Virgin Saints and Martyrs

S. Geneviève was born and lived in a time of frightful disaster, unparalleled in the history of Europe. From the commencement of the fifth century a veritable deluge of diverse nations, driven on one by another, inundated the crumbling empire, and gave the signal for its complete ruin.

The Franks, under the long-haired Clodion, traversing the forest of the Ardennes, and rolling to the banks of the Somme, had seized on Amiens, Cambrai, Tournai, after having burnt Trèves, and sacked Cologne. The citizens, of Trèves, which had been the residence of emperors since Maximian, had been slaughtered in the circus to which they had fled. The amphitheatre, which under Constantine has streamed with the blood of the Barbarians, was now heaped with the bodies of Romans. Cologne had been revelling in drunken orgy, when a slave ran to announce that the Franks were on the walls. The citizens had not the manhood to rise from table so as to die standing. Their blood mingled with the wine of their overturned cups. God chastised Roman vices with disgrace as with iron. In this fifth century three societies stood face to face—the Old Roman polity, the Barbarian, and the Church. Rome went to pieces under the blows of the Barbarians, but the Barbarian in turn was subjugated by Christianity.

S. Geneviève was born at Nanterre, about seven miles from Paris, in 422 or 423. The old name of the place, Nemetdoor, is purely Celtic, as is her name, which is the same as Gwenever or Gwenhwyvar in Welsh. Her father was named Severus, and her mother Gerontia, the female form of Geraint. There can be no doubt whatever that she was of Gallic origin, but Latinised, and a Christian.

One word, before proceeding, about the authority for her life. This is a biography, written eighteen years after her death, by the priest Genes, her spiritual director. He learned from the saint the general outline of the incidents in her childhood, and these he dressed up in what he believed to be literary style.

Late in the Middle Ages it was said that S. Geneviève had kept sheep for her father, and she is now generally represented as a shepherdess; but there is no early authority for this, although the fact is very probable. In the year 429 S. Germain, Bishop of Auxerre, and S. Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, at the entreaty of the British Church, commissioned for the work by a Council of Gallican bishops, left their dioceses to visit our island, there to withstand the Pelagian heresy, which was making way.

S. Germain was well qualified to go to Britain, as he was of Celtic origin, and his sister was the wife of Aldor, brother of Constantine I., King of Devon and Cornwall.

On his way to the coast he passed through Nanterre. The people, hearing of his approach, lined the road, and with them were the children in goodly numbers.

As Germain and Lupus advanced, the eye of the former rested on a fair little girl of seven, whose devout look, and sweet, innocent face, arrested him. He stood still, and called her to him, then stooped and kissed her on the brow, and asked her name. He was told that she was called Geneviève. The pleased parents now stepped up, and the venerable bishop asked, “Is this your child?”

They answered in the affirmative.

“Then,” said Germain, “happy are ye in having a child so blessed. She will be great before God; and, moved by her example, many will decline from evil and incline to that which is good, and will obtain remission of their sins, and the reward of life from Christ.” And then, after a pause, he said to the young girl, “My daughter, Geneviève.” She answered, “Thy little maiden listens.”

Then he said, “Do not fear to tell me whether it be not your desire to devote yourself body and soul to Christ.”

She answered, “Blessed be thou, father, for thou hast spoken my desire. I pray God earnestly that He will grant it me.”

“Have confidence, my daughter,” said Germain; “be of good courage, and what you believe in your heart and confess with your lips, that take care to perform. God will add to your comeliness both virtue and strength.”

Then they went into the church and sang nones and vespers, and throughout the office Bishop Germain rested his right hand on the fair little head of the child.

That evening, after supper had been eaten and they had sung a hymn, Germain bade Severus retire with his daughter, but bring her to him again early next morning. So when day broke, Severus returned with the child, and the old bishop smiled, and said, “Welcome, little daughter Geneviève. Do you recollect what was said yesterday?”

She answered, “My father, I remember what I promised, and with God’s help what I promised that I will perform.”

Then S. Germain picked up a brass coin from the ground, which had the sign of the cross on it, and which he had noticed lying there whilst he was speaking; and he gave it to her, saying, “Bore a hole in this, and wear it round thy neck in remembrance of me, and let no other ornament, or gold or silver or pearls, adorn thy neck and thy fingers.” Then he bade her farewell, commending her to the care of her father, and pursued his journey.

Now, we may ask, How much of this is true? Almost everything. Geneviève was certain never to forget how the old bishop had stopped her, when a little mite of seven, how he had asked her name, had made her promise to love and fear God; how in church his hand had rested all through the service on her head, and how he had given her the coin to wear. But as to the prophecy relative to her future, and to his exacting of her a promise to be a nun, all that may be the make-up of Genes, writing after she had been a blessing to the people of Paris, and had embraced the monastic life.

At the age of fifteen she and two other girls somewhat older than herself presented themselves before the bishop to be veiled as dedicated virgins. It was remarked that, although Geneviève was the youngest, yet the bishop consecrated her first.

After their dedication they returned to their homes; for, at that time, it was not a matter of course that consecrated virgins should live in community.

About this time her mother suffered from inflamed eyes, and for twenty-one months, or nearly two years, could not see to do her household work. Accordingly, Geneviève was of immense assistance to her. She was wont repeatedly to bathe her mother’s eyes with water from the well, and this in time reduced the inflammation, so that eventually Gerontia recovered her sight.

At last Geneviève lost both her parents, and now, having no home duties to restrain her, she went to Paris into a religious community.

In 447 S. Germain again visited Britain about the same trouble which had occasioned his first journey; and when, on his way, he came to Paris, he inquired for the little girl whom he had blessed at Nanterre eighteen years before.

Genes tells us that some spiteful people sought to disparage her; but Germain would not hearken to them, and sent for and communed with her.

What caused them to make light of her was probably this. She had adopted a life of great asceticism, eating nothing but barley bread and beans, and that only twice in the week; and remaining within her cell, conversing with none from Epiphany till Easter.

There were a number of people in Paris who did not like these extravagances; and it was these, in all probability, who spoke against her to S. Germain. But, as we shall see presently, by this means she did acquire an enormous power over the people of Paris, which she used for good.

S. Germain had probably but just returned from Britain before a new and terrible scourge broke upon Gaul.

In 451, the Huns, headed by their king, Attila, burst in. In two columns this vast horde had ascended the Danube. One of these drew several German peoples along with it, eager for plunder, whilst the other fell on and crushed the isolated Roman stations. This agglomeration of invaders met at the sources of the Danube, crossed the Rhine at Basle, where the proximity to the Black Forest favoured the construction of rafts for passing over.

The Franks, who occupied the right bank of the Rhine, extended their hands to the Huns. The Burgundians, however, offered a vain resistance, and were cut to pieces. The Huns, entering Gaul, completed the destruction of what had been left standing by Vandals, Suevi, and Alans. Attila, following the Rhine as he had the Danube, devastated Alsace. Strasburg, Spires, Worms, ruined by preceding invasions, had not risen from the dust. Mayence was sacked, Toul sank in flames, Metz had its walls and towers overthrown after a few months’ resistance. The savage conquerors massacred all, even to the children at the breast. They fired the town, and long after its site could only be recognised by the Chapel of S. Stephen, which had escaped the conflagration.

Several cities opened their gates to Attila: they hoped to find safety in submission; they did but expedite their destruction. Despair gave courage to others, but no heroism availed against these devouring hordes. Rheims and Arras were delivered over to the sack. The host broke up into fractions, which ravaged the country, carrying everywhere fire and sword.

Attila advanced to the Loire.

Then it was that a panic fell on the inhabitants of Paris. In madness of fear, they prepared to desert it: the rich in their chariots and waggons, the poor on foot.

It was now that S. Geneviève stood forward and rebuked their cowardice. Whither could they fly? The enemy penetrated everywhere. The Hun gained audacity by the universal panic. Better man their walls, brace their hearts, and resist heroically.

The Parisian mob, headlong and cruel, as such a mob has ever been, howled at her, and prepared to pelt her with stones and cast her into the Seine, when, opportunely, appeared the Archdeacon of Auxerre, sent expressly to Geneviève from the bishop, just returned from Britain, and now dying, bearing Blessed Bread to her, that he had sent in token of affectionate communion. This loaf, the eulogia, was that from which the bread for the Communion had been taken, and which remained over. It had been blessed, but not consecrated; and it was sent by bishops to those whom they held in esteem.

Such a token of regard paid to Geneviève by one so highly esteemed awed the rabble, and they swung from one temper to another. They were now amenable to her advice. They closed the gates, accumulated the munitions of war, and made preparations to stand a siege; but Attila did not approach. He foresaw that it would take him too long to reduce so strong a place. On the 14th of June, 451, the Huns encountered their first repulse. They were driven from the siege of Orleans. On the field of Châlons-sur-Marne, the memorable battle was fought between Aetius, the Roman general, and Attila. “It was a battle,” says the historian Jornandes, “which for atrocity, multitude, horror, and stubbornness has not had its like.” The field was heaped with the dead, but it resulted in the expulsion of the Huns from Gaul.

Feeling a great reverence for S. Denis, Geneviève desired greatly to build a church on the scene of his martyrdom; and she urged some priests to undertake the work. But they hesitated, saying that they had no means of burning lime—it was a lost art. Then, so runs the tale, one of them suddenly recollected having heard two swineherds in conversation on the bridge over the Seine. One had said to the other: “Whilst I was following one of my pigs the other day, I lit in the forest on an ancient abandoned lime-kiln.”

“That is no marvel,” answered the other, “for I found a sapling in the forest uprooted by the wind, and under its roots was an old kiln.”

The priests inquired where these kilns were and used them, and Geneviève set the priest Genes, who was afterwards her biographer, to superintend the work of building the church.

It shows to what a condition of degradation the art of building had fallen, when the Parisians were unable to burn lime without old Roman kilns for the purpose.

A little incident, very simple and natural, was afterwards worked up into a marvel. She was going one night from her lodging to the church for prayers, carrying a lantern, when the wind, which was violent, extinguished it. She opened the lantern, when a puff of wind on the thick red glowing wick rekindled the flame. This was thought quite miraculous. It is a thing that has happened over and over again with tallow candles when the snuff is long.

In the year 486, Childeric, King of the Franks, laid siege to Paris, which had remained under Roman governors. The siege lasted ten years, to 496. It cannot have been prosecuted with much persistence.

The Frank army reduced the city to great straits, and famine set in. The poor suffered the extremity of want, and were dying like flies. No one seemed to know what to do. All energy and resourcefulness had deserted those in authority. Geneviève alone showed what steps should be taken: she got into a ship, and was rowed up the Seine, and then up the Aube to Arçis, where she knew that she could obtain corn. In the Seine was a fallen tree with a snag that had been the cause of the loss of several vessels, but no one had thought of removing the obstruction. Geneviève made her boatmen saw up the tree and break it, so that it floated down stream and could effect no further mischief. Another instance of the condition of helplessness into which the debased provincials of Gaul had fallen: they neither could build lime-kilns nor keep their rivers open for traffic. She got together what provisions she could at Arçis, then went on upon the same quest to Troyes, and finally laded eleven barges with corn, and returned with them to the famished city. As they neared Paris a strong gale was blowing, and the barges being laden very heavily ran some risk, especially as here also there were snags in the water. But with patience and trouble they were manœuvred through these impediments, and the convoy arrived in Paris, with the priests singing, and all who were in the boats joining, “The Lord is our help and our salvation. The Lord hath delivered us in the time of trouble.”

The joy and gratitude of the Parisians knew no bounds. Afterwards, when the city did fall, Childeric resolved on executing a great host of captives; but Geneviève, in a paroxysm of compassion, rushed to him, fell on her knees, and would not desist from intercession on their behalf till he had consented to spare them.

At length, worn out by age, she died in 512, and was buried in Paris, where now stands the Panthéon. The church was desecrated at the Revolution, and turned into a burial-place for Mirabeau, the regicide Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, the brutal Marat, Dampierre, Fabre, Bayle, and other revolutionaries. The bodies of Voltaire and Rousseau were also transferred to it.

In 1806 it was again restored as a church, but was once more turned into a temple after the July revolution of 1830. Once again consecrated in 1851, it was finally secularised in 1885 for the obsequies of Victor Hugo.

It looked to the eyes of Christians of the Roman Empire crumbling to pieces as though the end of all things were at hand. From every quarter barbarism was extending over the confines of the Empire and was breaking them down. The civilisation which had been built up through centuries, the organism of political unity, the literature and learning of two great and gifted races, the Greek and the Latin, achievements of art never to be surpassed, and Christianity, all seemed destined to go down and be trodden under foot never to reappear.

Throughout the Church there rose the wail to God—“Thine adversaries roar in the midst of Thy congregations: and set up their banners for tokens. He that hewed timber afore out of the thick trees was known to bring it to an excellent work. But now they break down all the carved work thereof with axes and hammers. They have set fire upon Thy holy places: and have defiled the dwelling-place of Thy Name, even unto the ground. Yea, they said in their hearts, Let us make havock of them altogether: thus have they burnt up all the houses of God in the land. We see not our tokens, there is not one prophet more: no, not one is there among us, that understandeth any more. O God, how long shall the adversary do this dishonour: how long shall the enemy blaspheme Thy Name, for ever?”

Confusion, corruption, despair and death, were everywhere; social dismemberment was complete. The empire that had embraced the known world was crumbling to dust under the blows of the mysterious multitudes passing out of the darkness beyond the pale. Odoacer, the chief of the Heruli, had snatched the purple of the Cæsars from the shoulders of their last representative in 476, but himself disdained to wear a mantle that was stained with cowardice and dishonour. Authority, morals, laws, science, the arts, religion itself, all seemed to be sinking into the vortex of death.

Germany was wholly pagan, a breeding-place of hordes that burst forth periodically to devastate the land that had been cultivated, and to extinguish the light wherever it burned. Gaul had been overwhelmed by successive waves of barbarism. Spain was ravaged by Visigoths, Suevi, Alani, and Vandals. These latter had swept over Northern Africa, and had given it up to unpitying persecution. Britain had been invaded by the Anglo-Saxons, who had driven the Britons and their Christianity to the mountains of Strathclyde, Wales, and to the peninsula of Cornwall. Over the frozen Danube, the Goths had passed on their cumbrous waggons, and had spread from the woody shores of Dalmatia to the walls of Constantinople.

The condition of Italy, the heart and soul of the Empire that had been dissolved, was deplorable to the last degree. For centuries agriculture had decayed in it, as the farms were absorbed by the great senatorial families and worked by their slaves. The people had come to expect their grain from Egypt and Africa, and now these tributary harvests were withdrawn. War, famine, pestilence stalked over its fair plains, and mowed down such as remained of the population. Pope Gelasius affirmed, with some exaggeration, that in Æmilia, Tuscany and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated. “The plebeians of Rome,” says Gibbon, “who were fed by the hand of their master, perished or disappeared, as soon as his liberality was suppressed; the decline of the arts reduced the industrious mechanic to idleness and want; and the senators, who might support with patience the ruin of their country, bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury. One-third of those ample estates, to which the ruin of Italy is originally imputed, was extorted for the use of the conquerors. Injuries were aggravated by insults; the sense of actual sufferings was embittered by the fear of more dreadful evils; and as new lands were allotted to new swarms of barbarians, each senator was apprehensive lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favourite villa, or his most profitable farm. The least unfortunate were those who submitted without a murmur to the power which it was impossible to resist.”

The general despair produced in religious minds the conviction that the fashion of the world was passing away, there was nothing further to be hoped for in it, and that the only direction in which the eternal spring of hope could flow was in the channels of religion that led to heaven.

This was the condition of affairs in Italy, and this explains the origin and the enormous expansion of the Benedictine Order.

S. Benedict was born along with his sister Scholastica in the year 480. They were twins, and loved each other with that tenderness which so generally exists between twins; they were of one heart and one soul.

They belonged to the noble Anician family, whose history is traceable to the second century before Christ.

Benedict and his twin sister were born at Nursia, a Sabine town, situated high up in the mountains near the source of the Nar. It was here that Vespasia Polla, mother of the Emperor Vespasian, was also born. Virgil speaks of the coldness of its climate, as the chilly cradle of the waters of Tiber and Febaris. To the east tower up the Apennines to the peak of the Monte della Sibilla. Two centuries after the death of Benedict, the vast ruins of his ancestral palace were still to be seen outside the town gates.

Doubtless it was to this Alpine retreat that the family had fled to hide themselves from the Gothic invaders who were devouring the land. Benedict and his twin sister, as their minds opened, became aware of the universal hopelessness that possessed men’s minds. The doom of the great nobles was as certainly sealed as at the French Revolution. No prospect was open to them of any work, any career in political life. They could not fly the fatherland to the colonies, for the colonies were in the throes as well.

These little children, wandering hand in hand through the empty halls of the palace, became prematurely grave, and at an early age were convinced that the only life open to them was that of religion.

Scholastica was the first to speak out what she felt, and to resolve to devote herself wholly to God. Who could think of marriage then, when there was no prospect of being able to rear a family in sufficiency and to any career? Benedict followed. Leaving his old nurse, to whom the charge of the children had been committed, and who loved them as her own soul, he plunged into the gorges of the mountains to seek for a retreat where he might discipline his body and soul. The place he found was Subiaco, twenty-six miles from Tivoli, up the valley of the Anio. Why he chose this spot we do not know. He can hardly have stumbled on it in his wanderings about Nursia, and it is probable that he went thence from some other villa and estate of his parents.

The first place where he lodged was Mentorella, and there his nurse, Cyrilla, came up with him, and insisted on furnishing him with supplies of food. But thence he soon went on to Subiaco, where he found a cave in the face of the rocks above the falls of the Anio, and there he spent three years. Every day, Romanus, a monk who dwelt amid a colony of anchorites among the ruins of Nero’s palace, near at hand, let down to him half a loaf from the top of the rock above, giving him notice of its approach by the ringing of a bell suspended to the same rope with the food.

It was an astounding mode of life for a boy growing into manhood, and we should now consider it a most unprofitable one. But it was not destined to be unprofitable—very much the contrary; and we must remember that there was absolutely no other field for the activities of a young noble open before him.

“How perfectly,” says Dean Milman, “the whole atmosphere was then impregnated with an inexhaustible yearning for the supernatural, appears from the ardour with which the monastic passions were indulged at the earliest age. Children were nursed and trained to expect at every instant more than human interferences; their young energies had ever before them examples of asceticism, to which it was the glory, the true felicity of life, to aspire. The thoughtful child had all his mind thus preoccupied. He was early, it might almost seem intuitively, trained to this course of life; wherever there was gentleness, modesty, the timidity of young passion, repugnance to vice, an imaginative temperament, a consciousness of unfitness to wrestle with the rough realities of life, the way lay invitingly open—the difficult, it is true, and painful, but direct and unerring way to heaven.”

Such a life is not needed now-a-days. What is now required is one like that of Angela, in Sir Walter Besant’s “All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” who will plunge into the sordid wretchedness of the slums of our great cities, and labour there to bring happiness to the dull lives of the toilers—who will labour to ameliorate the condition of those that are the slaves of our nineteenth-century civilisation. What we require—what God requires—are social reformers, men and women, who in place of living selfish lives of amusement and luxury, will devote themselves to helping to raise those who are down, who will seek happiness, not in pampering self, but in making others happy.

After a while crowds of disciples flocked to Benedict, and then he left Subiaco for Monte Cassino, which was thenceforth to be the capital of monastic life.

Strange it may appear, but it was true, that Benedict found the people round Cassino still pagans, offering sacrifices in a temple to Apollo on the height where he chose to plant his settlement.

The visitor to Monte Cassino now leaves the station at San Germano, and hires donkeys for the ascent. The steep and stony path winds above the roofs of the houses of the town, and at every path opens fresh views of entrancing beauty. The silver thread of the Garigliano lies below, with towns studded on its banks; long ranges of mountains of the most beautiful outline break the horizon, billow after billow of intensest blue, crested as with a foam of snow. Little oratories by the wayside commemorate incidents in the life of S. Benedict. First comes that of S. Placidus, the favourite disciple of the patriarch; then that of Scholastica his sister; then one where he is supposed to have wrought a miracle; next a cross on a platform that indicates the place where brother and sister met for the last time—of which more anon. Then a grating and a cross where S. Benedict knelt to ask God’s blessing before he laid the foundation stone of his monastery. Benedict had been thirty-six years a monk before he came to Monte Cassino, and we know nothing of his sister’s life through all these years, save that she had maintained a still and holy converse with God. It is most probable that she had never tarried very far from her brother. Now that he settled at Monte Cassino, she came and planted herself with a little community of pious women at the foot of the mountain. Scholastica was as white in soul, as earnest, as devout as was Benedict. They were alike in everything save in sex; and she became, as unawares as himself, a mighty foundress—for if from him houses for men multiplied throughout the Western world, so was she the mother spiritual of innumerable similar refuges for holy women.

At Monte Cassino, according to the expression of Pope Urban II., “the monastic life flowed from the heart of Benedict as from the fountain of Paradise,” and here it was that he composed his famous rule, that commenced with the words, “Hearken, O my sons” (Ausculta o fili).

When he drew it up, not a notion came into his head that he was doing a work that would last, a work that was absolutely needed for the times, and without which the barbarians would never have been tamed and regenerated, and a new civilisation superior to the old rise out of the ashes of that which expired.

It is quite true that there were plenty of monks and nuns already scattered about; but they were under no definite rule, under no strict obedience. We see exactly how it was among the Celtic societies. An abbot or abbess rambled over the West, now in Ireland, then in Scotland, in Britain, in Armorica, dived into the Swiss gorges, strayed about in the woods of Germany, founding houses and churches, then going farther. And just as the abbots were ever on the move, so was it with those who placed themselves under their teaching. No sooner did they think they knew enough, or no sooner did the itch of change affect them, than away they went, now to pay a brief visit to some other great master, then to be off again and found monasteries of their own. There was no stability about them, and above all no organisation. The idea of obedience never seems to have entered their heads, and, as a matter of course, a great number of vagabonds too idle to work, and loving change, assumed the tonsure and habit, and roved over the country leading scandalous lives; in fact, the Hooligans of the day postured as saints. Monachism, which should have served a high missionary purpose, for lack of organisation was becoming a discredit to Christianity.

There is a striking French tale, “Mon oncle Celestin,” by Ferdinand Faber, in which he describes the “ermites” of the Cevennes and the south of France, a set of men who pretend to lead exalted lives, wear a religious habit, are under no ecclesiastical discipline, and who—with some notable exceptions—are a scandal and source of demoralisation. Now the monks and ascetics before S. Benedict were very much like these modern “ermites” of the Cevennes.

The great work of S. Benedict was to coordinate all these ardent men in one body, to subject them to discipline, to insist on obedience, and then to employ their powers for the good of the Church and of humanity in general.

At that period, when nations had to be conquered, and those nations barbarian, the ordinary methods of propagating the faith did not suffice. Single priests were pretty sure to be butchered, or if not, alone they could effect very little. Besides, the barbarians had to be taught something more than Christianity; they had to be instructed in the industrial arts and in agriculture.

Now, the Benedictine monastery was not only a missionary establishment containing a great many men, but it was a school, a hospital, a poorhouse, a great workshop, and an agricultural institution.

But we must leave this interesting topic to speak of S. Scholastica.

As already said, she had established herself at the foot of the mountain with a community of like-minded women who were under the direction of her brother. They met only once a year; and then it was that Scholastica left her cloister to seek Benedict. He, on his side, descended part way to meet her; and the place where they clasped hands and looked into each other’s eyes was on the mountain side, not very far from the gate of the monastery.

“There, at their last meeting, occurred that struggle of fraternal love with the austerity of the rule, which is the only episode in the life of Scholastica, and which has insured an imperishable remembrance to her name. They had passed the entire day in pious conversation, mingled with the praises of God. Towards evening they ate together.

“While they were still at table, and the night approached, Scholastica said to her brother, ‘I pray thee do not leave me to-night, but let us speak of the joys of heaven till the morning.’ ‘What sayest thou, my sister!’ answered Benedict; ‘on no account can I remain out of the monastery.’

“Upon the refusal of her brother, Scholastica bent her head between her clasped hands on the table, and prayed to God, shedding tears to such an extent that they ran over the table. The weather was at the time serene: there was not a cloud in the sky. But scarcely had she raised her head, when thunder was heard muttering, and a storm began. The rain, lightning, and thunder were such, that neither Benedict nor any of the brethren who accompanied him could take a step beyond the roof that sheltered them.

“Then he said to Scholastica, ‘May God pardon thee, my sister, but what hast thou done?’ ‘Ah yes!’ she answered him, ‘I prayed thee, and thou wouldst not listen to me; then I prayed God, and He heard me. Go now, if thou canst, and send me away, to return to my convent.’

“He resigned himself, against his will, to remain, and they passed the rest of the night in spiritual conversation. S. Gregory, who has preserved this tale to us, adds that it is not to be wondered at God granting the desire of the sister rather than that of the brother, because of the two it was the sister who loved most, and that those who love most have the greatest power with God.

“In the morning they parted, to see each other no more in this life. Three days after, Benedict, being at the window of his cell, had a vision, in which he saw his sister entering heaven under the form of a dove. Overpowered with joy, his gratitude burst forth in songs and hymns to the glory of God. He immediately sent for the body of the saint, which was brought to Monte Cassino, and placed in the sepulchre he had already prepared for himself, that death might not separate those whose souls had always been united to God.

“The death of his sister was the signal of departure for himself. He survived her only forty days. A violent fever having seized him, he caused himself to be carried into the chapel of S. John the Baptist. He had before ordered to be opened the tomb in which his sister slept. There, supported in the arms of his disciples, he received the viaticum: then, placing himself at the side of the open grave, at the foot of the altar, and with his arms extended towards heaven, he died standing, murmuring a last prayer.

“Died standing!—such a victorious death became well the great soldier of God.”^[3]

He was buried beside his sister, on the very spot where had stood the altar of Apollo which he had cast down.

One would have to look through many centuries, and over a wide tract of the earth’s surface, to find a woman who possessed in her own generation so large an influence, and who so deeply impressed her personality on after generations, as S. Bridget. A woman she was, with no advantages of birth; but who by the mere force of character and her marvellous holiness, became a predominating power in the Church of Ireland after the death of S. Patrick.

It is said of the sick that the nurse is as important as the doctor; and in the spread of the Gospel and the establishment of the Church, the part of Bridget was only second to that of the great Apostle of Ireland.

The lives of S. Bridget that we possess are, unhappily, late, and intermixed, nay, overloaded with fable; the most grotesque and preposterous miracles are attributed to her. Nevertheless, when sifted, and the extravagances have been eliminated, sufficient of truth, of real history and biography remains behind for us to distinguish the main outline of her story, and to discern the real characteristics of the Saint.

It would seem to be a law of Divine providence, that at such periods of transformation as arise periodically, suitable persons should rise to prominence for giving direction to the disturbed minds of men in the general dislocation of received ideas.

To understand the exact position of S. Bridget, and the work she wrought, it is necessary for us to look at the condition of Ireland before it received the Gospel.

The whole political organisation was tribal, and not territorial. The chief of the clan was almost absolute, and about him, as a centre of unity, the tribesmen clung, as bees about their queen.

The chiefs had their Druids or Medicine-men, who blessed their undertakings and cursed their enemies, and the most unbounded confidence was placed in the efficacy of these blessings or curses. The Druids were endowed with lands, and probably in Ireland, as in Britain, constituted sacred tribes within the tribal confines of the secular chiefs.

When S. Patrick arrived he at once strove to effect the conversion of the chiefs, for without that his efforts with the bulk of the population must fail, and the conversion of a chief entailed as a consequence that of his clan. The Druids, when discredited, were disposed to accept Christianity; where they were not, the chiefs did not disestablish them, but gave to S. Patrick and his followers fresh sites on which to constitute their own ecclesiastical federations, on precisely the same system as that of the Druids. S. Patrick throughout acted in the most conciliatory spirit; he overthrew nothing that was capable of being adapted, and his wise forbearance conciliated even those at first most opposed to him.

There can be little doubt that in Ireland, as in Gaul, there had been colleges of Druidesses, as there had been of Druids. We do not know this by the testimony of texts, but it is more than probable. In Gaul these women were prophetesses; they lived in solitary places, often on islands. The nine Scenæ occupied an island in the Seine. The priestesses of the Namnetes lived on another at the mouth of the Loire, in huts about a temple. Once in the year they were bound, between one night and another, to destroy and replace the roof of their temple; and woe to the woman who dropped any of the sacred materials! Instantly she was set upon by her sisters, and torn limb from limb.

When S. Patrick and his missionaries entered on the prerogatives of the Druids, there was occasion for Christian women to usurp the places, and to some extent the functions, of the Druidesses. And this is precisely the line adopted by S. Bridget. The year of her birth was between 451 and 458, and she was the daughter of a slave woman, who had been sold to a Druid. Her mother’s name was Brotseach. The father, Dubtach, was a nominal Christian, but a thoroughly heartless and unprincipled man.

The Druid and his wife were kindly people, and provided a white cow with red ears, on whose milk the little child was reared, and they allowed only one woman whom they could trust to milk the cow. As she grew up, Bridget was set to keep sheep on the moors; and there, not only did she tend them, but she also tamed the wild birds that flew about her. Soon the wild ducks and brent-geese allowed her to stroke them. When she had grown old enough to be useful, she asked leave to go and see her father, who lived in Leinster, whereas her mother was a slave in Ulster. The Druid at once gave her leave, and she left. Her father was not cordial in his reception of her, and set her to keep swine, and also at times to manage the kitchen. On one occasion, when visited by an acquaintance, he bade her boil five pieces of bacon for the entertainment. Unfortunately a hungry dog came in and carried off some of the bacon. This threw Dubtach into a fury, and he sent her back to her mother.

On her return, Bridget found Brotseach very ill and unable to attend to her work. It was summer, and she had been sent with the cattle to a mountain pasture, such as in Wales is called a hafod, whereas the winter habitation is the hendrê. There were twelve cows to be milked, and their butter to be made. Bridget undertook the supervision of the dairy with energy, and some verses have been preserved which it is said she sang as she churned: “Oh, my Prince, who canst do all things, and God, bless, I pray Thee, my kitchen with Thy right hand—my kitchen, the kitchen blessed by the white God, blessed by the Mighty King, a kitchen stocked with butter. Son of Mercy, my Friend, come and look upon my kitchen, and give me abundance.”

It was reported to the Druid that Bridget gave the buttermilk to the poor, and he and his wife started for the mountain dairy to see that she was not wasting their substance; but they found that the butter she had made was so good and so plentiful that they were satisfied. Indeed, the kindly old man at once gave Brotseach and Bridget their liberty, to go where they would. He and his wife had been won by their piety and blameless life, and gladly consented to be baptised.

Bridget and her mother left with thanks and tears, and went to Leinster to Dubtach, who was well connected and rich, but avaricious. Bridget particularly annoyed him by her readiness to give food to the poor. To what extent she was justified in this may be questioned. But it must be remembered that the period was one in which no provision whatever was made for the poor, who starved unless assisted; and the girl’s tender heart could not endure to see their sufferings and not to relieve them.

At last Dubtach could stand it no longer, and he took her in his chariot to sell her into slavery, to grind at the quern for Dunlaing, son of the King of Leinster. On reaching the king’s dun, or castle, Dubtach went within and left Bridget outside in the chariot. A squalid leper came up, begging. Bridget, whether out of impulsive charity, or more probably in a fit of mischievous cunning, knowing that her father was selling her like a calf or a sheep, gave to the leper the sword which Dubtach had left in the chariot. The poor man at once disappeared with the gift. Next moment the prince and her father issued from the dun; the prince desired to look at the girl before purchasing her. Instantly Dubtach discovered that his sword was gone, and he asked after it. “I have given it away for your soul’s good,” said Bridget, with a twinkle in her eye. “On my word!” exclaimed the prince, “I cannot afford to buy such extravagant slaves as this.”

Dubtach drove home in a fury, and he made his house so intolerable that she resolved to embrace the monastic life. She sought Bishop Maccaille, taking seven companions with her, all desiring to unite in the service of God and in ministering to the sick and needy.

Bishop Maccaille placed white veils on their heads, and blessed and consecrated them. Bridget was then aged eighteen.

Each of the girls chose one of the Beatitudes as her special virtue, which before all others she would seek to attain; and Bridget selected as hers “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

An odd story was told in later times concerning this consecration. It was said that Maccaille opened his book in the wrong place, and instead of reading the office for the consecration of a virgin, read over her that for the ordination of a bishop.

This fable was invented for a purpose. As we shall see presently, Bridget became head of an ecclesiastical tribe, and had under her jurisdiction a bishop who was amenable to her orders. This was a condition of affairs not at all uncommon among the British, Irish, and Scots, but it was incomprehensible in mediæval times to those trained under another system, when bishops were sources of jurisdiction. So this story was made up to give some justification for the exercise, by the Abbess Bridget, of authority over a bishop and priests.

In the Life of S. Bridget we are assured that when she was twelve years old she met S. Patrick, and that she wove the shroud in which he was buried. According to the ordinary computation, S. Patrick came to Ireland in 432, and died in 465; but Dr. Todd has shown good reason to believe that this calculation rests on an error. Palladius, whose name was also Patricius, was sent to Ireland in 432 by Pope Celestine; but he failed in his mission, abandoned Ireland, and died at Fordun. Neither S. Patrick himself, in his Confession, nor the earliest notices of him, say a word of his having been sent by Celestine, and there is reason to believe that he really came to Ireland in 460, and died in 493. If this be the case, it is quite possible that there may be truth in the story of the meeting of Bridget and the great apostle, and that it was his influence which induced her to adopt the life she chose. Bridget was now at the head of her little community of eight virgins, and they at once devoted themselves to good works.

Very soon great numbers of pious women came to her from every quarter, entreating to be received into her community and placed under her direction.

We can see by the brutality of Dubtach selling the mother of his child to a heathen Druid, though he himself professed to be a Christian, and later, deliberately attempting to sell his daughter, that women at that time were treated as chattels, and no respect was paid to them. It was largely due to Bridget that an immense revulsion of feeling in this particular took place.

She travelled over Ireland, and, wherever she was able, planted those who placed themselves in her hands near their own relatives and in their own country. She entered into correspondence with the bishops. She was warmly seconded by Erc of Slane, by Mel of Armagh, and Ailbe of Emly.

She managed to dot her settlements through a large portion of the island, and they became not only hospitals for the sick, but nurseries of learning, for she made a point of having the young girls confided to her for education taught their letters.

King Conall visited her on his way to make a raid, and to ask her benediction on his arms; “for,” said he, “it is a mighty great pleasure cutting the throats of our enemies.”

Bridget used all her endeavours to dissuade him from an unprovoked attack against those who were at peace with him, but she could induce him to go home only on one condition—that she would promise him her aid in all legitimate wars.

Somewhat later he was engaged in a military expedition, and it had been successful.

As he was returning, very tired, with his men, he reached a dun or castle, and resolved to rest there. His men dissuaded him, as the enemy were in pursuit. “Bah!” said Conall, “Bridget has promised to look after me,” and he threw himself down to sleep. A great fire was lighted, and his men ranged the heads of the slain they had brought with them round the fire, and they themselves sat up talking and singing. Meanwhile the enemy came on, but they sent a spy, who crept unobserved up to the walls and looked in. When he saw the dead faces with the flicker of the red fire on them, and that Conall’s men were alert, his heart failed him, and he went back and told his fellows that they must not risk a night attack on the dun.

Many touching stories are told of Bridget’s tenderness to the sick: of a poor consumptive boy whom she nursed; of a man who carried his mother on his back for many days, that he might lay her before Bridget in the hopes that she might be healed of the lung complaint that afflicted her.

One day—so says the legend—two lepers came to her, and she bade the one wash the other. And he who was washed became whole. Then said she, “Go and wash thy brother.” “Not I, forsooth!” replied the man. “I, a clean man, with sound skin, shall I scrub that loathsome object?” “Then I will do it,” said Bridget; and she took the poor leper and thoroughly cleansed him.

The truth of this story would seem to be that Bridget bade a servant wash the leper, that he refused, and she herself performed the office.

But she did more than attend to the sick. She saved the lives of men condemned to death. On one occasion, a cupbearer to the King of Teffia let fall a valuable goblet, and it was dented. The king, in a rage, ordered the man to execution, though Bishop Mel interceded for him, but in vain; then Bridget got the cup, and, as she had skilful smiths under her, had the dents removed, so that it presented the same appearance as before, and the king was then reluctantly induced to pardon the man.

She was for a long time under the direction of Erc of Slane, in Munster. Whilst there, a certain anchorite, who had made a vow never to look on the face of a woman, started with his disciples to go to one of the Western Isles, there to establish a community. His way led near where Bridget was. Night fell, and his disciples, not relishing spending the hours of darkness on the open waste, and supperless, begged him to ask Bridget to give them food and lodging for the night. The old man absolutely refused. Bridget heard of this, and when the whole company was asleep she and one or two of her maids went on tiptoe to them and carried off all their bundles of goods and garments. When the men woke next morning everything was gone. Here was a pretty kettle of fish! Most reluctantly the old anchorite was obliged to swallow his objections and go humbly to Bridget and beg for the restitution of the packages. “Very well,” said she, “when I have fed and housed you for a couple of days, you shall have them,—and do not hold up your nose and despise women any more.” So she entertained the whole party, and when they departed she provided them with a couple of sumpter horses to carry their bundles for them. When the anchorite arrived at the island to which he had taken a fancy, to his dismay he found that a man lived on it with his wife and sons and daughters, and claimed it as his property, and absolutely refused to leave. The anchorite was forced to send for Bridget to arrange terms, and she with difficulty bought off the proprietor. “After all,” said she, “you can’t do without the help of women—for all your foolish vow.”

When with S. Erc, she must have been in that portion of King’s County that then belonged to the kingdom of Meath. After that she removed to Waterford, and remained for some time at Kilbride, near Tramore.

She heard that the King of Munster had a captive in chains very harshly treated. She went to his castle to beg for the man’s release, but the king was not at home. However, the foster-father and -mother, and foster-brothers were there. They could give her no assistance. “I will await the king’s return,” said Bridget. Time began to pass heavily. She looked round, and saw that harps hung in the hall. “Come,” said she, “let us have some music.” The foster-parents of the king expressed themselves unwilling and incapable. But Bridget would take no excuse. Towards evening the king returned, and as he neared his hall, heard the twang of harps and voices singing and laughing. He came in at the door, and when he saw his foster-father with a cracked voice piping out an old ballad he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. Every one was in good humour, and he could not refuse Bridget her request.

Bridget next moved into Leinster, apparently to the district of Kinsale. She had not seen her father for some time, so now she went to visit him. He was not more amiable as he advanced in years. With difficulty she withdrew from him a servant maid, whom he was thrashing unmercifully. When she left, the maid said to her, “Oh! would to heaven you were always here, to save us from the master’s violence!”

She—who had been a slave-girl herself—was pitiful to these poor things. Some runaway slave-girls took refuge with her, and she had hard work sometimes to reconcile their mistresses to leaving them under her protection.

Before she left her father, the old fellow asked her to get the king to let him keep as his own property a sword the prince had lent him. Bridget went to the castle. No sooner had she arrived than one of the king’s men entreated her to take him into her tribe. So she asked the king to give her the man, and give her father the sword.

“You ask a great deal,” said he. “I must have something in return.”

“Shall I demand of God for you Life Eternal, and a continuation of royalty in your house?”

“As to Life Eternal,” said the king, “I know nothing about it; and as to royalty after I am dead, the boys of my family must fight for their own crowns. Give me victory over my enemies.”

“I will obtain that for you,” she said. And on this being promised he acceded to both her requests.

This is a very characteristic story of an Irish saint. The kings and princes firmly believed that the saints could give them a place in heaven and victory over their foes, could continue their line in power, or deprive their posterity of sovereign rights.

This king was Illand, son of Dunlaing. Soon after this interview he went into the plain of Breagh, west of Dublin, where he fought the Ulster men and defeated them. After this he waged as many as thirty battles in Ireland, and gained eight victories in Britain. He died in 506. On his death the clan of Niall, taking courage, gathered their forces to attack the men of Leinster, who actually dug up the body of the old king, set it in a chariot, clothed in his regal garments, and marched against the men of the north, headed by the corpse.

Bridget now went into Connaught, and founded an establishment there. It was whilst there that an incident characteristic of the times occurred.

She had under her charge a poor decrepit woman who was failing rapidly. “The old creature can’t live,” said one of Bridget’s women. “Let us strip her at once. It is bitter weather and frosty, and it will be awkward to get her garments off her back when she is stiff and stark.”

“On no account,” said Bridget. And when the cripple died she with her own hands divested the body of its clothing, then laid the garments outside the door in the frost, and washed them finally herself.

Bridget and some of her spiritual daughters paid a visit to S. Ibar of Begery. He served them at supper with bacon. Bridget saw two of the girls sitting with their platters before them and their noses turned up; they would not touch the food. She was very angry, jumped up from her seat, caught them by the shoulders, and turned them out of the hall, and bade them stand there, one on each side of the door, till supper was over. She had run short of seed-corn, and had gone to beg some of Ibar. The season was probably Lent, and the scruple of the girls was on that account.

When S. Bridget first saw the great plain of Breagh stretched before her, it was in early summer, and it was as though snowed over with the white clover, and the air that breathed from it was sweet with scent and musical with the hum of bees. She stood still, raised her hands in an ecstasy of delight, and said: “Oh! if this plain were but mine, I would give it all to God!”

“Good woman!” said S. Columba, when he was told this of Bridget. “God accepted the desire of her loving heart just as surely as if she really had made to Him the donation of all that land.”

Once a bishop and a party of clerks arrived, and began to inquire when they were to have a meal and what they were to have to eat.

“It is all very well for you to be so clamorous,” said Bridget, “for you are hungry. But can you not understand that I and my spiritual daughters are hungry also? We have no religious teacher here, and we long to hear the Word of God. Will you not give us who are hungry the nourishment of souls before you call on us to satisfy your stomachs?”

The bishop was ashamed, and led the way to the church.

It happened that there was a couple who led a cat-and-dog life, and at last declared that they could not live together, and that they would separate. Bridget went to them, and by her charm of manner and earnest words so won them over that thenceforth they came to love each other devotedly. So much so, that one day when the husband left home to cross an estuary, without saying good-bye, the wife ran after him into the water, and would have been drowned had he not returned to kiss her.

There was a madman who wandered on the mountain—Slive Forait. Bridget was crossing it, and her companions were in deadly fear of encountering the maniac. “I fear him not,” said she; “I will go and find him.”

Before long she encountered the poor wretch. She said to him, “My friend, have you anything to say to me?”

“Yes, nun,” answered he: “Love the Lord, and all will love thee. Reverence the Lord, and all will reverence thee. I cannot avoid thee, O nun, thou art so pitiful to all the miserable and poor.”

The life she led with the sisters was full of simplicity. She took her turn to tend the sheep, she helped to brew the Easter ale which she sent about to the bishops as her offering.

The following is a funny story.

Certain friends came to visit Bridget, and they left their house shut without a caretaker in it. When they were well away, some robbers came, broke open the byre and stole the oxen, and drove them away to the Liffey. They had to cross the river at a ford, but the water was deep, so the men stripped themselves, and that their garments might be kept dry, attached them to the horns of the cattle. But no sooner were the oxen in the water than they refused to proceed, and, turning, galloped home, carrying away the clothing of the robbers on their heads.

Having such large numbers of women under her direction, Bridget was obliged to draw up for them a set of rules. An odd legend attaches to the rules. She sent, so it was told, seven men and a poor blind boy, who was in her service, to Rome to obtain a rule. But as they were crossing the English Channel, the anchor caught. They drew lots who was to go down and release the anchor. The lot fell to the blind boy. He descended, unhooked the anchor, and it was hauled up, but left him behind. The seven went on, and returned at the end of the year, and were without any rule. As they were crossing the Channel, again the anchor caught, but it became disengaged, and up with it came the boy, and he had a Rule of Life with him, acquired in the depths, and this he took to Bridget, and it became her famous rule for all her communities. Perhaps the story originated thus. It was said that she had sent to Rome for a system of monastic discipline, but as none came to her, she fished up one out of the depths of her own conscience and common-sense.

Bridget certainly to the utmost strove to show forth the grace of Mercy, which she had elected as that for which she would specially strive, when she was veiled. Poor lepers were kept by her attached to her convent, and fed and administered to by her.

One day a woman brought her a hamper of apples. “Oh!” cried Bridget, “how pleased my lepers will be with them!” The woman angrily said, “I brought the apples for you, and not for a parcel of lepers.”

On another occasion, when Bishop Conlaeth came to vest for the Eucharist, he found that his chasuble was gone. In fact, Bridget had cut it up and made of it a garment for a leper. Conlaeth was not overpleased. “I cannot celebrate without a proper vestment,” said he. “Wait a moment,” said Bridget, and ran away. Presently she returned with one she had made and embroidered with her own hands, and gave it to him in place of that she had disposed of to the leper.

A poor fellow who had gone to prefer a petition to the King of Leinster, saw a fox playing about in his cashel (i.e. castle). Not knowing that it was tame, and a pet of the king, he killed it. The king, Illand, was furious, threw the fellow into chains and vowed he would have him put to death. Bridget heard of it, and at once went to see him, and took with her a fox that had just been trapped. She offered the fox to Illand, on condition that he should let the man go. The king, supposing it was tame, consented. No sooner was the fellow released than Bridget let go her fox, when away dashed Reynard across the dun and over the walls, and was seen no more. “I have not got the best of this bargain,” said the king.

In or about the year 480 she founded her mother house at Kildare—“The Cell of the Oak.” She was granted land and a sanctuary, with jurisdiction over all who lived on her land. Thus she became a great ecclesiastical chieftainess, ruling not over women only, but over men as well. Indeed, it would seem that schools for youths were also under her. To regulate sacred matters in her tribe, she chose a bishop named Conlaeth, who was a good smith in the precious metals, and could manufacture bells.

In the great house of Kildare little children were taken charge of, either because orphans, or because given to the sisters by their parents. Tighernach, Bishop of Clones, was one of these. As a babe, Bridget held him at the font, and his infant years were under her care. He ever remained deeply attached to her. Perhaps it may be taken as a token of his affection that when he founded a church in Cornwall, a chapel dedicated to his foster-mother should have been planted in proximity.

One who deeply reverenced her was the famous S. Brendan, who sailed for seven years on the Atlantic in quest of the Land of Promise. Once he was in conversation with her, and he said to her, “Tell me, Bridget, about your spiritual things. For my part I may say that, since I have learned to love and fear God, I have not stepped across nine furrows without my mind turning to Him.”

Bridget thought for a moment and said, “I do not think, Brendan, that my mind has ever strayed from Him.”

As her age advanced, her influence extended throughout Ireland. Swarms of her spiritual children must have crossed to Wales, to Devon and Cornwall, to Brittany, for we find in all these districts dedications to her; and these dedications signify churches placed under the rule of her congregation. It may indeed be said that it was she who initiated a great upheaval of woman from being a mere slave to become a revered member of the social body.

There was no woman in the British Church, either in Wales or Alba, which we now call Scotland, who occupied the same position. In Saxon England the only woman who at all approached her was S. Hilda, and she was not, like Bridget, an originator.

Conlaeth, Bridget’s bishop, died in 519. She was sought, consulted by princes and by prelates. The sour Gildas, author of the “History of the Britons,” if he did not pay her a visit, sent her as token of his esteem the present of a small bell, cast by himself.

Nothing particular is recorded of her last illness. She received the Communion from the hands of S. Nennid, whom years before she had gently reproved for his giddiness, and she died on February 1st, 525. According to some accounts she was aged seventy, according to others seventy-four.

There are two old Irish hymns in honour of her. One begins: