CHAPTER III.
With that about I tourned my hedde,
And sawe anone the fifth rout
That to this lady gan lout,
And doune on knees, anone, to fall,
And to her tho besoughten all,
To hiden hir good workes eke,
And said, they yeve not a leke
For no fame, ne soch renoun,
For they for contemplacioun,
And Goddes love had it wrought,
Ne of fame would they nought.
Chaucer: The House of Fame.
On the next occasion when our little Summerford circle was ready to hear some more of Arnstein’s Chronicle, they were informed by Atherton that four years of the manuscript were missing,—that such intervals were only too frequent,—in fact, the document was little more than a collection of fragments.
‘The next entry I find,’ said he, ‘is in 1324, and the good armourer, in much excitement, begins with an exclamation.
1324. July. St. Kylian’s Day.—What a day this has been! Strasburg, and all the states which adhere to Louis, are placed under the bann. The bells were ringing merrily at early morning; now, the Interdict is proclaimed, and every tongue of them is silent. As the news flew round, every workman quitted his work. The busy stalls set out on either side of the streets were left empty. The tools and the wares lay unlooked at and untouched. The bishop and the clergy of his party, and most of the Dominicans, keep out of sight. My men are furious. I have been all day from house to house, and group to group, telling the people to keep a good heart. We shall have a sad time of it, I see. It is so hard for the poor creatures to shake off a fear in which they have been cradled.
The clergy and the monks will pour out of Strasburg, as out of a Sodom, in shoals. A mere handful will stay behind,—not nearly enough to christen those who will be born and to shrive those who will die in this populous city. They may name their price: the greedy of gain may make their fortunes. The miserable poor will die, numbers of them, in horror, unable to purchase absolution. And then, out of the few priests who do remain, scarcely any will have the courage to disobey the pope, and, despite the Interdict, say mass.
’Tis an anxious time for either party. Louis has most of the states on his side, and the common voice, in all the towns of the Rhineland—(in the princely Cologne most of all), is, I hear, loud in his favour. The Minorites will be with him, and all of that sort among the friars, who have little favour to lose with his Holiness. But France is with the Pope against him; Duke Leopold is a doughty adversary; John of Bohemia restless and fickle, and no doubt the Pope will set on the Polacks and pagan Lithuanians to waste most horribly all the north and eastern frontiers. Since the victory of Mühldorf, Frederick has lain in prison. That battle is the grievance. The enemies of the Emperor are more full of rancour than ever. Yet, with all the mischief it may bring in the present, what lover of the Fatherland can sorrow therefor? Gallant little Schweppermann, with his lame foot and grey hair, and his glorious two eggs, long may he live to do other such deeds![[96]] Louis holds a high spirit at present, and goes about under the bann with a brave heart. But it is only the outset as yet. I much fear me he may lack the staunchness to go through as he has begun. There is store of thunder behind at Avignon. Methinks he hankers, like a child, mainly after the lance and sword and crown of Charlemagne, to dress him out perfectly withal King of the Romans, and seeth not the full bearing of the very war he wages.
We shall not be idle. It is already proposed to send off troops to the aid of Louis. I have half a mind to go myself; but home can ill spare me now, and I render the Emperor more service by such little influence as I have in Strasburg. To-morrow, to consult about the leagues to be formed with neighbouring towns and with the Swiss burghers, to uphold the good cause together.
1326. March. St. Gregory’s Day.—Duke Leopold died here yesterday, at the Ochsenstein Palace.[[97]] After ravaging the suburbs of Spires, he came hither in a raging fever to breathe his last. The bishop told him he must pardon the Landgrave of Lower Alsace from the bottom of his heart. They say he struggled long and wrathfully against the condition, till, finding the bishop firm in refusing absolution on other terms, he gave way. But, just as he was about to receive the host, a fit of vomiting came on, wherein he presently expired, without the sacrament after all.
Frederick has been now at liberty some months. Louis visited him in his prison. To think of their having been together all their boyhood, and loving each other so, to meet thus! Frederick the Handsome, haggard with a three years’ imprisonment—his beard down to his waist; and Louis, successful and miserable. They say Frederick cut off his beard at first, and sent it, by way of memorial, to John of Bohemia, and that when he went back to his castle he found his young wife had wept herself blind during his captivity. He swore on the holy wafer to renounce his claim to the empire. The Pope released him from his oath soon after, but he keeps his word like knight, not like priest, and holds to it yet. It is whispered that they have agreed to share the throne. But that can never be brought to pass.
Heard to-day, by a merchant, of Hermann.[[98]] He is travelling through Spain. I miss him much. Before he left Strasburg he was full of Eckart’s doctrine, out of all measure admiring the wonderful man, and hoarding every word that dropped from his lips. Eckart is now sick at Cologne, among his sorrowing disciples. Grieved to hear that the leeches say he hath not long to live.
A long conversation with Henry of Nördlingen.[[99]] He has journeyed hither, cast down and needy, to ask counsel of Tauler. Verily he needs counsel, but hath not strength of mind to take it when given. Tauler says Henry has many friends among the excellent of the earth; all love him, and he is full of love, but sure a pitiful sight to see. His heart is with us. He mourns over the trouble of the time. He weeps for the poor folk, living and dying without the sacraments. But the Interdict crushes his soul. Now he has all but gathered heart to do as Tauler doth—preach and labour on, unmoved by all this uproar, but anon his courage is gone, and he falls back into his fear again as soon as he is left alone. He sits and pores over those letters of spiritual consolation which Margaret Ebner has written to him. He says sometimes she alone retains him on the earth. Verily I fear me that, priest as he is, some hopeless earthly love mingles with his friendship for that saintly woman. He has had to flee from his home for refusing to perform service. Strasburg, in that case, can be no abiding place for him. I see nothing before him but a wretched wandering, perhaps for years. I cannot get him to discern the malice of Pope John, rather than the wrath of heaven, in the curse that withers us. I gave him a full account of what the Pope’s court at Avignon truly is, as I gathered from a trusty eye-witness, late come from thence, whom I questioned long the other day.[[100]] I told him that gold was the one true god there—our German wealth, wrung out from us, and squandered on French courtiers, players, buffoons, and courtezans—Christ sold daily for it—the palace full of cardinals and prelates, grey-haired debauchees and filthy mockers, to a man—accounting chastity a scandal, and the soul’s immortality and coming judgment an old wife’s fable;—yea, simony, adultery, murder, incest, so frequent and unashamed, that the Frenchmen themselves do say the Pope’s coming hath corrupted them. I asked him if these were the hands to take up God’s instruments of wrath to bruise with them his creatures? But all in vain. There is an awfulness in the very name of Pope which blinds reason and strikes manhood down, in him, as in thousands more.
A.D. 1332. Fourth week after Easter.—But now awaked from the first sleep I have had for the last three days and nights. I set down in a word or two what hath happened, then out to action again. Last Wednesday, at the great festival, the nobles, knights, and senators, with a brave show of fair ladies, banqueted at the grand house in the Brandgasse.[[101]] Within, far into the night, minstrelsy and dancing; without, the street blocked up with a crowd of serving men and grooms with horses, torch-bearers, and lookers-on of all sorts—when, suddenly, the music stopped—they heard shouts and the clash of swords and shrill screams. There had been a quarrel between a Zorn and a Müllenheim—they drew—Von Hunefeld was killed on the spot, another of the Zorns avenged him by cutting down Wasselenheim; the conflict became general, in hall, in the antechambers, down the great staircase, out on the steps, the retainers took part on either side, and the fray ended in the flight of the Zorns, who left six slain in the house and in the street. Two were killed on the side of the Müllenheims. All who fell were of high rank, and several of either faction are severely wounded. They draw off to their quarters, each breathing vengeance, preparing for another conflict at daybreak. All the rest of the night the Landvogt and Gotzo von Grosstein were riding to and fro to pacify them—to no purpose. Each party declared they would send for the knights and gentry of their side from the country round about. I was with Burckard Zwinger when we heard this. ‘Now,’ said I, ‘or all is lost. Off, and harangue the people. I will get the best of the burghers together.’ We parted. All the city was astir. As I made my way from house to house, I sent the people I met off to the market place to hear Zwinger. I could hear their shouts, summons enough now, without any other. When I got back to the Roland’s pillar, I found that his plain, home-thrust speech had wrought the multitude to what we would, and no more. Snatches of it flew from mouth to mouth, like sparks of fire,—he had struck well while the iron was hot. ‘To the Stadtmeister!’ was the cry. ‘The keys! The seal! The standard! We will have our standard. Let the citizens defend their own!’ Most of the burghers were of one mind with Zwinger, and we went in a body (the crowd shouting behind us, a roaring sea of heads, and the bell on the townhouse ringing as never before) to demand the keys of young Sieck. He yielded all with trembling. By daybreak we had dispersed; the several corporations repaired armed to their quarters; the gates were shut; the bridges guarded; the walls manned. All was in our hands. So far safe. The nobles, knights, and gentry of the neighbourhood came up in the morning in straggling groups, approaching the city from various quarters, with as many of their men as could be hastily gathered, but drew off again when they saw our posture of defence. It was truly no time for them. This promptitude has saved Strasburg from being a field of battle in every street for counts and men at arms, who despise and hate the citizens—whose victory, on whatever side, would have been assured pillage and rapine, and, in the end, the loss of our privilege to deal solely for ourselves in our own affairs. Well done, good Zwinger, thou prince of bakers, with thy true warm heart, and cool head, and ready tongue! To our praise be it said, no deed of violence was done; there was no blood-thirstiness, no spoiling, but a steady purpose in the vast crowd that, hap what would, no strangers should come in to brawl and rob in Strasburg.
While the gates have been closed and the Town Hall guarded, we have been deliberating on a new senate. Four new Stadtmeisters elected. Zwinger made Amtmeister. The magistracy taken out of the exclusive hands of the great families and open to the citizens generally, gentlemen, burghers, and artizans, side by side. The workmen no longer to be slaves to the caprice of the gentry. The nobles are disarmed for a time, to help them settle their quarrel more quickly. I go the rounds with the horse patrol every night. The gates are never to be opened except when the great bell has rung to give permission. We sit in the Town Hall with our swords. I took my place there this morning, armed to the teeth, and verily my Margarita seemed proud enough when she sent me forth, with a kiss, to my new dignity, clad in good steel instead of senatorial finery. We have every prospect of peace and prosperousness. The nobles see our strength, and must relinquish with as good a grace as they may a power they have usurped. The main part of the old laws will abide as before. All is perfectly quiet. There has been no mere vengeance or needless rigour. I hear nothing worse than banishment will be inflicted upon any—that only on a few. The bishop’s claws will be kept shorter.
1338. August. St. Bartholomew’s Day.—Now is the rent between clerk and layman, pope and emperor, wider even than heretofore. Last month was held the electorial diet at Rhense. The electors, by far the greater part, with Louis; and their bold doings now apparent. Yesterday was issued, at Frankfort, a manifesto of the Emperor’s, wherein Benedict, he and all his curses, are set at nought, and the mailed glove manfully hurled in his teeth. Thereby he declares, that whomsoever the electors choose they will have acknowledged rightful emperor, whether the pope bless or bann, and all who gainsay this are traitors;—that the emperor is not, and will not be, in anywise dependent on the pope. All good subjects are called on to disregard the Interdict, and such towns or states as obey the same are to forfeit their charters.[[102]]
It was indeed high time to speak out. Louis, losing heart, tried negotiation, and made unworthy concessions to the pope, whereon he (impatient, they say, to get back to Italy) would have come to an agreement, but the French cardinals took care to cross and undo all. The emperor even applied to Philip personally—asking the King of France, forsooth, to suffer him to be king of the Romans—then, finding that vain, is leagued with the English king, and war declared against France. This sounds bravely. Shame on the electors if they hold not to their promise now.
As to our Strasburg, we stand by the emperor, as of old, despite our bishop Berthold, who, with sword instead of crook, has done battle with the partisans of Louis for now some years, gathering help from all parts among the nobles and the gentry, burning villages, besieging and being besieged, spoiling and being spoiled; moreover, between whiles, thinking to win himself the name of a zealous pastor by issuing decrees against long hair growing on clerks’ heads, and enforcing fiercely all the late bulls against the followers of Eckart, the Beghards, and others.[[103]] Last year he tasted six weeks’ imprisonment, having quarrelled with the heads of the chapter. Rudolph von Hohenstein and others of the opposite party, surrounded one night the house of the Provost of Haselach, where he lay, and carried him off in his shirt to the Castle of Vendenti; and smartly did they make him pay before he came out. We have full authority to declare war against him, if he refuses now to submit to Louis, as I think not likely, seeing how matters go at present. He had the conscience to expect that we magistrates would meddle in his dispute and take his part. Even the senators, who adhere mainly to the Zorn family, were against him, and methinks after all he has done to harass and injure us, we did in a sort return good for evil in being merely lookers-on.
Tauler is away on a visit to Basle, where the state of parties is precisely similar to our own, the citizens there, as in Friburg, joining our league for Louis and for Germany; and the bishop against them, tooth and nail.[[104]] My eldest boy (God bless him, he is fifteen this day, and a lad for a father to be proud of) hath accompanied the Doctor thither, having charge of sundry matters of business for me there. Had word from him last week. They have somehow procured a year’s remission of the Interdict for Basle. He says Suso came to see Tauler, and that they had long talk together for two days. Henry of Nördlingen is there likewise, and now that the pope hath kennelled his barking curse for a twelvemonth, preaches, to the thronging of the churches, wherever he goes.
A.D. 1339. January.—The new year opens gloomily. Without loss of time, fresh-forged anathemas are come, and coming, against the outspoken emperor and this troublesome Germany. Some of the preachers, and the bare-footed friars especially, have yet remained to say mass and perform the offices; now, even these are leaving the city. Some cloisters have stood for now two or three years quite empty. Many churches are deserted altogether, and the doors nailed up. The magistracy have issued orders to compel the performance of service. The clerks are fairly on the anvil; the civil hammer batters them on the one side, and the ecclesiastical upon the other with alternate strokes.
Bitter wind and sleet this morning. Saw three Dominicans creeping back into the town, who had left it a month ago, refusing to say mass. Poor wretches, how starved and woe-begone they looked, after miserable wanderings about the country in the snow, winter showing them scant courtesy, and sure I am the boors less; and now coming back to a deserted convent and to a city where men’s faces are towards them as a flint. Straight, as I saw them, there came into my mind that goodly exhortation of Dr. Tauler’s, that we should show mercy, as doth God, unto all, enemies and friends alike, for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?[[105]] Ran after them, called them in, thawed them, fed them, comforted them with kind words and good ale by the great fire,—then argued with them. They thought it a cruel thing that they must starve because pope and emperor are at feud. ‘And is it not,’ urged I, ‘a crueller that thousands of innocent poor folk should live without sacrament, never hear a mass, perhaps die unshriven, for the very same reason? Is not God’s law higher than the pope’s,—do to others as ye would they should do unto you? Could you look for other treatment at the hands of our magistrates, and expect to be countenanced and sustained by them in administering the malediction of their enemies?‘ Thought it most courteous, however, to ply them more pressingly with food than with arguments.
While they were there, in comes my little Otto, opens his eyes wide with wonder to see them, and presently breaks out with the words, now on the tongue of every Strasburger, a rhyming version of the decree:—
They shall still their masses sing,
Or out of the city we’ll make them spring.[[106]]
Told him he should not sing that just then, and, when he was out of the room, bade them mark by that straw which way the wind blew.
I record here a vision vouchsafed to that eminent saint the abbess Christina Ebner, of Engelthal, near Nurnberg. She beheld the Romish Church in the likeness of a great minster, fair to see, but with doors closed by reason of the bann. Priestly voices, solemn and sweet, were heard to chant within; and, without, stood a multitude waiting and hearkening, but no man dared enter. Then came there to the nun one in the habit of a preacher, and told her that he would give her words to speak to comfort the poor folk withal that stood outside,—and that man was the Lord Christ.
And verily, in some sort, so hath God done, having pity upon us, for through all Rhineland hath he moved godly men, both clerks and laity, to draw nearer the one to the other, forming together what we call the association of the Friends of God, for the better tending of the inward life in these troublous times, for wrestling with the Almighty on behalf of his suffering Christendom, and for the succour of the poor people, by preaching and counsel and sacrament, that are now as sheep without a shepherd, and perishing for lack of spiritual bread.[[107]] Tauler is of the foremost among them, and with his brethren, Egenolph of Ehenheim and Dietrich of Colmar, labours without ceasing, having now the wider field and heavier toil, as so few are left in Strasburg who will perform any church service for love or money. Ah! well might the Abbess Christina say of him that the Spirit of God dwelt within him as a sweet harping. He has travelled much of late, and wherever he goes spreads blessing and consolation; the people flock to hear him; the hands of the Friends of God are strengthened; and a savour of heavenly love and wisdom is left behind. His good name hath journeyed, they say, even beyond the Alps, and into the Low Countries. Neither are there wanting many like-minded, though none equal to him. He found at Cologne Henry of Löwen, Henry, and Franke, and John of Sterngasse,[[108]] brother Dominicans all of them, preaching constantly, with much of his own fervour, if with a doctrine more like that of Eckart. In Switzerland there is Suso, and I hear much of one Ruysbroek, in the Netherlands, a man younger than Tauler, and a notable master in the divine art of contemplation.
Among the Friends of God are numbers both of men and women of every rank, abbots and farmers, knights and nuns, monks and artizans. There is Conrad, Abbot of Kaisersheim: there are the nuns of Unterlinden and Klingenthal, at Colmar and Basle, as well as the holy sisters of Engelthal; the knights of Rheinfeld, Pfaffenheim, and Landsberg; our rich merchant here, Rulman Merswin, and one, unworthy of so good a name, that holds this pen. Our law is that universal love commanded by Christ, and not to be gainsaid by his vicar. Some have joined themselves to us for awhile, and gone out from us because they were not of us; for we teach no easy road to heaven for the pleasing of the flesh. Many call us sectaries, Beghards, brethren of the Free Spirit, or of the New Spirit, and what not. They might call us by worse names, but we are none of these. The prophecies of some among us, concerning judgments to be looked for at the hands of God, and the faithful warnings of others, have made many angry. Yet are not such things needed, when, as Dr. Tauler saith, the princes and prelates are, too many of them, worse than Jews and infidels, and mere horses for the devil’s riding.[[109]] So far from wishing evil, we mourn as no others over the present woe, and the Friends of God are, saith Dr. Tauler again, pillars of Christendom, and holders off for awhile of the gathered cloud of wrath. Beyond all question, if all would be active as they are active in works of love to their fellows, the face of the times would brighten presently, and the world come into sunshine.
It was but yesterday that in his sermon Tauler repeated the saying of one—an eminent Friend of God—‘I cannot pass my neighbour by without wishing for him in my heart more of the blessedness of heaven than for myself;‘—‘and that,’ said the good Doctor, ‘I call true love.’ Sure I am that such men stand between the living and the dead.[[110]]
1339. March.—Much encouraged on hearing Dr. Tauler’s sermon on ‘Whose is the image and superscription?‘[[111]] It was the last part that gladdened me more especially, when he was enforcing watchfulness and self-examination, and yet showed that the command might be obeyed by men such as I am, in the midst of a worldly calling. Many, said he, complain that they are so busied with outward things as to have no time to look inward. But let such, for every six steps they have to take outward in their daily duty, take one step inward, and observe their hearts, and their business will be to them no stumbling-block. Many are cloistered in body while thought and desire wander to and fro over the earth. But many others do, even amid the noise and stir of the market-place and the shop, keep such watch over their hearts, and set such ward on their senses, that they go unharmed, and their inner peace abides unbroken. Such men are much more truly to be called monks than those who, within a convent wall, have thought and senses so distraught that they can scarce say a single Paternoster with true devotion.
He said that God impressed his image and superscription on our souls when he created us in his image. All true Christians should constantly retire into themselves, and examine throughout their souls wherein this image of the Holy Trinity lieth, and clear away therefrom such images and thoughts as are not of God’s impressing,—all that is merely earthly in love and care, all that hath not God purely for its object. It must be in separateness from the world, withdrawal from all trust and satisfaction in what is creaturely, that we present God the image he hath engraven, clear and free from rust. This image and superscription lies in the inmost inmost of the soul, whither God only cometh, and neither men nor angels, and where he delights to dwell. He will share it with no other. He hath said, ‘My delight is in the sons of men.’ Thus is the inmost of our soul united to the inmost of the very Godhead, where the eternal Father doth ever speak and bring forth his eternal essential Word, his only-begotten Son, equal in honour, power, and worthiness, as saith the Apostle—‘He is the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person.’ By him hath the Father made all things. As all things have their beginning and source from the Godhead, by the birth of the eternal Word out of the Father, so do all creatures in their essence subsist by the same birth of the Son out of the Father, and therefore shall they all return in the same way to their source, to wit, through the Son to the Father. From this eternal birth of the Son ariseth the love of God the Father to his divine Son, and that of the Son to his divine Father, which love is the Holy Ghost—an eternal and divine Bond, uniting the Father and the Son in everlasting Love. These three are essentially one—one single pure essential unity, as even the heathen philosophers bear witness. Therefore, saith Aristotle, ‘There is but one Lord who ordaineth all things.’
He, therefore, that would be truly united to God must dedicate the penny of his soul, with all its faculties, to God alone, and join it unto Him. For if the highest and most glorious Unity, which is God himself, is to be united to the soul, it must be through oneness (Einigkeit). Now when the soul hath utterly forsaken itself and all creatures, and made itself free from all manifoldness, then the sole Unity, which is God, answers truly to the oneness of the soul, for then is there nothing in the soul beside God. Therefore between such a soul and God (if a man be so prepared that his soul hangs on nothing but God himself) there is so great a oneness that they become one, as the Apostle saith, ‘He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.’
But there are some who will fly before they have wings, and pluck the apples before they are ripe, and, at the very outset of the Divine life, be so puffed up that it contents them not to enter in at the door and contemplate Christ’s humanity, but they will apprehend his highness and incomprehensible Deity only. So did once a priest, and fell grievously, and bitterly mourned his folly, and had to say, ‘Ah, most Merciful! had I followed truly the pattern of thy holy humanity, it had not been thus with me!’ Beware of such perilous presumption—your safe course is to perfect yourselves first in following the lowly life of Christ, and in earnest study of the shameful cross.
Methinks this is true counsel, and better, for our sort at least, than Master Eckart’s exhortation to break through into the essence, and to exchange God made manifest for the absolute and inscrutable Godhead.
1339. March 20.—Finished to-day a complete suit of armour for young Franz Müllenheim. The aristocratic families bear the change of government more good-humouredly than I looked for. Their influence is still great, and they can afford to make a virtue of necessity. Most of them now, too, are on the right side.
A great improvement—locking our doors at night.[[112]] This is the first time I have thought to record it, though the custom has been introduced these nine years. Before, there was not a lock to a house-door in Strasburg, and if you wanted to shut it, on ever so great a need, you had to work with spade and shovel to remove a whole mountain of dirt collected about the threshold. Several new roads, too, made of late by the merchant-league of the Rhineland.