Curiosities of Christian History Prior to the Reformation

by James Paterson

THE EMPEROR MONK’S DRESS AND FURNITURE.

The Emperor monk’s dress was always black and very old. He had an old arm-chair with wheels and cushions. Some of the apartments had some rich tapestry wrought with figures, landscapes, and flowers. His usual black dress was such another as that painted by Titian in the fine portrait wherein the Emperor sits before us, pale, thoughtful, and dignified, in the Belvidere palace at Vienna. He still had an old cap to save his best velvet one in case of a shower. He had a few rings and bracelets, medals and buttons, collars and badges, some crucifixes of gold and silver, various charms (such as the bezoar-stone against the plague, and gold rings from England against cramp), a morsel of the true cross and other relics, three or four pocket watches, and several dozen pairs of spectacles. He had a few well-chosen pictures worthy of the patron and friend of Titian, a composition on the subject of the Trinity, and three pictures of Our Lady by that great master. He had three cased miniatures of the Empress painted in her youthful beauty, also some family portraits of near relatives. Over the high altar of the convent and in sight of his own bed he had placed that celebrated composition called the Glory of Titian, a picture of the Last Judgment, in which Charles, his wife, and their royal children were represented in the master’s grandest style as conducted by angels into life eternal. Also another masterpiece of the great Venetian—St. Jerome praying in his cavern with a sweet landscape in the distance—was an altar-piece in the Emperor’s private oratory.

THE EMPEROR MONK’S APARTMENTS.

The Emperor’s house or palace, as the friars loved to call it, in Yuste was such as many a country notary would call comfortable. It had a simple front of two storeys to the garden and the noontide sun. Each of the eight rooms had an ample fireplace, such as a chilly invalid of Flemish habits required. Charles inhabited the upper rooms, and slept in one which had a window commanding the high altar. From the window on the opposite side of the corridor, where his cabinet stood, the eye ranged over a cluster of rounded knolls, clad in walnut and chestnut, in which the mountain died gently away into the broad bosom of the Vera. A summer-house peered above the mulberry tops at the lower end of the garden, and a hermitage of Our Lady of Solitude about a mile distant hung upon a rocky height which rose like an isle out of the sea of forest. Immediately below the windows the garden sloped gently to the Vera, shaded here and there with the massive foliage of the fig, or the feathery boughs of the almond, and breathing perfume from tall orange trees, cuttings of which some of the friars in after-days tried in vain to keep alive at the bleak Escurial. The garden was easily reached from the western porch or gallery by an inclined path, which had been constructed to save the gouty monarch the pain and fatigue of going up and down stairs. This porch, which was much more spacious than the eastern, was his favourite seat when filled with the warmth of the declining day. A short alley of cypress led from the parterre to the principal gate of the garden, and beyond was the luxuriant forest, and close in the foreground a magnificent walnut tree.

THE EMPEROR MONK’S DETESTATION OF HERETICS.

While the Emperor monk was at Yuste, he retained all his fiery zeal against heretics, and notice of any successful capture of an impious Lutheran was welcome news when forwarded to him. He always in his letters entreated his daughter, the Princess Regent, to lose no time and spare no pains to uproot the new and dangerous doctrines. He used to say to his confessor, “Father, if anything could drag me from this retreat, it would be to aid in chastising these heretics. I have written to the Inquisition to burn them all, for none of them will ever become true Catholics or are worthy to live.” He would have their crime treated in a short and summary manner, like sedition or rebellion. The King, his son (he said), had executed sharp and speedy justice upon many heretics, and even upon bishops in England. Upon news arriving about any hunt after heretics, he used to converse with his confessor and the prior on a subject that lay so near his heart. He told them that, in looking back on the early religious troubles of his reign, it was ever his regret that he did not put Luther to death when he had him in his power. He had spared him, he said, on account of his pledged word, but he now saw that he greatly erred in preferring the obligation of a promise to the higher duty of avenging upon that arch-heretic his offences against God. Had Luther been removed the plague might have been stayed. He had some consolation, however, in recollecting how steadily he had refused to hear the points at issue between the Church and the schismatics argued in his presence.

THE EMPEROR MONK’S INTEREST IN CLOCKMAKING.

The Emperor Charles, while a monk, often visited in spare hours the workshop of Torriano, who had long been at work on an elaborate astronomical timepiece, which was to tell the month and year and the movements of the planets. He had revolved the plan for twenty years, and the making of it actually occupied three and a half years. Of wheels it contained eighteen hundred; the material of the case was gilt bronze, and round. The clock was two feet in diameter, rather less in height, and with a tapering top, ending in a tower containing the bell and hammer. The Emperor helped the inscription by adding to the name of Torriano “The Prince of Clockmakers,” and caused his own portrait to be engraved on the back. Torriano also made for the Emperor a smaller clock in a crystal case, which allowed the whole working of the machinery to be seen. The same artist constructed a self-acting mill, which, though small enough to be concealed in a friar’s sleeve, could grind two pecks of corn in a day; also the figure of a lady who danced on the table to the sound of her own tambourine. Other puppets were attributed to the artist: minute men and horses, which fought, pranced, and blew tiny trumpets; and birds which flew about the room, as if alive,—toys which at first scared the prior and his monks out of their wits, and made them think the artificer a wizard. Besides these sedentary amusements, the Emperor had also his pet birds, his wolf-hounds, and even sometimes was unmonkish enough to stroll to the forest with his gun, and pop at the wood-pigeons on the chestnut trees.

THE EMPEROR MONK’S CONFESSOR.

Regla, the son of a poor Aragonese peasant, and who was taken into the convent of St. Yuste at the age of thirty-six, and became a devoted son and rigid disciplinarian, was selected by the Emperor Charles V. as his confessor. The recipient of so great an honour felt unworthy to take charge of His Majesty’s conscience. But Charles told him to take courage, adding, “I have had five learned divines, who have been busy with my conscience for three years past in Flanders, and all with which you will have to concern yourself will be my life in Yuste.” The meek confessor soon gained the good opinion of the Emperor, and obtained the great boon of being allowed to be seated in the royal presence—an act of condescension which greatly scandalised the loyal Quixada, the major-domo, who regarded it as an indignity that a poor friar should be placed on a level with his august sovereign. The monk felt the awkwardness—for it was the practice to keep up the same high state at Yuste in the Emperor’s presence—and he fell on his knees and besought the Emperor to allow him to stand in his presence; “for when any one enters the room,” said the friar, “it makes me feel like a criminal on the scaffold dressed in his san benito.” “Be in no trouble about that,” said Charles to him: “you are my father confessor; I am glad that people should find you sitting when they come into the room, and it does not displease me that you should change countenance sometimes at being found so.” After the confessor assisted Charles in his morning devotions, the latter usually went and watched Torriano, the mechanician, who was always busy with some mechanical invention and with improving the watches and clocks which so interested the Emperor.