‘The next entry I find,’ said he, ‘is in 1324, and the good armourer, in much excitement, begins with an exclamation.
1324. July. St. Kylian’s Day.—What a day this has been! Strasburg, and all the states which adhere to Louis, are placed under the bann. The bells were ringing merrily at early morning; now, the Interdict is proclaimed, and every tongue of them is silent. As the news flew round, every workman quitted his work. The busy stalls set out on either side of the streets were left empty. The tools and the wares lay unlooked at and untouched. The bishop and the clergy of his party, and most of the Dominicans, keep out of sight. My men are furious. I have been all day from house to house, and group to group, telling the people to keep a good heart. We shall have a sad time of it, I see. It is so hard for the poor creatures to shake off a fear in which they have been cradled.
The clergy and the monks will pour out of Strasburg, as out of a Sodom, in shoals. A mere handful will stay behind,—not nearly enough to christen those who will be born and to shrive those who will die in this populous city. They may name their price: the greedy of gain may make their fortunes. The miserable poor will die, numbers of them, in horror, unable to purchase absolution. And then, out of the few priests who do remain, scarcely any will have the courage to disobey the pope, and, despite the Interdict, say mass.
’Tis an anxious time for either party. Louis has most of the states on his side, and the common voice, in all the towns of the Rhineland—(in the princely Cologne most of all), is, I hear, loud in his favour. The Minorites will be with him, and all of that sort among the friars, who have little favour to lose with his Holiness. But France is with the Pope against him; Duke Leopold is a doughty adversary; John of Bohemia restless and fickle, and no doubt the Pope will set on the Polacks and pagan Lithuanians to waste most horribly all the north and eastern frontiers. Since the victory of Mühldorf, Frederick has lain in prison. That battle is the grievance. The enemies of the Emperor are more full of rancour than ever. Yet, with all the mischief it may bring in the present, what lover of the Fatherland can sorrow therefor? Gallant little Schweppermann, with his lame foot and grey hair, and his glorious two eggs, long may he live to do other such deeds![[96]] Louis holds a high spirit at present, and goes about under the bann with a brave heart. But it is only the outset as yet. I much fear me he may lack the staunchness to go through as he has begun. There is store of thunder behind at Avignon. Methinks he hankers, like a child, mainly after the lance and sword and crown of Charlemagne, to dress him out perfectly withal King of the Romans, and seeth not the full bearing of the very war he wages.
We shall not be idle. It is already proposed to send off troops to the aid of Louis. I have half a mind to go myself; but home can ill spare me now, and I render the Emperor more service by such little influence as I have in Strasburg. To-morrow, to consult about the leagues to be formed with neighbouring towns and with the Swiss burghers, to uphold the good cause together.
1326. March. St. Gregory’s Day.—Duke Leopold died here yesterday, at the Ochsenstein Palace.[[97]] After ravaging the suburbs of Spires, he came hither in a raging fever to breathe his last. The bishop told him he must pardon the Landgrave of Lower Alsace from the bottom of his heart. They say he struggled long and wrathfully against the condition, till, finding the bishop firm in refusing absolution on other terms, he gave way. But, just as he was about to receive the host, a fit of vomiting came on, wherein he presently expired, without the sacrament after all.
Frederick has been now at liberty some months. Louis visited him in his prison. To think of their having been together all their boyhood, and loving each other so, to meet thus! Frederick the Handsome, haggard with a three years’ imprisonment—his beard down to his waist; and Louis, successful and miserable. They say Frederick cut off his beard at first, and sent it, by way of memorial, to John of Bohemia, and that when he went back to his castle he found his young wife had wept herself blind during his captivity. He swore on the holy wafer to renounce his claim to the empire. The Pope released him from his oath soon after, but he keeps his word like knight, not like priest, and holds to it yet. It is whispered that they have agreed to share the throne. But that can never be brought to pass.
Heard to-day, by a merchant, of Hermann.[[98]] He is travelling through Spain. I miss him much. Before he left Strasburg he was full of Eckart’s doctrine, out of all measure admiring the wonderful man, and hoarding every word that dropped from his lips. Eckart is now sick at Cologne, among his sorrowing disciples. Grieved to hear that the leeches say he hath not long to live.
A long conversation with Henry of Nördlingen.[[99]] He has journeyed hither, cast down and needy, to ask counsel of Tauler. Verily he needs counsel, but hath not strength of mind to take it when given. Tauler says Henry has many friends among the excellent of the earth; all love him, and he is full of love, but sure a pitiful sight to see. His heart is with us. He mourns over the trouble of the time. He weeps for the poor folk, living and dying without the sacraments. But the Interdict crushes his soul. Now he has all but gathered heart to do as Tauler doth—preach and labour on, unmoved by all this uproar, but anon his courage is gone, and he falls back into his fear again as soon as he is left alone. He sits and pores over those letters of spiritual consolation which Margaret Ebner has written to him. He says sometimes she alone retains him on the earth. Verily I fear me that, priest as he is, some hopeless earthly love mingles with his friendship for that saintly woman. He has had to flee from his home for refusing to perform service. Strasburg, in that case, can be no abiding place for him. I see nothing before him but a wretched wandering, perhaps for years. I cannot get him to discern the malice of Pope John, rather than the wrath of heaven, in the curse that withers us. I gave him a full account of what the Pope’s court at Avignon truly is, as I gathered from a trusty eye-witness, late come from thence, whom I questioned long the other day.[[100]] I told him that gold was the one true god there—our German wealth, wrung out from us, and squandered on French courtiers, players, buffoons, and courtezans—Christ sold daily for it—the palace full of cardinals and prelates, grey-haired debauchees and filthy mockers, to a man—accounting chastity a scandal, and the soul’s immortality and coming judgment an old wife’s fable;—yea, simony, adultery, murder, incest, so frequent and unashamed, that the Frenchmen themselves do say the Pope’s coming hath corrupted them. I asked him if these were the hands to take up God’s instruments of wrath to bruise with them his creatures? But all in vain. There is an awfulness in the very name of Pope which blinds reason and strikes manhood down, in him, as in thousands more.