CHARITAS PIRKHEIMER.[72]
“Good and evil fortune are to a brave man as his right hand and his left: he uses either equally well.”—Saying of S. Catherine of Sienna.
Charitas Pirkheimer, the eldest daughter of John Pirkheimer and Barbara Löffelholz, was born on the 21st of March, 1466. Her family was a distinguished one in the annals of Nuremberg, her native town, one of those old free cities of Germany whose burghers, as Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., once said, were better lodged and more daintily fed than the kings of Scotland. Among the citizens of Nuremberg there was a kind of prescriptive aristocracy or patriciate composed of those families technically called “Rathsfähig”—that is, capable of being elected members of the ruling body or council of the little republic. Of those whose names occur again and again in this history one of the most ancient was that of the Pirkheimer, who, for at least a hundred and fifty years before the birth of Charitas, had been celebrated for their learning, piety, and statesmanship. Upright and honorable in their private life, as well as in the execution of their public trusts, they were looked up to by all, and their women no less than their men were distinguished for strength of character, love of learning, and solid, enlightened piety.
Nuremberg was at that time a centre of art and letters. Her youths went to Italy and studied at the old universities of Padua and Bologna, whence they brought back the prevailing enthusiasm for classical lore; the new art of printing had found in her citizens discerning
patrons; the streets were full of the beautiful houses of the rich merchants; churches and monasteries adorned with treasures of sacred art abounded, as even to this day the passing tourist can see; Albert Dürer, Adam Krafft, and Peter Vischer made their native city known far and wide in the world of art; while Regiomontanus drew his astronomical instruments from Nuremberg and published his works there, and his disciple, Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger by birth, discovered the sea-route to the East Indies. Literature was even more firmly established, and John Pirkheimer himself instituted a sort of academy after the model of those of the Italian princes. Wilibald, his only son and the last of his name, continued his work and became famous as the friend or patron of nearly all the renowned men of learning of his time.
Among these refining influences Charitas grew up, and early showed her enthusiasm for “polite” studies. The historians of Nuremberg, Lützelberger and Dr. Lochner, both Protestants, have left high testimony of the breadth of her intellect and the great consideration in which she was held by men of all parties. The latter calls her “a gifted, enlightened, pious, and prudent woman, who has conferred lasting honor on the Convent of St. Clare,” and who “deserves a high degree of respect for the firmness and dignity with which she withstood the storm of the Reformation, which to her and her community was a sorrowful event.” Lützelberger, in a lecture delivered at Nuremberg, said to his Protestant audience:
“The Reformation was a deep grief to her pious heart, accustomed as it was to the gentle amenities of convent life, and, if we would judge her aright, we must
put ourselves entirely in her circumstances. But this done, she will appear to us peculiarly worthy of respect and consideration as a gifted and conscientious opponent of the new religion.… Both by speech and in writing did she oppose all attempts to convert her; and even if we differ from her, we cannot but admire her earnest conviction, her prudence and understanding, and especially the patience which she added to her other virtues.”
Her father, John, was at the time of her birth a doctor of civil law (the degree had been conferred at the University of Padua), and was shortly after called to the service of the Bishop of Eichstädt, William of Reichenau, as counsellor, in which capacity he also for some years served the Duke of Bavaria and the Archduke of Austria at their respective courts at Munich and Innsbrück. He was also often sent as envoy and representative to other courts, after which services he returned to his native city and died there, a member of the council. Of his seven daughters only one married—Juliana, the youngest; the rest all took the veil. Charitas and Clara were joined in a lifelong friendship in the Convent of St. Clare in Nuremberg. By all accounts the former seems to have entered the convent at the age of twelve, whether as a novice or a scholar we are not told. The convent had existed as a Clarist institution for two hundred years, when some nuns of Söflingen, near Ulm, had introduced the Franciscan rule; but the building, which was several centuries old, had been tenanted before by a community of Sisters of St. Mary Magdalen. All the nuns, with very few exceptions, were Nurembergers by birth and descent (this was a condition of their admittance); and as each generation of every illustrious family was represented
by one or two members, the convent had become peculiarly a cherished local institution, whose welfare was closely connected with that of the town. One of the council was charged with its temporal concerns, and gifts and bequests were often made to it by the citizens. It was also the school where the young girls of patrician family were mostly educated.