HOW THE CHURCH UNDERSTANDS AND UPHOLDS THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
FOURTH AND LAST ARTICLE.
THE MIDDLE AGES.
It has been asserted by women in the present day that the state needs salvation and reform, and that through their use of the political franchise this end will be mainly accomplished. Perhaps they think that no state was ever in such danger before, and that they themselves are the pioneers of an order of things entirely new, under unprecedented circumstances. They should study history to see whether they really are without predecessors. What would they say to Genevieve, the shepherdess of Nanterre, the heroine of the sixth century, the woman of whom St. Germanus said, while giving her the veil of virginity and the honorary title of deaconess, “This woman will one day be a joy and an example even to men”? What would they say to her bravery and daring when, during the siege of Paris by the barbarian and heathen Franks (it was before their conversion by Queen Clotildis), Genevieve alone encouraged the affrighted peasantry, and promised relief to the threatened city? She had supplies transported by means of river-boats to the besieged, and for ten years, while the ever-renewed alarms of desultory attacks from the Franks continued, she succeeded in sparing Paris the horrors of a famine. When the barbarian chief, Childeric, at last entered the town, Genevieve interceded so successfully in behalf of the inhabitants that none of them were molested.
Every one knows the history of Joan of Arc, over whom more passionate recriminations have been flung at each other by rival historians than any other woman, save Mary, Queen of Scots, has provoked. The general and unbiassed verdict of the greater portion of the public in general has coincided with the national decision of patriotic Frenchmen. As a heroine, her name will go down to all ages, and she has earned her fame well, but how? Do any of her biographers say she was bold and unwomanly, a fast and dashing beauty, or a reckless adventuress? No; for they tell us she was modest in her demeanor, fond of being with and talking to little children, very sparing of her own comfort, but lavish of her poor means for others, ready and willing to keep the flocks, and to help her family in tilling the soil. Divinely warned of her coming mission, she was yet most reluctant to put herself forward, and required much pressing from her spiritual superiors to induce her to act upon the heaven-sent suggestions. It would take us too long to follow her through her unparalleled career; but one thing strikes us as foremost in all the vicissitudes of her successful military life—her extreme gravity and majesty, shielding her love of chastity. All the doctors of the University of Poitiers concurred, at the express desire of King Charles VII. of France, in a strict examination of her previous life and character, and it was chiefly her spotless reputation of virtue that inclined them to believe in her mission. During her camp life she never neglected her daily religious duties; the oldest and gravest veterans were her only companions and advisers, and after nightfall she never, on any pretext, consented to converse with a man. Before she had taken command of the army the French had been invariably beaten by the English in every encounter; after her accession to the supreme command, her countrymen were as invariably victorious. Her enemies laughed at the girl-general, but, strong in her faith, Joan of Arc overcame the scoffers. When she had taken Orleans, her first order was that all immoral women who had surreptitiously followed in the ranks of her soldiers should be summarily dismissed, as it was only to punish such licentiousness that God had allowed those great misfortunes to come upon France. Between Orleans and Rheims there were several towns and forts to be wrested from the English; Joan intrepidly attacked and reduced them, while Rheims itself surrendered without a blow. The young virgin follows the king to the cathedral, where he is crowned and anointed, and in a few days, so great is the moral influence of her undaunted and triumphant patriotism, that many other towns, and Paris itself, submit to the legitimate authority of Charles VII., and France is saved. On the principles of modern strategists, a patent of nobility, an alliance with the crown, a grant of broad estates, would have been hardly sufficient for the ambitious saviour of her country; but Joan of Arc, hardly was the king reinstated in his realm, begged leave to retire into her former solitude, insisting with mournful eagerness that “her mission was over.” She neither coveted nor asked any reward; such as were offered she refused. Against her own better judgment, but according to the king’s command, she continued to lead his armies, though she was no longer buoyed up by her former joyous confidence in the promises divinely made to her. God has tried her by the severe test of adversity, and she showed herself as eagle-spirited under her reverses as she had been in her prosperity. Betrayed by her own countrymen into the hands of her enemies, she suffered incredible indignities, but never raised her voice in self-defense, save when her honor was questioned or attacked. Solicitous only for her precious treasure of consecrated virginity, she looked death fearlessly in the face, and mounted the scaffold calling in a firm voice on God and his saints. She would be called by no title save “La Pucelle,” that is, “Joan the Virgin.” An aide-de-camp, John of Aulon, who was constantly near her during her campaigns, often said that he believed no purer woman breathed than Joan of Arc. Ventura draws attention to her extraordinary activity and bodily endurance, her long fasts and severe abnegation. He says that she was a phenomenon, but that, although her rare combination of qualities seemed almost a miracle in any single human being, yet such qualities are quite reconcilable in perfect womanhood. He says she was “brave as a warrior, and tender as a mother; wise as an old man, learned as a doctor, and simple as a child; pure as an angel, and redoubtable as a great conqueror.”[107]
Many historians thought it worth their while to treat in detail of her life and career: Fleury and Rohrbacher, in their Ecclesiastical History; Lebrun Charmette, in his Life of Joan of Arc; Jules Quicherat, in his work on her trial, condemnation, and rehabilitation; Guido Görres, in his German life of her; Voltaire, in his cowardly Maid of Orleans. She has been made into a representative character, and stood in Voltaire’s eyes for the Catholic Church and the Catholic tradition concerning woman. Görres mentions the eulogium pronounced upon her by an envoy of the Bishop of Spires, who plainly calls her the messenger of heaven and saviour of France.
It has been noticed that France during the middle ages was the most civilized of nations. It was because the spirit of chivalry had made greater progress among the French, and the spirit of chivalry sprang from the deeper source of religious enthusiasm. The spirit that dictated the crusades was the same that exalted woman; the respect for woman and the duty of a knight to protect the sex, even those of it who were unknown to him or those whom the fortune of war had placed in his power, were lessons learned in childhood and inculcated at the same time as fidelity to his religion and loyalty to his sovereign. In every woman a knight recognized a queen: the elder were to him the image of his mother, the younger of his sister; in every female form he reverently saw the similitude of the great Virgin, “whose Son shall be called Emanuel—God with us.” And in order that such should be the attitude of man towards woman, woman was educated in a manner that should make her deserve such homage.
Think not, sisters of our utilitarian age, that our ancestresses were ignorant and foolish women, swayed by the dictates of cunning priests, and kept as toys to beguile the idle hours of rough warriors. Their education, unlike our modern uniform regulations, was varied and suited to their talents; some cultivated learning, others the arts, many were skilful in medicine, especially in the use of herbs, and the treatment of wounds. The fairy embroidery that we hear so much extolled was not their only accomplishment: they could spin for all useful household purposes, and work for the poor of their neighborhood, which home manufacture was a great saving of both time and money. They were often elegant poets, and indeed frequently carried off prizes in rhyming contests. The “Jeux Floraux” of Toulouse, one of the great mediæval institutions of Provence, were established by a learned and accomplished lady of noble lineage, Clémence Isaure, herself a poetess of no little merit. The prize, we believe, was generally a golden violet, and was awarded every year to the successful competitor, whether man or woman. Tournaments owe all their romance to the presence and influence of woman, without which they would have fallen to the level of the brutal Roman games of old. The beneficial influence exerted by the women of the old feudal families, who always remained on their own estates and cultivated relations of mutual kindliness with their poorer neighbors and vassals, resulted in the unique spectacle of the Vendean insurrection, in which peasants and nobles were leagued together against the misguided satellites of “Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality.” Elsewhere, throughout France, women had become court puppets, and lived in Paris as absentees from their property, where iniquitous agents oppressed their tenants in their name; court favor and patronage, a rivalry of frivolous gossip and scandalous adventures, had displaced in their imaginations the noble but obscure triumphs of the Lady of the Manor surrounded by her “children,” as she terms her dependants; corruption, first sown by the influence of the German Reformation, then fostered by the growing infidelity of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had insinuated itself into the world of women, and through them had spread to the whole system of society. The last spark of the spirit of chivalry shone out in the determined stand made by the Breton peasantry against the invasion of principles that held nothing sacred and taught no authority save that of force. But what a grand testimony to the influence of woman was the downfall and disorganization that followed the French Revolution, and under the ruins of which they are still half-buried! When woman wishes to take up again her ancient crown, her true, “divine right,” she has but to stretch her hand across the chasm of ’89 and the great breach of the sixteenth century, and resume, with the sacred respect of home duties and the reverence towards consecrated and voluntary chastity, the sceptre of undisputed sway so triumphantly wielded by Joan of Arc, Catharine of Sienna, Hedwige of Poland, and Mathilda of Tuscany.
Among the religious of various orders to whom the Christian world looks up with well-merited veneration is the Blessed Juliana, a Hospitaller nun of the diocese of Liege. It was through the revelations made to her in prayer, and through her repeated entreaties, that the feast of Corpus Christi was first instituted, one of the most essentially Catholic feasts of the calendar. In 1266, it was first celebrated at Liege, but its observance was discontinued in consequence of the machinations of a hostile clique. In 1264, Pope Urban IV. solemnly approved and instituted it, and commanded the great doctor Thomas Aquinas to compose an office for it. This office is the same used by the church to-day. Juliana herself was dead, but her friend and companion, Eva, had not failed to continue her work, and the Pope himself did not disdain to send her a special copy of the Bull of Institution, with a letter in which he refers the accomplishment of the great work to her and her deceased friend. Ventura gives us lists of holy prelates whose mothers formed and educated them to virtue and sanctity, but mentions especially the aid afforded Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, by his female co-laborers. Lioba, the chief of these, was a noble Saxon lady, and was educated at Winburn, in England. Eadburge, an abbess, sent Boniface many presents of clothes and other necessaries for his expedition to Germany, and also, says Ventura, many manuscript copies of the Bible to distribute them among his neophytes. Lioba was well versed in Latin, and could write verses in that language. Boniface begged her superiors to let her go to Germany, to establish, says Butler, “sanctuaries and nurseries of religion for persons of her sex in the infant Church of Germany.” Prudent, zealous, and learned, she soon founded house after house of fervent nuns, and spread the blessings of education over the hitherto barbarian lands she visited. “Kings and princes,” continues Butler, “respected and honored her.... Charlemagne often sent for her to his court of Aix-la-Chapelle, and treated her with the highest veneration. His queen, Hildegardis, took her advice in the most weighty concerns.... St. Boniface, a little before his mission into Friesland and his martyrdom there, recommended her in the most earnest manner to St. Lullus and his monks at Fulda, entreating them to have care of her with respect and honor.” She died in extreme old age in the year 779. “Her education,” says Ventura, “embraced civil and canon law, theology and philosophy, natural sciences and literature, and, in some measure, the art of government.” Rohrbacher says “that it would have been desirable had all the clergy of Germany possessed the knowledge of St. Lioba, for many of them were ignorant to the point of not knowing how to administer the sacrament of baptism.” Three centuries later, Hildegardis, a noble German lady, vindicated the claims of her sex to the most sublime of gifts. Intellectually endowed and gifted with great firmness of character, she became the mother and foundress of the monastery of St. Rupert, in the Rhine provinces, where kings and statesmen repaired to her for advice and instruction. The revelations received by her, after being most rigorously examined by a council assembled at Treves, were solemnly approved by Pope Eugene III., assisted by St. Bernard. Rohrbacher calls her “the St. Bernard among women.” Her correspondence was immense, and her writings have been collected and published with care. In the thirteenth century, Gertrude and Mechtildis, of noble Saxon descent, claim our attention. They were sisters, and both governed immense monasteries. Alban Butler says of the former: “In her youth she studied Latin, as it was then customary for all nuns to do; she wrote and conversed in that language, and was versed in sacred literature.... How much soever she gave herself up to contemplation, she neglected not the duties of Martha, and was very solicitous in attending to the necessities of every one.... Her short book of Divine Insinuations is perhaps the most useful production, next to the writings of St. Teresa, with which any female saint ever enriched the church.” Her prayers to the Sacred Heart show how this characteristic devotion, afterwards perfected and made public by another holy woman, Mary Margaret Alacocque, first presented itself to a woman’s mind, and found a home in a woman’s heart.