Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 16

The Vicar-General, Staupitz, has visited our convent. I have confessed to him. He was very gentle with me, and to my surprise proscribed me scarcely any penance, although I endeavored to unveil all to him.

Once he murmured, as if to himself, looking at me with a penetrating compa.s.sion, "Yes, there is no drawing back. But I wish I had known this before." And then he added to me, "Brother, we must not confuse suffering with sin. It is sin to _turn_ back. It may be anguish to _look_ back and see what we have renounced, but it is not necessarily sin, if we resolutely press forward still. And if sin mingles with the regret, remember we have to do not with a painted, but a real Saviour; and he died not for painted, but for real sins. Sin is never overcome by looking at it, but by looking away from it to Him who bore our sins, yours and mine, on the cross. The heart is never won back to G.o.d by thinking we ought to love him, but by learning what he is, all worthy of our love. True repentance begins with the love of G.o.d. The Holy Spirit teaches us to know, and, therefore, to love G.o.d. Fear not, but read the Scriptures, and pray. He will employ thee in his service yet, and in his favour is life, and in his service is freedom."

This confession gave me great comfort for the time. I felt myself understood, and yet not despaired of. And that evening, after repeating the Hours, I ventured in my own words to pray to G.o.d, and found it solemn and sweet.

But since then my old fear has recurred. Did I indeed confess completely even to the Vicar-General? If I had, would not his verdict have been different? Does not the very mildness of his judgment prove that I have once more deceived myself--made a false confession, and, therefore, failed of the absolution! But it is a relief to have his positive command as my superior to study the Holy Scriptures, instead of the scholastic theologians, to whose writings my preceptor had lately been exclusively directing my studies.

_April_ 25.

I have this day, to my surprise, received a command, issuing from the Vicar-General, to prepare to set off on a mission to Rome.

The monk under whose direction I am to journey I do not yet know.

The thought of the new scenes we shall pa.s.s through, and the wonderful new world we shall enter on,--new and old,--fills me with an almost childish delight. Since I heard it, my heart and conscience seem to have become strangely lightened, which proves, I fear, how little real earnestness there is in me.

Another thing, however, has comforted me greatly. In the course of my confession I spoke to the Vicar-General about my family, and he has procured for my father an appointment as superintendent of the Latin printing press, at the Elector's new University of Wittemberg.

I trust now that the heavy pressure of pecuniary care which has weighed so long on my mother and Else will be relieved. It would have been sweeter to me to have earned this relief for them by my own exertions.

But we must not choose the shape or the time in which divine messengers shall appear.

The Vicar-General has, moreover, presented me with a little volume of sermons by a pious Dominican friar, named Tauler. These are wonderfully deep and heart-searching. I find it difficult to reconcile the sublime and enrapt devotion to G.o.d which inspires them, with the minute rules of our order, the details of scholastic casuistry, and the precise directions as to the measure of wors.h.i.+p and honour, Dulia, Hyperdulia, and Latria to be paid to the various orders of heavenly beings, which make prayer often seem as perplexing to me as the ceremonial of the imperial court would to a peasant of the Thuringian forest.

This Dominican speaks as if we might soar above all these lower things, and lose ourselves in the One Ineffable Source, Ground, Beginning, and End of all Being; the One who is all.

Dearer to me, however, than this, is an old ma.n.u.script in our convent library, containing the confessions of the patron of our order himself, the great father Augustine.

Straight from his heart it penetrates into mine, as if spoken to me to-day. Pa.s.sionate, fervent, struggling, wandering, trembling, adoring heart, I feel its pulses through every line!

And was this the experience of one who is now a saint on the most glorious heights of heaven?

Then the mother! Patient, lowly, n.o.ble, saintly Monica; mother, and more than martyr. She rises before me in the likeness of a beloved form I may remember, without sin, even here, even now. St. Monica speaks to me with my mother's voice; and in the narrative of her prayers I seem to gain a deeper insight into what my mother's have been for me.

St. Augustine was happy, to breathe the last words of comfort to herself as he did, to be with her dwelling in one house to the last. This can scarcely be given to me. "That sweet habit of living together" is broken for ever between us; broken by my deliberate act. "For the glory of G.o.d!" may G.o.d accept it; if not, may he forgive!

That old ma.n.u.script is worn with reading. It has lain in the convent library for certainly more than a hundred years. Generation after generation of those who now lie sleeping in the field of G.o.d below our windows have turned over those pages. Heart after heart has doubtless come, as I came, to consult the oracle of that deep heart of old times, so nearly s.h.i.+pwrecked, so gloriously saved.

As I read the old thumbed volume, a company of spirits seems to breathe in fellows.h.i.+p around me, and I think how many, strengthened by these words, are perhaps, even now, like him who penned them, amongst the spirits of the just made perfect.

In the convent library, the dead seem to live again around me. In the cemetery are the relics of the corruptible body. Among these worn volumes I feel the breath of the living spirits of generations pa.s.sed away.

I must say, however, there is more opportunity for solitary communion with the departed in that library than I could wish. The books are not so much read, certainly, in these days, as the Vicar-General would desire, although the Augustinian has the reputation of being among the more learned orders.

I often question what brought many of these easy comfortable monks here.

But many of the faces give no reply to my search. No history seems written on them. The wrinkles seem mere ruts of the wheels of Time, not furrows sown with the seeds of thought,--happy at least if they are not as fissures rent by the convulsions of inward fires.

I suppose many of the brethren became monks just as other men become tailors or shoemakers, and with no further spiritual aim, because their parents planned it so. But I may wrong even the meanest in saying so.

The shallowest human heart has depths somewhere, let them be crusted over by ice ever so thick, or veiled by flowers ever so fair.

And I--I and this unknown brother are actually about to journey to Italy, the glorious land of suns.h.i.+ne, and vines, and olives, and ancient cities--the land of Rome, imperial, saintly Rome, where countless martyrs sleep, where St. Augustine and Monica sojourned, where St. Paul and St. Peter preached and suffered,--where the vicar of Christ lives and reigns?

_May_ 1.

The brother with whom I am to make the pilgrimage to Rome, arrived last night. To my inexpressible delight it is none other than Brother Martin--Martin Luther! Professor of Theology in the Elector's new University of Wittemberg. He is much changed again since I saw him last, toiling through the streets of Erfurt with the sack on his shoulder. The hollow, worn look, has disappeared from his face, and the fire has come back to his eyes. Their expression varies, indeed, often from the sparkle of merriment to a grave earnestness, when all their light seems withdrawn inward; but underneath there is that kind of repose I have noticed in the countenance of my aged confessor.

Brother Martin's face has, indeed, a history written on it, and a history, I deem, not yet finished.

HEIDELBERG, _May_ 25.

I wondered at the lightness of heart with which I set out on our journey from Erfurt.

The Vicar-General himself accompanied us. .h.i.ther. We travelled partly on horseback, and partly in wheeled carriages.

The conversation turned much on the prospects of the new university, and the importance of finding good professors of the ancient languages for it. Brother Martin himself proposed to make use of his sojourn at Rome, to improve himself in Greek and Hebrew, by studying under the learned Greeks and rabbis there. They counsel me also to do the same.

The business which calls us to Rome is an appeal to the Holy Father, concerning a dispute between some convents of our Order and the Vicar-General.

But they say business is slowly conducted at Rome, and will leave us much time for other occupations besides those which are most on our hearts, namely, paying homage at the tombs of the holy apostles and martyrs.

They speak most respectfully and cordially of the Elector Frederick, who must indeed be a very devout prince. Not many years since, he accomplished a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and took with him the painter Lucas Cranach, to make drawings of the various holy places.

About ten years since, he built a church dedicated to St. Ursula, on the site of the small chapel erected in 1353, over the Holy Thorn from the Crown of Thorns, presented to a former elector by the king of France.

This church is already, they say, through the Elector Frederick's diligence, richer in relics than any church in Europe, except that of a.s.sisi, the birth-place of St. Francis. And the collection is still continually being increased.

They showed me a book printed at Wittemberg a year or two since, ent.i.tled "A Description of the Venerable Relics," adorned with one hundred and nineteen woodcuts.

The town itself seems to be still poor and mean compared with Eisenach and Erfurt; and the students, of whom there are now nearly five hundred, are at times very turbulent. There is much beer-drinking among them. In 1507, three years since, the Bishop of Brandenburg laid the whole city under interdict for some insult offered by the students to his suite, and now they are forbidden to wear guns, swords, or knives.

Brother Martin, however, is full of hope as to the good to be done among them. He himself received the degree of Biblicus (Bible teacher) on the 9th of March last year; and every day he lectures between twelve and one o'clock.

Last summer, for the first time, he was persuaded by the Vicar-General to preach publicly. I heard some conversation between them in reference to this, which afterwards Brother Martin explained to me.

Dr. Staupitz and Brother Martin were sitting last summer in the convent garden at Wittemberg together, under the shade of a pear tree, whilst the Vicar-General endeavoured to prevail on him to preach. He was exceedingly unwilling to make the attempt. "It is no little matter,"

said he to Dr. Staupitz, "to appear before the people in the place of G.o.d." "I had fifteen arguments," he continued in relating it to me, "wherewith I purposed to resist my vocation; but they availed nothing."

At the last I said, "Dr. Staupitz, you will be the death of me, for I cannot live under it three months." "Very well," replied Dr. Staupitz, "still go on. Our Lord G.o.d hath many great things to accomplish, and he has need of wise men in heaven as well as in earth."

Brother Martin could not further resist, and after making a trial before the brethren in the refectory, at last, with a trembling heart, he mounted the pulpit of the little chapel of the Augustinian cloister.

"When a preacher for the first time enters the pulpit," he concluded, "no one would believe how fearful he is; he sees so many heads before him. When I go into the pulpit, I do not look on any one. I think them only to be so many blocks before me, and I speak out the words of my G.o.d."

And yet Dr. Staupitz says his words are like thunder-peals. _Yet!_ do I say? Is it not _because_? He feels himself nothing; he feels his message everything; he feels G.o.d present. What more could be needed to make a man of his power a great preacher?

With such discourse the journey seemed accomplished quickly indeed. And yet, almost the happiest hours to me were those when we were all silent, and the new scenes pa.s.sed rapidly before me. It was a great rest to live for a time on what I saw, and cease from thought, and remembrance, and inward questionings altogether. For have I not been commanded this journey by my superiors, so that in accordance with my vow of obedience, my one duty at present is to travel; and therefore what pleasure it chances to bring I must not refuse.

We spent some hours in Nuremberg. The quaint rich carvings of many of the houses were beautiful. There also we saw Albrecht Durer's paintings, and heard Hans Sachs, the shoemaker and poet, sing his G.o.dly German hymns. And as we crossed the Bavarian plains, the friendliness of the simple peasantry made up to us for the sameness of the country.