Atherton. Our fourteenth century, so full of mysticism both in East and West, has some other mystical products to show, principally of the visionary, theurgic species. There is St. Brigitta, a widow of rank, leaving her Swedish pine forests to visit Palestine, and after honouring with a pilgrimage every shrine and relic in southern Europe, fixing her residence at Rome, to the great pecuniary advantage of the faithful there. She writes a discourse on the Blessed Virgin at the dictation of an angel, who visited her punctually for the purpose: indites bombastic invocations to the eyes, ears, hair, chin, &c., of the Saviour; and ditto to ditto of the Virgin; and, what was not quite so bad, gives to the world a series of revelations and prophecies, in which the vices of popes and prelates are lashed unsparingly, and threatened with speedy judgment.[[180]]
Willoughby. It would be interesting to trace this series of reformatory prophets, male and female. From the twelfth to the close of the fifteenth century there is a succession of them, called forth by the hideousness of ecclesiastical corruption—Hildegard, Joachim, Brigitta, Savonarola.
Gower. Do not forget Dante.
Atherton. You hear them all executing variations, plaintive or indignant, menacing or despairing, on the old and never antiquated theme—
Curia Romana non petit ovem sine lanâ,
Dantes exaudit, non dantibus ostia claudit.
Gower. And, to silence these complaints, the Church found inquisitors and censors of service, but most of all—her pattern children—those enthusiasts whose painful labours were employed to quiet the croaking, much as the lord in old feudal times would often exercise his right of compelling a vassal to spend a night or two in beating the waters of the ponds, to stop the frog-chorus there, and procure his master an easy sleep. Obedient enthusiasm toils all night that cardinals may snore.
Atherton. Angela de Foligni, who made herself miserable—I must say something the converse of flourished—about the beginning of the fourteenth century, was a fine model pupil of this sort, a genuine daughter of St. Francis. Her mother, her husband, her children dead, she is alone and sorrowful. She betakes herself to violent devotion—falls ill—suffers incessant anguish from a complication of disorders—has rapturous consolations and terrific temptations—is dashed in a moment from a seat of glory above the empyrean to a depth so low that the floor of hell might be its zenith. She tells us how, on her way to Assisi, the Saviour addressed her, called her his love, his sweet, his joy; and manifested himself within her soul as he had never done to evangelist or apostle. On one occasion, her face shone with a divine glory, her eyes were as flaming lamps; on another, a star proceeded from her side, broke into a thousand beautiful colours, and glided upwards into the sky.[[181]]
Willoughby. A notable example of mystical pyrotechny.
Atherton. Her etherialised olfactories were gratified by odours of indescribable fragrance; and to her exalted taste, the consecrated wafer became almost insupportably delicious. Visions and ecstasies by scores are narrated from her lips in the wretched Latin of Arnold the Minorite. All is naught! The flattest and most insipid reading in the world—from first to last a repetition of the old stock phrase, ‘feelings more readily imagined than described.’ She concludes every account by saying, ‘No words can describe what I enjoyed;’ and each rapture is declared to surpass in bliss all the preceding.