CATHOLIC WORLD. (continued 2)

Things grew worse and worse. Poliander preached vile and opprobrious sermons to the poor nuns, upbraiding and accusing them; and when he left Würzburg, two others, Schleussner and Osiander, succeeded him and preached regularly three times a week in the chapel. A sharp and degrading watch was kept over the nuns, as the council suspected them of stopping their ears with cotton-wool or exercising other petty devices to escape the words of the distasteful sermons. This continued throughout Lent, and the violence of the preachers inflaming the passions of the people, the nuns lived in daily fear of seeing the latter put into execution their frequent threat of burning down the convent. The serving-girls could hardly go out of the house in safety to purchase provisions, and the friends of the nuns had to use all manner of subterfuges to be able to visit them in peace, while every knock at the door frightened the poor women as if it heralded their doom. But worse was yet to come. On the 7th of June three of the councillors, Fürer, Pfinzing, and Imhof, visited the convent and laid before the nuns five propositions with which the council demanded instant compliance: an inventory was to be taken of all the convent possessions, a laxer rule introduced, the religious dress laid aside, the grated window replaced by a common one of glass, and free permission granted to every nun to leave if she chose, taking with her whatever dowry she had brought to the convent, or a suitable remuneration for the services done during her stay there. Charitas wisely showed a disposition to yield in minor matters, in which she knew that the council would find means at any rate to force her compliance, but on the matter of the religious vows she stood firm, answering:

“In so far as my sisters owe me any personal obedience and consideration, I am ready to forgive them the debt, but I cannot absolve them from vows vowed unto the Lord; for what are we poor creatures that we should lay hands on the things that are God’s?”

The council allowed her four weeks to make up her mind to these changes, and promised, in case of compliance, to protect the convent; but if these conditions were resisted, neither the house nor the nuns would be either protected or supported. Charitas called a chapter together and announced her determination to have nothing to do with an “open convent,” at the same time asking the sisters’ opinion on the council’s proposal. The nuns unanimously

Dame Ursula Tetzel had already tried some months before, with the help of her brothers, to get her daughter Margaret, who had been for nine years in the convent, to leave it and come home; but the girl herself vigorously resisted the attempt, and Charitas represented it to the mother as an infringement of the rights of the convent. Things had marched rapidly enough since then to enable Dame Tetzel to renew the attempt with more certainty of success; and accordingly she, with the wives of the two councillors, Ebner and Nützel, who had each a daughter in the convent, determined to take their children home at all hazards. They gave the nuns a week’s notice, and on the 14th of June appeared with a number of their male relations in two large conveyances or wagons. A great crowd had collected round the convent door, and a considerable excitement prevailed; the street and the churchyard were full. Charitas, on her side, had requested two of the councillors, Pfinzing and Imhof, to be present as witnesses of the disgraceful scene she foresaw. The young nuns, respectively nineteen, twenty, and twenty-three years old, fell on their knees before the abbess, weeping and entreating her not to let them be taken away. They even wished to hide themselves; but this, of course, Charitas forbade and led the girls with her to the chapel where they had taken their vows. She prayed and wept with them, and hesitated taking them over the threshold into the presence of their mothers; but the latter came into the chapel and violently upbraided their children, who with tears piteously begged to be left alone. Katharine Ebner especially spoke in eloquent tones for more than an hour, and, as the councillors afterwards said, “She spoke no word that was weak or useless, but talked with such force and cogency that every word weighed a pound.” Her mother stormed, and Held, the brother of Dame Nützel, threatened her “like an executioner,” but Katharine continued speaking in her own behalf and that of her friends: “Here will I stand and not move one step; and if you employ force, I will complain to God in heaven and every man upon earth.” She was rudely dragged forward, but, stretching her arms

The poor young nuns were put in the wagons and driven away, but they still cried out to the crowd that they were suffering violence and demanded to be taken back to their convent. Dame Ebner got so incensed that she struck her daughter on the mouth, and the poor girl bled all the way home. There were many in the crowd who cried “Shame!” and would gladly, had they dared, have attempted a rescue, but the strong hand of the “trained bands” of Nuremberg was not to be defied in vain. Charitas never saw her spiritual children again, but she heard from time to time that they were still unchanged in their feelings. Clara Nützel ate nothing for four days after she was taken away, and day and night cried to be taken back again.

This scene of violence made a great stir at the time and awakened much sympathy for the convent, and at least it had this good effect: that no more forcible abductions were attempted. Some time later one nun, Anna Schwarz, whose sisters had left the other convent of Nuremberg, St. Catherine, left St. Clare of her own accord; she was the only one who voluntarily gave up her vows. In this case, however, her mother was not well pleased and by no means urged her to leave. The community was now reduced to fifty-one members, and of these none henceforward left the convent, unless by the call of God to a better and more peaceful life.

In the following autumn Melanchthon visited Nuremberg, and, though their views now differed, his friendship with Pirkheimer was not weakened. He inquired into the state of affairs, and, together with the administrator, Nützel, visited the convent and had a long conversation with the abbess. She says in her diary: “He was more gentle and discreet in his speech than any of the new teachers I have met before”; and, indeed, she had long had the greatest esteem for the young and ripe Greek scholar.

“He spoke much of the new doctrines,” she continues; “but when I told him that we did not place our hope in our own works, but solely in the grace of God, he replied that in that case we might be saved in the cloister quite as well as in the world. Indeed, we agreed in the main on all points, except concerning the vows, which he holds not to be binding, but yet strongly disapproved of the violence that had been done to the nuns to force them to give up their vows. He took leave of us in a very friendly manner, and afterwards strongly reproved the administrator and the other councillors for having forbidden the Franciscans to celebrate divine service at St. Clare, and having dragged the children out of the convent against their will; indeed, he told them that, between themselves, he considered that therein they had committed a grievous sin.”

Although the three young nuns were not restored to the convent, their parents, smarting under the many insinuations made against their conduct, conveyed to the abbess, through Sigismund Fürer and Leonard Tucher, a formal acknowledgment of their satisfaction at the “manner in which the girls had been brought up and their health cared for”; while the two men added of their own accord that as to the girls they must tell the truth—i.e., that if it depended upon them, they would be back at the convent before evening. Kaspar Nützel himself said the same thing to the abbess, thanking her for the care bestowed on his daughter’s physical and moral well-being, and acknowledging himself indebted to the convent for this favor. But, better than this, he soon wrote a letter in which he distinctly stated that he regretted having several times “overstepped his legitimate authority in his attempts to convert her to the new doctrines,” and promised that in future he would attend with peculiar zeal at least to the temporal concerns of the convent. Their possessions had, however, been so curtailed during these troublous times that they almost literally subsisted on alms.

On All Souls’ day, 1527, the same two councillors who had witnessed the forcible taking away of the young nuns two years before, and two other associates, were commissioned to institute a domiciliary visitation in the convent and to speak in private with each sister, with a view to elicit their grievances and give them a chance of speaking freely. The poor nuns were very much frightened at the proposal, but Charitas only made this remonstrance:

“Worthy masters,” she said, “you are somewhat vehement confessors. It has pleased our rulers to abolish private confession to one man, and now you require us poor women to confess to four men at once, and lay open to them all our spiritual needs!” And as the men were rather staggered, she continued: “You say many abuses among us have come to the ears of the council. We should like to hear them detailed. We have been driven and oppressed like worms for three years, and would gladly, if we could, have hidden ourselves under a stone like worms; but if we have offended in anything, let it be clearly brought home to us.”

The men looked at each other, and one said: “This point is not yet settled”; while another asked helplessly: “What am I to say? I do not understand the matter.” At last they went through the form of examining each nun alone and separately, and got tired and left off when they had examined thirty-nine. The preacher Osiander once held a discussion with Charitas for four hours without any result but both parties remaining stronger in their own belief; and on another occasion, when Dr. Link, formerly an Augustinian, and now preacher at the hospital, sent her a controversial pamphlet, she answered him in writing, argument for argument, and made all who saw her defence marvel at the clearness of her logic and the ease of her style. He had put himself forward as an example (doubtless

“Forgive me if I do not care to follow the example of any man; our example is Christ, and, even if we were to look for models among men, it would be strange if we sought for them among living men while such men as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Cyprian, and others are set aside and disowned.”

Later on she again wrote to him:

“If God does not inspire us with love for your new faith, we cannot of ourselves force our hearts to it. We should deceive ourselves and do violence to our conscience (which is wrong) if we were to listen to the threats or persuasions of men. It is no luxurious life, God knows, that keeps us in our convent; neither is it any belief that simply to have taken the veil assures salvation. We do not place our hope in the conventual rule, but in the mercy of God and his only Son. I hold none of my nuns back against their will; if they choose to leave, they are free to do so. I only ask that they should not be forced to do it, as has happened already on one occasion.”

Towards the end of 1528 came a time of negative peace for the nuns, and, as the “silver wedding” or jubilee of the abbess fell about Christmas time, the convent prepared itself for a modest festival in honor of this event. It was the first time that an abbess had held her office for so many years, and the celebration was looked upon with so much the more interest that no former abbess had gone through such stirring and troublous times during the period of her abbess-ship. The festival was put off till Easter, 1529, and was long remembered by the nuns as one of their few red-letter days. Their friends from the town sent them presents of wine, fruit, cakes, and preserves, and Pirkheimer and Dame Ursula Kramer, his neighbor, both sent their plate to adorn the nuns’ table on the occasion. This pleased the simple women immensely, and Katharine, Charitas’ niece, wrote in glowing terms to her father, giving him an account of the festivities of the day. We will quote a few passages from her letter:

“In the morning the whole community came to the mother, each sister bearing a torch, and the prioress put a crown upon her head and led her to the choir, where we said the Office for the day and then sang the Mass as best we could. Then the mother took the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle and exposed it, and the community knelt to adore it and make a spiritual communion. We comforted ourselves with the words of St. Augustine: Crede et manducasti (Believe, and thou hast eaten). The mother then sat by the altar, and one by one we all went up to her and embraced her, … and she had her hands full of rings, and gave each of the sisters one as a pledge of their renewed espousals with their Bridegroom and of their resolve to be true to him; … although it has not been the custom hitherto with us, the mother thought that, considering these exceptionally sad years, it would be a remembrance of the obedience and earnestness with which we have hung together through these vicissitudes.… Then we took the mother to table, … and you, dear father, have proved yourself a generous host. The sisters said, ‘Oh! that Master Pirkheimer were here to see how we are enjoying his good gifts’; and your plate and Dame Kramer’s delighted us also mightily.… At last, at night, we had a little dance. The old nuns danced as well as the young ones. Mother Apollonia Tucher, who has been fifty-seven years in the convent, took hold of me and turned me round; … and the dance was so hearty that the mother said, ‘Dear children, spare my tables.’”

This was the last joyful event of Charitas’ life. Three months after this festival her niece Crescentia, Pirkheimer’s daughter, died, and the wicked tongues of the town took occasion to wag against the nuns, accusing them of worrying her to death; but Pirkheimer himself put down these scandalous rumors by publicly thanking the community

Another cross befell the abbess in the loss of reason of two of her nuns—a circumstance of which her enemies did not fail to make good use; but, the two sisters being perfectly harmless, except at long intervals, no removal was necessary, and they went about their common duties peacefully until their death.

In 1530 Charitas lost her well-beloved brother Wilibald, which was a sad break-up to her; but before he died he published an Apology for the Convent of St. Clare, which greatly comforted, if it did not help, the nuns. But the council contemptuously overlooked this as it had done all previous petitions.

Two years after her brother’s death the noble Charitas Pirkheimer followed him to a better land, and her sister Clara was chosen abbess in her stead. Her friend Apollonia Tucher died within a few months, on the 15th of January, 1533, and the new abbess the following month, whereupon her niece Katharine became abbess and ruled the community for thirty years. She was the last abbess but one; for towards the end of the century the last nun died and the convent reverted to the town.[74] But the good fight had been fought, and the noble defeat only brought fresh and eternal honor on the name of the Clarist Order; for, as says Montaigne, “There are defeats that dispute the palm with victories,” and Lacordaire comments thus on the saying: “This noble axiom applies no less to moral than to military defeats, and we should never tire of inculcating the principle that as long as honor and conscience are safe, so long also is fame deserved.”

MYSTERIES.

ARE YOU MY WIFE?

BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.