Part 8

I believe that St. Cedd, Bishop of London, in very early days, was also of a family whose profession was military. When or why he entered the church I do not know; but he has some connection with military matters in the fact that Tilbury Fort occupies part of the site of a monastery which St. Cedd had founded, in which he resided, and which was the pride of all the good people in the then pleasant and prosperous city of Tillabury.

Touching St. Aldric, Bishop of Mans, there is no doubt whatever. He was of a noble family, and commenced life at twelve years old, as page to Louis le Debonnaire, at the court of Charlemagne. He was speedily sick of the court, and as speedily sick of the camp. At the age of twenty-one he withdrew to Metz, entered the clerical profession, and became chaplain and confessor to the sovereign whom he had once served as page. His military training made him a very sharp disciplinarian during the quarter of a century that he was bishop; and it is only to be regretted that he had not some influence over the king whose conscience he directed, and of whom a legend will be found in another part of this volume.

There was a second son of Eric, King of Denmark, known by the name of St. Knudt or Canute. He was Duke of Schleswig, and was much more of a monk than a duke. He was canonized accordingly for his virtues. He had a rough way of joking. His knights were nothing better than robbers and pirates, and he resolved to make them forswear violence and live peaceably. They represented, in vain, that they had a right to live as became knights, which Canute did not dispute; he simply dissented from the construction of the right as set down by the knights themselves. To prevent all mistakes on the matter, he one day condemned seven of these gentlemen to be hanged for acts of piracy. One of these exclaimed that, “fitting as the sentence might be for his fellows, there must necessarily be exemption for him.” He was like the German corporal in the “Etoile du Nord,” who can very well understand that it is quite proper that a man should be hanged, but could _not_ comprehend that _he_ himself should be the man. The Schleswig knight claimed special exemption on the ground that he was a kinsman of Canute. The latter allowed that this entitled him to some distinction, and the saintly duke hung his cousin six feet higher than any of his accomplices.

We come back more immediately to a knight who grew tired of his vocation, in the person of Nathalan, a Scottish noble of the fifth century. He sold arms, horses, and estate, divided the proceeds among the poor, and devoted himself to preparations for ordination, and the cultivation of vegetables. He bears a highly respectable reputation on the roll of Bishops of Aberdeen.

We meet with a man more famous, in Peter of Sebaste, whose pedigree showed more heroes than could be boasted by any of Peter’s contemporaries. He is not an example, indeed, of a man quitting the camp for the cloister; but he and two of his brothers exhibit to us three individuals who might have achieved great worldly profit, by adopting arms as a vocation, but who preferred the Church, and became, all three, bishops.

We have a similar example in the Irish St. Felan. His high birth and great wealth would have made him the flower of Irish chivalry, but he selected another profession, and despising chivalry, entered the Church. He went _a Mundo ad Mundum_, for it was from the hands of Abbot Mundus that he received the monastic habit. Thus, as it was wittily said, the world (Mundus) at once drove and drew him into the Church. It is clear, however, that, like the old war-horse, he pricked up his ears at the sound of battle, and took an interest in stricken fields. To such conclusion we must come, if it be true, as is asserted of him, that the battle of Bannockburn, in 1314, was won by Bruce through the saint’s especial intercession. The Dukes of Normandy owed equal obligations to St. Vaneng, who unbuckled the armor from his aristocratic loins, to cover them with a frock; and built churches for the Normans, where he offered up continual prayer for the Norman dukes.

Then again, there was William Berringer, of the family of the Counts of Nevers. No persuasion could induce the handsome William to continue in the career he had embraced, the career of chivalry and arms. His uncle, Peter the Hermit, may have had considerable influence over him, and his change of profession was by no means unprofitable, for the once horse-loving William became Archbishop of Bourges: and he defended the rights of his Church against kings and councils with as much boldness, zeal, and gallantry, as any knight could have exhibited against the stoutest of assailants.

Among our English saints, the one who most nearly resembles him is St. Egwin, who was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, and who, after a short trial of the profession of arms, retired to the cloister, but was ultimately raised to the see of Worcester. The spirit of the man may perhaps be seen through the legend which says that on setting out on a penitential pilgrimage to Rome, he put iron shackles on his legs, the key of which shackles he flung into the Avon. This is very possible; but when we are told that on requiring the key at a subsequent period, he found it inside a fish, we see that the author of the legend has plagiarized from the original constructor of the story of Polycrates and his ring.

St. Egwin was far less a benefactor to his fellow-men than St. Benedict Biscop, a noble knight of the court of Oswi, the pious king of the Northumbrians. When Benedict, or Bennet, as he is familiarly called, retired from the profession of arms to follow that of the Church, he continued quite as active, and twice as useful, as he had been before. He was a great traveller, spent and gave liberally, and brought over with him, from the continent, workers in stone to erect that monastery at Weremouth which, in its ruins, commemorates his name and deeds. He also brought from France the first glaziers who ever exercised the art of glass-making in England. Altogether St. Bennet is one of those who find means to effect good to others, whatever may be the position they are in themselves.

Aelred of Ridal was a man of similar quality. He was a young North-of-England noble, when he figured as the handsomest cavalier at the court of that “sair saint to the Church,” the Scottish king, David. He was remarkable for his good temper, and was as well-disciplined a monk as he had been a military man; for when he once happened to inadvertently break the rule of permanent silence, which prevailed in the monastery at Ridal, into which he entered at the age of twenty-five, he became so horror-stricken that he was eager to increase the penalty put upon him in consequence. He had only dropped a single word in the garden, to a monk who, like himself, had been a knight, but who gave him in return so edifying a scowl, that in an instant poor Aelred felt all the depth of his unutterable iniquity, and accounted himself as criminal as if he had set fire to the neighboring nunnery. He never afterward allowed himself the indulgence of reading his favorite Cicero, but confined his reading to his own work “On Spiritual Friendship,” and other books of a similar description.

The great St. Hilary was another of the men of noble family following arms as a vocation, who gave up the profession for that of the Church, and prospered remarkably in consequence. St. Felix of Nola affords us an additional illustration of this fact. This noble young soldier found no happiness in the business of slaughtering, and all the sophistry in the world could not persuade him that it was honorable. “It is a disgusting business,” said the Saint, “and as I can not be Felix [happy] in performing it, I will see if I can not be Felix in the Church;” and the punning saint found what he sought.

There is something more wonderful in the conversion of St. Maurus. He was the son of a nobleman, had St. Benedict for a tutor, and was destined to the career of arms. The tutor, however, having awoke him one night, and sent him to pick a monk out of the river, whom Benedict, in a dream, had seen fall in, Maurus, although no swimmer, obeyed, walked upon the surface of the water, pulled out the struggling monk, walked back with him, arm-in-arm, to the shore, and immediately concluded that he was called to another vocation than that of arms. As for St. John Calybyte, he would not be a soldier, but ran away from home before his wealthy sire could procure him a commission, and only returned to stand, disguised as a mendicant, in front of his father’s house, where he received alms till he died. A curious example of idiosyncrasy. St. Honoratus was wiser. He was of a consular family; but, in declining the military profession, he addressed himself with sincerity to be useful in the Church; and the well-deserved result was that he became Archbishop of Arles. St. Anthony, the patriarch of monks, made still greater sacrifices, and chose rather to be a hermit than a commander of legions. St. Sulpicius, the Debonnair, was both rich and good-looking, but he cared less for helmet and feathers than for cord and cowl, and the archbishopric of Bourges rewarded his self-denial. There was more than one King Canute too, who, though not surrendering royalty and generalship of armies, seemed really more inclined, and indeed more fitted, to be studious monks than chivalrous monarchs. Wulstan of Worcester was far more decided, for finding himself, one night, most warmly admiring the young lady who was his _vis-à-vis_ in a dance, the gallant officer was so shocked at the impropriety, that he made it an excuse for taking to the cowl forthwith. He did not so ill by the exchange, for the cowl brought him to the mitre at Worcester.

St. Sebastian was a far bolder man, seeing that although he hated a military life, he, to the very utmost, did his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him; and if half be true of what is told of him, there never was knight of the actual days of chivalry who performed such bold and perilous actions as St. Sebastian. What was a cavalier, pricking against a dragon, to a Roman officer preaching Christianity to his men, under Diocletian?

In later days we meet with St. Raymund of Pennafort, the wealthy young lord, who, rather than serve for pay or plunder, went about teaching philosophy for nothing. St. John, the Patriarch of Alexandria, might have been known as a conqueror, but he preferred being handed down, under the title of the Almoner. He was like that St. Cadoc who chose rather to be abbot _in_, than prince _of_, Wales. St. Poppo of Stavelo exhibited similar humility. He was rapidly rising in the Flandrian army when he suddenly sunk into a cell, and became a sort of Flemish John Wesley. He preached against all tournaments, but only succeeded in abolishing the very exciting combats between a knight and a bear, which were greatly patronized by Flemish ladies, and at which parties staked great sums upon their favorite animal.

St. Francis of Sales, on the other hand, that gentlemanly saint, was saved from the knightly career which his noble birth seemed to promise him, by a vow made by his mother, before he was born. She was resolved that he should be a saint and not a soldier, and as all things went as the lady desired, she placed her son in a position direct for the Church, and the world certainly lost nothing by the matron’s proceeding. I respect St. Francis of Sales all the more that he had small human failings, and did not scatter damnation over men whom he saw in a similar concatenation. Sulpicius Severus was, in many respects, like him, save that he had some experience of a soldier’s life. But he laid down the sword for the pen, and gave us that admirable historical romance, in which he details so graphically the life of another noble warrior, who quitted the command of soldiers, to take up the teaching of men--St. Martin of Tours.

There was a lady, St. Aldegonde, of the royal blood of France, in the seventh century, who at least encouraged young knights to abandon their fancied vocation, and assume that of monks or friars. She was, most undeservedly, I dare say, assailed by scandalizing tongues accordingly. Indeed, I never heard of lady more persecuted in this way, except perhaps this particular lady’s namesake, who once belonged to the gay _troupe_ of the Varietés, and to whom the most rattling of _chansonniers_ alluded, in the line of a song, which put the significant query of

Que fait Aldegonde avec le monde entier?

One of the most remarkable features in the characters of many of these young nobles who were disinclined to take up arms, or who laid them down for the religious vocation, is the dread they entertained of matrimony. In illustration of this fact, I may notice the case of St. Silvin of Auchy. There was not a gayer or braver knight at the court of Childeric II., nor a more welcome wooer among the ladies. In due time he proposed to a noble maiden, who was in a flutter of happiness at the thought of carrying off such a bachelor from a host of competitors. The wedding was brilliant, up to the conclusion of the ceremony. That over, no persuasion could induce the bridegroom to go to the breakfast. As he had been brought to the altar, there he was resolved to remain. He denounced all weddings as wicked vanities, and darting out of the church-door, left bride and bridal party to take what course they would. There was no end of conjectures as to the cause of the sudden fright which had seized upon the young bridegroom. The latter set it down to inspiration, and as he took to the cowl and led a most exemplary life, no one presumed to doubt it, except the bride and her relations.

The case of St. Licinius is easier of explanation. He was the most rollicking knight-bachelor at the court of Clotaire I. It must, however, be said for him that he sowed his wild oats early, and fought none the less stoutly for going to mass daily, and confessing once a quarter. He was rich, and had a maiden neighbor who was richer. The families of knight and maiden were united in thinking that the estates of the two, encircled in one ring fence, would be one of the most desirable of consummations. The maiden was nothing loath, the knight alone was reluctant. He too, had his doubts about the excellence of marriage, and it was only with very considerable difficulty he was brought to woo the lady, who said “Yes” before the plume in his bonnet had touched the ground when he made his bow to her. The wedding-day was fixed, and as the old epitaph says, “wedding-clothes provided.” On the eve of the eventful day, however, Licinius, on paying a visit to the bride, found her suddenly attacked with leprosy. The doctor protested that it would be nothing, but Licinius declared that it was a warning which he dared not neglect. He looked at the leprous lady, muttered the word “unpleasant,” and at once betook himself, not to active military life, but to a religious mission. In this occupation he is alleged to have performed such miracles as to deserve canonization, if only the half of them were true.

Now, a bride afflicted with leprosy may fairly be said to be an unpleasant sight. Licinius may even be considered authorized to hesitate in performing his promise, if not in altogether declaring off. We can not say as much in extenuation of another knight who broke his word to a lady, and was clapped into the Roman calendar of deified men. This gentleman in question had a rather unchristian-sounding name. He was called Abraham of Chiduna. At tilt and tournament, and in tented field, there was no cavalier who sat more perfectly in saddle, or handled his lance and wielded his battle-axe with more terrible effect. He was of noble birth, of course; was wealthy, somewhat addicted to light living, in his salad days, but a man who lived soberly enough when those were over. He then resolved to marry, and he had the “good taste,” if one may use a term which, we are told, belongs to the literary milliner’s vocabulary, to offer himself to, and ask the hand of a very pious maiden with a highly satisfactory dower. The required conclusion was soon come to, and one fine spring morning saw the two principals and their respective friends in church. The knight, it is true, was the last to arrive, and he had been, previously, as unwilling to get up and be married, as Master Barnardine was to get up and be hanged. He was finally brought to the altar, and after some little delay, such as searching for the ring which he had misplaced, and only recovered after much search, the nuptial knot was tied. When this had been accomplished, surrounding friends approached to offer their congratulations; but the icy Abraham coldly waved them back, and announced his determination, then and there, to end his short-lived married state. As he immediately rushed into the wood which was in the vicinity of the church, there was a universal cry that he contemplated suicide. The bride was conveyed home amid much sympathy, and a general but an ineffectual search was made for the “groom.” Yet, not altogether ineffectual, for at the end of seventeen days he was discovered, offering up his orisons, in the midst of a marsh. There he had been, he said, for a fortnight, and there he declared he would remain, unless those who sought him consented to the terms he should propose. These were, that he should be allowed to retire to a cell which should be entirely walled up, save a small square aperture for a window. The agreement was ratified, and Abraham was shut up according to his desire; and by a long life of seclusion, passed in preaching to all who approached the window, and taking in all they brought through the same aperture, Abraham has had “Beatus” attached to his name, and that name has been recorded upon the roll of saints.

If there be any reader who objects to this story as unnatural, I would remark to the same, that similar incidents may be met with in our own time. In proof thereof I will briefly relate an anecdote which was told me by the reverend father of a legal knight, who was himself the officiating minister at the ceremony of which I am about to speak.

To the clergyman of a pretty village in Wales, due notice had been given, and all preliminary legal observances having been fulfilled, he awaited in his vestry, ready to marry an ex-sergeant and one of the girls of the village. The canonical hours were fast gliding away, and yet the priest was not summoned to the altar. By certain sounds he could tell that several persons had assembled in the church, and he had two or three times seen a pretty face peeping in at the vestry-door, with a look upon it of pleasure to see that he was still there, and of perplexity as if there was something to be told which only waited to be asked for. At half-past eleven the face again peeped in, whereupon the clergyman invited the owner of it to approach nearer. The invitation was obeyed, and the clergyman inquired the reason for the unusual delay, remarking at the same time, that if the parties were not speedily prepared it would be too late to perform the ceremony that day.

“Well sir,” said the nymph, “I was about asking your advice. I am the bride’s sister; and there is a difficulty--”

“What is it?” asked the priest.

“Just this, sir,” said Jenny. “Sergeant Jones has promised to marry sister Winnifred if father will put down five pounds. Father agrees; but he says that if he puts down the money before the marriage, the sergeant will walk off. And the sergeant will not come up to be married till the money is put down. So, you see, sir, we are in a terrible difficulty; and we want you to propose a method to get us out of it.”

“There is nothing easier,” said the minister; “let your father put the money into the hands of a trusty third person, who will promise to place it in the sergeant’s possession as soon as he has married your sister.”

Jenny Morgan saw the excellence of the device in a moment, rushed back to the bridal parties, and they showed their appreciation of the clergyman’s suggestion, by crowding to the altar as soon as the preliminary proceeding recommended to them had been accomplished. At length the clergyman came to the words, “Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?”

“Jack,” said the ex-sergeant, looking round at the stake-holder, “have you got the cash?”

“All right!” nodded Jack.

“Then I will,” said the sergeant; “and now, Jack, hand over the _tin_.”

The agreement was rigidly fulfilled; but had not the minister thought of the means which solved the difficulty, Sergeant Jones would have been nearly as ungallant to his lady as Abraham, Silvin, and Licinius, had been to theirs.

But to return to Abraham. I have said this knight, on assuming his monkly character, had caused himself to be walled up in his cell. I have my suspicions, however, that it was a theatrical sort of wall, for it is very certain that the saint could pass through it. Now, there resided near him a lady recluse who was his “niece,” and whose name was Mary. The two were as inseparable as the priest Lacombe and Madame Guyon; and probably were as little deserving of reproach. This Mary was the original of “Little Red Riding Hood.” She used to convey boiled milk and butter, and other necessary matters to her uncle Abraham. Now it happened that the ex-knight used also to be visited by a monk whose name was Wolf, or who, at all events, has been so called by hagiographers, on account of his being quite as much of a beast as the quadruped so called. The monk was wont to fall in with Mary as she was on her way to her uncle’s cell with pleasant condiments under a napkin, in a wicker-basket. He must have been a monk of the Count Ory fashion, and he was as seductive as Ponchard, when singing “Gentille Annette” to the “Petit Chaperon Rouge,” in Boieldieu’s Opera. The result was, that the monk carried off Mary to a neighboring city--Edessa, if I remember rightly--and if I am wrong, Mr. Mitchell Kemble will, perhaps, set me right, in his bland and gentleman-like way. The town-life led by these two was of the most disgraceful nature; and when the monk had grown tired of it, he left Mary to lead a worse, without him. Mary became the “Reine Pomare,” the “Mogadore,” the “Rose Pomponne” of Edessa, and was the terror of all families where there were elder sons and latch-keys. Her doings and her whereabouts at length reached the ears of her uncle Abraham, and not a little astonished were those who knew the recluse to see him one morning, attired in a pourpoint of rich stuff, with a cloak like Almaviva’s, yellow buskins with a fall of lace over the tops, a jaunty cap and feather on his head, a rapier on his thigh, and a steed between his legs, which curveted under his burden as though the fun of the thing had given it lightness. At Mary’s supper, this cavalier was present on the night of his arrival in Edessa. He scattered his gold like a Crœsus, and Mary considered him worth all the more penniless knights put together. When these had gone, as being less welcome, Abraham declared his relationship, and acted on the right it gave him to rate a niece who was not only an ungrateful minx, but who was as mendacious as an ungrateful niece could well be. The old gentleman, however, had truth on his side, and finally so overwhelmed Mary with its terrible application, that she meekly followed him back to the desert, and passed fifteen years in a walled-up cell close to that of her uncle. The miracles the two performed are adduced as proofs of the genuineness of the personages and their story; matters which I would not dispute even if I had room for it.