The friars had long been odious for their determined class feeling, religious intolerance, and encouragement of superstitions; it was obvious that the advocates of change would direct their attacks against them. Charitas, fully aware of the emergency, assembled the nuns and put before them the danger of being given over to ‘wild priests and apostate monks,’ and with their consent decided to hand in a ‘supplication’ to the town council. This council was presided over by three leading men (triumviri), of whom one named Nützel was the so-called representative (pfleger) of the convent, another named Ebner had a daughter among the nuns, and the third, Geuder, was the brother-in-law of Charitas. She consulted Wilibald on the matter of the supplication, but forthwith wrote and despatched a letter to each of these three men, begging and claiming the protection of her privileges.
The supplication itself (p. 12) was carefully worded, and requested that the connection between the Franciscans and the nuns might not be severed, contradicting the charges which were brought against the former. They do not forbid the nuns to read the Evangels and other books, Charitas says,—‘if they did so we should not obey them.’ The nuns have the Old and the New Testament in daily use in the German and the Latin versions. Charitas denies despising the married state or retaining nuns by force. ‘But as we compel no one, so too we claim not to be compelled, and to remain free in mind as well as in body. But this cannot be if we are given over to strange priests, which would be destruction to our community ...,’ and more to a like purpose.
The supplication was handed in at the beginning of 1524, but after considerable delay the councillors postponed giving a definite reply to it. In the meantime Charitas was much annoyed by the mother of one of her nuns who tried to persuade her daughter to leave the convent, and finding her words of no avail, appealed to the town council (p. 19) for an order to take her ‘out of this prison’ as she called it, into which she had sent her nine years before at the age of fourteen. Charitas also sent in a statement of the case (p. 28), but again no reply was vouchsafed her.
The letters which Clara wrote to her brother about this time help us to realise the situation. All her letters are undated, but in one she thanks Wilibald for his advice about the supplication, and says that if divine service should really be abolished she means to devote herself more to reading, for ‘the dear beloved old writers surely were no fools[1169].’ In another she thanks him for the loan of books and says a work of Erasmus (probably De libero arbitrio) has pleased the sisters by its moderation. As to Charitas ‘she finds great comfort in her beloved old Cyprian, in whose writings she reads day and night. She sends greetings and the message that she prefers Cyprian to all these new evangelists who strut about in cut garments and golden chains[1170].’
Though Clara did not lose her cheerfulness, Charitas, who saw further, was full of apprehension. From what her sister says she regretted the severe tone of her letter to Geuder[1171]. On other occasions also she was led to indignant utterances which she afterwards regretted[1172].
A gap occurs at this period in her memoir which she resumed writing in March 1525, after the religious disputation had taken place at Nürnberg. After many stormy scenes, ‘the preachers of the Evangel,’ as they called themselves, decided to carry out their intentions without waiting for the decision of a Church Council. The immediate result of the decision was an attack on all religious houses. But in the convent of St Clara the determined and reckless energy of the reformers was matched by indignant protest and unyielding opposition on the part of the abbess.
Charitas has described in full (p. 33) how a deputation from the town council asked to be admitted into her house, and how they informed her and the assembled nuns that their connection with the Franciscans was at an end; a ‘reformed’ preacher had been appointed to preach in the church of the nuns, and they were left the choice among several men who would act to them as confessors. Much argument followed, but Charitas maintained that her house and the Franciscans had always been closely connected. ‘If we yield it is only to force and we turn to God,’ she said, ‘and before Him we lodge a protest and declare that we are forced against our will, and that we reject and discountenance all your proposals.’ The assembled nuns rose to their feet to shew their approval of her speech, and the deputation in vain tried the effect of persuasion. Charitas scorned the idea of having anything to do with apostate monks; and the deputation retired after blaming the women for behaving in a most ungrateful manner. A second visit led to similar results; Charitas abode by her decision, the nuns wept, and the deputation retired after venting their indignation in threats.
The hopes of the convent now centred in Nützel, their representative in the town council, and Charitas with her brother’s approval wrote to him (p. 41) begging him to come to her. But the first words Nützel spoke dispelled every hope of assistance from that quarter; he blamed the nuns for opposing the council, and urged the advisability of their giving way. Charitas was most indignant and declared she was well aware that it was intended to force them to this new belief, but that they were agreed that neither in life nor in death would they listen to what the Church had not previously countenanced. She called upon the prioress to read out a second petition to the council asking to have their father confessor back or else to be left without one. She wanted Nützel to take charge of this petition, but he was only angered, and taking Charitas aside, represented to her that her opposition was a serious matter; her example was encouraging other women’s convents to opposition, which would relent if she did. He said that by resigning and disbanding the convent bloodshed would be averted, and he spoke in praise of the new preacher. But Charitas remained unmoved. As he was leaving the house his daughter and the other nuns, whose fathers were members of the town council, went down on their knees to him imploring protection. He refused to listen, but was so far impressed that he never slept all the following night, as his wife afterwards told the nuns (p. 54).
The convent’s opposition to their plans was a source not only of annoyance but of apprehension to the town authorities. The peasants’ rising was spreading in the direction of Nürnberg, and as popular feeling was against religious houses the argument that dissolving the house might help to avert a danger was not altogether unfounded. Nützel in a long expostulation (p. 55) shortly afterwards tried to impress this view on the abbess, but Charitas urged (p. 59) that other reasons besides hatred of the friars had roused the peasants to rebellion, and complained that the ill-feeling against her house was largely due to the reformed preachers, who declared they would not rest till they had driven monks and nuns out of the town (p. 62). Rightly or wrongly she held that Poliander, the reformed preacher who was now preaching in the convent church, had been promised a reward if he persuaded her or her nuns to leave the convent (p. 67), and that his want of success aggravated his hatred of them. It was in vain that Nützel wrote in praise of him (p. 67). Charitas now looked upon Nützel as a dangerous enemy, and her sister Clara wrote to Wilibald[1173] begging him to advise the convent how to get rid of the man. In another letter[1174] she said that Charitas was seriously afraid of him.
In place of the Franciscans a number of reformed preachers now preached before the nuns and the people in the convent church. Among them was Osiander, formerly a Carthusian, whose violence at a later period was censured and resented by his Protestant brethren; and the nuns were obliged to attend and to listen to a torrent of abuse and imprecation by him and others. ‘I cannot and will not detail,’ says Charitas in her memoir (p. 70), ‘how they perverted Holy Writ to a strange meaning, how they cast down the doctrines of the Church and discarded all ceremonies; how they abused and reviled all religious orders and classes, and respected neither Pope nor Emperor, whom they openly called tyrant, devil, and Antichrist; how roughly and in what an unchristian-like spirit and against all brotherly love they abused us and charged us with great wickedness, for the purpose of rousing the people, whom they persuaded that an ungodly set like ourselves should be destroyed, our cloister broken open, ourselves dragged out by force, since we represented a despicable class, heretics, idolatrous and blasphemous people, who were eternally of the devil.’