Told in the Cloister
IT is strange that, in spite of the modern interest in mediaeval literature, Caesarius of Heisterbaeh has waited so long for a translator. He is well known to all mediaevalists, and frequently pilfered for "good stories " exhibiting either the naive charm or crass credulity of our fathers in the faith, but there are not many persons who could truthfully say that they have read his book right through. Yet it is a source of the highest importance for an understanding, not only of thirteenth- century monastic life, the habits and main interests of the average monk, but also of the general social history of the period. All appearance to the contrary notwithstanding— and it must be admitted that some of his " miracles " seem to the modern reader both pointless and absurd--Caesarius was no mere uncritical collector of strange tales ; but a man of learning, with considerable literary sense. An almost exact contemporary of St. Francis, he entered the Cistercian Abbey of Heisterbach in the Rhineland in the last years of the twelfth century, rose to be Prior, achieved a great reputation as a theologian and casuist, and died between 1242 and 1250. He travelled extensively, and his description of the Albigensian and other heresies (classed by him as a branch of demonology) is of historjeal importance.
The Dialogue, composed in the form of a conversation between a novice master and his pupil, and arranged according to the subject-matter in twelve books, takes the attentive neophyte through all the chief phases of his religion. It begins with conversion to the monastic life, and ends with the state of the departed ; enforcing each point by a suitable tale. Some of these anecdotes are part of the stock-in-trade of the mediaeval -moralist, re-edited for the purpose in hand ; others are drawn from the great cycle of Mary-legends. A few of the most elaborate may have an Eastern provenance. But on the whole, they are fresh, abounding in personal references and local colour. To sit in the cloister of Netley or Fountains, and there read the cautionary stories by which Caesarius thus instructed his pupil in the virtues, customs, and outlook proper to the Cistercian life, is veritably to re-enter the religious world in which the great abbeys of St. Bernard's reform arose. It is a world both sensual and supernatural, human and austere ; unruffled in its acceptance of grossness on the one hand, and of holiness upon the other, and even remembering —what we always prefer to forget—the possibility of their co-existence in one soul.
If the sections devoted to temptations, demons, and dreams are representative, the psycho-analyst who regretted that she bad missed the opportunity of helping St. Paul to solve his conflicts would have found plenty to do in the convents of the thirteenth 'century' : she would have ready her explanations for many of the remarkable experiences which the Monk and the Novice naturally refer to the direct action of devils, or visit- ations of God. The stones of the abbey and its visible popu- lation are not more actual to the author than the thickly peopled supernatural world in which it stands. We may think the monastic career gave little scope ; but to its inhabitants, the cloister was a place where anything might happen and any- one be seen. Demons are ever near us, says the Monk ; and nearly all his best tales relate to them. Their presence caused the " sudden horror " which the Novice sometimes experienced in choir. Flocks of small ones flitted about the church ; but looking at them was bad for the eyes. On the other hand, angels assisted at the offices. Saints ministered to the sick. The Blessed Virgin herself walked through the dormitory, blessing the sleepers ; whilst carefully avoiding the monk who had committed the indelicacy of unbuttoning his tunic before going to bed. The images in the church became charged with life, and even dealt shrewd blows at those who offended them—which, as the Novice most justly observed, "astonishes me far more than the speech of Balaam's ass." But the Monk was ready with an explanation calculated to nip scepticism in the bud :
" The Spirit of God exists in every creature, both in essence and in power, and to Him nothing is impossible nor miraculous, and He daily works such things, as these in honour of His saints."
Few things annoyed the heavenly power more surely than sleeping in choir ; and a long string of amusing stories—full of priceless information on the details of the monastic routine— shows how sternly they dealt with this sin, and how cleverly their demon enemies encouraged it. Those who suffered from insomnia in the dormitory might still rely on sleeping comfortably in church : and a certain knight even asked whether he might buy the stone against which he was accustomed to lean while praying, to keep at his bedside as a soporific. " The stones of that abbey church,' said anbther appreciative patron, " are softer than any bed in my castle." But, lenient to the aristocracy, Heaven dealt sternly with the drowsiness of the religious ; a favouritism which reappears in its dealings with other frailties of the flesh. Thus a brace of anecdotes, which will be irritating to feminists, tells how the Blessed Virgin lured a young knight from unlawful love by giving him a kiss ; but delivered a nun from the same temptation by the less attractive method of a box on the ears.
" NOVICE. The male sex ought indeed to be kindled with love for Our Lady, seeing that she put away the temptation of the knight by kissing him ; and that of the nun by smiting her in the face, though the will of both was equally evil and perverse.
" MONK. For by this she shows, not only that she does not abhor our sex, but also that she cares equally for women. In truth it seems metre fitting that a mistress should chastise her erring maid-servant rather than serving-man.
" NOVICE. I like your explanation."
So do we. EVELYN UNDERHILL.
Previous page
