Part 9

The next knight whom I can call to mind as having been frightened by marriage into monkery, is St. Vandrille, Count of the Palace to King Dagobert. During the period of his knightship he was a very Don Juan for gallantry, and railed against matrimony as conclusively as a Malthusian. His friends pressed him to marry nevertheless; and introduced him to a lady with a hundred thousand golden qualities, and prospects as auriferous as those of Miss Kilmansegg. He took the lady’s hand with a reluctance that might be called aversion, and which he did not affect to conceal. When the nuptial ceremony was concluded, Knight Vandrille, as eccentric as the cavaliers whose similar conduct I have already noticed, mildly intimated that it was not his intention to proceed further, and that for his part, he had renounced the vanities of this world for aye. Taking the lady apart, he appears to have produced upon _her_ a conviction that the determination was one he could not well avoid; and we are not told that she even reproached him for a conduct which seems to me to have been a thousand times more selfish and inexcusable than that of the clever but despicable Abelard. The church, however, did not disapprove of the course adopted, and St. Vandrille, despite his worse than breach of promise, has been forgiven as knight, and canonized as saint.

Far more excusable was that little Count of Arian, Elzear, the boy-knight at the court of Charles II., King of Sicily, whom that monarch married at the age of thirteen years, to Delphina of Glandeves, a young lady of fifteen. When I say far more excusable, I do Elzear some injustice, for the boy was willing enough to be wed, and looked forward to making his lady proud of his own distinction as a knight. Delphina, however, it was who proposed that they should part at the altar, and never meet again. She despised the boy, and the little cavalier took it to heart--so much so, that he determined to renounce the career of arms and enter the church. Thereby chivalry lost a worthy cavalier, and the calendar gained a very active saint.

Elzear might well feel aggrieved. There have been knights even younger than he, who have carried spurs before they were thirteen. This reminds me of a paragraph in an article which I contributed to “Fraser’s Magazine,” in March, 1844, under the title of “A Walk across Bohemia,” in which, speaking of the Imperial Zeughaus at Vienna, I noticed “the suit of armor of that little hero, the second Louis of Hungary, he who came into this breathing world some months before he was welcome, and who supported his character for precocity by marrying at twelve, and becoming the legitimate bearer of all the honors of paternity as soon as he entered his teens; who moreover maintained his consistency by turning a gray old man at sixteen, and finally terminated his ephemeral course on the field of battle before he became of age.” Elzear then was not, perhaps, so poor a knight as his older lady seemed disposed to count him.

I must be briefer with noticing the remaining individuals who either flung up chivalry for the Church, or who preferred the latter to following a knightly career. First, there was St. Anscharius, who after he had made the change alluded to, was standing near the easy Olas, King of Sweden, when the latter cast lots to decide whether Christianity should be the religion of the state, or not. We are told that the prayers of St. Anscharius caused the king to throw double-sixes in favor of the better cause.

St. Andrew Cossini made an admirable saint after being the most riotous of cavaliers. So St. Amandus of Nantes won his saintship by resigning his lordship over men-at-arms. Like him was that St. Romuald of the family of the Dukes of Ravenna, who, whether fighting or hunting, loved to retire from the fray and the chase, to pray at peace, in shady places. St. John of Malta and St. Stephen of Grandmont were men of the like kidney. St. Benedict of Anian was that famous cup-bearer of Charlemagne, who left serving the Emperor in hall and field, to serve a greater master with less ostentation. He followed the example of that St. Auxentius, who threw up his commission in the equestrian guard of Theodosius the Younger, to take service in a body of monks.

Many of those who renounced arms, or would not assume military service when opportunity offered itself, profited personally by the adoption of such a course. Thus St. Porphyrius was a knight till he was twenty-five years of age, and he died Bishop of Gaza. The knight St. Wulfran became Bishop of Sens. St. Hugh won the bishopric of Grenoble, by not only renouncing knighthood himself, but by inducing his father to follow his example. St. Norbert became Archbishop of Magdeburg, after leading a jolly life, not only as a knight but as priest. A fall from his horse brought him to a sense of decency. A prophecy of a young maiden to St. Ulric gained him his saintship and the bishopric of Augsburg. Had she not foretold he would die a bishop, he would have been content to carry a banner. Examples like these are very numerous, but I have cited enough.

Few in a worldly sense made greater sacrifice than St. Casimir, son of Casimir III., King of Poland. He so loved his reverend tutor, Dugloss, that, to be like him, he abandoned even his chance of the throne, and became a priest. St. Benedict of Umbria took a similar course, upon a smaller scale; and not all the persuasions of his nurse, who ran after him when he ran away from home, could induce him to be anything but a priest. St. Herman Joseph, of Cologne, showed how completely he had abandoned the knightly character, when, as monk, he begged the peasants whom he taught, to be good enough to buffet him well, and cuff him soundly, as it was impossible for him to have a sufficiency of kicks and contempt. St. Guthlac, the noble hermit of Croyland, evinced more dignity in his retirement, and the same may be said of St. Peter Regalati, and St. Ubaldus of Gabio. The latter was resolute neither to marry nor take arms. He liked no turmoil, however qualified. St. Vincent of Lerins _did_ bear arms for years, but he confessed he did not like the attendant dangers--threatening him spiritually, not bodily, and he took the cowl and gained a place in the sacred calendar accordingly. St. Aloysius Gonzaga, whose father was a prince, was another of the young gentlemen for whom arms had little attraction. The humility of this young gentleman, however, had a very silly aspect, if it all resembled what is said of him by Father Caperius. “He never looked on women, kept his eye strictly guarded, and generally cast down; would never stay with his mother alone in her chamber, and if she sent in any message to him by some lady in her company, he received it, and gave his answer in a few words, with his eyes shut, and his chamber-door only half open; and when bantered on that score, he ascribed such behavior to his bashfulness. It was owing to his original modesty that he did not know by their face many ladies among his own relations, with whom he had frequently conversed; and that he was afraid and ashamed to let a footman see so much as his foot uncovered.” Whatever the soft Aloysius may have been fit for, it is clear that he was _not_ fit for chivalry. Something akin to him was St. Theobald of Champagne, who probably would never have been a saint, if his father had not ordered him to lead a body of troops to the succor of a beleaguered cousin. Theobald declined, and at once went into a monastery.

St. Walthen, one of the sons of the Earl of Huntingdon, and Maud, daughter of Judith, which Judith was the niece of the Conqueror, only narrowly escaped being a gallant knight. As a boy, indeed, he used to build churches with his box of bricks, while his brothers built castles; but at least he gave promise of being a true knight, and, once, not only accepted the gift of a ring from a lady, but wore the sparkling diamond on his finger. “Ah! ah!” exclaimed the saucy courtiers, “Knight Walthen is beginning to have a tender heart for the ladies!” Poor Walthen! he called this a devil’s chorus, tossed the ring into the fire, broke the lady’s heart, and went into a monastery for the remainder of his days. He escaped better than St. Clarus, who had a deaf ear and stone-blind eyes for the allurements of a lady of quality, and who only barely escaped assassination, at the hands of two ruffians hired by the termagant to kill the man who was above allowing her holy face to win from him a grin of admiration. But though I could fill a formidable volume with names of _ci-devant_ knights who have turned saints, I will spare my readers, and conclude with the great name of St. Bernard. He did not, indeed, take up arms, but when he adopted a religious profession, he enjoyed the great triumph of inducing his uncle, all his brothers, knights, and simple officers, to follow his example. The uncle Gualdri, a famous swordsman and seigneur of Touillon, was the first who was convinced that Bernard was right. The two younger brothers of the latter, Bartholomew and Andrew, next knocked off their spurs and took to their breviary. Guy, the eldest brother, a married man, of wealth, broke up his household, sold his armor, sent his lady to a convent and his daughters to a nunnery, put on the cowl, and followed St. Bernard. Others of his family and many of his friends followed his example, with which I conclude my record of saints who have had any connection with arms. As for St. Bernard, I _will_ say of him, that had he assumed the sword and been as merciless to his enemies as he was, in his character of abbot, without bowels of compassion for an adversary whom he could crush by wordy argument, he would have been the most terrible cavalier that ever sat in saddle!

Perhaps the most perfect cavalier who ever changed that dignity for the cowl, was the Chevalier de Rancé. Of him and his Trappist followers I will here add a few words.

THE CHEVALIER DE RANCE AND THE TRAPPISTS.

De Rancé was born in 1626. He was of a ducal house, and the great Cardinal de Richelieu was his godfather. In his youth he was very sickly and scholastic. He was intended for the Church, held half a score of livings before he could speak--and when he _could_ express his will, resolved to live only by his sword. He remained for a while neither priest nor swordsman, but simply the gayest of libertines. He projected a plan of knight-errantry, in society with all the young cavaliers, and abandoned the project to study astrology. For a period of some duration, he was half-knight, half-priest. He then received full orders, dressed like the most frivolous of marquises, seduced the Duchess de Montbazon, and absolved in others the sins which he himself practised. “Where are you going?” said the Chevalier de Champvallon to him one day. “I have been preaching all the morning,” said De Rancé, “like an angel, and I am going this afternoon to hunt like the very devil.” He may be said to have been like those Mormons who describe their fervent selves as “Hell-bent on Heaven!”

Nobody could ever tell whether he was soldier or priest, till death slew the Duchess de Montbazon. De Rancé unexpectedly beheld the corpse disfigured by the ravages of small-pox or measles, and he was so shocked, that it drove him from the world to the cloister, where, as the reconstructor, rather than the founder, of the order of Trappists, he spent thirty-seven years--exactly as many as he had passed in the “world.”

The companions and followers of the chivalrous De Rancé claim a few words for themselves. The account will show in what strong contrasts the two portions of their lives consisted. They had learned obedience in their career of arms, but they submitted to a far more oppressive rule in their career as monks. Some century and a half ago there was published in Paris a dreadfully dreary series of volumes, entitled “Relations de la Vie et de la Mort de quelques Religieux de l’Abbaye de la Trappe.” They consist chiefly of tracts, partly biographical and partly theological, uninteresting in the main, but of interest as showing what noble soldiers or terrible freebooters asked for shelter in, and endured the austerities of, La Trappe. I have alluded to the unreserved submission required at the hands of the brothers. The latter, according to the volumes which I have just named, were sworn to impart even their _thoughts_ to the Abbot. They who thus delivered themselves with least reserve appear to have been commanded in very bad Latin; but their act of obedience was so dear to Heaven, that their persons became surrounded with a glory, which their less communicative brethren, says the author naïvely, could not possibly gaze at for any length of time:--the which I implicitly believe.

The candidates for admission included, without doubt, many very pious persons, but with them were degraded priests, with whom we have little to do, and ex-officers, fugitive men-at-arms, robbers who had lived by the sword, and murderers, of knightly degree, who had used their swords to the unrighteous slaying of others, and who sought safety within the cloisters of La Trappe. All that was asked of them was obedience. Where this failed it was compelled. Where it abounded it was praised. Next to it was humility. One brother, an ex-soldier reeking with blood, is lauded because he lived on baked apples, when his throat was too sore to admit of his swallowing more substantial food. Another brother, who had changed arms for the gown, is most gravely compared with Moses, because he was never bold enough to enter the pantry with sandals on his feet. Still, obedience was the first virtue eulogized--so eulogized that I almost suspect it to have been rare. It was made of so much importance, that the community were informed that all their faith, and all their works, without blind obedience to the superior, would fail in securing their salvation. Practical blindness was as strongly enjoined. He who used his eyes to least purpose, was accounted the better man. One ex-military brother did this in so praiseworthy a way, that in eight years he had never seen a fault in any of his brethren.

It was not, however, this sort of blindness that De Rancé required, for he encouraged the brethren to bring accusations against each other. Much praise is awarded to a brother who never looked at the roof of his own cell. Laudation more unmeasured is poured upon another faithful knight of the new order of self-negation, who was so entirely unaccustomed to raise his eyes from the ground, that he was not aware of the erection of a new chapel in the garden, until he broke his head against the wall.

On one occasion the Duchess de Guiche and an eminent prelate visited the monastery together. After they had left, a monk entered the Abbot’s apartment, threw himself at the feet of his superior, and begged permission to confess a great crime. He was told to proceed.

“When the lady and the bishop were here just now,” said he, “I dared to raise my eyes, and they rested upon the face--”

“Not of the lady, thou reprobate!” exclaimed the Abbot.

“Oh no,” calmly rejoined the monk, “but of the old bishop!” A course of bread and water was needed to work expiation for the crime.

Some of the brethren illustrated what they meant by obedience and humility, after a strange fashion. For example, there was one who having expressed an inclination to return to the world, was detained against his will. His place was in the kitchen, and the devastation he committed among the crockery was something stupendous--and probably not altogether unintentional. He was not only continually fracturing the delf earthenware dishes, but was incessantly running from the kitchen to the Abbot, from the Abbot to the Prior, from the Prior to the Sub-Prior, and from the Sub-Prior to the Master of the Novices to confess his fault. Thence he returned to the kitchen again, once more to smash whole crates of plates, following up the act with abundant confessions, and deriving evident enjoyment, alike in destroying the property, and assailing with noisy apologies the governing powers whom he was resolved to inspire with a desire of getting rid of him.

In spite of forced detention there was a mock appearance of liberty at monthly assemblies. The brethren were asked if there was anything in the arrangement of the institution and its rules which they desired to see changed. As an affirmative reply, however, would have brought “penance” and “discipline” on him who made it, the encouraging phrase that “They had only to speak,” by no means rendered them loquacious, and every brother, by his silence, expressed his content.

If death was the suicidal object of many, the end appears to have been generally attained with a speedy certainty. The superiors and a few monks reached an advanced age; only a few of the brethren died old men. Consumption, inflammation of the lungs, and abscess (at memory of the minute description of which the very heart turns sick), carried off the victims with terrible rapidity. Men entered, voluntarily or otherwise, in good health. If they did so, determined to achieve suicide, or were driven in by the government with a view of putting them to death, the end soon came, and was, if we may believe what we read, welcomed with alacrity. After rapid, painful, and unresisted decay, the sufferer saw as his last hour approached, the cinders strewn on the ground in the shape of a cross; a thin scattering of straw was made upon the cinders, and that was the death-bed upon which every Trappist expired. The body was buried in the habit of the order, as some knights have been in panoply, without coffin or shroud, and was borne to the grave in a cloth upheld by a few brothers. If it fell into its last receptacle with huddled-up limbs, De Rancé would leap into the grave and dispose the unconscious members, so as to make them assume an attitude of repose.

A good deal of confusion appears to have distinguished the rules of nomenclature. In many instances, where the original names had impure or ridiculous significations, the change was advisable. But I can not see how a brother became more cognisable as a Christian, by assuming the names of Palemon, Achilles, Moses, or even Dorothy. Theodore, I can understand; but Dorothy, though it bears the same meaning, seems to me but an indifferent name for a monk, even in a century when the male Montmorencies delighted in the name of “Anne.”

None of the monks were distinguished by superfluous flesh. Some of these ex-soldiers were so thin-skinned, that when sitting on hard chairs, their bones fairly rubbed through their very slight epidermis. They who so suffered, and joyfully, were held up as bright examples of godliness.

There is matter for many a sigh in these saffron-leaved and worm-eaten tomes, whose opened pages are now before me. I find a monk who has passed a sleepless night through excess of pain. To test his obedience, he is ordered to confess that he has slept well and suffered nothing. The submissive soldier obeys his general’s command. Another confesses his readiness, as Dr. Newman has done, to surrender any of his own deliberately-made convictions at the bidding of his superior. “I am wax,” he says, “for you to mould me as you will and his unreserved surrender of himself is commended with much windiness of phrase. A third, inadvertently remarking that his scalding broth is over-salted, bursts into tears at the enormity of the crime he has committed by thus complaining; whereupon praise falls upon him more thickly than the salt did into his broth: “Yes,” says the once knight, now abbot, “it is not praying, nor watching, nor repentance, that is alone asked of you by God, but humility and obedience therewith; and _first_ obedience.”

To test the fidelity of those professing to have this humility and obedience, the most outrageous insults were inflicted on such as in the world had been reckoned the most high-spirited. It is averred that these never failed. The once testy soldier, now passionless monk, kissed the sandal raised to kick, and blessed the hand lifted to smite him. A proud young officer of mousquetaires, of whom I have strong suspicions that he had embezzled a good deal of his majesty’s money, acknowledged that he was the greatest criminal that ever lived; but he stoutly denied the same when the officers of the law visited the monastery and accused him of fraudulent practices. This erst young warrior had no greater delight than in being permitted to clean the spittoons in the chapel, and provide them with fresh sawdust. Another, a young marquis and chevalier, performed with ecstacy servile offices of a more disgusting character. This monk was the flower of the fraternity. He was for ever accusing himself of the most heinous crimes, not one of which he had committed, or was capable of committing. “He represented matters so ingeniously,” says De Rancé, who on this occasion is the biographer, “that without lying, he made himself pass for the vile wretch which in truth he was not.” He must have been like that other clever individual who “lied like truth.”

When I say that he was the flower of the fraternity, I probably do some wrong to the Chevalier de Santin, who under the name of Brother Palemon, was undoubtedly the chief pride of La Trappe. He had been an officer in the army; without love for God, regard for man, respect for woman, or reverence for law. In consequence of a rupture between Savoy and France, he lost an annuity on which he had hitherto lived. As his constitution was considerably shattered, he at the same time took to reading. He was partially converted by perusing the history of Joseph; and he was finally perfected by seeing the dead body of a very old and very ugly monk, assume the guise and beauty of that of a young man.

This was good ground for conversion; but the count--for the chevalier of various orders was of that degree by birth--the count had been so thorough a miscreant in the world, that they who lived in the latter declined to believe in the godliness of Brother Palemon. Thereupon he was exhibited to all comers, and he gave ready replies to all queries put to him by his numerous visiters. All France, grave and gay, noble and simple, flocked to the spectacle. At the head of them was that once sovereign head of the Order of the Garter, James II., with his illegitimate son, from whom is descended the French ducal family of Fitz-James. The answers of Palemon to his questioners edified countless crowds. He shared admiration with another ex-military brother, who guilelessly told the laughing ladies who flocked to behold him, that he had sought refuge in the monastery because his sire had wished him to marry a certain lady; but that his soul revolted at the idea of touching even the finger-tips of one of a sex by the first of whom the world was lost. The consequent laughter was immense.