Woman under Monasticism

It is in the course of this exhortation that Elisabeth consults the Angel about the heretic Cathari749, who she states are said to reject marriage while teaching at the same time that only those marriages are valid where both parties have preserved their virginity. The Angel cannot deny that such marriages are most acceptable to God, but declares that they are rare. Yet he announces that the leaders of that sect are of Satan. ‘Then,’ the nun continues, ‘I said, “Lord, what and of what kind is their faith?” He answered: “Their faith is contemptible, their works are worse.” And I said: “Yet they have the appearance of just men and are praised as men of good works.” “Truly,” he replied, “they put on an appearance of just and innocent living, through which they attract and convert many, and yet inwardly they are full of the worst madness.”’ Considering that nothing is known of these early dissenters except what their opponents have preserved, these remarks are interesting as showing that though Hildegard treated the Cathari with unhesitating contempt Elisabeth was perplexed about them.

Another exhortation addressed to the ministers of the Church is eloquent in its attacks on the overbearing conduct of the clergy, and on the way they neglect their flocks. Widows are then admonished to cultivate peace of mind and to reflect only on spiritual joys, and hermits are urged not to carry their self-denying practices to extremes, since immoderate fasting is productive of no good results. The book seems originally to have ended here, for the last two exhortations are evidently the result of an afterthought. In the first of these young people are recommended to cultivate seriousness of mind, and the second treats of young children, but only in a vague way, for their parents are said to be chiefly responsible for their behaviour. The book ends with a paragraph to the effect that the angel appeared and addressed the bishops of Trier, Cöln and Mainz telling them to amend their ways and accept the contents of the book. ‘Read them, and hearken to their divine admonitions,’ it says750, ‘and receive them with an equable mind. Do not think they be the fabrications of a woman, for they are not; they have come through God, the Almighty Father, who is the source and origin of all goodness.’

It must have been some time after she had begun to write visions that Elisabeth wrote the following letter to Hildegard. It is preserved in the third book of her visions, and also in the correspondence of Hildegard, together with the reply sent to it751.

‘What you said had been revealed to you concerning me, I now write to confirm; a cloud of distrust has come over my mind owing to the foolish sayings of some people who are ever talking of me; they are not true. The talk of the people I can easily bear, but not of those who wear clerical garb, they bitterly oppress my spirit. For goaded on, at whose instigation I know not, they ridicule the grace of God that is within me, and do not hesitate rashly to condemn what they do not understand. I hear that certain letters written in their spirit are circulating under my name. They accuse me of having prophesied concerning the Day of Judgment, which I surely never have presumed to do, as knowledge of its advent is denied to mortal man.’ She goes on to explain how the angel of God had repeatedly appeared to her, saying that the time for contrition and repentance had come, and how she had spoken of this to others. But now a letter is circulated, full of threats against the abbot. In her distress she begs that Hildegard will accept this explanation, offer prayers in her behalf and write her some words of consolation.

In her reply to this letter Hildegard admits Elisabeth’s power of prophecy. She also is a trumpet through which the blasts of divine admonition become audible. Another letter addressed to Hildegard by Elisabeth shows that they remained in communication752, though their different church and political sympathies naturally precluded a closer connection.

The last book Elisabeth wrote added greatly to her fame. It consists of ‘Revelations on the holy band of virgins of Cöln753,’ the companions and fellow-martyrs of St Ursula, the origin of which legend is shrouded in some obscurity754. The story current in Elisabeth’s time in various versions states that in the 3rd century Ursula, a British princess, went on pilgrimage to Rome with 11,000 virgin companions, and that on their journey homewards these virgins together with many followers were murdered at Cöln, either by the Huns or some other heathen tribes. The name Ursula, however, does not occur in any of the ancient martyrologies, and therefore may be a latter-day addition to the story, while the extraordinary number of her companions is held to have originated through misreading an inscription which refers to eleven martyred virgins (XI M. V.). History speaks of virgin martyrs at Cöln at an early date.

In 1156 a quantity of bones were found in an ancient cemetery outside Cöln, and this led to the revival of the story, which now assumed gigantic proportions. The relics of one of the virgins named Cordula were brought to Schönau by Ekbert. Elisabeth’s imagination was roused, the progress of St Ursula, various incidents of her journey and the character of many of her companions, were made manifest to her in a series of visions by St Verena, also one of the band, who repeatedly appeared to Elisabeth and divinely enlightened her on various points in dispute. With the help of this saint Elisabeth felt enabled to explain how Pope Cyriacus (otherwise unknown to history) came to be of the party; how it was that archbishops, cardinals and a king of England accompanied these women, and what caused one of the band to bury, with some of the dead, tablets inscribed with their names, which tablets had come to light at Cöln. The whole account, which Elisabeth promulgated in good faith, and which her contemporaries had no hesitation in accepting as genuine, forms a most interesting example of mediaeval religious romance. It teems with chronological and historical impossibilities: apart from these it bears the stamp of truthfulness. It is pure romance, but it is romance set forth in a spirit of conviction and with a circumstantiality of detail thoroughly convincing to the uncritical mind.

Throughout the Rhine district these visions were greeted with acclamation. They were welcome for two reasons; they increased the interest and traffic in the relics at Cöln, and they fell in with current traditions and encouraged the revived local worship of the three women-saints. The names of these were now connected with that of St Ursula755, and the legend of St Ursula became the centre of many floating traditions, and has proportionately attracted the attention of the hagiologist and the folk-lore student. Eleven thousand became the accepted number of Ursula’s followers and the compilers of the Acta Sanctorum have actually succeeded in making out a list containing over seven hundred names756.

In literature the version of the legend as told by Elisabeth was accepted in preference to earlier versions, and became popular not only in Germany, but also in England and France, especially in Normandy. In England both the legend and the visions were known as early as 1181 through Roger, a monk of the Cistercian abbey at Forde in Devonshire. It is thought that he came into personal contact with Elisabeth at Schönau, and references are sometimes made to him as the compiler of the ‘Visions’ and as the author of the legend of the band of 11,000 virgins757.

Elisabeth died in 1164 at the early age of thirty-six, and her brother Ekbert, who was staying with her at the time, wrote a full account of the last days of her life to three nuns of the convent of St Thomas at Andernach758. In this letter he describes Elisabeth’s thoughtful care and tenderness to her companions on her deathbed, and says that she was more than a sister to him and that his grief is proportionally greater. Like Hildegard Elisabeth has never been officially canonized, but her name also was inscribed in the Roman Martyrology compiled by Gregory VIII, by which she became a recognised saint of the Church759.

A later age witnessed other notable nuns who were divinely inspired and who were acknowledged to be so by their contemporaries, but, as we shall see later, their communings with God and the saints were chiefly directed to intensifying mystic and devotional feelings in themselves. They have neither the hold on outside events nor the wide outlook which give such a deep interest to the writings of St Hildegard of Bingen and St Elisabeth of Schönau.

§ 2. Women-Saints connected with Charity and Philanthropy

The last section showed how earnestly the religious teachers of the 12th century advocated a stricter practice of the precepts of religion. The practical outcome of this advocacy was an increased consciousness among those of the upper and authoritative classes of society of the needs and sufferings of humbler folk, and an extraordinary development of pity and tenderness for suffering generally. It can be noticed that everywhere there sprang into life the desire to help those who were in distress, and to cultivate that love and sympathy which is indifferent to rank, degree and antecedents, and especially so with regard to the diseased, despised and shunned.

The representative figures of this movement during the 13th century are St Francis of Assisi († 1226) and St Elisabeth of Thüringen († 1231), whose fame will abide wherever the precepts of Christianity in the direction of unselfishness and charitable zeal are cherished. The tendency to renounce all worldly possessions, which was a feature of the 13th century, culminated in them, and their example was followed by many men and women who on account of their altruistic sympathies are numbered among the saints. Since the practical outcome of their efforts carries in itself the beginnings of our modern charitable institutions of hospital, almshouse and infirmary, their work is well worth a somewhat detailed account, but such an account must necessarily be preceded by a few general remarks on the development of charitable zeal in the course of history.

From the earliest period Christian teachers had championed the cause of the poor and afflicted, and had upheld the sanctity of human life as such, whether in the aged, the crippled, or the unborn. Moreover the Church throughout ministered to poverty by almsgiving, and looked upon the destitute as having a special claim on her care. At two distinct periods in history these self-imposed duties were specially requisite – at the breaking up of the Roman Empire, and at the collapse of the feudal system. For under the Roman social system slavery had been a safeguard against vagrancy, but when slavery was discontinued the class of homeless outcasts became numerous. And again under the feudal system men belonged to the soil they were born on, but in proportion as serfdom ceased, beggars, and especially the diseased, increased to a great extent. In both instances efforts to stay the consequent evils to society were made by all professing Christians, but the attitudes of the 5th and the 12th centuries have distinct points of difference which it is well to bear in mind.

Glancing back along the vistas of time to the 5th century we find Severin bishop of Noricum († 482) instituting a regular and far-reaching system of charitable relief which has been described by his disciple Eugippius760. In connection with Magnericus of Trier († 596), the famous opposer of idolatrous practices, the newly-developed virtues of this period are thus summed up by his biographer, the monk Eberwein († 1047)761: ‘With him (Magnericus) the hungry found bread, the traveller found shelter, the naked found clothing, the weary found rest, and the stranger found hopefulness.’ We see that the efforts of these men were directed to ministering to poverty but not to disease, for the prevalent attitude of Christian society towards disease continued for some centuries strongly self-preservative. The poor were fed, but the diseased were shunned, especially those who were visibly disfigured, and who included the vast class of those who from the 11th century were currently spoken of as lepers (leprosi).

The homogeneity of the disease lepra in this application has been called into question, and it has been shown that the ‘lepers’ of the Middle Ages included those suffering from cutaneous eruption brought on by St Anthony’s fire, from gangrene of the limbs, such as comes through protracted use of bread containing rye spurred or diseased with ergot, and from other diseases which produce visible disfigurement. Scant provision was made for such people during early Christian ages, and lepers were numbered among social outcasts, not from fear of contagion – that was a comparatively late idea – but simply from a wish on the part of society to be spared a sorry sight. The diseased member of a family was a visible burden to his relations, and finding himself despised and shunned by his associates he took refuge with outlaws, who herded together and lived in a state of filth, misery and moral degradation terrible to recall.

It is in the treatment of these unfortunate people that the 12th century witnessed a revolution. The efforts of a few large-souled individuals overcame the general disgust felt towards disease, the restraints of a more barbarous age were broken through, the way to deal with the evil was pointed out, and gradually its mitigation was accomplished. The task these people set themselves, as so often happens in the course of social reform, absorbed them so entirely that they thought no sacrifice too great when it was a question of carrying out their ideas. It seems therefore rather gratuitous on the part of the modern scientist to say that a ‘halo of morbid exaggeration surrounded the idea of leprosy in the mediaeval religious mind. We live in a time of saner and better proportioned sentiment,’ etc.762 In point of fact an evil is removed only by putting it for a time into strong relief, when it comes to be rightly dealt with and so is gradually checked. In early Christian times nothing was done for diseased people and lepers, but in the 12th and 13th centuries first individuals, then the masses, became interested in them. It mattered little that vagrants of the worst kind felt encouraged to call themselves lepers because as such they could excite more pity, could gain admission into hospitals, or were allowed to solicit alms under royal patronage. The movement once set going in the right direction steadily did its work: and the class of lepers so prominent in the 11th and 12th centuries were rapidly disappearing by the end of the 13th763.

From the earliest period monasteries and church centres offered some alleviation for the sick and distressed, but their resources were at first intended for the relief of those who belonged to the settlement. The peaceful pursuits and regular occupations of the monk naturally prolonged his term of life, and as Christianity set great store by a peaceful and happy death, when feebleness and sickness crept on the member of a convent he was relieved from his duties and tended in an outhouse by a brother told off for the purpose. The guest-house of the settlement, called hospitalis, generally stood near this outhouse for the sick, but sometimes it was identical with it, and the pilgrims and travellers who were ill were nursed with the convent inmates. While these combined houses for guests and invalids, attached to convents, were numerous from the first, the foundation of shelters intended primarily for strangers took place comparatively late. Among them must be numbered the shelters designated as hospitals (hospitales), founded in outlying districts for the reception of pilgrims (pro susceptione peregrinorum) such as the Pope urged Karl the Great († 814) to keep up in the Alps764. Pilgrims were always an object of solicitude to the Church, and it was in their interest that the earliest independent road-side shelters and hospitals in cities were founded. These shelters and hospitals often consisted of no more than the protection of a roof, and the proctor, or brothers and sisters who voluntarily took charge of the house, secured the needful sustenance for themselves and those seeking their aid by going about begging.

The impulse to found these rests or hospitals naturally emanated from Rome, from a very early date the site of pilgrimages, but a new impulse was given to the movement by the foundation of two important guest-houses at Jerusalem in the 11th century, when that city also was a frequent resort of pilgrims. Of these two guest-houses or hospitals765, one was intended for men and placed under the management of men, the other was for women and placed under the management of women. They were arranged according to an elaborate system which is interesting in many ways. The men were divided into three classes – the knights who looked after the interests of the house, the priests who attended to the sick, and the lay-brothers who assisted in the same work. The knights formed themselves into the religious order of St John, from the name of the church near which their headquarters lay. Similarly the women’s house, which was near the chapel of St Mary Magdalen, consisted of ladies, nuns and lay servants. The fact that St John and St Mary Magdalen were so often adopted as patron saints of similar houses elsewhere was due to the chance connection of these saints with the hospitals at Jerusalem.

Looking after pilgrims and nursing the sick constituted the chief work of the order at Jerusalem, but after the conquest of that city in 1187, when the knights removed to Malta and the ladies to Spain, the care of those not belonging to their body ceased to hold the foremost place. But the existence of the hospitals at Jerusalem and the attention they had attracted in the different countries of Europe, where grants of land had been made for their support, indirectly stimulated efforts in favour of the foundation of similar shelters or hospitals.

The first idea of independent hospitals came into England from Rome, when Archbishop Lanfranc († 1089), a native of Italy, founded two hospitals in the true sense of the word, one inside, one outside Canterbury. The one situated inside the city walls is described by the historian Eadmer († 1124) in the following terms766. ‘He divided it into two parts; men who were sick in various ways inhabited the one, women the other part. He gave to them clothes of his own and daily sustenance; and ordered that there should be servants and masters who were to take care they should want nothing; the men had no access to the women, nor the women to the men.’ A chapel was built on the other side of the way and given into the care of canons, who were to attend to the spiritual needs of the sick and to see to their burial after death.

The other hospital founded by Lanfranc was at Herbaltown, in the woods of Blean, a mile away from Canterbury; it was for those who were afflicted with scrofula (regia valetudine fluentibus), and who at a later date, in the confirming charter of Henry II, are styled lepers (leprosi)767.

These accounts of Lanfranc’s foundations are especially interesting as they give us some of the earliest well-authenticated indications of a changed attitude towards lepers, and anticipate the efforts made in their behalf in the 12th century by the founders of the orders of combined canons and nuns, and in the 13th century by a number of women who on this account are numbered among the saints. These women, as we shall see, not only felt interested in these unfortunate beings but unhesitatingly tended them with their own hands. They knew nothing of the disgust usually felt towards wretchedness and poverty, and found their life’s happiness in vanquishing sordidness and filth. In the eyes of some of their contemporaries they were chiefly bent on seeking sorry sights and coveting painful experiences, but, apart from the appreciation they found among those to whom they directly ministered, others were generous enough to recognise the heroism of their efforts.

Among these women must be numbered Matilda († 1118) the wife of Henry I of England, the daughter of St Margaret and the sister of St David of Scotland, whose education and marriage have been discussed above in connection with Romsey. Highly as Matilda was esteemed by her contemporaries, she has never been accepted as a saint, and no day is given to her in the Calendar. This omission is perhaps due to the fact that she left her nunnery against the wishes of some of the clergy, perhaps owing to her husband’s quarrels with the Pope, for Matilda was beloved by high and low and early writers are unanimous in praise of her. Map speaks of her as the holy queen Matilda (sanctae Matildis reginae)768.

This estimate is based on the fact that Matilda was so moved by pity towards lepers that she overcame the repugnance commonly felt towards them. A well-authenticated story is told of how her brother David, coming into her apartment, found it full of lepers. She proceeded to lay aside her robe and with a towel girt about her washed and dried their feet and then kissed them, and when her brother objected she replied that in kissing the feet of lepers she was kissing the feet of the Eternal King. Ailred of Rievaux recounts the story, which he had from David, who repeatedly spoke of it to him769.

This generous disposition is borne out by the fact that soon after her marriage Matilda founded the hospital of St Giles in the East for the maintenance of forty lepers, a chaplain, a clerk and a messenger770. It was commonly known for a long time afterwards as the hospital of Matilda. It was founded in 1101, and Matthew Paris saw it a hundred and fifty years later and made a sketch of it which is still extant771. With the exception of the house founded by Lanfranc in Herbaltown, the inmates of which were not styled lepers at the time, the hospital of St Giles, the foundation of ‘good Queen Maud,’ was the first institution of its kind in England and for a long time remained quite the most important.

But we must study the records of foreign countries to find the majority of those women who were actively beneficent to the sick, and who for this reason are officially accepted as saints. Probably leprosy, or the diseases collected under this designation, showed greater virulence on the Continent than they ever did in England, and the miseries of those who were repulsively disfigured were extreme, when in the first half of the 13th century a small group of women personally related to each other took pity on them. The field of their labours was in Central and South Germany and the adjoining countries, which were at that time brought under German influence.

All the women who were actuated by this new philanthropic spirit were members, either by birth or marriage, of the powerful and influential family of the Counts of Andechs and Meran772. The scientist Virchow has remarked that this family, which was once most prosperous and widely spread, practically extinguished itself through its extreme ascetic tendencies773. Its men joined the Crusades, and any who returned dedicated their sons to the celibacy of the bishopric and their daughters to that of the cloister; and in this way the family ceased to exist after a few generations.

Whence the first impulse towards charitable deeds came to them we know not, but we find them sometimes taking the initiative in philanthropic enterprises, and sometimes uniting their efforts to those of others who were working on similar lines to their own. Some members of the family acted as patrons to the Cistercian order, – others invited and encouraged the settlement of the Teutonic or Red Cross Knights in their lands. Others again were strongly attracted by the teachings of the Dominican and Franciscan friars, who were very influential in the first half of the 13th century. Various tendencies were represented in the different countries of Europe by the followers of St Francis of Assisi. This divergence arose partly because the rule of life promulgated in 1209 was supplanted by another in 1221, and partly from the varied interests of each country. In South Germany it was the influence of the Franciscans which primarily encouraged charitable zeal and self-denial.

Hedwig, daughter of Count Berthold, of the family of Andechs and Meran, first claims our attention on account of her charitable deeds. She married Heinrich the Bearded († 1238), first duke of Silesia, Poland and Croatia. These districts were occupied by people of the Slav race, and it was at this time that they were first brought into contact with German influence and civilization. Christianity had been introduced in the 12th century, but there were very few churches, and the conditions of life were unsettled and insecure owing to the continued feuds of the barons. Heinrich checked internal dissensions with a high hand; he was zealous in introducing German law and in encouraging German immigration, and in this way gave solidarity to this part of the Empire. His marriage with the daughter of a family which was among the wealthiest and most influential in South Germany is a proof of his German sympathies.