Susanna Winkworth (trans.) · 20 of 47

Introductory Notice Respecting Tauler’s Life and Times · Part 5

Up to 1367, Nicolas and his companions dwelt in a “city in the Oberland,” most likely Basle; but in that year, finding it “not helpful” “to live among the common people,” they determined on retiring into utter seclusion; principally, no doubt, in order to carry on their work unwatched and undisturbed. In accordance with a dream, as they tell us, which commanded them to take their black dog for a guide, they fixed on a site high up on a mountain, far away from any human habitation. This mountain was situated in the dominions of the Duke of Austria, and for two leagues round there was no town. A messenger whom they sent to the Duke, to request his permission to settle here, was taken prisoner in the wars then raging in those countries, and a year had elapsed before they were able to obtain his release. He, however, then brought back the required permission, and they began to build their house, in which each was to have his own spacious apartment, and there were also to be chambers for the reception of foreign brethren as guests; but they were prevented from finishing the edifice, by the political disturbances in the neighbourhood, so that it remained at a standstill for seven years, and the “Friends” gave up all idea of completing it.

The political and ecclesiastical feuds by which the Papal court was distracted excited a lively but melancholy interest in Nicolas, who constantly predicts in his letters that they must bring down still heavier judgments at God’s hand than even those which had already visited the world; but when, after his long residence in Avignon, Gregory XI. returned to Rome in 1376, a ray of hope that it might yet be possible to restore unity and concord to the afflicted Church seems to have dawned upon his mind, and he felt called on to make a personal effort to influence the Pope himself. Accordingly, as we learn from a letter to Henry von Wolfach, in the February of 1377 it was resolved by the “Friends” that Nicolas and the Jurist should repair to Rome; the Jew, John, offered to raise funds to defray the expenses of the journey from among his relatives,—Jews who harboured a secret inclination towards Christianity. The severity of the Alpine winter and an attack of illness which befell Nicolas, now above seventy years of age, caused the journey to be postponed till the end of March. I extract from the account of the “Friends of God” given in Rulman Merswin’s Briefbuch the following narrative of their mission and its results: “And when they came to Rome, the Layman (Rulman’s secret friend) made inquiry after a Roman whom he had known a long time before, and found him yet living. And this Roman received the two ‘Friends of God’ in a very friendly fashion, and would take no denial, but they, with their servants, and horses, and carriages, must lodge with him so long as their affairs kept them in Rome; and he entertained them most courteously with all manner of good cheer. Then he said to the Layman: ‘Methinks it is somewhat strange that thou in thine old age shouldst come to court from such a distant land, unless it be upon some urgent occasion.’ Then the Layman answered: ‘So it is: we must speak to our Holy Father upon very weighty affairs.’ Then said the Roman: ‘I shall be able to bring you into his presence, for I am very familiar with him, and often dine at his table.’ And he procured that the Pope should give them a privy hearing on the third day after. . . So they came into the presence of Pope Gregory, and the Jurist spoke to him in Latin, and the Layman in Italian, since he could not speak Latin, and said, among much other discourse: ‘Holy Father, there be many grievous and heinous crimes wrought throughout Christendom by all degrees of men, whereby God’s anger is greatly provoked; thou oughtest to consider how to put an end to these evils.’ But he answered: ‘I have no power to amend matters.’ Then they told him of his own secret faults, which had been revealed to them of God by certain evident tokens, and said, ‘Holy Father, know of a truth, that if you do not put away your evil doings and utterly amend your ways, you shall die within a year,’ as also came to pass. When the Pope heard these words of rebuke, he was enraged beyond measure; but they answered and said: ‘Holy Father, take us captive, and if we cannot give you evident tokens, then kill us and do what you will with us.’ . . . And when they declared to him these tokens, he rose up from his throne, and embraced them and kissed them on the mouth, and said to the Layman, ‘Let us talk together in Italian, since thou canst not speak Latin.’ And they had much loving discourse together; and among other things the Pope said, ‘Could you tell the Emperor as much as you have told me, you would indeed do a good service to Christendom.’ And afterwards the Pope prayed the two ‘Friends of God’ that they should stay with him in Rome, and he offered to provide them all things needful, and also to follow their counsel. But they answered, ‘Holy Father, suffer us to return home; and we will be at all times obedient to come if you send for us. For we seek no earthly gain, nor have we come hither for the sake of such; we seek only God’s glory and the welfare of Christendom above all the perishable gifts of this present time.’ Then he inquired of them where their home might be; and when they said, ‘We have long dwelt in such a town,’ he marvelled that such ‘Friends of God’ should dwell among the common people. Thereupon they told him [all that had happened], and how they had been hindered in their building. Then the Pope would have given them a bishopric and other revenues and grants, but they would not have them. . . . [But the Pope gave them letters recommending their cause to the Bishop and clergy of their diocese.] Now when these two dear ‘Friends of God’ had settled their affairs with the Pope, and desired to depart from Rome, their host would not suffer them to pay for anything that they had had in his house . . . and moreover gave the layman a good ambling horse instead of the heavy carriage in which he had come, saying that a soft-paced horse would be much easier for him to ride over the high mountains than the carriage, seeing that he was old and weakly. Now afterward the Pope was unmindful of God’s message, and obeyed it not, and died that same year as they had prophesied—to wit, about the fourth week in Lent, 1378.”

On returning to their mountain, they found that the Bishop of their diocese was sojourning in a city thirteen leagues distant. It was resolved that the two who had been with the Pope should ride with his letter to the Bishop to entreat aid for the completion of their house. The prelate received them favourably, and gave them letters to the clergy of the town that lay nearest to their estate. On this, all the five brethren repaired thither, where the priests read from the pulpit the letters of recommendation which they had brought from the Pope and the Bishop. The magistrates also took up their cause, promising to send them armed men to protect their settlement in time of disturbance, and offering them besides a house in the town for a temporary abode, and in which they could also take refuge if necessary; and further sent them on leaving a complimentary present of fish and wine by the hand of their officers. Three foreign brethren, who had for some time cherished the wish to be received into their society, made over to them the whole of their property, in order to finish the house and erect the church. Thus aided, the little band were at length able to settle down in the home they had chosen. But, as far as we can gather from the obscure traces of their subsequent history, it does not appear that they were allowed to enjoy for more than a few years the retreat for which they had sighed so long.

In the same year (1377), Nicolas learns from several foreign “Friends of God” that the Church is on the point of falling into great peril, doubtless from the growing discord which threatened all the convulsions of anarchy; and he foresees that things may come to pass which would constrain the “Friends of God” to separate and divide themselves over the world; but in the meantime their part is to remain in concealment till “God shall do something, we know not what as yet.” Meanwhile he entreats the prayers of his friends, for they are greatly troubled in mind, and know not what will come of it. It is evident from such dark hints as these that Nicolas and his friends now began to contemplate the possibility of their duty calling them to use more public means of influence than the private, though by no means inactive or inefficient, line of conduct they had hitherto pursued. They must have foreseen the painful collision that was impending between their deep reverence for the outward authority of the Church and the inward authority of the indwelling light. Neither can they have been without forebodings of the martyr’s doom, which actually befell all those of whose fate any traces are left; though we may well believe, from all we know of them, that this would occasion them far less anxiety and distress than the question whether they were acting most for the interests of the Church by continuing their present silent and therefore undisturbed efforts to influence the spiritual leaders of the people; or by going out among the people themselves, to call them to repentance, and proclaim doctrines which, however true, might unsettle the foundations of their traditional belief;—the difficulty and perplexity which in many ages meets and torments minds of the prophetic order.

In the following year, the great schism that had been dimly foretold, broke out, and for forty years the church was divided between two heads; Urban VI. was elected at Rome, under the influence of terror at the violence of the insurgent mob; and soon after, in subservience to the French party, Clement VII. et Fondi, who immediately hastened to Avignon. When these tidings reached the “Friends of God,” it seemed to them that the time was come when the threatened judgments of God were about to burst over the world. It was, indeed, intelligence fitted to shake all hearts, for, as the brethren of Gruenen-Worth write: “After God has been warning the world for these forty years past, by deadly diseases and earthquakes, famines, and a wild, masterless folk, laying waste many lands, He is now sending us a plague that is worse than all the rest, because it attacks our faith; namely, the dissensions of Christendom, in which all the wisdom of nature, of Scripture, and of the grace of the Holy Spirit is so utterly dried up and extinct, that all our learned doctors and wise priests have lost their way, and know not which to choose of these two Popes, that they may help to bring back unity to Christendom, and peace to the See of Rome.” Their Master wished in this perplexity to repair for counsel to the “Friends of God,” but Nicolas forbade him, saying: “Have you not the Holy Scripture? Are you not a professor in the chair? Why should you ask counsel from the creature? Stop, and wait till God Himself shall constrain you to come to us. It is not yet time for us to reveal ourselves; but it may soon come to pass that we slip from our covert, to be scattered abroad over the world, and if so, I shall come to Strasburg and make myself known to you.”

It is, however, evident that the “Friends of God,” though concealed, were by no means passive at this time; what special plans they cherished are unknown, but that they had such is clear from all their proceedings. So early as November 1377, Nicolas had been with the priest, John, in Metz, on some business with which we are not acquainted. During 1378, much consultation by means of messengers and letters must have taken place, for on the 17th of March, in the following year, Nicolas (as he relates in a letter to Henry von Wolfach), with seven other brethren, met in some wild place high up among the mountains, near a chapel hewn out in a rock, close to which a priest dwelt with two young brethren in a little hermitage. Four out of the seven were laymen, the other three ordained priests. Nicolas, whether from humility or not, speaks of himself as one of the least among them. From his letter it would seem that the chief purpose of this meeting was united prayer to God, to avert the “dreadful storm” that was menacing the Christian world, that there might be space left for amendment. A week was devoted to these supplications; every afternoon the brethren went out into the forest, and sat down “beside a fair brook,” to converse upon the matters on which they had come hither. At length, on the last day, while thus assembled, a storm of wind came on, followed by a thick darkness, which they took for a work of the evil spirits. After the storm had lasted an hour, there came a pleasant light, and the sweet voice of an invisible angel announced to them that God had heard their prayer, and stayed his chastisements for a year; but when this was ended, they should entreat Him no more, for the Father would no longer delay to take vengeance on the despisers of His Son. After this the “Friends of God” returned back again each to his own place. Respecting the course they resolved to pursue, all that we can make out from the vague hints in the letters of Nicolas is, that they interpreted the promise of the angel to mean that they were to wait a year longer before quitting their concealment and taking an open and active part in the affairs of the world; the only thing that is distinctly stated is, that it was resolved once more to try the effect of personal remonstrances with the Pope. Nicolas himself was entrusted with this mission, which, however, from some unknown cause, was not carried out. Meanwhile, according to the intelligence received from the brethren in foreign parts respecting the progress of the schism, affairs were assuming a more and more gloomy aspect; the confusion and perplexity occasioned by the presence of two Popes was continually increasing; the Christian world was splitting into two parties; even the secular authority was in danger of disruption and subversion. The time drew nearer and nearer when Nicolas believed himself called on to begin to work among the common people; already, in June 1379, he calls on the Strasburg Master to warn the people in his sermons, and hold up before them the testimonies of Scripture concerning their duties in such a crisis.

As the end of the year approached, during which the “Friends of God” were to wait, they agreed to hold another meeting. All the accounts relating to this conference (the latest distinctly recorded intelligence we have respecting this extraordinary band of associates), are so mixed up with the symbolical and the marvellous, that it is extremely difficult to make out the real facts of the case. According to the narrative given by Nicolas to Rulman Merswin, he, with twelve other “Friends of God,” were at Christmas 1379 warned by dreams to assemble together on the following Holy Thursday, at the same place where the seven brethren had met the year before. So early as February some of the foreign brethren arrived at the abode of Nicolas: one from the country of the “Lords of Meiglon,” (probably Milan); two from Hungary, whom he had known thirty years before; one from Genoa, a rich burgher, with whom Nicolas was not previously acquainted. On Holy Thursday, the 22nd of March, they met at the little chapel in the rock, and, after receiving the sacrament on Good Friday morning, repaired, as before, to the wood, and sat down beside the stream to begin their deliberations. What passed during these conferences is only related in the form of marvellous visions and fantastic occurrences. After tempests and diabolical apparitions, a bright light surrounds the place, and an invisible speaker tells them that the impending plagues shall be stayed for three years longer, on condition of their obeying the injunctions contained in a letter which thereupon drops down in their midst. These commands are somewhat mysterious: the “Friends of God” are to withdraw from their ordinary communications with the world, except in the case of those who desire their counsel; to receive the sacrament three times a week, &c.; and after three years they shall receive further commands from God. After they have declared their readiness to obey the letter, they are told by the same voice to light a fire, and throw it in. Instead of burning, it rises up in the fire, a flash of lightning meets the flame, and catches up fire and letter together to heaven, after which there is nothing more to be seen; and the brethren depart to their respective homes. The brethren in the Oberland commence their period of retreat at Whitsuntide, after a high mass has been performed by the priest John in their newly-finished church. Nicolas writes beforehand to Rulman Merswin releasing him from his obedience, and recommending him to take the Master Henry von Wolfach for a confessor in his stead. To the latter, who had again applied to know what course the “Friends of God” meant to take with regard to the rival Popes, Nicolas replies with his usual caution, that the Brethren of St. John could not regulate their conduct in these matters by that of the “Friends of God;” for they were bound to obey the dictates of their superiors in the Order, while the latter had received many privileges from Pope Gregory, and were, moreover, only subject to their Bishop, who did not press them for a decision.

It is certainly very difficult to know in what light to regard the marvellous accounts that meet us in the writings of Rulman and Nicolas. Some of them seem to be simply symbolical; for it is clear that they were in the habit of presenting their views of human affairs under the form of an allegory, supposed to be seen in a vision or dream, just as Bunyan does in his “Pilgrim’s Progress.” This is the case with Rulman’s Book of the Nine Rocks, Christiana Ebner’s vision of the Closed Cathedral, and some unimportant visions occurring in the letters of Nicolas. But the case is different when wonders are related, as far as we can see, as simple matters of fact. That, however, the “Friends of God” expected, and so were ready to receive without much hesitation as to their reality, not only direct spiritual communications from the Divine Being, but also miraculous interpositions in physical things, is perfectly clear; and thus they were undoubtedly open to all the self-deception in these matters which may arise from intense emotion and mental excitement acting on frames disordered by asceticism. Swoons under the pressure of religious emotion are with them, as with the Methodists of the last century, a matter of continual occurrence; and with them, as with the early Methodists, seem to have been not unfrequently the crisis of a state of overwrought physical and mental excitement, after which they regained a calmer and healthier condition both of body and mind, with an addition of spiritual experience and enlightenment. Such an occurrence as a letter falling from heaven presents much greater difficulties. It is possible that Nicolas may have intended the whole story rather as an allegory than as matter of fact; if he regarded it in the latter light, it must have been the result either of a terribly over-strained imagination, or of fraud on the part of some unknown person. But to suppose that a man of so much simple holiness and practical wisdom as Nicolas appears to us, should have taken part in juggling tricks of such dreadful impiety in order to persuade his associates that the course he judged best was prescribed to them by Heaven, is, I confess, a larger demand upon my powers of credence than they are able to meet. Moreover, we must judge these accounts by the age in which they were produced,—an age when the mental food of the pious laity was the life of St. Francis with his five wounds and blasphemous “conformities” to the life of our Lord, and other works of a similar nature. And it must be remembered that the leaders of this party—Nicolas, Rulman, John,—were laymen whose not large stock of erudition was self-acquired, comparatively late in life. In the writings of the scholar Tauler (though, in common with all his contemporaries, he believes in ghosts and heavenly visions) we find scarcely a trace of the fanatical credulity that meets us in the letters of these lay friends of his, if we are to take their statements as literal and not symbolical representations of fact. Even so doing, however, if we compare them with the stories contained in the staple religious literature of the day, or even in the life of Suso, Tauler’s companion and friend, Nicolas and his friends, wild as they may seem to us rational Protestants, will appear scarcely to leave the regions of sober common sense; and it is remarkable that, in most of the practical questions that arise with regard to self-discipline, he takes the moderate and judicious side.

Whatever interpretation, however, we may be inclined to put upon the marvellous circumstances attending the above-mentioned conference, it seems tolerably clear that the three years’ so-called seclusion of the “Friends of God” was regarded by them as a time of preparation for their public work, when they should be “scattered abroad over Christendom;” and that by their retirement, they were breaking the ties that bound them to those who had hitherto depended on them for guidance, and accustoming them to act for themselves against a time when they should no longer have their wonted counsellors at hand. Probably, too, the brethren took this course partly from the desire that their spiritual children should not be involved in the persecutions which they could not but perceive to threaten themselves, but might continue to work for the cause of true religion in their respective spheres, unhindered by the suspicions of heresy, which any known connexion with the “Friends of God” would have brought upon them. Not that there is any sign of the “Friends of God” having been heretical in point of dogma; it was rather the remarkable freedom with which they criticized the conduct both of the spiritual and temporal authorities that was likely to bring them into trouble. Thus, in one of their meetings just before their retreat, the brother who had been a Jurist says, that if offices in Church and State were conferred in accordance with God’s law, neither Urban nor Clement deserved to be Pope; the former had been appointed by the Roman mob through violent means, and the latter was now defending himself by similar acts of violence, which was contrary to justice and God’s order. So likewise, the King of Rome had obtained the crown after a shameful fashion (1376), for his father had bought the votes of the electors with gold; how the electors could reconcile it with their oath to choose an inexperienced boy for their king, God only knew; with the subjects matters did not stand much better: they obeyed their rulers only so long as it served their own interests to do so; a godly life was almost extinct, everywhere prevailed nought but the striving after riches and pleasures. This passage throws much light on the views and aims of the “Friends of God,” and enables us to form an idea of what must have been the frequent topics of discussion among them. With the cessation of the correspondence between Nicolas and Rulman Merswin, ceases our only source of information about the “Friends of God.” Their term of waiting expired on the 25th March 1383; and since we know, from contemporary history, that the course of events, instead of bringing brighter prospects, grew ever darker and more threatening, we seem justified in concluding that they now believed the time to have arrived for them “to go out into the five ends of the world,” and work for Christ. Most likely they went forth as preachers of repentance, for there occur in the letters of Nicolas frequent comparisons of the present state of the world to that of Nineveh, and hints that they may have to act the part of Jonah. But where, and how long they did so, is wrapt in utter darkness. As far as we can learn, Providence did not see fit to bless their preaching like that of Jonah, and, to human eyes, their enterprise was a failure. For all we actually know respecting their subsequent history is, that in 1393 a certain Martin von Mayence, a Benedictine monk of Reichenau, in the diocese of Constance, who is called in the acts of his trial a disciple of Nicolas of Basle and a “Friend of God,” was burnt at Cologne, after the same fate had befallen some other “Friends of God,” a short time before, at Heidelberg. Active researches were made after Nicolas, but as he had concealed himself from his friends, so for a long time he was able to elude the efforts of his persecutors. At length, on a journey which he had undertaken into France, in order to diffuse his doctrines, accompanied by two of his disciples, James and John (the latter most likely the converted Jew who always appears as his bosom friend), he fell into the hands of the Inquisitors at Vienne, in the diocese of Poitiers. He was brought to trial, and persisted firmly and publicly in his heresies, the most “audacious” of which seems to have been that he pretended to “know that he was in Christ, and Christ in him.” He was therefore delivered over to the secular power, and perished in the flames, together with his two disciples, who refused to be parted from him.

Since, in the trial of Martin of Mayence, Nicolas is spoken of as still living, his death most likely occurred subsequently to that date, but cannot have taken place much later, as he must then have been near ninety years of age. Even before this time, the Strasburg brethren had lost all trace of the “Friends of God,” and their frequent attempts to discover them had proved utterly unavailing; no doubt, because the convent which they sought to find was already deserted, and its inmates, whose names they had never known, were scattered abroad in fulfilment of their vocation. That which appears to have formed the chief ground of their persecution, was their effort to free the people from the tyranny of the clergy, and their claiming for every one enlightened by God the right to teach,—a claim antagonistic to the inmost essence of the Romish Church. And if their teaching failed to effect a wide reformation because it was mingled with some of the great errors of Rome, and in place of priestly authority over men’s consciences set up that of their brethren, whose inspiration was often not less doubtful, yet we cannot but recognize in it the germs of the true freedom of the Gospel, as well as the great and all-essential truth that the Christian life does not consist in outward works, but in the inward union of the spirit with God.