues. But while
little Gertrude laboured so hard to make herself desirable, Mechtild,
quite simply and without effort, won all hearts to herself. Although she
was not so learned nor so grave as her sister, though once she had told
a lie (the one lie of her life), boasting to her companions that she had
seen a thief in the court, where thief was none; though, judging from a
later vision, she had sometimes looked back from the plough and longed
for her mother’s love: ay, though no early holiness had, as with
Gertrude, foretold the saint, and only after her entrance to the convent
had manifested itself in her; despite all this, Mechtild was the loved
one. While Gertrude in the library was toiling hard at grammar that her
mind might be worthy of God and the love of her companions, Mechtild
standing in the garden was surrounded with listeners, hanging on the
words of her fanciful allegories as she expounded the message of God.
While Gertrude was making extracts from the Fathers and compiling
treasuries of Scripture to help the souls of the sisterhood, Mechtild,
like a little mother, was going among the sick, speaking, ministering to
each, giving help and comfort to all in affliction. As they grew older
it was still the same—Gertrude putting her soul into her studies,
Mechtild into her life; Gertrude absorbed and wise, with no one friend
preferred to any other; Mechtild every one’s darling, beset with every
one’s confidences “to the impediment of the sweet quiet of her soul.”
Gertrude the humanist, Mechtild the human.
II.
So far all was right and fair. Each child naturally selected the
education fitted to its wants, and became wise or loving as the need
was. But when they came to full girlhood they did not quit this school
whose teaching they had outgrown. These girls were, since their
childhood, cloistered nuns dedicated to God. But only when their
childhood was over could they appreciate the meaning of their vow. To
Mechtild it did not greatly matter; her life in the world might have
been fuller and richer, in the convent it was not wasted. She was so
easily interested in others, so gifted to soothe the sick and suffering,
so naturally humble and unselfish, that even the consciousness of
sanctity could not injure her nature; in her visions, even, she rarely
announces her own glory. It is Gertrude that she sees in the bosom of
the Father, and she hears the Divine Voice proclaim, “Gertrude is far
greater than this Mechtild.” More often her visions are messages of
consolation to those she has pitied and laboured for awake. She sees the
dead baby of a certain sorrowing mother clad in scarlet and gold, and
greatly glorified in heaven. She beholds God and the Virgin standing by
the bed of one of the sisters who is sick unto death; or else her
visions are tender and poetic fancies. She sees the Father giving all
the saints to drink of the Fountain of Mercy. She sees the Heart of God
burning like a lamp; or, again, she beholds the sacred rose that blooms
in the Heart of God; or, lastly, her visions supply the needs of her
maimed and stinted life. Kneeling on the floor of her cell, this loving
woman, with no natural ties, often sees God come to her as a little
child of five years old, and, in a dream, God gives her His love, at
last, to be her mother, “to care for her and lead her as a mother her
child.” Or she dreams, this woman with her love of colour and beauty, of
beautiful women in splendid raiment. Mary comes to her in a gown the
colour of air, sewn all over with tiny flowers of gold, and embroidered
round the neck and sleeves with the holy monogram of Jesus. Or she comes
in a pale green cloak, latticed over with gold, with the head of Christ
in every lattice. St. Catherine of Alexandria appears in dull crimson,
covered over with gold embroidery of little wheels, fastened at the
breast with a clasp of two meeting hands of gold. Christ appears young
and beautiful, in rose-coloured silk, stiff with gold and jewels, “yet
not to be thrown away because so heavy, but rather ennobled,” as the
soul with the heavy gems of grief. Or she sees the least saint in
Paradise, a youth of middle height, wonderfully lovely, most fair of
face, his hair crisply curling, of a colour between green and white,
clad all in green. Never, out of Meister Stefan’s pictures, were there
such deep colours, such quaintly-patterned gowns and mantles, such
jewels and embroideries as figure in the visions of this poor little
sallow saint, asleep herself in her darned serge and yellowed linen, and
always clad, by her own choice, in the worst clothes of the convent,
torn and patched in all corners.
The real dangers of mysticism have little power over a soul so sweet and
naïve as this. But it was otherwise with Gertrude. She was a woman of
passionate intensity of imagination, of an ever-active and ambitious
mind. During her childhood this had been wisely exercised in study. Had
she gone then into the world life and learning would have employed it
for her. Had she been a secular sister like Catherine of Siena, a
wandering preacher and prophetess, like Mechtild of Magdeburg, or an
avowedly learned and reforming abbess, like Heloise or Teresa, she
would, perhaps, have been most useful and happiest of all. But, when she
grew up, when she perceived the real aim of her cloistered life, her
learning became odious to her. What had the vain lore of this world to
do with the appointed spouse of Christ? “While this virgin was
continuing the study of the humanities,” relates the _Vita_, “she became
aware that this study was a region too remote from the similitude of
Christ, perceiving that too hungrily she had longed after human
learning, for which reason she had not until that moment disposed her
heart to receive Divine illumination. She knew then (and not without
passionate sighs coming from the heart) that until this time she had
been deprived both of the consolations and of the illuminations of
Divine wisdom, since she had remained intent on human things.”
A terrible conflict, a terrible temptation. With Gertrude’s earnest
nature there could be but one end. She cut off from her the hungry and
passionate love of human learning as she would have cut off a limb or
plucked out an eye to enter, maimed but holy, into Paradise. With tears,
and anguish, and bitter agony of prayer, she maimed her soul. But not
always does the mutilated member heal. Woe to those whom nature punishes
for their temerity with mortification, with numb and creeping death.
Now that Gertrude had, of her own will, shut off from herself all her
former means of progress and employment, how should she spend her time?
She was not, like Mechtild, by nature a sick-nurse and a confidant; she
had not, like Mechtild, a beautiful voice which she could cultivate for
the service of God; and to her dominant eager nature it was necessary to
do something and to do it better than any one else. The one remnant of
all her studies which she permitted herself was the translation of Latin
prayers into German for the benefit of more ignorant sisters, and at
this she would persevere the whole day long. But this oft-repeated,
almost mechanical employment could not fill her mind, could open no
vista to her ambition. There was, indeed, only one road that she could
follow; all the circumstances of her life converged to the same
vanishing point.
When she remembered, in the long vacant hours of sleeping or copying,
the books she used to read, what thoughts would they naturally suggest
to her? She had, we may be sure, read no books that would give her
visions of the world outside—poems of Virgil the magician, or the
minnesingers. To her the humanities were themselves books of theology;
the writings of the fathers of the Church, a tract of St. Bonaventura’s
it may be, or one of the sermons of Eckhart or of Albertus Magnus (then
at the prime of their renown), certainly the works of Dionysius
Areopagita. What would they have taught her, these books which she had
given up to imitate the lowliness of Christ? They told her, one and all,
how much more desirable was feeling than reason, ecstasy than care for
others, faith than works; how far above all natural tenderness of human
charity was the _virtus infusa_, the theological virtue, the love of
God. Every hour of her life must have repeated the lesson. The eight
offices of the day, the lesson from the _Martyrology_, which was all the
food this hungry and active mind was given to fast upon; the daily task
of copying prayers; the long, weary misery of being no one, in no true
position. All these things must have spoken to this earnest,
self-preoccupied Gertrude, who had toiled so long to make herself
pleasing in the eyes of every one; and, now, knowing so well what was
necessary, would she not strive in prayer for this last, dearest gift?
Would she not set herself to learn this one thing needful? Most likely
she had not long to pray, nor ever consciously began to learn, before
the gift was granted, the science acquired, the strong mind weakened and
perverted, the student an ecstatic.
III.
From that first moment of vision the fame of Gertrude grew so high and
so rapidly, that when in 1251 the abbess of Rodardesdorf expired, this
girl-ecstatic of nineteen was elected her successor. It is strange that
the duties of her new position, the great responsibilities of so famous
a convent, did not draw her from her visions; but the influence of the
time was strong, and the abbess of Rodardesdorf was beset by no
imperious need for reform. There was no cleansing work of righteousness
to be performed in that well-ordered house of high-born mystical ladies.
All that Gertrude could do was, seven years after her nomination, when
the springs of Rodardesdorf dried up, to remove the convent to her own
castle of Helfta, an act which naturally increased her own position in
the convent, and tripled her glory of abbess, benefactress, and
ecstatic. Gertrude, however, was not the only saint in Helfta. Besides
her sister, the sweet, fanciful Saint Mechtild, there was Gertrude the
Nun,[3] sometimes confounded with the abbess, who in all probability
wrote the concluding book of the _Vita_, certainly finished after St.
Gertrude’s death. The two daughters of the Count of Mansfeld were also
professed in the convent, and were gifted disciples of its mystical
doctrines. Sophia spent her life in enriching the already valuable
library of Helfta, and Elizabeth painted, probably in the chapel.
Footnote 3:
Herr Preger, notwithstanding the authority of other scholars, and the
entire tradition of the Church, maintains the _Gertruden-buch_ to be
the work not of Gertrude von Hackeborn, but of a certain Gertrude the
Nun, living at the same time in the same convent. He also, in an
argument of great ingenuity, separates Mechtild the chantress from our
Mechtild von Hackeborn, to whom, however he leaves the authorship of
her works; but as in the Venetian edition of the _Vita_ (1583 and
1605), I find the words, “Now Gertrude, with her sister Mechtild the
chantress, managed all the affairs of the convent,” with constant
indications of the identity of Gertrude the abbess and Gertrude the
saint; and as Lansperg, the earliest chronicler, expressly states them
both to be the daughters of the Graf von Hackeborne, I have decided in
this one matter not to accept the dictate of a scholar, to whom all
students of the subject must remain indebted.
In 1265 the convent, already the high school of ecstasy in the north of
Germany, received a more famous woman than any of these. This was our
Mechtild of Magdeburg, whose earnest faith and flashing, passionate
eloquence, whose songs inspired with a wild, strange tenderness, whose
life of hardship and adventure for the love of Christ, had rendered her
one of the noblest and most endearing figures of her age. She chose
Helfta to be the home of her declining years, and added another glory to
the convent of St. Gertrude and St. Mechtild.
Such a house, it may be supposed, did not exhaust the spiritual energies
of a nature so full of force and so ambitious as that of its young
abbess. Her surroundings were but an added incentive to her aspiring
soul. She worked hard, it is true, aided by her sister Mechtild. Every
day she visited the infirmary and saw that the sick were well and
cleanly treated. She ruled her nuns with thought and care; but when the
hours of leisure came, the many daily periods set apart for prayer and
meditation, then her old ecstasy overpowered her with a strength and
vividness the more forcible for the obstacles it had to overcome. More
passionate, more personal become her revelations as she lies abandoned
to trance and vision in the arms of the spiritual Lover. So strong, so
hot, so fierce, so tender are the words that fall from her lips, that we
cannot bear them now unmoved. Ah me! what vain and fruitless passion
this dreaming love of the saint for a dream!
It was not until nine years after the bestowal of the “singular grace of
divine familiarity,” says the _Vita_ that Gertrude wrote down the
description of her visions. But the visions, themselves recorded in the
five books of her revelations, seem to have begun almost immediately
after her renunciation of human learning. “From that time she began to
hold as vile all visible and external things, and verily not without a
cause, for from that time the Lord opened to her the ways of Mount Zion,
a place of joy and consolation. Leaving the study of grammar, in which
she was greatly instructed, she turned to theology, that is to say, Holy
Scripture and the lives of the saints, using them with infinite
diligence.”
And soon the saint herself began to speak from the mount, in her own
language. None of the tender consolations and quaintly pictured fancies
of Mechtild are here. The revelations of Gertrude manifest the ambition,
the activity, the emotion of a crushed and passionate nature forced into
an unnatural channel. Tragic and miserable spectacle: the strong
passion, the earnest will so sorely wanted in the world outside, are
spent vainly, vilely, in inducing terrible disease. The saint grows
weaker as her visions increase in force; her mind, warped and broken,
can bend but one way. And that way is towards inertia, madness, and
annihilation. An old tale, oft-repeated, yet needed, perhaps, in these
days of mesmerism and spiritual _séances_. An old tale, well-known to
the Yogis of India, to the monks and nuns of mediæval Europe, to all who
have deliberately made themselves the victims of catalepsy and hysteria.
For deliberately they did it. Many of the receipts have come down to us:
the absolute cessation from practical affairs, the emptiness of mind and
heart; the regulated diet, neither too little nor too much; the lack of
sleep; the quiet, which no joy or woe of others may disturb, when,
seated or kneeling in his cell, at an hour when digestion is well over,
sighing lugubriously in deep, regular sighs, the eyes are fixed on one
point too high or too low for perfect comfort, the arms are to beat the
breast in monotonous routine, as Gerson and other mystical doctors
prescribe, until a heavy trance involves the body, until the brain
becomes deranged by this appalling and stultifying monotony, and
creeping death or madness end the vision.
“It happened once,” says the _Vita_, “that by reason of sickness,
Gertrude was prevented from attending vespers; and, longing for these,
and feeling sick at heart, she turned to the Lord, and said: ‘O my
Master, were it not more praiseworthy that I should now be singing in
the choir with my other companions and hearing the prayers and the other
regular exercises than to be lying in this weakness, in which I consume
in negligence so many hours?’ To which He answered: ‘Oh, dost thou
believe the bridegroom holds his bride less dear, when he stayeth at
home to taste the familiarity of his domestic pleasure, than when he
glories to lead her forth, well adorned, before the gaze of the crowd?’
from which speech she understood that, in the divine service, the soul
appears as a bride going forth; but, when heavily laden with bodily
infirmities, then as a bride sleeping in the secret chamber; for the
more that man is weak, shorn of all pleasures of the sense, destitute
and impotent, the more is he made to delight the Lord.”
Such a theory was naturally productive of fasts and vigils, nor, if the
favour of her Lord depended on the sickness of her body, could it ever
have been far from this poor ailing and anæmic girl. A revolting amount
of suffering is naïvely and incidentally revealed in her works of
spiritual grace. Scarce a chapter but opens, “Being again sorely weak
from want of sustenance,” “Lying again in bed helpless with sickness,”
“Being sorely oppressed with a burning of the liver,” or with some
similar avowal of the connection between her revelations and the
weakness of her health. Often she piteously implores the Lord to restore
her to her former soundness and well-being, but the answer is always the
same. “Thy sickness is a dance and a festival for me,” responds the
Celestial Spouse; nor ever is there any hope given her of a cessation to
her pain. In her wandering senses the poor tormented saint dimly guessed
that her spiritual gifts were dependent on the utter prostration of her
body and her mind.
The spectacle of her suffering convinced the whole convent of Gertrude’s
sanctity. They believed her in daily communication with their unseen
Head. It was natural, therefore, that they should bring their sorrows to
her and entreat her intercession, as men ask a minister to counsel the
king, or a steward to remedy the carelessness of the absent master, or a
favoured mistress to beg that, for her love’s sake, a piece of justice
may be granted that otherwise were withheld. It was natural, also, that
Gertrude should believe herself capable of guiding the will of God;
natural that the strange vanity of the visionary and the hysteric should
obscure the eyes of her mind, and lead her further on the road she had
chosen. After visions, miracles.
IV.
Miracles exist in the mind of the witnesses. “Le miracle,” said
Lamennais, “existe quand on y croit.” To the latter-day sceptic, the
marvels which procured the canonization of Gertrude are such natural
trifles that it is difficult to imagine they could ever have filled a
whole countryside with rapture and thanksgiving. A sudden downfall of
rain, the ceasing of a shower, the finding of a needle—such are her
miracles. But hear with what pomp and circumstance the chronicler
narrates them.
“One evening when the nuns had finished supper, they went into the court
to finish a certain piece of work that they were set to do, and it
happened that at this time the sun still shone, notwithstanding that in
the sky there were several clouds which threatened rain; wherefore she,
sighing, began heartily to converse with the Lord, I hearing all she
said, as follows: ‘O Lord God, Creator of everything, I do not wish that
thou, as if compelled, should obey the will of me unworthy; none the
less would it be very dear to me, if pleasing to Thee, if Thy most
liberal goodness shouldst prevail against Thine honest justice to retard
a little, for my sake, this rain. None the less, Thy will be done.’ She
said these latter words resigning herself into the hands of God, not
thinking of aught but the fulfilment of His good pleasure; a marvellous
thing it must certainly be accounted, that scarcely had she finished
speaking when lightning, thunder, and great drops of rain burst forth
with great fury; for which cause, moved with pity for the other sisters,
she remained altogether filled with fear, and again she said to the
Lord, ‘Let Thy goodness, O most clement God, last at least so long as
while we finish our appointed task.’ At these words the most clement
God, to show how in everything He was pleased to grant her prayer, held
up the rain until the nuns had finished the task they were at work upon;
which done, they returned to the convent, and scarcely had they reached
the gate when there began a tempest of rain and thunder and lightning,
so that some of the sisters who had lingered behind could not enter the
door before they were soaked to the skin.”
V.
Gertrude was the saint of the convent, and yet her ambition cannot have
been wholly realized. She, who ever since her childhood had laboured
hard to acquire “all manner of flowered virtues in order to please the
eyes of every one,” she, the favoured of God, was nevertheless in the
convent less beloved than simple Mechtild. The fact is revealed
unconsciously in every page of her life, in all the numerous revelations
when God declares that notwithstanding the convent’s suffrage, Gertrude
is greater than Mechtild. And greater she was—more passionate, strong,
and earnest, suffering anguish and burning with great desires that her
sweet and happy sister could not conceive. Love was necessary to her,
love and approbation. They were the very food of her soul. Reading side
by side her revelations and her life, one easily comprehends how in
proportion as she failed to gain the love and tenderness of her
companions, her visions become erotic and passionate. To give such a
nature respect, esteem, awe, as a reward for its sacrifice, is in
bitterest truth to give a stone to the child crying for bread. Gertrude
being hungry dreamed of a feast; phantasmal banquets which nourish not,
but madden.
As time went on, Gertrude transferred all her earnestness, all her
powers of feeling, from the outer world to this dream-born inner life.
Censorious, abstracted, caring little for physical suffering, she was
tender and anxious to the last degree in all matters that concerned the
soul. And this without any interest in the personality of the creature
she longed to save. She had, says her biographer, not one friend so dear
that to save her she would by so much as one word commit an offence
against perfect justice, and would declare that rather would she consent
to the injury of her own mother than harbour an evil thought against an
enemy. Her conversation was in heaven, and the things of the world were
as dust to her. Nay, as poison. She was as careful as Pascal[4] by no
word of hers ever to draw to herself the heart of any person; it was not
for her who was beloved of God to unite herself in earthly friendship,
and as one would fly a person stricken with a pestilent disease, she
fled from any one who sought her affection. Never now could she endure
to hear a word of earthly love; rather would she remain deprived of the
services and the goodwill of all the world than ever consent that, by
reason of human favour the heart of any should be joined to hers.
Footnote 4:
“La vraie et unique vertue et donc de se haïr. Il est injuste qu’on
s’attache à moi, quoiqu’on le fasse avec plaisir et volontairement. Je
tromperais ceux à qui j’en ferais naître le désir; car je ne suis la
fin de personne et n’ai pas de quoi les satisfaire:” Pascal told his
married sister she ought not to caress her own children or suffer them
to caress her.