While the boys were undergoing that thorough course of physical training, and practising the Seven “Brumicheiten,” which correspond in the education of the future Knight to the Seven Liberal Arts in the education of the future cleric—riding, swimming, running, jumping, wrestling, shooting with bow and arrow, and hunting—the girls had also their physical exercises, carefully designed to develop the grace of the body. Much attention was paid to deportment. To walk with great strides, to swing one’s arms, to sit with one’s legs crossed, to take the initiative in addressing a strange man, to look at him boldly, to speak loud, to laugh noisily, were all great offences against “Zucht.” A girl was drilled to walk gracefully, with downcast eyes, to hold her mantle on her breast with a certain gesture, to lift her train with another. She had, moreover, to learn to ride, to tame falcons, and to acquire the ritual and language of the chase.
Book-learning for a woman was held of more importance than for a man. Little Elizabeth must have been stirred to great efforts in this direction by her eagerness to read the beautiful psalter which she loved to open in her frequent visits to the chapel. The old chaplain who taught her had no difficulty with her. When she had learned to read, she had a whole new world open to her, which, alas! is closed to us now. For which of us can Natural History have the same appeal, for instance, as for one who studied it in the fascinating pages of the “Physiologus”?
The Middle Ages did not lay a very great stress on the school-room as a factor of education. A great part of the training of boys and girls was got by what I might call the system of “direct apprenticeship to life.” Elizabeth and Agnes were being trained for the noble profession of wife and mother, Christian Châtelaine and great lady. They were early set to acquire the womanly arts and crafts, spinning, and tapestry, and embroidery. In the garden, where sweet-scented flowers and herbs were cultivated, they gathered simples, and made them, under skilled guidance, into unguents and potions. They took their places in the hall, and had the privilege of hearing the best poetry the period produced. They followed the direction of the great world-currents of the century from the talk of the travellers who claimed the Wartburg hospitality—returned crusaders, and pilgrims, or wandering scholars from some of the universities which were just then springing up. And once upon a time two men came to the Wartburg, two men in grey habits, with bare feet and a cord around their waist. And the story they had to tell was of the “Poor Little Man” of Assisi, their master! Oh! story to be remembered by Elizabeth through all her life!
It was never the custom of Duchess Sophia to keep her girls shut up in the women’s apartments. We are constantly meeting her and them, making the long descent from the Wartburg to the town of Eisenach. Sometimes it would be to take their part in a church festival; sometimes, perhaps, to listen to the preaching of a “Kreuzzug prediger,” and sometimes for that direct training in Christian Charity, which was so characteristic of the Middle Ages. There was no hiding away of the poor in those days in their own slums. They displayed themselves, and their sores, and their nakedness at the doors of Princes, and claimed the noblest as their servants. So Duchess Sophia and her girls went into the huts of the poorest, and tended them like sisters.
And all this time the great realities of life were playing their part in Elizabeth’s education. She had hardly been two years in the Wartburg when the dreadful news of her mother’s assassination was brought to her. Was she too young, little six-year-old girl that she was, fully to understand?
But on the Saint Sylvester Day of the year 1216, another blow befell, not her alone, but all those who dwelt on the Wartburg—young Hermann, her betrothed, died suddenly, and amid the wailing of the “Media Vita,” which surrounded the bier of his son, Duke Hermann lost his reason. For a year he sat in darkness and the shadow of death, murmuring ever the terrible psalm: “In the Midst of Life we are in Death.” He died in the year following, 1217. He was laid to rest in the convent he had founded, and young Ludwig reigned in his stead.
What was to become of Elizabeth? There were many who said, “let her be sent back to her father. The Arpad rule is weakening in Hungary, as witness Queen Gertrude’s murder. Her dowry, too, hath never been paid in full.” Duchess Sophia was of this way of thinking. She was nervous and irritable after the terrible strain of her husband’s illness, and the shock of her son’s death.
But there were two people who were determined that justice should be done to the little stranger, who had left home and kindred, on the promise of becoming, one day, Landgräfin of Thuringia. One of these two was old Walther of Varilla, who had brought her from her Hungarian home, and watched over her tenderly ever since.
The other was Landgraf Ludwig, into whose heart she had stolen, all unknown, when she was a tiny girl; and whose chivalrous soul could not bear to inflict an ignominy on her.
So it came to pass that, in the Burgkapelle, whither Elizabeth had turned so often from her play, she stood one day with her hand in Ludwig’s, and plighted her eternal troth.