The Catholic World, Vol. 23, April, 1876-September, 1876. / A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science

by Various

THE ROOT OF OUR PRESENT EVILS.

When Mr. Dickens repaid the hospitality which he had received by his extremely humorous satires of this country, he called the attention of all Americans to the extent to which our national vanity was likely to blind us. Mr. Chollop’s opinion to the effect that “we are the intellect and virtue of the airth, the cream of human natur, and the flower of moral force,” has been secretly cherished by many better men.

The conviction of ordinary Americans is that our system of government is so evidently perfect, and the course of our development so manifestly healthy, that nothing but sheer blindness can account for any suspicion as to their future stability. To those who question the success of our future we are wont to reply by a smile of genuine pity, or by pointing to the results already achieved and the difficulties which have been surmounted. We have fused the most incongruous race-mixture into one homogeneous nation. We have occupied a continent, and laid the foundations

of a great empire upon a comprehensive and stable adjustment of all the functions of government. We have eliminated the vast system of human slavery from which our ruin had been predicted. We have overcome the most powerful assault upon the integrity of our national existence; and any violent attempt upon our government seems at present to be both impossible of occurrence and hopeless of success.

It cannot be denied, however, that recent events have awakened in the minds of earnest and patriotic Americans a sense of uneasiness and anxiety very different from any similar feeling in the past. The professional politician sees in the corruption lately developed in Washington simply the evidence of decay manifested by a powerful organization which has enjoyed unlimited power and survived the issues which brought it into existence. He would persuade the people that a “rotation” is all that is necessary in order to restore things to an honest and sober condition.

Less thoughtful men demand a return on the part of officials “to the simplicity of our forefathers,” and applaud blindly every effort at retrenchment. All observant writers and thinkers deprecate any such impossibility and are quite clear as to the folly of attempting it. The Nation, March 16, says: “We confess that there is to us something almost as depressing in this kind of talk as in the practice, in which many of our newspapers indulge, of drawing consolation for the present corruption of this republic from the reflection that the corruption of the English monarchy one hundred and fifty years ago was just as great; because both one and the other have a tendency to turn people’s minds away from real remedies and throw them back on quackery.”

The feeling exhibited by this writer is not confined to himself; and the protest which he makes against disguise and quackery is extended much further than he himself has carried it. For the most part careful observers are willing to postpone the question of treatment until the public is settled as to what the malady really is. We are shaken out of our customary habit of mind by witnessing the disgrace and infamy which cover our present administration. Everybody feels that something ought to be done. But to pay particular attention to this portion of the body politic, without examining how far the disease extends and what is its source, is simply to run the risk of suppressing a symptom instead of curing a disorder.

The slightest attempt at candid observation reveals clearly that corruption is not confined to Washington. A few years ago it was supposed to be limited to a certain

class of local politics; then it was restricted to the city of New York. Now it is proved to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and to exist in every circle of society. The suspicion which once attached to the “ward politician” now hangs about our representatives and senators. Dishonesty in commercial transactions perpetrates renewed outrages. We shall soon have to establish fresh associations to insure our insurance companies and to guarantee our banks. The medical profession feels called upon to issue tracts in order to guard against the physical degeneracy of the entire race.

To deny that there is a pronounced, marked, and universal decadence in morality is simply to stultify all faculties of observation and to contradict the testimony of every sense. It is not necessary to repeat the list of scandals which are daily appearing, or to appeal to the conviction, which prevails everywhere, that we have seen but a small portion of those which really exist. It is the common sentiment that the next century will witness either a complete and radical reform of the present state of things, or else a condition far worse than the enemies of this country have ever yet predicted.

Startling as this conviction may appear, the only thing which ought to surprise us is that the present disorder has not been foreseen and is not now more fully understood. It would have been easy to predict the increase of wealth and the consequent increase of luxury in our midst. No sane person can doubt that these sources of temptation will be greater in the future. The presence of wealth, the possibility of attaining it, will call forth all the activity of the rising generation, and the keenness of the struggle, in

which all are free within the limits of the law, will tend constantly to lower the standard of honesty. The strictness of party discipline, the disgust which the mass of citizens have for attending to the details of politics, offer the widest scope for unprincipled adventurers. There are few careers in which quackery, fraud, and imposture cannot secure those fruits for the possession of which honesty and labor are forced to suffer and to strive.

It does not involve a cynical view of mankind to decide that where the occasion of sin abounds wickedness will increase and prove destructive, unless adequate means are taken to preserve the purity of a nation.

This restraining influence in the history of nations hitherto has been religion, which is supposed to furnish motives and to supply the strength and means of combating these evil tendencies, and of defining and consolidating public morality.

The religion under profession of which the older portions of the republic developed was professedly Christian and retained much of the traditional morality of the middle ages. There was no particular form of Protestantism which succeeded in impressing itself permanently upon the growing republic, although some connection of church and state was universally recognized in the early State constitutions. The rigid forms of Puritanism and Quakerism were well calculated to preserve frugality and simplicity of life as long as they could be maintained in rigidity. But no system of mere forms or external restraint could suffice for the direction of a civilization which, still in its infancy, presents so much richness and luxuriance of growth. Neither the austerity of the Roundhead nor

the dignity of the Cavalier could hope to remain as the type upon which the American character was to be moulded. The external habiliments of the early generations were bound to disappear, as they have disappeared. But their principles—i.e., the beliefs of Protestantism—were to remain and to form the intellect and conscience of the American people. However great the influence of Southern statesmen upon our external constitution, the New England mind has wrought most powerfully upon the popular sentiment of the country. This action has been manifold.

The stock in trade, to use a homely comparison, with which Protestantism assumed its duty of providing for the moral and intellectual necessities of the American people was contained in the principles of the so-called Reformation.

In addition to the theory of private judgment, which was retained, with the utmost inconsistency, the early religion of this country reposed upon two fundamental and mischievous errors which were inherited from the authors of the Reformation. These were the heresies of justification by faith alone and the total depravity of human nature. If any proof were wanting of the strength and permanence of the religious instinct in man, it would appear in the fact that such monstrous delusions could so long receive the assent of those who professed at the same time perfect freedom of belief. These disgusting caricatures of Christian dogma have almost lost their control over human reason, and will remain only to demonstrate the needs of man and his weakness when acting in abnormal ways and under false traditions. But the fruit which they have borne will not speedily perish. After crystallizing

into a system and founding institutions for perpetuating its growth, the Calvinism of New England assumed all the proportions and manners of an established sect. The preachers were intellectually well worthy of the position which they enjoyed. Great eloquence, rich thought, and all the scholarship of which they were possessed were wasted in elaborate sermons proving, or attempting to prove, their dark and malignant creed. A large mass of the people, however, not attracted by the airs of Calvinism, were repelled by the heavy and metaphysical style of the Calvinistic pulpit.

Before the separation of the colonies from the mother country New England Calvinism had become sufficiently dry and devoid of sentiment to prepare the way for a more emotional religion. Thousands of eager souls drank in the enthusiasm of Asbury, Coke, and the other apostles of Wesleyanism. The founders of Methodism in America, though obliged to adopt some articles of faith as distinctive of their organization, owed their success to the fact that, discarding all reasoning, they appealed to religious emotion, and were mainly instrumental in founding that school of theology whose doctrine is that it matters little what one does or believes, provided one feels right.

Emotionalism has run its course and dies out in the Hippodrome, whither the official teachers of evangelicalism have led their congregations to receive from the ministrations of two illiterate laymen that spiritual stimulant which can no longer be obtained from educated preachers in the fashionable meeting-house.

While the ancient organizations of Puritanism continued, with more

or less dilution of its original doctrines, another movement had arisen in the very heart of Calvinism. The Unitarian movement has proved a complete reaction against what are called the doctrines of the Reformation. It has resulted in the extinction of the religious sentiment. Its popular summary is to the effect, that it makes little difference what one feels or believes, provided he does right. From the society of the Free Religionists back to the original shades of Calvinism is a gloomy road for even the imagination to travel, but no one can pass over it in fancy without perceiving the utter impossibility of persuading one who has once emerged from, ever to return to, the earlier darkness.

To continue in a creed which involved blasphemy against the goodness of God and the denial of all the natural sources of morality, or to surrender one’s self to religious emotion without any solid intellectual principle, or else to place individuals in entire dependence upon their private perceptions of religious and moral truth, and finally pass from one degree of scepticism to another—one of these three alternatives was proposed as the occupation of the American intellect during the most active period of national growth.

The Egyptian darkness which Calvinism brings upon any thoughtful soul was the inheritance of the religious youth of the country. What virtue can exist when total depravity is daily preached? What bar does it put to the passions of man to know or to believe that his salvation does not depend upon his good life? What conception of the universe can he form who sees in it only the work of what a popular preacher has called an “infinite

gorilla”? Nothing is more pathetic than the history which we have of minds whose natural goodness vainly struggled against these detestable heresies. And if the religious heart of New England found in its creed nothing but discouragement, what was the effect of that religion upon the popular mind? Is it not mainly to its influence that all that is repulsive and hard in the Yankee character is to be attributed?

But, on the other hand, what has been left by the decay of emotional religion? It might have been prophesied with safety that the result would be simply a reaction. So far as can be observed, it is nothing more or less. The writer was not a little amused at reading lately in a Methodist paper an editorial charging strongly against the present style of revivals, under the heading of “Religious Fits.” The editor, in the course of his remarks, very bluntly asserted that religious fits are not much better than any other kind of fits—a proposition which sums up the vital weakness of Methodism. And when a whole nation or a large class is reduced to this condition, the recovery from the fit will be attended with great disaster. “The religion of gush,” as it has been forcibly styled, is fatal to morality. It is an attempt to feed a starving man upon stimulants. The appearance of strength which it gives is simply an additional tax upon the system. Emotional religion may succeed in quieting women who are secluded in domestic life, or even the weaker sort of men who are occupied solely in teaching it; but for the common mass, who are daily exposed to temptation, it is, at most, a salve with which the wounds inflicted upon conscience are plastered over. There is nothing in it to discipline

the soul before trial, and nothing to repair its weaknesses after it has fallen.

With regard to the results of the naturalistic revolt against Calvinism there is little to be said. The charming writers who have given it prestige are not its product but its cause. In so far as they assert the dignity of human reason against Calvinism, to this extent they are in harmony with our natural instincts and have tended to produce a wholesome influence. But even transcendentalism is past its wane, and will be known in the future only by its literary reputation. Free religion has developed no permanent constructive idea. Its principal effect will be to obliterate whatever of Christianity has clung to the tradition of New England Protestantism. Its mission will be accomplished when all connection between the past and present shall have been effectually broken. It leaves us only a considerable amount of scientific knowledge which we should possess without it. Its morality staggers through the wide range extending from free love and spiritism into the undefined vacuity which it supposes to lie between these bolder theories and old-fashioned uprightness. Like emotional Protestantism, it is wholly incapable of withstanding any strain or of guiding and controlling the absolute individualism which it has created. If the Congregational pastor of Plymouth Church affords a sad example of the impotence of emotional pietism, the unfortunate plaintiff in the lawsuit against him is no less a melancholy instance of the aberrations of the last phase of American Protestantism.

There is little affectation of concealment, on the part of thoughtful Americans, of the conviction that

our national growth and the success of our government are subject to the universal laws according to which past empires have risen and perished. It is to be hoped that the success with which we have been blessed so far will not blind our eyes to this truth. We must have a solid basis of morality, or we are doomed to fall into such a condition as will make our absolute extinction a desirable thing. Whence is this new life to come? Is there anything in American Protestantism which can reverse its steady process of decay and disintegration? Has it any principles which can arrest for one moment the popular tendencies? We are unable to see in it even a “serviceable breakwater against errors more fundamental than its own”; quite the contrary. Its dogmatic front only serves to disgust those who mistake it for Christianity. Protestantism never converted a nation to Christianity or formed one. It could do neither even if it had an opportunity. In its latitudinarian aspect it directly fosters the present vagueness of moral convictions; while its emotional tendency only justifies the substitution of sentiment for reason and nullifies all attempts to subject the feelings to the judgment.

However one may be disposed to prefer the paganism which universally pervades our era to the unlovely fanaticism of earlier times, experience, both past and present, forbids the indulgence of any hope of future success springing from it.

It is hard to imagine what thought has been expended upon this subject by those who profess to see the way out of our present difficulties through a lavish system of public education. We hear declamations on this subject which fill us with bewilderment. If the public schools

were able to furnish the people with sound moral instruction, we could understand something of the enthusiasm which describes them as the sources of national morality and as the salvation of the future. God knows we have no desire to cut off one ray of light; but the present moment is not one in which to indulge in madness. The sooner it is understood that our system of education is destroying the generation that is subjected to its influence, the better. It stands to reason that the great need of the hour is to save our children from its evils. Our public education barely succeeds in exaggerating all the moral and physical degeneracies of the day. To develop the desire and capacity for action and enjoyment, without providing means of guiding and restraining within wholesome limits the power thus produced, is simply to court disaster. We are suffering at present from aversion to hard labor and a quiet life from the unbridled desire of wealth and pleasure, from the absence of well-defined moral sentiment. The present system of education, so vehemently applauded, is an aggravation of all the morbid tendencies of our condition. This complaint will not receive much attention coming from this source, but it is finding universal utterance from the medical profession, and its justice will speedily appear to the most casual observer.

There is nothing in paganism, however brilliant its science or art, that can restore the health of a race which is morally corrupt. The “positive stage of development,” as it is styled by a certain class of modern writers, is an age of decrepitude. If the analogy be true which they hold to exist between the life of man and the development

of a race, we must expect death as soon as the “positive” era has been attained. The muscular epoch has passed. The age of delusions has left the mind incapable of anything but observing facts; the demand for artificial stimulants has exhausted the brain of the nation; and the body politic, though surrounded with luxury, is moribund beyond the power of recovery.

While we do not fully accept the analogy of positivism, we are convinced that neither Protestantism nor paganism can raise the nation from the slough in which it seems about to settle. Nor will it be saved by the infusion of fresh blood, as was the ancient world according to some ingenious writers. The Hun and Vandal and Goth would never have changed their originally savage state had they not met in the world that they destroyed an indestructible power which, after surviving the assaults of both Roman and barbarian, by its subtle constructive faculty altered the face of the earth. This power was Christianity, whose work of universal civilization was so fatally marred by the religious catastrophe of the sixteenth century.

Now that the false Christianity of our forefathers has developed its utter worthlessness as a guide, it will be well to inquire whether the religious system, which is historically identified with Christianity, contains any of those elements of stability so lacking in our civilization.

It is not to be expected that such a discussion, even if resulting favorably to Catholicity, will be sufficient to convert the American people to its faith, but it will greatly conduce to removing misconceptions and ignorance on the part of many of

our fellow-citizens with regard to the relative merits of Catholicity and Protestantism.

No system can ever prove efficient which is unable to maintain its own integrity. No intellectual movement can hope to exert any large practical influence after it has lost its unity. Protestantism, having begun with a denial of the need of authority, was soon forced to contradict itself in practice in order to preserve its existence. But the principle which had given it life could not be disregarded, and the germ of discord, involved in the idea of a teaching body without any claim to be believed save what private conscience might be willing to concede to it, continued to produce disintegration without end.

The evils of our present exaggerated individualism are universally admitted. Men are united upon all points except those involving moral responsibility. While it is quite clear that in matters of science we are willing to trust to authority, on the other hand, in the more complex and easily perverted order of ideas (involving as they do the gravest consequences), every man is endowed with infallibility. This is simply an inversion of the natural order. The normal and rational order is preserved by Catholicity. With the Catholic Church religious truth as the basis of morality is a tradition whose bearing upon human science and politics always requires fresh application and is co-extensive with the possibility of human growth. But while this application of principle is left to individual effort and furnishes the proper exercise of the intellect, the excesses of individualism are always to be counteracted by a living authority. The ability of the church to maintain her unity has been

demonstrated and perfected in its operation by the storms which the last three centuries have launched against her. The opposition to her, on the contrary, has brought about its own destruction. If the absurdities of modern individualism are to be remedied, the cure lies in an earnest consideration of the claims of Christianity. Protestantism, though a grievous calamity, has served to settle for ever all those questions concerning the supreme source of doctrinal authority which had been raised by the intrigues of the secular power in the middle age. Now it is no longer possible to confuse the sentiment of obedience to authority by reference to unlawful sources. The attack of modern governments upon the church tends still further to circumscribe the limits of secular power, and to define clearly that which belongs to Cæsar and that which belongs to God.

The stability and permanence of Catholic thought are maintained in great measure by the prerogatives of the spiritual power, which promulgates and guards the divine tradition committed to its care. But the real power which that tradition exercises is its truth and its conformity with facts. The divine revelation is made to reason. It supposes a rational being. It is accepted on rational and convincing evidence, and becomes operative in virtue of divine grace. Its aim is to elevate and ennoble human nature and to heal its infirmities. In fulfilling this mission it acts in harmony with God’s other works, always above and with reason, but never against it. It puts no obstacle in the way of human science, which, as the Vatican Council declares, can only contradict revelation by being incomplete or by misinterpreting divine truth. It encourages

labor in its development of nature as a means of discipline and as furnishing the necessary condition of peace and civilization. It stimulates art to search after beauty as a means of showing the necessity and embellishing the truth of heavenly doctrine. It is true that the Catholic faith does not permit the intellect to repose in any one of these occupations as its sole end. In the light of divine truth science and art are united by a synthesis; and the rest which faith forbids the soul to take in earthly pursuits is denied by its own nature. The synthesis which faith provides is sought restlessly and eagerly by the mind. Modern thought, which has been turned away from Catholicity, searches vainly for some principle of unity.

The faith which redeemed the ancient world and prepared the germs of that degree of civilization that has not been wholly destroyed by Protestantism, was in no respect like the withering, soul-destroying horrors of Calvinism. The doctrines which supplied matter for the intense intellectual life of the middle age, which corrected Aristotle and piled tome after tome of the close, serried reasoning of St. Thomas Aquinas, was in accord with human reason, vindicated the dignity and powers of man, and stimulated him with fresh vigor in every sphere of science, poetry, and art. Scholasticism was nothing else than an effort of human reason to demonstrate the reasonableness of Christianity. The present generation is so grossly ignorant of those eight hundred years of most intense life which formed Christendom that it is not capable of appreciating their influence and still less their character. But whoever will read the proœmium of the Summa Contra Gentiles

of the “Angel of the Schools” will see the difference between the constructive doctrine of the middle age and the reactionary delusions of the sixteenth century—the bitter fruit of that splendid revival of paganism. Protestantism, viewed as a system of doctrine, was simply an extravagant caricature of the supernaturalism of the Catholic Church. As a system of morality it was nothing else than the emancipation of the passions from the restraints imposed by Christianity. Having destroyed the necessary conditions of faith by denying authority, it presented the ideas of grace and sanctification in such a distorted manner as to render sacraments unnecessary and unmeaning, to do away with free will, merit, and natural goodness—in a word, to abolish human nature. Wherever the heirs of the so-called Reformers have revolted from the unnatural task of propagating their religious system they have left mankind, not simply bewildered by the darkness whence it has emerged, but without the heavenly guidance which genuine Christianity provides. It has robbed men of the light of heavenly doctrine, and has furthermore stripped them of the aid of the sacramental system, the means of the action of divine grace and of the growth of supernatural life, without which natural virtue and natural intelligence cannot long endure in purity.

The present state of our people calls for what Protestantism has not. Justification by faith could not save its first professor from breaking his vows and debauching another person equally bound; nor will its influence increase by repeating his famous dictum, Pecca fortiter sed crede fortius. The evanescence of genuine fanaticism on the part of

evangelical religion is no guarantee of a better state of morals. Our people have got beyond simply believing and feeling; they wish to do right, but they are gradually coming to acknowledge that man cannot do right without knowing what he ought to do, viz., what is right; and the best and wisest will confess that they do not know what they ought to do, and that they can see nothing in the future from whence they may expect to learn. Whether they will be content to review the evidences of Catholicity we know not. Many are doing so, but the intense worldliness of the day is not favorable to serious thought on the part, of the multitude. Should, however, the authority of true Christianity be revealed to, and accepted by, them, we may justly expect a development of the utmost significance in the history of the world.

Catholicity not only preserves and restores the Christian truth of which men have been robbed by the heresies of the Reformation, but it preserves, sanctifies, and makes fruitful the natural goodness which remains in the individual, the race, and the nation. But above all things it applies those principles of natural justice and purity which are now so seriously jeopardized.

An unjust man can console himself, when transmitting his dishonest gains to his descendants, by reflecting that he is to be justified by faith alone. This has been done to our certain knowledge, and doubtless every New Englander can recall similar cases. A man who admits the injustice of his transactions can find ways of forgetting his indebtedness. The fraudulent bankrupt can revel in the wealth of his wife and children. Even the thief

who admits in the abstract the obligation of restoring that which he has stolen, without the assistance of the confessional is too apt to cling to that which he has once acquired.

We want, first, to hear the Catholic doctrine of the necessity of restitution in the place of maudlin denunciation of “carnal righteousness.” We want to have it well understood that no amount of exalted emotion will relieve the guilty thief until he has handed over his ill-gotten goods. We do not say that the neglect of this doctrine is the cause of the special cases of corruption which come before our eyes; but we freely assert that the spread of dishonesty is due to nothing less than the ineptitude and fatuity of Protestantism in this respect.

We further assert our conviction that no amount of preaching will change the present widespread disregard of the rights of property. These must be enforced in the private life of each man, backed by a supernatural principle. The means which the Catholic Church has provided for the support and assistance of the individual conscience is the confessional. This it is which has created the very sentiment of honesty that is now dying out among us for want of it. Antiquity did not possess this sentiment. The Greeks encouraged stealing and made a god of theft. The Romans acknowledged only the claims of hospitality and the force of law. Our barbarian ancestors grew and thrived upon piracy and pillage. It was no abstract or speculative doctrine which overcame their savage traits and established the new sentiment which condemns successful villany; nor will the present decay of honesty be arrested by any

system which divorces it from the institution that has brought it into existence.

The most fatal symptom, however, of our lapse into paganism reveals itself in that department of morality in which the struggle is carried on with the most lawless of human passions. The morality of Protestantism offered no assistance to the individual in this conflict between reason and the excesses of that instinct which is at once the most necessary and at the same time the least governable. Developments such as Mormonism and the Oneida Community, the increasing frequency of divorce, and the freedom with which the maxims of the ancient Christian morality are questioned, are sufficient to illustrate the decay of fixed principles of morality. Such results are not strange when we recall the actual conduct of the founders of Protestantism. Nor is it unreasonable to expect a certain amount of laxity in an intellectual movement which constitutes each individual his own supreme judge and teacher of morals; but the worst is that the very source of purity is thoroughly vitiated. In ancient Christianity the laws of chastity were clearly defined, peremptory, and plainly set before the intellect. Modern individualism, having begun by denying man’s responsibility and asserting his necessary depravity, has placed the rule of virtue, not in reason, but in instinct. The old morality was a sentiment based upon dogmatic conviction. The modern Neo-protestantism has nothing upon which to depend for its purity of life except the natural feelings of modesty and shame. The very idea of attempting to subject sexual instinct to reason is scouted as an absurdity by popular writers. The license taken by those whose occupation is to amuse the

public every day increases in shamelessness. Art, whether pictorial or dramatic, will not listen to any suggestion of restraint, and the natural sentiment upon which our virtue rests is constantly being weakened.

It is foolishly supposed that this species of disorder, having gone to certain lengths, will at last return to rational limits. It is with some such notion that the enthusiasts, who profess to see in popular education a panacea for all evils, expatiate upon the future. This, however, is mere thoughtlessness. The development of the nervous temperament in the system of a nation is no remedy for this moral illness; on the contrary, the reverse is true. The result is the most dangerous form of sensuality. When an intense and excitable organism, quick in its intellectual movements, eager in its appreciation of beauty, is left to follow its own instincts in the application of wealth, we have the nearest approach to the ancient classic type of culture. The recent development of American art is a source of universal remark. Here the successful artist finds golden appreciation. The diva of the lyric stage, the painter and sculptor, meet with substantial welcome. The growing taste for beauty of line is well known and acknowledged. Extravagance in dress is becoming a national weakness. There is every indication that the next century will witness in our descendants a race more elegant in its tastes, more intense in its enjoyment of every form of beauty, than even the heirs of European refinement—a generation as unlike the ungainly type of Brother Jonathan as an Athenian of the age of Pericles was dissimilar to the rude Pelasgic fisherman of the Hellespont. We think of Greece

most commonly in her æsthetic character and influence; but we must not forget that her immorality as recorded in history was hideously dark. The product of her sensuous and overwrought knowledge and enjoyment of nature spread with her literature and art. They brought death to the strong and vigorous race which had overcome the world. The annals of Suetonius and Tacitus, the calm records of current facts, are too obscene to bear circulation among ordinary readers of our day. The literature of their time has to be expurgated before it is fit to be perused by youthful students. The crimes which are charged by the apostle in his terrible invective against the heathen culture, which are rehearsed by Terence and Aristophanes, satirized by Juvenal, laughed at by Horace, celebrated in the flowing measures of Anacreon, Ovid, and Catullus, and coldly set down by historians as the public acts of the cultivated classes—these frightful excesses live to-day, with all their unnatural beastliness, in the exquisitely-wrought marbles and frescos of Pompeii.

There was never a case in which either a nation or an individual was cured of this species of corruption by increasing the æsthetic faculties and amplifying the temptations of wealth. But, it is urged, education gives the rising generation the ability to read, and therefore puts it in the way of acquiring sound instruction. Let it be understood that we believe no parent has a right to deny this instruction to his children; but we bespeak on the part of all earnest men the utmost attention to the practical issue of this theory, in order that they may see how incomplete it is as a safeguard to the virtue of the youth now

growing up. What is the nature of our popular literature? Upon what sort of reading is the newly-acquired art exercised? What is the ratio of books which furnish useful instruction to those works whose aim is solely to amuse and excite the imagination? And of the latter class, what is the proportion between the harmless and noxious publications? Those who receive only elementary instruction practically go to school in order to learn to read novels and the trashy and immoral periodicals whose costly illustrations and increasing number amply prove the increasing demand for them. The influence of the press is necessary and indispensable, but there is nothing in our literature which will in any degree restrain the tendencies of our civilization.

We wish it were possible to use language of sufficient force to express the reality of our perilous condition; for our people have already gone far enough in this direction to excite the utmost alarm. The moral corruption of New England is such as to threaten with extinction the vigorous race which originally inhabited it. The medical profession of this country is so profoundly impressed with the constant decrease in the birthrate of the native stock and with its marked physical decadence, that essays on these subjects are to be seen in every scientific periodical.

Ten years ago Dr. Storer called attention to the fact that, as far back as 1850, the natural increase of the population, or the excess of births over deaths, was by those of foreign origin, and that subsequently the ratio in favor of foreign parents was constantly on the increase. “In other words,” he says, “it is found that, in so far as depends upon the American and

native element, and in the absence of the existing immigration from abroad, the population of our older States, even allowing for the loss by emigration, is stationary or decreasing.” Dr. Storer did not hesitate to attribute this fact to the criminal destruction of human life or to the suppression of the family by those whose natural instincts ought to procure its conservation. The evidences of this widespread evil are before us in every daily issue of the press.

The demands of pleasure, the numerous inducements to women to find their occupation outside of domestic life, and to shrink from the duties and cares of maternity—none of those temptations which furnish the occasion of this crime are to be met by increasing the size and beauty of our public schools or by providing the children of the poor with elegant accomplishments. Nor will the result be more favorable if the privilege of the elective franchise is added to the other extra-domestic responsibilities of American women. What, then, is to save us when marriage, if recognized, has ceased to be a desirable state, when luxury and nervous development have subjected the chastity of single life to the severest temptation, and when our inherited morality has vanished in the process of our growth?

If the native American race is not going to die out, it must learn from foreigners the secret of their vitality. Christianity has, in the confessional, the means of applying not only sacramental grace to the fallen and repentant, but of securing them from further disorder. Dr. Storer has told the country very plainly that “the different frequency of the abortions depends, not upon a difference in social position or in fecundity,

but in the religion.” In other words, the cultivated American is far below the ignorant immigrant in morality; and the reason of this is that the immigrant referred to is a Catholic and his employer is not.

Dr. Storer proceeds to observe: “It is not, of course, intended to imply that Protestantism, as such, in any way encourages or, indeed, permits the practice of inducing abortion; its tenets are uncompromisingly hostile to all crime. So great, however, is the popular ignorance regarding this offence that an abstract morality is here comparatively powerless.” This touches the fundamental truth involved in the whole discussion—“an abstract morality” never can prove effective against any concrete evil. But the doctor further expresses his conviction, drawing the legitimate conclusion and stating the fact: “And there can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance, flanked on the one hand by the confessional and by denouncement and excommunication on the other” (he has previously quoted from the pastoral of a Catholic prelate), “has saved to the world thousands of infant lives.”

The American people is beginning to perceive that wealth and culture without true morality mean ruin. If it does not perceive that Protestantism is the cause of its present corruption, it at least confesses that its inherited religion is powerless to remedy the evils of the day. We cannot ask it to reject its false guide

much faster than it is doing. We cannot tell how soon it will be able to receive the divine truth of Christianity. It will be no pleasure to us to have the old faith vindicated by the destruction of this people.

We beg to be allowed to preserve our Catholic population and to keep them pure and faithful, at least until non-Catholics can offer something which will meet their own contingencies. If this demand be persistently disregarded and our honest attempt to save ourselves be misconstrued into an assault upon others, we will do the best we can, at all events.

But, in the meantime, let all earnest men admit the reality of danger. Do not let attention be absorbed by particular manifestations of a disease which is universal. The evils which threaten our life will not be removed by retrenchment of government expenses, or by a temporary destruction of party tyranny, or by an ostentatious simplicity in official circles, or by “justification by faith,” or by pietistic feeling, or by acting out individual crotchets, or even by sound moral doctrine in an abstract form, but by the living truth of God, taught by him through human lips, applied by him with divine efficacy through the ministry of human hands. The truth which has saved the ancient world and has produced all that is desirable in modern civilization is alone able to preserve our nation in its future growth.

---

A FRENCH NOVEL.[69]

This title will prove a disappointment to those who only associate the idea of a French novel with that typical production of vicious and feverish literature to which the fiction-mongers of France have so long accustomed us, and whose corrupt influence has made itself felt far beyond the limits of the nation which gives it birth. Our present purpose is not to discuss one of those pernicious books, but to consider one which rises as far above their level by its artistic beauty and literary merits as by the nobler tone of its morality. A novel by a Catholic writer, impregnated from first to last with the spirit and principle of the faith, full of noble sentiments, and yet as amusing and as exciting as any “naughty” novel; a book where all the good people, even the holy people, are as charming, witty, odd, or fascinating as if they were anything but holy; a book that conveys in the characters and scenes it brings before us a great moral lesson, and which at the same time absorbs and excites us as powerfully as the cleverest novel of the sensational school, with its inevitable murders and forgeries and double marriages—the appearance of a novel such as this is surely an event that it behoves us to examine closely as the curious literary phenomenon which it is.

Mrs. Augustus Craven’s last work, Le Mot de l’Enigme, which, under the title of The Veil Withdrawn, appeared in The Catholic World

simultaneously with its issue in the Correspondant of Paris, is known to most of the readers of the present article, but we would ask them if, when enjoying its persual, they have sometimes stopped to consider what a genuine achievement the book was, and how pregnant with promise for the lighter Catholic literature of the future? Any book by the author of the Récit d’une Sœur is sure to command a wide audience in Europe and America among readers of different languages and creeds; but there are reasons why The Veil Withdrawn should meet with a specially triumphant welcome from us Catholics, for it is in truth a triumph over prejudices whose narrow and tyrannical rule have hitherto been fatal to Catholic fiction. The Récit d’une Sœur, the peerless story that stands unrivalled amidst the literature of the world, taught many lessons to our day, but no one, perhaps, more important, considering its possible results, than that which it conveyed to Catholic writers—namely, that religion, in its most ardent form and its most rigid application, is compatible with the tenderest romance; that human hearts and imaginations, far from being chilled or fettered by the sublime truths of the faith, are kindled and enlarged by their influence; that human passions come into play as powerfully in souls ruled by the divine law as in those that reject and defy it, the only difference being that to the former they are weapons used in noble warfare, servants and auxiliaries, whereas to the others they are tyrants that strike only to destroy. The loves of Alexandrine and Albert revealed this

secret to the world, and this alone would have sufficed to immortalize the Récit. No romance ever reached the skyey heights to which these lovers soared; and yet, while their hearts sang their sweet love-song together, their souls were fixed on God, dreaming of heaven, where their love was to find its perfect consummation, scorning the pitiful meed of earthly happiness, unless it might lead them to the secure possession of the eternal bliss of which this was but the transient foretaste. “Pour la vie, c’est trop court!”[70] was Alexandrine’s reply when Albert asked her for the ring on which the words were graven, Pour la vie! And such should be the motto of all love worthy of the name.

This pure key-note is struck and sustained with a master-hand throughout the whole story of The Veil Withdrawn, and the success with which the principle it enunciates has been forced into the service of art is the point which we would invite Catholic writers in all countries to consider attentively. Our grand mistake, as a rule, is to assume that Catholic literature, in order to be true to its mission, must be constantly talking of holy things, bringing forward pious maxims and practices; that the heroes and heroines of its stories must be pious people, or else very wicked people whose final cause is the glorification of the pious ones who are to convert them; it must never deal openly with the great problems of life, never grapple with its deepest mysteries, never describe men and women as they ordinarily exist around us—human beings endowed at their birth with the fatal inheritance of Adam, with mighty capabilities for good and evil, with passions and instincts that have to work out their

issue to ruin or to endless victory; souls where all the forces are clashing in deadly and desperate strife—these things are forbidden ground to the Catholic novelist. He may tread timidly on the outskirts of the battle-field, but he must not venture into the thick of the fight; he must not lift the veil and let us look upon the scene where this momentous combat is going forward, where nature and grace and all the allied enemies of the human heart are wrestling and striving in fierce war. These things would not be “edifying”; they would not be fit reading for young girls; they might put ideas into their heads and excite their imaginations. And why, we ask, is it invariably taken for granted that Catholic writers only write for young girls? Are there no Catholic men in the world? It might be urged, with better show of reason, that young girls are not obliged to read novels at all—stories, yes; but novels do not form any necessary part of their education. These are intended for men and women—people who have found out the “answer to the riddle,” learned some of the dark and painful lessons of life; who turn to the pages of a novel to find an hour’s harmless recreation, if nothing more, and to forget the dull round of care and vexing realities in the amusement or excitement of imaginary troubles and joys. We are far from saying that the novel has no higher purpose than this; but if it claimed no other, this, in itself, is a legitimate one. Human nature must have relaxation. The most ascetic saints sought recreation of some kind from the strain of work and contemplation. Still more must ordinary mortals seek it; and as novel-reading has become one of the easiest and most popular forms of

mental diversion, it is of the highest importance that it should be of good and wholesome quality. Now, a novel is neither good nor wholesome when it ignores the canons of art, and eschews the true study of human nature, and confines itself to pretty commonplaces and pious allusions and exemplary sentiments exchanged between namby-pamby people who are represented as in a state of society which, practically, has no prototype in real life, where strong passions and conflicting interests and fierce temptations have no existence, but where all difficulties are adjusted by a pious suggestion offered at the right moment by a friend or a book. Grown-up men and women will not be put off with this sort of thing, be they ever such good Catholics; when they take up a novel, they do so for interest or amusement, and, for lack of better, they fall back on the real novels, sensational or otherwise.

This is a lamentable state of things, and as fatal to Catholic writers as to their readers. It is this false idea of the character and requirements of Catholic literature which has brought it to the low ebb at which it now is among English-speaking Catholics, in spite of the growing numbers of a cultivated and intelligent audience. Every one recognizes the fact, and many deplore it, but no one has the courage to attempt the remedy. It would require, indeed, something more than any effort of individual influence to break down the prejudices and puerile traditions that fence in the authorized field of Catholic fiction in the present day, and it is difficult to say which calls for strongest denunciation—the prohibition which excludes certain subjects, or the large license given to the use of others. The Catholic

novelist is forbidden to strike the deep, vibrating chords of nature and of souls, but he believes himself free to handle the most sacred subjects, to preach and moralize to the top of his bent. It is hard to speak of this folly as dispassionately as we should wish; but looking at it with all possible indulgence, is there not something in the stupid conceit and self-complacent audacity of it that may justly rouse indignation? We see grave men, who have graduated in the schools, give up long years to the study of sacred science, in order that they may some day be competent to speak worthily on these high themes, that they may learn how to balance the relations of right and wrong, and define the limits of temptation and sin, of cause and effect; and when, with knowledge ripened by study and meditation, they venture to write, it is in a spirit of great reverence and in fear and trembling. On the other hand, we see incompetent laymen, young ladies and young gentlemen fresh from school, utterly inexperienced, but well supplied with the boldness of inexperience and incompetence, dipping a dainty pen into a silver inkstand and proceeding to discourse in a novel of pious subjects—of prayer, and temptation, and sacraments, and priests and the priestly character, and controversial subjects—as flippantly as they might discuss the merits of a new opera or a new costume. And they fancy, forsooth, that this is doing good and giving edification! They imagine that it is enough to mention sacred subjects and emit pious or quasi-pious sentiments in order to reach the human heart and strike the sursum corda on its springs! One could afford to laugh at the silly delusion, if the danger did not lie so close to the folly of it. A

moment’s reflection and a little humility would suffice to convince these well-meaning persons of their mistake. Many of them might really attain their end of edifying if they had only the sense to confine themselves within the range of their powers. If a beginner, or one endowed with a delicate sense of music but limited musical ability, should attempt to perform one of Beethoven’s glorious sonatas, he would only irritate us by spoiling the masterpiece; but if the same person wisely contented himself with playing some simple air, he might afford genuine and unalloyed pleasure, touching some chord of feeling in the listener’s heart, evoking, mayhap, sweet memories of childhood, sacred and long forgotten. Few things provoke the disgust of an intelligent reader, pious or not, more than to come upon religious platitudes in a book ostensibly written to amuse; and the prospect of meeting with this kind of thing at every page is sufficient to prejudice him against a book which bears a Catholic name on the title-page. Even the name of a Catholic publisher brands it at first sight as “dull and silly.” Here, as elsewhere, the cause and effect react upon each other, and the puerile tone and absence of artistic treatment in the author, by failing to gain the favor and attention of the public, paralyzes the most energetic efforts of Catholic publishers, and those few Catholic writers who can command a wider audience are unavoidably driven to the Protestant publishers in order to secure a hearing.

Is it too much to say that a Catholic novelist who would successfully break through these narrow-minded and false theories, and courageously inaugurate a new reign in Catholic

fiction, would be conferring a great benefit on our generation? We claim for Mrs. Augustus Craven the merit of having achieved this feat. The mission which she began in the Récit d’une Sœur was successfully continued in Fleurange, and may be said to triumph completely in The Veil Withdrawn. Her last novel is a book which appeals as strongly to the interest of the unbeliever and the heretic as of the most fervent Catholic. The moral lesson it conveys may be accepted or not, just as the reader pleases; it is there, brilliantly and powerfully delivered; but, like so many messages broadly written on the face of nature or faintly whispered to our hearts, we may hearken or we may close our ears to it, as we choose; the story still remains one of enthralling interest, full of tenderest romance, of fiery passion, of picturesque description, of sparkling repartee, of gay and pathetic and thrilling situations. With the skill of a real artist the author lifts the curtain and bids us look into the hearts of our fellow-creatures; she touches the hidden springs, reveals the dubious motives, evil sometimes blending with good so closely that it requires the finest analysis to discern their true proportions, to decompose the elements, and show where and how far each in turn prevails.

The two characters who stand out from the canvas as the leading figures in the picture are brought face to face in the most terrible conflict that human hearts can know. Ginevra—not a child, not a placid convent maiden suspecting no life beyond her “narrowing nunnery walls,” but a woman with a strong, impassioned soul—is first inebriated with the pure wine of permitted happiness; the cup is dashed from her, and she tries

to clutch it in defiance and despair. It eludes her still. She beholds her happiness wrecked, her life blighted, at the very outset. She does not take her rosary, and, with conventional propriety, accept the ruin of her young life with the resigned spirit and smiling countenance of a saint; far from it. The evil that is in her starts into activity and makes a fierce fight against her cruel lot. She plunges into the whirl of society, and tries to drown her misery in such consolations as excitement and gratified vanity can give. We follow her step by step in the perilous career, now trembling at her rashness, now rejoicing at her escape, but never, in the bottom of our hearts, believing that she will prove unworthy of her nobler self.

Let us glance over the story, not to analyze its merits as a work of high art and moral philosophy, but simply to review it in the light of a novel characteristic of our times and full of the stir of nineteenth-century life.

It opens at Messina, in an old palazzo, where Ginevra, blossoming out in her fifteenth summer, sits watching the sea through the half-closed window, listening to the wave sobbing on the beach, unconscious and dreamy, but already vibrating to the “low music of humanity” that stirs the unwakened pulses of her heart. She rivets our attention at the first glance as a creature whose beauty, sensitiveness, and dormant energy of character contain all the elements of some high romance. The description of her home and its inmates forms a charming and animated picture. Fabrizio, the learned and somewhat austere father; Bianca, the mother, with her tenderly brooding love; Livia, the sister, at first so misjudged,

but destined to rise to such prestige amidst them all; Ottavia, the fussy, superstitious, devoted old nurse; Mario, the sombre and jealous-tempered brother—they all come before us with the reality of living characters whom we love, fear, or suspect as they gradually reveal themselves. The episode of the flower flung from the window in a moment of frolic and girlish vanity, and which leaves so deep a mark on Ginevra’s life, is cleverly introduced and prepares us for the retribution which awaits the poor child’s innocent misdemeanor. Her life glides on peacefully in the old frescoed saloon, where she cons her book and tends her nightingales, until one day, while high perched on a stool, ministering to her singing bird, the old majordomo flings the door wide open and in a sonorous voice announces Sua eccellenza il Duca di Valenzano! Ginevra starts, and so does the reader; for he knows instinctively that this visitor is the fairy prince of the story, destined to make the golden-haired maiden supremely happy or supremely miserable. Ginevra’s confusion, at being discovered by this illustrious intruder in such an awkward attitude and so childishly engaged, is charmingly described. She knows not whether to be terrified or delighted when the handsome duke goes forward and assists her to descend from her aerial standpoint. But old Don Fabrizio knows what to feel about it, and surveys the group in the embrasure of the window with a glance of stern displeasure. This high-born client of his has nothing in common with Don Fabrizio’s daughter, and it is with undisguised reluctance that the proud lawyer obeys the duke’s request to introduce him to the signorina.

And now the story is fairly afloat, and we follow it with an interest that grows in proportion as the plot advances, rising in dramatic power at every chapter. We know that Valenzano is not to be trusted, that he has in him all the elements of a faithless lover and a cruel husband; but we surrender ourselves all the same to the charm of his manner, his genius, his irresistible fascinations. The love-making is as warm as the author dares to make it in a country where the freedom of Anglo-Saxon courtship is unknown, and where the course of true love runs smoothly between the contracting families on one side and the family lawyers on the other. Ginevra goes forth to her new life with a mixture of delight and fear that are like the foreshadowing of the flickered destiny that awaits her, and Livia’s voice strikes like a note of painful warning in the concert of the family joy and triumph and congratulation, when she reminds Ginevra that “marriage is like death”—a thing that we wait and watch for, but never know until we have passed the gates and it is too late to turn back. The description of the bridal festivities, when she goes home to her husband’s palace, and, worn out by the grandeur and the glare, takes refuge alone in the quiet starlight, and removes the circlet of glittering jewels from her brow, that cannot bear the pressure any longer, presents one of those pictures of life in the great Italian world that Mrs. Craven excels in depicting.

Life has now become like an enchanted dream to Ginevra. But the first touch of the awakening reality is not long delayed. One night, when the moon was high in the blue heavens and flooding earth and sea with a mystic glory, Ginevra

and Lorenzo were sitting on the terrace, listening to the water lapping on the shore, to the nightingales trilling in the ilex groves; the young wife, hushed into silence by the ecstatic beauty of the scene, laid her hand upon her husband’s arm and whispered to him, “Let us lift up our hearts in prayer for one moment, and give thanks for all this beauty.” Lorenzo bent on her a look of tenderest love, and then murmured with a smile, as if answering the poetic folly of a child,

“‘Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei guardava.’[71]

Thine eyes are my heaven, Ginevra. I feel no need to raise my own any higher.” A cold chill like the first suspicion of a great sorrow crept over the young wife. But Lorenzo quickly chased it away, and she tries to banish the memory of it. But we do not forget it. Slight as the incident is, it has all the import of the first growl of the distant thunder, the small patch of cloud, “no bigger than a man’s hand,” upon the summer sky, that are the certain forerunners of the storm.

But the storm will not burst just yet, and meantime we follow Ginevra in her brilliant career, first travelling here and there with her husband, and finally enthroned as a queen in her delightful world at Naples. The first thing that makes us tremble for her is Lorenzo’s startled exclamation of anger—was it?—when he comes upon Donna Faustina’s card amongst those that are left at the young duchess’ door, and the latter, in surprise, asks what it means. He turns it off adroitly, and Ginevra dismisses it from her mind. The interval that follows is bright with incident and pictures of society in Naples and in Paris. We

see Lorenzo at work in his studio, where Ginevra sits to him as a model for his Vestal, and where his rapturous admiration of her beauty makes her recoil instinctively as from a homage unworthy of her, too much “of the earth earthly.” And yet this husband, who is almost an unbeliever, who smiles with indulgent fondness on his wife’s ardent piety, is glad enough that she should have religion to guard her from the perils that beset her on all sides; he recognizes the power and utility of her faith, and is careful not to shock it or to let her see how little he really shares it. Lando, the cousin and boon companion of the duke, now comes upon the scene, and for a time we side with Ginevra in her dislike and suspicion of him; but soon we find out our mistake, and acknowledge that, in spite of his loose principles and wild ways, he is kind-hearted and a stanch and loyal friend to Ginevra. He does his best to save both her and Lorenzo, though to the last he is unable to understand why any woman in her right mind should care so much more for her husband’s love than for his fortune, and why the ruin of the latter should be as nothing to her compared to even a passing breach in the former. The scene at the concert, where she first detects Lorenzo at a card-table, and it breaks upon her that her husband is a gambler, is finely introduced, and the conversation of Lando with the terrified young wife is admirably drawn. But we know that the real crisis in her peace and happiness has yet to come, and we hurry on till Donna Faustina enters. Lorenzo disarms us, and almost gains our sympathy for this evil genius of Ginevra, by the frankness with which he tells her story to the latter; but the relations between all three, as he now

tries to establish them, are radically false, and it requires no prophetic eye to foresee how they must end. What barrier have either Faustina or Lorenzo to stem the torrent of passion when it breaks loose—outraged love and desire of revenge on her side, and on his the embers of a love that he fancies dead, but which it only needs the vanity of his own undisciplined nature and the spell of her guilty passion to fan into a livelier flame than ever? While the storm is rapidly rising in this direction, Gilbert de Kergy crosses Ginevra’s path; but she is yet far from suspecting that he is the messenger of fate to her, the one who is to exercise a supreme influence in her life and call out its energies in her soul’s defence with a courage that till now has never been demanded of her. We know how the battle is sure to go with Ginevra, as we foresee the issue with Lorenzo and Faustina. We see the force that will ensure the victory in the one case, just as we see how the want of it must lead to slavery and surrender in the other. And here again the skill and power of the author triumph and afford a striking contrast to the old system we have denounced. She never moralizes, or reminds us that Lorenzo, being a bad Christian, who never goes to Mass or the sacraments, is certain to fall, and that Ginevra, in spite of passions that sway her heart with such relentless power, will come safe out of it because of that restraining force which, like a mysterious presence, rules her even when she is unconscious of it—the author does not say these things; she proves them by making her characters demonstrate their truth and act out their conclusions. We will quote the passage where Gilbert and Ginevra

part, only to meet again in those sweet and tempting days at Naples. Gilbert has been lecturing on his travels with an eloquence that carried away his hearers. Then Ginevra says:

“I remained seated near the mantelpiece, and fell into a dreamy silence, while Diana sat down to the piano. She began to execute, with consummate art, a nocturne of Chopin’s, which sounded to me like the expression, the very language, of my own thoughts.… I woke up from my reverie with a strange thrill, and blushed to the very roots of my hair; for in lifting my eyes I met those of Gilbert fixed upon me, and mine were full of tears. I brushed them away quickly, and muttered something about the effect Chopin’s music always had on my nerves, and then rose and drew near to the piano, where Diana continued to pass her hands in rapid changes over the keys.… Gilbert remained silent and pensive in the place where I had left him, following me with his eyes, and perhaps trying to guess the real cause of my emotion.… When the time had come for me to go, and Mme. de Kergy clasped me to her heart, I no longer strove to repress my tears.… Gilbert gave me his arm and conducted me to my carriage without speaking. As I was entering it, he said in a voice that faltered slightly:

“‘Those whom you are leaving are greatly to be pitied, madam.’

“‘I am still more to be pitied,’ I replied, and my tears flowed freely.

“He was silent for a moment, and then he said:

“‘As for me, I have the hope of seeing you again; for I shall come to Naples, … if I dare.’

“‘And why should you not dare? You will be received and welcomed as a friend.’

“He made no reply, but when he had placed me in the carriage, and I held out my hand to him to say adieu, he murmured in a low voice: Au revoir!’”

And he keeps his word. He goes to Naples and meets Ginevra at a ball, whither she has rushed, half mad with despair and jealousy, reckless of everything

resolved to drown the anguish of her heart in the intoxication of gayety and the adulation of the world, that until now she had carelessly despised. It was the night after the masked ball at the Festina, where, on the impulse of the moment, she and her beautiful friend Stella went as dominos to join in the fun and mystify their friends a little. Ginevra recognized Lorenzo’s stately figure the moment she entered the ball-room, and, terrified at finding herself alone in the crowd, seized hold of his arm, clinging to him in silence. Lorenzo, deceived by the color of her domino, mistakes her for Faustina, whom he is expecting. He stoops low and whispers a tender welcome in her ear. Ginevra, with a stifled cry, starts from him and rushes frantically from the scene. The next night, with the delirium of this discovery upon her, she goes forth in her loveliest attire to dispute the palm of beauty with the rest.

“I had my diamonds and pearls brought out, and I gave precise directions as to how I intended to wear them; this done, long before the time came I began my toilet and spent an endless time over it. So many women seem to take pleasure in making a triumphant entry into a ball-room, I said to myself, and in being flattered and admired, why should I not taste of this pleasure as well as they? I am beautiful, I know that—very beautiful even. Why should I not attract and indulge my vanity and coquetry like other women?”

And she does attract, and her vanity is satisfied to overflowing. Her beauty and the dazzling splendor of her jewels create a perfect furore the moment she appears. She announces her intention of dancing, and the noblest cavaliers in the room are at her feet in a moment, quarrelling for the honor of

her hand. Never was the triumph of a coquette more complete than Ginevra’s. Her youth and its instinctive love of pleasure vindicated themselves for a time, and she enjoyed her success to the full; but as the night wore on nobler instincts asserted themselves, worthier voices made themselves heard above the din of this ardent and puerile vanity, and Ginevra feels the cold chill of remorse stealing over her; a sense of vague misfortune takes possession of her and stills her feverish gayety like a touch of ice. Her last partner leads her to her seat, and she sinks into it exhausted and miserable.

“At the same moment,” she says, “I heard near me a voice well known though well-nigh forgotten—a voice at once calm, strong, and sweet, but which now sounded slightly sarcastic. ‘Although I cannot aspire to the honor of dancing with the Duchess de Valenzano, may I hope that she will deign to recognize me?’

“I turned around quickly. The speaker who stood there and thus addressed me was Gilbert de Kergy.”

The ordinary French novelist had here a fine opportunity for bringing matters to a crisis between Ginevra and Gilbert; but the present author uses it differently. Gilbert does not take advantage of the temporary madness of Ginevra to gain influence over her and beguile her from her allegiance to Lorenzo, faithless and cruel as he is. Gilbert is far too noble for this, and his first feeling, on beholding his ideal in this dangerous and unworthy atmosphere, is one of censure and poignant regret. Neither he nor Ginevra is of the conventional type of defaulters; both are good, high-principled, and brave; they are both practical Christians, and the idea of betraying their duty to God and to their own honor would have

revolted them had it presented itself in its naked horror. But it did not. The approach was gradual, imperceptible. And here we have a great truth illustrated—one which it is customary in Catholic authors to ignore practically, if not theoretically: The possession of the faith and the practice of religion do not act as opiates on human beings, deadening their hearts and annihilating nature, and lifting them to a secure region where the great temptations of life cannot reach them, or where, if they do, they glide off harmless as arrows glance from the steel cuirass of the soldier. Ginevra is pure and true as ever woman was who vowed at the altar “that most solemn vow that a woman can utter”; she was, moreover, genuinely pious. Gilbert was the very ideal of manly chivalry and honor and goodness, an accomplished type of the Christian gentleman; but neither he nor she was fireproof when the time of trial came. He loved Ginevra before he knew it; and she, forsaken, humiliated, stung in her love and her wifely pride, is thrown into his constant companionship, not by her seeking, but through one of those accidents to which women of her class and circumstances are liable every day. She is grateful for Gilbert’s brotherly regard, she admires his noble life and his sentiments, so true, so different from those of other men; she is grateful to him for the frank rebuke which he spoke out at the ball when she was drifting she knew not whither. Step by step the friendship grows to a tenderer feeling, and at last culminates in a love whose depth and power Ginevra does not even suspect, so gradual has been its development. We tremble for her; but even when we see her tottering blindfold on the edge of the abyss, we feel certain she will never

take the fatal plunge. All this is depicted with infinite delicacy and rare psychological skill.

Livia now reappears upon the scene as one of the visible forces that are guarding Ginevra along the slippery road. Livia is one of the most striking and carefully drawn of the subordinate characters. It is worth mentioning en passant that here, as elsewhere, Mrs. Craven breaks boldly through the time-honored traditions of the Catholic novelist. The holier and more spiritual-minded her dramatis personæ, the brighter, more sympathetic and accessible they are. Stella, the heroic friend in days of sorrow, so gifted, so beautiful, so untainted with the spirit of the world where she lives and moves—Stella has the high animal spirits of a school-girl, the glad heart—le sang joyeux, as she herself calls it—of a happy child. Livia, who in her father’s home was pensive almost to melancholy, the moment she embraces the austere rule of the cloister, spending her days in the contemplation of heavenly things, grows as merry as a lark. Joy is henceforth the keynote and regulator of her life; we have no trace of the downcast face and solemn, mournful voice that have hitherto been characteristic of pious people in novels. No one pulls long faces here, or whines or sighs, except it may be those who have forsaken the fountain where true joy has its spring, to drink of the poisoned waters of this world’s pleasures, of sin, ambition, or folly. How winning, too, is Livia’s tender interest in the gay life of her brilliant young sister! She has not closed her heart against the actors on the world’s stage outside her convent gates, but keeps her sympathies wide open to all life and all humanity beyond them.

“‘Gina mia, you don’t tell me everything,’ she says one day that Ginevra is conversing with her through the grating. ‘Is it that you think I take no interest in your life now?’

“‘It is not only that, Livia, but it is difficult to talk about such trivial, foolish things in presence of these bars and looking at you as you stand behind them.’

“‘Nay, it is always good for me to hear you and for you to talk to me,’ replied Livia. ‘It is true that when Aunt Clelia comes here with her daughters, I put on a severe countenance now and then, and tell them pretty plainly what I think of the world; … but I must say that my aunt bears me no malice for it, for she counts on my vocation to get good husbands for Mariuccia and Teresina.… She does not look upon me as “jettatrice” at all now, I can tell you!’

“She laughed so merrily as she spoke that I could not help exclaiming with envy and surprise:

“‘Livia, how happy you are to be so gay!’”

The sense of humor, so essential to preserve the balance in true mental power, is not wanting in this story. Donna Clelia is lightly and brightly touched. She is everywhere true to herself; self-important, silly, and good-natured, she and her daughters are redeemed from hopeless vulgarity as much by their naïveté and naturalness as by the sheer inability of the author to depict vulgarity—a fact which we notice without comment, leaving our readers to decide whether it be a merit or a fault. Donna Clelia’s intense satisfaction at being able to parade “my niece, the duchess” is one of those touches that throw a character into striking relief. Her enthusiasm for the “view” from the baronessa’s house, where “not a donkey-boy, nor a cart, nor a horse, nor a man, nor a woman could pass in the narrow street but you saw them so plainly you could tell the pattern of their clothes,” gives us the measure of her artistic perceptions,

while her raptures over the situation “with the church on one side and the new theatre on the other … figurateir! so that the baronessa can let herself into the church on the right, and through a passage into her box in the theatre on the left,” is equally characteristic of the manners and minds of the society around her. The description of the splendid pageant of the Carnival, passing under Donna Clelia’s balcony, is as spirited a bit of picturesque writing as we have come upon for a long time. But we hurry on through these gay and vivid scenes, impatient for the crisis that is at hand between Gilbert and Ginevra. Nothing, so far, had prepared our heroine for its approach.

“Apparently,” says Ginevra, “and in reality, our intercourse was precisely what it had always been; every word he said to me might have been said before the whole world. I felt, it is true, that he spoke to me as he did not speak to any one else, and I, on my side, spoke to no one as I did to him. We were seldom alone, but every evening, in the drawing-room or on the terrace, he managed to converse with me for a moment or two when no one was by. He did not disguise from me that these stolen moments were to him the most enjoyable of the evening, and I knew they were the same to me. From time to time something indefinable in his voice, in his glance, even in his silence, made me shudder as at some threat of danger. But as he had never swerved by so much as a word from the position he had assumed towards me—that of a friend—my slumbering conscience did not awake!”

The awakening, however, came at last. The immediate occasion of it was an eruption of Vesuvius, which is described with a dramatic power worthy, if possible, of the sublime and terrible subject. The mountain is on fire; the lava streams forth from a rent in its side, and, strong and pitiless as fate, flows on over

vineyards and villages and smiling gardens, spreading desolation before it. Ginevra, with a large party of friends, goes out to witness the magnificent spectacle from a safe eminence. She and Gilbert are thrown together and climb to the top of a hillock overlooking the scene of the conflagration. The flames rose on all sides as in some vengeful apocalypse, high, fantastic, awful. Ginevra could not take away her eyes from the sight, but gazed on it as on some mysterious apparition that held her spell-bound. At last she exclaimed:

“‘This is truly la città dolente! We have before our eyes a faithful picture of the last day!’

“Gilbert did not answer. He was a prey to some emotion more poignant than mine, and, in glancing towards him in the lurid glare of the fire, I was frightened by the change in his features and their strange expression. ‘Would to heaven,’ he muttered at last, ‘that it were so in reality, and that the last day were come for me! Yes, I wish I could die here, on this spot, near you and worthy of you!’

“In spite of the appalling scene around us, in spite of the roar of the detonations thundering above the dull noise of the lava, the accent of his voice struck upon my ear, and his words made my heart leap up with an emotion mingled with terror.

“‘You are growing giddy,’ I said, and my voice trembled. ‘Take care; the effect of looking long at this is sometimes to draw one on to the abyss.’

“‘Yes, Donna Ginevra,’ he replied in the same strange tone, ‘you are right; I am giddy and I am walking on to the abyss. I know it. I exposed myself rashly; I presumed too much on my strength.’

“The look which he fixed upon me in pronouncing these words gave them a meaning which it was impossible to misunderstand. It was no longer Gilbert who was speaking to me; it was no longer the man to whom I fancied I had granted only the safe privileges of a friend. The bandage which I had wilfully placed upon my eyes fell off in an instant, and, in the sudden emotion which

followed, the sight of the roaring flames that encircled us, the certain peril to which one step further would lead us, appeared to me as the exact representation of the danger to which I had madly exposed my honor and my soul! For one moment I covered my face with my hands, not daring to utter a word. At last I said in a voice of supplication:

“‘Monsieur de Kergy, cease to look upon the fire that surrounds us; lift up your head and see how, far above this hell, the night is calm and beautiful!…’

Gilbert’s eyes followed mine and remained for some time fixed upon the peaceful stars, that seemed, indeed, as far away from the terrible convulsion of nature as from that which was agitating our souls. Mine felt the need of a mighty help, and I murmured in a low voice, and with a fervor which had long been absent from my prayers: ‘O my God! have pity upon me.’ A long silence ensued, and then Gilbert said in a voice that was low and tremulous:

“‘Will you forgive me, madame? Will you trust yourself to me to lead you from this place?’

“‘Yes, I will trust you,’ I replied. ‘But let us make haste to leave it, for it is dangerous.…’

“‘Do not fear,’ he said in a tone that had resumed its wonted calmness; ‘we must make haste, but the only danger would be if you were to become frightened. Give me your hand.’

“He would have taken it, but I hesitated and made an involuntary movement, as if I meant to descend without his help.

“‘In the name of Heaven,’ he said quickly, and trembling with agitation, ‘don’t refuse my assistance in this extremity! You cannot do without it; you must give me your hand!’

“His voice was now almost imperious; I gave him my hand, and, grasping his arm firmly with the other, we descended the hill slowly together.”

But although this first victory is the sure guarantee of the ultimate one, Ginevra has a fierce battle yet to fight. Perhaps it will be better that our cursory notice of the story should, however, end here, and that we should leave our readers to discover the sequel for themselves:

how the same strong hand which held Ginevra safe on the brink of the precipice led her faithfully through the peril, and brought her back, not only to the inward peace which follows every generous renunciation, every conquest over self, but how it finally won back her husband’s love, crowning them both with a joy such as they had never known in the days of their early happiness. The fitness of Lorenzo’s punishment, the wreck of his fortune through one passion and the vengeance brought upon his selfish pride by the other, is worked out with a constructive art of no mean order. The minor characters and their parts are carefully finished and satisfactorily disposed of. Livia to the last shines like a sweet, pure star above the horizon of Ginevra’s stormy life, pointing onwards and upwards with faithful hand, never too strong for pity or too far removed for sympathy, sorrowing with those who mourn, rejoicing with those who rejoice. Her interview with Ginevra after the fearful ordeal through which the latter has passed, when she comes like one who has been “saved, but through fire,” to seek consolation in the peaceful atmosphere of the convent, rises to a high degree of power. We are strongly tempted to quote the scene between Padre Egidio and Ginevra, but it is almost too sacred to be made matter of critical comment, and would lose, moreover, much in effect by being detached from the complete frame, and especially from the crucial experiences which prepared Ginevra’s soul for that touch of the divine hand which healed and strengthened and uplifted her in one instant. Such an episode can only be appreciated in its proper place as part of a whole which

justifies and glorifies it. The close of the story is full of deep pathos.

It is significant that this novel, which is recognized as the herald of a new era in Catholic literature, should have made its appearance at the same time in France and in America. May we not venture to infer from the coincidence that America, in harmony with sound Catholic teaching, placing greater confidence in human nature, may aid in redeeming Catholic English fiction, and prove to the world that the faith does not paralyze the imagination, but elevates it; leaving the novelist at liberty to deal with the deepest problems of life, to disport himself freely in the wide realms of fancy, nature, and the world, and, guided and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, to grasp with a firm hand and turn to the best account all those things that come within the scope and province of art?

[69] Le Mot de l’Enigme—The Veil Withdrawn. By Madame Craven. Translated by permission. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1875.

[70] “For life, is too short!”

[71] “Beatrice gazed upwards, and I on her did gaze.” —Dante.

---

CHARITAS PIRKHEIMER.[72]

“Good and evil fortune are to a brave man as his right hand and his left: he uses either equally well.”—Saying of S. Catherine of Sienna.

Charitas Pirkheimer, the eldest daughter of John Pirkheimer and Barbara Löffelholz, was born on the 21st of March, 1466. Her family was a distinguished one in the annals of Nuremberg, her native town, one of those old free cities of Germany whose burghers, as Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., once said, were better lodged and more daintily fed than the kings of Scotland. Among the citizens of Nuremberg there was a kind of prescriptive aristocracy or patriciate composed of those families technically called “Rathsfähig”—that is, capable of being elected members of the ruling body or council of the little republic. Of those whose names occur again and again in this history one of the most ancient was that of the Pirkheimer, who, for at least a hundred and fifty years before the birth of Charitas, had been celebrated for their learning, piety, and statesmanship. Upright and honorable in their private life, as well as in the execution of their public trusts, they were looked up to by all, and their women no less than their men were distinguished for strength of character, love of learning, and solid, enlightened piety.

Nuremberg was at that time a centre of art and letters. Her youths went to Italy and studied at the old universities of Padua and Bologna, whence they brought back the prevailing enthusiasm for classical lore; the new art of printing had found in her citizens discerning

patrons; the streets were full of the beautiful houses of the rich merchants; churches and monasteries adorned with treasures of sacred art abounded, as even to this day the passing tourist can see; Albert Dürer, Adam Krafft, and Peter Vischer made their native city known far and wide in the world of art; while Regiomontanus drew his astronomical instruments from Nuremberg and published his works there, and his disciple, Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger by birth, discovered the sea-route to the East Indies. Literature was even more firmly established, and John Pirkheimer himself instituted a sort of academy after the model of those of the Italian princes. Wilibald, his only son and the last of his name, continued his work and became famous as the friend or patron of nearly all the renowned men of learning of his time.

Among these refining influences Charitas grew up, and early showed her enthusiasm for “polite” studies. The historians of Nuremberg, Lützelberger and Dr. Lochner, both Protestants, have left high testimony of the breadth of her intellect and the great consideration in which she was held by men of all parties. The latter calls her “a gifted, enlightened, pious, and prudent woman, who has conferred lasting honor on the Convent of St. Clare,” and who “deserves a high degree of respect for the firmness and dignity with which she withstood the storm of the Reformation, which to her and her community was a sorrowful event.” Lützelberger, in a lecture delivered at Nuremberg, said to his Protestant audience:

“The Reformation was a deep grief to her pious heart, accustomed as it was to the gentle amenities of convent life, and, if we would judge her aright, we must

put ourselves entirely in her circumstances. But this done, she will appear to us peculiarly worthy of respect and consideration as a gifted and conscientious opponent of the new religion.… Both by speech and in writing did she oppose all attempts to convert her; and even if we differ from her, we cannot but admire her earnest conviction, her prudence and understanding, and especially the patience which she added to her other virtues.”

Her father, John, was at the time of her birth a doctor of civil law (the degree had been conferred at the University of Padua), and was shortly after called to the service of the Bishop of Eichstädt, William of Reichenau, as counsellor, in which capacity he also for some years served the Duke of Bavaria and the Archduke of Austria at their respective courts at Munich and Innsbrück. He was also often sent as envoy and representative to other courts, after which services he returned to his native city and died there, a member of the council. Of his seven daughters only one married—Juliana, the youngest; the rest all took the veil. Charitas and Clara were joined in a lifelong friendship in the Convent of St. Clare in Nuremberg. By all accounts the former seems to have entered the convent at the age of twelve, whether as a novice or a scholar we are not told. The convent had existed as a Clarist institution for two hundred years, when some nuns of Söflingen, near Ulm, had introduced the Franciscan rule; but the building, which was several centuries old, had been tenanted before by a community of Sisters of St. Mary Magdalen. All the nuns, with very few exceptions, were Nurembergers by birth and descent (this was a condition of their admittance); and as each generation of every illustrious family was represented

by one or two members, the convent had become peculiarly a cherished local institution, whose welfare was closely connected with that of the town. One of the council was charged with its temporal concerns, and gifts and bequests were often made to it by the citizens. It was also the school where the young girls of patrician family were mostly educated.

A model of strict observance and reformed rule, it was under the spiritual direction of the barefooted Franciscans, who, in the middle of the fifteenth century, under the protection of Pope Eugenius IV., had, in a time when discipline was relaxed in many of the houses of their order, taken up their abode in Nuremberg and put things upon the old ascetic footing ruled by the great reforming saint, Francis of Assisi.

Apollonia Tucher was Charitas’ best and dearest friend. They lived together more than fifty years, and died within a few months of each other. Through her Charitas also learnt to know and appreciate Sixtus Tucher, her cousin, the provost of St. Lawrence, also a prominent man in those days. Apollonia was at that time prioress and Charitas a teacher in the convent school. The provost kept up a regular correspondence with the two nuns, of which unfortunately one part has been lost; but all his letters are preserved, and were first translated into German by his nephew, Christopher Scheurl, and dedicated to a successor of his at St. Lawrence—Provost George Behaim. His advice to Charitas and her friend was a great boon, and now and then he would send little presents, such as gilt lanterns for the church, which he always accompanied by some symbolical warning. Among other

things, he once reminded them that the convent life alone was not enough to save their souls. “There is no other way to deserve the eternal Fatherland,” he says, “but by industriously keeping all God’s commandments.” He also furnished them with books, a Commentary on the Liturgical Hymns and Sequences, 1494, and 1506, and the Discourse of St. Augustine on the Siege of Hippo. This was sent apropos of a siege in 1502 which Nuremberg suffered at the hands of the Margrave Casimir, and during which three hundred brave and noted burghers, all heads of families, lost their lives. On the occasion of her father’s death, in 1501, he writes to Charitas:

“Therefore we must not sorrow when a man has deserved to return from a strange land to his own country, from an inn to his own house, from work to rest, from death to life, from time to eternity, and especially when he has, by a blessed exchange, accumulated many good works; for we are all like unto merchants sent into this pilgrimage of earth, that with temporal goods we may buy and win eternal life.”

This learned and holy man died at the age of forty-six, in 1507, but not before he had seen his friend Charitas chosen abbess of St. Clare. She was only thirty-eight, but her strength of character made the choice unanimous; and if the nuns could have foreseen what a stormy time they would soon have to tide over, they would have congratulated themselves still more on their good sense in electing her. From henceforth she was the heart and soul of the convent: the nuns looked to her for advice, support, and comfort; the council saw in her a distinguished, learned, and enlightened countrywoman, the example not only of her own community, but of those in the neighborhood who followed her lead. One of the first events

that marked her rule was the attack of the plague which visited Nuremberg in 1505 and laid low one of her own spiritual family. She insisted upon nursing the sick nun, notwithstanding the remonstrances of her anxious sisters, and was rewarded by the recovery of the patient. In those years of peace and prosperity the convent fully vindicated its claim to being a house of happy labor. Besides the instruction given to the young girls of the city, the nuns were occupied in various artistic works, such as illumination, copying, and embroidery. Their particular industry was the manufacture of carpets and tapestries for hangings. They fulfilled orders for public and civic buildings, as well as for private families, and once the town council gave the imperial regalia into their hands for putting in order for the coronation of Charles V. at Aix-la-Chapelle. Nuremberg had the care of these venerated garments, and was jealous of its reputation; so that the nuns felt a high responsibility in being allowed to handle and repair such treasures. They carefully mended and re-embroidered the white dalmatic, and lined other pieces of the imperial dress, until they were fit to do honor to the care of the city of Nuremberg. The convent had also a library of some note for that time, the Scriptures and the fathers of the church forming the principal part of it. Charitas’ favorite among the latter was St. Jerome. She was solicitous concerning the daily reading of the Scriptures, both in Latin and in German, which was done in common as well as in private—a fact which she brought to her own defence in the evil days that followed. She might truly say that she stood on evangelical ground; for, as

she wrote to the learned but scarcely Christian Celtes, she saw in Scripture the “field of the Lord, whence learning must draw the kernel from the shell, the spirit from the letter, oil from the rock, and blossoms from the thorn.”

She had much to do also to manage the temporal concerns of her house. The town demanded a yearly account of her stewardship; and in every report made by the council on her administration there is nothing but praise and recognition of her business talents. She corresponded with a circle of lettered friends whom she knew through her brother Wilibald, and these literary friendships form one of the most interesting phases of her life. Conspicuous among her friends was her brother himself, the friend of Albert Dürer, who has left us a portrait of him, the correspondent of Erasmus, the polished man of letters, the scholar of two Italian universities, for some time the head of the council of the republic, and the leader of the Nuremberg contingent in the war with Switzerland (1499). This last office he held when he was only twenty-nine, and he afterwards became the historian of the war. When the first beginnings of the Reformation disturbed and excited all thoughtful minds in Germany, he looked upon them as simple moral reforms, a renewal of ancient fervor and discipline. But as the true nature of the changes heralded by Luther broke upon him, he separated himself from the movement and rallied to the side of the church doctrines so ruthlessly attacked. He proved a great support to his sister in the days when the convent was under the ban of the triumphant Reformers of Nuremberg, and his opinion of the classical studies which some of the atheistic

literati would fain have exalted as the only learning fit for civilized men was clearly expressed in these words: “It is not my belief that Christian knowledge is incomplete without heathen literature. God forbid! Divine Wisdom needs no human inventions, and it is possible to attain to the highest point of theology without the help of Plato and Aristotle.” Wilibald was accustomed to write to his sister in Latin, as Sixtus Tucher also did, and Charitas’ style, notwithstanding her lowly opinion of her own proficiency, was such as to do honor to her education. He often sent her presents of books—for instance, the Hymns of Prudentius, the Christian poet, and some writings of her favorite doctor, St. Jerome. Later on he dedicated to her the works of Fulgentius, which he had edited. Both Charitas and her sister Clara were great admirers of Erasmus and diligently read his German translation of the New Testament (in 1516), as well as some works of the famous scholar Reuchlin (1520). To the former Charitas excused herself from writing “on account of her bad Latin,” but sent him many complimentary messages through her brother, and both he and Reuchlin spoke of her in high terms in their letters to Wilibald. Clara also was marvellously fond of books, and playfully told her brother that there was nothing she envied out of her convent except his library. The women of the Pirkheimer family all seem to have been distinguished for their love of art and books. Catherine, Charitas’ niece, was almost a transcript of her aunt and showed a wonderful strength of character. The abbess’ married nieces were earnest and generous women, a great support to the convent in the evil days that followed; and her sister Sabina, the

abbess of a Benedictine monastery on the Danube, was a patroness of sacred art, the friend of Dürer, who sent her designs for her illuminations and took great interest in the school of miniature-painting established in her community.

Celtes was one of Charitas’ correspondents, and dedicated to her his compilation of the works of Roswitha, the poet-nun of Gandersheim in the tenth century. On the occasion of his being attacked by robbers she writes him a letter of condolence, in which, in the style of the day, she alludes to “the precious treasure of true wisdom, which is the noblest and only possession wherein consolation may be found”; but at another time she thinks it due to her conscience to speak to him of a higher wisdom, and says:

“Your worthiness, of which I am a humble follower, will pardon me for being also a lover of your salvation, and therefore do I beseech you from my heart, not, indeed, to give up worldly knowledge, but to add to it that higher one which will lift you from the writings of the heathen to the sacred books, from the earthly to the heavenly, from the creature to the Creator. For although no kind of knowledge or experience ordained of God is to be despised, yet a virtuous life and the study of theology is to be considered above everything; for man’s mind is weak and may err, but true faith and a good conscience can never err.”

Christopher Scheurl, a clever jurist and called the Cicero of Nuremberg, who had learnt letters at the University of Bologna, dedicated his book on “The Use of the Mass” (Utilitates Missæ) to Charitas, and sent it to her from Bologna, where it was printed in 1506, through his uncle, Sixtus Tucher. In his dedication Scheurl says that in all his life he has only known two women—the

pious Cassandra of Venice and Charitas of Nuremberg—who “for their gifts of mind and fortune, their knowledge and high station, their beauty and their prudence, could be compared to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, and to the daughters of Lælius and Hortensius.” He praises her that, following the example of her illustrious ancestors, she has preferred “the book to the wool and the pen to the spindle,” and proved her high degree of mental culture by such remarkable letters as he had seen and received.

Albert Dürer was also often in communication with the sister of his friend Wilibald. He, with the administrator of the convent, Kaspar Nützel, and another companion, had gone in 1518 to the Reichstag at Augsburg, where the painter was to take the old Emperor Maximilian’s portrait. They wrote her a joint account of their doings there, which she received in the same jesting spirit as it was written; for she says she “cried for laughing” when she read it. She also touches on the political questions of the day, and playfully gives them each his lesson to learn in Augsburg. The convent administrator was to admire in the Swabian Confederation “an example of strict observance”; the secretary of the council, Lazarus Spengler, was to observe “the apostolical life in common” of the members; and the painter to take note of the fine buildings for which Augsburg was famous, in case they might some day want good designs for the rebuilding of the convent choir. She also bade them not to forget the “little gray wolf” among the stately black and white habits of the religious of Augsburg (her nuns wore a gray habit), and alluded to the three men as the captive “sand-hares”—a

name given to the burghers of Nuremberg, first in scorn, but now become a mere jest.

Charitas’ mind was like a diamond of many facets; she was no angular, sour ascetic, narrow in her sympathies and petrified in her prejudices, but a genuine, warm-hearted woman, with as much love for innocent mirth on the one hand as for the widest researches of learning on the other. With her the words of her contemporary, Abbot Trithemius, were true—“To know is to love”—and her affection for her own family, no less than her appreciation of the intellectual movement of the age, is shown in her voluminous correspondence. She and her brother often exchanged little simple domestic presents, and she delighted to send him sweetmeats, preserves, and cakes made in the convent, often with her own or her nieces’ hands.

But she was not destined to end her life in these pleasant and peaceful interchanges of friendship. The storm was brewing, and the “new learning,” or new doctrine, as it was called, was beginning to take formidable proportions and go far beyond the needed reforms which Pope Adrian VI., one of the noblest men who ever sat in the apostolic chair, so anxiously recommended to the nuncio Chieregati on the occasion of the Reichstag at Nuremberg in 1522. Charitas grieved to see holy things indiscriminately attacked, often with unworthy motives cloaked by the convenient plea of conscience and zeal for the Gospel, and grieved still more to hear no voice among her learned friends raised in defence of all she held dear. At last, however, Jerome Emser, licentiate of canon law at Leipsic, and private secretary of Duke George of Saxony, published

a masterly defence of the old faith, and Charitas eagerly read it through and caused it to be read aloud to the nuns during meals. The sisters and the abbess of the Convent of St. Clare at Eger, who had sent her Emser’s writings, begged her to acknowledge them in a letter to the author, which she accordingly did, writing in fervent, unconstrained terms and thanking him in the name of her sixty sisters and all other convents of her order. But this letter fell into other hands, and in a distorted, mutilated shape, and accompanied by a malicious commentary on its sentiments and motives, was published by an enemy of Emser and Charitas. Even her brother Wilibald, who had not yet seen through the real motives of the Reformers, was vexed at her taking part in the fray, and told her she had better have held her tongue. This was the beginning of a teasing persecution of pin-pricks which gradually became serious and well-nigh insupportable as years went on. Her brother, when he had fully rallied to the Catholic party, had left the council and could be of little practical use to his sister, while the majority of the council were decidedly hostile. The convent’s administrator especially used his station and authority only to torment the poor nuns. Charitas at this time began to keep a diary, of which her biographer has made good use. Dr. Lochner, the historian of Nuremberg, recognizes that many evil deeds were done in the name of religion; and as to the case of the Convent of St. Clare, he says that “it was the victim of that force which at many times clothes itself in the garb of a moral and divine reform, without being any the less mere force, the right of the strongest.”

In 1524 Charitas says:

“There came to the convent many strangers, men and women, but especially the latter, to tell the nuns the new things that were being taught from the pulpit, and to represent to them what a ‘damnable’ state was that of the religious life, and how impossible it was for them to be saved in the cloister, adding most unceremoniously that nuns were all the devil’s creatures. Many citizens spoke threateningly of withdrawing their relatives from the convent, whether the persons in question wished it or no.”

As may be supposed, these attacks made no impression on the sisters; but the town council, ready enough now to seize upon any pretext, ascribed their steadfastness to the influence of their spiritual directors, the Franciscans, and ordered the convent to be put under the control of the new preachers. Charitas immediately drew up a petition, which was approved by the community, in which she represented to Kaspar Nützel, the administrator, that this was the first time for forty-five years that she had seen her sisterhood in grief, and went on to beseech him, as he had always been her friend and supporter in temporal matters, so, now that she required his help more than ever, he would not fail her in this spiritual distress. She likewise wrote to Jerome Ebner, another of the highest dignitaries of the council, whose daughter Katharine was one of her community; and to Martin Geuder, her brother-in-law, to whom she touchingly appealed on the ground of the innocence and evangelical character of the community.

“I beg of you,” she says, “do not allow yourself to be persuaded by those who untruly say that the clear word of God is hidden from us; for, by the grace of God, this is not so. We have the Old and New Testaments here as well as you who are out in the world; we read it day and night, at meals, in the choir, in Latin and in German,

in common and in private. By God’s grace we know well the holy Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles, but still I think he is more praiseworthy who fulfils the Gospel’s precepts in his actions than he who has them always on his lips, but does not act up to them.” She continues: “We desire to be no burden or offence to any one; but if any one can point out an abuse, let him do so, and we will gladly reform it. For we acknowledge ourselves to be weak creatures, who may go easily astray, and who do not dare to take pleasure in good works. We only ask that no one shall do us wrong and violence, and that we shall not be forced to do that which we consider a disgrace and against our eternal salvation.”

Charitas’ former petition to Nützel was now supplemented by a more formal petition of the convent, addressed to the town council. She protested against the violent change meditated, and repelled the idea of submitting to spiritual directors imposed by the republic; she asked the councillors why they should object to a few women voluntarily living in common, and besought them not to root up a time-honored institution which was so intimately connected with the annals of their native city. Part of the council was decidedly in favor of less violent measures, and by the advice of these members the intrusion of Lutheran directors was put off for a time and affairs left to take their own course; but the lull was but momentary. People still besieged the convent, threatening its inmates and disseminating scandalous rumors in the town, and the poor nuns lived in daily fear of some outbreak. This was in the Advent of 1524, and in March, 1525, the storm broke loose again.

One of those frequent and useless disputations on the subject of religion which made such a characteristic feature of the sixteenth-century

movement took place at Nuremberg at the beginning of March. Eight religious of the Carmelite, Franciscan, and Dominican orders took the Catholic side against seven preachers of the Lutheran doctrines (among them the famous Osiander) under the leadership of the prior of the Augustinians at Nuremberg. The debate lasted for eleven days, or five sessions, without any shadow of an accommodation appearing possible, and at the sixth session the Catholic doctors gave in a written statement to the effect that the affair had become a discussion such as by imperial mandate was strictly forbidden, and that, as there was no impartial judgment to be looked for, the presidents of the colloquium being known adherents of the new doctrines, they thought it best to retire from the useless conflict. The council, however, had attained its end, and prepared an opportunity for formally introducing the new religion into the republic. The convents and monasteries were ordered to give up their rule and the members to enter the world again. Four of the male communities did as they were bid; the Dominicans and Franciscans still refused to comply. The former were compelled to leave in 1543, and the latter stood their ground till the last brother died. They were, however, forbidden to preach and hear confessions, and the direction of both convents of women, St. Clare and St. Catherine, was taken from them.

The first open attack on St. Clare was made five days after the religious disputation, on the 19th of March, 1525. A deputation from the council demanded admittance into the interior of the convent, and, though Charitas pleaded the “enclosure”

and offered to gather the community at the grated window through which it was customary to speak with strangers and men, she was forced to accede to their demand and admit the councillors into the winter refectory. The two representatives began with a honeyed address, telling the assembled nuns that, now the light of the Gospel was fully manifested in the city, it were a shame that they alone should be denied the privilege of seeing it. Therefore a learned and distinguished preacher, Herr Poliander, of Würzburg, would impart to them this knowledge, and, the Franciscans being removed, the council would provide the nuns with suitable confessors. The abbess heard them out, and then retorted that her nuns were well stored with Gospel knowledge, which had been clearly preached to them before, and that the connection between their order and the Franciscans was of long date and authorized by papal and imperial decrees, but that, if they were to suffer violence in this matter, God and their conscience urged them to declare that it was so, and that they protested against such violence being used. The councillors said that, since they objected to secular[73] priests as confessors, they might choose one of the Augustinians (who had apostatized), since they too were “religious.” But Charitas answered: “If we are to have religious, why not leave us the Franciscans? We know and honor them and have had long experience of them; but as to the order you name, we also know how lax its discipline has grown.”

“Nay,” said the councillors, “you will soon not have that to complain

of; for these brothers will doff their cowls and enter into another state.”

To which the abbess replied: “That is no comfort to us. They could only teach us to follow their example; and as they have taken to themselves wives, they would have us take husbands. God forbid!”

The useless conversation was carried on some time longer, and on Charitas asking the reason why the council so oppressed her sisterhood, and whether they had committed any offence, the councillors were forced to allow that the “council knew of no offence or abuse on their part, but, on the contrary, only of honor, diligence, and modesty,” but that in other communities it was not always so, and the new laws must be enforced everywhere alike. The very next day Poliander, the Lutheran preacher, came for the first time to preach to the reluctant nuns, while on the 21st of March the Franciscans were allowed to pay their charges a farewell visit, administer the sacraments, say Mass, and preach. This was the last time the nuns enjoyed these holy privileges; henceforward the dying were deprived of the Viaticum and Extreme Unction, and Mass was no longer said in the convent chapel. On the 22nd Charitas assembled a chapter of her nuns, which decided on presenting a second petition to the council, and the abbess sent to ask Kaspar Nützel to come in person to the convent. He consented and sent her a friendly message, but it was clear he expected submission. He came and set before the community the advantages of gracefully giving way and the evil they would entail on themselves by resistance; but Charitas answered to the point: that, although he had spoken

in friendly terms, he had not mentioned the real subject of the dispute—i.e., the question of who should be the convent’s spiritual directors. “We see,” she said, “that every means is being used to drive us to accept the new doctrines, but until the whole church accepts them neither will we. Nothing will part us from the fellowship of the universal church nor from the vows we have vowed unto God.” She then offered to let the administrator ask each nun her opinion separately during her own absence; but Nützel saw that this would be useless, and even refused to take the petition, whereupon the abbess read it aloud before him. The gist of it was contained in the prayer that, in the name of the Gospel-freedom which the times had so extolled, no violence should be done to the consciences of the nuns. They begged also that if their confessor was taken from them, at least no one should be imposed upon them in his place. But it was evidently in vain, although Nützel reluctantly pledged himself to represent their case to the council. Before he left the convent, however, he attempted to cajole the abbess out of her firm resistance to his wishes, and, taking her aside, begged her to put her authority and influence on his side, telling her that she might personally do much to prevent even bloodshed, and that, if he could only win her over, he would think himself sure of the city and the neighborhood. Indeed, many pinned their faith to her steadfastness and looked to her example for support in their own temptations. But neither flattery nor threats could win her over, nor even the hint that by her obstinacy she would confirm others in contumacy, and bring upon her native town the vengeance of the

peasants who had risen in arms against the Catholics. To this she answered calmly that it was well known that the peasants had risen because, in the midst of this new preaching of fraternity and evangelical freedom, they saw a way to abolish the custom of vassalage, and meant forcibly to possess themselves of that which their richer brethren were so glibly prating of in theory. As the second petition had remained without effect, Charitas drew up a third, a model of clearness and logic. Quoting St. Paul, she said, “I can do all things in Him who is my strength,” and she again assured the council that nothing would drive the sisters out of the church. This paper was signed by all the nuns. She also asked through Nützel for a secular priest, a holy man of the name of Schröter, for a confessor, since the council was determined that the Franciscans should no longer serve the convent; but this prayer was also refused.

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

(there were nearly sixty of them) declared that they did not wish to be “made free” after the council’s pattern of freedom; they meant to keep to their vows and maintain their rule, and begged the abbess not to forsake them. She then swore to stand by them as long as they would stand by their vows, and exhorted them to steadfast courage and fervent prayer. Her friends in the council, seeing that their influence was too weak to help the convent, advised her to consent to the lesser propositions, and accordingly the inventory was quietly made and handed over to the authorities; the grating was taken down, and, at Wilibald Pirkheimer’s suggestion, some part of the nuns’ habit was dyed black and assumed only at the parlor window and in the gardens, while in the private parts of the house the usual gray garb was worn. But the nuns steadfastly refused to change the rule or to consider themselves absolved from their vows, and, unless they were to be forcibly ejected from the convent, there was no possibility of carrying out these two important changes. But the council was prepared for anything, and soon even this last violent act was publicly enforced.

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

towards the abbess, cried out: “Dear mother, do not let me be driven away from you!” Four persons, however, seized hold of her, and amid loud cries on all sides she was dragged over the threshold of the chapel, where she and Margaret Tetzel fell over each other, the latter having her foot crushed in the crowd. Dame Ebner followed her daughter with angry threats, telling her that if she did not go willingly she would fling her down the stairs and break her head on the pavement below. At last poor Charitas could stand it no longer and took refuge in her cell, while the councillors who had witnessed the scene declared that, had they foreseen such a sad sight, they would not have come for a world of money, and never again would they lend the sanction of their presence to such violent proceedings.

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.”

Charitas dated from his visit a quieter state of things and the cessation of many petty persecutions on the part of Kaspar Nützel. She says of Melanchthon in her diary: “I hope God sent this man to us at the right time; …” and later in a letter she writes thus of the administrator: “Would to God every one were as discreet as Master Philip; we might then hope to be rid of many things that are very vexatious.”

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

because he had been, like her, a religious), but she answered:

“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

for the care bestowed on his child, and by making a special gift to the convent in recognition of it. He also singled out the sisters who had had special care of his daughter during her illness, and sent them tokens of his gratitude; and, not content with this, he left the convent fifty gulden in his will, which they received after his death.

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.”

[72] Charitas Pirkheimer, Abbess of St. Clare at Nuremberg. By Franz Binder. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau. The biographer, Franz Binder, has compiled the life of Charitas, which we have condensed in the present article, from trustworthy sources, the principal ones being the Works of Wilibald Pirkheimer, in Latin, published at Frankfort in 1610; MS. letters of the Pirkheimer family preserved in the town library at Nuremberg; Charitas’ own diary, published at Bamberg in 1852; Dr. Lochner’s Biography of Celebrated Nurembergers, published in 1861; and other less important and shorter works in which passing reference is made to the events of Charitas’ life.

[73] Literally lay priests, but, we think, referring to seculars.

[74] The church of St. Clare at Nuremberg remained for a long time closed. It was then opened again and soon afterwards given over to Protestant worship. It was subsequently used for commercial purposes, as a magazine of wares, a market-place, and place for local exhibitions, and finally as a barracks. In 1854 it was given back to the Catholics of Nuremberg as their second church. In the following year its restoration was begun, and on May 13, 1857, the Church of St. Clare was publicly consecrated anew for Catholic worship.

---