Part 5

In this apotheosis of ecstasy, this contagion of love, the feminine element naturally predominated. The movement, which the gracious and pathetic figure of Elizabeth of Hungary announced, was to be, above all, a movement of women. Far beyond the glory of Eckhart and Gerson, above the eminence of thinker and teacher, shone, in this strange hierarchy of dreamers, the beatitude of the visionary and prophetess. Prophets of God some, others prophets of evil; so the Church decided. But it is hard to divide the spiritual abnegation of Bridget, of Catherine, of the two German Elizabeths, of Mechtild of Magdeburg, Gertrude and Mechtild von Hackeborn, from the heresy which declared that to the soul lost in God the sins of the body are as naught. That heresy is but the others’ holiness, pushed to its logical consequence.

The saints were chiefly women—women of vague, imperious, unsatisfied emotion, sick of a world given over to rapine, interdict, and slaughter, where no choice was left between disloyalty and damnation; women young and active, living for the most part the passive, temperate eventless life of the convent; women who imposed on themselves long fasts and vigils, whose tender flesh was bruised with the stone flags of the cell where they would lie of winter nights for penance, and torn with the lashings of the self-inflicted scourge. In this life no hope for them; in this world no love, no happiness, no possessions. As starving people dream of delicious feasts and banquets, they found in a vision the things withheld from them awake.

_Amor rapit, unit, satisfacit_: the practical Gerson lets fall the fiery phrase. Each of these virgin visionaries had said as much. Open the books of their exercises, their revelations; the dusty pages exhale a violence and tenderness of passion that the minnesingers never caught, the troubadors never felt, in their earthly singing. For these saintly visions are all of love—love which ravishes; nay, love which drowns, annihilates, swallows up. Love in a dream, and yet the one real thing in a cramped and narrow life; love which fills every interstice and cranny of a void and aching heart; love unseen, untouched, unheard, for which the visionary waits hour by hour, in an anguish of tense devotion, waits till the muttered monotony of her prayers, the fixed, unvaried straining of her eyes, shall have lulled the body to a death-like trance, shall set free the soul to show her the mirage of her own unsatisfied desire.

I.

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.

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!