Читать книгу The End of the Middle Ages - A. Mary F. Robinson - Страница 17

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Throughout the thirteenth century Thuringia continued the centre and stronghold of German sanctity. The life of St. Elizabeth at the Wartburg had gone up from its midst like a purifying altar-flame to heaven. When she died in 1231, hundreds of men and women came in tears to honour the wasted body wrapped in its worn Franciscan cloak, lying dead in the poor little house at Marburg. From the memory of her life, from the pilgrimages to her tomb, a tradition and ideal of saintliness spread among the people. Fifteen years later, it was in Thuringia that the Pope found his champion. Even his oppression, and the defeat and death of that ill-starred defender of the faith did little to abate the popular ardour.

The convent of Rodardesdorf, near Eisleben, and the great princely convent of Quedlinburg, gave an especial religious distinction to Thuringia; but not until about the year 1234, when the rich and noble Freiherr von Hackeborn of Helfta placed at Rodardesdorf his little five-year-old daughter Gertrude, was the specially illustrious future of that house decided. Rodardesdorf was a convent of Cistercians, a thoughtful and peaceful place. The little Gertrude was happy there. She was a serious and earnest child, “not content,” says the chronicle, “with childish innocence, but, even when a babe, gifted with a constant gravity and prudence of demeanour.” Indeed, that childish head was troubled with many things, for the little girl was passionately eager to learn all that came in her way: science, liberal arts, grammar, theology. So that she became no less honoured for her acquirements than beloved for her docility and modesty of bearing.

But the convent was to acquire another infant saint. The mother of Gertrude again visited the convent, and on one occasion brought with her her younger daughter, Mechtild, then seven years of age, and as many years younger than her sister. “They came for honest diversion,” says the chronicle, probably to see little Gertrude, and certainly with no thought of leaving Mechtild behind. But the child was so delighted with the strange place, the large rooms, the little cells, the chapel with its altar lights, the children in the garden, the nuns who made much of her, that she declared she would willingly remain there for ever. Nor would she leave, though her mother bade her come. Then the sisters, delighted with so much holiness so young, instantly beseeched the mother to leave her little girl in their company for awhile, and to this she consented. Poor mother, did no pang go through her heart when the convent doors shut on both her children? It was for ever; no prayers, no commands could bring her back her wilful, loving, eager little Mechtild any more, for the Vita relates, “after this holy and blessed embrace her parents could never withdraw her from that place for all the caresses and endearments that they knew how to make.” With bruised ties and bleeding hearts the career of saintliness begins. “Only he,” runs the Scripture that child would often hear, “that hateth father and mother can become my disciple.”

Of the daily routine of life in the convent we may gain an idea from Abelard’s directions to the nuns of the Paraclete, and, setting against the difference of date the difference of culture in the two countries, we may not unfairly suppose the Thuringian Cistercians of 1250 to have followed much the same rule of life as the Benedictines of Heloise adopted a century earlier.

According to the code of Abelard the convent was divided into six functions, all alike subject to the direction of the abbess. The sacristan was responsible for the convent treasury; she kept the keys, and had the care of the church plate and sacred vessels; and it was her duty to set the virgin sisters to prepare the wafers for the Host, which must not be made by widows. The chantress taught singing and reading, had care of the choir and of the library, to which she was expected to add by copying and illuminating manuscripts. The head of the infirmary had charge of the sick. Another sister was mistress of the wardrobe, and responsible not only for all the spinning, weaving, and sewing necessary for the convent, but also for the tanning and cobbling. The cellarer had in her charge the wines for the altar and the sick, the provisioning of the table, and the management of whatever the convent possessed in orchards and garden-land, flocks and herds and hives, trout streams and mills. Lastly, the doorkeeper, who was especially chosen for courteous manners, judgment, and trustworthiness, was responsible for the keeping of the gate, the entertainment of guests, and the distribution of hospitality.

Life in the convent was not hard, but monotonous, eventless beyond description—a perpetual alternation of broken sleep, repeated tasks, and prayer. In the middle of the night the sisters rose for Matins, and the office over, trooped back through the darkness to the dormitory. There they slept till Lauds, which are sung at the break of day; in summer, when Lauds are early, the sisters slept again till Prime. At Prime they left the dormitory, having first washed their hands, and taking their books repaired to the cloister to read and sing until the office should begin. Service over, they all assembled in the chapter-house, where a lesson out of the Martyrology was read to them and expounded. On leaving the chapter each nun was sent to fulfil her allotted task—singing or sewing, nursing or baking—until the hour of Tierce, when mass was said. They then resumed their work till noon, the sixth hour, which was the convent dinner-time, except on fast-days, when it was postponed till Nones, or in Lent, when nothing was eaten till after Vespers at four. The convent fare was simple and spare. Save for the sick, no wine; stale bread of coarse flour; roots and greens, and at discretion of the abbess a portion of unflavoured meat on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. From the autumn equinox till Easter, on account of the shortness of the days, this one meal was considered sufficient for all save the infirm.

After dinner, in summer-time, the sisters slept till Nones; in the two hours between that office and Vespers they were set to finish their task, but at four the day’s work was done. Between the spring and autumn equinoxes the sisters were permitted a light refreshment after Vespers. It was the only time when fruit might be eaten. This light supper over, Compline began. Then they all sought the dormitory again. On Saturday evenings they were a little later, as then the sisters were enjoined to purify themselves—that is to say, to wash their hands and feet, a function which the abbess or lay-sisters were specially directed to supervise. This done, they slept till the midnight matin-bell should clang them from their beds.

Out of such a life of dreary monotony, the same task day by day, or 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.