Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 49

Concerning the monks, however, it is different. For the priests to marry is merely a change of state; for the monks to abandon their vows is the destruction of their order, and of the monastic life altogether.

Gottfried and I are fully persuaded they are right; and we honour greatly these men, who, disclaiming maintenance at other people's expense, are content to place themselves among the students at the university. More especially, however, I honour the older or less educated brethren, who, relinquis.h.i.+ng the consideration and idle plenty of the cloister, set themselves to learn some humble trade. One of these has apprenticed himself to a carpenter; and as we pa.s.sed his bench the other day, and watched him perseveringly trying to train his unaccustomed fingers to handle the tools, Gottfried took off his cap and respectfully saluted him, saying,--

"Yes, that is right. Christianity must begin again with the carpenter's home at Nazareth."

In our family, however, opinions are divided. Our dear, anxious mother perplexes herself much as to what it will all lead to. It is true that Fritz's second imprisonment has greatly shaken her faith in the monks; but she is distressed at the unsettling tendencies of the age. To her it seems all destructive; and the only solution she can imagine for the difficulties of the times is, that these must be the latter days, and that when everything is pulled down, our Lord himself will come speedily to build up his kingdom in the right way.

Deprived of the counsel of Fritz and her beloved Eva, and of Dr.

Luther--in whom lately she had grown more to confide, although she always deprecates his impetuosity of language--she cannot make up her mind what to think about anything. She has an especial dread of the vehemence of the Archdeacon Carlstadt; and the mild Melancthon is too much like herself in disposition for her to lean on his judgment.

Nevertheless, this morning, when I went to see them, I found her busily preparing some nouris.h.i.+ng soup; which, when I asked her, she confessed was destined for the recusant monk who had become a carpenter.

"Poor creatures," she said apologetically, "they were accustomed to live well in the cloister, and I should not like them to feel the difference too suddenly."

Our grandmother is more than eighty now. Her form is still erect, although she seldom moves from her arm-chair; and her faculties seem little dimmed, except that she cannot attend to anything for any length of time. Sometimes I think old age to her is more like the tender days of early spring, than hard and frosty winter. Thekla says it seems as if this life were dawning softly for her into a better; or as if G.o.d were keeping her, like Moses, with undimmed eyes and strength unabated, till she may have the glimpse of the Promised Land, and see the deliverance she has so long waited for close at hand.

With our children she is as great a favourite as she was with us; she seems to have forgotten her old ways of finding fault; either because she feels less responsibility about the third generation, or because she sees all their little faults through a mellowed light. I notice, too, that she has fallen on quite a different vein of stories from those which used to rivet us. She seems to pa.s.s over the legendary lore of her early womanhood, back to the experiences of her own stirring youth and childhood. The mysteries of our grandfather's history, which we vainly sought to penetrate, are all opened to Gretchen and the boys. The saints and hermits, whose adventures were our delight, are succeeded by stories of secret Hussite meetings to read the Scriptures among the forests and mountains of Bohemia; of wild retreats in caves, where whole families lived for months in concealment; of heart-rending captures or marvellous escapes.

The heroes of my boys will be, not St. Christopher and St. George, but Hussite heretics! My dear mother often throws in a warning word to the boys, that those were evil times, and that people do not need to lead such wild lives now. But the text makes far more impression on the children than the commentary.

Our grandmother's own chief delight is still in Dr. Luther's writings. I have lately read over to her and my father, I know not how many times, his letter from the Wartburg, "to the little band of Christ at Wittemberg," with his commentary accompanying it on the 37th Psalm--"Fret not thyself because of evildoers."

Our dear father is full of the brightest visions. He is persuaded that the whole world is being rapidly set right, and that it matters little, indeed, that his inventions could not be completed, since we are advancing at full speed into the Golden Age of humanity.

Thus, from very opposite points and through very different paths, he and my mother arrive at the same conclusion.

We have heard from Thekla that Ulrich has visited Dr. Luther at the Wartburg, where he is residing. I am so glad to know where he is. It is always so difficult to me to think of people without knowing the scene around them. The figure itself seems to become shadowy in the vague, shadowy, unknown world around it. It is this which adds to my distress about Fritz. Now I can think of Dr. Luther sitting in that large room in which I waited for the Elector with my embroidery, so many years ago--looking down the steep over the folded hills, reaching one behind another till the black pines and the green waving branches fade into lovely blue beneath the golden horizon. And at sunset I seem to see how the shadows creep over the green valleys where we used to play, and the low sun lights up the red stems of the pines.

Or in the summer noon I see him sitting with his books--great folios, Greek, and Hebrew, and Latin--toiling at that translation of the Book of G.o.d, which is to be the blessing of all our people; while the warm sunbeams draw out the aromatic scent of the fir-woods, and the breezes bring it in at the open window.

Or at early morning I fancy him standing by the castle walls, looking down on the towers and distant roofs of Eisenach, while the bell of the great convent booms up to him the hour; and he thinks of the busy life beginning in the streets, where once he begged for bread at Aunt Ursula Cotta's door. Dear Aunt Ursula, I wish she could have lived till now, to see the rich harvest an act of loving-kindness will sometimes bring forth.

Or at night, again, when all sounds are hushed except the murmur of the unseen stream in the valley below, and the sighing of the wind through the forest, and that great battle begins which he has to fight so often with the powers of darkness, and he tries to pray, and cannot lift his heart to G.o.d, I picture him opening his cas.e.m.e.nt, and looking down on forest, rook, and meadow, lying dim and lifeless beneath him, glance from these up to G.o.d, and re-a.s.sure himself with the truth he delights to utter--

"_G.o.d lives still!_" feeling, as he gazes, that night is only hiding the sun, not quenching him, and watching till the grey of morning slowly steals up the sky and down into the forest.

Yes, Dr. Melancthon has told us how he toils and how he suffers at the

Wartburg, and how once he wrote, "Are my friends forgetting to pray for me, that the conflict is so terrible?" No; Gottfried remembers him always among our dearest names of kith and kindred.

"But," he said to-day, "we must leave the training of our chief to G.o.d."

Poor, tried, perplexed Saint Elizabeth! another royal heart is suffering at the Wartburg now, another saint is earning his crown through the cross at the old castle home; but not to be canonized in the Papal Calendar!

_December_ 21.

The chapter of the Augustinian Order in Thuringia and Misnia has met here within this last month, to consider the question of the irrevocable nature of monastic vows. They have come to the decision that in Christ there is neither layman nor monk; that each is free to follow his conscience.

_Christmas Day_, 1521.

This has been a great day with us.

Archdeacon Carlstadt announced, some little time since, that he intended, on the approaching Feast of the Circ.u.mcision, to administer the holy sacrament to the laity under the two species of bread and wine.

His right to do this having been disputed, he hastened the accomplishment of his purpose, lest it should be stopped by any prohibition from the court.

To-day, after his sermon in the City Church, in which he spoke of the necessity of replacing the idolatrous sacrifice of the ma.s.s by the holy supper, he went to the altar, and, after p.r.o.nouncing the consecration of the elements in German, he turned towards the people, and said solemnly,--

"Whosoever feels heavy laden with the burden of his sins, and hungers and thirsts for the grace of G.o.d, let him come and receive the body and blood of the Lord."

A brief silence followed his words, and then, to my amazement, before any one else stirred, I saw my timid, retiring mother slowly moving up the aisle, leading my father by the hand. Others followed; some with reverent, solemn demeanour, others perhaps with a little haste and over-eagerness. And as the last had retired from the altar, the archdeacon, p.r.o.nouncing the general absolution, added solemnly,--

"Go, and sin no more."

A few moments' pause succeeded, and then, from many voices here and there, gradually swelling to a full chorus, arose the Agnus Dei,--

"Lamb of G.o.d, who takest away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.

Give us peace."

We spent the Christmas, as usual, in my father's house. Wondering, as I did, at my mother's boldness, I did not like to speak to her on the subject; but, as we sat alone in the afternoon, while our dear father, Gottfried, Christopher and the children had gone to see the skating on the Elbe, she said to me,--

"Else, I could not help going. It seemed like the voice of our Lord himself saying to me, '_Thou_ art heavy laden-come!' I never understood it all as I do now. It seemed as if I _saw_ the gospel with my eyes,--saw that the redemption is finished, and that now the feast is spread. I forgot to question whether I repented, or believed, or loved enough. I saw through the ages the body broken and the blood shed for me on Calvary; and now I saw the table spread, and heard the welcome, and I could not help taking your father's hand and going up at once."

"Yes, dear mother, you set the whole congregation the best example!" I said.

"I!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean that I went up before any one else?

What! before all the holy men, and doctors, and the people in authority?

Else, my child, what have I done? But I did not think of myself, or of any one else. I only seemed to hear His voice calling me; and what could I do but go? And, indeed, I cannot care now how it looked! Oh, Else,"

she continued, "it is worth while to have the world thus agitated to restore this feast again to the Church; worth while," she added with a trembling voice, "even to have Fritz in prison for this. The blessed Lord has sacrificed himself for us, and we are living in the festival.

He died for sinners. He spread the feast for the hungry and thirsty.

Then those who feel their sins most must be not the last but the first to come. I see it all now. That holy sacrament is the gospel for me."

_February_ 10, 1522.

The whole town is in commotion.

Men have appeared among us who say that they are directly inspired from heaven; that study is quite unnecessary--indeed, an idolatrous concession to the flesh and the letter; that it is wasting time and strength to translate the Holy Scriptures, since, without their understanding a word of Greek or Hebrew, G.o.d has revealed its meaning to their hearts.

These men come from Zwickau. Two of them are cloth-weavers; and one is Munzer, who was a priest. They also declare themselves to be prophets.

Nicholas Storck, a weaver, their leader, has chosen twelve apostles and seventy-two disciples, in imitation of our Lord. And one of them cried in awful tones, to-day through the streets,--

"Woe, woe to the impious governers of Christendom! Within less then seven years the world shall be made desolate. The Turk will overrun the land. No sinner shall remain alive. G.o.d will purify the earth by blood, and all the priests will be put to death. The saints will reign. The day of the Lord is at hand. Woe! woe!"

Opinions are divided throughout the university and the town about them.

The Elector himself says he would rather yield up his crown and go through the world a beggar than resist the voice of the Lord. Dr.

Melancthon hesitated, and says we must try the spirits whether they be of G.o.d. The Archdeacon Carlstadt is much impressed with them, and from his professorial chair even exhorts the students to abandon the vain pursuits of carnal wisdom, and to return to earn their bread, according to G.o.d's ordinance, in the sweat of their brow. The master of the boys'

school called, from the open window of the school-room, to the citizens to take back their children. Not a few of the students are dispersing, and others are in an excitable state, ready for any tumult. The images have been violently torn from one of the churches and burnt. The monks of the Convent of the Cordeliers have called the soldiers to their aid against a threatened attack.