9. Beyond the Cloistered Walls: Monasticism, Mysticism, and Social Outreach

What most pleases God? Prayer and meditation or humanitarian service? This is an age-old, often unconscious issue facing Christians of every generation. Should our faith be weighted toward the contemplative or the active life?

More than a decade ago, after delivering a series of lectures at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington, I was seated, on my flight home, across the aisle from a nun in full habit who was praying her rosary. My curiosity mounting, I waited to greet her until our lunch was served. I forget my “pick-up line,” but within minutes we were engaged in a lively conversation. She had taken a vow of silence, but was able to talk while away from the convent with anyone who opened up a conversation. She was pleased that I had reached out to her.

Here was a one-time executive office manager who had left her promising career and gone through a marriage ceremony with Jesus. In fact, she showed me photographs of her wedding. She looked lovely in her elegant, lacy white gown.

Although she had taken a vow of silence, she was now being released to teach at an inner-city parochial school in Cleveland, Ohio. She was excited about this temporary opportunity for service. When I asked if she would like to be released to spend the rest of her life in such a service ministry, she expressed ambivalence. As exciting as this new venture was, she did not want to leave behind her life of contemplation.

As we consider monasticism in the Middle Ages, we see extremes of both the active and the contemplative life—not so much in one individual as in particular monastic systems. Is one way more spiritual than the other? We come to understand our own perspective on spirituality as we reflect on historical models.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

It may seem difficult to imagine gentle Saint Francis or studious Saint Dominic or Saints Catherine or Hildegard with serious vices, having condemned the pleasures of sense. But a closer look confirms that power truly is the vice of the ascetic. In the name of God they wield authority. Ascetics rallied crusaders and led crusades. Dominican friars propelled the Inquisition. Cloistered nuns authenticated their authority through visions and supernatural powers. We fail to fully understand asceticism and monasticism if we do not recognize how closely the vice of power and the profession of godliness are linked.

Monastic movements had grown alongside the church hierarchy from the early centuries as parachurch organizations. Each had a specialty or uniqueness by which it was known, and they often spawned spiritual celebrities. Some of these saints, however, operated independently, outside the confines of the monastery. Among the household names of the High Middle Ages were Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi, Dominic, Catherine of Siena, and Margery Kempe.

As the Middle Ages progress, the number of saints increases. In an age when the supernatural is easily meshed with superstition, miracle stories are the “reality shows” of the day. But for every miracle there are a dozen torments by the devil, sometimes attacking innocent people in the night and other times merely spoiling the milk. Life is difficult, with few comforts for the average family. Death and disease are ever-present realities. Nearly a third of children born healthy die before their mid-teens. Old age, however, is not uncommon. Every village honors the old ones who remember the stories of long ago.

By 1250 a robust population increase benefits the economy, and in some areas it reaches levels it will not see again until the nineteenth century. This trend is checked in the following centuries by a series of calamities, notably the Black Death but also numerous wars and economic stagnation. During the time of economic growth, several new religious orders are founded, including the Franciscans in 1209 and the Dominicans in 1216, both orders of preaching friars. But whether cloistered nuns or begging friars, monasticism is controversial. Among those who profess no faith, monasteries are a costly waste of time and energy. Even among Christians, monasticism has severe critics. Martin Luther protested loudly against monasteries and the vow of celibacy:

PARADE OF HISTORY

As the Christian church continues to push northward into the whole of Western Europe, monastic leaders are in the front lines, often leading a parade of followers into the wilderness to establish new monastic sites. Bernard sometimes marches with as many as thirty men following dutifully behind him. So also does Francis of Assisi, a pied piper with a parade of disciples. Women are rarely part of the parades, though Margery Kempe wiled away many years annoying fellow travelers on her various pilgrimages.

A FATAL DOUBLE STANDARD

Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard…. And so we get the paradoxical result that monasticism, whose mission was to preserve in the Church of Rome the primitive Christian realization of the costliness of grace, afforded conclusive justification for the secularization of the Church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

If you are able to remain chaste and be pure by your own strength, why then do you vow to be chaste? Keep it, if you can, but it is a mere nothing that you should want to boast about your vow…. Do you want to know to whom you have vowed to keep chastity? I’ll tell you: the miserable devil in hell and his mother.

Long before the preaching friars came on the scene, monastic communities had been located in remote desert areas and later in the mountains or forests of Europe. Monasticism meant being separated from the world, though wherever monasteries were located, the world found them. One of the trademarks of medieval monasticism was repeated renewal and reform. This reform typically meant going back to the basics — stricter rules, less worldliness, and more limitations on women religious. Monastic reform in the tenth and eleventh centuries was centered at the Monastery of Cluny with the aim of revitalizing the monastic system that had been severely weakened by military conflict.

In addition to its ornate churches, the most notable feature of Cluniac monasticism was its regimented daily cycle of worship. Monks rose before dawn to begin church services and private devotions and continued on through the day with alternating periods of work and worship. The benefactor of the convent was Duke William of Aquitaine, an old man who had committed a murder in his younger years. “I will provide at my expense for men living together under monastic vows,” wrote William, “with this hope, that if I cannot myself despise all the things of this world, at least by sustaining those who despise the world … I may myself receive the reward of the righteous.”

The collapse of the Benedictine monastic monopoly in the late eleventh century coincided with the beginning of the period of rapid expansion of monasticism in Western society. The two most successful of the new orders were Augustinians and Cistercians, emphasizing two sides of the Benedictine tradition. The Augustinians, basing their rule on a letter written by Augustine of Hippo, relaxed the rigid Benedictine regulations. Augustine had counseled that the most effective rule was one that left “much to the imagination” so that “it could be developed in various ways.” Augustinian monks were extensively involved in relief work among the poor and in rebuilding churches. With thousands of communities by the thirteenth century, the lowly Augustinians had a profound impact on medieval society.

Monastery of Cluny

EVERYDAY LIFE

Medieval Medical Practices

I llness in the Middle Ages was far more mysterious than it is today. Without the benefit of x-rays, EKGs, MRIs, and a multitude of other tests, medicine was largely guesswork. Home remedies, including a wide variety of herbal potions, were less risky than bloodletting and other procedures provided by physicians. Astrological charts and other superstitions were used to diagnose illness.

Until the Black Death, leprosy was the most dreaded malady, inflicting large numbers of people with its insidious eating away of the flesh. There was no cure, and its victims were segregated in colonies, some two thousand colonies in France alone by the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Black Death, however, trumped leprosy as the most dreaded medieval killer. Spanning four years between 1347 and 1351, the European plague wiped out more than a third of the population.

The cause of the plague was often judged to be sin, as was true of other maladies, particularly mental illness. Found in every town and village, the mentally ill were divided into two categories: that observed in infancy or childhood (often referred to as idiocy), and that which struck an otherwise normal individual. Women frequently suffered from what today is diagnosed as postpartum depression brought on by a hormonal imbalance. It was not uncommon for mentally handicapped children and adults to be sent to convents, a practice that met with some resentment from the monks and nuns charged with their care.

Whether at home or in a convent, those who were difficult to control were bound in chains. In some instances they were ostracized from the community and forced to wander or live in caves. Demon possession was often presumed to be the cause of the malady. Priests using a standard liturgy were equipped to perform exorcisms. Testimonials, including those from Anthony and Gregory the Great, point to instances of demons fleeing from the one exorcized, thus authenticating the saint’s reputation. Whippings and forced consumption of foul substances were sometimes used to aid the exorcism.

Medicine during the medieval period

When medical specialists treated mental illness, they looked for an imbalance in bodily fluids or humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. Too much black bile, for example, was believed to cause depression. Various potions and prescribed courses were offered to decrease the flow of black bile. The earliest mental institution was founded in 1247 in London at Bethlem Royal Hospital. In exchange for care, property and other valuables were often confiscated by government officials. With primitive and often violent treatment, the Bethlem atmosphere was chaotic and frenzied; thus the term bedlam entered the English language.

Unlike the Augustinians, the Cistercians, founded in 1098, sought to strictly interpret the Rule of Benedict. Located in remote areas and with tightly regulated activities, they sought to remove themselves from the rough and tumble everyday village life of medieval Europe. Lay brothers did the dirty work of manual labor and farming, while the “White Monks” (named for their habits of unbleached fabric) read and meditated and prayed. Unlike the ornate Cluniac churches, the Cistercian churches and liturgy were plain. Overall, medieval monasticism allowed for a wide range of styles. Even within an order or a single monastic house, amid regulated days and hours, unique personalities — often colorful and unconventional, if not insane — emerged.

Bernard of Clairvaux: Preaching Christ Most Excellently

The most celebrated of the Cistercians monks and the leading reformer of the twelfth century, Bernard (1090 – 1153) was more than a monastic leader. He was a theologian, a papal confidant, a Crusader, and a hymn writer. Indeed, he was one of the few medieval Roman Catholics widely heralded by the Reformers. John Calvin regarded him as the premier proclaimer of truth in the centuries between Gregory the Great and the Reformation, and Martin Luther found him to be “superior to all the doctors in his sermons, even to Augustine himself, because he preaches Christ most excellently.”

Bernard of Clairvaux

Born in a French castle where his parents “ruled in feudal glory,” Bernard turned away from wealth and prestige to become a Cistercian monk in his early twenties. Like his six brothers and a sister, he was influenced by the deep faith of their mother, Aletha According to his earliest biographer she, with her husband, “governed the household in the fear of God, devoting herself to deeds of mercy and rearing her children in strict discipline not so much for the glory of her husband as for that of God; for all the sons became monks and the daughter a nun “ As a youth, Bernard was inflamed by the passion of the Crusades, even as his father had been — despite the fact that his father, like so many others, never returned home.

A REFORMER REFLECTS ON BERNARD

Since the apostles’ time, the Scriptures have remained so obscure…. Even the holy fathers … have often fallen into error, and, because they were ignorant of the languages, they very seldom agree, but one says one thing, and another another. St. Bernard was a man of great genius; so much so that I would place him above all the eminent doctrinists, both ancient and modern. But yet, how often does he play upon the language of the Scriptures (albeit in a spiritual sense), thus turning it aside from its true meaning.

Martin Luther, Letter to Maintain and Establish Schools, 1524

Bernard’s decision to become a monk, according to his biographer, occurs suddenly. He is riding one day through a dense forest. Coming upon a roadside chapel, “he went in and there prayed, with flooded eyes, lifting his hands toward Heaven…. From that hour God had kindled [fire] in the heart of his servant “ Bernard then seeks out a Cistercian monastery, bringing more than two dozen men with him His early life of luxury is behind him, and three years later he is commissioned to take twelve monks and start a new community They march northward through deep forests to a valley near the headwaters of the River Aube. Here he and his followers build the Abbey of Clairvaux.

“While I am in this life this more sublime philosophy will be mine — to know Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”

For the next thirty-four years Bernard ministers in this region, preaching, praying, and reaching out to those in need in the surrounding areas So compelling are his recruitment efforts that women reportedly warn their husbands and lovers and sons to stay away from his monastery because he has magical powers for turning men into monks The story of his sister Humbelina — the one sibling who had refused to enter the cloister—sheds light on his power. She is married with children, but Bernard is not moved by her maternal instincts When she turns away from his demands, he refuses to speak with her Eventually he breaks her will, and she consents to leave her family and spend the rest of her life in seclusion.

A celebrated traveling wonderworker, Bernard leaves behind testimonies of healings — particularly of young boys suffering a variety of afflictions who then join his band of recruits On one occasion thirty young men who are healed or witness a healing follow him back to the monastery By the middle of the twelfth century the Abbey of Clairvaux has some seven hundred monks and seventy daughter houses under his strict discipline — all secluded cloisters When a monk leaves for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Bernard appeals to the pope, demanding that he be returned Propelled “by a spirit of frivolity,” he argues, the monk might encourage others to leave.

BERNARD’S CONTEMPLATIVE LENTEN HYMN

O sacred Head, now wounded,

With grief and shame weighed down,

Now scornfully surrounded

With thorns, Thine only crown.

O sacred Head, what glory,

What bliss, till now was Thine!

Yet, though despised and gory,

I joy to call Thee mine.

Yet for all his insistence on curbing the travel and curiosity of his monks, Bernard abides by no such rule for himself Engaged in the most critical debates of the era, he is tireless in his efforts to end a church schism in 1130, and he becomes the attack dog in the campaign against Abelard With the same intensity, he promotes the Second Crusade, launched in 1145. Before he becomes involved, there is little excitement for another long march east But then the “honey-tongued” recruiter aims his evangelistic arrows at those needed to liberate the Holy Land “I opened my mouth,” he testifies, “and at once the Crusaders have multiplied to infinity Villages and towns are now deserted You will scarcely find one man for every seven women Everywhere you see widows whose husbands are still alive.”

Bernard spends a year traveling from town to town, appealing for troops But the early news of Crusader defeats, dampens his spirits Surely, he reasons, God must be punishing the sins of the Crusaders In the end, the Islamic armies prevail, and Jerusalem is taken Despite setbacks, his popularity is high, and he is canonized a saint in 1174, barely two decades after his death.

Hildegard of Bingen: Directed by Divine Light

A contemporary of Bernard, Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) left behind a large portfolio of writings that sheds light on her inner thoughts as well as the world around her During the final decades of her life she reigned as the abbess queen over her spirited German convent — a bevy of women all eager to express their ideas in writing.

The tenth child born into an aristocratic family, Hildegard grows up sickly and saintly When she is but a small girl she informs her nurse that a pregnant cow is carrying a white calf with black spots on its head, back, and feet For her spot-on accuracy she is given the calf as a pet Soon after, she is sent away to study with the celebrated anchoress Jutta. Like other anchors of both sexes, Jutta lives in a small cell attached to a church. Nearby is a Benedictine monastery where Hildegard is exposed to church music and liturgy.

SAINT BERNARD: THE MAN AND THE DOG

The beloved big, slobbery Saint Bernard dog is not named for Bernard of Clairvaux, but rather, for Bernard of Menthon, born more than a century and a half earlier in 923. A Benedictine monk, Bernard founded two monasteries in the Alps providing refuge for pilgrims trudging through dangerous mountain passes on their way to Rome. Sometimes travelers were caught in storms and monks rescued them with their faithful dogs. The most celebrated of these rescue dogs was Barry, who saved nearly one hundred pilgrims. Today Barry is stuffed and lives in the Natural History Museum in Berne.

MISERABLE AND WORSE THAN MISERABLE WOMAN

Venerable Father Bernard … I am greatly troubled from this vision, which appears to me in the spirit of mystery, which I have never seen with my external physical eyes. I, a miserable and worse than miserable woman, from my infancy have seen great marvels, which my tongue could not proclaim, except that the Spirit of God teaches me.

Hildegard of Bingen to Bernard of Clairvaux (1146/47)

Like Jutta, Hildegard testifies to revelations and visions that begin in her pre-teens. Then, on the death of Jutta, she assumes the leadership of the young women who have now joined together in community. In her early forties she testifies that God has given her the ability to comprehend the true meaning of sacred texts and has commanded her to record the meaning that is given her through a continuous stream of visions. Seeking sanction as God’s mouthpiece, she contacts Bernard of Clairvaux. He passes her request on to the pope, who encourages her to continue transcribing her visions. She takes this as papal support and begins publishing her visions under the Latin title Scivias (know the ways [of the Lord]), which is soon popular among both laity and clerics.

The revelations, according to Hildegard, do not come during a dream or a trance, “but watchful and intent in mind I received them according to the will of God.” Directed by a divine light “more brilliant than the luminous air around the sun,” she speaks with authority:

And it came to pass … when I was forty-two years and seven months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame … and suddenly I understood the meaning of expositions of the books….

Yet when commanded by God to write down what she is seeing, she feels “wretched in my womanly condition” and an “unworthy servant”:

Self-doubt made me hesitate. I analyzed others’ opinions of my decision and sifted through my own bad opinions of myself. Finally, one day I discovered I was so sick I couldn’t get out of bed. Through this illness, God taught me to listen better. Then, when my good friends Richardis and Volmar urged me to write, I did. I started writing this book and received the strength to finish it, somehow, in ten years. These visions weren’t fabricated by my own imagination, nor are they anyone else’s. I saw these when I was in the heavenly places. They are God’s mysteries. These are God’s secrets. I wrote them down because a heavenly voice kept saying to me, “See and speak! Hear and write!.”

Soon Hildegard relocates her nuns to the Rhine River in Bingen. Here her reputation flowers as she and her nuns write on a wide variety of topics in a number of genres, including plays, letters, music, and scientific treatises. Throughout her ministry she criticizes corrupt clergy, warning people not to seek out priests for salvation, but to seek Christ and the Scriptures — or expect pain and punishment in the life to come:

I saw a well deep and broad full of boiling pitch and sulphur, and around it were wasps and scorpions…. And I saw a great fire, black, red, and white, and in it horrible fiery vipers, spitting flame; and there the vipers tortured the souls of those who had been slaves of the sin of uncharitableness.

On a more personal level she responds to the ordinary concerns as a Dear Abby or Dr. Ruth of the twelfth century, often serving as an advocate for children. As such she firmly counsels parents not to place children in convents without their consent. Nor is she prudish on the topic of sex, challenging the common belief that the woman is passive in the sex act and that pregnancy is a result of a mere deposit of the male seed. Indeed, the woman plays an active and manly role.

Hildegard is only one of many influential abbesses of this era. The convent of Hefla attracts the most attention for its mystical visions and accompanying writings, an atmosphere encouraged by Gertrude of Hackeborn, who reigns as abbess of Hefla for forty years. Most of the writings there are the work of Gertrude the Great, Mechtild of Hackeborn, and Mechtild of Magdeburg. The writings of Gertrude the Great are very specific, as she peers into purgatory and sees the souls coming and going. She confidently offers advice to priests and laity concerning when souls will be released on the basis of the prayers offered.

Sometimes visions give nuns the validation needed to strike out on their own and go out into surrounding towns to preach. Indeed, through these ecstatic experiences, nuns receive authorization to take on priestly functions, though not without opposition from clerics. More important, however, is their recognition as authentic saints. Near the end of her life, Gertrude testifies to receiving (several decades after a similar experience of Francis of Assisi) the most spectacular miracle of all — the stigmata. Although invisible to others, she sees and feels the bleeding nail prints in her hands and feet.

Along with visions are personal problems and struggles with demons. During Hildegard’s long service as an abbess, a young nun, Richardis von Stade, becomes her beloved personal assistant. Due in part to an unexplained falling out (of which Hildegard writes that they both have sinned), Richardis arranges to move to another convent where, through the influence of her brother an archbishop, she will become abbess. Hildegard claims that God has told her Richardis should not go. To the archbishop she writes: “Your curses and your malicious and threatening words are not to be heeded.” To Richardis, after she has departed, Hildegard writes: “Why have you forsaken me like an orphan? I loved you for your noble bearing, your wisdom, your purity, your soul and all your life!” Hildegard relentlessly battles for her “daughter” to return, demanding such in a court of law. Richardis prevails, but the battle ends only at her death.

WHEN A WOMAN MAKES LOVE….

When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman’s sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.

Hildegard of Bingen, Liber Subtilatum

Unlike her cloistered sisters, Hildegard travels and preaches widely. In fact, despite her poor health, she conducts four preaching tours over a span of thirteen years, the final one completed during her seventy-fourth year. She visits monasteries and cathedrals, counseling and preaching to men more often than women. She corresponds with popes and bishops and heads of government as well as lesser clerics and laity. She also writes music and is now recognized as one of the great medieval composers.

Francis of Assisi: Blessing Our Brothers, the Birds

The story of Francis of Assisi (c. 1181 – 1226), symbolized in a concrete garden statue of a robed monk with woodland birds and animals, is as beloved as it is familiar. The preeminent wanderer, Francis and his followers personified what Bernard forbade. His religious order, the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans) paved the way for the preaching friars.

The son of Pietro di Bernadone, a wealthy Italian fabric merchant, Francis is one of seven children. From an early age, he gravitates toward his mother Pica’s faith far more than his father’s financial wizardry. His very name reflects different parental aspirations. His father away on business when he is born, Pica baptizes him Giovanni di Bernardone for John the Baptist. When Pietro returns home, he objects to the name’s significance and changes it to Francesco.

Francis of Assisi and scenes from his life

Young Francis finds little satisfaction in his father’s business enterprise, nor is he interested in living a life of adventure as a knight. He sleeps late and loafs around during the day and then becomes a troubadour, a singer, and songwriter who wanders through markets presenting an appealing alternative to monks’ Latin hymns. Nights are filled with rollicking fun and mischief. Perhaps realizing he will never become a star troubadour, he joins the military. But before he sees action, he is taken prisoner, during which time he is dazzled by a vision. He wonders if God is calling him to serve the poor. After his release he goes back to a life of leisure, only to face serious illness before returning again to the military. Obsessed with God’s call, he leaves the military and goes home. But he no longer sings on the street corners and in the bazaars. A pilgrimage to Rome proves decisive. There he has another vision, this time while meditating on an icon of Christ on the cross. Three times the voice of the crucified speaks to him: “Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.”

So ardent is his zeal that he becomes a virtual Robin Hood, stealing from his own father. How else, he reasons, is he going to acquire the money to repair God’s house? His father is not amused. In fact, he is so outraged that he calls on the bishop to settle the matter. Francis is anything but repentant. Dressed for success, he appears before the bishop and hears the charges against him He then steps behind a door and reappears naked, handing his clothes and his money to the bishop and makes an announcement: “Up to this time I have called Pietro Bernardone father, but now I desire to serve God and to say nothing else than ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’.”

Dante’s Paradiso portrays Thomas Aquinas commemorating Francis:

Let me tell you of a youth whose aristocratic father disowned him because of his love for a beautiful lady. She had been married before, to Christ, and was so faithful a spouse to Him that, while Mary only stood at the foot of the Cross, she leaped up to be with Him on the Cross. These two of whom I speak are Francis and the Lady Poverty. As they walked along together, the sight of their mutual love drew men’s hearts after them. Bernard saw them and ran after them, kicking off his shoes to run faster.

Dante, Paradiso

In 1209, now in his late twenties, he hears the voice of God in a sermon from Matthew 10:9: “Preach, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils Provide neither silver nor gold, nor brass in your purses.” This becomes his rule of life.

“If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

Francis of Assisi

He discards his purse and shoes, dresses in rags, and feels guilty if he meets someone who is poorer than he He lives with lepers, washing their puss-filled sores and kissing their fingerless hands and stubbed feet His father and his friends think he has gone mad Initially, he is a loner But then a follower comes along, and by the end of the year, with ten more disciples, the “Lesser Brethren,” as mendicants, beg from house to house, spending nights out of doors.

In Rome Francis seeks the papal blessing However, Innocent III is insulted by his apparent show of disrespect, reportedly telling him: “Go brother, go to the pigs, to whom you are more fit to be compared than to men, and roll with them, and to them preach the rules you have so ably set forth “ But Innocent also sees something remarkably sincere in Francis After putting him off, he later agrees to give provisional approval for a new religious order Final sanction will come only after they have proven themselves worthy

Poverty is not a new concept in monasticism, but Francis gives it greater prominence than others had For Benedictines, obedience is emphasized over poverty And previously, poverty had been associated with a rural, secluded life But with Francis, urban poverty takes on a whole new meaning He embraces poverty rather than separating from it as hermits and monks had done The inward emphasis on personal self-denial is turned upside-down with an outward focus on the poor and needy living on the margins of society

Although taking a vow of celibacy, he himself is married He had boasted as a youth that his wife would be the most beautiful woman to be found And now, as a wandering beggar, he finds her, recognizing her as his true love He finds her on a mountaintop, “sitting on the throne of her neediness “ She is Lady Poverty, informing him that she was with Adam in paradise but that after he sinned she was forced to become a homeless wanderer She was married to Jesus when he walked the earth. Since then she has sought refuge in one monastery after another but was always turned away. Revering her as “the mistress and queen of the virtues,” Francis marries her and she comes to dwell with him.

Francis has another love in his life second only to Lady Poverty — Mother Nature. He stands out as the premier medieval environmentalist, his devotion to nature as sincere as his devotion to poverty.

So close was Francis to nature that he preached sermons to those he regarded as his companions: “Brother birds,” he admonished, “you ought to love and praise your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all things that can be of use to you. You have neither to sow, nor to reap, and yet He takes care of you.” An environmentalist before his time, he asked the emperor to enact laws to protect “our sisters, the birds.”

For Francis, however, life is far from idyllic. For many of the less-committed friars, the love for Lady Poverty quickly dissipates. They rebel against what they perceive to be an evil stepmother. Having been stirred by the personal charisma and emotion-charged sermons of Francis, they have second thoughts about being on the bottom rung of society. Other monks, they observe, live the good life. Supported by clerics, angry friars replace Francis with a new leader while he is away on a mission trip. It is the most dramatic coup in monastic history. He returns to find a wealthy cleric in charge of the very ministry he has founded. He might have rallied his dedicated followers and led them away and begun anew. But this, he reasons, is not the way of humility. He accepts the stunning reversal as God’s will. He tells his followers, “From henceforth I am dead for you. Here is brother Peter di Catana whom you and I will obey.” He then prostrates himself before his new superior and directs the friars to follow in submission. His heart is broken, but there is no other course of action for this most singular saint.

Despite this turn of events, Francis is widely regarded as a saint, and his death in 1228 only increases his stock as a holy man. Church leaders from far and near, including Pope Gregory IX, bask in his popularity. In fact, the pope preaches at his funeral, lays the cornerstone for a church in his memory, and canonizes him as a saint. The miracle most associated with Francis is the stigmata, as testified by the vicar of the Franciscan order the day after Francis dies:

Never has the world seen such a sign except on the Son of God. For a long time before his death, our brother had in his body five wounds which were truly the stigmata of Christ, for his hands and feet have marks as of nails, without and within, a kind of scars, while from his side, as if pierced by a lance, a little blood oozed.

THE SAINTLY ENVIRONMENTALIST

The hymn [“Canticle to the Sun”] is a pious outburst of passionate love for nature. It soars above any other pastorals of the Middle Ages. Indeed Francis’ love for nature is rare in the records of his age, and puts him into companionship with that large modern company who see poems in the clouds and hear symphonies in flowers. He loved the trees, the stones, birds, and the plants of the field. Above all things he loved the sun, created to illuminate our eyes by day, and the fire which gives us light in the night time, for “God has illuminated our eyes by these two, our brothers.”

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church

Clare of Assisi: Sequestered and Silent

Women played an important role in communal monasticism almost from the beginning. Some were placed in convents as children, but many devoted their lives to God, thus avoiding the drudgery and danger of childbearing. Like many who fell under the spell of Francis, Clare of Assisi (1194 – 1253) heard him preach early in his ministry and was determined (as was her brother) to join the new order. Born into a noble family of Sciffi, she is only a teenager when she announces to her family that she will be taking a vow of poverty. Clare’s mother, Ortolana, is a devout Christian who has taken pilgrimages to Rome and to the Holy Land. In view of their social status, however, she and her husband, the Count of Sasso-Rosso, are determined that Clare marry a worthy and wealthy nobleman.

Clare of Assisi saving a child from a wolf

Strong-willed, Clare flees, living under the protection of Francis, who is aware of her reputation for holy living. They meet often, and two years later, in 1212, she establishes the Order of the Poor Dames (later called Poor Clares), based on his rule. She commits herself to poverty and begins wearing a plain garment. Her distraught family soon loses another daughter when Agnes joins Clare. And later their mother also joins. Clare spends the rest of her life in the convent, her days spent in prayer and meditation as well as with menial tasks and supervising the women who join her. Unlike the friars, she and her nuns are strictly cloistered, with no freedom to preach and serve the poor. Yet their only means of support is begging — sending out word of their needs. The rule of Clare does not even permit rich girls to enter with their dowries: “Let the sisters not appropriate anything to themselves…. Let them send confidently for alms. Nor should they be ashamed, since the Lord made Himself poor in this world for us.”

SAINT CLARE GOES TO CHURCH ON CHRISTMAS EVE

St. Clare was … so ill that she could not go to church with the other nuns to say the Office on the night of the Nativity of Christ. All the other sisters went to Matins; but she remained in bed, very sorrowful…. But Jesus Christ, her Spouse, unwilling to leave her comfortless, carried her miraculously to the church of St. Francis, so that she was present at Matins, assisted at the Midnight Mass, and received the Holy Communion, after which she was carried back to her bed. When the nuns returned to their convent, the ceremonies being ended at St. Damiano, they went to St. Clare and said to her: “O Sister Clare, our Mother, what great consolations we have experienced at this feast of the Holy Nativity! Oh, if it had but pleased God that you should have been with us!” To this St. Clare answered: “Praise and glory be to our Lord Jesus Christ … for by the intercession of my father, St. Francis, and through the grace of our Saviour Jesus Christ I have been personally present in the church of my venerable father, St. Francis, and with the ears of my body and those of my spirit have heard all the Office, and the sounds of the organ, and the singing, and have likewise received there the most Holy Communion.”

The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, Chapter XXXV

Dominic: Founder of the Dominicans

In many ways the polar opposite of Francis, Dominic of Osma (1170 – 1221) stands alongside Francis as the founder of another very influential order of friars. The Dominican order of Preachers was established less than a decade after Francis founded the Franciscans. Dante compared the two: “Francis filled the world with passion and love; Dominic … filled the world with light.” The latter emphasized preaching with scholarly rigor, especially to “heretics,” urging them to come back to the fold. As with the Franciscans and other orders of friars, the Dominicans begged for alms and were largely located in urban settings.

Born in a Spanish castle, Dominic shares with many other medieval saints a noble heritage and a mother who profoundly influenced his spiritual vocation. Juana, long venerated by Dominicans as a saint, tells an extraordinary birth story. Before her son is born she has a dream of a dog jumping out of her womb with a torch fastened in its teeth. It is a prophecy that the child she is carrying will “set the whole earth on fire.”

Stained glass showing the legend of Mary giving Dominic the rosary

Well educated in theology and liberal arts, Dominic, the nephew of an archbishop, is reared in the shadow of the church. While he is completing his university training, famine devastates large regions of Spain and starving refugees flee the countryside. Selling his clothes and precious manuscripts, Dominic feeds the hungry. When friends admonish him to consider his own academic future, he reportedly responds: “Would you have me study off these dead skins, when men are dying of hunger?.”

DOMINIC’S EARLY MINISTRY IN SPAIN

Dominic abode there alone with a few Christian men and Catholic, against the heretics, and denounced and preached the word of God firmly. And the adversaries of truth mocked him, and spit at him, and threw at him filth of the streets, and other right foul things, and … he answered, without fear or dread: “I am not worthy to be martyred, nor I have not yet deserved that death by glory.” And therefore he passed hardily by the way where they despised him, and sang, and went joyously. And they marveled and said to him: “Hast thou no dread of death? What wouldst thou have done if we had taken thee?” “I had prayed you,” said he, “that ye should not have slain me suddenly, but little and little ye should have hewn member from member, one after another.” … He found a man that for the great poverty that he suffered was joined to the heretics, and S. Dominic, seeing this, ordained himself to be sold, and that the price of him should be given to the poor man to bring him out of his poverty. And this did he for to bring him [out] of the foul error he was in.

The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, 1275

After leaving the university, Dominic travels widely, maintaining close connections with Rome In Southern France he finds the Albigensian heresy flourishing Distressed by their Manichean dualism that pits light against darkness and spiritual against material, he vows to devote his life to fighting heresy Like Francis he makes a pilgrimage to Rome to beseech Pope Innocent III for permission to found a new order. The year is 1215. The event is the Fourth Lateran Council Permission is granted, and the “Black Friars” are born.

Dominic’s initial evangelistic strategy had been to convince heretics to repent through persuasive preaching — not by the power of Rome “It is not by the display of power and pomp, cavalcades of retainers, and [decked-out horses], or by gorgeous apparel, that the heretics win proselytes,” he adamantly insists Rather, “it is by zealous preaching, by apostolic humility, by austerity, by … holiness. Zeal must be met by zeal, humility by humility, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching falsehood by preaching truth.”

But in 1232, the work of the Inquisition is given to the Dominicans, and conversion by force becomes the preferred approach Unlike most monastic leaders Dominic makes his headquarters in Rome From there he and his friars spread out, recruiting followers and reclaiming hearts and minds from heresy The luxury of Rome does not tempt him He practices strict asceticism, wearing a heavy chain around his waist and a rough hair shirt, often walking long distances barefoot and sleeping outside in the elements He fasts frequently, eats no meat, and observes a strict regimen of prayer and silence Not surprisingly, his health fails and he dies before he reaches his fifty-second birthday.

As a dead saint, Dominic does not enjoy the popularity accorded Francis The reason is the Inquisition Reformers pointed to the Dominicans as theological thugs Today the Inquisition — this Catholic arm of terror — is disdained by Catholics and “heretics” alike But Dominicans were more than theological thugs Their rapid growth within a century to some six hundred religious centers uniquely positioned them for mission outreach during the age of discovery and colonialism Though the order was less than half the size of the Franciscans, they competed in the race for religious domination in the New World, India, and the Orient.

Like Francis, Dominic is credited with a wide rage of miracles, most notably raising people from the dead. In one story a worker employed to help construct a church is crushed when a wall caves in. Arriving on the scene, Dominic raises him to life. In another case, a cardinal’s nephew falls from a galloping horse; several hours later Dominic brings him back to life with no sign of the injuries. In still another situation, a woman returns from hearing the saint preach only to find her son dead. She rushes back to Dominic with the child in her arms and he raises him from the dead. When Dominic died he remained dead. But twelve years later, during church renovation, his remains were moved and it is said that “a gentle aroma, like a sweet perfume, filled the air to the delight of all.”

Catherine: Saint on the Streets of Siena

More than a century after Dominic’s death, Catherine of Siena (1347 – 1380), at age sixteen, joins the Third Order of St. Dominic. The First Order was comprised of friars, the second of nuns, and the third of laity. Unlike Clare, who lived out her life secluded in a convent, Catherine follows a course more closely associated with Francis himself. She spends her days nursing the poor — particularly lepers and victims of the plague.

The daughter of a prosperous fabric dyer, she is the third youngest of twenty-five children. (As was true of other very large families, mothers die in childbirth and fathers remarry.) She survives infancy despite the Black Plague that ravages Siena when she is but a toddler. From the age of four she meditates and prays, and at seven (the legal age of consent to marriage) she takes a vow of virginity. Against her parents’ objections, she cuts her long hair so as to be unattractive to the man with whom marriage has been arranged. During these years she is sustained by visionary experiences. On one occasion, during a pre-Lenten carnival, demons tempt her with the feminine and marital joys she is denying herself. While friends and family and neighbors are in the streets eating and drinking and dancing — typical pleasures of a medieval community — she is in her dark cell. Suddenly Jesus and the Virgin and other saints appear. Jesus puts a gold ring on her finger, and Catherine becomes his bride.

From then on she holds to strict asceticism, wearing a hair shirt and pelvic chain and residing in a secluded cell. But she gradually moves out into the streets of Siena among lepers and the plague-infected. On one occasion, as she is kneeling over a woman and draining pus from the woman’s putrid sores, she is overcome by the sickening stench. Guilt-stricken by her revulsion, she reaches for the bowl of pus, lifts it to her lips, and drinks it, later insisting that it was the sweetest taste she had ever known. That her sanity is questioned does not deter her. On another occasion she is caring for a man on the day of his execution. Through her comfort on previous visits, his violent ways have subsided. The execution, as she relates, is turned into their own private celebration:

I was there at the place of execution, waiting and praying…. At length he came, like a meek lamb. When he saw me, he laughed and asked me to make the sign of the Cross over him. When I had done so I said: “Kneel down now, my sweetest brother. To the nuptials! In a moment you will have entered into life eternal.” He knelt down gently and I bent over him and held him as he lowered his head, reminding him of the blood of the Lamb. His lips murmured nothing but the names, Jesus and Catherine. I closed my eyes, accepting in the Divine Goodness the sacrifice, and as he was speaking I received his head into my hands.

While some consider Catherine mentally unstable, others are deeply moved by her selfless acts of service. Like other Catholics of her day, she was deeply troubled by the volatility of the papacy — and thus the church itself. In 1309, more than forty years before she was born, the papacy, prompted by carnage in Rome, had moved to Avignon. Opponents of the newly elected pope had threatened his life, so the French king kidnapped and secured him in France. His successors continued to live in Avignon for nearly seventy years — a period known as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church by those demanding that popes return to Rome. Critics rightly regard the Avignon papacy as a puppet of the increasingly powerful French regime, and not until 1377, did Pope Gregory XI return the papacy to Rome. His death, however, triggered the Great Schism in the Western church that lasted for four more decades. In this instance the cardinals, regretting their election of Urban VI, reversed the decision and elected Pope Clement VII. Two popes and more, supported by various factions, created turmoil until the schism ended with the Council of Constance in 1417.

Catherine died in her early thirties, only two years after the Great Schism has begun, but years earlier she had sought to convince the pope to depart from Avignon, the “Babylon of the West.” With some twenty devoted followers, she leads a march to Avignon. She is granted an audience with the pope but only after she is found by papal officials to be neither insane nor a heretic. She offers a ready-made solution: launch another Crusade. Gregory IX counters that the church must settle its internal strife before going to war, but Catherine persists in the age-old argument that the best way to solve the problems at home is to declare war on the enemy. That Catherine, according to one historian, “dominated Pope Gregory and to a lesser extent Urban VI” is an unwarranted conclusion. She was one among many who urged the pope to return to Rome. But her tenacity in serving the poor and challenging the hierarchy of the church solidified her fame.

Catherine of Siena

Through revelations, she sought to confirm church tradition not clarified in Scripture. Medieval theologians from Anselm to Aquinas, for example, had argued that Mary was conceived sinless and remained so all her life, ever remaining a virgin. Aquinas had summed up the common belief: “As a virgin she conceived, as a virgin gave birth, and she remains a virgin forever.” Through a vision, Catherine confirms the tradition and offers an additional detail: Mary was not perfected until three hours after her conception. But her revelation is trumped by theologian Duns Scotus, who insisted that Mary was perfected at the instant of conception.

Catherine was canonized by Pope Pius II in 1461. More notable, however, was her elevation by Pope Paul VI in 1970 to Doctor of the Church, along with Theresa of Avila, the first women to be so named. She was recognized again in 1999 by Pope John Paul II, who named her a patron saint of Europe.

Margery Kempe: Unconventional Pilgrim

Not all medieval women who followed God’s call were unmarried. Indeed, some of the most celebrated holy women practiced celibacy in marriage. In 1413, after twenty years of marriage and fourteen children, Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – 1438) convinced her husband to agree to sexual abstinence for the remainder of their lives. If Catherine of Siena seemed strange to many observers, Margery’s idiosyncrasies were even more bizarre. For some two decades she traveled as a pilgrim to various sacred shrines, seeking an audience with local churchmen, recounting to them her revelations and visionary experiences. To fellow pilgrims she was a nuisance and worse. Known for shrill moralizing, she was regarded by many as deranged, and they sought to escape her company.

Born into a middle-class family in Norfolk, England, Margery was the daughter of a wool merchant who also served as a local politician and member of Parliament. At twenty, she married John Kempe. Soon after the birth of their first child, she suffered a serious breakdown — one of the earliest such incidents described by the patient herself. In The Book of Margery Kempe, dictated to a scribe, she tells her story of being attacked by devils, often speaking of herself as “this creature.” Hallucinations are so severe that she is restrained:

For dread she had of damnation … this creature went out of her mind and was wonderfully vexed and labored with spirits half year eight weeks and odd days. And in this time she saw, as her thought, devils open their mouths all inflamed … sometime ramping at her, sometime threatening her, sometime pulling her and hauling her both night and day the foresaid time And also the devils cried upon her with great threatenings and bade her she should forsake her Christendom, her faith, and deny her God, his Mother, and all the saints in Heaven, her good works and all good virtues, her father, her mother, and all her friends And so she did She slandered her husband, her friends, her own self like as the spirits tempted her She bit her own hand so violently that it was seen all her life after. And also she [scratched] her skin on her body … with her nails … and worse she would ‘a done save she was bound and kept with strength both day and night that she might not have her will.

THE BLACK DEATH

I say, then, that the years of the beatific incarnation of the Son of God had reached the tale of one thousand three hundred and forty eight, when in the illustrious city of Florence, the fairest of all the cities of Italy, there made its appearance that deadly pestilence…. In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple … and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots … making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, then minute and numerous…. Citizen avoided citizen … kinsfolk … never met, or but rarely; … brother was forsaken by brother, nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and oftentimes husband by wife: nay, what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children, untended, unvisited, to their fate, as if they had been strangers. Wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375)

JULIAN OF NORWICH

An anchoress living in a small cell attached to a church in Norwich, Julian (1342 – 1416) is regarded as one of the great English mystics of all times. She is known primarily for Revelations of Divine Love, visions that began at age thirty during a serious illness. Although she billed herself as “a simple unlettered creature” who was “lewd, feeble and frail,” her writings show otherwise. Indeed, she is one of the most quotable and most quoted medieval mystics. From her pen come the oft-repeated lines: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Of Christ she writes: “He said not ‘Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be diseased’; but he said, ‘Thou shalt not be overcome.’“ She reflected on the Trinity in feminine images: “God is oure moder,” “oure savyouure is oure very moder,” “very moder Jhesu,” and “oure moder, Christ.”

Margery testifies that amid this suffering, while her guardians are out of sight, she suddenly experiences a profound vision of Jesus:

Our merciful Lord Christ Jesus … appeared to his creature….”Daughter, why hast thou forsaken me, and I forsook never thee?” And … as he had said these words she saw verily how the air opened bright … and the creature was stabled in her wits and in her reason as well as ever she was before, and prayed her husband as soon as he came to her that she might have the keys of the buttery to take her meat and drink as she had done before.

The fascinating story of this thirteenth-century English woman, regarded by some as the first autobiography written in the English language, demonstrates the profound role of religion in everyday life of the Middle Ages As a pilgrim, Margery represents religious women who are among the freest in medieval society They have been released — often through claims of visions — from the bonds of marriage and are under no one’s “rule” but their own Unlike nuns in convents, these pilgrim women live very geographically and socially and spiritually liberated lives. Medieval religion — and life itself— was as interesting and varied as it is today.

It is fashionable today to read the lives of medieval saints, quote their writings and imagine they are our spiritual sisters and brothers And, of course, they are But there is a chasm that separates us from them — a cultural chasm that can never be spanned by words alone Their inner lives and outward actions belong not to us but to a distant medieval world.

What if….

What if Francis, the troubadour, had continued composing and singing love songs regaling exploits of knights and helpless damsels instead of composing songs like his Canticle of the Sun?

What if Dominic had continued his softer response to heretics through persuasive preaching and had not commissioned the Dominicans to serve in the forefront of the Inquisition? Might the course of medieval church history gone in a different direction without the terrors of these preachers of orthodoxy?

What if the Catholic Church had denied medieval women the opportunity to pursue a religious vocation? Did Hildegard of Bingen, Clare of Assisi, and Catherine of Siena contribute significantly to the depth and richness of spiritual life in the Middle Ages? How have they influenced both men and women in the centuries since?

9. Beyond the Cloistered Walls: Monasticism, Mysticism, and Social Outreach

9. Beyond the Cloistered Walls: Monasticism, Mysticism, and Social Outreach

CHAPTER 9

Beyond the Cloistered Walls

Monasticism, Mysticism, and Social Outreach

PARADE OF HISTORY

A FATAL DOUBLE STANDARD

EVERYDAY LIFE

Bernard of Clairvaux: Preaching Christ Most Excellently

A REFORMER REFLECTS ON BERNARD

BERNARD’S CONTEMPLATIVE LENTEN HYMN

Hildegard of Bingen: Directed by Divine Light

SAINT BERNARD: THE MAN AND THE DOG

MISERABLE AND WORSE THAN MISERABLE WOMAN

WHEN A WOMAN MAKES LOVE….

Francis of Assisi: Blessing Our Brothers, the Birds

THE SAINTLY ENVIRONMENTALIST

Clare of Assisi: Sequestered and Silent

SAINT CLARE GOES TO CHURCH ON CHRISTMAS EVE

Dominic: Founder of the Dominicans

DOMINIC’S EARLY MINISTRY IN SPAIN

Catherine: Saint on the Streets of Siena

Margery Kempe: Unconventional Pilgrim

THE BLACK DEATH

JULIAN OF NORWICH

What if….

Further Reading