With the account of the last visitation, which took place in 1528, the memoir of Charitas ends. From other sources we hear that short of annoyances about her income and a tax levied on the convent she remained unmolested, and passed the last few years of her life in peace. At the close of 1528, the fiftieth anniversary of her entering the convent, and the twenty-fifth year of her appointment as abbess, was celebrated with some amount of cheerfulness. Wilibald and others sent presents, and after dinner the nuns danced to the sound of the dulcimer (hackbrett), which the abbess played[1182]. Wilibald’s interest in the convent continued, and towards the close of his life we find him busy writing a pamphlet in justification of the nuns[1183], in which he developed at some length the arguments against those who had oppressed and coerced them. He died in 1530, and within a couple of years was followed by his sister Charitas (1533). Her sister Clara ruled the convent for a few months after her and was succeeded by Wilibald’s daughter Charitas. The number of nuns was slowly but steadily dwindling; before the close of the century the house had fallen into the hands of the town council by default.
The abbess Charitas Pirckheimer worthily represents the monastic life of women at the close of the Middle Ages. Faithful to the system she had embraced, she remained true to her convictions to the last, with a fearlessness, candour, and determination which give her attitude a touch of heroism. She is one among many staunch adherents to the old faith who experienced hardships which simple humanity and feelings of equity and justice alike condemned, but whose steadfastness could not save their cause from being lost.
CONCLUSION.
My task has drawn to its close. In a series of chapters, incompletely no doubt but I trust not superficially, the position of woman under monasticism has been brought before the reader, and some account has been given of the various aspects of convent life. In conclusion it seems well to pause and look back over the ground traversed, to take in at a glance what Catholic tradition, convent-life and saint-lore have done for women in the past. The area over which the reader has been taken is a wide one, and the ground in many directions remains unexplored. Still some of the most prominent landmarks have been noted, and some districts carefully examined. Thus while further information might be sought concerning many special points, it still seems legitimate to form a general survey and to draw certain conclusions.
Turning back to the earliest period when Christianity with its new conceptions first came into contact with beliefs dating from a distant heathen era, we have seen how many sentiments and associations of ideas peculiar to pre-Christian times lived on and were absorbed into the new religion. The early representatives of Christianity, with a keen-sighted appreciation of the means by which a change of religion is most successfully effected, treated the older conceptions with tolerance, and by doing so made possible the establishment of new ideas in the old heathen setting. The legends and the cult of the saints contain a mine of wealth as yet little explored by the student of primitive civilization and folk-lore, a mine which has here been tapped at one vein only,—namely for the information it yields on the antiquity of beliefs which attach to certain women who are reckoned among the saints.
Passing from the ground of tradition to that of history we have seen how the convent was looked upon with favour by women of the newly converted barbarian races, and how readily they availed themselves of the protection which the Christian religion held out to them. This development also needed to be studied side by side with previous social conditions in order to stand out in its true light, and it gained a new meaning when considered in connection with the elements of older folk tradition which it absorbed. The representatives of Christianity, profiting by a surviving love of independence among womankind, turned the energies of women into new channels, and giving scope to their activity in new directions, secured their help in the cause of peaceful progress. The outward conditions of life were such that the woman who joined the convent made her decision once for all. But provided she agreed to forego the claims of family and sex, an honourable independence was secured to her, and she was brought into contact with the highest aims of her age. At a period when monasteries, placed in the remote and uncultivated districts, radiated peace and civilization throughout the neighbourhood, many women devoted themselves to managing settlements which in the standard they attained, vied in excellence with the settlements managed by men.
At the outset many married women left their husbands for the purpose of founding and governing convents; sometimes they founded convents the management of which they left to others, and themselves retired to them later in life. The prestige and advantages enjoyed by the heads of religious settlements were such that kings and queens frequently installed their daughters as abbesses in preference to seeking for them matrimonial alliances, and these princesses were joined by many daughters of the most influential families, who gladly availed themselves of the opportunity of embracing the religious vocation. Through their close contact with high-born women, convents maintained a high tone in manners, morals and general behaviour, and grew into important educational centres, the beneficent influence of which was generally recognised.
The career open to the inmates of convents both in England and on the continent was greater than any other ever thrown open to women in the course of modern European history; abilities might raise the nun to the rank of abbess, a position of substantial authority. In the Kentish charter, to which reference has been made, the names of the abbesses as representatives of religion follow those of the bishops. In Saxony it fell to an abbess to act as representative of the emperor during his absence. As independent landowners, who held their property of and from king and emperor, the abbess took rank with the lords temporal and spiritual in the right of jurisdiction which they exercised, and in the right of being represented in Parliament or at the Imperial Diet as the case might be.