The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages

  CHAPTER XCIV

  YES, the hermit of Gouda was the vicar of Gouda, and knew it not, soabsolute was his seclusion.

  My reader is aware that the moment the phrenzy of his passion passed, hewas seized with remorse for having been betrayed into it. But perhapsonly those who have risen as high in religious spirit as he had, andsuddenly fallen, can realize the terror at himself that took possessionof him. He felt like one whom self-confidence had betrayed to the veryedge of a precipice. "Ah, good Jerome," he cried, "how much better youknew me than I knew myself! How bitter yet wholesome was youradmonition!"

  Accustomed to search his own heart, he saw at once that the true causeof his fury was Margaret. "I love her better than God," said he,despairingly, "better than the Church. From such a love what can springto me, or to her?" He shuddered at the thought. "Let the strong battletemptation; 'tis for the weak to flee. And who is weaker than I haveshown myself? What is my penitence, my religion? A pack of cards builtby degrees into a fair-seeming structure: and lo! one breath of earthlylove, and it lies in the dust. I must begin again: and on a surerfoundation." He resolved to leave Holland at once, and spend years ofhis life in some distant convent before returning to it. By that timethe temptations of earthly passion would be doubly baffled; an older,and a better, monk, he should be more master of his earthly affections,and Margaret, seeing herself abandoned, would marry, and love another.

  The very anguish this last thought cost him showed the self-searcher andself-denier, that he was on the path of religious duty.

  But in leaving her for his immortal good and hers, he was not to neglecther temporal weal. Indeed, the sweet thought he could make hercomfortable for life, and rich in this world's goods, which she was notbound to despise, sustained him in the bitter struggle it cost him toturn his back on her without one kind word or look. "Oh, what will shethink of me?" he groaned. "Shall I not seem to her of all creatures themost heartless, inhuman? but so best: ay, better she should hate me,miserable that I am. Heaven is merciful, and giveth my broken heart thiscomfort; I can make that villain restore her own, and she shall neverlose another true lover by poverty. Another? Ah me! ah me! God and thesaints to mine aid!"

  How he fared on this errand has been related. But first, as you mayperhaps remember, he went at night to shrive the hermit of Gouda. Hefound him dying, and never left him till he had closed his eyes andburied him beneath the floor of the little oratory attached to his cell.It was the peaceful end of a stormy life. The hermit had been a soldier,and even now carried a steel corselet next his skin, saying he was nowChrist's soldier as he had been Satan's. When Clement had shriven himand prayed by him, he, in his turn, sought counsel of one who was dyingin so pious a frame. The hermit advised him to be his successor in thispeaceful retreat. "His had been a hard fight against the world, theflesh, and the devil, and he had never thoroughly baffled them till heretired into the citadel of Solitude."

  These words and the hermit's pious and peaceful death, which speedilyfollowed, and set as it were the seal of immortal truth on them, made adeep impression upon Clement. Nor in his case had they any prejudice tocombat; the solitary recluse was still profoundly revered in the Church,whether immured as an anchorite, or anchoress, in some cave or cellbelonging to a monastery, or hidden in the more savage but laxerseclusion of the independent hermitage. And Clement knew more about thehermits of the Church than most divines at his time of life; he had readmuch thereon at the monastery near Tergou; had devoured their lives withwonder and delight in the manuscripts of the Vatican, and conversedearnestly about them with the mendicant friars of several nations.Before Printing these friars were the great circulators of those localannals and biographies which accumulated in the convents of every land.Then, his teacher, Jerome, had been three years an anchorite on theheights of Camaldoli, where for more than four centuries the Thebaid hadbeen revived; and Jerome, cold and curt on most religious themes, waswarm with enthusiasm on this one. He had pored over the annals of St.John Baptist's abbey, round about which the hermits' caves werescattered, and told him the names of many a noble, and many a famouswarrior, who had ended his days there a hermit, and of many a bishop andarchbishop who had passed from the see to the hermitage, or from thehermitage to the see. Among the former the archbishop of Ravenna; amongthe latter Pope Victor the Ninth. He told him too, with grim delight, oftheir multifarious austerities, and how each hermit set himself to findwhere he was weakest, and attacked himself without mercy or remissiontill there, even there, he was strongest. And how seven times in thetwenty-four hours, in thunder, rain, or snow, by daylight, twilight,moonlight or torchlight, the solitaries flocked from distant points,over rugged precipitous ways, to worship in the convent church; atmatins, at prime, tierce, sexte, nones, vespers, and complin. He even,under eager questioning, described to him the persons of famousanchorites he had sung the Psalter and prayed with there; the onlyintercourse their vows allowed, except with special permission. Moncata,Duke of Moncata and Cardova, and Hidalgo of Spain, who in the flower ofhis youth had retired thither from the pomps, vanities, and pleasures ofthe world; Father John Baptist of Novara, who had led armies to battle,but was now a private soldier of Christ; Cornelius, Samuel, andSylvanus. This last, when the great Duchess de' Medici obtained thePope's leave, hitherto refused, to visit Camaldoli, went down and mether at the first wooden cross, and there, surrounded as she was withcourtiers and flatterers, remonstrated with her and persuaded her, andwarned her, not to profane that holy mountain, where no woman for somany centuries had placed her foot; and she, awed by the place and theman, retreated with all her captains, soldiers, courtiers, and pages,from that one hoary hermit. At Basle Clement found fresh materials,especially with respect to German and English anchorites; and he hadeven prepared a "Catena Eremitarum" from the year of our Lord 250, whenPaul of Thebes commenced his ninety years of solitude, down to the year1470. He called them _Angelorum amici et animalium_, _i. e._,

  FRIENDS OF ANGELS AND ANIMALS.

  Thus, though in those days he never thought to be a recluse, the roadwas paved, so to speak: and when the dying hermit of Gouda blessed thecitadel of Solitude, where he had fought the good fight and won it, andinvited him to take up the breastplate of faith, that now fell off hisown shrunken body, Clement said within himself: "Heaven itself led myfoot hither to this end." It struck him too, as no small coincidence,that his patron, St. Bavon, was a hermit, and an austere one, acuirassier[D] of the solitary cell.

  As soon as he was reconciled to Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, he went eagerlyto his new abode, praying Heaven it might not have been already occupiedin these three days. The fear was not vain; these famous dens neverwanted a human tenant long. He found the rude stone door ajar; then hemade sure he was too late; he opened the door and went softly in. No;the cell was vacant, and there were the hermit's great ivory crucifix,his pens, ink, seeds, and memento mori, a skull; his cilice of hair, andanother of bristles; his well-worn sheepskin pelisse and hood, hishammer, chisel, and psaltery, &c. Men and women had passed that way, butnone had ventured to intrude, far less to steal. Faith and simplicityhad guarded that keyless door more securely than the houses of the laitywere defended by their gates like a modern jail, and thick iron bars atevery window, and the gentry by moat, bastion, chevaux de frise, andportcullis.

  As soon as Clement was fairly in the cell there was a loud flap, and aflutter, and down came a great brown owl from a corner, and whirled outof the window, driving the air cold on Clement's face. He started andshuddered.

  Was this seeming owl something diabolical? trying to deter him from hissoul's good? On second thoughts, might it not be some good spirit thehermit had employed to keep the cell for him, perhaps the hermithimself? Finally he concluded that it was just an owl; and that he wouldtry and make friends with it.

  He kneeled down and inaugurated his new life with prayer.

  * * * * *

  Clement had not only an earthly passion to quell, the power of whichmade him
tremble for his eternal weal, but he had a penance to do forhaving given way to ire, his besetting sin, and cursed his own brothers.

  He looked round this roomy cell furnished with so many comforts, andcompared it with the pictures in his mind of the hideous place, eremusin eremo, a desert in a desert, where holy Jerome, hermit, and thePlutarch of hermits had wrestled with sickness, temptation, and despair,four mortal years; and with the inaccessible and thorny niche, a hole ina precipice, where the boy hermit Benedict buried himself and livedthree years on the pittance the good monk Romanus could spare him fromhis scanty commons; and subdivided that mouthful with his friend, araven; and the hollow tree of his patron St. Bavon, and the earthlypurgatory at Fribourg, where lived a nameless saint in a horrid cavern,his eyes chilled with perpetual gloom, and his ears stunned with aneternal waterfall; and the pillar on which St. Simeon Stylita existedforty-five years, and the destina, or stone box, of St. Dunstan, wherelike Hilarion in his bulrush hive, sepulchro potius quam domu, he couldscarce sit, stand or lie; and the living tombs, sealed with lead, ofThais, and Christina, and other recluses; and the damp dungeon of St.Alred. These and scores more of the dismal dens in which true hermitshad worn out their wasted bodies on the rock, and the rock under theirsleeping bodies, and their praying knees, all came into his mind, and hesaid to himself, "This sweet retreat is for safety of the soul; but whatfor penance? Jesu aid me against faults to come; and for the fault Irue, face of man I will not see for a twelvemonth and a day." He hadfamous precedents in his eye even for this last and unusual severity. Infact the original hermit of this very cell was clearly under the samevow. Hence the two apertures through which he was spoken to, andreplied.

  Adopting, in other respects, the uniform rule of hermits and anchorites,he divided his day into the seven offices, ignoring the petty accidentsof light and dark, creations both of Him to whom he prayed sounceasingly. He learned the psalter by heart, and in all the intervalsof devotion, not occupied by broken slumbers, he worked hard with hishands. No article of the hermit's rule was more strict or more ancientthan this. And here his self-imposed penance embarrassed him, for whatwork could he do, without being seen, that should benefit hisneighbours? for the hermit was to labour _for himself_ in those casesonly where his subsistence depended on it. Now Clement's modest needswere amply supplied by the villagers.

  On moonlight nights he would steal out like a thief, and dig some poorman's garden on the outskirts of the village. He made baskets anddropped them slily at humble doors.

  And since he could do nothing for the bodies of those who passed by hiscell in daytime, he went out in the dead of the night with his hammerand his chisel, and carved moral and religious sentences all down theroad upon the sandstone rocks. "Who knows?" said he, "often a chanceshaft striketh home. Oh, sore heart, comfort thou the poor and bereavedwith holy words of solace in their native tongue; for _he_ said well,''tis clavis ad corda plebis.'" Also he remembered the learned Colonnahad told him of the written mountains in the east where kings hadinscribed their victories. "What," said Clement, "are they so wise,those Eastern monarchs, to engrave their warlike glory upon the rock,making a blood bubble endure so long as earth; and shall I leave therocks about me silent on the King of Glory, at whose word they were, andat whose breath they shall be dust? Nay, but these stones shall speak toweary wayfarers of eternal peace, and of the Lamb, whose frail, andafflicted, yet happy servant worketh them among."

  Now at this time the inspired words that have consoled the poor and theafflicted for so many ages, were not yet printed in Dutch, so that thesesentences of gold from the holy Evangelists came like fresh oracles fromheaven, or like the dew on parched flowers; and the poor hermit'swritten rocks softened a heart or two, and sent the heavy laden singingon their way.[E]

  These holy oracles that seemed to spring up around him like magic; hisprudent answers through his window to such as sought ghostly counsel;and above all, his invisibility, soon gained him a prodigiousreputation. This was not diminished by the medical advice they now andthen extorted from him, sore against his will, by tears and entreaties;for if the patients got well, they gave the holy hermit the credit, andif not, they laid all the blame on the devil. I think he killed nobody,for his remedies were "womanish and weak." Sage, and wormwood, sion,hyssop, borage, spikenard, dog's-tongue, our Lady's mantle, feverfew,and Faith, and all in small quantities except the last.

  Then his abstinence, sure sign of a saint. The eggs and milk theybrought him at first he refused with horror. Know ye not the hermit'srule is bread, or herbs, and water? Eggs, they are birds in disguise;for when the bird dieth then the egg rotteth. As for milk, it is littlebetter than white blood. And when they brought him too much bread herefused it. Then they used to press it on him. "Nay, holy father; givethe overplus to the poor."

  "You who go among the poor can do that better. Is bread a thing to flinghaphazard from an hermit's window?" And to those who persisted afterthis: "To live on charity, yet play Sir Bountiful, is to lie with theright hand. Giving another's to the poor, I should beguile them of theirthanks, and cheat thee the true giver. Thus do thieves, whose boast itis they bleed the rich into the lap of the poor. Occasio avaritiae nomenpauperum."

  When nothing else would convince the good souls, this piece of Latinalways brought them round. So would a line of Virgil's AEneid.

  This great reputation of sanctity was all external. Inside the cell wasa man who held the hermit of Gouda as cheap as dirt.

  "Ah!" said he, "I cannot deceive myself; I cannot deceive God's animals.See the little birds, how coy they be! I feed and feed them and long fortheir friendship, yet will they never come within, nor take my hand, bylighting on't. For why? No Paul, no Benedict, no Hugh of Lincoln, noColumbia, no Guthlac bides in this cell. Hunted doe flieth not hither,for here is no Fructuosus, nor Aventine, nor Albert of Suabia: nor e'ena pretty squirrel cometh from the wood hard by for the acorns I havehoarded; for here abideth no Columban. The very owl that was here hathfled. They are not to be deceived; I have a Pope's word for that; Heavenrest his soul."

  Clement had one advantage over her, whose image in his heart he was benton destroying.

  He had suffered and survived the pang of bereavement; and the mindcannot quite repeat such anguish. Then he had built up a habit oflooking on her as dead. After that strange scene in the church andchurchyard of St. Laurens, that habit might be compared to a structureriven by a thunderbolt. It was shattered, but stones enough stood tofound a similar habit on; to look on her as dead _to him_.

  And, by severe subdivision of his time and thoughts, by unceasingprayers, and manual labour, he did, in about three months, succeed inbenumbing the earthly half of his heart.

  But, lo! within a day or two of this first symptom of mental peacereturning slowly, there descended upon his mind a horrible despondency.

  Words cannot utter it; for words never yet painted a likeness ofdespair. Voices seemed to whisper in his ear, "Kill thyself, kill! kill!kill!"

  And he longed to obey the voices; for life was intolerable. He wrestledwith his dark enemy with prayers and tears; he prayed God but to varyhis temptation. "Oh let mine enemy have power to scourge me with red-hotwhips, to tear me leagues and leagues over rugged places by the hair ofmy head, as he has served many a holy hermit, that yet baffled him atlast; to fly on me like a raging lion; to gnaw me with a serpent'sfangs: any pain, any terror, but this horrible gloom of the soul thatshuts me from all light of Thee and of the saints."

  And now a freezing thought crossed him. What if the triumphs of thepowers of darkness over Christian souls in desert places, had beensuppressed; and only their defeats recorded, or at least in full: fordark hints were scattered about antiquity that now first began to grinat him with terrible meaning.

  "THEY WANDERED IN THE DESERT AND PERISHED BY SERPENTS," said an ancientfather, of hermits that went into solitude, "and were seen no more." Andanother at a more recent epoch, wrote: "Vertunter ad melancoliam;" "theyturn to gloomy madness." These two statements
were they not one? for theancient fathers never spoke with regret of the death of the body. No,the hermits so lost were perished souls, and the serpents werediabolical[F] thoughts, the natural brood of solitude.

  St. Jerome went into the desert with three companions; one fled in thefirst year; two died: how? The single one that lasted, was a giganticsoul with an iron body.

  The cotemporary who related this made no comment; expressed no wonder.What then if here was a glimpse of the true proportion in every age, andmany souls had always been lost in solitude for one gigantic mind andiron body that survived this terrible ordeal.

  The darkened recluse now cast his despairing eyes over antiquity to seewhat weapons the Christian arsenal contained, that might befriend him.The greatest of all was prayer. Alas! it was a part of his malady to beunable to pray with true fervour. The very system of mechanicalsupplication he had for months carried out so severely by rule hadrather checked than fostered his power of originating true prayer.

  He prayed louder than ever, but the heart hung back cold and gloomy, andlet the words go up alone.

  "Poor wingless prayers," he cried; "you will not get half way toheaven."

  A fiend of this complexion had been driven out of King Saul by music.

  Clement took up the hermit's psaltery, and with much trouble mended thestrings and tuned it.

  No, he could not play it. His soul was so out of tune. The sounds jarredon it, and made him almost mad.

  "Ah, wretched me!" he cried. "Saul had a saint to play to him. He wasnot alone with the spirits of darkness; but here is no sweet bard ofIsrael to play to me; I, lonely, with crushed heart, on which a blackfiend sitteth mountain high, must make the music to uplift that heart toheaven; it may not be." And he grovelled on the earth weeping andtearing his hair.

  VERTEBATUR AD MELANCHOLIAM.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [D] "Loricatus," vide Ducange, in voce

  [E] It requires now-a-days a strong effort of the imagination to realizethe effect on poor people who had never seen them before, of suchsentences as this: "Blessed are the poor," &c.

  [F] The primitive writer was so interpreted by others besides Clement;and, in particular by Peter of Blois, a divine of the twelfth century,whose comment is noteworthy, as he himself was a forty-year hermit.