Kitabı oku: «Woman under Monasticism», sayfa 36
Penance in its extreme form was undergone by the convent (p. 311), but as Cusanus persistently denied to Sigmund the right of appointing a new abbess, many letters passed before the conditions of peace were settled and ratified. The correspondence, as Jäger remarks (p. 315), throws an interesting light on the character of the women concerned. Verena, who throughout maintained a proud dignity, retired from the convent on a pension; Afra, who had resorted to various intrigues, finally renounced all claims, and Barbara Schöndorfer came over from Brixen and was installed as abbess.
Thus ended the quarrel about the privileges of Sonnenburg, which lasted six years and led to the curtailment of many of its rights. The story proves the inability of convents to preserve their independence, and shows how their weakness was made the excuse for interference from without to the detriment of the abbess in her position as landowner.
It remains to enquire how far the improvements effected in monastic life by peaceful and by forcible means were lasting, and in what position the nunnery stood at the beginning of the 16th century.
Some valuable information is given on the general state of monasticism by a number of addresses delivered by Tritheim, abbot of Sponheim († 1516), before the assembled chapter of Benedictine abbots between 1490 and 14921035. Tritheim takes high rank among the older humanists; he was an enlightened man according to the notions of his age, and collected a wonderful and comprehensive library of books in many languages at Sponheim. His interest in necromancy afterwards brought reproach on him and he left his convent, but at the time when he pleaded before the assembled abbots he was full of enthusiasm for his order and full of regrets concerning it. In his address ‘on the ruin of the Benedictine order,’ he pointed out how effectually the Bursfeld and other congregations had worked in the past, but the beneficial results they effected had passed away and little of their influence remained. If only those who are vowed to religion, says Tritheim, would care more for learning, which has been made so much more accessible by the invention of printing, the outlook would not be so utterly hopeless.
In these addresses Tritheim takes no account of nunneries, but we can discover his attitude towards nuns in an address to a convent1036, the keynote of which is that the women assembled there should cultivate love, lowliness and patience under tribulation. The address is gentle and dignified, but it shows that Tritheim, in common with other men of the time, attached importance to nunneries chiefly for the piety they cultivated. His belief in this respect is shared by the zealous reformer Geiler von Kaisersberg († 1500), who preached many sermons before the nuns of the convents of St Mary Magdalen (Reuerinnen), and of St Stephan at Strasburg, and who likewise saw the beauty of a nun’s vocation only in her devotional and contemplative attitude. We gather from his sermons, many of which are preserved in the form in which they were written out by nuns1037, that a clear line of demarcation existed in his mind between reformed and unreformed convents, and that while emphatic in denouncing the ungodly ways of the inmates of unreformed houses, life in a reformed house was comparable in his eyes to Paradise. Geiler’s efforts as a reformer were so far crowned by success that the convent of St Mary Magdalen to which he had devoted his efforts, outlived the attacks to which it was exposed at the time of the Reformation.
The fact that Tritheim insists only on the devotional attitude of nuns is the more noticeable as he visited at the convent of Seebach, the abbess of which, Richmondis van der Horst, was equally praised for her own abilities and the superior tone she maintained in her convent. For instances were not wanting which show that intellectual tastes were still strong in some nunneries and that women living the convent life were themselves authors and took a certain amount of interest in the revival of classical learning, as we shall see later.
Thus Butzbach (called Premontanus, † 1526), a pupil of Hegius, who became a monk at Laach and was an admirer of Tritheim, was in correspondence with Aleydis Ruyskop († 1507), a nun at Rolandswerth, who had written seven homilies on St Paul in Latin and translated a German treatise on the mass into Latin. He dedicated to her his work on ‘Distinguished learned women,’ which he took from the work of the Italian Benedictine Jacopo of Bergamo, but from delicacy of feeling he omitted what Jacopo had inserted in praise of women’s influence as wives and mothers1038. In this work Butzbach compares Aleydis to Hrotsvith, to Hildegard and to Elisabeth of Schönau. He also wrote to Gertrud von Büchel, a nun who practised the art of painting at Rolandswerth, and he refers to Barbara Dalberg, niece of the bishop of Worms, who was a nun at Marienberg, and to Ursula Cantor, who, he declares, was without equal in her knowledge of theology.
But in spite of these instances and others, a growing indifference is apparent, both among the advocates of the new culture and in the outer world generally, to the intellectual occupation of women, and the training of girls. In their far-reaching plans for an improved system of education the humanists leave girls out of count, and dwell on their qualities of heart rather than on their qualities of mind. That the training of the mental faculties must be profitable in all cases for women does not occur to them, though the idea is advanced with regard to men.
At the close of the 15th century Wimpheling († 1528) wrote a work on matters of education entitled Germania. It is a conception of ideal citizenship, and in it he insists that the burghers of Strasburg must let their sons receive a higher education and learn Latin in the ‘gymnasium,’ of which he gives his plan, regardless of the vocation they intend to embrace. Only a short chapter1039 of the book refers to the training of girls. Their parents are cautioned against placing them in nunneries, which in the writer’s mind are little better than brothels. He advises their being trained at home for domestic life and made to spin and weave like the daughters of Augustus.
Similar tendencies are reflected in the works of Erasmus († 1536). His Colloquies or Conversations introduce us to a number of women under various aspects; and the want of purpose in convent life, the danger of masterfulness in wives, the anomalous position of loose women, and the general need there was of cultivating domestic qualities, are all in turn discussed.
Two Colloquies turn on the convent life of women. In the first1040 a girl of seventeen declares herself averse to matrimony, and expresses her intention of becoming a nun. The man who argues with her represents to her that if she be resolved to keep her maidenhood, she can do so by remaining with her parents and need not make herself from a free woman into a slave. ‘If you have a mind to read, pray or sing,’ he says, ‘you can go into your chamber as much and as often as you please. When you have enough of retirement, you can go to church, hear anthems, prayers, and sermons, and if you see any matron or virgin remarkable for piety in whose company you may get good, or any man who is endowed with singular probity from whom you can gain for your bettering, you can have their conversation, and choose the preacher who preaches Christ most purely. When once you are in the cloister, all these things, which are of great assistance in promoting true piety, you lose at once.’ And he enlarges on the formalities of convent life, ‘which of themselves signify nothing to the advancement of piety and make no one more acceptable in the eyes of Christ, who only looks to purity of mind.’ The girl asks him if he be against the institution of monastic life. He replies, ‘By no means. But as I will not persuade anyone against it who is already in it, so I would undoubtedly caution all young women, especially those of a generous temper, not to precipitate themselves unadvisedly into that state from which there is no getting out afterwards, and the more so because their chastity is more in danger in the cloister than out of it, and you may do whatever is done there as well at home.’
His arguments however are in vain; the girl goes into a convent. But the next Colloquy, called the ‘Penitent Virgin1041,’ describes how she changed her mind and came out again. She was intimidated by the nuns through feigned apparitions, and when she had been in the house six days she sent for her parents and declared that she would sooner die than remain there.
Another Colloquy1042 shows how masterfulness in a wife destroyed all possibility of domestic peace and happiness; yet another1043 how a woman of loose life was persuaded to adopt other ways on purely reasonable grounds. Again we have a young mother who is persuaded to tend her child herself, since the promotion of its bodily welfare does much towards saving its soul1044. The most striking illustration however of the fact that in the eyes of Erasmus the position of woman was changing is afforded by the ‘Parliament of Women1045,’ in which a great deal of talk leads to no result. Cornelia opens and closes the sitting, and urges that it is advisable that women should reconsider their position, for men, she says, are excluding women from all honourable employments and making them ‘into their laundresses and cooks, while they manage everything according to their own pleasure.’ But the assembled women dwell on irrelevant detail and harp on the distributions of class in a manner which shows that those qualities which made their participation in public affairs possible or advisable were utterly wanting among them. Erasmus passes no remarks derogatory to women as such, and yet he leaves us to infer that they cannot do better than devote their attention exclusively to domestic concerns.
Judging by his writings and those of others who were active in the cause of progress, there was a growing feeling that the domestic virtues needed cultivation. A change in the position of women was not only imminent but was felt to be desirable, and probably it was in conformity with what women themselves wished. Both in England and on the Continent the idea that virginity was in itself pleasing to God was no longer in the foreground of the moral consciousness of the age; it was felt that the duties of a mother took higher rank, and that the truest vocation of woman was to be found in the circle of home. This view, as we shall see presently, tallied with the views taken by the Protestant reformers and prepared the way for the dissolution of nunneries.
CHAPTER XII
THE DISSOLUTION
‘In church, chapell and priory
Abby, hospitall and nunry,
Sparing nother man nor woman,
Coopes, albes, holy ornamentes,
Crosses, chalecys, sensurs and rentes,
Convertyng all to usys prophane.’
The Blaspheming English Lutherans, verse 33.
‘The Abbaies went doune because of there pride,
And made the more covetus riche for a tyme,
There leivenges dispercid one everi syde,
Where wonce was somme praier, now placis for swyne.’
Quoted by Furnival from Douce MS. 365, l. 95.
§ 1. The Dissolution in England
The movement of the 16th century commonly spoken of as the Reformation was the forcible manifestation of a revolution in thought which had long been preparing. This period may fitly be likened to a watershed between the socialistic tendencies of the Middle Ages and the individualistic tendencies which have mainly prevailed since. It forms the height which limits average modern conceptions, but which can be made the standpoint from which a more comprehensive view of things past and present becomes possible. Like other great epochs in history it is characterised by a sense of assurance, aspiration, and optimism, – and by wasted possibilities which give its study an ever renewed interest. The political, social, and intellectual changes which accompanied the Reformation are especially interesting nowadays when the standards which were then formulated are felt to be no longer final. The progressive thought of to-day, heretical though the assertion may sound to some, has become markedly insensible to the tenets which the reformers of the 16th century propounded and in which Protestantism found its strength and its safeguard. While paying due deference to the courage of the men who heralded what was advance if measured by such needs as they realised, the thinker of to-day dwells not so much on the factors of civilisation which those men turned to account as on those which they disregarded; – he is attracted by Erasmus, not by Luther, and looks more to him who worked in the interest of reform than to him who worked in the interest of the Reformation.
Among the important social changes effected by the Reformation the dissolution of the monasteries forms a small but a significant feature, a feature pregnant with meaning if considered in the light of the changing standards of family and sex morality. For those who attacked the Church of Rome in her fundamentals, while differing in points of doctrine, were at one in the belief that the state of morality needed amendment, and that marriage supplied the means of effecting the desired change. In open antagonism to principles which formed the groundwork of monasticism, they declared celibacy odious and the vow of chastity contradictory to scriptural teaching and in itself foolish and presumptuous.
The language in which Luther, Bullinger and Becon inculcated these principles is often offensive to modern ears. Their views are wanting in good taste, but consistency cannot be denied them. For these men were logical in condemning the unmarried state at every point, attacking it equally in the priest, the monk, the nun and the professed wanton. The changed attitude towards loose women has repeatedly been referred to in the course of this work, and it has been pointed out how such women, at one time not without power, had been steadily sinking in general estimation. Society, bent on having a clear line drawn between them and other women, had interfered with them in many ways, and had succeeded in stamping them as a class, to its own profit and to their disadvantage. But even at the close of the Middle Ages these women retained certain rights, such as that of having free quarters in the town, which the advocates of the new faith openly attacked and summarily swept away. Zealous if somewhat brutal in the cause of an improved morality, they maintained that marriage was the most acceptable state before God and that a woman had no claim to consideration except in her capacity as wife and mother.
The calling of the nun was doomed to fall a sacrifice to this teaching. Her vocation was in antagonism to the doctrines of the party of progress, and where not directly attacked was regarded with a scarcely less fatal indifference. It has been shown that great efforts were made before the Reformation to reform life in nunneries, but various obstacles, and among them a growing indifference to the intellectual training and interests of women, were in the way of their permanent improvement. The nun was chiefly estimated by her devotional pursuits, and when the rupture came with Rome and these devotional pursuits were declared meaningless, individuals who were driven from their homes might be pitied, and voices here and there might be raised deploring the loss of the possibilities secured by the convent, but no active efforts were made to preserve the system, nothing was attempted to save an institution, the raison d’être of which had vanished.
Previous to the Reformation the efforts of churchmen on the Continent to reform convent life had led in several instances to the disbanding of a convent. In England like results ensued from the conduct of churchmen, who in their efforts to regenerate society by raising the tone of religion, rank with the older humanists abroad. These men had no intention of interfering with the institution of monasticism as such, but were bent on removing certain abuses. Among them were John Alcock, bishop of Ely, Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Cardinal Wolsey; they appropriated a number of decayed convents on the plea of promoting religious education, and their action may be said to have paved the way towards a general dissolution.
Among the monasteries dissolved by them were several belonging to nuns, and the fact is noteworthy that wherever the property of women was appropriated, it was appropriated to the use of men. Considering that the revenues of these houses had been granted for women and had been administered by women for centuries, this fact appears somewhat regrettable from the woman’s point of view. But no blame attaches on this account to the men, for their attitude was in keeping with progressive thought generally and was shared by women themselves. Thus Margaret Beaufort († 1509) the mother of Henry VII, whose college foundations have given her lasting fame, seems never to have been struck by the thought that advantages might accrue from promoting education among women also. She founded Christ’s College at Cambridge, planned the foundation there of St John’s, and instituted divinity professorships both at Oxford and at Cambridge. But her efforts, in which she was supported by Fisher, bishop of Rochester, were entirely devoted to securing an improved education for the clergy.
The nunnery of St Radegund’s at Cambridge was among the first establishments appropriated in the interest of the higher religious education of men on the plea of decay and deterioration. It had supported a convent of twelve nuns as late as 1460, but in 1496 it was dissolved. The change was effected by John Alcock, bishop of Ely († 1500), a man of liberal spirit who ranks high among contemporary ecclesiastics. The king’s licence1046 for the dissolution of the house contains words to the effect that it had fallen into decay owing to neglect, improvidence, and the dissolute dispositions of the prioress and convent, which were referable to the close proximity of Cambridge. The house had only two inmates, of whom one had been professed elsewhere and the other was a girl. The bishop asked leave to declare the house dissolved in order to appropriate its possessions and revenues to the foundation of a college of one master (magister), six fellows (socii) and a certain number of students (scolares). These numbers show that the property of the house was not inconsiderable. The sanction of Pope Alexander III having been obtained1047, the nunnery of St Radegund was transformed into Jesus College, Cambridge1048.
This instance paved the way for others. The suppression of the smaller monasteries for the purpose of founding and endowing seats of learning on a large scale was advocated by Cardinal Wolsey soon after his accession to power. He was advanced to the chancellorship in 1513 and was nominated cardinal by the Pope in 1515, and among the first houses which he dissolved were the two nunneries of Bromhall in Berkshire and Lillechurch in Kent.
In a letter about Bromhall addressed to the bishop of Salisbury1049 Wolsey directs him to ‘proceed against enormities, misgovernance and slanderous living, long time heretofore had, used, and continued by the prioress and nuns.’ The nuns were to be removed ‘to other places of that religion, where you best and most conveniently bestow them, especially where they may be brought and induced unto better and more religious living.’ Henry VIII asked in a letter to the bishop that the deeds and evidences of the convent ‘by reason of the vacation of the said place’ might be delivered to his messenger1050. It is not clear whether the inmates returned to the world or were transferred to other nunneries. In 1522 it was found that the prioress Joan Rawlins had resigned, her only two nuns had abandoned the house, and it was granted to St John’s College, Cambridge, by the interest and procurement of Fisher, bishop of Rochester1051.
Full information is preserved about the charges brought against the nuns at Lillechurch. From records at Cambridge we learn on what pleas proceedings were taken. The house formerly contained sixteen nuns, but for some years past there had been only three or four. It stood in a public place, that is on the road to Rochester, and was frequented by clerics, and the nuns were notorious for neglect of their duties and incontinence. Moreover the foundations at Cambridge made by Margaret Beaufort needed subsidizing, and public feeling was against the house. Depositions were taken in writing from which we see that the prioress was dead, and that one of the three inmates had yielded to temptation some eight or nine years before. In answer to the question: ‘Alas, madam, how happened this with you?’ – she replied: ‘And I had been happy I might have caused this thing to have been unknown and hidden.’ – Together with her two companions she agreed to sign the form of surrender (dated 1521), which was worded as follows. ‘Not compelled by fear or dread, nor circumvented by guile or deceit, out of my own free will, for certain just and lawful reasons (I) do resign and renounce all my right, title, interest and possession that I have had and now have in the aforesaid monastery.’ We do not know what became of these women. Their house was given over to Bishop Fisher, and by letters patent it also passed to St John’s College, Cambridge1052.
Regarding the charges of immorality brought against the inmates of convents in this and in other instances, it has been repeatedly pointed out by students that such accusations should be received with a reservation, for the occurrence may have taken place before the nun’s admission to the house. The conventionalities of the time were curiously loose in some respects; the court of Henry VIII could boast of scant respect even for the conjugal tie, and a woman of the upper classes who disgraced herself naturally took refuge in a convent, where she could hope in some measure to redeem her character. The fact that Anne Boleyn, who was averse to the whole monastic system, at one time thought of retiring into a nunnery, is quoted as a case in point1053.
The readiness of Wolsey to dissolve decayed convents and to appropriate their property grew apace with his increase of power. In no case is it recorded that he was deterred by opposition. In 1524 he appropriated St Frideswith’s, a house of Austin canons at Oxford, and made it the nucleus of his great college1054. His legatine powers being further extended by a bull of the same year and the royal consent being obtained1055, twenty small convents were dissolved by him during the next few years1056. Among them we note two nunneries, Wykes in Essex, and Littlemore in Oxfordshire1057. But little is known of the number and character of their inmates at the time. Two further bulls1058 were obtained by Wolsey from Pope Clement (1523-34) for diminishing the number of monasteries and suppressing houses of less than twelve inmates. Gasquet, to whom we are indebted for a detailed account of the dissolution, shows that Clement, who was hard pressed by the Lutheran agitation at the time, only reluctantly yielded to Wolsey’s request1059.
Wolsey’s proceedings in the matter, however, roused considerable local dissatisfaction and brought censure on him from the king. ‘They say not that all that is ill gotten is bestowed on the colleges,’ Henry wrote to him on the eve of his fall, ‘but that the college is the cloak for covering mischiefs.’ The king’s ire was further roused by the cardinal’s accepting the appointment of Isabel Jordan as abbess of Wilton, a house which was under royal patronage, and where the acceptance of the abbess belonged to the king. Anne Boleyn was in the ascendant in Henry’s favour at the time, and wanted the post for someone else. But on enquiry at Wilton the unsuitability of this person became apparent. ‘As touching the matter of Wilton,’ Henry wrote to Anne, ‘my lord cardinal has had the nuns before him and examined them, Master Bell being present, who has certified to me that for a truth she has confessed herself (which we would have abbess) to have had two children by sundry priests, and further since has been kept by a servant of Lord Broke that was, and not long ago; wherefore I would not for all the world clog your conscience nor mine to make her ruler of a house who is of such ungodly demeanour, nor I trust, you would not that neither for brother nor sister I should so stain mine honour and conscience1060.’ It is evident from this letter that whatever the character of the women received into the house might be, the antecedents of the lady superior were no matter of indifference. In this case the king’s objection to one person and the unsuitability of the other led to the appointment of a third1061.
From the year 1527 all other questions were swallowed up by the momentous question of the king’s divorce. Wolsey, who refused to comply with his wishes, went into retirement in 1529 and died in the following year. The management of affairs then passed into the hands of those who in this country represented the ruthless and reckless spirit of rebellion which had broken loose abroad. However several years passed before the attempt to appropriate the revenues of monasteries was resumed.
In the intervening period of increasing social and political unrest we note the publication, some time before 1529, of the ‘Supplication for beggars,’ with which London was flooded1062. It was an attack on the existing religious and monastic orders by the pamphleteer Simon Fish († c. 1530). Based on the grossest misrepresentations this supplication, in a humorous style admirably suited to catch popular attention, set forth the poverty of the people, the immorality of those who were vowed to religion, and the lewdness of unattached women, and declared that if church and monastic property were put to a better use these evils would be remedied. The king, who was on the eve of a rupture with Rome, lent a willing ear to this ‘supplication,’ and it so fell in with the general belief in coming changes that the refutation of its falsehoods and the severe criticism of Luther written in reply by Thomas More passed for the most part unheeded1063.
Another incident which reflects the spirit of the time in its contrarieties and instability, is the way in which Elizabeth Barton, of the parish of Aldington, the so-called Maid or Nun of Kent, rose to celebrity or notoriety. Her foresight of coming events had been received as genuine by many men of distinction, but her visions concerning the king’s projected divorce were fiercely resented by the king’s partisans. Bishop Fisher wept tears of joy over her, Wolsey received her as a champion of Queen Katherine’s cause, and even Thomas More showed some interest in her, while Cromwell accused her of rank superstition and induced Henry to take proceedings against her1064. She had been a servant girl, but at the instigation of the clergy at Canterbury had been received into St Sepulchre’s nunnery, where she lived for seven years and was looked upon with special favour by the Carthusian monks of Charterhouse and Sheen, and the inmates of the monastery of Sion. At the beginning of 1533 the king was married to Anne, and in the autumn of the same year Elizabeth Barton was accused of treasonable incitement and made to do public penance. Later a bill of attainder was brought in against her, and as Gasquet has shown1065, she was condemned without a hearing and executed at Tyburn with several Carthusian monks who were inculpated with her on the charge of treason. Henry also made an attempt to get rid of Bishop Fisher and of Sir Thomas More by causing them to be accused of favouring her ‘conspiracy,’ but the evidence against them was too slight to admit of criminal proceedings. It was on the charge of declaring that Henry was not the supreme head of the Church that Fisher suffered death (June, 1535), and on the yet slighter charge of declining to give an opinion on the matter, that More was executed a fortnight later1066.
The parliament of 1533 had passed the act abolishing appeals to the Court of Rome, and among other rights had transferred that of monastic visitation from the Pope to the king. In the following year a further division was made, – the king claimed to be recognised as the head of the Church. It was part of Henry’s policy to avoid openly attacking any part of the old system; gradual changes were brought about which undermined prerogatives without making a decided break. Cromwell was appointed vicegerent in ecclesiastical matters, and it was on the plea of securing the recognition of the king’s supremacy that he deputed a number of visitors or agents to conduct monastic visitations on a large scale, and to secure all possible information about religious houses. His plan and the way in which it was carried out struck a mortal blow at the whole monastic system.
The agents employed by Cromwell were naturally laymen, and the authority of the diocesan was suspended while they were at work. Great powers were conferred on them. A list of the instructions they received is in existence; and we gather from it that monks and nuns were put through searching interrogatories concerning the property of their house, the number of its inmates, its founders and privileges, its maintenance of discipline, and the right conduct of its inmates. The agents then enjoined severance from the Pope or any other foreign superior, and directed those who had taken the vow, whether men or women, henceforth to observe strict seclusion. A daily lesson in scripture was to be read; the celebration of the hours was to be curtailed; profession made under the age of twenty-four was declared invalid; and ‘other special injunctions,’ says the document, might ‘be added by the visitors as the place and nature of accounts rendered (or comperts) shall require,’ subject to the wisdom and discretion of Cromwell1067.
