Kitabı oku: «Woman under Monasticism», sayfa 38

To some of the heads of houses it seemed incredible that the old system was passing away for ever, and they surrendered in the belief that their deprivation was only temporary. Elizabeth Shelley, abbess of St Mary’s, Winchester, who in 1535 had saved her house, accepted the surrender but continued to dwell at Winchester with a number of her nuns, and when she died bequeathed a silver chalice which she had saved to the college in the city on condition that it should be given back to St Mary’s if the convent were restored¹¹³². The fact that she succeeded in carrying away a chalice appears exceptional, for the inmates of convents who were expelled seem as a rule to have taken with them nothing except perhaps their books of devotion.

The story of the dissolution repeats itself in every convent. The inventory of the house having been taken, the lead was torn from the roofs, and sold together with the bells; the relics and pictures were packed in sacks and sent up to London to be burnt.

The plate and jewels of the house, the amount of which was considerable in the houses of men and in some of women (for example in Barking) were also forwarded to London to be broken up and melted; in a few instances they were sold. The house’s property in furniture, utensils and vestments was sold there and then. The superiors and convent inmates were then turned away, and the buildings that had so long been held in reverence were either devoted to some profane use or else left to decay.

The inventory taken at the dissolution of the ancient Benedictine nunnery of Wherwell in Hampshire has been preserved among others, and shows how such a house was dealt with¹¹³³. There is a list of the inmates of the convent and of the pensions granted to them; the abbess in this case received a yearly pension of £40, and her nuns’ pensions ranged from £3. 6s. 8d. to £6. We then get a list of the dwellings of which the settlement was composed. The houses and buildings ‘assigned to remain’ were as follows: ‘the abbess’ lodging with the houses within the quadrant, as the water leads from the east side of the cloister to the gate, the farmery, the mill and millhouse with the slaughter-house adjoining, the brewing and baking houses with the granaries to the same, the barn and stables in the outer court.’ The list of dwellings ‘deemed to be superfluous’ follows. ‘The church, choir, and steeple covered with lead, the cloister covered with tiles and certain gutters of lead, the chapter house, the refectory (ffrayter), the dormitory, the convent kitchen and all the old lodgings between the granary and the hall door covered with tiles.’ Then follow accounts of the lead and bells remaining, of the jewels, plate and silver ‘reserved for the king’s use,’ and of the ornaments, goods and chattels which were sold. We further gather that the debts of the house were paid and that rewards and wages were given to the chaplain, officers and servants before they were turned away.

As mentioned above the pensions given differed greatly, and the heads of wealthy houses were allowed considerable sums. Thus Elizabeth Souche, abbess of Shaftesbury, the yearly income of which house was taxed at £1166, received £133 a year and all her nuns to the number of fifty-five were pensioned. Dorothy Barley, abbess of Barking, a house taxed at £862, received a yearly pension of £133; while Elizabeth Shelley, abbess of St Mary’s, Winchester, received only £26 a year. The prioress of St Andrew’s, Marricks, a small house, received £5 annually, and her nuns a pension of from twenty to forty shillings each. Gasquet points out that a large number of those who were pensioned died during the first few years after the surrender¹¹³⁴. Probably many of them were old, but there is extant a pension roll of the year 1553 (reign of Philip and Mary) from which can be gathered that a certain number of pensioned monks and nuns were then alive and continued to draw their pensions. Gasquet further remarks that only a few of the nuns who were turned away are known to have married¹¹³⁵; considering that hardly any are known to have left their convents voluntarily, and that many of the younger ones were turned away through the act of 1535, this seems only natural.

Eye-witnesses as well as Cromwell’s agents have left descriptions which give a striking picture of the brutality of the proceedings¹¹³⁶. But the hardships to which the convent inmates were exposed, the terrible waste of their property, and the senseless destruction of priceless art treasures, must not blind us to the fact that the breaking up of the monastic system was but an incident in one of the most momentous revolutions within historic record. The dissolution of the monasteries at the time of the Reformation, to be rightly estimated, must be considered as part of a wider change which was remoulding society on an altered basis.

It is interesting to compare the view taken of monastic life at the time of the dissolution with the attitude taken towards convents in the following period. Some writings, as for example Lindesay in the play of the Three Estates, acted in the North in 1535¹¹³⁷, severely censure the inclinations which are fostered in the convent.

But strong as the feeling against convents and their inmates was in some instances at the time of the Reformation, when the system was once removed little antagonism remained towards those who had represented it. The thought of the nun, fifty years after she had passed away in England, roused no acrimony. Shakspere had no prejudice against her, and Milton was so far impressed in her favour that he represented ‘Melancholy’ under the form of a ‘pensive nun, devout and pure, – Sober, steadfast and demure.’ It was only at a much later period that the agitation raised by the fear of returning ‘Popery’ caused men to rake up scandals connected with convents and to make bugbears out of them.

The losses incurred by the destruction of the convents were not however slow in making themselves felt; but as indifference towards women’s intellectual interests had made part of the movement, a considerable time went by before the loss of the educational possibilities which the convent had secured to women was deplored. ‘In the convents,’ says Gasquet¹¹³⁸, ‘the female portion of the population found their only teachers, the rich as well as the poor, and the destruction of these religious houses by Henry was the absolute extinction of any systematic education for women during a long period.’ While devotion to domestic duties, exclusive of all other interests, continued to be claimed from women, the loss of their schools was a matter of indifference to society in general. But in proportion as shortcomings in women were felt, the thought arose that these might be due to want of training. The words in which the divine, Fuller († 1661), expressed such thoughts in the 17th century are well worth recalling. The vow of celibacy in his eyes remained a thing of evil, but short of this the convents had not been wholly bad.

‘They were good she schools wherein the girls and maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work; and sometimes a little Latin was taught them therein. Yea, give me leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued, provided no vow were obtruded upon them, (virginity is least kept where it is most constrained,) haply the weaker sex, besides the avoiding modern inconveniences, might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained¹¹³⁹.’

§ 2. The Memoir of Charitas Pirckheimer

A memoir is extant from the pen of the abbess of a convent at Nürnberg. It was written (1524-28) during the stormy period following upon the outbreak of the Lutheran agitation, and it helps us to realize the effect which the rupture with Rome had on a convent of nuns. Charitas Pirckheimer, the author of this memoir, was the sister of Wilibald Pirckheimer († 1530), a well-known humanist, and through him she was in touch with some of the leading representatives of learning and art of her day. She was well advanced in life and had many years of active influence behind her when the troubles began of which she has left a graphic description.

An examination of the contents of her memoir must stand as a specimen of the effects which the Reformation had on women’s convent life on the Continent, effects which varied in almost every town and every province. For the breaking up of the monastic system abroad had none of the continuity and completeness it had in England. The absence of centralised temporal and spiritual authority left the separate townships and principalities free to accept or reject the change of faith as they chose. The towns were ruled by councils on which the decision in the first place depended, and in the principalities the change depended on the attitude of prince and magnate, so that the succession of the prince of a different faith, or the conquest of one province by another, repeatedly led to a change of religion. In some districts the first stormy outbreak was followed by a reaction in favour of Rome, and convents which had disbanded were restored on a narrowed basis; in others the monastic system which had received a severe shock continued prostrate for many years. But even in those districts where the change of faith was permanently accepted, its influence on conventual establishments was so varied that an account of the way in which it put an end to nunneries lies beyond the scope of this work. It must suffice to point out that some convents, chiefly unreformed ones, disbanded or surrendered under the general feeling of restlessness; and that others were attacked and destroyed during the atrocities of the Peasants’ War. The heads of others again, with a clearsightedness one cannot but admire, rejected Romish usages and beliefs in favour of the Lutheran faith, and their houses have continued to this day as homes for unmarried women of the aristocracy. Others were suffered to remain under the condition that no new members should be admitted, but that the old ones should be left in possession of their house till they died. To this latter class belonged the convent of St Clara at Nürnberg which we are about to discuss.

The convent dated its existence from the year 1279, in which several nuns from Söflingen, near Ulm, joined a number of religious women who were living together at Nürnberg, and prevailed upon them to adopt the rule of St Clara and place themselves under the guardianship of the Franciscan friars who had settled in Nürnberg in 1226¹¹⁴⁰. It has been mentioned above that the nuns of this order, usually designated as Poor Clares, did not themselves manage that property of theirs which lay outside the precincts; they observed strict seclusion and were chiefly absorbed by devotional pursuits. Under the influence of the movement of monastic reform described in a previous chapter, Clara Gundelfingen (1450-1460), abbess of the house at Nürnberg, had greatly improved its discipline, and nuns were despatched from thence to convents at Brixen, Bamberg and other places to effect similar changes. There was another convent of nuns at Nürnberg dedicated to St Katherine which was under the supervision of the Dominican friars, but the convent of St Clara was the more important one and seems to have been largely recruited from members of wealthy burgher families. In 1476 it secured a bull from the Pope by which its use was altogether reserved to women who were born in Nürnberg.

Charitas Pirckheimer came to live in the house (1478) at the age of twelve. She was one of a family of seven sisters and one brother; all the sisters entered convents, excepting one who married, and they were in time joined by three of the five daughters of their brother¹¹⁴¹. These facts show that the women of most cultivated and influential families still felt convent life congenial. The Dominican writer Nider († 1438), speaking of convent life in the districts about Nürnberg, remarks that he had nowhere else found so many virtuous, chaste and industrious virgins¹¹⁴². Of the members of the Pirckheimer family who became nuns, Clara († 1533) joined her sister Charitas and acted as secretary to her for many years; her letters show her to have been of a lively and sanguine disposition¹¹⁴³. Walpurg, another sister, lived as a nun in the convent of St Clara at Münich; Katharina became prioress at Geisenfeld, and Sabina and Euphemia entered the ancient Benedictine settlement of Bergen near Neuburg, of which they successively became abbesses. Sabina (1521-29), like her sister Charitas, was a great admirer of Albrecht Dürer, whom she consulted on the subject of illuminations done at her house¹¹⁴⁴. A number of her letters remain to show that she held opinions of her own on some points of doctrine and watched the progress of affairs at Nürnberg with interest¹¹⁴⁵. Her sister Euphemia (1529-47), who succeeded her, experienced even greater hardships than Charitas, for when Palgrave, Otto Heinrich of Neuburg, accepted the Protestant faith (1544), she and her nuns were expelled from their convent, and spent several years staying first at one place then at another, till the victory which the emperor Karl V won at Mühlberg (1547) made it possible for them to return to Bergen.

Charitas on entering the house at Nürnberg found herself among the daughters of family friends and relations. She contracted a lasting friendship with Apollonia Tucher, who was afterwards elected to the office of prioress, which she held for many years. Apollonia was nearly related to Anton Tucher († 1524), one of the wealthiest and most influential men of the town, and to Sixtus Tucher († 1507), a learned divine who was made provost of the church of St Lorenz, and in this capacity instructed the nuns of St Clara and provided them with religious literature. Scheurl († 1542), a nephew of Apollonia and a distinguished jurist, who came to settle at Nürnberg, greatly admired Charitas. We shall return to him later on.

Felicitas Grundherrin, another nun, who was made portress in 1503, wrote letters to her father which throw an additional light on the conduct and the experiences of the nuns during the period of religious contention. There were sixty inmates at that time, and among them we find the chief families of the town represented.

We are not informed at what age Charitas made profession. In 1494 she was joined by her sister Clara, and a few years later, when we first hear of her and her sister in connection with their brother, she was engaged in teaching the novices.

The career of Wilibald Pirckheimer, a man of considerable literary ability, is interesting, as it forms the centre of the intellectual and artistic life of Nürnberg, which at that time was achieving some of its greatest triumphs. The friend of Albrecht Dürer and of the leading humanists, he was himself full of enthusiasm for the revived interest in classic culture, and filled with that liberal appreciation of merit regardless of origin and nationality which is one of the attractive traits of the movement. In compliance with the taste of his age he had studied in Italy, and shortly after his return to Nürnberg, on the occasion of their father’s death (1501), he lent his sisters, Charitas and Clara, a copy of the hymns of the Christian poet Prudentius, and an unnamed portion of Jerome’s works, for their comfort and perusal; Charitas thanked him for the loan in a Latin letter in which we get our first glimpse of her¹¹⁴⁶. She says that she has been interested to find among the hymns some which are habitually sung in the choir and the authorship of which was unknown to her, and she begs she may keep Jerome’s writings for some time longer, as they afford her so much delight. She refers to the frequent loans of books from her brother and assures him how much she depends on him for her education, begging him to visit and further instruct her. She has some knowledge of scripture, she says, but barely enough to instruct the novices.

In the year 1487 Celtes († 1508), a celebrated Latin scholar and poet, was crowned poet laureate by the Emperor Friedrich III at Nürnberg, and received at his hands the doctor’s degree and a laurel wreath. Afterwards he travelled about in Germany, rousing interest in the revival of classical studies wherever he went, and encouraging those who were interested in learning to band together in societies (sodalitates) for the purpose of editing and publishing the classics. During a stay at a monastery in Regensburg (1501) he had come across the forgotten dramas of the nun Hrotsvith. They seemed to him so worthy of attention that he had them published at Nürnberg in a beautiful illustrated edition. We do not know if he was previously acquainted with Charitas; but he sent her a copy of the dramas, and she wrote a grateful reply¹¹⁴⁷. She begins by deploring the news she has heard that Celtes has been attacked and plundered by robbers. ‘A few days ago,’ she writes, ‘I received the interesting writings of the learned virgin Hrotsvith, sent to me by you for no merits of my own, for which I express and owe you eternal gratitude. I rejoice that He who bestows powers of mind (largitor ingenii) and grants wisdom to men who are great and learned in the law, should not have denied to the frail and humbler sex some of the crumbs from the tables of wisdom. In this learned virgin the words of the apostle are verified that God chooses the humble to confound the strong…’

Celtes was charmed by this letter, and was inspired to compose a Latin ode¹¹⁴⁸ in praise of Charitas. In it he addressed her as the crown and star of womanhood, praised her for her knowledge of Latin, in which she worthily followed in the steps of a learned father and a learned brother, and enlarged on the pleasure her letter had brought. With the ode he sent a copy of a work on the city of Nürnberg lately published by him, and Charitas in reply sent a long letter which is most instructive in regard to the light it throws on her general attitude towards humanist culture¹¹⁴⁹. While delighted by the gifts and the attentions of so distinguished a man as Celtes, she felt critical towards the heathen element in him, which seemed to her incompatible with the claims of a higher morality. The letter is too long to reproduce in full, but the following are some of its most noteworthy passages. ‘I am your unworthy pupil, but a great admirer of yours and a well-wisher for your salvation, and as such I would earnestly and with all my heart entreat you not indeed to give up the pursuit of worldly wisdom, but to put it to higher uses, that is to pass from heathen writings to holy scripture, from what is earthly to what is divine, from the created to the Creator… Indeed neither knowledge nor any subject of investigation which is from God is to be contemned, but mystic theology and a good virtuous life must be ranked highest. For human understanding is weak and may fail us, but true faith and a good conscience never can. I therefore put before you, most learned doctor, when you have enquired into all under the sun, that the wisest of men said, Vanity of vanities… In the same friendly spirit I would beg you to give up celebrating the unseemly tales of Jupiter, Venus, Diana, and other heathen beings whose souls are burning in Gehenna and who are condemned by right-minded men as detestable and deserving of oblivion; make the saints of God your friends by honouring their names and their memory, that they may guide you to the eternal home when you leave this earth.’

At the end of her letter she begged to be excused writing in this strain in words which suggest that her brother had urged her to speak out her mind, and a further letter of hers addressed to Wilibald says that she is forwarding to him a copy of her letter to Celtes¹¹⁵⁰. She begs he will not bring him to the grating without sending her word previously, and expresses the belief that Celtes will not take umbrage.

We hear no more of their intercourse. Celtes soon afterwards left Nürnberg, and when Helena Meichnerin, abbess of the convent, resigned on account of some complaints of the town council, Charitas was chosen abbess (1503). Her acceptance of the post was made conditional by the Franciscan friars on her giving up her Latin correspondence¹¹⁵¹, and there can be no doubt that this prohibition was primarily aimed at her intercourse with men like Celtes, who was known to be very lax in his morality, and whose sympathies in regard to learning were in direct opposition to the narrow religious views of the friars. Charitas conformed, but Wilibald’s anger was roused, and he wrote to Celtes: ‘You know that my sister Charitas has been chosen abbess. Imagine, those soft-footed men (χυλόποδες) have forbidden her to write Latin for the future. Observe their caution, not to say roguery¹¹⁵².’

Charitas apparently wrote no more Latin letters, but her brother’s friends continued to take an interest in her. Wilibald had a sincere regard for her abilities and frequently wrote of her to his friends. Other members of the humanist circle sought her out. Scheurl, the young jurist mentioned above, sent her from Bologna a copy of his ‘Uses of the mass’ (Utilitates missae) with a flattering letter which was presented to her by the provost Tucher (1506)¹¹⁵³. It is overflowing with youthful enthusiasm, and says that of all the women he has met there are only two who are distinguished by abilities and intellect, knowledge and wealth, virtue and beauty, and are comparable to the daughters of Laelius and Hortensius and to Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi; the one is Cassandra (Fedele, poetess¹¹⁵⁴) in Venice, the other is Charitas in Nürnberg. He expatiates on the merits of the Pirckheimer family generally, and says Charitas is following the example of her relatives in preferring a book to wool, a pen to the distaff, a stilus to a needle. At a later stage of his career (1515) Scheurl wrote that it was usual for men who were distinguished in mind and power to admire and respect the abilities, learning and moral excellence of this abbess¹¹⁵⁵.

In 1513 Wilibald published an edition of Plutarch’s essay ‘On retribution’ which he had translated from Greek into Latin, and dedicated it to his sister Charitas in a long and flattering epistle¹¹⁵⁶. Mindful no doubt of the influences about her and referring to difficulties in his own career, he spoke in the highest terms of the Stoic philosophers and of the help their writings afforded. ‘Accept this gift on paper which, if I judge rightly, will not be displeasing to you,’ he says, ‘and carefully peruse the writings of this pagan author (gentilis). And you will soon see that the philosophers of antiquity did not stray far from the truth.’ Charitas was able to appreciate this point of view and admitted in her reply that he had sent her a jewel more precious than gold and silver¹¹⁵⁷. Speaking of Plutarch she confessed that ‘he writes not like an unbelieving heathen but like a learned divine and imitator of Christian perfection. It is a wonderful circumstance which has filled me with joy and surprise.’ But she thought her brother’s praise of her excessive. ‘I am not learned myself, only the friend of those who are learned; I am no writer, I only enjoy reading the writings of others; I am unworthy of so precious a gift, though in truth you have done well and wisely in placing the word Charitas at the head of your work. For Charity is the virtue which makes all good things to be shared, and that Charity which is the Divine Spirit itself will reward you here and in the life to come, where honest efforts will be fully requited.’

A short time afterwards Pirckheimer dedicated to his sister Clara, who was now teaching the novices, a ‘Collection of the Moral Sentences of Nilus.’ It was a translation from Greek and Latin, and the title was ornamented with a design by Dürer¹¹⁵⁸. He sent it ‘to prevent her feeling any jealousy of her sister.’ Clara shared her sister’s tastes and was herself an ardent reader. When the New Testament edited by Erasmus appeared, Pirckheimer wrote to him that his sisters, who zealously read his writings, took great delight in this book also, and he says that they had greater insight into it than many men who were proud of their learning. They would have written themselves, he adds, if they had not felt shy of so great a man. Erasmus on one occasion compared the daughters of Sir Thomas More to the sisters of Wilibald Pirckheimer. Some writings of the humanist Reuchlin were also perused by them¹¹⁵⁹.

Wilibald further dedicated to Charitas his edition of the works of Fulgentius (1519), in a long preface in which he describes the difficulty he had had in procuring the manuscript from the library of his friend Tritheim, how he had despaired of deciphering it till the learned Cochlaeus came to his rescue, and how sure he felt that his sister would look upon the book as a treasure¹¹⁶⁰. The translation of the sermons of Gregorius Nazianzenus, an important undertaking, he also accomplished mainly for the use of his sisters¹¹⁶¹.

Besides their devotional and intellectual interests, the nuns at St Clara made their own clothes, and seem to have had some ability in sewing, for when the imperial robes which were kept at Nürnberg were to be carried to Aachen for the coronation of the Emperor Karl V, they were first given into the hands of the nuns to be looked over and mended¹¹⁶².

An interesting light is thrown on the less serious side of the character of Charitas by an amusing German letter which she wrote to Dürer and two envoys of Nürnberg who were staying at Augsburg in 1518 on the occasion of the Imperial Diet. From there they had sent her a missive penned in a jovial hour, and Charitas in reply wrote¹¹⁶³: ‘I received your friendly letter with special delight and read it with such attention that my eyes were often brim full, but more from laughing than any other emotion. Many thanks to you that in spite of your great business and your amusements you should have taken the trouble to give directions to this little nun about cloister-life, of which you have a clear mirror before you at present…’ And she begs the envoy Spengler to study accounts with a view to advising her how to waste everything till nothing remains, and begs Dürer, ‘who is such a draughtsman and genius,’ to give his attention to the buildings, so that when she has the choir rebuilt he may help and advise her how to introduce larger windows so that the nuns’ eyes may be less dim.

From these various notices we conclude that time passed not unpleasantly or unprofitably with the abbess of St Clara before those contentions began which followed upon the attack made on the established religion by Luther. In Nürnberg, as in most other cities, the feeling was general that the life of the prelacy was degenerate and that the Papacy was a hotbed of abuse. Luther’s opposition to the Pope was therefore greeted with acclamation both by the enlightened men of the town, who felt that the tyranny of the Church was a stumblingblock in the way of progress, and by the people, who readily seized the idea that the means were now given them to break through class tyranny. Wilibald Pirckheimer was among those who without hesitation sided with the Lutheran agitation, but Charitas thought otherwise. The abbess of the convent of St Clara at Eger forwarded to her some of the fierce attacks on Luther from the pen of Emser († 1527), and Charitas was so delighted with them that she had them read out aloud to the nuns during meals, and was prompted to write a letter to their author¹¹⁶⁴.

This letter became a source of great annoyance to her. It fell into the hands of Emser’s enemies, and was published with an abusive running comment on Charitas¹¹⁶⁵. Even Wilibald was annoyed and declared she would have done better not to have written it. He strongly supported the Lutheran agitation at the time, and Eck, who suspected him of having written the attack on himself, entitled ‘Eccius Dedolatus,’ for personal reasons inscribed Wilibald’s name on the Papal ban. There is extant from Wilibald’s pen a fragment in which he expresses doubts as to the rightfulness of convent life generally¹¹⁶⁶, but he gradually modified his views. The violence and narrowness of the representatives of the party of progress in Nürnberg were little to his taste. On the plea of ill-health he withdrew from the council, and took no part in the stormy discussions of 1523, when the rupture with Rome was declared complete and decisions arrived at, momentous for the future of the new faith not only in Nürnberg, but in Germany generally.

At this juncture the memoir of Charitas¹¹⁶⁷ begins. She describes the effect of the Lutheran teaching; how ceremonies are being abolished, rules and vows declared vain, so that many monks and nuns are leaving their cloisters, putting off convent garb and marrying and otherwise doing as they choose.

‘These various reasons brought us many troubles and difficulties,’ she writes (p. 2), ‘for many powerful and evil-minded persons came to see the friends they had in our cloister, and argued with them and told them of the new teaching, how the religious profession was a thing of evil and temptation in which it was not possible to keep holy, and that we were all of the devil. Some would take their children, sisters and relatives out of the cloister by force and by the help of admonitions and promises of which they doubtless would not have kept half. This arguing and disputing went on for a long time and was often accompanied by great anger and abuse. But since none of the nuns by God’s grace was moved to go, the fault was laid on the Franciscans, and everyone said they encouraged us, so that it would be impossible to convince us of the new belief while we had them as preachers and confessors.’

The friars had long been odious for their determined class feeling, religious intolerance, and encouragement of superstitions; it was obvious that the advocates of change would direct their attacks against them. Charitas, fully aware of the emergency, assembled the nuns and put before them the danger of being given over to ‘wild priests and apostate monks,’ and with their consent decided to hand in a ‘supplication’ to the town council. This council was presided over by three leading men (triumviri), of whom one named Nützel was the so-called representative (pfleger) of the convent, another named Ebner had a daughter among the nuns, and the third, Geuder, was the brother-in-law of Charitas. She consulted Wilibald on the matter of the supplication, but forthwith wrote and despatched a letter to each of these three men, begging and claiming the protection of her privileges.