ON BL. IDA OF LÉAU, VIRGIN OF THE CISTERCIAN ORDER, AT LA RAMÉE IN BELGIAN BRABANT,
AFTER THE MIDDLE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.
PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.
Ida of Leewis, Cistercian nun, at La Ramée in Brabant. (Bl.)
BY R. D. B.
§ I. The growth of the Catholic Church in the thirteenth century. Many women renowned for holiness in the diocese of Liège in the thirteenth century. Bl. Ida of Léau.
It is known to the readers of the Bollandist Work that in the thirteenth century the Christian religion took astonishing growth among the European nations. In the thirteenth century the Catholic Church took great growth, For in this age, besides the fact that the Prussians, Livonians, Estonians, Courlanders, and other northern peoples were joined to the faith, there flourished SS. Felix of Valois and John of Matha, the institutors of the Order of the Holy Trinity; St. Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem, the lawgiver of the Carmelites; SS. Dominic and Francis of Assisi, the fathers of the Friars Preachers and Minors; St. Anthony of Padua; SS. Raymond of Peñafort and Peter Nolasco, the founders of the Order of the Redemption of Captives; SS. Ferdinand, king of León and Castile, and St. Louis, king of France; SS. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. With whom are to be joined many other saints, of whom several ruled churches, several began monasteries either of men or of women, several in another way greatly benefited the Christian cause. But although throughout all Belgium also not a few men were renowned for every kind of virtue, and promoted the monastic Orders in a wonderful manner [Smet, Heilige en roemweerdige persoonen in geheel Nederland, volume II, page 235.], yet the diocese of Liège above the rest (as we gather from Jacques de Vitry, canon regular, afterward bishop of Acre, then bishop of Tusculum and Cardinal R. E.) produced many persons, but especially women, distinguished for holiness. For in the Prologue of the Life of St. Mary of Oignies that writer, addressing Fulk, bishop of Toulouse, at that time driven out of the district of Toulouse by the Albigensians and a refugee in the diocese of Liège, writes, as is read in the manuscript codex of Huy [Catalogue des manuscrits de l'Université de Liège, number 232. Compare Acta Sanctorum, volume IV of June, page 636.]:
[2] especially in the diocese of Liège; For you know, holy Father, Pastor of Toulouse, nay pillar of strength of the whole Church of Christ in our days (for to you my speech is addressed, at whose command, and who reproved me for negligence, I have dared to attempt the present little work), you know, I say, when you came to our parts, that it already seemed to you to be as it were in the land of promise. For I heard you relate that you had left Egypt in your parts, and, passing through the desert, had found the land of promise in the parts of Liège. For when in your parts you had come to know many from our parts signed with the cross against the (Albigensian) heretics, fervent in faith, having wonderful patience in tribulation, abounding in works of mercy; nay (as you told me) when you wondered at certain women weeping more for one venial sin than men in your parts for a thousand mortal ones; coming to our parts, as you had heard, so you saw, nay more than you had heard; so that you could scarcely believe it, had you not known it by eye-witnessing faith through experience. For you saw (and rejoiced), in the gardens of the lilies of the Lord, many companies of holy virgins in various places, who, having spurned carnal allurements for Christ, and despised the riches of this world for love of the heavenly kingdom, clinging to the heavenly Bridegroom in poverty and humility, sought a slender livelihood by the labour of their hands, although their parents abounded in many riches. Yet they, forgetting their own people and their father's house, preferred to endure the straits of poverty rather than abound in ill-gotten riches, or remain with danger among pompous worldlings. You saw (and rejoiced) holy matrons serving God, with how great zeal they guarded the chastity of the young girls, and instructed them with salutary admonitions in the honourable purpose of desiring only the heavenly Bridegroom. The widows too, serving the Lord in fasts and prayers, in vigils and the labour of their hands, and in tears and supplications, as they had before striven to please their husbands in the flesh, so, nay more, they studied to please the heavenly Bridegroom in the spirit; frequently recalling to memory … that holy widows who share in the necessities of the saints, who wash the feet of the poor, who pursue hospitality, who persist in works of mercy, merit the sixtyfold fruit. You saw (and rejoiced) holy women too, serving the Lord devoutly in matrimony, instructing their children in the fear of God, keeping honourable marriage and an undefiled bed, giving themselves to prayer for a time, and afterward returning together again with the fear of God, lest they be tempted by Satan. Many, however, abstaining by consent of their husbands from lawful embraces, leading a celibate and truly angelic life, are worthy of so much the greater crown, the more, being placed in the fire, they did not burn.
[3] where many women distinguished for chastity, You saw also and wondered, nay strongly protested, at certain unchaste men, enemies of all religion, maliciously defaming the religious life of the aforesaid women, and barking with dog-like rage against manners contrary to their own: and when they had nothing more they could do, they invented new names against them, as the Jews called Christ a Samaritan and the Christians Galileans… But since it is written: "By their fruits you shall know them," how truly they clung to God was sufficiently found out in the sack of the city of Liège. For those who could not flee to the churches threw themselves into the river, choosing rather to die than to incur the loss of chastity. Some too, leaping into dung-pits, preferred to be stifled by the stench than to be despoiled of virginity. Yet the merciful Bridegroom deigned so to provide for His brides that in so great a multitude none was found who incurred death of the body or loss of chastity. And when one of the holy women was in peril in the river, two of the enemy, coming to her with a little boat, drew her into the boat, in order to have shameful intercourse with her. But what did the chaste one do among the panders, the lamb among the wolves, the dove among the hawks? She chose rather to be submerged in the river again than to be corrupted; she leapt from the boat among the waves: and while the boat was swamped by the force of her leap, those two sank together and perished, but she, by the grace of God, without harm of body or soul, the river obliging her, came to the bank.
[4] and especially nuns, were renowned for virtues, This holiness, although very many women of the diocese of Liège, of every kind, of every condition, and of every age, became renowned for it, was yet attained especially by those serving under the banner of the religious Orders. Above, in the Commentary on Bl. Rycwera, Premonstratensian nun, we saw with what eagerness illustrious virgins and women, spurning the delights of this world, fled to the Premonstratensian convent as to a harbour of salvation, and there, under the direction of the canons of that Order, treading in the footsteps of Christ, reached the summit of perfection. But, as often happens in human affairs, that fervour gradually diminished: nay, the intercourse between canons and nuns, formerly very moderate and useful, became daily more frequent, and therefore less guarded, so that the prelates of the Order judged that the care of the canonesses should be given up. But then, when the ardour for embracing the monastic life, especially among the nobler families, was at its very strongest, the women turned their minds to another regular Order, namely the Cistercian, which at that time shone like the sun in the Christian world, and as it were in troops suppliantly sought and obtained to be co-opted into it. Of this most burning zeal the diocese of Liège, above many others, had a share, as we learn from several writers, but especially from Jacques de Vitry. It is pleasant to report his words, as being very honourable to our Belgium.
[5] in the Cistercian But after the God-fearing and religious men of the Premonstratensian Order, says that writer [Libri duo Orientalis et Occidentalis historiae, page 305 and following. Douai edition of the year 1596.], wisely considering, and having learned by familiar example, how grave and dangerous it is to guard the guardians themselves, decreed thenceforth not to receive women in the houses of their Order: the religious life of the nuns of the Cistercian Order was multiplied like the stars of heaven and grew beyond measure, the Lord blessing them and saying to them: "Increase and multiply, and fill the house." Convents were founded, monasteries were built, cloisters were filled, virgins flocked together, widows ran, and married women, with the consent of their husbands, changed carnal matrimony into spiritual. From other monasteries nuns, changing their habit, flew to the fruit of a better life and a straiter way. Noble matrons, powerful in the world, leaving earthly inheritances and immense possessions, chose rather to be abject in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners. Virgins of illustrious lineage, despising the marriages offered them, leaving their freeborn parents and the delights of the flattering world, casting away ornaments and precious garments, were joined to Christ the Bridegroom of virgins in poverty and humility; and, serving the Lord most devoutly in the harshness of a harder life, wisely exchanging temporal riches and deceitful delights for spiritual ones.
[6] Order. For, to say nothing of the other monasteries of this Order and congregations of nuns, which were being built here and there in other places; in one region of the diocese of Liège seven (probably Herkenrode, Aywières, La Ramée, Hocht near Maastricht: to which add, in the district of Louvain, Florival, Parc-les-Dames, and Linter) [Verstocht, Maeghden cloosters van Cisteaux in Nederlandt, page 146 and following.] abbeys of nuns of this Order and profession in a short time to be founded
and built we have seen, and adorned with holy nuns as with lilies and violets. And the aforesaid province, beloved of God, abounds so much in holy and devout virgins, like a garden of lilies and a paradise of delights, that we believe for certain, and have found out in truth, that if there were three times as many in those parts, lilies of this kind would not be lacking; but, with ready mind and ardent desire, pious and devout virgins would offer themselves to the Lord as a holocaust of fatness and an odour of sweetness, despising the kingdom of the world and all its adornment for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that, serving the Lord with tranquil devotion, escaping the burnings of the perishing world, they might flee to the tabernacle of the covenant, that it might be for them, according to the word of Isaiah, a shade by day from the heat and a security and hiding-place from the whirlwind and the rain. Thus far Jacques de Vitry, about the year 1217.
[7] The names of these and of many others are enumerated. Bl. Ida, Among these holy women the first place was held by Bl. Mary of Oignies, whose virtues, as we have seen, not a few most devout women in the diocese of Liège imitated before and after her passing to heaven. Indeed in the thirteenth century in that district, besides Blesseds Juliana of Cornillon, Eve the recluse, Christina the Astonishing, Lutgard, Ivetta the recluse, Ida of Nivelles, Ida of Louvain, Hilsuindis wife of Bl. Ansfrid, Helwigis, Mary of Gravio, and Marquina; there were eminent there for holiness of life Beatrice, prioress of Nazareth, Beatrice, abbess of Robermont, Agnes, nun of Salzinnes, Iolenta, nun of Aywières, Margaret, nun at La Ramée, Mary, nun of Walencuria, Ozilia, nun of Salzinnes, Sybil de Gagis, nun of Aywières, Sybil, sister of Beatrice of Nazareth, Uda, recluse at Namur, Odilia, virgin, Catherine Lexia, abbess of Val-Benoît, Elizabeth of Gravio, Grimelota, virgin of Nivelles, Elizabeth Wansia, nun of Aywières, Bertha Marbesia, abbess in the territory of Namur, Diedela, virgin of Nivelles, Isabella of Huy, companion of St. Juliana, Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Himmana, abbess of Salzinnes, Oda, recluse in the valley of St. Lambert, Odilia, mother of John Abbatulus, Ida, widow in the Valley of St. Lambert, Sapientia, mistress of Bl. Juliana of Cornillon, and many others: among whom is Bl. Ida of Léau, nun, whose Acts we have at present to illustrate, beginning from her dwelling-places.
[8] born at Léau in Belgian Brabant, Bl. Ida inhabited two places of the ancient diocese of Liège: the one, Léau, whence she sprang and where she spent her life until she put on the monastic garment; the other, the convent of La Ramée, where, co-opted among the Cistercian nuns, she was renowned for virtues of every kind and at length most devoutly fell asleep in the Lord. Of the former place, whose history has been written copiously, we shall speak briefly: of the latter, as being a most ancient convent of Belgium, now extinct and destroyed, and also as the arena of Bl. Ida's holiness, we shall undertake a longer discourse, using documents for the most part unpublished. Now from altogether genuine historical monuments the learned man Charles Piot has shown that the town which in our age we call in French Léau, in Flemish Leeuw or Zoute-Leeuw, had in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the name Villa Lewa, Leuva, Lewa, Lewe, or Lewes, or other similar ones; in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries Leeuw or Leeuwen. He adds that the name Zoute-Leeuw was used from the sixteenth century Notice sur la ville de Léau, page 7.. In the manuscript codex of the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau we read Lewes, as was customary not only in the eleventh century but also in the fourteenth. Further, Léau, which, as can be conjectured from the name, was once a crossing, lies in the part of Belgian Brabant bordering on the district of Limburg, and was until the year 1559 a parish of the ancient diocese of Liège: at which time it began to be contained within the bounds of the diocese of Mechelen. The beginnings of Léau are very obscure. It is first mentioned in the Life of St. Landoald, whose biographer, writing between the years 972 and 1008, calls that town Villa Lewa Acta Sanctorum, volume III of March, page 39.. In the twelfth century it was still of the dominion of Liège, as is established from a coin struck at Léau with the image of St. Lambert, bishop of Liège. But, if credit is to be given to Gramaye Antiquitates Brabantiae, page 44. Compare Piot, page 11., from the time that Godfrey the Bearded, duke of Lotharingia, snatched from among the living in the year 1140, held Léau, it was a part of the duchy of Brabant Ibid., page 84.. Moreover Léau was reckoned among the communes in the year 1213, at which time Bl. Ida was living there, and its administration was entrusted to a villicus (Mayeur), on condition, however, that he should obey the villicus of Tienen, in whose power Léau was. This state of affairs, not seldom changed, was at length utterly extinguished by the French Republic at the end of the eighteenth century. It then numbered about 1130 inhabitants, but now about 1650. Of its ancient institutions, since the distinguished man Charles Piot has explained them learnedly, we omit to speak. However, we shall recall to the reader's memory that at Léau, from remote times until the French upheaval at the end of the eighteenth century, there flourished a chapter of secular canons, to whom it was lawful to contract matrimony. A similar institution likewise flourished in the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Tienen in Brabant Moulaert, Notre-Dame-au-Lac à Tirlemont, pages 9 and 39..
[9] and a nun of La Ramée. The members of which convent, first in an unknown place, Now of the monastery of La Ramée, which lay in the parish of Jauchelette in Walloon Brabant, near Jodoigne , and which gained much praise on account of the dwelling there of many holy virgins, among whom was Bl. Ida of Léau. The nuns of La Ramée had three seats: the first in an unknown place, the second at Kerckehem near Tienen, and the third at La Ramée. And this is manifest from the very ancient manuscript Life of Bl. Ida of Nivelles, also a nun of the convent of La Ramée, formerly of the Bollandist, now of the royal Brussels library. Namely, in it, in chapter II, is read: When she (Ida of Nivelles) was sixteen years old, bidding farewell to her own, she entered a certain monastery of the Cistercian Order which was called Kerkehem. In which place there was as yet a tiny community of nuns, who, HAVING LEFT THE SITE OF ANOTHER PLACE which they had at first chosen to dwell in, had transferred themselves and their belongings to this place: and at the beginning of chapter III: So in the same year in which she entered the aforesaid cloister, the nuns, strengthened by the help of a certain powerful man named Gerard, migrated from that place, since indeed it was arid, and, going TO ANOTHER PLACE beside a certain stream, set up a monastery for themselves, which, because it was planted with branching thicket, they called Rameya.
[10] then at Kerckehem, Of the convent of Kerckehem, however, little has come down to us. Its founder, as Miraeus Diplomata Belgica, volume I, page 438; compare page 203., Cornelius Van Gestel [Historia archiepiscopatus Mechliniensis, volume I, Deanery of Tienen, page 284 (The Hague edition).], and Gramaye Antiquitates Brabantiae, Pagus Nivellensis, page 48. report, is to be said to have been Florentius, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Inde near Aachen: which is very probable, since this monastery had many and great possessions in Hesbaye, and until the end of the eighteenth century was patron of the church of Kerckehem. Another, anonymous, writer refers the beginnings of the convent of Kerckehem to the year 1212, having under his eyes, without doubt, ancient historical documents now perhaps lost Ibid. Archives du Royaume, Registre de la Ramée, A. 24.. Certainly a very ancient monument, hitherto unpublished, is the diploma by which Hugh of Pierrepont, bishop of Liège, in the year 1214 took the nuns of Kerckehem and their goods under his protection: which diploma, as it was transcribed by us from the autograph Archives du Royaume de Belgique, Chartrier de la Ramée., receive, reader:
Hugh, by the grace of God bishop of Liège, to all who shall inspect the present page, eternal salvation in the Lord. Let both present and future know that we receive the sisters of Kerkehem, of the Cistercian Order, with all that they justly possess, under the protection of Blessed Mary and of St. Lambert and our own; sharing the prayers of our diocese with all who, with a view to divine recompense, shall help the same nuns. Under pain of excommunication also we forbid that anyone presume to trouble them unjustly. And that the aforesaid may be preserved in peace and quiet, we strengthen the present page with the protection of our seal. Given in the year of the incarnate Word 1214.
† Place of the seal.
And so much for the convent of Kerckehem, whose traces were still to be seen at the beginning of the eighteenth century Gramaye, Antiquitates Brabantiae, pagus Nivellensis, page 48..
[11] and at length they had their seat at La Ramée. For a short time the nuns remained in this place, and they were compelled to migrate from it, as we have seen, since indeed it was arid, or rather to seek a dwelling at La Ramée. Here they were led by Helwidis, abbess of the monastery of Nivelles, and Gerard, lord of the place, and were endowed with estates [Archives du Royaume, manuscript Chronicle of Nivelles; Gramaye, Antiquitates Brabantiae, pagus Nivellensis, page 48.]. And that this happened in the very year in which Bl. Ida of Nivelles was enrolled in the register of the nuns of Kerckehem we have seen above; and that this year was 1216 is evident from these words of the Life of the same blessed woman, chapter XXXIV: So in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1232, the venerable Ida, having completed sixteen years and nine months in the Cistercian Order, … in the thirty-second year of her age, in the ninth month, on the third day before the ides of December, put off the mortal tunic. The plan of the nuns of Kerckehem passing over to La Ramée was approved by Florentius, abbot of Inde, who did not cease to deserve very well of them: of which thing the following diploma, given in the very year of the translation, is witness:
I, Florentius, by the grace of God abbot of Inde, and the whole community of the same place, make known to those present as well as future who inspect this writing that Gerard of Comtehe (Cumptich) conferred in alms upon the nuns of La Ramée, with our consent, the tithe which he held of us in census and fief. And we, for the aforesaid tithe, on the counsel of our men, have exchanged the tithe of the new clearing which belonged to us from the possession of the aforesaid nuns, both in crops and in animals, excepting the census proceeding from the aforesaid clearing. And that this may remain firm and unshaken for ever, we have fortified and strengthened it with our seal and that of our chapter. Done in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1216 Chartrier de la Ramée.
[12] Their convent was enriched with many favours by the Roman pontiffs. Three years later, that is, on the 27th day of March of the year 1219, Honorius III, Roman pontiff, took the convent of La Ramée under the protection of Blessed Peter and his own, and with it shared the liberties and immunities granted to the Cistercian Order and other privileges. These are the words of the Roman pontiff Ibid.:
Honorius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to his beloved daughters in Christ the abbess and nuns of La Ramée of the Cistercian Order, greeting and apostolic benediction. When that is asked of us which is just and honourable, both the vigour of equity and the order of reason require that it
be brought to due effect through the solicitude of our office. Wherefore, beloved daughters in the Lord, concurring with your just requests with gracious assent, we take your persons and the place in which you are bound to the divine service, with all the goods which you at present reasonably possess, or may in the future, the Lord granting, be able to acquire by just means, under the protection of Blessed Peter and our own. And specially the liberties and immunities granted to your Order, and also the tithes, courts, houses, possessions, and your other goods, as you justly and peacefully possess them all, we confirm by apostolic authority to you and through you to your monastery, and fortify them with the patronage of the present writing. Let it therefore be lawful for no man at all to infringe this page of our protection and confirmation, or to go against it with rash daring. But if anyone should presume to attempt this, let him know that he will incur the indignation of almighty God and of His blessed apostles Peter and Paul. Given at the Lateran on the sixth day before the Kalends of April, in the third year of our pontificate.
† Place of the seal.
[13] Which in the sixteenth century was recalled to its original regular discipline, Several other Roman pontiffs Ibid, as we gather from the autograph diplomas given by them and still preserved in the royal archive at Brussels, increased or protected the privileges or rights of the monastery of La Ramée. But although the nuns of this monastery were quite often daughters of noble families, yet the ancient writers have handed down little about them. Nevertheless in a brief chronicle of this monastery Archives du Royaume à Bruxelles. Cartulaires et manuscrits, number 778., written in French at the beginning of the sixteenth century, we read that monastic discipline had at that time suffered much harm, and that, in order that the nuns might take up again the original holiness of life, there came there in the year 1500 from the convent of Marche-les-Dames four nuns and three lay sisters. In the same century, namely in the year 1559, when Pius IV had created new dioceses, the parish of Jauchelette, and therefore also La Ramée, which had before lain in the diocese of Liège, was made part of the new diocese of Namur.
[14] and extinguished in the year 1796. And such was the condition of this convent, until at last by the decree of the 1st day of October of the year 1795 the territory of Jodoigne (and therefore La Ramée) was annexed to the French Republic; and the convent itself was abolished by the law of the 15th day of Fructidor of the year IV (the 1st day of September of the year 1796) and the decree of the 17th of Fructidor of the year IV (the 3rd day of September of the year 1796) of the French Republic; when the abbess Marie-Thérèse de Sivry presided over seventeen nuns and ten lay sisters Ibid., Registre de la Ramée, A. 25.. The buildings at length, after they had been sold at auction, were partly levelled to the ground, partly adapted to profane uses. To each of the despoiled nuns they offered 10000 francs in paper money (en bons), and to the lay sisters 3334 francs, likewise in paper money: which sum several (and perhaps all), led by excessive scruple, refused to accept [Registre de la Ramée, Article 25, Recueil des décisions, etc., du Saint-Siège apostolique, volume III, page 318 and following, Rome edition 1800.]. It hardly seems necessary to add that that sum, fairly large in appearance, was in reality very slender, since at that time that paper money was of the least value: on which matter see the Brussels periodical Précis historiques, year 1872, pages 253 and 270.. Shortly afterward, by virtue of the convention of the year 1801, the parish of Jauchelette was included within the limits of the archdiocese of Mechelen. To this notice of Bl. Ida's dwelling-place we put an end, reporting the words of Gramaye Antiquitates Brabantiae, Nivellensis pagus, page 48. and of his follower Baron Le Roy Topographia Gallo-Brabantiae, book VI, chapter IV, page 243., writers of the beginning of the eighteenth century: This convent (of La Ramée) would readily yield to none in all Brabant, whether you consider its extent, or its site, or anything else commendable. The place is in the seclusion of a forest, suitable for sacred uses. The buildings, from a hundred years ago, began to be adorned with outstanding extent and beauty, elegantly furnished with porticoes, workshops, and fountains. But unhappily now nothing but some ruins remains.
Annotations* Jodoigne.
* Kerkhom.
§ II. The biographers of Bl. Ida of Léau. Whether Hugh of Floreffe was among them? The ecclesiastical cult of Bl. Ida. Of her revelations. Of other saints of Belgium of the same name.
The contemporary biographer of Bl. Ida of Léau, In the convent of La Ramée, among the virgins who were renowned for outstanding holiness and for the grace of prophecy and miracles, we have said that Bl. Ida of Lewes was eminent. Her Life was written by a contemporary, a sensible and most worthy man, some years after the most devout maiden had departed from among the living, and when many eye-witnesses of her holiness still survived. Which is clear from these words of the Prologue: Let all, then, know who shall read, and to whose knowledge the present work shall come… We omit at present her praises, which are established to be not only innumerable but also inextinguishable; since they have been exalted by the testimonies of so many and so great witnesses that no envious man or detractor can bark against them. The authority of the witnesses, indeed, and their praiseworthy life ought by right and deservedly to have been very greatly commended by us: but, since very many of them are still held in this vale of misery by the prison of the flesh, the fetter of the body, lest we seem to become flatterers of men over their praises, for the present the ship stands in harbour, the foot stands under the threshold, the reins of the chariot, drawn back, are stiff, the checked speech is silent. Of this Life there once existed several copies, namely the Rosweyde copy (which he himself had received from the nuns of La Ramée), that of Villers [Oudin, Commentarius de Scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, volume III, column 107, Leipzig edition.], that of Corsendonk Sanderus, Bibliotheca Belgica Manuscripta, part II, page 62., that of Rouge-Cloître Miraeus, Chronicon Ordinis Cisterciensis, page 211., that of Miraeus Ibid., and Ordinis Praemonstratensis Chronicon, page 171., and that of the Crosiers of Huy: but through the harshness of the times all except the Rosweyde or Bollandist copy, now of the royal manuscript Library of Brussels, and that of Huy, now of the manuscript Library of the university of Liège, have either perished or been scattered hither and thither Bibliothèque des manuscrits de l'Université de Liège, number 135..
[16] Miraeus But who committed the life of Blessed Ida of Léau to writing is not so clear. Miraeus, indeed, recounting the origins of the Premonstratensians, says at the year 1227 Ordinis Praemonstratensis Chronicon, page 171.: The life and merits … of Ivetta were written at length and elegantly by Hugh, canon of Floreffe. He also learnedly described the Life of Bl. Ida of Nivelles, virgin of the Cistercian Order in the monastery of Ramnia in Brabant… I have both Lives in manuscript in an ancient codex, together with that of Blessed Ida of Lebbe … which also seems to have been written by the same Hugh. The same Miraeus, in the Auctarium de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica, page 257., affirms in plain words that the Lives of Ida of Nivelles and Ida of Léau were written by Hugh, canon of Floreffe of the Premonstratensian Order. He seems to have gone over to this opinion because he had written in one and the same codex the Lives both of Bl. Ivetta, whose author is most certainly Hugh of Floreffe Acta Sanctorum, volume I of January, page 864., and of Blesseds Ida of Nivelles and Ida of Léau: although perhaps they were arranged in this order because these three holy women were members of the same Cistercian Order. Further, following Miraeus, Valerius Andreas Bibliotheca Belgica, page 397, second edition., Georg Lienhart Spiritus literarius Norbertinus, page 288., Foppens Bibliotheca Belgica, volume I, page 492., Oudin Commentarius de Scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, volume III, column 107., and the Continuators of the Literary History of France Histoire littéraire de la France, volume XVIII, page 87. said that Hugh of Floreffe, a writer of the early thirteenth century, was the author of the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau.
[17] wrongly judged But I think, as I was just indicating, that Miraeus and those who follow him came to that opinion on an uncertain indication, namely that Miraeus, the leader of the rest, coming upon a codex containing three lives, and seeing there that the Life of Blessed Ivetta had Hugh of Floreffe as its author, believed that the two remaining Lives had been written by the same man. What the causes of this opinion of mine are, learn in a few words. First of all Hugh discloses that he undertook to write the Life of Blessed Ivetta in order to satisfy the wishes of his superior. For his abbot, named John, when he had stood by Blessed Ivetta as she was dying, was exceedingly moved by the holiness of that woman, and so desired that the memory of such great virtues should never perish; but in the Lives of both Idas there is nothing of this kind. Next, Hugh in the Life of Bl. Ivetta openly stated his name; the writers of the later Lives are so silent not only about their name but also about their profession that one can scarcely guess it. Thirdly (and in this place we touch the second cause of Miraeus's opinion), Hugh of Floreffe and the writer of the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau by no means seem to be contemporaries, as Miraeus judged. He, namely, thought that this virgin died in the year 1230, that is, a little after the death of Bl. Ivetta, who departed this life on the 13th day of January of the year 1228, and so that their Lives were written at not very different times. But the matter is not so. And indeed if Miraeus had examined more diligently the Life of Bl. Ida of Nivelles, which he attributed to that same writer, he could have understood even from it alone that Bl. Ida of Léau had not yet died in the year 1230. For in the Life of Bl. Ida of Nivelles, who died at La Ramée in the year 1232, although the praises of several other most devout virgins of the monastery of La Ramée are narrated there, there is great silence about the most illustrious Bl. Ida of Léau. Wherefore we are of the opinion that Bl. Ida of Léau had not yet departed from the earth when the Life of Bl. Ida of Nivelles was composed, and that therefore her deeds were committed to writing after this time, namely the year 1232. Nay, we judge also that this work was not completed before the year 1280: of which view let us now bring forward the reasons.
[18] was Hugh of Floreffe. And indeed Bl. Ida of Léau does not seem to have departed from life before about the year 1260, since certainly after the year 1216 she began to follow the Cistercian discipline, and served God in its practice for a long time; and only after several years did she obtain a biographer, who certainly was other than Hugh of Floreffe. That this argument may be better understood, it must be somewhat unfolded. Namely, that the blessed maiden took up the monastic life after the year 1216 is plain, since we have shown that the beginnings of the convent of La Ramée, which was her only monastic arena, are to be referred to the year 1216. Nor does she seem to have been co-opted among the first nuns of that dwelling: for of the beginning of the convent, as would be proper in such circumstances, no mention is made throughout the Life: which indeed was not neglected by the author of the Life of Bl. Ida of Nivelles, a nun who migrated with her companions from the dwelling of Kerkchehem to La Ramée in the year 1216. Wherefore we conjecture that Bl. Ida
of Léau was numbered among its nuns only after the monastery of La Ramée had been begun some years. We judge, moreover, that in that most devout company she strove after the better gifts for at least forty years: because she served God there for a long time, as is reported in her Life, and a long time, in the case of monks and nuns, seems to be taken as at least forty years. And so the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau probably could not have been written before the year 1260. Nay, the biographer himself indicates that the writing which we have in hand was composed several years, in fact, after the happy end of the blessed maiden. For, although chronological marks are lacking, he nevertheless brings forward witnesses in such a way that, although many are declared to be still alive, it appears that a rather long time had already passed since the death of the blessed virgin; whereby we are easily led down to the year 1280, half a century distant from the publication of the Life of Blessed Ivetta. That Life, indeed, is written in a laboured style, yet the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau in a more laboured one. Further, who would believe that a man worn out with old age (such as Hugh of Floreffe must have been, if he composed the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau) pursued so difficult a kind of writing that scarcely a young man exercising his little talent could be conceived to have sought some praise from so great an artifice of thoughts and words? It is no wonder, then, if Henriquez Menologium Cisterciense, at the 29th of October., while Miraeus was still alive, perceived that his opinion could by no means stand, and so wrote that the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau was committed to letters by an anonymous Cistercian monk; led by no improbable conjecture. For the biographer of the virgin of Léau has the manner of writing of the Cistercians of that age, reporting many visions, ecstasies, and other gifts of divine operation of this kind. Finally the Life itself smells of a writer so skilled in Cistercian usages that, unless he himself was a member of that Order, it can scarcely be conceived by the mind. Hence Charles de Visch approved the view of Henriquez Bibliotheca scriptorum Cisterciensium, page 244..
[19] of Bl. Ida, whose body was elevated, Of the antiquity and rightness of the public cult of Bl. Ida of Léau there can be no doubt for one who weighs the old Brabantine Chronicle, whose first edition was made in the year 1518 and the second in 1530, and which is therefore more than a hundred years older than the decree of Urban VIII. In chapter II of the first part of this work there are set out two classes of saints or blessed men and women of Brabant, of which the first contains the most celebrated names: and those saints are said to be exalted or canonized (verheven in der heyliger Kercken); the other, the less celebrated saints and blessed, and those called not canonized (niet verheven); among whom are numbered St. Boniface of Lausanne, St. Landoald, St. Alena of Forest, St. Odrada, St. Vivina, and others now honoured with liturgical offices. Further, in the first class, that is, among the more illustrious, comes the name of Bl. Ida of Léau. Then chapter XXX of the first part is wholly occupied with the Life of the same virgin, who is called Saint, and whose image, with the head adorned with rays, is placed at its head there. Add that in a manuscript codex of Liège of the fifteenth century she is called Blessed. Whence it is clearer than daylight that a place must be given to Bl. Ida in our Work.
[20] a feast day is assigned Her feast day is now commonly assigned as the 29th of October; but since it is not read in the Life or in other monuments when she went to God, there was for some while variation in fixing her heavenly birthday. Nor does her name seem to have been brought into kalendars, martyrologies, or menologies before the year 1620. Indeed, I could not obtain the Salamanca Kalendar of Manrique, published without indication of date, nor that of Dijon, published in the year 1617; I judge, however, that in them either the name of Bl. Ida of Léau does not appear or her heavenly birthday is not indicated: for in the Sacrarium perantiquum Comitatus Namurcensis, published at Liège in the year 1619 by our Gilles Du Moulin Sacrarium perantiqui Comitatus Namurcensis, page 37., the name of Bl. Ida is read without a sacred day being assigned to her. Likewise it occurs in the Cistercian Chronicle of Miraeus of the year 1614, where the devout death of the venerable maiden is noted, with the title of blessed added, but with the heavenly birthday wholly omitted Chronicon Cisterciense, page 211.. I find it first noted in the Cistercian Kalendar which Miraeus inserted at the end of the Origines Monasticae, published at Cologne in the year 1620. There at the 29th day of October is read Bl. Ida of Nivelles; but of Nivelles is written in place of of Léau by an evident error: for the name of Bl. Ida of Nivelles genuinely recurs at the 11th day of December. No one could ever doubt that Miraeus announced Bl. Ida of Léau on that day at his own discretion, or rather because the twenty-ninth day of October lacked other saints and blessed of the Cistercian Order; wherefore it is no wonder if Raissius, in the Auctarium to Molanus's Natales Sanctorum Belgii, printed at Douai in the year 1626, weaving a Kalendar not of the Cistercians but of the Belgians, and so not finding that day empty in Molanus, preferred to take another way. Namely, it has long since been received in usage by the martyrologists to enter less celebrated saints, whose day of death is unknown, on the same days on which the heavenly birthday of other saints of the same name, but much more illustrious, is noted. Whence it happens that in our Work saints of the same name have so often been treated at the same days. Since, therefore, Bl. Ida of Nivelles died on the 11th day of December and was inscribed on that day in Molanus's Natales Sanctorum, it is easily understood why Raissius wove the eulogy of Bl. Ida of Léau at the same day in the Auctarium to the same Natales. Henriquez, on the contrary, in the Catalogue of Cistercian holy women, published after the Quinque Virgines Prudentes in the year 1630, and also in the Cistercian Menology of the same year and in the Kalendar of the Saints and Blessed Women of the Cistercian Order prefixed in the year 1633 to the Lilia Cistercii, followed Miraeus. The huge work of Henriquez, put together with outstanding diligence, could not fail to prevail.
[21] the 29th of October. And from this it seems to have come about that those who came afterward constantly placed the name of Bl. Ida of Léau at the 29th day of October. These, namely, are: Du Saussay in the Martyrologium Gallicanum of the year 1637, Arthur in the Gynecaeum sacrum of the year 1657, Bucelin in the Benedictine Menology of the year 1656, the Cistercian Martyrology of the year 1689 in smaller letters, Cherle in the Benedictine Martyrology of the year 1714, the manuscript Martyrology which seems to have been used in choir in the Brabantine monastery of Villers in the last century, and which is now kept in our museum; Sigismundus Albertus in the Catalogue of the Saints, Blessed, and Servants of God of the Cistercian Order published at Mondovì in the year 1712. To these add that her Life, with the title of Blessed, was published in French by Jean d'Assignies in the year 1598 Vie des personnes illustres et saintes de l'Ordre de Cîteaux., and that she was quite often called Blessed by Miraeus in his little works and by the writers whom we have brought forward above. From all which it is manifest that the public cult of the blessed maiden, which consists not only in the elevation of the body but also in images and in the appellation of saint or blessed, existed a hundred years before the Urbanian decrees, and has continued up to these times. These statements present the history of the cult accorded to Bl. Ida of Léau.
[22] She died at the close of the thirteenth century. So far we have shown that Bl. Ida of Léau did not depart from life before the middle of the thirteenth century, but we have indicated her age by no certain mark. Miraeus holds that she flourished about the year 1230 Chronicon Cisterciense, page 211.: with whom Manrique does not agree Annales Cistercienses, volume IV, at the year 1231, page 423., judging that she had not yet died in the year 1260. We, indeed, think that she departed from the earth when the thirteenth century was already growing old, and not in the following one, because not only does her Life betray a writer of that time, but especially because men distinguished in the palaeographic art hold that that same writing was set down in the thirteenth century: whence it follows that Bl. Ida of Léau, since she does not seem to have laid down her life before the year 1260, passed to heaven in this year or somewhat later. Of the blessed maiden no other ancient document appears to survive, unless perhaps you except the letter on the praises of the Cistercian Order which Geoffrey, a monk of Villers, wrote to a certain Ida, a Cistercian nun. Manrique suspects Ibid. that this nun was Bl. Ida of Léau: on the contrary Bernardo de Brito Chronica de Cister, page 916 and following, edition of 1720., who made that letter public, rendered into Portuguese, is of opinion that she was Bl. Ida of Nivelles. Brito certainly errs, for in that letter Geoffrey reports that Bl. Boniface, first bishop of Lausanne, then a member of the Cistercians, in the convent of women of La Cambre near Brussels, no otherwise than Bl. Aleydis of Schaerbeek, a nun of the same convent, is honoured there with the cult of the saints. Which things surely could not have been written to Bl. Ida of Nivelles, who died in the year 1231: since St. Boniface in the year 1265 Acta Sanctorum, volume II of February, page 149 and following. and St. Aleydis Ibid., volume II of June, page 476 and following. in the year 1250 entered the way of all flesh. The opinion of Manrique, however, although altogether credible, is yet not certain, since in that age there existed in Belgium Bl. Ida of Louvain, a Cistercian nun, and that name was by no means rare in these parts, and therefore Geoffrey could have addressed his letter to another Cistercian virgin whose name was Ida.
[23] Whether the visions of Bl. Ida were corporeal, imaginary, or intellectual, It now remains for us to say a very few things about the visions, raptures, or ecstasies of Blessed Ida of Léau, especially since we are to set out in this volume the deeds of Bl. Dorothy of Prussia, Bl. Thomas of Florence, and Bl. Alphonsus Rodriguez, who were enriched with the same divine gifts. Now a supernatural vision is described by the mystical writers as the beholding of some thing shown to a man by God in a peculiar manner. If this vision takes place through the eyes, it is called corporeal, or an apparition. Imaginary, however, if the thing is shown in the imagination through composite species, or newly infused ones, illuminated by a supernatural light. It is called also Intellectual, when the thing, all imagination being set aside, is shown without figure to the mind alone. Raptures or ecstasies are when he who undergoes such things is suddenly and as it were violently deprived of the use of the external senses. Some raptures are equated by the mystical writers with imaginary visions: others, more perfect than the former, deprive the man of the internal senses too, and so join him with God by the bond of love that they as it were transform him into Him. Of true revelations of unknown things, namely those which have God as their author, we shall add that they are distinguished from false ones especially by this mark, that those who enjoy them by no means desire them, and wholly exercise themselves in the Christian virtues, especially humility and obedience [Compare Scaramelli, II Direttorio Mistico, treatise III, page 195 and following; treatise
IV, page 232; Acta Sanctorum, volume VII of October, page 511 and following; Amort, De Revelationibus etc. regulae tutae, part I, chapter 259 and following.].
[24] is not established. They cannot be convicted of falsity. Now whether Bl. Ida had corporeal, or imaginary, or intellectual visions is difficult to say, since scarcely any argument is supplied to us from her Life by which it may be decided. But if anyone should call into doubt the visions of the blessed maiden, we should answer this one thing, that there are absent from them the blemishes which are held by the mystical writers as signs of falsity. We subjoin the opinion, nay for the most part the words, of our colleague, now devoutly deceased in the Lord, discussing the revelations of Bl. Hermann Joseph, which hold also of Blessed Ida. First, no otherwise than Blessed Hermann, Bl. Ida of Léau spent almost her whole life in an ecstatic state, conscious of very many secrets. Secondly, that ecstatic state is such that the mind is wholly carried away from these earthly things to heavenly ones, and moves among them in almost the same manner as other mortals among earthly things: which no one would deny to be a great gift of God. Thirdly, while the minds of ecstatics move in this way among heavenly things, they are not deprived of the freedom of the imagination, so that they can imagine many things to themselves and seem to themselves to see and hear things which outwardly they neither hear nor see. And since this action is human, and not a divine passion, it is easily understood that there is room in it for many errors. And so, with Papebroch himself Acta Sanctorum, volume VI of May, page 246 and following. and Benedict XIV De canonizatione Sanctorum, book III, last chapter,, in revelations, visions, and other things of that kind, the substance is to be distinguished from the circumstances. For it can happen that by divine grace the human mind is singularly raised up and cleaves greatly to things supernaturally, without, however, being prevented from putting forth its natural powers and thinking, according to preconceived opinions, desires, and other affections, many things which are in no way communicated to it by God Acta Sanctorum, volume IX of October, page 93.. Whoever wishes more, let him read the most learned work of Eusebius Amort on private Revelations, visions, and apparitions, or also the disputation of the Reverend Father Philip of the Most Holy Trinity Theologia mystica, volume II, page 396. on divine visions, revelations, locutions, and other charisms of this kind. We should indeed have to discuss the revelations and ecstasies of Bl. Ida at greater length in this place, had not our predecessors several times, and especially in explaining the Life of St. Teresa, pursued the same argument. Yet we could not but institute a very brief discourse on the matter, since in this volume the Acts are to be illustrated not only of Bl. Ida but also, as we have noted, of several others who were likewise gifted with many revelations, ecstasies, and divine raptures.
[25] Several holy Idas in Belgium But before we put an end to this preliminary commentary, it seems that notice must be given that besides Bl. Ida of Léau another Bl. Ida, surnamed of Nivelles, made the monastery of La Ramée illustrious by holiness and miracles, of whom we have spoken so often and whose heavenly birthday was formerly observed on the 11th day of December: at which day her Acts will, God granting, be made public in our Work. Moreover other holy women of the name Ida are venerated in Belgium. Of Bl. Ida, mother of Godfrey of Bouillon, and of Bl. Ida of Louvain our predecessors treated at the 13th day of April: likewise at the 20th day of June of Bl. Ida, martyr, who was venerated at Ghent. To which add Bl. Itta or Iduberga, widow of Bl. Pippin of Landen and mother of St. Gertrude of Nivelles. Now take, reader, the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau, according to the Rosweyde or Brussels manuscript codex of the thirteenth century, collated with that of Huy or Liège of the fifteenth century: the places in which they differ from each other are noted in the margin. If this composition is not perfect in every respect, it is certainly an outstanding document of the monastic discipline of the Cistercian maidens, who in that age in Belgium were wonderfully renowned for the praise of holiness, some subject immediately to Cîteaux, others to Clairvaux. There exists in the Düsseldorf library a manuscript codex of the fifteenth century in which their convents are reviewed. Under Cîteaux were the nuns of La Ramée Winter, Die Cistercienser des nordöstlichen Deutschlands, volume III, page 176..
LIFE OF BL. IDA OF LÉAU
from the Brussels codex collated with that of Liège.
Ida of Leewis, Cistercian nun, at La Ramée in Brabant. (Bl.)
BHL Number: 4144
FROM MANUSCRIPTS.
PROLOGUE.
That the virtues of Bl. Ida of Léau may not lie hidden, her Life is written. Here begins the prologue to the life of the lady Ida called of Lewes, nun at La Ramée. By the testimony of the word of truth, no one lights a lamp to put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may give light to all who are in the house. And therefore there is no doubt that the Humanizer of men, by whom and from whom and through whom understanding and mind and reason are brought forth , and are, and abide; nay, who in Himself surpasses all sense, as the abyss and fount and ocean, and the beginning of all reason; utterly refuses, and in no way consents, that the lights which He has illumined with the ray of His own light should be hidden, or buried in the darkness of silence. We therefore propose, God granting, to place the lamp upon the candlestick, so far as our smallness, nay more truly our nothingness, has been able to furnish *; lest the talent of the Lord committed to us lie hidden under the earth; lest the torch of grace kindled in modern times, shut up in a hiding-place, be denied to posterity; lest the lamp shining forth, beautified with a starry light, grieve at being despised, and lest the most noble pearl remain useless and unknown to us b. But since with the grandiloquent compositions of the great the praise and nobility of the others is sung throughout the world, our mind to take up the present work, but yielding to the very many and unassailable requests of friends, and constrained by the bond of charity, neither willing nor able to resist, both unwillingly and fearfully has acquiesced.
[2] If that work contains many marvels, Let the power of friendship, then, excuse, let the violence of charity defend from the bites of envy and from the disdainful judgement him whom, long fearfully seeking to escape, they have compelled. Let the hearing of the hearers be delighted and allured, and the appetite of the readers be provoked, not so much by smoothness of words as by goodness of matter, and by the delightful life of the most happy virgin, whom wonderful deeds commend, whom lovable honesty, whom praiseworthy maturity, whom the grace of virtues and of manners and , whom the popular proclaiming of her fame; whom the daughters of Sion seeing have proclaimed most blessed, and have run in the odour of her ointments; since without doubt her name is ointment poured forth. For this most blessed one, of whom we now treat, was one who could say with the prophet: "But I, as a fruitful olive tree in the house of the Lord, have hoped in the mercy of God for ever." But since this our series will turn wholly upon her praises and the grace which she deserved to obtain while she was yet living, keeping silence about her praises for the present; who have deserved to receive crowns from the hand of the Lord, bearing off the glory and the triumphal prize of the course completed; whose pens, bearing neither the lowest nor a middling elegance, put forth golden flowers, and with pipes beautified by rhetoric, an Homeric harmony, anointed with the smoothness of charms, through you are foolish in nothing, and with the varieties of their colours the Tullian thickets are fragrant: it is not for our nothingness to compare itself madly with the names of such men, and presumptuously to stretch out a foolish hand to riches which it cannot have; but since it befits each one to measure himself and to be helped by his own strength, lest our portion be laid up with those arrogant ones who said: "We will magnify our tongue, our lips are our own;" within the circuit of our own round we guide, after a fashion, the reins of our little talent, the poverty of our own capacity being known beforehand; but, to confess what is true, most insufficiently, compared with what the outstanding, wonderful, and excellent nobility of the matter to be written would require.
[3] let all know that nothing but the truth is said. Let all, then, who shall read, and to whose knowledge the present work shall come, know that, Jesus Christ the Son of God being witness, neither moved by arrogance, nor thirsting or eager to magnify the fringes or to broaden the phylacteries, has presumed. We omit those which are established to be not only innumerable but also inextinguishable, since they have been exalted by the testimonies of so many and so great witnesses that no envious man or detractor can bark against them: the authority of the witnesses, indeed, and their praiseworthy life ought by right and deservedly to have been very greatly commended by us: but since very many of them are still held in this vale of misery by the prison of the flesh, the fetter of the body, lest we seem to become flatterers of men over their praises, for the present:
The ship stands in harbour, the foot stands under the threshold, the chariot's reins, drawn back, are stiff, the checked speech is silent.
These things, then, being set down, let us invoke that blessed Virgin who both is and is called the virgin of virgins, the splendour of lights, the summit of summits, the salvation of men, entreating her most affectionately that her kindness may not refuse to direct with gracious nod this work, which we offer to her most kind majesty, but that, as mother of all grace, she may furnish grace and favour, the delights of the love of Jesus Christ to us who write, and the unbearable ardours of the blessed virgin to be commemorated, by which she languished while serving as a soldier in the flesh, that happy virgin of whom we propose to speak helping, with the other virgins, and Jesus Christ Himself granting it, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns God through all ages of ages. Amen. Here ends the prologue.
ANNOTATIONS.
The reader will notice that this prologue is most difficult to understand from the words: but since with the grandiloquent compositions of the great, as far as: We omit those which are established to be not only innumerable. On the contrary, to one reading the same prologue in the Liège manuscript codex it will at once appear that in the Brussels codex, which we have edited, some sentences were transposed by a careless copyist. Wherefore, so that the mind of the biographer may be laid open, we subjoin here the very words of the Liège codex:
But since with the grandiloquent compositions of the great the praise and nobility of the others is sung throughout the world, who have deserved to receive crowns from the hand of the Lord, bearing off the glory and the triumphal prize of the course completed; whose pens, bearing neither the lowest nor a middling elegance, put forth golden flowers, and with pipes beautified by rhetoric, an Homeric harmony, anointed with the smoothness of charms, are in no part foolish, and with the varieties of their colours the Tullian thickets are fragrant: it is not for our nothingness to compare itself madly with the names of such men, and presumptuously to stretch out a foolish hand to riches which it cannot have. But since it befits each one to measure himself and to be helped by his own strength, lest our portion be laid up with those arrogant ones who said: "We will magnify our tongues, and our lips are our own"; within the circuit of our own round we guide, after a fashion, the reins of our little talent, the poverty of our own capacity being known beforehand (let us confess what is true), most insufficiently, compared with what the outstanding nobility,
wonderful and excellent, of the matter to be written would require.
Let all, then, who shall read, and to whose knowledge the present work shall come, know that, Jesus Christ the Son of God being witness, neither moved by arrogance, nor thirsting or eager to magnify the fringes or to broaden the phylacteries, has our mind presumed to take up the present work: but, yielding to the very many and unassailable requests of friends, and constrained by the bond of charity, neither willing nor able to resist, it has acquiesced, though unwillingly and fearfully. Let the power of friendship, then, excuse, let the violence of charity defend from the bites of envy and from the disdainful judgement him whom, long fearfully seeking to escape, they have compelled. Let the hearing of the hearers be delighted and allured, and the appetite of the readers be provoked, not so much by smoothness of words as by goodness of matter, and by the life of the most happy virgin; whom wonderful deeds commend, whom lovable honesty, whom praiseworthy maturity, whom the grace of virtues and of manners, whom the popular proclaiming of her fame; whom the daughters of Sion seeing have proclaimed most blessed, and have run in the odour of her ointments, since without doubt her name is ointment poured forth. This most blessed one, of whom we now treat, was one who could say with the prophet: "But I, as a fruitful olive tree in the house of the Lord: have hoped in the mercy of God for ever." But since this our series will turn wholly upon her praises and the grace which she deserved to obtain while she was yet living, keeping silence about her praises for the present, we omit them. Which are established to be not only innumerable but also inextinguishable: since they have been exalted by the testimonies of so many and so great witnesses…
* amator
* producuntur
* potuerit
* is missing
* read parte
Old Titles of the LifeSo that the reader may see the Acts of Bl. Ida at one glance, we place in front all the old titles of the Life together, which in the work itself are each placed before its own chapter:
1 On the praise of the diocese of Liège, and whence the virgin Yda was born.
2 On the praise of Gilbert, Yda's father, and on the conversion of her sister Katherine.
3 On the praise and childhood of the virgin Yda.
4 On the manners of Yda while still living in the world.
5 On the fervour of her compassion.
6 On her conversion and the first consolation of the spirit.
7 On her temptations, and on her patience and adversities.
8 On her labour and patience and the increase of her grace.
9 On her understanding and the increase of her joyfulness.
10 On the excess of her joy.
11 On the virgin's love towards her neighbours, and on certain miracles.
12 On the vision at Christmas, and the knowledge of the presence of God, and the contemplation of the virgin.
13 On the vision at Matins, and on her humility and compassion.
14 On the subtlety and knowledge of her spirit.
15 On her frequent rapture.
16 On her understanding and the abundance of spiritual consolation.
17 On the vision at the death of a sick person, and on the death of the virgin herself.
CHAPTER I.
The parents and sisters of Bl. Ida. Her childhood and virtues in the world.
[Let the diocese of Liège rejoice that within its borders was born Bl. Ida of Léau,] Here begins the life of the lady Yda called of Lewes, nun at La Ramée . Of the praise of the diocese of Liège and whence the virgin Yda was born. Let, then, the city of Liège a rejoice, adorned with the adornment of so great an adornment, happy, pre-eminent among the others and praiseworthy, to whose dominion the Lord willed to subject that holy, that wonderful diocese, of altogether inexplicable holiness, which every beauty, every pleasantness, every abundance of spiritual goods paints and marks out as it were a kind of paradise of honey-flowing delight. A land whose trees bring forth kinds bearing spices, among which in her time, like the sun among the stars, like gold among silver things, like the topaz among the other precious stones, happy and again happy, sweet Yda shone forth, a woman clothed with the sun and in golden fringes surrounded with the varieties of holiness. Let, then, the aforementioned diocese rejoice, adorned with so many and so great beauties. Let the praiseworthy town by name Lewes b, from which the most noble virgin * Yda, mentioned above, worthy to be remembered through the ages, is both believed and said to have sprung, exult and shout for joy, scarcely containing itself for the greatness of its joys.
[5] dear to God. For happy and worthy of praise is that ground which, adorned with such springtime turf, was able to bring forth the shoot of so excellent a nature, and deserved to nourish in sweet cradles the tenderness of so sweet a childhood, and, refreshing in its sweet bosom the seed-plot of so holy a harvest, was bound, by coming to the help of her tenderness, to make up the defects of natural want and inability by the largeness of its kindness. For the Lord, claiming her for Himself as chosen out of thousands, willed that His most dearly beloved bride should be wholly exempted from worldly delusions. Wherefore it can be judged quite clearly by anyone that for this reason that discerner of all things willed * that she should have come of a family of middling rank according to the dignity of the world, lest, if she had come from the poor, stifled by the weight of poverty, entangled in the business of the world, she should be able to serve God as a soldier less eagerly; and lest, made drunk by the blandishments of worldly deceit, with which the world sings and pipes, as very often happens, she should be drawn by the snare of nobility, if with womanish levity she should regard herself as sprung from nobles, thronged with the glory of the world, propped round by a kindred of great power, and so, feeding on wind and air, seeking a lie, she should love vanity.
[6] Bl. Ida, daughter of Gilbert and Of the praise of Gilbert, father of Yda, and of the conversion of her sister Katherine. The father of the virgin beloved of the Lord, Gilbert, sister of Catherine the recluse, a most venerable, honourable, prudent, cheerful man, sufficiently endowed with much temporal means, had received this girl of whom we now speak from his wife Yda, in the marriage bed, a sweet pledge, a lovable bond, a delightful tie, the force and knot of sweetness and love. It happened, then, that one of the sisters of this praiseworthy virgin, Katherine c, having the gaze of her mind illumined by the ray of the Holy Spirit, shunning the deceitful glories of the world and empty gladness, subjected herself to cloistered enclosure d, under the habit of the Cistercians and their observances, to keep the rule of Blessed Benedict. And that cloister of the Cistercian Order which Katherine entered excelled very many others in spiritual goods, and in it the said Katherine *, remaining, living laudably, persevering manfully, served faithfully as a soldier of the King of kings for very many years. But Ida, in all things most worthy of praise, staying at home, living in the world, did not conduct herself in a worldly way. For although she knew that very many bound to her by the chain of blood were of no small power and radiant with worldly glory, and abounded in no middling degree in a lavish affluence of temporal things, yet it never pleased the virgin to frequent the places or the glory of her rich kindred.
[7] already from childhood she was renowned for every kind of virtue. Of the praise and childhood of the virgin Yda. This memorable pious virgin, then, was outwardly, in her bodily appearance, endowed with no small beauty; but, what is more precious and much more praiseworthy, she shone inwardly, beautified with every figure of the virtues; for she was, while she still lived under the guardianship of her parents, always in all things and toward all of such meekness, of so mild an innocence, of so honeyed a sweetness, that she never presumed to trouble anyone either by mouth or by deed; but as a lily among thorns, so was the beloved of the King among the daughters, and thus gentle, sweet, innocent, she rendered herself wholly and in every way without share in and a stranger to worldly jests and to the care which these times bring forth, disdaining riches, honours, joys, and the other delights of the world with such effort and such zeal that it could truly be said of her that she counted all things as dung, that she might gain Christ. Whence the pious virgin was rendered surrounded with such modesty, such ripe hoariness, ignorant of gadding about, and very constant and stable, and wholly tranquil, settled and quiet, and she exercised herself in things of this kind so wonderfully that the conversion of her manners, her constant maturity, and stable modesty could already declare her assigned to the cloister, not to the world.
[8] Sitting in school, she learns Nor did she strive vigorously to practise so celebrated a pursuit only from the time of youth and thereafter, but from when she first frequented the schools of literary knowledge e (and the sweet little plant is believed to have had then not more than about seven years), with so knowing a heart and such great desires she undertook to begin the road of life, the path of salvation, and the step of health, that she would never consent in any way, even for a single day, to remain away from study with a peaceful mind; but as often as the unseasonableness of the weather, covering the earth either with excessive mud or with deep snows, opposed this desire, she obtained, earnestly asking by frequency of prayers and anxious urging, that she be carried to school by the service of a certain servant; and at other times, rising at the earliest dawn, daily, as a happy friend of study, she hastened to study no more slowly ; whence it quite often happened that coming to school in the morning before the doorkeeper, before the doors of the schools, which she had found locked, she waited for a very long time, sitting quietly.
[9] letters Of the manners of Yda while still living in the world. The mother of the praiseworthy virgin, captivated by the presage of so wonderful a nature, rejoicing and cheerful, and wholly consenting to the good works which she did, anxiously provided that the sweet daughter should learn the knowledge of the Scriptures f, and this not that she might follow the vanity of the world, but that she might taste more sweetly and thirst more ardently, and be filled more devoutly with the praise of God; nor was cheated of the desire. Already foretasting the fruit of the offspring, above the other children whom she had she had taken her into her love far more tenderly; and not unjustly: for she was in all things, to her masters as a disciple, to her parents as a daughter, to the others as a handmaid, mild, obedient, humble, patient, sweet, gentle, innocent, devout, faithful in works, easy to those who asked, friendly to her equals, kind to the wretched, and, to pass on briefly, gracious toward all and in all things.
[10] mature in manners beyond her years. For she, having already obtained by ripeness of heart the hoariness of old age, anticipating the limit of her age, and anticipating its manners, without share in and ignorant of childish games and works of levity, avoiding and fleeing them, would not in any way nor even be taught in such things, and, by no means seeking or loving the kindling of vices, on feast days choosing to be removed from the tumult of the world, entering solitary retreats more secretly, kneeling on the ground, given to prayer, and afflicting her tender body with the sharper strokes of rods, with disciplines, she kept herself undeluded by the world: and so, through the exercise of more sublime works, she bore herself before all who beheld her as the form and mirror and exemplar of life, of manners, and of virtue, so that never could any mark or sign of worldly wantonness be read as displayed in her in countenance or dress: disdaining and rejecting the glory of ornaments, which the women of modern times desire with such solicitude for the increase of beauty and beauty, and pant more ardently to have fitted on themselves, she sometimes bore reproaches, and those loving worldly things * more harshly rebuked her very many times. But nevertheless the virgin, breastplated with strength of heart, passing over all things with a deaf ear, setting no value on the windy, frivolous things of worldlings, bore it patiently, fenced round with the impregnable rampart of purity and innocence; and never acquiescing in vanities, a guardian and watch-tower of honesty, she used sober garments and white veils g, and this only so far as necessity or some usefulness required.
[11] Bl. Ida, repulsed by one of her sisters, frequents the Beguines and recluses. Of the fervour of her compassion. One of the sisters of the virgin, following and desiring the things of the world, bearing ill the modesty of sweet Yda, because she was unlike her both in heart and in body, was quite often moved to anger against her, and, ashamed of her company, would not go anywhere with her sister, embarrassed that the noble virgin did not shine with the adornment of worldly things . But the most sweet and lovable pious virgin, caring little about all these things, desiring to be edified, frequented with praiseworthy care both recluses h and Beguines i . One day, when the praiseworthy virgin was going to a certain place with her sister as companion, it happened that that expressly diabolical office, the apprenticeship of hell and the theatre of lust, that witness * whirling round of the round-dances, of which it was said by the prophet: "The wicked walk round about
," was taking place in a certain place through which it was fitting that she should direct her steps, if she completed the journey which she had begun. When the noble daughter of Jesus Christ saw this, as a cell of true sweetness, as a lake of mercy, as a stream and welling-up of loving-kindness, bearing not a little grievously the dishonour of her Beloved, and with ardent mind having compassion on the folly of her erring neighbours, transfixed by the sword of charity, wounded in no middling degree by the darts of love, stifled by the noose of compassion, streaming with showers of tears, she gave up the journey she had undertaken for the burning of her grief, nor did she care afterward to arrive where she had purposed, but, setting her foot more hastily, she returned home as quickly as possible.
[12] Let her be the wonder of all. O praiseworthy purity, O laudable kindness, O gracious holiness of sweet innocence, which so arms and equips its possessors! How great a fervour of ardour and burning could it generate! How great a ray of light could this inextinguishable lamp bring forth for us! How much can the dustiness of a dry heart be watered by so great a flood of nectared sweetness, by so great an abundance of honey-flowing loving-kindness! But what shall I say? With what words can be set forth the marvels of the virtues which, while she lived, shone in this most sweet virgin? Could she not be called a mirror of virtue, a lamp of grace k, an irradiating torch? Could she not, by the merit of virtue, be called sun, moon, morning star, star, heaven, the banquet-hall of the Godhead? Not a vine of gladness, palms of hope , a cedar of constancy? Could she not deservedly and not improperly be named precisely thus, a Lebanon of modesty, or a fruitful olive, or a pomegranate of charity, by a virtue befitting the properties of each?
ANNOTATIONS.
* the title is missing here
* is missing
* adds et
* nominata
* is missing
* is missing
* idcirco
* voluerit
* is missing
* is missing
* is missing
* venustata
* temporalia
* sitienti
* legimus
* is missing
* repperebat
* read Pater, as in the Liège manuscript codex
* doceretur
* sentiret
* impleretque — laudem
* prælibatis
* adds omnibus
* jam
* vel
* tumultibus
* is missing
* forma
* read adeo ut — sustineret
* mundana
* mundialium
* beguinas
* pestis
* mitis
* palma spes, read palma spei
CHAPTER II
Bl. Ida becomes a Cistercian nun in the monastery of La Ramée. Her consolations and victories over the devil. She writes liturgical books. Her spirit of contemplation.
[Bl. Ida, at thirteen years of age, becomes a Cistercian nun in the monastery of La Ramée,] Of her conversion and first consolation of the spirit. When, then, this venerable and most sweet pious virgin had happily completed the number of thirteen years of time, through the arrangement of her father Gilbert, who had long desired this, thirsting and desiring to serve as a soldier of the King of kings more freely and readily, she entered with gratitude and a glad mind a certain monastery of the Cistercian Order called Rammeya . And there for a long time she observed willingly and faithfully the rule of Blessed Benedict, in poverty of heart and body, and, leading herself and dwelling under the bond of discipline, with fasts, prayers, silence, vigils,
and the other kinds of regular warfare, she overcame the world, the flesh, and the demons. And while she was still young in age, not yet having obtained the status of a novice a, as is the custom of that Order, one night, with wakeful spirit, eager heart, with a mind of slumbering fervour, she was chanting the office of Matins b assigned to her; Christ, that inspector of hearts , beholding not from afar the affection of the pious virgin, speaking to the heart of Jerusalem, and calling her within , putting His hand in from heaven through the opening, visited His bride as sweetly as secretly, and, giving His beloved the cups of paradise to drink, made known to her in her inmost marrow so great a flood and so great an overflowing of joy of spirit and of divine sweetness, that her heart, bursting forth with joys, declared by the most manifest signs, from the indication of the body, what it had within. For the stream of the river makes glad the city of God, when the most high and most subtle Dedicator sanctifies His tabernacle.
[14] and there as a novice she is flooded with joy. O how often, O how much more savourily, O how delightfully the sweet virgin strove, and striving was able , to recall that sweetness which she had then perceived, provoking the appetite of her spirit, the awaited joys foretasted , and kindling and sharpening at the memory the thirst of desire. Sighing, then, corrected by the desire of this sweetness, she thirsted more ardently that she might be able to come to the joys without purgatory; for love, strong as death, had so inflamed the virginal breast that, caught in the noose of love, compelled by the vehemence of charity, she would in no way consent to bear the fire of purgatory even for a single day, lest the embraces of the desired joy should be delayed. And when she was speaking with the Lord, using more secret and mental colloquies, with pure heart, anxious mind, fervent desire, she asked that whatever unfitting thing she might contract in this life from the contagion of earthly stain should be thoroughly purged by God through penance in the present, so that, when, the bodily prison being loosed, He should will to call her soul from the perils of the present life, hindered by no obstacles , taking up her dwelling with the Beloved, she might fly rejoicing, wholly freely, to His chamber. The prayer made, the Lord, easy to be entreated by her who besought Him, pacifying the mind of the beloved virgin, increased the strength of spirit and constancy of mind which she had already long had, bestowing no small spiritual grace.
[15] The devil attacks her in many ways, Of the temptations and of * the patience and adversities of her. That knower of all things, then, weighing how prudent, how great-souled, how strong, how most upright, how discreet, how patient, how skilful, how humble the virgin was, in order that He might receive greater fruit, permitted the most precious field to be worked more strongly and more deeply by the sharper vexations of the enemy, the assailant of men; for from that day on which she had asked of the Beloved that she might be wholly purged in the present, that most wicked enemy, like a famished lion rushing on its prey, raging and running mad against her with temptations brought on in divers ways and with crafty malices, did not cease to afflict her both in body and in spirit for a year and a half, and, thirsting to break her wholly with the heavier scourges of bodily blows, he afflicted her more frequently and more vehemently with open and most harsh blows.
[16] but, overcome by her patience, And since after Compline c the custom and manner of the Order requires that strength and bodies be restored by the rest of sleep, then he would assail her sharply, and that more frequently, on very many nights with dire blows; but the virgin, recalling that blessed is the man who endures temptation, and the rest, girded with the arms of justice, defended by the breastplate of faith, made solid by trust in the goodness of God, snatching up the shield of wonderful patience, with a manly right hand, by no means womanishly, but fighting mightily with the sword of the spirit, wisely shaking off all the darts of the crafty one, reducing his fraudulent wickednesses to nothing, repelled and trampled on him. For when she was more strongly and more harassingly worn down by the wicked envious one, and bore the scourges of greater blows, she was more eager and more joyful; and that she might more manfully sustain unmoved the wars of the conflicts , frequently asking for the Eucharist, she made Christ for herself a tower of refuge and a castle of fortification ; and thus the virgin was Sion, the city of strength, in which the Saviour was set as wall and bulwark. But, what is more wonderful, as often as the faithless enemy ceased for some space of time from his accustomed blows and vexations, she feared wonderfully lest through some little offence or other she had deserved to be forsaken by the Lord: which, however, never happened; but, bestowing and enlarging the strengthening of her mind, the spirit of fortitude and the constancy of fervour, the delightful Beloved remained delightfully, always, continually with His beloved; for, as He Himself has testified in Scripture, His delights are to be with the children of men.
[17] he withdraws for ever. The enemy of the human race, then, perceiving that the happy virgin could never by any craft be supplanted from her state of fortitude, from the virtues she was intent on, from the sweetness of love, and weighing more certainly that from the struggles there came * to himself dishonour and reproach in all things, to the virgin glory, honour, and merit, confounded and most utterly vanquished, never daring to tempt the virgin further, about to receive punishment for his evil deeds, gave up wholly assailing her, either by himself or through another. O another Job! O another Judith! O happy woman, yielding to no adversities, cutting off the head of Holofernes, strongly crushing and trampling the head of the old serpent! For this was the most blessed and praiseworthy sweet virgin against whom the enemy availed nothing at all, and to whom the son of iniquity did no harm.
[18] Bl. Ida writes books for the church: Of her labour and patience and the increase of her grace. After the sweet virgin knew herself freed from the struggle which she had long endured, transferring herself in her inmost marrow to the delights of Rachel after the uncomeliness of Leah, she disposed ascents in her heart, and, raising herself above herself, taking the little wings of love, by the flight of desire, uplifted by contemplative draughts, penetrating the secrets of heavenly things, like a pillar of smoke of the spices of myrrh and frankincense and of every powder of the perfumer, brought into the wine-cellar with the Beloved, anointed with heavenly nectar, with flower-bearing heart, honey-flowing mind, milky spirit, she deserved to have charity set in order in herself. Sweet Yda, then, giving herself to God alone, making it d a custom to receive the body of Christ every Sunday, going forward from virtue to virtue, occupying her outward bodily senses in * writings, studiously writing books of the church e, correcting a certain ferial book f of no small size, in which the lessons are read at Matins, she also wrote out very diligently many others.
[19] she spends the rest of her time so in divine contemplation, Permitting no space of time to pass away empty, in the time of labour she laboured more than the others, and at other times, occupied with holy prayers, she offered herself to the Beloved as a pleasing victim: and the more sublimely she ascended by the merits of her life with contemplative spirit, the more humbly she descended toward herself and her neighbours in all things, below all *. The praiseworthy virgin was indeed useful to others, prudent for herself and pleasing to God, sweet of countenance, devout of spirit, and so almost already unaware of herself, that when she went up to the altar to receive the holy Eucharist, fattened with the marrow of wheat and inebriated with the wine that gladdens the heart of man, namely the most pure blood of the grape, two nuns could scarcely lead her back from the sanctuary to the choir. And it happened very many times that, forgetting the custom assigned, she did not drink from the chalice which the keeper of the church g offers, nor return in due order from the altar, as is laid down: but this stupefaction did not happen to her alone, but this same event befell certain others likewise in the same convent. Wherefore, discretion going before, lest a greater inconvenience might happen from it, it was wisely provided against, and a general decision was weighed among them, that whoever did not return in due order from the altar should in no way presume to approach the altar.
[20] [so that, for not keeping the customs of the Cistercians in receiving the Eucharist, she is punished. But Christ consoles her.] Very many grieved, thirsting with a vehement, unquenchable appetite for what had been forbidden, and, burning for the forbidden thing, though they bore it most grievously, knowing that they were not their own masters in this case, for the good of obedience they observed the decision given, whatever the distress. O dire providence! O wicked maturity! O austere discretion, which thus vexes, afflicts, and tortures the hearts of lovers, pitying no languor, moved by no sighs, softened by no groans! What have you to do with vexation? What have you to do with destruction? What have you to do with the hanging-up of those transfixed by the goad of charity? Attend to what the philosopher says on this: Who would give a law to lovers? Love is a greater law unto itself. The most noble virgin, then, happy Yda, seeing that the inflicted decision was held rather rigidly, as is the custom of the Order, prostrate most devoutly both in body and in spirit, drawing sighs more deeply to the Beloved with secret prayers, overflowing with a little stream of tears, addressing the Beloved confidently, uttered a honey-flowing word, saying thus: "You know, O good Lord, that I dare not approach You, but You can well come to me." These words said, the Father of mercy, who stands behind the wall, looking through the lattices, looking through the windows, visiting His beloved, fulfilled her desire very speedily, lovingly. Nor did it please the Lord to visit His dearest bride on that occasion only, but on every Sunday He sweetly and divinely visited her for a whole year, conferring fully the savour and sweetness which she had been accustomed to have before, when she had received the body of the Lord. Glad at this kindness, the sweet virgin composed verses in Teutonic, which are translated into Latin speech in this manner:
The cups which the peoples of Christ hand on are good; but far better are these which God Himself gives.
ANNOTATIONS.
Benedict's rule had admitted, was in force. And Compline indeed held the place of the prayers which we now usually call evening prayers.
* Ramciam
* habilitatis
* cæterisque
* adds non
* adds Jhesus
* adds eam
* read prælibans
* voluit
* read correpta
* cœli adds
* adds sic
* is missing
* is missing
* conflictuum
* castellum
* in minimis
* is missing
* provenire
* is missing
* is missing
CHAPTER III
The extraordinary graces and ecstasies of Bl. Ida.
Bl. Ida is taught the Christian mysteries by God, Of her understanding and the increase of her joy. When the praiseworthy virgin, breathed upon by the Holy Spirit, had entered upon a conversation about spiritual things with a certain person, she discoursed most excellently on the modes and orders by which the inaccessible light of the Godhead pours itself over to the angels, and, what is more wonderful, she said most wonderful things about that ineffable unity of the Trinity; nay, she declared very many other things, which, on account of the height of the excellent matter and its wonderful subtlety, could not be understood at all by the person with whom the most noble virgin was speaking, nor thus be retained in any way. Noticing and pondering this within herself, fearing lest she give the hearers occasion or some sign for supposing that she had at times been drawn up spiritually on high, at once turning her speech to the things which the humanity of Jesus Christ, of wonderful sweetness, displays to those who gaze with the unveiled keenness of the heart, leading and directing her discourse from the infancy * ascending in order, as much step by step as one by one, distinctly praising each, praising them together, she brought forth very many things, which, lest they produce weariness in readers or hearers, we have deliberately omitted to note down in this book.
[22] and she is flooded with heavenly joy, Not much of time that kindness, besides that which the Lord did her by visiting her, as has already been touched on above, He did her also another, not the least praiseworthy, nor at all worthy to be passed over in silence. For on every Saturday, as Sundays were close at hand, pouring in a certain joy altogether inestimable and without doubt not human, Christ so wonderfully, sweetly, and in her inmost marrow, inebriated His dearest bride with the nectar of joy that that sweet joy her body not a little wearied. On Sundays , for almost the whole day, quite often, so great a tranquillity so wonderfully flooded her that it could in no way be fully set forth in the words of mortals. And after this, in another year, for the increase of the aforesaid joy, it happened to the virgin that on the sixth day of the week, a little after None, the aforesaid joy always began, so that, joyful from all the sixth day through the whole Saturday, always on the following Sunday she received, for almost the whole space of the day, an unheard-of tranquillity, wholly, both of spirit and of body; and thus the Father , the knower of the bodily fashioning , mercifully sparing the body of His beloved, nourished the spirit within with heavenly spices, refreshing it with inner goods, so that, wholly unaware of herself, she did not feel the burden of the bodily mass.
[23] and she is rapt in ecstasy. One day the praiseworthy virgin was sitting alone in a certain place from which she could gaze on the of the heavens beloved , yet she did not care to look upon the vessel, except that within there rested hidden that noble treasure which she loved most tenderly with all the strength of heart and body. And while she sat there delightfully, behold, one of the nuns coming there signed to the virgin, after the manner of cloistered persons, with signs suited to the matter, that she should hasten quickly to the window. She, seeing herself scarcely , by the greatness of her mind's being drawn, dedicated at that time to more pleasing cares, rising, her spirit unwilling, not to obey the nun willed, preferring the fruit of discreet obedience to the pleasure of spiritual sweetness, and that no small one. O wonderful bond, obedience! O delight of the languid body! How wonderfully, in contradiction, do you strive to obtain the same thing! But that nun who had come, seeing her with open eyes and unmoving eyelids, wonderfully seated in the spirit, perceiving her heart strengthened, was astounded and wondered not a little; but the most sweet Yda, coming to the window as she had been signed, sitting there for a rather long time in silence, at length indeed * spoke, out of fear of conscience and to preserve the peace of her neighbour. By which act she declared quite clearly of how great weight it is for spiritual persons, when the sweetness of God has been tasted, to return at once to themselves and to be able to speak of outward things.
[24] To temper her excessive joy, Bl. Ida receives the Eucharist: Of the excess of her joy. Once indeed it happened that at that time in which, in the accustomed manner, she was troubled by the gluttony of joys, through the unbearableness of the said joy she seemed neither yet to die nor to live long: what could then be done by her, what counsel was to be sought for this, what remedy could be procured? At length sound and very suitable counsel was given to the happy virgin, namely that she should receive the body of Christ. Hearing this, the praiseworthy virgin, not wishing the effect of her mind nor her desire to be declared, exclaimed with rather loud words: "Wat sal mi Got" What shall God do to me, wishing the price of her religion and the desire of her holy mind to be hidden by those words. At length, relying on sound counsel, she received her Redeemer most sweetly, and at once obtained the greatest tranquillity both of mind and of body; and thus the same, in manners and as physician, fulfilled more evidently in His beloved what He had once said by the prophet: "I will kill and I will make to live, I will strike and I will heal." But what is it that the sweet virgin did thus? Was she striving to make God contrary to Himself? Did she, rejecting the joys conferred so sweetly by the Beloved, invoke Him inwardly in order to confound Him more strongly? Far be it, far be it. She called Him inwardly, indeed, not that He should be contrary to her, not that He should take away the joys, but that the madness of her mind and the tumults of impatience, which the burning of fervour and the bitterness of love, wholly impatient of delay, compelled to boil up more ardently, they might calm * by His express presence, and that, pitying the languor of His beloved, He might will to set not an end but a measure to her joys.
[25] with which, however, on another day she cannot be refreshed. On another occasion it happened that on a certain feast, as is the custom of the Order on great solemnities, on which the whole congregation was to receive a the holy Eucharist, the ardour of her mind afflicted her through desire of receiving the body of Christ Jesus, and, enduring this desire until Prime, restraining her mind from the hour of Lauds b, not being able to wait longer, she wished to have it quickly, and made known with more preparation her wish that this be done. At Prime the priest brought the body of the Lord with him, wishing to give it to her, but, afflicted by the vehemence of the ardour of her desire, as if suffering an ecstasy, almost bordering on death, she could not accomplish what she had desired. Yet, lest her neighbours should be troubled, she strove so strongly to recall the vigour of her body, that more laboriously her face, through the distress of the labour, seemed to be wholly overspread with blackness; and the priest, effecting nothing, returning to the church, carried back with him the holy Eucharist as he had brought it.
[26] She loathes earthly food. On the solemnities c on which custom requires that two d be celebrated in the Order, she could pray at the first, but at the second by no means, bound by unspeakable fervour and by charity least . One day, in the refectory, after receiving the Eucharist, sitting at table, full of God, blazing with odours , burning in spirit, wholly forgetful of herself and unaware of her state, uttering outwardly by voice what she bore within, speaking in Teutonic, she said thus: "Wi here min harte e"; which the community understanding, wondered not a little that she spoke in the refectory f. On all solemnities, and also on other days , when she had communicated, the bride of Christ, anointed with the delights of Christ , filled with the foods of the spirit, fed with the bread of fine flour, loathing incredibly the earthly dishes , not to go to the refectory and to sit with the others at Mass , she reckoned a weight not the least and a burden heavier than the others. Whence it came about that one of the nuns had asked the virgin on one occasion which places seemed more harmful, and, wishing to extort something from her answers, had added: "Is it the church?" She at once answered: "No. For I know that singing and reading, meditating and praying, become for me sweet tranquillity and peace of mind." What wonder, then, if, to be nourished with such sweet and so spiritual dishes, the carnal refectory was burdensome and hateful, since the apostle testifies that, when the spirit has been tasted, all flesh is distasteful *.
[27] She obtains peace of mind for a certain nun. One of the nuns of this monastery, wounded not lightly with the wound of compassion for a certain person placed under the rule of Blessed Augustine, who, deserting the royal road and the safe path of virtue, turning her mind to vices, was being carried to the precipices of death; urged on by distress of mind, with grief of mind of heart and groaning she laid bare * to the beloved virgin what she was grieving over, asking her very attentively and beseeching her very ardently that she would implore the mercy of Christ about this business. The virgin, not disobeying, nor passing over the request with a deaf ear, on the third day, with glad brow and cheerful face, going to the troubled nun, joyfully magnifying the greatness of the divine goodness, made known to her more joyfully
that this infirmity was not unto death; for the loss would be turned to advantage, and the lamentable fall to salvation; for that merciful Disposer of things had permitted her to fall into sins for the benefit of the spirit, and, enduring the ruin for good, would restore her to something better. Hearing these things and things like them, the nun, but now most sad, the face of her mind cleansed and the cloud of weeping wiped away, hope being resumed, wholly drove out her sadness, and received consolation through the help of sweet Yda.
ANNOTATIONS.
* adds Jhesu Christi
* adds post
* is missing
* adds redderet
* diebusque
* is missing
* adds misericordiæ
* figmenti
* bonus
* ciborium
* directe
* sed
* adds intelligens
* noluit
* pectoris
* adds felix
* illic
* quædam
* affectum
* adds quam
* morbus
* adds hoc
* sedarentur
* quod
* Primam
* is missing
* prævaluit
* quod
* laborantis
* adds missas
* read munimine
* fragrans
* ardoribus
* adds et
* adds quibus
* cœli
* fastidiens
* is missing
* inire
* mensam
* adds cum
* namque
* read enutritæ
* desipiat
* ejusdem
* is missing
* denudavit
* dispositor
* desidem
CHAPTER IV.
The charity of Bl. Ida toward her neighbour. Her devotion in adoring and receiving the holy Eucharist. The Mother of God and the child Jesus appear to her.
Bl. Ida frees a certain nun from a vice. Of the love of the virgin toward her neighbours and of certain miracles. There was a certain nun in the same abbey held by a certain vice. She, approaching the virgin, implored her help, that she would not refuse to come to her aid with her prayers. The praiseworthy virgin, receiving the humble petition without disdain, gave her counsel as useful as honourable, namely that she should receive the body of the Lord on a certain day, and say to Him confidently that she was sent by sister Yda for His help. She, relying on the counsel of the praiseworthy virgin, received the body of the Lord, and perceived that the Lord truly willed the vice to be ended * through the merit of His beloved virgin.
[29] She lays bare the vice of another. There was also a certain other nun in the same convent who had a hidden vice, lying wholly concealed within, and which could never be comprehended by man . Approaching her sweetly with the spirit of gentleness, sweet Yda laid bare, most certainly by the will of the Lord, that she was labouring under such a vice. The nun hearing this, wishing that she should repeat the words further, by which she might be more certain of the truth, of her own accord answered rather harshly, saying thus: "Have you seen visions?" After this the most meek virgin declared most certainly to the nun that she had known the truth of the matter through God alone; and, adding further, she said to her: "I know that the Lord is also angry with you on account of this vice, and that you have lost very many gifts of no lowly dignity and a special grace on account of it. And if you do not take care to be amended, know without doubt that, the Lord permitting, it will be gravely punished upon you." It happened also that God, wonderful in His saints, through the praiseworthy virgin loosed the bonds of sickness for a certain sick person and restored the sick woman to health. Whence the virgin, greatly advancing, receiving manfully in herself the spirit of fortitude, through these things always strove more anxiously to climb to a higher step by the merits of the virtues.
[30] She is divinely helped to receive the body of Christ. On another occasion it happened that the most praiseworthy virgin, signifying to one of the nuns by the gestures of signs the desire of affection which she had to receive the body of the Redeemer, added also that she wished this to be done in such a way that it should be known by none of the others. The nun, promising her help to the beloved virgin, set her heart at peace about this. After this, informing the priest that one of the nuns wished to receive the Saviour, she prepared herself diligently to help her. After this a certain person coming made known to the nun that for which she had come, namely that the nun should hasten as quickly as possible to a certain business. And at once the nun already so often mentioned, grieving in heart, troubled in spirit, went very hastily to the prioress of the abbey, asking diligently and supplicating anxiously that she give her leave to remain. What did the request, what did supplication profit her? She could not obtain what she had desired. Sad, then, and troubled of countenance, she did what she could, and, seeking help more gently, she anxiously asked, with affectionate spirit, the Lord the Lord, whose sweet kindness is closed by no limit, that through the merits of the virgin to whom she had promised herself as helper, He would send an occasion whereby she could remain for the help she had promised the virgin. At once so great a flood of rains came down * from heaven that she could in no way, even if she had wished, have gone to the said business. And so, remaining gladly, held back by the violence of the rains, returning to the church she helped the beloved virgin, until the most sweet virgin had sweetly received the body of the Lord which she was awaiting. Afterward, leading her to a suitable place, she went out very hastily, and, locking the door of the church, not imprudently left the beloved alone with the Beloved, and, not forgetful of the aforesaid business, having found a suitable time, she hastened very quickly to it. What, then, will the incredulous say? Had the sweet Bridegroom granted the spirit of Elias to His sweet bride, through whose merit He drove away sickness and opened the cataracts of heaven, suddenly sending rain when the sky before was clear and serene?
[31] One day, having received the Eucharist, she is rapt in ecstasy; One day the praiseworthy virgin, full of the sweetness of God, having found a suitable place to enjoy peace of spirit, sat there peacefully. And while she was sitting thus alone, one of the nuns came there, asking her sweetly whether the virgin was sick or weak. She, indicating more sweetly with cheerful face the joy of her spirit, answered joyfully, wonderfully, and thus : "This grace which I have does not weaken me." And saying this, hindered by the overflowing of grace, she could speak nothing further. In harvest time it once happened that the community had gone out of the abbey to gather the crops a, but the virgin, remaining at home, desiring earnestly to receive the body of Christ, contrived to fulfil her desire. When she went up to the altar, having received the body of Christ, she could not stand long, but, falling down on her back upon the ground, she lay thus for a long time. None of those standing by dared to raise her up. The priest, therefore, seeing what had happened, going in person to the door of the church, quickly summoning a certain person, asked her sweetly to help the virgin lying thus. She, approaching the virgin and raising her as she lay, strove as far as she could to be able to put her in a sitting position, and, turning her this way and that like a dead woman, could not bend her at all. And when she had lain there for a rather long time, being afterward moved onto a bed, she slept thus until after the space of None.
[32] likewise when by chance she had been deprived of holy communion. One Sunday, desiring to receive the holy Eucharist, she set herself the last Mass as a limit, but she was very much disappointed in her waiting: for it happened that the whole community, going out to a certain building which had lately been made, went to the place where Mass was to be celebrated, nor had the nuns the custom of receiving the body of the Lord there. The praiseworthy virgin, then, perceiving herself disappointed, grieved very much, and signed to one of the nuns in such a way that from the signs the nun knew more certainly that the pious virgin was more grievously distressed by anxiety of heart; and the honey-sweet virgin asked the nun not to desert her. This granted, going together to the church building, they heard that Mass very devoutly. But the Lover of souls, after the Mass, sweetly visiting His beloved , filled her with Himself from heaven so wonderfully that she could not easily return to the place of the convent, and, seized with sweetness and inebriated in spirit, she had to remain for a rather long time in the middle of the way, while she was returning, together with her companion. And while the most sweet virgin lay there thus, drawn in mind into ecstasy, having her face wonderfully all ruddy and very bright, a certain person meanwhile, thirsting to see her , asked the nun, the virgin's companion, very sweetly, and, promising two psalters of the Blessed Virgin b, obtained from her what she had asked; and the nun, uncovering the virgin's face, showed it amply to the person, who gazed most willingly. Having seen it, the person was pleased, and, very greatly edified, praised not a little the face of holiness. After this the virgin, recovering herself, and her usual state being now regained, returned to the convent with the nun her companion. Then on the third day of the week after the aforesaid Sunday the nun asked her sweetly whether she would receive the body of the Lord. The pious virgin answered her most mildly: "The good things which the Lord gave me to drink on Sunday quite suffice me." One day the virgin, appearing more joyful than usual, was speaking with the nuns of the child Jesus born. One of the nuns, kindly questioning her, asked whether the Lord's being born or His suffering seemed to her of greater worth? The virgin, answering her mildly, spoke thus: "If the Lord had not been born, He could by no means have died; but from the time He was born, He had to suffer the punishment of death." As often as the noble virgin, whether slowly or quickly, passed by the choir of the priests, consolation of spirit was so sent to her from the ciborium c that her outward face, sometimes rosy, sometimes pale, was seen following the motion within *.
[33] To Bl. Ida, feverish on the Nativity of the Lord Of the vision on the Nativity of the Lord, and the knowledge of the presence of God, and the contemplation of the virgin. The precious pearl of the supreme King, in the Lord's Advent, according to the state of the season, desirable to true lovers, was moved with ardent desire, ineffable fervour, a devotion almost wholly beyond belief, desiring that her noble Beloved might be willing to give her to drink of heavenly sweetness some new thing pertaining to the joys of the Nativity of the Lord d; nor did presumption or curiosity instigate this, but the impetuosity of love, wounding and piercing her heart. But God, who beholds the minds of men, not disdaining the desire of His friend, willingly granted her what she wished; for, as the time approached, on the Sunday next to the solemnity which precedes it, the last of Advent, the Nativity of the Lord, God filled His beloved virgin with such spiritual delights that she seemed rather to suffer from the disease of the feverish. The prioress of the convent, ministering comfort and help, diligently compelled her to enter the cell of the infirmary e.
[34] the Mother of God appears with the child Jesus. Where the sweet virgin, placed in bed, seized more vehemently with continuous and acute fevers of love, the daughter of love languished with love, thirsting for love, drunk with love, burning on the sweet gibbet of love, to be stifled by the noose of love. And thus, delightfully in her agony, she awaited the joy of the solemnity; and after midnight, namely at the time at which it happened that the first Mass was celebrated , behold, with a great light there appeared to the virgin as she lay a certain person, suddenly wonderful , ineffably beautiful, most excellently, reverently carrying in her arms a child of all beauty and grace, radiant as a lamp, of whom she said honey-flowing words, words seasoned with nectar: "Behold my beloved son. He was born at this hour. Having nothing dearer as a gift than He, I will confer Him upon you and upon the community this day." And the noble virgin saw in the divine light poured round on every side certain mysteries of the Trinity, and the Father presently cleaving to the Son, whose words she received, hearing them not unwillingly. And the virgin, keeping in memory with charitable spirit certain persons, urging herself to ask what would befall them at this moment, asked in the presence of the Lord; but about a certain one she asked the Lord most specially and earnestly. To her the Lord very sweetly commanded that she should tell her that she should strive to take the path of a better state. And these things said, the vision departed. Then, returning to herself, she understood that the Agnus Dei was being sung in the church. After this, receiving the holy Eucharist at the night Mass, she could not hold out any longer for desire, wondering also very much that she had been able to hold out so long.
[35] Afterward she was everywhere certain of the presence of God on the altar, After this vision, it seemed to the praiseworthy virgin that so great a brightness had remained in her body that the whole world, seven times brighter than the light of the sun, could easily be adorned by it, if her body were placed as a lamp in the middle of the air. And what had been commanded concerning the person she carried out very speedily, faithfully, and devoutly. It happened also that there was most wonderfully renewed in the said virgin what is found of Blessed John the Baptist. For as he in his mother's womb felt the presence of God coming, so the most sweet virgin felt the coming of the Lord descending presently upon the altar; whence, tested many times, she made those who accepted certain on this point. For sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly than the usual manner, the priest of the convent f so commanding that the truth of this thing might be proved, the little bell was rung from the altar. But the virgin disclosed more secretly to the priest the error of the sound, of which the others were unaware. And this grace the Lord had given her so generally that, wherever she might be at all, she knew the presence of God on the altar. And from the fourth day of the week before Easter, all that week and also likewise the following one, until there is sung: "Quasi modo geniti infantes, " she rejoiced, so full of sweetness, so filled with joys, that she wholly lost the appetite for bodily food.
[36] [or also whether the Eucharist was duly received by those present; she suffers ecstasies.] The pious virgin also knew of certain timid persons that in them, when the body of Christ had been received, the Godhead ineffably rejoiced; in others likewise she saw God descend as if not spontaneously, but unwillingly; and wherever she was, she knew these and similar things. And perceiving and knowing certain persons approaching the body of Christ outside the path of salvation, she saw it happen to one that, when she had the body of the Lord in her mouth, an angel was present in person, who took away his King from a mouth in no way worthy of so great a gift. One day the praiseworthy virgin, having received the body of Christ, suffering ecstasy of mind, rapt by excess of spirit, remained thus almost the whole day; and afterward, when she had returned a little, yet not fully, as she was being moved to the cell of the infirmary, she did not recognize the cell to which she had been moved. Some of the nuns, condescending sweetly to the necessity of the body, wished that she should eat. And when they set food before her, not wholly returned to herself, she could neither recognize nor taste the food set before her. And when they put a morsel of meat to her mouth, the food put there remained there, and she did not perceive it at all. But a certain very spiritual person, standing by here, urged anxiously that they should let her enjoy quiet and the sleep of the spirit tranquilly begun. And when they left her peacefully, holding the morsel of meat in her mouth she fell asleep again, inebriated with joyful nectar. And when on the next day the wonderful virgin had returned to her former state, the nun narrated very diligently what had been said by the spiritual person. Hearing which *, the most sweet virgin said to her: "She told the truth. It would have harmed me very much if I had not slept again thus." It also happened quite often concerning her that, holding food in her mouth, she fell asleep in spiritual slumbers.
[37] The Mother of God gives the child Jesus to Bl. Ida to embrace. Of the vision at Matins, and of her humility and compassion. It befell the same beloved virgin that, when she was present at the offices of Matins on a certain solemnity of the Blessed Virgin, the glory of heaven, the queen of virgins, the gladness of angels, wonderful, wonderfully appeared to her as she alone among the others was keeping vigil g, bearing in her arms a child excellently most beautiful, adorned most excellently, painted and noble with the flower of all comeliness and beauty, whom, embracing and fondling Him as father and son, as most beloved brother, she presented venerably and kindly to the beloved virgin. What could she then do? Did she, sluggish or negligent, refuse to receive the thing offered? Far be it, far be it. Nay, rejoicing and cheerful, loving the Lover, the bride the Bridegroom, glad she received Him sweetly in the inmost marrow of her heart; for with all the force of the desire of heart and body she carried Him more ardently and more vehemently. It happened also at this moment that it fell to her to sing her verse according to the order. What could she then do, holding thus the child bound in the embraces of her arms, whom she loved above all others? And thinking within herself, she hesitated long what she should do, saying thus: "If I hold the child thus in my arms, and sing the verse thus, I shall not keep the statute of the Order, because the statutes of the Order bid the sleeves of the cowl h to be let down at the joints." And when the time demanding the verse was now at hand, surrounded with such trust in the goodness of God, she brought forth confidently: "Think of yourself, Lord, for in singing I shall enjoy the order." And when she had begun the verse as she ought, the child, clinging to the virgin's neck, binding her firmly to Himself, bound Himself more firmly with her by the excellently most sweet and lovable bonds of His little arms . And she sang through the verse which she had begun much better than usual. Afterward, sitting according to the order, putting the venerable child back upon her lap , she received very many consolations from Him here, sweetly and devoutly.
[38] She discoursed wonderfully of God When once the virgin so often mentioned was speaking with some, discoursing wonderfully of the wonders of God, taking five letters, namely a d m o n, she comprehended wonderfully concerning God upon them, denoting the Trinity by m, the Godhead by d, and expounding marvels by the others. When, oppressed by no small sickness, she lay at a certain time on a certain bed, holding a little rose in her hand, saying thus: "As this little rose does not * belong to me, so the good which the Lord gave me to drink did not belong to me," saying that she spoke such things of the visitations of that time in which the Visitor of hearts had visited her every Sunday. And so, keeping in all things the spirit of humility, never in
great things walking, she humbly followed the will of her attendant in all things , and although she had lost the appetite for bodily food, never contrary to her attendant , when she offered food, she received it sweetly, though rejecting it in spirit * and unwilling. And so, subjecting her will wholly and in every way to her inferiors, she strove to be able to attain the lowest things of humility, humble to all, sweet in works, compassionate to the grieving, she pressed on with all the strength of her spirit.
[39] and she was very merciful toward others. Whence it came about that, when a certain person in need, in order to be supported with consolations by the office of loving-kindness, conversing with the praiseworthy virgin, had piteously indicated the heaviness of her state, the virgin, full of sweetness, not avaricious of heavenly goods, refreshing the person's spirit, said to her with sweet-speaking voice: "If I have ever done any good things, I confer them all wholly on you, and give me all your evils, and remit them to me wholly, on this condition, namely, that you henceforth follow anxiously the path of virtue and newness of spirit and rectitude of life, and so strive henceforth to remain with faithful spirit." She, firmly promising what she had asked, to live more religiously, frequented the beloved virgin herself and the others whom she had named skilfully and anxiously, and afterward profited very much by the fitting admonition of sweet Yda.
ANNOTATIONS.
* contra
* ascaria
* tenuari
* quoddam
* deprehendi
* volensque
* noniali
* dulce
* statim
* nequivit
* is missing
* cecidit
* mirabilis
* sic
* adds ipsamque
* illic
* is missing
* is missing
* is missing
* ad
* ipsam
* cibario
* intrinsecum
* is missing
* natali
* verius
* monstrans
* read suffocata
* celebrare
* mirabiliter adds nobilis
* adds ei
* circumfuso
* quodam
* clariori
* attentantes
* vidente
* is missing
* dedit
* adds tota
* is missing
* is missing
* et
* Domini
* mirabilis
* nondum
* quæ
* visitatione
* dulci
* ut
* amplexans
* dulci
* adds lætum
* in
* exoptabat
* adds his
* talia
* brachiorum
* adds suum
* coram
* mirabilia
* dixit
* adds nunc
* is missing
* adds in omnibus
* is missing
* is missing
* adds penitus
* amisisset
* adds tamen
* affectu
* is missing
* noverat
CHAPTER V.
The bodily ailments of Bl. Ida. God reveals secrets to her. Her ecstasies and spiritual joys.
Bl. Ida, sick for three years, was most devoted toward the Holy Eucharist. Of the subtlety and knowledge of her spirit. The virgin, wholly given to holiness, one day comprehended wonderful things about God, naming the letters of her own name; for by y, which is a sharp letter, she designated sharpness; by d God; by a love. Whence Yda can be called from the etymology of her name as it were sharply loving God . So always meditating on the things which are of God, carefully looking about herself lest she incur any defect through negligence, for three years she showed herself an exemplar of patience, but it by no means pleased the languishing one to live any longer. And when, for a longer time, the Sunday to draw near to the day of her death
she had desired, the merciful Lord fulfilled both desires. For in the third year, on a certain Sunday, He freed her from the prison of the body. She, while she lived, willingly receiving the body of the Saviour when she could, drawn by sweetness of mind, remained in contemplation for almost the whole space of the day. But when she could not receive it, she roused the others by admonition. Some of whom, trusting in the help of the virgin's prayers, approaching the altar, when they had received the body of the Lord, felt themselves become stronger against the flesh and vices and the wickednesses of the demons.
[41] God opens secrets to her One day the praiseworthy virgin, remaining not a little joyful, keeping silence a little, did so for some little time. After this, with speech in no way sluggish, she brought forth such things to a certain person standing by in her presence: "Since you came here, your state has been changed: for you are by no means such as you pretend to become." Her state indeed had been changed for the better: for she showed herself very angry, and yet did not feel anything of anger at that time. And one day afterward that same person asked the praiseworthy virgin: "On that day on which I spoke with you, you seemed weak, and not able easily to hold up. What happened to you?" She said: "I was strengthened in spirit on your account." The person again asking the virgin, saying thus: "When your spirit is rapt, how is it with you at that hour?" The virgin said: "I do not sleep now as often as I used to. For I asked the Lord that this sleep be taken from me. But when I have returned to myself, I could in no way set forth the good things which I have had." To the same person she also declared afterward that she had been in a certain place for prayer, in which she could in no way have seen her with the bodily eye. When the same person , when she had been somewhat burdened with tribulations, asked her very diligently: she felt herself always most promptly freed by her help.
[42] God opens. There was a certain other person who, while still young in age, radiant above many in beauty of body, abundance of riches, and worldly glory, who could have abounded very much in the delights of the world, bravely leaving the world and worldly things, joined herself to those who serve God. She, since she knew sweet Yda as more excellent than many both in body and in spirit, one day asked the virgin diligently: "Have you ever seen me before?" She, with moderate spirit, keeping silent a little, did not answer the questioner at once. But she insisting, desiring more keenly to know this secret, compels the virgin to answer to what was asked, and, moved very much by the solicitude of loving-kindness, she said to her: "I have seen you elsewhere, where no one could have discerned you, unless the Lord had willed to bring someone there." On another occasion, desiring to know that more truly, she laid bare her wish wholly and plainly to the beloved virgin, and the virgin faithfully revealed to her more fully the secret which she had sought. And she, knowing and understanding without the cloud of doubt that the praiseworthy virgin had been rapt in ecstasy of mind to those ineffable delights of paradise, and had there contemplated her spirit in spiritual light, took much solace from it. Nor is it a wonder : for her mind had drunk in sweet and most savoury tidings, honey-flowing , delightful, foretasting and pre-savouring from the little stream the sweetness of the fountain and the joy of hope from the things she had heard.
[43] [She gladdens one who receives the Holy Eucharist. Bl. Ida obtains the same for others.] One day, when the noble virgin, according to her accustomed manner, had received the holy Eucharist, secluding herself in a certain solitary place remote from men, not the limit of houses, sequestering herself from the tumults of crowds, she remained there a rather long time, with contemplative heart, tasting the suavity of the spirit and the delights of the soul with sober inebriation: and having obtained the solace which she had desired, recovering herself, she returned to the convent, and, displaying to those who beheld her a glad and cheerful countenance, radiant with a heavenly lamp and adorned from heaven with divine joy, she declared most evidently by the joyfulness of her body in how great a fullness of joys her soul had remained. It happened elsewhere that a certain person known to her came to her, loving the company and frequent society of the virgin. When they were speaking with each other, they proposed together to receive the holy Eucharist at a certain hour. When the most praiseworthy virgin, sweet Yda, knew this, she answered the person very sweetly thus: "If I receive my Lord, know that I know more truly that I shall not be able to supplicate Him for you." This person, then, hearing her say such things, answered thus: "Since indeed it is so, I prefer, and rather counsel, and believe it in every way to be of more value, that you should pray the Lord for me, whom I myself also shall receive, and that you should put Him off for some little time." Afterward, when she who had spoken thus went up to the altar and had received the body of the Lord, she knew truly that she had obtained through the virgin's prayers what she had desired to obtain, nor indeed did this * lie hidden.
[44] She also knows divinely what had befallen others. She knew more certainly whatever had befallen her, knowing also with what, how great, and what kind of movements of disturbance both of spirit and of body she had before been burdened. She knew also, and this quite often by very many signs, ways, and words , when, how long, and in what manner God visited the person's spirit, and very many times made such things known to her familiarly and devoutly; and the same person mentioned above asked the virgin to tell her, when she fell upon the wood, whether she felt injury in her head. To this the virgin answered very sweetly that at that hour she felt no pain, nor perceived that fall at all, but, some time having elapsed afterward, she felt the gravity of the injury in her head. Let not those who hear wonder. For it is not wonderful. For when a heart filled with joys so great and of such a kind, burning and overflowing from every part and in every way, out of the fullness of the mind boils up and utters the sweetness of love, the joys of heaven, delights, in what part of the breast, in what cell of the brain, in what region of sense could * the wormwood of pain thrust or mingle itself?
[45] Bl. Ida, rapt in ecstasy, is deprived of all sense, Of her frequent rapture. One night after Compline one of the nuns, raised to the summit of prelacy, asked the dear virgin to consent to take some food, so that the strength and members of her body might be somewhat restored by nourishment a. And when she kept wholly silent at this, food was placed in her little mouth, but remaining there it did not go down into her belly: for, full of the sweetness of God, most full of heavenly food, she could not take earthly foods, but, thirsting for the sweetness of the mind, for swiftness of spirit, and eager to contemplate the height of the heavens, not kicking against love, girded with the bond of love, she flew back with charitable manners . And when two of the nuns, so that she might lie more comfortably, drew off her garments, although they turned her this way and that, remaining wholly as one dead, and feeling nothing of herself, she did not know what was being done with her. And when she was presently able to speak, being now master of herself and conscious, she said to the nun named above : "If men now wonder at me, truly it is not wonderful, nor do I myself wonder. I too wonder * very much at the ineffable and wonderful unheard-of things which, divine mercy bestowing it, the Lamp of the spirit, the Sweetness of hearts, the delightful Beloved, permits me to know and feel so abundantly."
[46] and she grieves that she is called back to herself, but God restores her. One day, sitting at table, the praiseworthy virgin could not eat at all, but, appearing as if dead, when the community, going out, was withdrawing from the refectory so that the thanksgiving b might be rendered, she, remaining in ecstasy, wholly unaware of what was happening, did not withdraw with those withdrawing, but, remaining thus until Vespers, rested in spirit with the greatest peace; and this happened to her quite often. On another day it happened that when, having received the body of Jesus Christ, she was being led by the nuns to a bed, giving herself to the sweetness of the mind, anointed with the joy of the spirit, bound wonderfully with the tie of the charitable Godhead, she lay there sweetly, given over by delightful slumber to the suspension of contemplation. One of the nuns, approaching her quite unseasonably, either forgetful of or wholly ignorant of the word which is found in the Canticles: "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and the harts of the fields, that you stir not up nor make the beloved to awake, till she please;" arousing her, resisting and unwilling, from her sweet sleep, contrived to lead her to another suitable place. But the virgin, bearing it grievously that she had been so quickly called back from so great a sweetness, from so great a joy of mind, from a thing so delightful, remaining in the new place, drawing sighs from her inmost bowels, unceasingly uttered complaining cries and groans with lamentations. The kind and merciful King of lovers, then, beholding the vehemence of the grief and the impatience of the love by which His noble beloved was distressed, not bearing her distresses * any longer, comforted her in honey-flowing wise. She, enjoying the solace she had caught at, remained there until Vespers, drunk with the sweet cup, congratulating the sweet Bridegroom, plucking sweet joys with the Beloved.
[47] [Yet on another day, rapt again in ecstasy, she could not be called back to herself.] On another day it happened that, when the sweet and most wonderful pious virgin had received the bread of life, the marrow of wheat, the holy Eucharist, following and keeping the order for the thanksgiving, entering the church with the others after the hour of the midday meal, when the others went out she did not go out, but, remaining there, began with tearful voice to pour out tears more ardently, which the sweet and nectared Consoler of spirits, receiving them after His manner *, comforted her delightfully and lovingly. One of the nuns, who was present in the church, hearing her cries and groans, hastened to her quickly; but she found her already keeping silence. And when she strove to raise her up, she, remaining as if empty of all vital spirit, and like a useless and unfit mass of body, could in no way be moved by her who struggled in vain. When the nun perceived this, she left her in peace. Watching her for a long time, she saw her for no brief space contemplating with a wonderful countenance.
[48] Of whom many other marvels are related. The virgin already so often mentioned, sweet Yda, very many times studied to seek places suitable for sighing, so that in shut-up solitude she might offer to the Bridegroom more deeply and more ardently the groans and complaining sobs of her mind and the sighs of a vehement soul, and might be able more freely, without anyone's scandal, to stir herself, or conduct herself according to the desires of her heart. It happened elsewhere that one of the nuns rebuked the most sweet Yda, given to the sweetness of the mind, with words of charity, because the sweet and most clement virgin had not drunk at the keeper's chalice c. The sweet one, hearing this, answered thus: "When the Trinity rejoices in me and the Godhead exults in my mind, and my spirit is made one with the Beloved, when I feel these things, most sweet sister, how do you believe that I could receive or taste the chalice from the keeper?" She told her also another lofty marvel which also befell her, but on account of the simple
of understanding we have providently judged it worthy not to be written.
The nun of whom we now speak also asked the praiseworthy virgin what comparison or what union there is with the Spirit of God and the virgin, when it happened that they were mingled with each other. To her the praiseworthy virgin answered clemently and most sweetly thus: "Most lovable sister, as is * a little drop of water in a skin filled quite full with wine, so it is then." She said this as if she said: In God I do not appear, because the smallness of the creature cannot be compared with the lofty greatness of the Creator.
[49] Bl. Ida many things of her ecstasies Of her understanding and the abundance of spiritual consolation. When the same nun on another occasion had found the virgin drawn into ecstasy, often opening her eyes with her fingers, she saw that as often as she had tried to open them, the rapt virgin at once hastened to close them again. Whence after this she asked the virgin to be willing to tell her what this was. To whose petition the virgin fittingly answered thus: "Know that my spirit was not yet separated from the Spirit of God." One day, when the noble virgin, full of the sweetness of God, was now little in possession of herself, the nun so often mentioned began to reprove her because she did not care to receive the sustenance or necessaries of the body. The virgin, hearing these things, gave an answer in this manner: "How do you believe that a morsel of bread can enter into one's own body, into which the least hair could in no way enter for the multitude of the sweetness of God?" This same nun also asked the beloved virgin to tell her, when her mind was drawn into ecstasy, why her face was changed and became sometimes pale, sometimes saffron-coloured, in this state. The virgin said: "Those who are drawn or rapt according to the great things of the Trinity a pale colour , but those who fly to ecstasy tasting the sweet things of the humanity obtain a ruddy colour." When the same nun was speaking quite often with the sweet virgin of that ineffable and most praiseworthy sacrament, namely of the body of Jesus Christ, and asked her how long the form of bread d remains when the substantial e words are finished, the praiseworthy virgin said: "When I receive God, in a brief space of time I feel Him passing into my soul, and not transferred to the mind of the body through the limits of temporal food. Moreover I feel * more certainly that both true humanity and perfect Godhead dwell in my mind, and more sweetly confer and pour themselves into my spirit."
[50] she explains to another nun. The same nun also asserted very many times that sometimes, when she was joined to the dear virgin at the time when she had undergone ecstasy of mind, through the power of that virgin, to whom she rendered herself the nearest, she was strengthened many times with divine consolation, made thus stronger against vices, spurning the world more manfully, and more loving of good things. This same nun asked the virgin how it can be that the body rejoices with the soul, when spiritual gladness is poured chiefly into the soul. The virgin said: "Since the soul is the guest of the body, and is joined to it so sweetly in the bordering of so great a love; since the whole soul, in its inmost marrow, is inebriated with the sweetness of divine joy without the limit of measure, what wonder is it if the body feels what the spirit feels, and rejoices for gladness at its beloved guest?" It was said of the virgin that she had the custom that, if anyone spoke with her about those things in which her mind had been called forth into * ecstasy, she would very quickly be changed, keeping silence. When at times the nun mentioned above was speaking with the most praiseworthy virgin of the wonders of the Trinity, it happened by chance that she said a certain thing, at which the virgin, moved, very sweetly admonished her to be silent, and she herself, keeping sweet silence with wonderful peace, drank in mentally for a rather long time a wonderful sweetness from the things heard.
[51] Sometimes she can take no food, When she was asked very attentively by that nun one day that, providently repairing the weakness of her body, she would be willing to take food, humility going before, not presuming to reject what she asked, she consented to eat a little, and, having taken the food, she could not fall asleep for almost the whole space of the night which followed afterward. And so it happened to the virgin that what she believed would benefit her harmed her. And at a certain time when the solemnity * of the Ascension of the Lord, joyful in spirit, exulting in heart, so uttered forth the joy of heart and body that for the wonderful gladness of her heart she could eat nothing at all. And in the night next to the celebrated festivity she proved, trying five times, whether she could take any food in any way, but for all her efforts she could not overcome herself, except a little.
[52] and she now abounds in spiritual joy, now lacks it. When indeed it happened that the grace had been withdrawn from the beloved virgin with which the divine goodness had long visited her every Sunday, dismayed, she remained humbly for a long time, for fear, of a fearful and trembling spirit: whence, when she had indicated these things to one of the nuns, the nun answered the virgin that the Maker of hearts willed her patience to be thus proved. To her the virgin, using signs f in place of the speaking of words, answered thus: "If I am not culpable in this, God knows that I do not much desire to possess that grace." Nor yet did she say this despising it, but thirsting to follow the statutes of the Order g more frequently with the others and to be able to bear them better. When at a certain time, languid with the excess of the divine fullness, she was lying on a certain little bed, in the night-time of a certain night preceding the Nativity of the Lord, understanding the lessons from the treatises of Blessed Augustine, who speaks wonderfully of the wonders of the Trinity, her soul was suddenly anointed with such joys, her spirit seething, that she almost feared lest she should lose her senses, and, losing herself wholly for the wonderful gladness of her heart, go mad. Let lukewarm readers blush, who often read, search, ruminate so many great things of the Scriptures, and when they have passed over what they have read, like a fetid vessel, can scarcely retain even the odour. Very many times it happened to the virgin that when for some times she had been lately recalled from excess of mind and ecstasy, she displayed to the unwise eyes so spiritual that they seemed more truly radiant * with a certain heavenly lamp and with wonderful rays.
ANNOTATIONS.
* denotando
* acute
* Deum
* quemquam
* adds in
* timere
* fuit
* adds aliquid
* dixit
* enim
* Pro
* adds pluries
* subiciens
* quidem
* coegit
* extasim
* read humores
* adds et
* seducens
* conterminum
* Quæ
* adds recipere
* adds ipsa
* et corpus
* adds virginem
* enim
* hæc
* persæpius
* verbis et modis
* potuerit
* positusque
* celeritate
* sitientis
* tracta
* motibus
* memoratæ
* adds enim
* omits
* omits
* adds ferre
* in ore
* intra
* contiger
* et
* traheret
* adds habent
* quærens
* partes
* Insuperque sentio
* hæc
* residebat
* fortiorum
* adds animæ
* ad
* adds accederet
* unde cum hæc cuidam
* adds cum
* inspicientibus
* omits
* fulminantes
CHAPTER VI.
Bl. Ida languishes from excessive spiritual joy. She puts to flight the devil who tempts her. Near to death she asks for the Eucharist. Her death.
Bl. Ida, whose inmost parts lie open for divine light, Of the vision at the death of the sick woman and the death of the virgin herself. At times it happened to the virgin that she blushed at the gaze of those who beheld her; for it seemed to her more truly that so great a brightness had shot through her in every part that she seemed so transparent with exceeding brightness that by those looking from within her inmost parts could be seen clearly , the bodily wall notwithstanding. And the novelty of the event compelled her companions in this matter to wonder very much, and she too to whom these things had happened wondered. One of the nuns one day asked the virgin whether it would be any help to her if a conversation about divine things were held with her at the time when she bore that distress which at times she seemed to suffer. To her the virgin said thus in brief answers: "Know that, if it were done so, I should go mad." O wonderfulness of fervent love! O tenderness of the languishing spirit! O sweet charity of the besieged heart! You who so press the bodies of lovers, the body dare not speak outwardly, or hear.
[54] This noble virgin was of so great fervour of spirit and so great desire, she languishes for excessive joys. that she could in no way, for the vehemence of the fury of her mind , bear any longer that she should not have the body of the Lord, nor did love or joy, or the overflowing of sweetness or the largess of grace suffice for the heart inflamed with the fires of delight, if she should receive God Himself and the Lord, for whom she burned with all her affections, presently and expressly. But when she had received Him, having Him who has all things, she required nothing further at all; for then chiefly the body was subject to the spirit, and the spirit enjoyed the very greatest peace. Yet she, for the wholly unspeakable joys which reigned in her heart, could not fall asleep for very many nights. And at those times at which the praiseworthy virgin bore this vehemence of joys, with such labours and pain of body, with anxiety of joy
she was pressed, that even the inner parts of her body gave out a vehement noise.
[55] Demons appear to her, At times there appeared to the virgin dear to God the persecutor of the human race, that wicked devil, bearing in himself the figure of a man; but the virgin, strong in spirit, radiant with vigour of mind, breastplated with the fortifications of the virtues, wholly spurned him, nor feared him in anything, except a little. The most lovable virgin at times had such a state that she could in no way bear any of men beside her. Whence once, when she had entered the church, and her heart had flown away to heavenly things, foretasting in contemplation the lilies of paradise, it happened that a certain person approached her, thus disposed, gently, and touched her a little with a light touch; at once she, perceiving the thing and the touch, cried out most wonderfully with a deep voice. When at a certain time the praiseworthy virgin was sitting beside in person a certain person not a little sick, gravely chained in the bonds of infirmities, as the heaviness of the disease grew, it happened that the person drew near to the end of death, which bites all things. And when sweet Yda was present close by, she saw demons standing by there in person, who, disputing for the soul with terrible horror and horrible terror, were judging the wretched one, urgently and cruelly fighting against mercy, bringing forward against the trembling one whatever of evil kind could be found in her, accusing her unceasingly, and claiming her for themselves most wickedly . Hearing these things, the virgin, terrified, shuddering in all her bowels, the goad of loving-kindness urging her on, her heart overflowing, filled with the dew of the sweetness of inmost compassion, the vessel and cell of all mercy, for the succour of that soul at that time in need of help, reserved herself to sacred prayers in her inmost marrow and devoutly, and asked with shuddering spirit, contrite heart, a mind altogether anxious, that the kind and patient Father of mercy, Jesus Christ, would be willing to free the present soul from the peril of eternal death.
[56] whom, the Mother of God helping, she puts to flight. Her prayers not yet finished, she saw on the other side, standing by in person to resist the demons, the empress of virgins, the fountain of mercy, the support of the weak, the medicine and refuge of the whole human race, Mary the mother of the Lord, who had come mercifully to free the labouring soul amid so great distresses. Setting herself in opposition, then, royally, with authority spurning and casting off manfully those unclean spirits, she said thus: "This soul, living in the body, paid my hours a anxiously and devoutly." And these things said, freeing the soul from the harsh word and the snares of the hunters, she judged her very kindly to salvation. In this moment, then, the sweet virgin was helper and companion to the mother of mercy: what she asked for by prayers of loving-kindness, the highest of virgins fulfilled by works of power; and thus, following the mother as a daughter of life through arduous ways, through the path of peace, through the footsteps of love, she studied very diligently to preserve the cleanness of honesty, the patience of labour, the grace of humility. Whence, when at times she had related certain things more secretly to a certain religious and very honourable man, and he asked the virgin that what she had told him be declared to certain others, this daughter of humility answered thus: "I will not, lord, but I very much fear to usurp vainly the name of holiness." And thus, as heaven and cell more surely hiding the secrets of the Lord, the noble virgin could be called a work of humility.
[57] Knowing beforehand the day of her death, she dies devoutly. When, then, she had foreknown the day and term of her own death, thirsting to receive the body of the Beloved with sweet heart before her spirit should leave the prison of the flesh, summoning one of the nuns, she said to her: "When I have received the body of the Beloved, be mindful to have my face veiled with our veil." She, as she had asked, so did. And when she had veiled the face, lowering herself to the ground, drawing the veil a little up from beneath, looking at her countenance she saw her eyes very spiritual and the eyelids by no means wholly moved. And on the next day, undergoing temporal death, although a very great heaviness and no light infirmity pressed her gravely sharply, yet in this moment the pious virgin by no means abandoned devotion, but, living devout in the world, she laboured more devoutly and passed over most devoutly; and thus the good which she had begun from childhood, and had already been brought forward for the better by the progress of time, she consummated with a holy end , a praiseworthy end, a sweet end, a most excellent end.
[58] No one can worthily praise her virtues. Who, then, with what speech, will praise this soldier of Christ, this mirror of life, this fountain of light, so elegantly that it ought to suffice? Into whom the whole heap of the virtues, the overflowing ocean of grace, the glory and beauty of all things that can adorn any spirit, so most abundantly poured themselves that there lives nothing praiseworthy to which her nobility cannot be compared. For the virgin, shining forth with so many marvels, can be named, as the demands of her virtues require, a watered garden [b], a fruitful land, an admirable vessel, a ray of the sun, a lamp of grace, palm, cedar, olive, hyssop, a planting of the rose, spice, balsam, violet, lily, and whatever else bears sweetness. Since our smallness falls far short of sufficing to extol the most excellent proclaiming title both of her virtue and of her merit, which itself falls short of sufficiency, fixing the anchor on the shore, drawing in the reins of the vehicle, treading with the foot the goal proposed, the tongue is silent, the pen is snatched away, our little bark stands still, words cease, the sails fall, the body yields. Touching, then, the term of the matter begun and of the proposed work, we supplicate and earnestly ask not a little the favour of the hearers, that out of the goodwill of charity they hasten a little of our foolishness, and, not handing over the present work to examination or to the judgement of the balance, that they disdain not the goodness of the matter on account of the poverty of the style; but whatever better they savour in these things, let them bring it forth more lovingly and together with us praise the virgin who, not unworthy to be praised for the merits of her works, deserved by her works to obtain grace in living and in departing to attain the glory of the heavens. In which reigning, surrounded more delightfully with the varieties of merits, flowery with the lilies of cleanness, plunged in the flood of love, rejoicing in the delights of lovers, and enjoying the desired embraces, with the Beloved she will live through the ages of ages. Amen .
ANNOTATIONS.
* infirmitatis
* read extrinsecus.
* perspicaciter
* adds ut quæ gestant introrsus pectora,
* is missing
* is missing
* adds non
* omits
* hominem
* igitur
* poterat
* nequitius
* adds et
* reseravit
* consona
* omits
* omits
* secundo
* aliquid
* opus
* ergo
* sustineant
* omits
* Christo
* vivit
* adds Explicit vita beatæ Ydæ.
FIRST LITTLE APPENDIX.
Ida of Leewis, Cistercian nun, at La Ramée in Brabant. (Bl.)
BY R. D. B.
§ Sole. Notice. Of copyists and the copying of books in the monasteries of the East and of the West. The scriptorium among the Benedictines and other monks, especially in Belgium. Books written in the convents of nuns. Of learned nuns of the Middle Ages.
We had written this dissertation on the copying of books and the study of letters in monasteries, especially of women, in the year 1870, not unaware that this argument had been touched on in passing by several learned men, to be indicated below. But in the year 1877 there came to light a most learned work on the libraries of the Middle Ages, put together through the care of the Reverend Father Charles Cahier, priest of the Society of Jesus: in which that distinguished man, now here, now there, either touches on or explains almost all the heads which we had undertaken to discuss. Having examined these, it was at one time in our mind to leave our composition in darkness, lest we should seem to do what had been done, or to trespass on another's work. But several things dissuaded us from carrying this plan into effect. And first, indeed, the excellent author directed his mind to another end than ours. For he proposed to himself to make manifest that men, both ecclesiastical and monastic, were the founders of the libraries of the Middle Ages: which course no one will deny that he has run with great praise. We, on the contrary, try to show that the monks placed their zeal in copying books, as though it were proper to the religious profession, already in the earliest times, leaving to others the province of explaining more fully with what diligence this monastic law was obeyed. The other, and indeed the principal, end of this our dissertation is to demonstrate that nuns, especially those of Belgium, trod in the footsteps of the monks, not only in copying ecclesiastical books most beautifully, but also in cultivating letters and in liberally educating the young of both sexes. There is added, to make us bring forward this our disputation, both the counsel of prudent men and the example of a member of the former Society of Jesus, Francesco Saverio Zaccaria: who, although our predecessor Stilting had in the year 1757 printed a lengthy discussion on the fictitious fall of St. Liberius Acta Sanctorum, volume VI of September, page 598., did not blush to make public in the years 1757 [In Petavius, Opus de Theologicis dogmatibus, volume II, part II, Venice edition of the year 1757.] and 1762 Thesaurus theologicus, volume II, page 580. a commentary on the same argument, long since composed. Wherefore we too submit our disputation to the press in the style in which it was composed nine years ago.
The Eastern monks From the words of the biographer of Bl. Ida we understand that this holy virgin, before she took up the monastic life, learned the knowledge of letters among the Beguines of Léau, and afterward, when she had been made a nun, studiously wrote books of the church, or also corrected a certain ferial book of no small size, in which the lessons are read at Matins… Several others
she wrote out very diligently. Permitting no space of time to pass away empty, in the time of labour she laboured more than the others, at other times occupied with holy prayers. Which words show sufficiently that this was the principal labour of the blessed nun, as also in many places of very many sacred virgins. Nor is that to be wondered at: for in this way those most devout women rendered a very useful service to the churches: and further they avoided idleness, so destructive to all men and especially to the female sex. Moreover they were not ignorant that this kind of work had been practised and commended by most holy men in the first times of the Christian era. For we read in the Paradise of Heraclides, chapter XIX, where the manner of life of the monks of Tabennisi is described: One … another … another rejoiced in the reading or the writing of codices In Rosweyde, Vitae Patrum, page 958.. With which St. Jerome agrees in the letter to the monk Rusticus: Let books be written, so that both the hand may work for food and the mind be filled with reading Complete Works of St. Jerome, volume I, column 1079, Migne edition.; likewise St. John Chrysostom in the 14th Homily on I Timothy, saying: After they have completed the morning prayers and hymns, they betake themselves to the reading of the Scriptures: there are also those who have learned to write books Works of St. John Chrysostom, volume XI, column 576, Migne edition.. Cassian mentions the same task of the Eastern monks in the work On the Institutes of the Monasteries Works of Cassian, page 76, Arras edition 1628.. St. Ephrem of Edessa also affirms that this obtained in his monastery, in the 48th Paraenesis, to a monk given to acedia [Works of St. Ephrem, volume II, in Greek and Latin, page 176 and following, Roman edition 1743.].
[2] even the more illustrious, Moreover the Eastern monks made so much of the office of scribe that, when any one of them, a holy man or one notable on another title, excelled the others in it, it was reported in his Life as no common praise. Hence it came about that St. Epiphanius, recording the excellent gifts of the heretical monk Hierax, said: Some are authorities that he lived beyond ninety years, and to the last period of his life wrote books after the manner of a copyist. For he was a scribe, and a skilled one [Works of St. Epiphanius, volume II, book II, heresy 47, column 178, Migne edition.]. Likewise it is read in the Life of St. Epiphanius, which, although sprinkled with fables, Papebroch nevertheless affirms to be fairly ancient Acta Sanctorum, volume III of May, page 37.: Lucian, an admirable and learned man, the master of SS. Hilarion and Epiphanius, possessed the art of an elegant scribe. A little lower it is added: Lucian had with him ten monks, who, diligently writing books, provided their livelihood from them Works of St. Epiphanius, Migne edition, columns 30 and 34.. In the same work is cited the deacon Sabinus, whose zeal was to write beautifully Ibid., column 94.: as also Rufinus, whose art was to write correctly Ibid., column 94.. St. Epiphanius himself, as his biographer says, under St. Hilarion as master made progress in the grace of God and in the most beautiful art of writing [Ibid., column 34. Compare Acta Sanctorum, volume III of May, page 37 and following.]. The biographer of St. John Climacus also reports that he composed little books Works of St. John Climacus. His Life, chapter II, Migne edition, column 601.. Similar praise is attributed to many other Eastern monks. Add the words of Nicephorus, from which it is clear how proper it was for those professing the monastic life in the East in the fifth century to copy ecclesiastical books: Theodosius the Younger, he says, took diligent care that his imperial court should differ in nothing from a MONASTERY. Rising in the morning he sang hymns to God alternately with his sisters, and always had the words of the spirit in his mouth. Meeting with bishops and priests, he explained the obscure places and knots of the Scriptures, no otherwise than if he himself had been initiated into sacred orders. He was so zealous in collecting the sacred books and their interpreters that in that praise he was not inferior to Ptolemy. By night he gave his attention to reading them… He himself wrote most beautifully with his own hand, and many of his writings have been preserved to this time, superior to the force of the times: namely Gospels, and certain other things, distinguished wholly in golden letters, whose pages represent the form of the cross [Historia Ecclesiastica, volume II, book XIV, chapter III, page 441 and following, Paris edition 1630.]. No more seems necessary to be said of the scribe-monks of the East.
[3] likewise the Western, The Western monks entered upon the same way as the Eastern, and likewise devoted their labour to copying books. For St. Martin of Tours willed that in his monastery no art should be practised except that of scribes: to which work, however, the younger age was assigned; the elder gave themselves to prayer Sulpicius Severus, Life of St. Martin, volume I, page 17, Verona edition.. St. Fulgentius, monk and afterward bishop of Ruspe, practised the art of the scribe laudably Acta Sanctorum, volume I of January, page 38.. Nor did Cassiodorus depart from this path, who, after holding the consulship and other offices, living as a monk in the monastery of Vivarium in Calabria, indicated in the work On Orthography in what manner books are to be written Works of Cassiodorus, in Migne, volume II, column 1239 and following., having beyond doubt before his eyes St. Irenaeus, who vehemently urged copyists to apply outstanding diligence, as Eusebius of Caesarea Historia Ecclesiastica, book V, chapter 23, page 397, Laemmer edition and St. Jerome Works, volume II, De viris illustribus, column 650, Migne edition. relate. Likewise St. Ferreolus, in chapter 28 of his Rule, noted that writing is especially the work of monks; for he says: Let him paint the page with his finger who does not cleave the earth with the plough: because he who cannot practise agriculture can read, write, which is the principal work… Holstenius, Codex Regularum, volume I, page 162, Brockie edition.. Of the same opinion was St. Eustasius Acta Sanctorum, volume III of March, page 786, abbot of Luxeuil and disciple of St. Columbanus, greatly urging the monks subject to him, by assiduous example, to copy books, imitating his masters, the Irish abbots. But these things are known to the bleary-eyed and the barbers.
[4] and especially the Benedictines, From the beginning of the Order of St. Benedict also the practice prevailed that not a few monks should spend their industry in writing books. For they were bidden to avoid idleness as the enemy of the soul; and, as Trithemius relates, the less learned brethren were not given to idleness, but after prayers applied themselves devoutly to the work of their hands. Those who were suited to it wrote books, and copied fair from sheets those published by the doctors. Others skilfully glued together the written codices, others corrected, the rest adorned them with red minium. No one's hand was lacking to this holy office; all rejoiced to be held sharers in the studies which were carried on in the expositions of the Scriptures [Works of Trithemius, De viris illustribus Ordinis S. Benedicti, book I, chapter 6, page 21. Compare De laude scriptorum, page 742, Busaeus edition of the year 1605.]. So it came about that throughout the monasteries of the Order of St. Benedict, even in the most remote times, there existed so great an abundance of manuscript codices as all have wondered at [Mabillon, Traité des études monastiques, volume I, chapter VI, page 53 and following, Paris edition 1692; Brower, Antiquitates Fuldenses, book I, chapter XI, page 46 and following.]. Nor did the monks of Fulda act otherwise, especially in the time of St. Sturm, the first abbot, and his nearest successors, as also those of Bursfeld, of Cluny, and a good many other branches of the Benedictine Order: in which, as often as monastic discipline was restored, so often the study of letters and sciences was used as an excellent support. On this opinion no mean light is shed by the controversy on monastic studies between Mabillon and the abbot de Rancé, afterward reduced to a compendium and order by Edmond Martène Commentarius in Regulam S. Benedicti, chapter 48, page 627.; and also by the praises with which men of this Order who deserved very well of the Church are extolled, such as Bl. Lanfranc Acta Sanctorum, volume VI of May, page 846., John of Stavelot Reiffenberg, Annuaire de la Bibliothèque royale, volume I, page XLIX., James of Wrocław Pez, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, volume I, page IV., and others, because they copied books unweariedly. But so that the writing of books might be done accurately and religiously, there was in monasteries a cell called the scriptorium, and it was set apart for the scribes. Which institution Alcuin Du Cange, Glossarium, at the words scriptores and scriptorium, Didot edition. pursues in well-known verses, and afterward it flourished among the Cistercians, the canons of St. Victor at Paris, and everywhere. Nor is there doubt that there were scriptoria of this kind in many monasteries of Belgium. For the monk Rivet and others show that in the eighth century the monasteries of Elnone, of Saint-Bertin, of Stavelot, of Lobbes, and the cathedral church of Utrecht on the Rhine were renowned for celebrated schools [Histoire littéraire de la France, volume IV, page 17; Vos, Lobbes, son abbaye et son chapitre, volume II, chapter XVII, page 75 and following; Delaplane, Abbés de Saint-Bertin, volume I, page XIII and following; volume II, Appendix, page 514 and following.]: they report that in the ninth century the monastery of Stavelot again deserved this praise, in whose footsteps at that time the monastery of Maubeuge trod Histoire littéraire, volume IV, page 239. Ibid., volume V, page 84.; likewise in the tenth century the monasteries of Blandin at Ghent, of Gembloux and of Brogne, of Echternach, of Lobbes, of Stavelot, and of Saint-Bertin: to which are to be added the cathedral churches of Cambrai and of Liège Ibid., volume VI, page 30 and following, page 40 and following.. But in the eleventh century many more monasteries and cathedral churches strove to shine with letters and schools: for Rivet, besides the monasteries of Saint-Bertin, Echternach, and Lobbes, enumerates Affligem in Brabant, Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes Forest, St. Lawrence at Liège, St. James likewise at Liège, no otherwise than the cathedral churches of Liège, Utrecht, and Cambrai, and also the collegiate church of St. Bartholomew at Liège Ibid., volume VII, page 17 and following, page 94 and following., and the abbey of St. Martin of Tournai, whose scribes Herimann, provost of this monastery, praises much [Herimann, De restauratione abbatiae S. Martini, in d'Achéry, Spicilegium, volume II, columns 900, 912, 913.].
[5] and also the Carthusians and Premonstratensians; In the twelfth century there arose two Orders of regulars which were renowned in the Church not only for holiness but also for learning, the Carthusians and the Premonstratensians. And first the Carthusians, mindful of the precepts of St. Bruno Acta Sanctorum, volume III of October, page 620., set down these things in the Customs collected by Guigo, fifth prior of the Chartreuse: Almost all whom we receive, if it can be done, we teach to write … For as many books as we write, so many for ourselves
we seem to make heralds of truth, hoping for a reward from the Lord for all who through them have either been corrected from error or have made progress in Catholic truth Masson, Annales Cartusienses, volume I, book I, chapter 28, page 62.. Another Guigo, in the book On the Exercise of the Cell, doubtless mindful of the words of the former Guigo, addresses a Carthusian brother thus: But this ought to be specially your work, … that you diligently devote your labour to copying books In Migne, volume CLIII, column 883.. Which opinion, namely that to increase monasteries in any way with books is to be held a great benefit rendered them, had so occupied minds in the Middle Ages that in the Norman monasteries of Lyre and Le Bec prayers were poured out through Lent for the faithful who had made and given books to these abbeys Martène, De antiquis Monachorum ritibus, book III, chapter XI, page 351.. Thomas à Kempis shows that Florentius in the fourteenth century rendered great services to the monastery of Windesheim, because there, as rector, he promoted much the art of writing by word and example [Works of Thomas à Kempis, Life of Florentius, chapter 14, page 943, Douai edition 1625.]. The same Thomas, in the Doctrinale Juvenum, encouraging the young men of his monastery to whom the care of copying books had been committed, said that those who would receive profit from the reading of their books would pray to God for the copyists when they had departed this life Ibid., page 702 and following.. The Premonstratensian canons, from the beginning of their institute, since they were very lettered men, left no stone unturned to obtain excellent books for themselves and to have many scribes in their monasteries. And indeed in our Belgium the abbeys of Park near Louvain [Libertus de Pape, Summa chronologica ecclesiae Parchensis, page 463. Raymaekers, Recherches historiques sur l'ancienne abbaye de Parc, pages 13, 44, 46, 48.] and of Bonne-Espérance in Hainaut [Rivet, volume IX, page 126 and following. Maghe, Chronicon ecclesiae B. Mariae Bonae-Spei, page 18.] were renowned above others, duly imitating the monasteries of St. Martin of Tournai [Chronica Tornacensis, in De Smet, Corpus Chronicorum Flandriae, volume II, page 555 and following.], of Andage or Saint-Hubert [Cantatorium S. Huberti, in Reiffenberg, Monuments pour servir à l'histoire de Namur, Hainaut, Luxembourg, volume VII, Introduction, page CXI, pages 237, 246. Robaulx, Chronique de Saint-Hubert ou Cantatorium, page 2 and following, pages 224, 231; Bethmann, Bibliothèques de Belgique, in the Messager des sciences historiques de Belgique, year 1843, page 134.], of Gembloux Bethmann, ibid., page 141., of St. Lawrence at Liège Ibid., and others Ibid., whose manuscript codices of the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, remarkable throughout the whole world, were religiously preserved until the calamities of the last part of the eighteenth century.
[6] but especially the monks of Tournai But among those libraries of the Middle Ages few were as ample as that of St. Martin of Tournai. For Li Muisis writes in his Chronicles in the fourteenth century: The said brother Vincent (of Beauvais, a most learned writer, though rather often less prudent) had from the lord king (St. Louis) authority to see the libraries in the kingdom of France. And it happened that the said brother came to our monastery of St. Martin, and the library was opened to him, and he saw everything as it pleased his will; whence I have heard from our predecessors, old and living at that time, that the said brother had said that in no monastery of any Order whatever had he found such good and sufficient books, such good and true originals, moral works, and ancient histories, as he had found in our library, and he much commended our monastery In De Smet, Chronica Flandriae, volume II, page 152.. Hence also it came about that in the tenth century Gerbert, afterward Sylvester II, did not hesitate to extol the Belgian copies in these words: I am assiduously gathering a library, and as formerly at Rome and in other parts of Italy, so also in Germany and Belgium, I have purchased scribes and copies of authors with a multitude of coins Sylvester, Letter 44, in Migne, Patrologia, volume 139, column 214.. Add that the Fathers of the council of Trent, for revising the divine Scriptures, used the sacred Bibles of two Belgian monasteries, Park and Lobbes: which certainly is no small praise [Sanderus, Bibliotheca Manuscripta Belgica, volume II, page 164. Bulletins de la Société historique de Tournai, volume I, page 267.].
[7] and other Belgians; But it is to be lamented that of the innumerable and most precious manuscript codices the smallest part has survived to our age: and that many perished through wars, age, the burning of monasteries, or also the rage both of the Calvinists of the sixteenth century and of the French Republic of the eighteenth century. The town of Liège alone numbered about fifteen thousand manuscript codices in its thirty-three monasteries Bethmann, page 136.. And if anyone should wish to estimate in some way how great an abundance of manuscript books there once was in Belgium, it will be enough for him to consult the Bibliotheca Belgica Manuscripta of Antonius Sanderus, published at Lille in the year 1641; and although almost all those books have perished or been dispersed or sold, yet so many still survive in the public libraries of Brussels, Liège, Tournai, Namur, Mons, Ghent, and others (omitting also private book-cases and the old catalogues of many monasteries), that in no part of Europe perhaps did they once more abound. Nor do they excel only in abundance, but, as men who have surveyed the principal libraries testify, the old Belgian books commonly so excel in the neatness of the writing, the accurate form of the letters, and also sometimes in the beauty of the pictures and other ornaments of this kind, that by this very excellence they as it were betray their native soil. On which matter are to be seen the Commentaries which Bethmann, the most learned assistant of Pertz in editing the Monumenta Historica Germaniae Ibid., page 133 and following., Baron de Reiffenberg [Monuments pour servir à l'histoire des provinces de Namur, de Hainaut et de Luxembourg, volume VIII, Introduction, page XV and following; Chronique de Philippe Mouskes, Introduction, page XXI. Annuaire de la Bibliothèque royale, year 1840, page IX and following.], and others have worked out on the Belgian manuscript libraries of our age.
[8] likewise boys, and those incurring fault; Besides monks and other men employed in copying codices, in many places, in the eighth century, the work of boys was used for that task: which custom, since the accuracy of boys was less, Charlemagne forbids to be kept in future. For in the Capitulary of Aachen of the year 789, chapter LXXII Labbe, Collectio Conciliorum, volume VII, column 985., or in the First Book of Capitularies of the same year, chapter LXVIII Baluze, Capitularia regum Francorum, volume I, column 237, Paris edition 1677., after he had enjoined great sedulity on monks in obtaining liturgical books, he proceeds thus: And do not allow your boys to corrupt them (the books) either by reading or by writing. And if there is need to write a gospel, or a psalter and missal, let men of mature age write with all diligence. Upon monks committing a fault, also, the copying of some book or part was from time to time enjoined as a penalty, since it is an arduous work. Whence a certain brother, at the end of a book written by him, added this little verse by way of crowning:
Explicet iste liber, a pœna sum modo liber Let this book be finished; I am now free from punishment [Haeftenus, Disquisitiones monasticae, book VIII, treatise III, Disquisition II, page 807.].
And many examples of this kind occur. And these documents sufficiently demonstrate that the art of copying books was for a very long age a labour above all monastic.
[9] women, in the first centuries of the Church, and afterward in England, Not unlike the monks were the nuns and other most devout women, who indeed from the first age of the Church laboured to the best of their strength in copying codices: nor did they suffer this work afterward for many centuries to be exiled from their dwellings. And indeed, while the profession of the monastic life was still a reproach in the Roman empire, they strove to spend labour in copying books; among others St. Melania the Younger, who, as her biographer relates, emulating the Eastern monks, wrote … so swiftly and beautifully and without error that she never gave any handle for finding fault to those who are skilled in this matter. And in writing she spent the greatest part of the day Surius, Vitae Sanctorum, month of December, page 379.. It is read in the Life of St. Caesarius of Arles, written by contemporary authors, that under Caesaria, second abbess of the convent of women of that town, the work flourished with her companions so pre-eminently that, amid psalms and fasts, vigils also and readings, the virgins of Christ wrote out divine books beautifully Acta Sanctorum, volume I of January, page 729.. Among the Anglo-Saxons in the eighth century many most illustrious nuns following the Rule of St. Benedict studied to enrich the churches with liturgical books written by their own hand. Of this thing a most brilliant document is the letter of St. Boniface, bishop of Mainz, asking the abbess Eadburga to be willing to write out ecclesiastical books for him. Since often, he says, whether with the solace of books or with the help of garments, your loving-kindness has consoled my sadness: so I still beseech you to increase what you have begun, that is, to write for me in gold the epistles of my lord St. Peter the apostle, for the honour and reverence of the holy Scriptures before the eyes of the carnal, in preaching: and because I desire always to have most of all in my presence the sayings of him who directed me on this journey; and to write this which I ask I am sending the priest Eoban. Do, then, dearest sister, with this petition of ours, as your kindness was always accustomed to do with all my prayers, so that here too your works may shine in golden letters to the glory of the heavenly Father Letters of St. Boniface, letter 19, page 52, Giles edition.. The nuns of Germany seem to have been taught this art by the English nuns. and in Germany,
[10] In this region, if an argument may be drawn from a nun of Wessobrunn, the art of writing books was very much practised in convents of women. What an anonymous author, transcribed by Bernard Pez [Thesaurus Anecdotorum, volume I, Introductory Dissertation, page XX and following.], narrates of Diemudis, an unwearied nun of that monastery, I share with the reader, so that he may have a specimen of the incredible labour spent on this matter by the sacred virgins.
Diemudis, he says, was a most devout virgin nun formerly of this our monastery of Wessobrunn. For our monastery was formerly double, or divided into two, namely of monks and of nuns. The place of the monks was where it now is: that of the nuns in the place where the parish church now is. This virgin was most skilled in the art of writing. For although she is not found to have composed any work, yet she wrote with her own hand many
volumes in an excellent and legible hand, pertaining both to divine worship and to the public library of the monastery, which are noted in a certain index written by herself in a certain Plenary. For in the same index the following books pertaining to divine worship are noted:
A Missal book with Gradual and Sequences.
Another Missal book with Gradual and Sequences, which was given to the bishop of Trier.
Another Missal book with Epistles, Gospels, Gradual, and Sequences.
Another Missal book with Epistles and Gospels for the whole year, and Gradual and Sequences, and an entire baptismal book.
Likewise a Missal book with Epistles and Gospels.
A book of Offices.
Another book of Offices with a baptismal book, which was given to the bishop of Augsburg.
A book with Gospels and Lessons.
A book with Gospels.
A book with Epistles.
The aforesaid volumes she wrote, as has been said, for the adornment and use of divine worship. With the following she adorned the library, of which only those are still held in our library which are here * marked with §. For the rest have perished and been lost either through the burning of the monastery, which, as is reported, burned twice, or through the negligence and sloth of the succeeding monks. For in the aforesaid index the following books pertaining to the library are noted:
A Bible * in II volumes, which was given for the estate at Pisinberch.
A Bible in III volumes.
The Moralia of St. Gregory in VI volumes, of which the first and third have perished.
Gregory to Reccared.
Gregory on Ezekiel and certain other things, I volume.
Sermons and Homilies of the ancient doctors, III volumes.
Origen on the Old Testament.
Origen on the Song of Songs.
Augustine on the Psalter, III volumes.
Augustine on the Gospel of John and on his first Epistle, II volumes. The first is not held.
Letters of Augustine, number LXXV.
Treatises of Augustine on the Words of the Lord, on the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, on the work of monks, and on the Christian combat, on worshipping God, on the profession of widowhood, on the good of marriage, on virginity.
Letters of St. Jerome, number CLXIV.
The Tripartite History of Cassiodorus.
The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius.
L Sermons of St. Augustine. The Life of St. Silvester. Jerome against Vigilantius. The same on the consolation of the dead. The Life of St. Blaise. The Life of St. John the Almsgiver.
Paschasius on the Body and Blood of the Lord. The Conflict of Lanfranc against Berengar. The Passion of St. Denis. The Life of St. Hadrian the Pope, etc.
Jerome on Hebrew Questions and many other little works of Jerome and of other authors.
The books of the Confessions of St. Augustine.
Canons.
A Gloss composed by A. B. C.
[11] were devoted to the art of writing beautifully, as also in Norway, These are the volumes written out by the aforesaid handmaid of God Diemudis with her own hand in praise of God and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of this monastery. But at what time she flourished I could nowhere find, since in all the volumes, out of humility, as is piously believed, she neglected to set down both her own name and the time at which she finished them. Another writer, the compiler of the catalogue of the abbots of Wessobrunn, after he has mentioned Wulphildis, reviews the books which Diemuot, the handmaid of God, wrote and delivered to St. Peter. Diemudis, a virgin, he says, devoted to God and a nun who professed the Rule of St. Benedict in the monastery of St. Peter of Wessobrunn, to the praiseworthy memory of her most commendable life, this most devout handmaid of God herself wrote the books written below with her own hand faithfully and most ornately, and offered them, most accurately corrected, to St. Peter and devoutly delivered them. Then the writer subjoins a list of the books written out by Diemudis, such as the anonymous gave, with these added: a Matins book in II volumes, a Lectionary I, Augustine against the definitions, I volume, the Enchiridion, Jerome on the praises of Virginity, Chrysostom on the fall etc., I volume, a Plenary I, and the Book of the Prophets. It is to be known, he adds, by all the faithful of Christ established in sacred religious life, that in the time of Pope Gregory VII, who began in the year of salvation 1073, there was renowned among the other sacred virgins Dyemuet, virgin and nun of St. Peter in Wessobrunn, who was the writer of the aforesaid books. And this venerable handmaid of God, not undeservedly to be commended for her labours, died on the third day before the Kalends of April, at length here in the place of her profession, and was buried there in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary annexed to the chapter-house, which is called in the vernacular "Das Alt-Munster" The Old Minster. There still exist very sweet letters in the monastery of Beronica, which is now called in the vernacular Perenried, sent by her to the holy virgin Herluca, and again sent back in turn by Herluca herself, with which they refreshed each other with charitable exhortations, strengthening each other by exhorting in the Lord. Pez adds, who saw with his own eyes the most elegant codices of Diemudis, most of them still surviving then, that the venerable bones of the most devout nun were laid under a stone monument in the middle of the nave of the church of Wessobrunn toward the setting of the sun, with an effigy of the virgin raised over it, arming her right hand with a stylus. Nor did Herrad, nun of Hohenburg, bring mean diligence to the copying of books, who with the utmost industry made the Hortus deliciarum, consumed by fire in the siege of Strasbourg in the year 1870. Of which excellent book I judge it superfluous to discourse, since its excellence is celebrated in the talk of all, especially since the learned man Alexandre Lenoble explained it so accurately Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, 1st series, volume I, page 239.. But in Norway itself, which once received the Christian light from the Anglo-Saxons, the nuns devoted their zeal to copying ecclesiastical books elegantly. For our predecessor Conrad Janning relates Acta Sanctorum, volume VI of June, part I, page 205. that he saw in the metropolitan church of St. Vitus at Prague a Psalter finely written in capital letters, at the end of which were inscribed these words: I, Brigitta, daughter of Sichfusus, conventual Sister in the monastery of Munkalyff near Bergen, wrote this Psalter with capital letters, though less well than I ought.
[12] in Frisia and other regions, Nor did the religious Orders of men seldom use the work of nuns, after the example of St. Boniface, as did Emo, a Premonstratensian canon of Bloemhof in Frisia. He, helped by his brother Addo, collected a good many manuscript liturgical books at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and this work, as is narrated in the Chronicle of Menco, not only so among the clerics, whom he fervently urged to write and instructed by himself, but also, observing the sedulity in the female sex, he anxiously trained in writing the Sisters suited for this, first indeed the text of the old and new testament and the scholastic history, the expositions of the holy Fathers, namely of Augustine on John and of Blessed Gregory and of others, and also of the masters Hugo, Sacrae antiquitatis monumenta, volume I, page 513.. Emo was imitated in the fifteenth century by the Friars Preachers, employing the work of the nuns of their Order in neatly copying and adorning books. For in a letter dated the 15th day of February of the year 1401, Bl. John Dominici of Florence Compare Acta Sanctorum, volume II of June, page 394., afterward archbishop of Ragusa and Cardinal R. E., admonishes the Venetian nuns of the convent of Corpus Christi to take care to use as diligently as possible the liturgical books of the Camaldolese of Murano, as excellent exemplars: and lest they neglect it, he adds: In case you should ask from the abbot of St. Michael of Murano his Graduals, in which there are some large miniatures made with the pen, and especially within the octaves of the Resurrection and of Pentecost, and you too could work according to those exemplars [Mittarelli, Annales Camaldulenses, volume VI, page 217. Venetae ecclesiae illustratae, decade I, page 137.]. In another letter, which Flaminio Cornaro made public, the same Bl. John Dominici mentions nuns skilled in the art of adorning books, and asks them to copy out his compositions with great care. To similar help from the virgins of the Lower Monastery of Regensburg, in the thirteenth century, a monk, a German by birth, had recourse, asking their abbess that his Dialogue on the customs of the Cluniacs and Cistercians be written legibly and diligently corrected by some sisters … suitable for this work Pez, Thesaurus anecdotorum, volume VI, part II, page 58.. Likewise did the nuns Regilindis and Irmingardis: of whom the former wrote out with her own hand the Explanation of the books of Judges by Irimbert, abbot at Bamberg, the latter the same monk's Explanation of the book of Ruth [Pertz, Monumenta, Scriptores, volume XI, Gesta archiepiscoporum Salisburgensium, page 48, note.]. There is also mentioned in the preface to the Monumenta Mallerstorfensia Monumenta Boica, volume XV, page 249. a certain nun of the convent of Eutting, Leukardis, of the Scottish nation, knowing four languages, that of her own country, Greek, Latin, and German, and who wrote out many codices on parchment with her own hand. The books, especially liturgical, of many other nuns are kept in the libraries of Germany: to review them all is superfluous, since from what has been said it has been plainly demonstrated that an excellent service was rendered to the Catholic religion by the German nuns copying books. Nor is there doubt that among other nations nuns deserved very well, by the same labour, of bishops, priests, and monasteries both of men and of women.
[13] above all in Belgium. Already in the eighth century two sisters, SS. Herlindis and Renildis, nuns of the convent near Maaseik, in Flemish Maeseyck, in the province of Belgian Limburg, had won praise for themselves from the art of writing: The writings of the four evangelists, says a biographer of the ninth century, which are the … sayings and deeds of Christ, they wrote out in honourable work. And moreover the little book of the psalms which we call the psalter they themselves wove with the pen: and very many other divine scriptures, all of which indeed shine up to now in the same place so fresh and quivering with gold and sparkling with pearls that you would believe they had been finished today Acta Sanctorum, volume III of March, page 388.: Which notable work, as a sacred pledge, is still devoutly kept today in the parish church of Maaseik. Whoever desires to have a deeper knowledge of this book, let him consult the compositions of the distinguished man J. Gielen Messager des sciences historiques, year 1858, page 1 and following. and of the venerable priest C. Deshaines L'Art chrétien en Flandre, page 31 and following.. That many other nuns, conspicuous for piety, trod in the footsteps of SS. Herlindis and Renildis in Belgium in the following centuries is altogether certain. For not only at La Ramée, where Bl. Ida is reported to have studiously written books of the church, but also in two other Cistercian convents of Brabant, Florival and Lier, very beautiful liturgical books were written by nuns. And indeed in the convent of La Ramée the inmates were so skilled in this art that nuns of other monasteries hastened there to learn it more perfectly: for example Bl. Beatrice, about the year 1231 a nun first of the convent of Florival, afterward of the convent of Nazareth at Lier in Belgium. This most devout virgin, after, as her contemporary biographer William of Mechelen says, she had completed her novitiate at Florival, by the counsel of the venerable abbess, after a short interval of time, to a certain monastery of the same Order called La Ramée,
where she might learn the skill of writing, which afterward she practised in writing books necessary for her church … is sent Bibliothèque royale des manuscrits de Bruxelles, number 4461.. And below it is narrated that her father Bartholomew spent six months in building the convent of Nazareth, and it is added: And the aforesaid six months having passed, in which she gave herself continually to writing books for the work of the new monastery of Lier, with two sisters, namely Christina and Sibylla… This knowledge Bl. Beatrice brought into the convent of Nazareth begun by her at Lier, as is gathered from another biographer, of Corsendonk, of the year 1470, who says that the books of the most devout nun were for a long time the ornament of that convent: For she had learned in her youthful age the art of writing: whence, as is plain even today to those who look, she adorned the church of Nazareth by writing many books by hand Bibliothèque des manuscrits de Bruxelles, codex 858..
The discipline of writing books most beautifully the nuns of Belgium, as also many others, diligently cultivated even after printing had been brought forward. Among whom there were eminent in the fifteenth century Elisabeth Wytens, Margaret Raes, Elisabeth Vlieghe, Catherine Van Ghiseghem, nuns of the Augustinian convent of Brussels whose name was Gate of Heaven or Jericho Bibliothèque de Van Hulthem, volume VI, manuscripts 15, 45, 48.. Likewise Barbara Boons, a Beguine of Bruges. Likewise in the sixteenth century Joanna Van den Broucke, a nun of the convent of the Blessed Mary of the Annunciation at Aalst, no otherwise than Maria Smeyers and Maria Van Peteghem, Beguines [Annales de la Société d'Émulation de Bruges, volume IV, page 255. Compare Biographie des hommes remarquables de la Flandre occidentale, volume II, page 125 and following; Bulletins de l'Académie royale de Belgique, volume XV, part II, page 87. Compare De Smet, Mémoires, volume II, page 590.]. And so much of these. Nor will anyone who has touched ancient Belgian history with the tip of his lips wonder at the unwearied industry of the nuns of this district, who formerly, as now, laboured unwearied with all their might in spreading the glory of God.
[14] Many women from the beginning of the Church were cultivated in learning, Although between the scribal art and more abstruse learning there lies a vast difference, yet very many things are common to both, so that one passes more easily from the one study to the other than appears at first sight. To make women devote their labour diligently to copying books, it availed very much that not a few were found among them to whom the more difficult and more recondite disciplines lay open: which learned women understood well how great usefulness they brought to the Christian cause by multiplying Catholic books. Of those learned women very many testimonies exist. We read, namely, that not a few women went to schools of even the higher sciences, and were frequently present at the lectures and catecheses of Origen, although very learned ones Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, book VI, number 8, page 439, Laemmer edition.; moreover that St. Jerome, without acting imprudently and inconsiderately, sent letters remarkable for loftier philosophy and theology to SS. Marcella, Paula, Eustochium, Fabiola, and other matrons [Complete Works, volume I, column 394 and following, Migne edition. Compare Acta Sanctorum, volume II of January, page 720.]. Learned too were St. Melania the Younger Surius, Vitae Sanctorum, month of December, page 379., and Thomais, who composed the Acts of St. Febronia the martyr Acta Sanctorum, volume V of June, page 14 and following., as well as St. Perpetua, who wrote the Passion of herself and her companions Ibid., volume I of March, page 633. In the sixth century there was renowned Elpis, a most devout woman, who was sometimes called, though perhaps less correctly, the wife of Boethius, and who composed hymns in honour of SS. Peter and Paul Patrologia latina, Migne, volume LXIII, column 537.. In whose footsteps especially many nuns trod; such as Baudonivia, who wrote the Life of St. Radegund; where we also read that this holy queen gave herself to pious readings as it were day and night Acta Sanctorum, volume III of August, page 78.. Likewise St. Rusticula, abbess of Arles, as her almost contemporary biographer reports, had learned all the Psalms within a few spaces of time and retained all the divine scriptures by memory. The holy virgin died at a great age in the year 632 Ibid., volume II of August, page 659..
[15] especially in England, Nowhere perhaps did the study of letters prevail more than among the Anglo-Saxon nuns of the seventh and eighth centuries. Among whom not the last place is held by Hilda, abbess of the monastery of Streaneshalch about the year 664. She was so learned in sacred letters that Bede, judging that the prayers of the holy woman were not to be spurned, composed the Exposition on Habakkuk for her use. This diligence, under the leadership of St. Aldhelm, first abbot of Malmesbury, then bishop of Sherborne, and of St. Boniface, a monk of Exeter, afterward archbishop of Mainz, took incredible growth. For St. Aldhelm at one time had an exchange of letters with the abbess Hildelitha and her nuns Justina, Cuthburga, Osburga, Aldgida, Scholastica, Hidburga, and others: to whom, proclaiming their letters, he wrote these weighty words: Some time ago, setting out for the pontifical assembly, accompanied by the brotherly bands of my fellows, receiving very gladly the writings of your Benignity brought to my mediocrity, with palms raised to the ether, I took care to render, rejoicing, immense thanks to Christ for your welfare; in which writing not only did the ecclesiastical covenants of the promised vows, which you pledged with faithful promise, shine forth abundantly; but also the honey-flowing studies of the divine Scriptures lay open in a most sagacious series of discourses. And when, reciting each text of the letters, I scanned them with the swift gazes of my pupils, and contemplated them with a certain natural curiosity about hidden things, as is said to be inborn in me, and greatly admired the most abundant eloquence of words and the virginal eloquence of urbanity; lo, I said, that Ruler of high Olympus and Governor of heaven rejoices with ineffable exultation, when He sees in such wise the Catholic home-born handmaids of Christ, nay the adoptive daughters of regenerating grace, begotten from the fruitful womb of ecclesiastical conception by the seed of the spiritual word, instructed in divine dogmas through maternal solicitude, and, like sagacious gymnosophists under some most skilled director of the games, exercised in the gymnasium in palaestric disciplines and gymnastic arts [Works of St. Aldhelm, letter De Laude Virginitatis, page 1 and following, Giles edition.].
[16] and in Germany, The same charisms, as we were just intimating, St. Boniface emulated while he was still leading the monastic life in England: for under his leadership not only monks but also nuns, running through the series of the pages, as his biographer the priest Willibald narrates, clung insistently to heavenly searching, and meditated continually on the secrets of the sacraments and the hidden things of the mysteries Acta Sanctorum, volume I of June, page 462.. Afterward, migrating into Germany about the year 716 to announce the Christian religion, he did not cease to foster a holy friendship with Bugga or Eadburga Letters of St. Boniface, volume I, page 51 and following, Giles edition., Cangyth Ibid., page 73., and other English nuns, as is established from many of their letters. The letters which they sent back and forth not so rarely were written in the Latin language in a laboured style. Moreover St. Boniface, as another biographer, Otloh, relates, summoned from England into Germany many monks and nuns imbued with true knowledge. Of these nuns Chunihilt and her daughter Berathgit, very learned in liberal knowledge, were established as mistresses in the region of the Thuringians; Chunitrud was destined for Bavaria Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, century III, part II, page 42.. Moreover he also summoned St. Lioba or Leobgytha from England, and set her over the monastery of Bischofsheim, where no small number of handmaids of God was gathered, who, after the example of the blessed mistress, were instructed in the studies of heavenly discipline, and made such progress in her teaching that many of them afterward became mistresses of others: so that there were no, or rare, monasteries of women in those regions which did not desire the teaching of her disciples. And Lioba applied herself to the study of reading with such diligence that, unless she was giving herself to prayer, or refreshing her little body with food or sleep, the divine page never left her hands. For since from the very rudiments of infancy she had been instructed in grammar and the other studies of the liberal arts, she strove with such insistence of meditation to attain the perfection of spiritual knowledge that, reading agreeing with talent, by the doubled good of nature and industry, she was rendered most learned. For, surveying with sagacious mind the codices of the Old and New Testament, she committed the divine precepts to memory. But the sayings of the holy Fathers too, and the decrees of the canons, and the laws of the whole ecclesiastical order, she added to the fullness of perfection Ibid., page 251.. Thus far Rudolph, the biographer of St. Lioba.
[17] and also At the same time St. Walburga, an imitator of St. Lioba, abbess of the convent of Heidenheim, or another nun, wrote the Lives of SS. Richard and his sons Willibald and Wunibald in the Latin tongue, and not, as in those times, a barbarous one Acta Sanctorum, February, volume II, page 69.. And it is to be noted that this love of the good arts flourished in the German monasteries of women for several centuries [Ziegelbauer, Historia rei literariae Ordinis S. Benedicti, volume III, page 487. Compare Pertz, Scriptores, volume IV, page 302.]. Among which perhaps the first place is held by the monastery of Gandersheim, where the three first abbesses, SS. Hathumoda, Gerburga, and Christina, daughters of Ludolf, duke of Saxony, founder of the monastery, taught letters from their first age, spared no labour that their companions should give unwearied attention to the best arts: whence it came about that Roswitha and other nurslings of the same house, in the tenth century, made wonderful progress in the Latin and Greek languages, and even in philosophical matters, and composed books not to be despised on various disciplines. And these things from Ziegelbauer, who collected much more about Roswitha.
[18] in Gaul, Nor is Bertrada to be passed over, sister of St. Wolphelm, a nun of Vilich in the archdiocese of Cologne, of whom the same Ziegelbauer speaks Ziegelbauer, page 496.. This most devout virgin wrote, in a fairly elegant style, about the year 1030, the Life of St. Adelheid, first abbess of Vilich, afterward published by our forebears in the Bollandist Work Acta Sanctorum, volume I of February, page 714.. Worthy of memory also are Cecilia and Adela, daughters of William the Conqueror Rivet, Histoire littéraire, volume IX, page 130 and following.. The former was a nun and afterward abbess of the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Caen. More learned was Adela, countess of Meaux, Chartres, and Blois, afterward a nun of Marcigny of the Order of Cluny, in the diocese of Autun: she wrote two letters for the protection of the monks of Marmoutier, edited by Edmond Marlene Thesaurus Anecdotorum, volume I, column 373.. Besides these Benedictine nuns famous for their writings, there are to be remembered St. Elizabeth, abbess of Schönau, who died in the year 1169 Ziegelbauer, volume III, page 499.; St. Hildegard, abbess on the mount of St. Rupert near Bingen, who laid down her life in the year 1178 Ibid., page 503.; Heloise, abbess
of the Paraclete in the diocese of Troyes, who died in the year 1163 Works of Abelard, Part II, column 379 and following, Migne edition.. Likewise Relindis and Herrad, in the twelfth century, abbesses of the monastery of St. Odile of Hohenburg in Alsace Ziegelbauer, volume III, page 508 and following., and in the thirteenth century the sisters SS. Gertrude and Mechtild, abbesses of Rodersdorf in the diocese of Halberstadt Ibid., page 510.; Matilda, abbess of Fontevrault, and Angelucia, a nun of the same monastery. I pass over many other nuns of the same Order of St. Benedict, likewise renowned for letters, of whom Ziegelbauer either narrates the deeds briefly or only reviews the names Ibid., page 485 and following, page 535 and following..
[19] and also in Belgium. That in Belgium too nuns learned in doctrine were not lacking we gather from the Life of Bl. Ida of Léau, who, when at a certain time, languid with the excess of the divine fullness, she was lying on a certain little bed, in the night-time of a certain night preceding the Nativity of the Lord, understanding the lessons from the treatises of Blessed Augustine, who speaks wonderfully of the wonders of the Trinity; her soul was suddenly anointed with such joys, her spirit seething, that she almost feared lest she should lose her senses and, losing herself wholly for the wonderful gladness of her heart, go mad. Likewise Bl. Beatrice, prioress of the convent of Nazareth at Lier in Belgium, seems to have been eminent for no common learning; for we read in her manuscript Life already indicated: But since, among all the things which are proved more useful to those advancing on the way of this life, sacred Scripture holds the chief place, as that which first by its guidance directs the steps of the faithful tending to the fatherland, first by its light drives out the darkness of error, and, as it were as a wall on the right and left of those walking, first prepares and shows the road: therefore we shall begin the first series of our narrative from it, and shall show how studiously our Beatrice exercised herself in it in her times. For divine grace had opened the understanding of its beloved that she might understand the Scriptures, and therefore she studied to form all the motions both of her actions and of her affections, namely inner and outer, according to the counsel of the Scriptures.
[20] There were also innumerable other learned women, It is not pleasing to pursue all the nuns who illustrated religious families with learning and knowledge in the eleventh and following centuries. Let the reader who wishes to review the names of these nuns consult the writers of the Libraries of the religious Orders: among these Georg Lienhart, extolling with great praises the most devout virgin Christina, a Premonstratensian nun at Rheters in the diocese of Mainz, who wrote a Book of Revelations Spiritus Litterarius Norbertinus, page 597 and following.; let him consult Cosmas de Villiers, enumerating seventy Carmelite nuns not undistinguished for their writings Bibliotheca Carmelitana, volume II, page 1010.; let him consult Jacques Échard and Jacques Quétif, celebrating the praises of forty-four nuns of the Order of Friars Preachers Scriptores Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, volume II, page 882.. John of St. Anthony, in the Library of all the Orders of St. Francis, indicates many more nuns renowned for their writings, bringing forward thirty-one names under the letters A B C Bibliotheca Universa Franciscana, in three volumes, Madrid in the year 1732.. That in Belgium many women remarkable for learning and erudition were renowned is known to all. Jean-François Foppens makes mention of some Bibliotheca Belgica, pages 63, 123, 559, 552, 707, and 845.. But here the testimony of Carolus Scribani is by no means to be passed over, who, where he asks why the king of Spain spares no expense or labour to preserve Belgium, answers that Belgium excels in riches of every kind, and that its inhabitants excel among all the nations of the world in industry, learning, and other gifts of talent, and at length adds: In the city of Antwerp you will see inhabitants so skilled in foreign languages, even diverse ones, that you would doubt whether they are more versed in a foreign idiom than in their mother tongue; and not seldom even women speak in five different languages; you will also find few who do not know at least two or three [Civilium apud Belgas bellorum initia, progressus etc., page 33 and following, edition of 1627.]. But we must not dwell on this praise, since our aim at present is to discourse only of nuns skilled in writing or cultivated in learning.
[21] in the Middle Ages in monasteries, In those first times, however, it was not a singular praise of some nuns to understand the Latin language. For before in Latin Europe the languages which we usually call Neo-Latin put on a certain and fixed form, and underwent as it were the yoke of rules, boys were taught only the Latin language in schools; then, since books were rather rare, both men and women who were bound to choral chant recited the psalms and hymns not each from his own codices but by memory, helped at times by a common book. Wherefore no small part of the novitiate was spent in exercising the memory: from which exercise the study of the Latin language was not foreign, so that generally all understood the easiest things written in Latin. But after the new languages were constituted, the old Latin began to be neglected. Yet the understanding of the Latin language did not wholly perish even among nuns. Antoine Rivet thinks this is to be inferred both from the fact that Baldric of Dol, Marbod of Rennes, Hildebert of Le Mans, Geoffrey of Vendôme, St. Bernard, Peter Abelard, Peter the Venerable, Peter of Celle, and others composed for the use of nuns letters, treatises on moral matters, and poems written in the Latin language; and also because the nuns were bound to meditate diligently on the ecclesiastical office which they sang in Latin; and because they read in Latin, privately or all together, sacred Scripture and the books of the holy Fathers and other pious books.
[22] as is evident even from the mortuary rolls. At times, however, no one will wonder that some nuns went beyond the bounds. In a manuscript codex formerly of the library of Schäftlarn, now of Munich, number 17142, it is read that the canonesses of a certain convent, whose name is omitted, had a hold of the Latin language and spoke it very easily, though less purely, nay even contended for the palm of poetry with the clerics of the place, their masters, and, as it seems, carried it off. This was shortly after the death of Henry III, emperor of Germany, which happened in the year 1056 [Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, volume II, page 57, edition of 1878.]. More usefully the nuns composed poems, using their art to relieve the souls detained in purgatory. For if any monk or nun departed from life, their death was announced by Latin letters to the monasteries both of men and of women with which a society of prayers had been entered into. To these letters, which were called Rolls, or Briefs of the dead [Rivet, Histoire littéraire de la France, volume IX, page 127. Compare Du Cange at the words Rotulus and Brevia mortuorum; Haeftenus, Monasticae Disquisitiones, book VIII, treatise I, disquisition 4, page 793.], a reply was given in Latin, and sometimes in verse. Replies of this kind exist even today, of which the distinguished man Léopold Delisle collected not a few: one of these, now preserved in England in the manuscript library of the lord Ashburnham, concerns Elisabeth Sconinck, abbess of the convent of Forest near Brussels. Jan Leonis announced Elisabeth's death to about four hundred monasteries, churches, and leading men, and obtained prayers for her; and this between the 6th day of September of the year 1458 and the 8th day of July of the year 1459 Rouleaux des morts, page 485 and passim.. Finally Antoine Rivet recites the names of some women eminent in learning who lived outside the precincts of convents: nay, he affirms that up to the fourteenth century no women in France, except the lay Sisters, were admitted to monastic profession unless they had some knowledge of the Latin language Histoire littéraire, volume IX, page 131.. I think this came from the fact that nuns recite the ecclesiastical office. But it is not permitted to dwell on this matter. However, I do not wish the reader to be unaware that Christ the Lord said to Bl. Beatrice, whom we have praised several times, in the Latin tongue: "Let us enter a covenant, let us strike a pact, that henceforth we may not be divided, but truly united."
[23] The nuns had schools Moreover we gather that nuns, from the fact that in the Middle Ages they had schools of letters, to which girls even of noble houses came for the sake of learning especially sacred disciplines, attained the praise of learning among their people. Similar care of girls was already applied at the beginning of the fifth century; for St. Jerome, instructing Laeta, a Roman matron, whose wish it was to form her little daughter Paula as perfectly as possible in Christian manners (that she might at some time live as a virgin for God alone), indicates with how much trouble and how imperfectly girls are cultivated in their fathers' houses by domestic discipline; and advises her to hand Paula over to virgins consecrated to God to be educated. For, anticipating what he foresees Laeta will object, he writes these things: You will answer: how can I, a woman of the world, in so great a throng of men, keep all these things at Rome? Do not, then, take up a burden which you cannot bear. But after you have weaned her with Isaac, and clothed her with Samuel, send her to her grandmother and aunt… Let her be nourished in a monastery, let her be among the choirs of virgins, let her not learn to swear, let her think lying a sacrilege, let her not know the world, let her live angelically, let her be in the flesh without the flesh, let her think every kind of men like herself… Hand over the little one to Eustochium… Hand over the companion of holiness, the future heiress. Let her see her, let her love her, let her wonder at her from her first years, whose speech, and gait, and dress is a teaching of the virtues [Works of St. Jerome, volume I, column 877, in Migne. Compare Acta Sanctorum, volume II of September, page 635 and following, volume II of January, page 711 and following.]. Nor is it an obstacle that Paula, scarcely born, had been consecrated to God by her parents; for the virtues which as a little child she was bound to attain in the monastery of Bethlehem are to be cultivated by all Christians.
[24] of girls, Hence in the seventh century St. Wulfetrude, daughter of Grimoald, mayor of the palace of St. Sigebert, king of Austrasia Acta Sanctorum, volume II of March, page 595., and St. Gudula Ibid., volume I of January, page 1044., likewise born of a most distinguished family, were educated in the monastery of Nivelles. Likewise SS. Aldetrude and Madelberta by St. Aldegund in the monastery of Maubeuge [Ibid., volume III of September, page 103; Acta Sanctorum Belgii, volume V, page 491.]; or also SS. Benedicta and Cecilia Acta Sanctorum, volume III of August, page 509., daughters of Zwentibold, king of Lotharingia, by St. Amalberga in the convent of Susteren, in Netherlandish Limburg. In like manner their biographer relates that the holy virgins Herlindis and Renildis were taught at Valenciennes, a town of the diocese of Cambrai Ibid., volume III of March, page 385 and following.. Nor is it to be thought that the holy virgins Gudula, Aldetrude, and Madelberta lived in those monasteries as oblates: for from the writer's words it is plain that such was not their condition. Moreover it is not known whether in that age in the convents of Nivelles and Maubeuge, where the Benedictine Rule was not then in force
Acta Sanctorum Belgii, volume III, page 180 and following., oblate girls were brought up [Compare Magagnottus, De oblatis pueris, in Zaccaria, De disciplina populi Dei, volume III, page 239.].
Finally we know that St. Gudula began the monastic life in no convent Acta Sanctorum Belgii, volume IV, page 670 and following., and also that girls and women were admitted within the domestic precincts by the nuns of Nivelles and of Andenne, whether for the sake of instruction or of support Ibid., volume III, page 186. Add that in Lower Germany, not far from the city of Bonn, St. Adelheid, abbess of Vilich, who died about the year 1015, instituted, increased, and strengthened holy religion and the school of divine service, which were always the chief care of her office. Entering these frequently, she would put little questions on the art of grammar, and if anyone chanced to meet her question with a fitting answer, at once kissing her in motherly fashion she presented her with some reward, and was suffused with spiritual gladness in the hope of her progress Acta Sanctorum, volume I of February, page 718.. The nuns of the Order of Fontevrault seem to have followed the same way; for in the Rule which Bl. Robert of Arbrissel imparted to them at the beginning of the twelfth century, chapter XXIII is framed in these words: That the scholars and their mistresses always have as guardian one of the elder lay sisters Nicquet, Histoire de Fontevraud, book III, page 286.. Of this convent, about the middle of the twelfth century, the most devout virgin Angelucia was a member: who is said to have been offered to God from the very cradle of infancy, brought up at Fontevrault, and sufficiently imbued with sacred letters Martène and Durand, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, volume III, column 1704.. The nuns of Mont-Cornillon near Liège also received some girls in their convent to be brought up and taught in the thirteenth century: among these was Bl. Juliana, afterward a nun and prioress of that house. This holy virgin, together with her sister according to the flesh, Agnes, had as mistress a nun called Sapientia; Juliana therefore, sitting at the feet of her mistress, was taught letters by her; she responded to her teaching with daily progress, … it came about in a short time that she not only knew how to read the psalter, but also retained it by heart: for God had given her both a capacious understanding and a tenacious memory Acta Sanctorum, volume I of April, page 445.. Nor are the schools to be passed over in silence which Hildebert of Le Mans Works, Letters book II, letter 31, column 244, Migne edition. relates that the nuns of a certain convent of Anjou had in the twelfth century, no otherwise than the school instituted by the nuns first of Argenteuil near Paris, then of the Paraclete, and frequented by Heloise Works of Abelard, part I, letter I, column 134 and following, Migne edition.. There is added that, to instruct the nuns themselves, outside masters were at times summoned: in Frisia, for example, Bl. Frederick, abbot of Mariëngaarde, transferred virgins of the Premonstratensian Order to the place called Bethlehem, having hired at a fixed price men renowned for literature and for knowledge of ecclesiastical chant, and took care that they be imbued with all necessary learning Hugo, Monumenta sacrae antiquitatis, volume II, page 226.. For such was the ardour for the study of letters in the twelfth century that a good many women, even of royal stock, whose names Rivet pursues one by one, served in the arena of the arts [Rivet, volume IX, page 131 and following. Jourdain, De l'éducation des femmes au moyen âge, Mémoires de l'Institut de France, volume XXVIII, part I, page 89 and following.]: but we pass them over, because our purpose is to review only those who followed the monastic institutes.
[25] nay sometimes of boys. And, what you will wonder at more, at times young males were educated by nuns. Charlemagne, indeed, in the Capitulary of the year 804 forbids nuns to undertake this care: but the very prohibition plainly shows that they had devoted their labour to this matter. These are Charles's words: We altogether forbid that anyone presume to commend a male son, or grandson, or kinsman of his to a monastery of girls to be brought up: nor let anyone dare to receive one Baluze, Capitularia Regum Francorum, volume I, column 418, edition of 1677.. Which precept seems at times to have been given to oblivion: for in the eleventh century St. Goderannus, bishop of Saintes Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, century VI, part II, page 320., and Bl. Theodoric, abbot of Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes Forest Acta Sanctorum, volume IV of August, page 850., were instructed in letters by nuns. These boys, when they were taught in convents, were certainly older in age than the little boys whom the nuns of the convent of Obazine received to be educated: for, as is read in the Life of St. Stephen of Obazine, they were permitted to stay within the precincts of that convent of women only up to the fifth year of their age: then they passed to the adjacent monastery of men Baluze, Miscellanea, volume I, page 169, Mansi edition.. That almost the same discipline obtained in the convent of women of Clairefontaine near Arlon in the duchy of Luxembourg is certain from manuscript books. Traces of that custom occur also both in Germany and in Poland. Thietmar, bishop of Merseburg, born in the year 976, narrates that he was first well instructed in letters in the convent of women of Quedlinburg in Saxony, with his father's maternal aunt Emnilda Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae, Scriptores, volume III, page 772.. Likewise in the chronicle of the Poles, book II, at the year 1091, we read: Zbigniew, begotten by Duke Władysław of a concubine, already grown in age in the city of Cracow, was given to letters, and his stepmother sent him into Saxony to a monastery of nuns to be taught Ibid., volume IX, page 446.. That an institution of this kind prevailed in some Cistercian convents of women seems beyond doubt from the fact that in a certain chapter of the whole Order it was laid down… Nor shall boys in any way be instructed in the cloisters of nuns Nomasticon Cisterciense, page 365.. Which prohibition is expressed again in the Libellus of ancient definitions of the Cistercian Order of the year 1316, in these words: Nor shall boys be permitted in any way to be instructed or brought up in the cloister of nuns Ibid., page 579. And it is credible that this law was passed for this reason, that in that age abundant provision had been made for educating young males piously and liberally. In which matter Bl. Martin III, prior of Camaldoli, probably for the same reasons, agreed with the Cistercian Order in the year 1253, enjoining: Neither boys shall be taught in the cloisters of nuns, nor girls, except novices received for probation Mittarelli, Annales Camaldulenses, volume VI, Codex, column 57..
Annotations* read hoc §
* that is, the sacred Bible
LITTLE APPENDIX ON THE PSALTER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY.
Ida of Leewis, Cistercian nun, at La Ramée in Brabant. (Bl.)
BY R. D. B.
The Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary The passage about the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary which is read in number 32 of the Life of Bl. Ida has occupied us very much. For since, as could be understood from the Preliminary Commentary, certain and manifest marks are lacking by which the time of Bl. Ida's life may be defined, we hoped for some while that from the indicated practice of that devotion we should receive some sign by which it might be established after what times she certainly lived. But the hope disappointed us: since, the matter having been studiously examined, it is plain to us that the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary was already in use when Bl. Ida was still younger, without its being possible to establish in what age it took its beginning. To this business, however, we can bring some light, namely to demonstrate that this office of devotion is not to be attributed to St. Bonaventure, as many contend, but was used many years before the excellent doctor began to write books: and therefore that the holy man, although he composed some psalter of the B. V. M., was not the very first author or beginner of that devotion of all; for many Marian Psalters are carried about, which have only these things in common, that they have a certain likeness to the distribution of the divine office into the canonical hours, and celebrate the praises of the Blessed Virgin Mary: almost all the rest differ among themselves. From this discussion it also seems to follow that the Psalter of the B. V. M. of which that passage speaks was not the Rosary of the B. V. M., nor had that name at the beginning of the thirteenth century in Belgium. Benedict of Cavalese, or Bonelli, reviewed some writings of this kind [Prodromus ad Opera omnia S. Bonaventurae, book VIII, columns 587, 662, 681 and following.]. But it is very far from being the case that nothing is lacking in his list: for if you come upon old books of prayers, especially those written in the vernacular tongue, there frequently occur there Offices of the Mother of God marked with the title of Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From this too it appears that this devotion was once very much in use.
[2] already in use at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Now about what year, in what place, by what author the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary was first used has not been shown up to now, nor will it easily be shown. The most ancient monument marked with a certain year in which the name of the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary occurs (that I at least have known) is a diploma of Ghent, by which in the year 1227 a certain donation is made to the beguinage of St. Elizabeth by John, son of Alexander. He says that the Beguines promised that for his soul and his wife's, on the anniversary day, on account of the benefit received, they would say the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary [Ryckel, Vita sanctae Beggae, page 563 and following; Acta Sanctorum, volume I of August, page 426 and following.]. I do not know, however, whether this diploma is interpolated: for in it the beguinage of Ghent is called St. Elizabeth's, although this blessed widow died in the year 1231, and after four years was enrolled among the saints [Acta Sanctorum, ibid., page 422 and following; compare Mamachi, Annales Ordinis Praedicatorum, volume I, page 325 and following, Monumenta, column 316.]: to omit the opinion of certain Friars Preachers contending that this passage concerns the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which in fact was called by many the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary: for from that document it cannot be demonstrated with certainty that the Rosary was promised to be recited.
[3] and therefore not composed by St. Bonaventure, Bl. Ida recited it. A firmer argument for showing that the Psalter of the Mother of God was already in use at the beginning of the thirteenth century is taken from the Life of Bl. Beatrice of Nazareth. This most devout virgin, born in Brabant at the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century, took up the monastic life near Tienen in the Cistercian convent of Florival (at least one year before the year 1232, the year of the death of Bl. Ida of Nivelles, for some while her companion at La Ramée): afterward she began, as first prioress, the monastery of Nazareth of her Order near Lier, and died there in the year 1268. She herself wrote her Life in her native tongue out of obedience: which, of his own very little
adding or changing, William, a monk of Affligem, afterward prior of Wavre and at last abbot of Sint-Truiden, where he departed from life in the year 1297, rendered into Latin Miraeus, Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica, page 173.. It can therefore be held as a document as genuine as possible, older than the year 1268, in which things done before the year 1231 are most accurately reported. A copy of this composition, written in the year 1320, we have under our eyes [Bibliothèque royale de Bruxelles, manuscript 4461. Compare Henriquez, Quinque Virgines prudentes, page 1 and following; Analectes pour servir à l'histoire de Belgique, volume VII, page 77.]. Now in that manuscript codex we read of Bl. Beatrice: When she was passing her novitiate at Florival (certainly not after the year 1231), she was accustomed to pay daily, with genuflections, the Psalter of the blessed Virgin, which is usually made up by as frequent a repetition of the angelic salutation as the number of psalms of David's psalter extends to. By which words it is surely shown that the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary was in use before the year 1231, and therefore that its author or beginner was not St. Bonaventure, who was born in the year 1221 and became a Friar Minor in the year 1243. From the same passage it can perhaps be gathered that in those times in Belgium the name of Psalter of the B. V. M. had not yet been given to the Rosary of the Mother of God, but only that the exercise of the Psalter was made up by the Angelic Salutation repeated a hundred and fifty times: and that this was not then performed for the first time, but was customarily done. And our opinion too is that the Psalter which the most devout virgin Beatrice is read to have used was the same as the Psalter recited by Blessed Ida of Léau: for, besides the fact that they were contemporary nuns and of the same Order in Brabant, it is known that the Cistercians, above other monks, were most observant of a discipline once adopted. To which add that it is read in the Life of Bl. Beatrice that their convents of La Ramée and of Florival were joined as closely as possible by friendship and intercourse. But why say more? It seems sufficiently shown that the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary was already in use at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and therefore that its institutor was not St. Bonaventure: further, that that which Bl. Ida recited was not the Rosary, to which only afterward, I judge, the name of Psalter of the Mother of God was given in Belgium.
[4] The Greater Psalter of the Mother of God is discussed. And if now the reader should inquire of us about St. Bonaventure (since there can be no talk of the Marian Psalter without there being talk also of the holy doctor), here is our answer: his case by no means concerns St. Ida, who recited some Psalter or other: further, that in our age no one dares to settle the dispute about the author of the Greater Psalter (for it is almost about this one alone that there is debate). For for several centuries the learned have gone, some into one opinion, some into another. That this celebrated book was written by St. Bonaventure was affirmed by Galesini Acta Sanctorum, volume III of July, page 845., Robert Bellarmine Works, volume VII, De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, column 165, edition of 1617., Bl. Peter Canisius [De Verbi Dei corruptelis, volume II, De B. Maria Virgine, book V, chapter 26, page 803, edition of 1583.], Wadding Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, page 75., Marianus of Florence Ibid., page 66., and Arthur du Moustier Menologium Franciscanum, page 305., who indicates several authors who agree with him; on the contrary Oudin Commentarius de Scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, volume III, column 411., Giacinto Sbaralea Bibliotheca Franciscana, supplement., and others whom Arthur and Benedetto Bonelli Prodromus, column 681 and following. review, take it away from the holy doctor. Certainly, like Bonelli, we shall stand doubting in the midst of the disputants, and shall judge that this question cannot be solved from the testimonies of the ancients, and must therefore be settled by the inscription of the book itself. Indeed the two earlier editions, that of Strasbourg of the year 1495 and that of Venice of the year 1476, agree in assigning the Greater Psalter to St. Bonaventure. But whether rightly, or according to sufficiently genuine codices, is not established: which, however, Benedetto Bonelli would greatly have liked Ibid., column 682.. Whence it is not to be wondered at that the future editor, Father Fidelis a Fanna Ratio novae collectionis Operum S. Bonaventurae proxime in lucem edendae., does not seem inclined to number the Greater Psalter, of which alone there is talk, among the genuine Works of St. Bonaventure. After his times there succeeded, as is hidden not even from the blind, innumerable other Marian exercises, and the Marian Psalter went into oblivion among many: to which perhaps the very form of the little work contributed not a little; for although its doctrine is irreprehensible, yet that changing and accommodating of the psalms, a book assuredly divine, never pleased all: further, the Friars Preachers had their own Psalter, namely the Rosary, called in the year 1479 by Sixtus IV the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Bullarium Fratrum Praedicatorum, volume III, page 576 and following., which they could commend to the people, a devotion assuredly easier and more removed from all ill-will.