St. Boniface sent for Sturmi after awhile, probably to Maintz, to ask of his success; and Sturmi threw himself on his face before him; and Boniface raised him up, and kissed him, and made him sit by his side—which was a mighty honour; for St. Boniface, the penniless monk, was at that moment one of the most powerful men of Europe; and he gave Sturmi a good dinner, of which, no doubt, he stood in need; and bade him keep up heart, and seek again for the place which God had surely prepared, and would reveal in His good time.
And this time Sturmi, probably wiser from experience, determined to go alone; but not on foot. So he took to him a trusty ass, and as much food as he could pack on it; and, axe in hand, rode away into the wild wood, singing his psalms. And every night, before he lay down to sleep, he cut boughs, and stuck them up for a ring fence round him and the ass, to the discomfiture of the wolves, which had, and have still, a great hankering after asses’ flesh. It is a quaint picture, no doubt; but let us respect it, while we smile at it; if we, too, be brave men.
Then one day he fell into a great peril. He came to the old road (a Roman one, I presume; for the Teutons, whether in England or elsewhere, never dreamed of making roads till three hundred years ago, but used the old Roman ones), which led out of the Thuringen land to Maintz. And at the ford over the Fulda he met a great multitude bathing, of Sclavonian heathens, going to the fair at Maintz. And they smelt so strong, the foul miscreants, that Sturmi’s donkey backed, and refused to face them; and Sturmi himself was much of the donkey’s mind, for they began to mock him (possibly he nearly went over the donkey’s head), and went about to hurt him.
‘But,’ says the chronicler, ‘the power of the Lord held them back.’
Then he went on, right thankful at having escaped with his life, up and down, round and round, exploring and surveying—for what purpose we shall see hereafter. And at last he lost himself in the place which is called Aihen-loh, ‘the glade of oaks;’ and at night-fall he heard the plash of water, and knew not whether man or wild beast made it. And not daring to call out, he tapped a tree-trunk with his axe (some backwoodsman’s sign of those days, we may presume), and he was answered. And a forester came to him, leading his lord’s horse; a man from the Wetterau, who knew the woods far and wide, and told him all that he wanted to know. And they slept side by side that night; and in the morning they blest each other, and each went his way.
Yes, there were not merely kings and wars, popes and councils, in those old days;—there were real human beings, just such as we might meet by the wayside any hour, with human hearts and histories within them. And we will be thankful if but one of them, now and then, starts up out of the darkness of twelve hundred years, like that good forester, and looks at us with human eyes, and goes his way again, blessing, and not unblest.
And now Sturmi knew all that he needed to know; and after awhile, following the counsel of the forester, he came to ‘the blessed place, long ago prepared of the Lord. And when he saw it, he was filled with immense joy, and went on exulting; for he felt that by the merits and prayers of the holy Bishop Boniface that place had been revealed to him. And he went about it, and about it, half the day; and the more he looked on it the more he gave God thanks;’ and those who know Fulda say, that Sturmi had reason to give God thanks, and must have had a keen eye, moreover, for that which man needs for wealth and prosperity, in soil and water, meadow and wood. So he blessed the place, and signed it with the sign of the Cross (in token that it belonged thenceforth neither to devils nor fairies, but to his rightful Lord and Maker), and went back to his cell, and thence a weary journey to St. Boniface, to tell him of the fair place which he had found at last.
And St. Boniface went his weary way, either to Paris or to Aix, to Pepin and Carloman, kings of the Franks; and begged of them a grant of the Aihen-loh, and all the land for four miles round, and had it. And the nobles about gave up to him their rights of venison, and vert, and pasture, and pannage of swine; and Sturmi and seven brethren set out thither, ‘in the year of our Lord 744, in the first month (April, presumably), in the twelfth day of the month, unto the place prepared of the Lord,’ that they might do what?
That they might build an abbey. Yes; but the question is, what building an abbey meant, not three hundred, nor five hundred, but eleven hundred years ago—for centuries are long matters, and men and their works change in them.
And then it meant this: Clearing the back woods for a Christian settlement; an industrial colony, in which every man was expected to spend his life in doing good—all and every good which he could for his fellow-men. Whatever talent he had he threw into the common stock; and worked, as he was found fit to work, at farming, gardening, carpentering, writing, doctoring, teaching in the schools, or preaching to the heathen round. In their common church they met to worship God; but also to ask for grace and strength to do their work, as Christianizers and civilizers of mankind. What Christianity and civilization they knew (and they knew more than we are apt now to believe) they taught it freely; and therefore they were loved, and looked up to as superior beings, as modern missionaries, wherever they do their work even decently well, are looked up to now.