[175]. Leben, cap. liii. p. 148. See Note, p. 357.
[176]. Schröckh’s Kirchengeschichte, vol. xxxiv. pp. 431-450.
[177]. See Die Mystik des Nikolaus Cabasilas vom Leben in Christo, von Dr. W. Gass (1849).—In this work, Dr. Gass publishes, for the first time, the Greek text of the seven books, De Vita in Christo, with an able introduction. The authority for this summary of the theological tendency of Cabasilas will be found, pp. 210-224.
[178]. The Masters speak of two faces the soul hath. The one face is turned towards this world. The other face is turned direct toward God. In this latter face shineth and gloweth God eternally, whether man is ware or unaware thereof.
[179]. Schmidt’s Tauler, pp. 205, &c.—Mosheim gives the passage in Nieder relating the apprehension and death of Nicholas:—‘Acutissimus enim erat (says this authority) et idcirco manus Inquisitorum diu evaserat.’—Mosheim de Beghardis et Beguinabus, cap. iv. § 42, p. 454.
[180]. See Revelationes Selectæ S. Brigittæ (Heuser, 1851).—This is a selection for the edification of good Catholics, and contains accordingly the most Mariolatrous and least important of her writings. Rudelbach gives some specimens of her spirited rebuke of papal iniquity in his Savonarola, pp. 300, &c. In her prophetic capacity she does not hesitate to call the pope a murderer of souls, and to declare him and his greedy prelates forerunners of Antichrist. She says,—‘If a man comes to them with four wounds, he goes away with five.’ Like Savonarola, she placed her sole hope of reform in a general council.
A common mode of self-mortification with her found an imitator in Madame Guyon:—the Swede dropped the wax of lighted tapers on her bare flesh, and carried gentian in her mouth—Vita, p. 6. The Frenchwoman burned herself with hot sealing-wax in the same manner, and chewed a quid of coloquintida.
The Revelationes de Vitâ et Passione Jesu Christi et gloriosæ Virginis, contain a puerile and profane account of the birth, childhood, and death of our Lord, in the style of the apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy, professedly conveyed in conversations with the authoress by the Mother and her Son. The Virgin tells her, in reference to her Son,—‘quomodo neque aliqua immunditia ascendit super eum;’ and that his hair was never in a tangle—(nec perplexitas in capillise jus apparuit).
[181]. ‘Angela de Foligni.’ See Beatæ Angelæ Fulginio Visionum et Instructionum Liber; (recens. J. H. Lammertz; Cologne, 1851.)—The account of the wonderful star is given by Arnold in his Prologue, p. 12. At one time it is promised by the Lord that the ‘whole Trinity shall enter into her,’ (capit. xx.); at another, she is transported into the midst of the Trinity.—(Capit. xxxii.) In chapter after chapter of monotonous inflation, she wearies and disappoints the curious reader by declaring her ‘abysses of delectation and illumination’ altogether unutterable,—such as language profanes rather than expresses—‘inenarrabiles,’ ‘indicibiles,’ &c. So the miraculous taste of the host to her favoured palate was not like bread or flesh, but a ‘sapor sapidissimus,’—like nothing that can be named.—Capit. xl.
The following act of saintship we give in the original, lest in English it should act on delicate readers as an emetic. She speaks of herself and a sister ascetic:—‘Lavimus pedes feminarum ibi existentium pauperum, et manus hominum, et maxime cujusdam leprosi, qui habebat manus valde fœtidas et marcidas et præpeditas et corruptas; et bibimus de illâ loturâ. Tantam autem dulcedinem sensimus in illo potu, quod per totam viam venimus in magnâ suavitate, et videbatur mihi per omnia quod ego gustassem mirabilem dulcedinem, quantum ad suavitatem quam ibi inveni. Et quia quædam squamula illarum plagarum erat interposita in gutture meo, conata sum ad diglutiendum eam, sicut si communicassem, donec deglutivi eam. Unde tantam suavitatem inveni in hoc, quod eam non possum exprimere.’—Capit. l. p. 176.