Elizabeth, perhaps to gain leisure to study her beloved subject, philosophy, entered the Lutheran convent at Herfort, becoming later its abbess. Louise became abbess of a Catholic convent at Naubisson, and a very lively and comfortable, if not exactly moral, abbess she made. A third sister, Henrietta, took to preserves instead of either philosophy or religion. She married, and lived happily ever after among her sticky pots and kettles. Not the least blessed of the three, to judge from her letters, was the lot of practical Henrietta.
At the end of the Thirty Years' War, Germany lay prostrate, bleeding at a thousand wounds. The condition of the peasant women was not greatly improved. They had more cows to milk, it is true; but, on the other hand, they were furnished with fewer books from which to draw mental nourishment. The public schools had gone to ruin. Even the boys were not properly taught. "Our wenches learn nothing," an exceptionally interested father complains.
The old manufacturing interests, like weaving by hand, in which women formerly aided, had declined. Workingwomen in the cities found it hard to earn a living. By losses resulting from the war, many of the genteel poor, ladies born and bred, had been forced into the ranks of the workers. These timid unfortunates became nursery governesses in families of the impoverished nobility, day teachers, court ladies without salary, and the like. The personal secrets of the children of labor are kept only in the archives of solitary human hearts; else, many a story of tragedy, love, and brave self-denial might be written from the bitter experiences of these pioneer women workers. In considering the condition of workingwomen during this unhappy period, the word "Vice," written large, must be constantly kept in mind. It was not a question of temptation to vice; the problem, instead, was how a respectable workingwoman could possibly escape being driven into sin by man's physical force.
The counter reformation, set in motion by the wonderful intellect of Ignatius Loyola, had a mighty influence upon women in certain parts of the empire. "In the year 1551," says Steinmetz, "the Jesuits had no fixed position in Germany. In 1556 they had overspread Franconia, Swabia, Rhineland, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Bavaria." This rapid but quiet growth of the Society of Jesus was due largely to the influence of a comparatively few rich, intelligent Catholic women, like Maria of Bavaria.
The relation between women and early Jesuitism bears out the old assertion that kicks and beatings increase both canine and feminine affection. Ignatius Loyola himself compared woman to the devil. He writes: "Our enemy imitates the nature and manner of a woman as to her weakness and frowardness. For, as a woman, quarrelling with her husband, if she sees him with erect, firm aspect, ready to resist her, instantly loses courage and turns on her heel, but if she perceive he is timid and inclined to slink off, her audacity knows no bounds, and she pounces upon him, ferociously. Thus the devil," etc.
Ignatius Loyola was magnificently in earnest. He remembered the Medician Papal courts and their scandal. He would have his order endangered by no looseness of priestly morals. His rules were of iron strictness. Moreover, and this greatly to his official advantage, he knew women. Especially well he knew, too, the sentimental, introspective, hero-worshipping woman. The spiritual direction of three such women for a short time gave him more trouble, he afterward declared, than the government of his whole world-spread order. Accordingly, he decreed:
"No woman shall come twice to confession in one day."
"If the female penitents pretend to scruples of conscience, the confessors are to tell them 'not to relate tales and repeat trifles.' Sometimes they must be silenced at once, for if they are truly disturbed by conscience there will be no need of prolixity."
"Consolation and advice to women are to be given in an open part of the church."
Visits to women were also severely restricted. They must be confined to women of rank and consequence. The women visited must be those who have rendered signally important service to the order. Visits must be agreeable to the husband or other ruling male relative of the woman visited. Confession by a woman was always to be witnessed by another priest, stationed near the confessor.