On the next evening Atherton resumed his reading as follows:—

Chronicle of Adolph Arnstein, continued.

1354. March. St. Brigitta’s Day.—A fortnight ago this day, there came to me, to buy as goodly a battle-axe as could be made, young Sir Ulric—the same who, at the tourney the other day, graced his new-won spurs by such gallant feats of arms. We fell into talk about the great floods which have everywhere wrought of late such loss of life, and cattle, and husbandry. He said he had but the day before saved the life of a monk who, with his companion, had been carried beyond his depth by the force of the water, as they were wading across the fields.

‘The one most in danger,’ said Ulric, ‘had a big book in his bosom. As he flounders about, out tumbles the book; he lets go his staff, and makes after it; and souse he goes, over head and ears in a twinkling. The other stands stock still, and bawls out to me for help. I, just sworn to succour the distressed and be true to the Church, spur Roland, plunge in, and lift out the draggled, streaming father by the hood, half throttled and half drowned, but clutching the book in his frozen fingers as though it were a standard or a fair lady’s token. I lay him before me across my horse; his fellow catches hold of my stirrup, and we land on the rising ground. When my monk had somewhat come to himself, he pours as many blessings on my head as there were drops running from his habit; not, he said, for saving his poor life merely, but that the book was safe. He had just finished writing it—there was not another copy in the world—the devil had an especial spite against it—no doubt the fiend had raised the waters to destroy the seed which fed men’s souls as well as the grain which nourished their bodies; but the faithful God had sent me, like his angel, just in time for rescue. I saw them in safety, and he promised to remember me in his orisons. His name, I think he said, was Seusse or Suso.’^[159]

So Suso is in Strasburg, thought I,—the man I have long wished to see. I lost no time in inquiring after him at the Dominican convent. There I found, with no small satisfaction, that he was none the worse for his mishap; saw him several times, and persuaded him, at last, to honour for a few days my unworthy roof. He has been with us for a week, but must pursue his journey to-morrow. On my part, I could tell him news about Ruysbroek, and Tauler, and some of his old friends at Cologne. On his, he has won the love of all the household by his gentle, affectionate nature, blessed us by his prayers, and edified every heart by his godly conversation. My good wife would love him, if for nothing else, because he so loves the little ones. They love him because he always goes with them to feed the old falcon, and to throw out crumbs for the sparrows, because he joins them in petting Argus, and talks so sweetly about the Virgin and Child, and the lilies and violets and roses, and the angels with gold-bright wings that live in heaven. Those three tall fellows, my boys, fonder of sword-play, wrestling, and camping the bar, than of churchmen or church-going, will listen to him by the hour, while he tells of his visions, his journeys, his dangers, and his deliverances. Rulman Merswin also came over and spent two evenings with us. He talked much with Suso about Master Eckart. Suso was full of reminiscences and anecdotes about him. In his youthful days he had been his disciple at Cologne.

‘At one time,’ said Suso, ‘I was for ten years in the deepest spiritual gloom. I could not realize the mysteries of the faith. A decree seemed to have gone forth against me, and I thought I was lost. My cries, my tears, my penance,—all were vain. I bethought me at last of consulting my old teacher, left my cell, sailed down the Rhine, and at Cologne the Lord gave to the words of the master such power that the prison-doors were opened, and I stepped out into the sunshine once more. Neither did his counsel cease with life. I saw him in a vision, not long after his death. He told me that his place was in the ineffable glory, and that his soul was divinely transformed in God. I asked him, likewise, several questions about heavenly things, which he graciously answered, strengthening me not a little in the arduous course of the inner life of self-annihilation. I have marvelled often that any, having tasted of the noble wine of his doctrine, should desire any of my poor vintage.’^[160]

In talking with the brethren at the convent, while Suso was their guest, I heard many things related concerning him altogether new to me. I was aware that he had been greatly sought after as a preacher in German throughout the Rhineland, and stood high in the esteem of holy men as a wise and tender-hearted guide of souls. That he was an especial friend of the Friends of God wherever he found them, I knew. When at Cologne I heard Tauler praise a book of his which he had in his possession, called the Horologe of Wisdom.^[161] Something of the fame of his austerities, conflicts, and revelations, had come to my ears, but the half had not been told me.

It seems that his life, from his eighteenth to his fortieth year, was one long self-torture. The Everlasting Wisdom (who is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, more precious than rubies, and with whom are durable riches and righteousness) manifested herself to him. This was his call to the spiritual life. He seemed to behold her—a maiden, bright as the sun,—her crown, eternity;—her raiment, blessedness;—her words, sweetness; unknown, and yet well known; near, and yet afar off; smiling on him, and saying, ‘My son, give me thine heart!’ From that time forth he dedicated his life to her service. He called himself the servant of the Eternal Wisdom, armed his soul as her knight, wooed her as his heart’s queen, bore without a murmur the lover’s pangs of coyness, doubt, and distance, with all the hidden martyrdom of spiritual passion.^[162]

But the rose of his love, as he is wont to term it, had fearful thorns. I heard with a shudder of what he underwent that he might crush to death his naturally active, buoyant, impulsive temperament. Day and night he wore a close-fitting shirt in which were a hundred and fifty sharp nails, the points turned inward on the flesh. In this he lay writhing, like a mangled worm; and lest in his sleep he should find some easier posture, or relieve with his hands in any way the smart and sting that, like a nest of vipers, gnawed him everywhere, he had leather gloves made, covered with sharp blades, so that every touch might make a wound. Time after time were the old scars opened into new gashes. His body appeared like that of one who has escaped, half dead, from the furious clutches of a bear. This lasted sixteen years, till a vision bade him cease.

Never satisfied with suffering, he devised a new kind of discipline. He fashioned a wooden cross, with thirty nails whose points stood out beyond the wood, and this he wore between his shoulders underneath his garments, till his back was one loathly sore. To the thirty nails he added afterwards seven more, in honour of the sorrows of the Mother of God. When he would administer the discipline, he struck a blow on this cross with his fist, driving the points into his wounded flesh. He made himself, moreover, a scourge, one of the iron tags of which was bent like a fisher’s hook, and with this he lashed himself till it broke in his hand. For many years he lay at nights in a miserable hole he called his cell, with an old door for his bed, and in the depth of winter thought it sin to approach the stove for warmth. His convent lay on a little island where the Rhine flows out of the Lake of Constance. He could see the sparkling water on every side. His wounds filled him with feverish thirst; yet he would often pass the whole day without suffering a drop to moisten his lips. His recompence was the vision in which, at one time, the Holy Child brought him a vessel of spring-water; and, at another, Our Blessed Lady gave him to drink from her own heart. Such, they tell me, was his life till his fortieth year, when it was signified to him that he should remit these terrible exercises. He is now, I believe, little more than fifty years old—the mere wreck of a man to look at; but with such life and energy of spirit that, now he hath begun to live more like other people, he may have a good thirty years before him still.^[163]

I questioned him about his book called the Horologe of Wisdom, or Book of the Eternal Wisdom, for it hath gone abroad under both names. He said it was finished in the year 1340, since which time he hath written sundry other pieces. He declared to me that he wrote that treatise only in his most favoured moments, himself ignorant and passive, but under the immediate impulse and illumination of the Divine Wisdom. He afterwards carefully examined all he had written, to be sure that there was nothing in his pages other than the holy Fathers had taught, and the Church received.^[164] Methought, if he was sure of his inspiration, he might have spared himself this pain, unless the Holy Spirit could in some sort gainsay his own words.

He is strongly moved by music,—but what must have been his rapture to hear the hymns of the heavenly host! He has seen himself surrounded by the choir of seraphim and cherubim. He has heard a voice of thrilling sweetness lead the response, ‘Arise and shine, Jerusalem,’ and has wept in his cell with joy to hear from angels’ lips, at early dawn, the soaring words, ‘Mary, the morning star, is risen to-day.’ Many a time has he seen a heavenly company sent down to comfort him. They have taken him by the hand, and he has joined in spirit in their dance,—that celestial dance, which is a blissful undulation to and fro in the depths of the divine glory. One day, when thus surrounded in vision, he asked a shining prince of heaven to show him the mode in which God had His secret dwelling in his soul. Then answered the angel, ‘Take a gladsome look into thine inmost, and see how God in thy loving soul playeth His play of love.’ Straightway (said Suso to me) I looked, and behold the body about my heart was clear as crystal, and I saw the Eternal Wisdom calmly sitting in my heart in lovely wise: and, close by that form of beauty, my soul, leaning on God, embraced by His arm, pressed to His heart, full of heavenly longing, transported, intoxicated with love!^[165]

We were talking one evening of May-day eve, and asking Suso wherein their custom of celebrating that festival differed from our own. He said that in Suabia the youths went out, much in our fashion, singing songs before the houses of the maidens they loved, and craving from them garlands in honour of the May. He told us how he, in like manner, besought Our Lady with prayers and tears that he might have a garland from her Son, the Eternal Wisdom. It was his wont, he said, to set up a spiritual May-pole—the holy cross, that May-bough of the soul, blossoming with grace and beauty. ‘Before this,’ he continued, ‘I performed six venias,^[166] and sung the hymn, ‘Hail, holy cross!’ thereafter praising God somewhat thus:—

‘Hail! heavenly May of the Eternal Wisdom, whose fruit is everlasting joy. First, to honour thee, I bring thee, to-day, for every red rose a heart’s love; then, for every little violet a lowly inclination; next, for every tender lily, a pure embrace; for every bright flower ever born or to be born of May, on heath or grassplot, wood or field, tree or meadow, my heart doth bring thee a spiritual kiss; for every happy song of birds that ever sang in the kindly May, my soul would give thee praises inexhaustible; for every grace that ever graced the May, my heart would raise thee a spiritual song, and pray thee, O thou blest soul’s May! to help me so to glorify thee in my little time below, that I may taste thy living fruit for evermore above!‘^[167]

The beginning of a new stage of trial was made known to him by the appearance, in a vision, of an angel, bringing him the attire and the shoes of a knight. With these he was to gird himself for new and yet more terrible conflicts. Concerning his own austerities he never speaks, nor does he show to any one the letters of the name of Jesus, which he is said to have cut with a style upon his bosom. But of the sufferings which came upon him from without, he talks freely. At one time, when in Flanders, he was brought before the chapter on a charge of heresy; but his enemies gained not their wicked end.^[168] He was in greatest danger of his life shortly before the coming of the plague, when the fearful rumour was abroad about the poisoning of the wells. He himself told me the story, as follows:—

‘I was once despatched on a journey in the service of the convent, and they gave me as my companion a half-witted lay-brother. We had not been many days on the road, when, one morning, having early left our quarters for the night, we arrived, after a long, hungry walk through the rain, at a village on the banks of the Rhine. It happened to be the fair-time. The street was full of booths and stalls, horses and cattle, country-folk, players, pedlers, and idle roystering soldiers. My fellow-traveller, Peter, catches sight of a sign, and turns in straightway to warm himself at the fire, telling me I can go on, do what I have to do, and I shall find him there. As I learnt after, he sits himself down to table with a ruffianly set of drovers and traders that had come to the fair, who first of all make him half-drunk, and then seize him, and swear he has stolen a cheese. At this moment there come in four or five troopers, hardened fellows, ripe for any outrage, who fall on him also, crying, ‘The scoundrel monk is a poisoner.’ The clamour soon gathers a crowd.

‘When Peter sees matters at this pass, he piteously cries out to them to loose him, and stand still and listen: he will confess everything. With that they let go their hold, and he, standing trembling in the midst of them, begins: ‘Look at me, sirs,—you see I am a fool; they call me silly, and nobody cares for what I say: but my companion, he is a wise man, so our Order has given him the poison-bag, and he is to poison all the springs between here and Alsace. He is gone now to throw some into the spring here, to kill every one that is come to the fair. That is why I stayed here, and would not go with him. You may be sure that what I say is true, for you will see him when he comes with a great wallet full of bags of poison and gold pieces, which he and the Order have received from the Jews for this murderous business.’

‘At these words they all shouted, ‘After the murderer! Stop him! Stop him!’ One seized a spear, another an axe, others the first tool or weapon they could lay hands on, and all hurried furiously from house to house, and street to street, breaking open doors, ransacking closets, stabbing the beds, and thrusting in the straw with their swords, till the whole fair was in an uproar. Some friends of mine, who heard my name mentioned, assured them of my innocence of such an abominable crime, but to no purpose. At last, when they could nowhere find me, they carried Peter off to the bailiff, who shut him up in the prison.

‘When I came back to the inn, knowing nothing of all this, the host told me what had befallen Peter, and how this evil rumour had stirred up the whole fair against me. I hastened off to the bailiff to beg Peter’s release. He refused. I spent nearly the whole day in trying to prevail with him, and in going about in vain to get bail. At last, about vesper time, with a heavy sum of gulden I opened the heart of the bailiff and the doors of the jail.

‘Then my greatest troubles began. As I passed through the village, hoping to escape unknown, I was recognised by some of the mob, and in a moment they were swarming about me. ‘Down with the poisoner!’ they cried. ‘His gold shall not serve him with us as it did with the bailiff.’ I ran a little way, but they closed me in again, some saying, ‘Drown him in the Rhine;’ others answering, ‘No, burn him! he’ll poison the whole river if you throw him in.’ Then I saw (methinks I see him now) a gigantic peasant in a russet jerkin, forcing his way through the crowd, with a pike in his hand. Seizing me by the throat with one hand, and flourishing the pike in the other, he shouted, ‘Hear me, all of you. Let me spit him with my long pike, like a poisonous toad, and then plant it in this stout hedge here, and let the caitiff howl and twist in the air till his soul goes home to the devil. Then every one that goes by will see his withered carcass, rotting and wasting, and sink him deeper down in hell with curses. Come on,—it serves him right.’

‘My brain swam round. I closed my eyes. I expected the next instant to feel the iron. By some merciful interposition, the wretch was not suffered to execute his purpose. I thought I saw some of the better sort looking on with horror-stricken faces, but they dared not interfere. The women shrieked and wrung their hands. I made my way from one to another of those who seemed least pitiless, beseeching them to save me. Heaven must have heard my cries, though man did not. They stood round watching me, disputing with horrid oaths among themselves what they should do. At length—as I had sunk on my knees under the hedge, praying for deliverance—I saw a priest, more like an angel than a man, mightily thrusting them from side to side, and when he reached me, laying his hand on my arm, he looked round on the ring of savage faces, and threatened them with the hottest curses of the Church if they harmed a hair upon the head of her servant; outvoiced their angry cries with loud rebukes of their cowardice, cruelty, and sacrilege, and led me out safely through them all. He brought me to his house, made fast the doors, refreshed and sheltered me for the night, and by the earliest dawn I was away and safe upon my journey, while that abode of the wicked was sunk in its drunken sleep. I keep the anniversary of that dreadful day, and never shall I cease to praise the goodness which answered my prayer in the hour of need, and delivered me as a bird from the snare of the fowler.^[169]

‘On one other occasion only,’ continued Suso, ‘did I taste so nearly the bitterness of death.’

We begged him to tell us the adventure, and so he did, somewhat thus—

‘I was once on my way home from Flanders, travelling up the Rhine. A great feebleness and sickness had been upon me for some days, so that I could not walk fast, and my companion, young and active, had gone on about two miles ahead. I entered an old forest whose trees overhung the steep river bank. It was evening, and it seemed to grow dark in a moment as I entered the chilling shadow of a wood, in which many a defenceless passenger had been robbed and slain. I had gone on deeper and deeper into the growing gloom, the wind among the pines sounding like a hungry sea. The fall of my own footsteps seemed like the tread of one coming after me. I stood still and hearkened. It was no one; when suddenly I saw, not far off among the trees, two persons, a man and a woman, talking together and watching me. I trembled in every limb, but I made the sign of the cross, and passed on. Soon I heard quick footsteps behind me. I turned—it was the woman. She was young and fair to look on. She asked my name, and when she learnt it, said she knew and reverenced me greatly, told me how that robber with whom I saw her had forced her to become his wife, and prayed me there and then to hear her confession.

‘When I had shriven her, think how my fear was heightened to see her go back and talk long and earnestly with the robber, whose brow grew dark, as he left her without a word, and advanced gloomily towards where I stood. It was a narrow pathway; on the one side the forest, on the other the precipice, sheer down to the rapid river. Alas, thought I, as my heart sank within me, now I am lost. I have not strength to flee: no one will hear a cry for help: he will slay me, and hide the body in the wood. All was still. I listened in vain for the sound of a boat, a voice, or even the bark of a dog. I only heard the feet of the outlaw and the violent beating of my own heart. But, lo! when he approached me, he bowed his knee, and began to confess. Blessed Mary, what a black catalogue! While he spake I heard, motionless, every word of the horrible recital, and yet I was all the time listening for rescue, watching his face, and minutely noting every little thing about his person. I remember the very graining of the wood of his lance which he laid aside on the grass when he knelt to me—the long knife in his belt—his frayed black doublet—his rough red hair, growing close down to his shaggy eyebrows—two great teeth that stood out like tusks—and his hands clasped, covered with warts, and just the colour of the roots of the tree by which I stood. Even during those fearful moments, I can call to mind distinctly how I marked a little shining insect that was struggling among the blades of grass, climbing over a knot of wood, and that got upon a fir-cone and fell off upon its back.

‘After revealing to me crimes that made my blood run cold, he went on to say, ‘I was once in this forest, just about this hour of the day, on the look-out for booty as I was this evening, when I met a priest, to whom I confessed myself. He was standing just where you are now, and when my shrift was ended, I drew out this knife, stabbed him to the heart, and rolled his body down there into the Rhine.’ When I heard this, the cold sweat burst out upon my face; I staggered back giddy, almost senseless, against the tree. Seeing this, the woman ran up, and caught me in her arms, saying, ‘Good sir, fear nothing, he will not kill you.’ Whereat the murderer said, ‘I have heard much good of you, and that shall save your life to-day. Pray for me, good father, that, through you, a miserable sinner may find mercy in his last hour.’ At this I breathed again, and promised to do as he would have me. Then we walked on some way together, till they parted from me, and I reached the skirts of the wood, where sat my companion waiting. I could just stagger up to him, and then fell down at his side, shivering like a man with the ague. After some time I arose, and we went on our way. But I failed not, with strong inward groaning, to plead with the Lord for the poor outlaw, that he might find grace and escape damnation. And, in sooth, I had so strong an assurance vouchsafed to me of God, that I could not doubt of his final salvation.’

With stories such as these of what befel himself, and many others, whom he knew in Suabia and the Oberland, or met with on his journeys, the holy man whiled away our windy March nights by the ingle. Very edifying it was to hear him and Rulman Merswin talk together about the higher experiences of the inward life.

Concerning the stages thereof, Suso said that the first consisted in turning away from the world and the lusts of the flesh to God: the second, in patient endurance of all that is contrary to flesh and blood, whether inflicted of God or man: the third, in imitating the sufferings of Christ, and forming ourselves after his sweet doctrine, gracious walk, and pure life. After this, the soul must withdraw itself into a profound stillness, as if the man were dead, willing and purposing nought but the glory of Christ and our heavenly Father, and with a right lowly demeanour toward friend and foe. Then the spirit, thus advanced in holy exercise, arriveth at freedom from the outward senses, before so importunate; and its higher powers lose themselves in a supernatural sensibility. Here the spirit parts with its natural properties, presses within the circle which represents the eternal Godhead, and reaches spiritual perfection. It is made free by the Son in the Son.

‘This I call,’ he said, ‘the transit of the soul,—it passes beyond time and space, and is, with an amorous inward intuition, dissolved in God. This entrance of the soul banishes all forms, images, and multiplicity; it is ignorant of itself and of all things; it hovers, reduced to its essence, in the abyss of the Trinity. At this elevation there is no effort, no struggle; the beginning and the end are one.^[170] Here the Divine Nature doth, as it were, embrace, and inwardly kiss through and through, the soul; that they may be for ever one.^[171] He who is thus received into the Eternal Nothing is in the Everlasting Now, and hath neither before nor after. Rightly hath St. Dionysius said that God is Non-being—that is, above all our notions of being.^[172] We have to employ images and similitudes, as I must do in seeking to set forth these truths, but know that all such figures are as far below the reality as a blackamoor is unlike the sun.^[173] In this absorption whereof I speak, the soul is still a creature, but, at the time, hath no thought whether it be creature or no.’^[174]

Suso repeated several times this saying—‘A man of true self-abandonment must be unbuilt from the creature, in-built with Christ, and over-built into the Godhead.’^[175]

We bid adieu with much regret to this excellent man, and his visit will abide long in our memory. We drew from him a half promise that he would come to see us yet again.

May, 1354.—Oh, most happy May! My brother Otto hath returned, after trading to and fro so long in foreign parts. He is well and wealthy, and will venture forth no more. What store of marvellous tales hath he about the East! What hairs-breadth escapes to relate, and what precious and curious things to show! Verily, were I to write down here all he hath to tell of, I might be writing all my days.

Only one thing will I note, while I think of it. He visited Mount Athos, now fourteen years ago: he described to me the beauty of the mountain, with its rich olives and lovely gardens, and the whole neighourhood studded with white convents and hermitages of holy men. Some of the monasteries were on rocks so steep that he had to be drawn up by a rope in a basket to enter them. The shrines were wondrous rich with gold and silver and precious stones. But nowhere, he said, was he more martyred by fleas. When he was there, a new doctrine or practice which had sprung up among the monks (taught, it is said, by a certain Abbot Simeon), was making no small stir. There was to be a synod held about it at that time in Constantinople. It seems that some of the monks (called, if I mistake not, Hesychasts) held that if a man shut himself up in a corner of his cell, with his chin upon his breast, turning his thoughts inward, gazing towards his navel, and centering all the strength of his mind on the region of the heart; and, not discouraged by at first perceiving only darkness, held out at this strange inlooking for several days and nights, he would at length behold a divine glory, and see himself luminous with the very light which was manifested on Mount Tabor. They call these devotees Navel-contemplators. A sorry business! All the monks, for lack of aught else to do, were by the ears about it,—either trying the same or reviling it.^[176]

Methought if our heretics have their extravagances and utmost reaches of mystical folly here, there are some worse still among those lazy Greeks.

Kate. And is that the end of Arnstein’s journal?

Atherton. No more has come down to posterity.

Mrs. Atherton. That last piece of news from Mount Athos seems quite familiar to me. I have just been reading Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant, and thanks to him, I can imagine the scenery of the mountain and its neighourhood: the Byzantine convents, with their many little windows rounded at the top, the whole structure full of arches and domes,—the little farms interspersed, with their white square towers and cottages of stone at the foot,—the forests of gigantic plane trees, with an underwood of aromatic evergreens,—flowers like those in the conservatory everywhere growing wild,—waterfalls at the head of every valley, dashing down over marble rocks,—and the bells, heard tinkling every now and then, to call the monks to prayer.

Willoughby. The crass stupidity of those Omphalopsychi shows how little mere natural beauty can contribute to refine and cultivate,—at any rate when the pupils are ascetics. The contemporary mysticism of the East looks mean enough beside the speculation, the poetry, and the action of the German mystics of the fourteenth century. It is but the motionless abstraction of the Indian Yogi over again.

Atherton. Yet you will be unjust to the Greek Church (which has little enough to boast of) if you reckon this gross materialist Quietism as the only specimen of mysticism she has to show during this period. There was a certain Cabasilas, Archbishop of Thessalonica,^[177] a contemporary of our German friends, an active man in the political and religious movements of the time, whose writings exhibit very fairly the better characteristics of Byzantine mysticism. His earnest practical devotion rests on the basis of the traditional sacerdotalism, but he stands between the extremes of the objective and the subjective mysticism, though naturally somewhat nearer to the former. He presents, however, nothing original to detain us;—so let us away to supper.

Note to page 354.

The following passage, placed in the mouth of the Everlasting Wisdom may serve as a further specimen of the sensuous and florid cast of Suso’s language:—

‘I am the throne of joy, I am the crown of bliss. Mine eyes are so bright, my mouth so tender, my cheeks so rosy-red, and all my form so winning fair, that were a man to abide in a glowing furnace till the Last Day, it would be a little price for a moment’s vision of my beauty. Behold! I am so beauteously adorned with a robe of glory, so delicately arrayed in all the blooming colours of the living flowers—red roses, white lilies, lovely violets, and flowers of every name, that the fair blossoms of all Mays, and the tender flowerets of all sunny fields, and the sweet sprays of all bright meadows, are but as a rugged thistle beside my loveliness.’ (Then he breaks into verse):—

‘... Happy he who shall share the sweet play, and tread at my side the joy-dance of heaven for ever in gladsome security. One word from my sweet mouth surpasses all the songs of angels, the sound of all harps, and all sweet playing on stringed instruments.... Lo! I am a good so absolute that he who hath in time but one single drop thereof finds all the joy and pleasure of this world a bitterness,—all wealth and honour worthless. Those dear ones who love me are embraced by my sweet love, and swim and melt in the sole Unity with a love which knows no form, no figure, no spoken words, and are borne and dissolved into the Good from whence they sprang,’ &c.—Leben, cap. vii. p. 199.

The following is a sample of Suso’s old Suabian German, from the extracts given by Wackernagel, p. 885:—

‘Entwürt der ewigen wisheit. Zuo uallende lon lit an sunderlicher frœd. die diu sel gewinnet von sunderlichen vnd erwirdigen werken mit dien si hie gesiget hat. alz die hohen lerer, die starken marterer. Vnd die reinen iungfrowen. Aber wesentliche lon. lit an schöwlicher ver einung der sele mit der blossen gotheit. Wan e geruowet si niemer, e si gefueret wirt über alle ir krefte vnd mugentheit. vnd gewiset wirt in der personen naturlich wesentheit. Vnd in dez wesens einvaltig blosheit. Vnd in dem gegenwurf vindet si denn genuegde vnd ewige selikeit. Vnd ie ab gescheidener lidiger usgang. ie frier uf gang., Vnd ie frier uf gang. ie neher in gang. in die wilden wuesti. vnd in daz tief ab gründe der wiselosen gotheit in die siu versenket ver swemmet vnd uer einet werdent. daz siu nit anderz mugen wellen denn daz got wil, vnd daz ist daz selb wesen daz do got ist. daz ist daz siu selig sint. von genaden. als er selig ist von nature. [Answer of the Everlasting Wisdom.—Adventitious reward consists in a particular joy which souls receive for particular worthy deeds wherein they have here been conquerors,—such, for example, are the lofty teachers, the stout martyrs, and the pure virgins. But essential reward consists in contemplative union of the soul with the bare Godhead: for she resteth not until she be carried above all her own powers and possibility, and led into the natural essentiality of the Persons, and into the simple absoluteness of the Essence. And in the reaction she finds satisfaction and everlasting bliss. And the more separate and void the passage out (of self), the more free the passage up; and the freer the passage up, the nearer the passage into the wild waste and deep abyss of the unsearchable Godhead, in which the souls are sunk and dissolved and united, so that they can will nothing but what God wills, and become of one nature with God,—that is to say, are blessed by grace as He is blessed by nature.]

Di Meistere sprechen von zwein antlitzen der sêle. Daz eine antlitze ist gekart in dise werlt. Daz ander antlitze ist gekart di richte in got. In diseme antlitze lûchtet und brennet got êwiclîchen, der mensche wizzes oder enwizzes nicht.^[178]—Hermann von Fritzlar.

Kate. I should like to know what became of our mysterious ‘Layman,’ Nicholas of Basle.

Atherton. He lived on many years, the hidden ubiquitous master-spirit of the Friends of God; expending his wealth in restless rapid travels to and fro, and in aiding the adherents of the good cause; suddenly appearing, now in the north and now in the south, to encourage and exhort, to seek out new disciples and to confirm the old; and again vanishing as suddenly, concealing his abode even from his spiritual children, while sending them frequent tracts and letters by his trusty messenger Ruprecht; growing ever more sad and earnest under repeated visions of judgment overhanging Christendom; studying the Scriptures (which had opened his eyes to so much of Romanist error) somewhat after the old Covenanter fashion, with an indiscriminate application of Old Testament history, and a firm belief that his revelations were such as prophets and apostles enjoyed,—till, at last, at the close of the century, he was overtaken at Vienna by the foe he had so often baffled, and the Inquisition yet more ennobled a noble life by the fiery gift of martyrdom.^[179]

Gower. I can well imagine what a basilisk eye the Inquisition must have kept on these lay-priests—these indefatigable writers and preachers to the people in the forbidden vernacular—these Friends of God, Beghards, and Waldenses; and on those audacious Ishmaels, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, most of all. I fancy I see it, lurking always on the edge of any light, watching and watching, as they say the Indian lizard does, crouched in the shadow just outside the circle of light a lamp makes upon the ceiling, to snatch up with its arrowy tongue the moths which fly toward the fascinating brightness.

Willoughby. And do not let us forget that even those pantheistic Brethren of the Free Spirit, with all their coarseness and violence of exaggeration, held at least some little truth, and might plead a large excuse. If some of them broke blindly through all restraint, they made at any rate a breach in priestcraft better used by better men.—

Gower.—Just as the track where buffaloes have made their huge crashing way through the forest, has often guided the hunter of the backwoods.

Atherton. We must not think that the efforts of such a man as Nicholas were fruitless, whatever the apparent success of his persecutors.—

Gower.—Though history has paid him too little attention, and though the Inquisition paid him too much. How I love to find examples of that consoling truth that no well-meant effort for God and man can ever really die—that the relics of vanished, vanquished endeavours are gathered up and conserved, and by the spiritual chemistry of Providence transformed into a new life in a new age, so that the dead rise, and mortality puts on immortality. The lessons such men scattered, though they might seem to perish, perpetuated a hidden life till Luther’s time;—like the dead leaves about the winter tree, they preserved the roots from the teeth of the frost, and covered a vitality within, which was soon to blossom on every bough in the sunshine of the Reformation.

Atherton. Our fourteenth century, so full of mysticism both in East and West, has some other mystical products to show, principally of the visionary, theurgic species. There is St. Brigitta, a widow of rank, leaving her Swedish pine forests to visit Palestine, and after honouring with a pilgrimage every shrine and relic in southern Europe, fixing her residence at Rome, to the great pecuniary advantage of the faithful there. She writes a discourse on the Blessed Virgin at the dictation of an angel, who visited her punctually for the purpose: indites bombastic invocations to the eyes, ears, hair, chin, &c., of the Saviour; and ditto to ditto of the Virgin; and, what was not quite so bad, gives to the world a series of revelations and prophecies, in which the vices of popes and prelates are lashed unsparingly, and threatened with speedy judgment.^[180]

Willoughby. It would be interesting to trace this series of reformatory prophets, male and female. From the twelfth to the close of the fifteenth century there is a succession of them, called forth by the hideousness of ecclesiastical corruption—Hildegard, Joachim, Brigitta, Savonarola.

Gower. Do not forget Dante.

Atherton. You hear them all executing variations, plaintive or indignant, menacing or despairing, on the old and never antiquated theme—

Gower. And, to silence these complaints, the Church found inquisitors and censors of service, but most of all—her pattern children—those enthusiasts whose painful labours were employed to quiet the croaking, much as the lord in old feudal times would often exercise his right of compelling a vassal to spend a night or two in beating the waters of the ponds, to stop the frog-chorus there, and procure his master an easy sleep. Obedient enthusiasm toils all night that cardinals may snore.

Atherton. Angela de Foligni, who made herself miserable—I must say something the converse of flourished—about the beginning of the fourteenth century, was a fine model pupil of this sort, a genuine daughter of St. Francis. Her mother, her husband, her children dead, she is alone and sorrowful. She betakes herself to violent devotion—falls ill—suffers incessant anguish from a complication of disorders—has rapturous consolations and terrific temptations—is dashed in a moment from a seat of glory above the empyrean to a depth so low that the floor of hell might be its zenith. She tells us how, on her way to Assisi, the Saviour addressed her, called her his love, his sweet, his joy; and manifested himself within her soul as he had never done to evangelist or apostle. On one occasion, her face shone with a divine glory, her eyes were as flaming lamps; on another, a star proceeded from her side, broke into a thousand beautiful colours, and glided upwards into the sky.^[181]

Willoughby. A notable example of mystical pyrotechny.

Atherton. Her etherialised olfactories were gratified by odours of indescribable fragrance; and to her exalted taste, the consecrated wafer became almost insupportably delicious. Visions and ecstasies by scores are narrated from her lips in the wretched Latin of Arnold the Minorite. All is naught! The flattest and most insipid reading in the world—from first to last a repetition of the old stock phrase, ‘feelings more readily imagined than described.’ She concludes every account by saying, ‘No words can describe what I enjoyed;’ and each rapture is declared to surpass in bliss all the preceding.

Lowestoffe. Enough! enough!

Atherton. Catharine of Siena——

Willoughby. No more, pray.

Atherton. Only this one. Catharine of Siena closes the century. She is a specimen somewhat less wretched, of this delirious mysticism. Her visions began when she was six years old, and a solemn betrothal to our Lord was celebrated, with ring and vow, not very long after. She travelled through the cities and hamlets of Italy, teaching, warning, expostulating, and proclaiming to assembled crowds the wonders she had seen in heaven and hell during that trance in which all had thought her dead. She journeyed from Florence to Avignon, and back to Florence again, to reconcile the Pope and Italy; she thrust herself between the spears of Guelph and Ghibelline—a whole Mediæval Peace-Society in her woman’s heart—and when she sank at last, saw all her labour swept away, as the stormy waters of the Great Schism closed over her head.^[182]

Gower. What a condemning comment on the pretended tender mercies of the Church are those narratives which Rome delights to parade of the sufferings, mental and bodily, which her devotees were instructed to inflict upon themselves! I am reminded of the thirsting mule, which has, in some countries, to strike with its hoof among the spines of the cactus, and drink, with lamed foot and bleeding lips, the few drops of milk which ooze from the broken thorns. Affectionate suffering natures came to Rome for comfort; but her scanty kindness is only to be drawn with anguish from the cruel sharpness of asceticism. The worldly, the audacious, escape easily; but these pliant excitable temperaments, so anxiously in earnest, may be made useful. The more dangerous, frightful, or unnatural their performances, the more profit for their keepers. Men and women are trained by torturing processes to deny their nature, and then they are exhibited to bring grist to the mill—like birds and beasts forced to postures and services against the laws of their being—like those who must perform perilous feats on ropes or with lions, nightly hazarding their lives to fill the pockets of a manager. The self-devotion of which Rome boasts so much is a self-devotion she has always thus made the most of for herself. Calculating men, who have thought only of the interest of the priesthood, have known well how best to stimulate and to display the spasmodic movements of a brainsick disinterestedness. I have not the shadow of a doubt that, once and again, some priest might have been seen, with cold grey eye, endeavouring to do a stroke of diplomacy by means of the enthusiastic Catharine, making the fancied ambassadress of heaven in reality the tool of a schemer. Such unquestionable virtues as these visionaries may some of them have possessed, cannot be fairly set down to the credit of the Church, which has used them all for mercenary or ambitious purposes, and infected them everywhere with a morbid character. Some of these mystics, floating down the great ecclesiastical current of the Middle Age, appear to me like the trees carried away by the inundation of some mighty tropical river. They drift along the stream, passive, lifeless, broken; yet they are covered with gay verdure, the aquatic plants hang and twine about the sodden timber and the draggled leaves, the trunk is a sailing garden of flowers. But the adornment is not that of nature—it is the decoration of another and a strange element; the roots are in the air; the boughs, which should be full of birds, are in the flood, covered by its alien products, swimming side by side with the alligator. So has this priestcraft swept its victims from their natural place and independent growth, to clothe them in their helplessness, with a false spiritual adornment, neither scriptural nor human, but ecclesiastical—the native product of that overwhelming superstition which has subverted and enslaved their nature. The Church of Rome takes care that while simple souls think they are cultivating Christian graces, they shall be forging their own chains; that their attempts to honour God shall always dishonour, because they disenfranchise themselves. To be humble, to be obedient, to be charitable, under such direction, is to be contentedly ignorant, pitiably abject, and notoriously swindled.

Atherton. Strong language, Lionel,—yet not unjust to the spirit of the Romanist system. The charity which pities the oppressed is bound to denounce the oppressor.

Willoughby. Rem acu tetigisti. If you call priestcraft by smooth names, your spurious charity to the tyrant is uncharitableness to the slave. It is sickening to hear the unctuous talk with which now-a-days ultra-liberalism will sometimes stretch out a hand to spiritual tyranny.

Atherton. Not surprising. It is just like the sentimental sympathy got up for some notorious criminal, which forgets the outrage to society and the sufferings of the innocent, in concern for the interesting offender.

And now let us bid adieu to that fourteenth century which has occupied us so long. I shall only afflict you with one more paper,—to-morrow, Lowestoffe, if we don’t go to Hawksfell. Some notes I have drawn up on the contemporary Persian mysticism.

Willoughby. Stay—do not let us forget that little book, so much read in the fifteenth century, and praised and edited by Luther,—the German Theology.^[183] I have read it with great interest. It seems to me to stand alone as an attempt to systematise the speculative element in the more orthodox mysticism of the age.

Atherton. We may call it a summary of Tauler’s doctrine, without his fancy and vehement appeal; it is a treatise philosophic in its calmness, deservedly popular for its homely, idiomatic diction. What we were saying about Tauler applies substantially to the Theologia Germanica.

Mrs. Atherton. I have been waiting to hear something about Thomas à Kempis,^[184]—certainly the best known of all your mystics.

Atherton. Right. Who could forget the comforter of the fifteenth century? It is curious to compare the third book of his Imitation of Christ, with its dialogue between Christ and the disciple, and Suso’s conversation, in his Book of the Eternal Wisdom, between Wisdom and the Servant.

Gower. There is less genius, less abandon, if one may so say, about Thomas.

Atherton. Decidedly. That original and daring spirit which carried mysticism to such a height in the fourteenth century, could not survive in the fifteenth,—an age tending towards consolidation and equilibrium, bent on the softening down of extremes. Suso, a poet as much as an ascetic, is continually quitting his cell to admire nature and to mix with men. He mingles speculation borrowed from his master, Eckart, with the luxuriant play of his own inexhaustible fancy. Thomas à Kempis is exclusively the ascetic. His mysticism ranges in a narrower sphere. Hence, to a great extent, his wider influence. He abjures everything that belongs to the thought of the philosopher or the fine feeling of the artist. He appeals neither to the intellect nor to the imagination—simply to the heart. He could be understood without learning, appreciated without taste, and so thousands, in castle and in cloister, prayed and wept over his earnest page. ‘See!’ said he, ‘this life is filled with crosses.’ And multitudes, in misery, or fear of misery, made answer, ‘It is true.’—‘Then,’ urged the comforter, ‘be thyself crucified to it, and it cannot harm thee. Cease to have any care, any aim, any hope or fear, save Christ. Yield thyself, utterly passive and dead to this life, into his hands who is Lord of a better.’ Then the sufferers dried their tears, and strove hard to forget time and self in contemplating Christ.

Gower. And, let us hope, not always quite in vain.

Atherton. I have one more name yet upon my list, with which the mediæval mysticism reaches its conclusion. It is the great Frenchman, Chancellor Gerson.^[185] His figure stands out prominently among the confusions of the time, half-way between the old age and the new. Up to a certain point, he is a reformer; beyond it, the enemy of reform. He is active in the deposition of John XXII., yet he does not hesitate to burn John Huss. He looks on, with a smile of satisfaction, when the royal secretaries stab with their penknives the papal bulls, and the rector tears the insolent parchment into shreds. He sees, half with pity and half with triumph, the emissaries of the Pope, crowned in mockery with paper tiaras, and hung with insulting scrolls, dragged through the streets in a scavenger’s tumbril, to be pilloried by angry Paris. But he stands aloof in disdain when the University, deserted by the Parliament, fraternizes with the mob to enforce reform,—when threadbare students come down from their garrets in the Pays Latin to join the burly butchers of St. Jacques la Boucherie,—when grave doctors shake hands with ox-fellers, and Franciscans and White-hoods shout together for the charter.

Willoughby. And very wrong he was, too, for those butchers, rough as they were, were right in the main,—honest, energetic fellows, with good heads on their shoulders. Could they but have raised money, they would have saved France. But Gerson would rather be plundered than pay their tax, and had to hurry down for hiding to the vaults of Notre Dame. I remember the story. And when the princes came back to power, the moderates were pillaged like the rest,—and serve them right.

Atherton. Yes, the reform demanded was just and moderate, and even the rioters lost none of their respect for royalty, feeling still in their rude hearts no little of that chivalrous loyalty which animated Gerson himself when he bent low before the poor idiot king, and with oriental reverence exclaimed, ‘O King, live for ever!’ Gerson was a radical in the Church and a conservative in the State—the antagonist of the political republicanism, the champion of the ecclesiastical. His sanguine hopes of peace for his country and of reform for his Church, were alike doomed to disappointment.

His great work on the theory and practice of mysticism was composed during the stormy period of his public life. Imagine how happily he forgot popes and councils, Cabochiens and Armagnacs, during those brief intervals of quiet which he devoted to the elaboration of a psychology that should give to mysticism a scientific basis. Nominalist as he was, and fully conscious of the defects of scholasticism, then tottering to its fall, he differs little in his results from Richard of St. Victor. He closes the series of those who have combined mysticism with scholasticism, and furnishes in himself a summary and critical resumé of all that had previously been accomplished in this direction. He was desirous at once of making mysticism definite and intelligible, and of rendering the study of theology as a science more practical, devout, and scriptural. Hence his opposition to the extravagance of Ruysbroek on the one side, and to the frigid disputation of the schools on the other. He essays to define and investigate the nature of ecstasy and rapture. He even introduces into mysticism that reflection which its very principle repudiates. He recommends an inductive process, which is to arrange and compare the phenomena of mysticism as manifest in the history of saintly men, and thence to determine the true and legitimate mystical experience, as opposed to the heterodox and the fantastic. He maintains that man rises to the height of abstract contemplation, neither by the intellectual machinery of Realism, nor by the flights of Imagination. If he attempts the first, he becomes a heretic; if the second, a visionary. The indispensable requisite is what he calls ‘rapturous love.’ Yet even this is knowledge in the truest sense, and quite compatible with a rational, though impassioned self-consciousness. His doctrine of union is so temperate and guarded as almost to exclude him from the genuine mystical fellowship. He has no visions or exaltations of his own to tell of. Resembling Richard in this respect, to whom he is so much indebted, he elaborates a system, erects a tabernacle, and leaves it to others to penetrate to the inmost sanctuary. Like Bernard, he thinks those arduous and dazzling heights of devotion are for ‘the harts and climbing goats,’ not for active practical men such as the Chancellor. Above all, urges this reformer both of the schoolmen and the mystics, clear your mind of phantasms—do not mistake the creations of your own imagination for objective spiritual realities. In other words, ‘Be a mystic, but do not be what nine mystics out of every ten always have been.’

But now let us have a walk in the garden.

Thither all repaired. They entered the conservatory to look at the flowers.

‘Which will you have, Mr. Atherton,’ asked Kate, ‘to represent your mystics? These stiff, apathetic cactuses and aloes, that seem to know no changes of summer and winter, or these light stemless blossoms, that send out their delicate roots into the air?’

‘Those Aroideæ, do you mean?’ replied Atherton. ‘I think we must divide them, and let some mystics have those impassive plants of iron for their device, while others shall wear the silken filaments of these aërial flowers that are such pets of yours.’

As they came out, the sun was setting in unusual splendour, and they stood in the porch to admire it.

‘I was watching it an hour ago,’ said Gower. ‘Then the western sky was crossed by gleaming lines of silver, with broken streaks of grey and purple between. It was the funeral pyre not yet kindled, glittering with royal robe and arms of steel, belonging to the sun-god. Now, see, he has descended, and lies upon it—the torch is applied, the glow of the great burning reaches over to the very east. The clouds, to the zenith, are wreaths of smoke, their volumes ruddily touched beneath by the flame on the horizon, and those about the sun are like ignited beams in a great conflagration, now falling in and lost in the radiance, now sending out fresh shapes of flashing fire: that is not to be painted!’

Lowestoffe (starting). The swan, I declare! How can he have got out? That scoundrel, John!

Atherton. Never mind. I know what he comes for. He is a messenger from Lethe, to tell us not to forget good Tauler.

Lowestoffe. Lethe! Nonsense.

Mrs. Atherton. My love, how can you?

Atherton. The creature reminded me of an allegorical fancy recorded by Bacon,—that is all. At the end of the thread of every man’s life there is a little medal containing his name. Time waits upon the shears, and as soon as the thread is cut, catches the medals, and carries them to the river of Lethe. About the bank there are many birds flying up and down, that will get the medals and carry them in their beak a little while, and then let them fall into the river. Only there are a few swans, which, if they get a name, will carry it to a temple, where it is consecrated. Let the name of Tauler find a swan!

END OF VOL. I.