SAINT ELIZABETHA Little German Schoolgirl of the Middle Ages
A Little German Schoolgirl of the Middle Ages
Has not Herr Walther,[6]good-humouredly turning the laugh against himself, advised all those who suffer from earache to stay away from the Court of Thuringia? For my part I can never read his “Spruch”:—“Swer in den ôren siech von ungesûhte sî,” without feeling a most realistic discomfort at the din, made even in the poetry (and at 700 years’ distance!) by the alternating trains of “coming and parting guests,” for whom Landgraf Hermann’s undiscriminating hospitality had equal “welcome and speeding”; and without endorsing Herr Wolfram’s[7]regret that no Kaye, the boorish Seneschal of King Arthur’s Court,held office in the Wartburg, to keep the “good and bad” in their respective places.
How intolerable the ceaseless din could be, even to one who was born in the midst of it, a little boy was dolorously feeling on a certain summer’s evening of the year 1211. The noise seemed worse than usual from the impression he had (which nobody took the slightest trouble, alas! to remove), that he was hopelessly “out of it.” When, braving the dragon which kept terrible guard over King Ortnit, murdered in his sleep (a warning, in high relief over the tower gate, to watchmen too fond of sleep), he had climbed the rough spiral staircase to the keep, he had found no welcome from the warder, intent on scanning the horizon for an eagerly expected messenger. Shouts, that sounded not all too sober, from the House of the Muleteers, warned him offtheirpremises. As for the kitchen—with the roaring of fires, and the creaking of spits, and the cursing of cooks and scullions, and the wailing of imprisoned fowl, awaiting execution under the huge table—that was Inferno! As the little boy passed the great stone steps that led to the entrance of the Palas, he put his hands in his ears; for the door of the Saal stood open, and amidst the gambols of gleemen, and the notes of everymusical instrument known to the period—flageolet, guitar, organistrum, bagpipe, psaltery, tabor, lute, sackbut, rebeck and gigue—Landgraf Hermann was reminding guests (who needed small reminder) that, if ever there was an excuse for emptying flagons, it was to-day, when the little Hungarian Princess, the betrothed of his son and heir, Hermann, was due to arrive at her German home.
In the Armourers’ House our little boy had been frankly snubbed; and big brother, Hermann, whom he found in it (made much of as the hero of the day), being measured, if you please, for a suit of armour (which he supposed he would needverysoon now), had given him the brutal advice to go back to Agnes, and Heinrich, and Conrad in the nursery—and not be forcing his company on his elders.
And then, suddenly, things had changed. As he turned out of the Armourers’ smithy, with Hermann’s mocking laugh in his ears, he heard his own name called once or twice. His mother had sent one of her women in search of him, and he was to come at once to the women’s apartments.
It certainly was a comfort to be wanted somewhere, and young Ludwig made about two steps of the staircase which led to thelong open gallery on the side of the great courtyard. He lingered a little, though, on the gallery, for the sense of beauty and comfort which one had to starve somewhat in mediæval castles found satisfaction here. Sweet-scented flowers grew in boxes in the spaces between the charming double columns, which even to-day are the Wartburg’s chief architectural beauty. In gilded cages beneath the open arches were the little song-birds his mother loved. On the inside wall were painted tender domestic scenes from the Bible. He had a dim but very pleasant consciousness, as he passed them by, that the figures were smiling out on him the welcome of old friends. And as he paused for a moment at the door of his mother’s room, and looked back along the gallery, he noticed that the last rays of the sun were filling it, and the birds were singing, and some of the flowers, that had gone to sleep, had wakened up again.
But all this did not prepare him for what he found when he pushed open the door, and stood on the threshold of the great vaulted chamber, where his mother awaited him.
A feast of colour and light! Instead of the golden evening rays, here was the soft radiance of hundreds of waxen tapers. Thehinged wooden shutters had been let down over the unglazed window spaces, and night was summoned hither before her time. From the quartered arches of the painted roof hung chandeliers of enamelled bronze, of the admirable workmanship of the period, and each of them was laden with lights. In long rows between the columns on which the roof rested stood tall candle-sticks with great “king-candles” burning in them. On the hearth flamed a fire of scented wood, and the light of candles and leaping fire made wonderful play with the glowing colours of the painted ceilings, and the splendid tapestry on the walls.
“Come hither, fair son.”
Young Ludwig came over the flower-strewn floor, between columns of coloured marble and “king-candles,” his handsome, fair head held high. In his page’s dress of crimson, he fitted in well with the rest of the scene. So did his mother, standing in the midst of her maidens, stately and beautiful in her mantle, with its shimmering embroideries, its long train, and breast fastening of regal pearls. She held out a little white hand to him, and he kissed it, kneeling on one knee. Then, with a sudden impulse, as if the mother claimed her rights as well as the princess, she stooped down tohim, moved aside her wimple, and laid his firm young cheek against her own. She left her hand in his, while he rose from his knees, and led him with it to the top of the chamber.
“Look, fair son, and tell me what you see.”
For a moment Ludwig was so astonished at what he saw that he could not speak. Then he turned to his mother with a question: “Who worked the tapestry? And how doIcome to be standing in the Landgraf’s robes, high on the Wartburg, with the valley and the town of Eisenach far beneath me, and a great star hanging low from the sky above my head?”
His mother answered one part of his question: “The ‘Wise Nun’ in thy Father’s Convent of Eisenach has wrought it,” she said, and then stopped suddenly, and led him to the lateral wall.
“This, too, hath the wise nun wrought?” he asked in growing astonishment. For the tapestry on this wall depicted a scene which had occurred in the Wartburg four years previously, with a fidelity which seemed impossible to anyone but an eye-witness.
It was the celebrated “War of the Poets” on the Wartburg—the “Wartburgkrieg”—thememory of which is as fresh to-day as when young Ludwig looked on the “Wise Nun’s” tapestry, and saw it pictured in glowing colours and wealth of detail on the canvas.
There on the “Minstrels’ Gallery” were the seats of Duke Hermann and Duchess Sophia. The Landgräfin had risen from hers, and with the folds of her mantle was covering a terror-stricken suppliant. In the Minstrel’s Hall, a step or two beneath the Gallery, were the other contestants. Ludwig recognises each of the angry faces that are turned towards the fugitive—Wolfram von Eschenbach, Walther von der Vogelweide, Heinrich von Zweten, and Heinrich Schreiber. A man, with the instruments of the executioner in his hand to label him for the spectator, is starting forward, but the quick movement is arrested by someone he sees in the opening door—a white-haired, venerable man, with a long beard.
“It is Klingsohr, the Wise Man from Hungary, who has come just in time to save the life of Heinrich von Ofterdingen,” says Ludwig, while his mother nodded confirmation. Young Ludwig passed on.
Here was the white-haired man again—in a garden this time before one of the littletables which have been in German inn-gardens since first such things were, and will be, until they are no more. He has risen from the table and is scanning the skies—and, behold! very low in them is hanging the star which shines about Ludwig’s own head in the piece of tapestry opposite. From the other tables, men in the knightly garb of peace, have risen likewise, neglecting their chess, and draughts, and dice, and drinking flagons, to follow the direction of the old man’s pointing arm.
On the left wall another many-figured scene. A king and queen on their thrones in the midst of a full and splendid court. Between them, the wonderful star is poised; and at their feet are kneeling ambassadors, whom Ludwig recognises as those sent from his father’s court, to ask the hand of the little Hungarian Princess (whose birth had been announced to him by Klingsohr) for his eldest son, Hermann.
“How wonderful it is,” said Ludwig, “but why did the ‘Wise Nun,’ so exact in all else, make the mistake of clothing me in the Landgraf’s robes, instead of Hermann?”
Nobody answered, for a peal from the Berchfrid,[8]that rang through every cornerof the huge enclosure on the Wartburg, made its way into the women’s apartments, and told those who waited there that they need wait no more. The serving women were busy with their lady’s mantle, and presently the hum of a merry little song, and the ring of a martial (and not quite steady) step was heard along the gallery, and Duke Hermann, somewhat flushed from his mighty potations, but excellently-humoured, came into the “kemenate.”
“Art ready to meet thy daughter-in-law, Frau Landgräfin?” he said, jocularly. “If so, there is no time to be lost. What, Ludwig, still at thy mother’s girdle? It fears me much that we shall never make a sturdy drinker and fighter of thee, to keep thy father in countenance.”
Over Duchess Sophia’s fine face a shadow fell. She loved this passionate Lord of hers, with all his faults and all his weaknesses. But it was the dearest prayer of her soul to preserve her sons from following the path he trod. As much as lay in her power, she strove to keep them away from the motley company which held revel in the hall of the main building. But Hermann had speedily emancipated himself. “The lust of the eyes, the delight of the flesh, and the prideof life,” had put their fascination on him as soon as he had got clear of the women’s apartments. Ludwig was different. A certain asceticism, answering her own, had early revealed itself in his character. A strength of purpose, a force of self-restraint, a natural attitude of noble aloofness from all that seemed unworthy, made her build high hopes on Ludwig. And as for Hermann, who knew what blessings might be brought him by this child-bride from Hungary, whose birth had been accompanied by such wonders, who had already won the gladness of peace for her own land?
Joyfully, then, she went forth to meet her. Outside on the gallery torches burned. The great courtyard was full of light and movement, the stamping of horses, the shouting of orders, snatches of laughter and song. She heard a whisper from Ludwig: “May I be your escort, Lady Mother?” and answered with a pressure of the hand. A groom brought her horse, and Ludwig lifted her from the mounting-stone at the bottom of the staircase, on to the bench-like seat, which, for the ladies of the thirteenth century, took the place of a saddle. Her husband and Hermann were already mounted; Ludwig, as his mother’s chosen squire, was at her horse’s head. So theyrode, with a long train of knights, and ladies, and squires, and pages, behind them, out of the great court into the Vorburg, and then through the triple gates of the entrance tower, out over the lowered drawbridge, and so to the narrow and dangerous path which led to the plain below. So narrow was the path that they could but ride in single file with a torch-bearer beside each rider to light the way for them. In the depths below them, Eisenach lay, a great blazing jewel in the dark valley. All sorts of summer-night scents came to them from the sloping woods on either side. There was no darkness in the sky, only a deep blue, cut by exquisite star-forms. In the west was a thin curve of a very young moon. Landgraf Hermann began to hum a “Lied” of Walther’s, the “Praise of Summer”—“Swie wol der heide ir manicvaltiu varwe stât,” “How well the painted heath becomes its wealth of summer bloom”—and presently a boy’s soprano took it up, and to wood, and heath, and meadow were being revealed their own sweet loveliness, under the tender light of a poet’s longing, wistful yet passionless, like that of the thin young moon herself!
So those rode down from the Wartburg,who went forth from it to meet the King’s Daughter.
The gates of Eisenach opened to their trumpeter, and through the torch-lit streets they rode to the inn beside Saint George’s Gate, where Michael Hellgreff had had Klingsohr to guest, what time he saw the Star hang low in the mystic East. On their way, they passed groups of burghers and their dames, all in their Sunday best, sitting on benches under the overhanging stories of their gabled, wooden houses, who left off gossiping to cheer their Sovereigns and the handsome young bridegroom. Under the linden on the green, country lads and lasses, in the fine clothes which raised Neidhart’s bile, were dancing a merry “Springtanz,” to the infinite delight of the Court Pages and the dainty scorn of the Court Ladies. They shouted their “Heil” as the Ducal pair passed, but never lost a step. The market-place was almost impassable, so dense were the throngs that crowded round the roasting ox, and the fountain that played wine.
There were two people in the ducal procession who were not sorry to leave the uproar of the streets, and seek the quiet of Master Hellgreff’s garden. These were the Landgräfin and her second son. As for theLandgraf and Hermann, they and the Knights, and Squires, and Pages were out in the street again directly, and the ladies showed so evident a desire to follow them, and see all the gay doings, that the Landgräfin summoned back the Squires and put her ladies in their charge, and sent them forth.
But Ludwig and his mother had their own joy, sitting in the scented, dark garden, into which the gay noises of the streets came, robbed of their harshness, with the stars shining down on them, and the young moon over the woods, while they waited for the trumpet to sound at the gate.
It came at last, and Duchess Sophia hastened to the door of the inn, to be joined there by her Lord and Hermann, as had been agreed. As the Ducal tableau arranged itself, there was a moment’s silence, as if a whole people were holding its breath in expectation. It was broken by the noise of wheels, and a carriage passed through the towered gate, and stopped before the Hellgreff Inn. Two Knights, who rode on either side of it, dismounted, amid the frantic cheers of the by-standers, and knelt to kiss in turn the hand of the Landgraf and the Landgräfin. Then they turned to the carriage, wherein a lady wasstanding up, with a little sleeping girl in her arms. But the Landgräfin could wait no longer. Over the muddy street she went, in defiance of all etiquette, and took the little maid, warm and lovely with sleep, from the hands of Frau Bertha, and carried her to her Lord.
Then the joy of the people got beyond all bounds. And it was their shouts of welcome that made the little four-year-old bride open her eyes at last—on her German home.
It was astonishing how soon she really seemed to make it her home. Kind Duchess Sophia, who had watched the whole first night by the little bride’s silver cradle, in the Inn at Eisenach, looked carefully, in the days that followed their return to the Wartburg, for a sign of home-sickness. But, except that the child’s great dark eyes would sometimes fill with tears when they rested on Frau Bertha, she could find none. Little princesses are early schooled to stoicism, and before the tiny Hungarian’s “Königstochter,” left her father and mother, she had received lessons which,young as she was, she was not too young to understand.
So, after a time, she became, to all intents and purposes, a little German girl, as much one of the family as Agnes, or Heinrich, or Conrad, who shared the Kinderstube with her. She was more in awe of Hermann than anybody else; for Hermann had realised that, instead of its adding to his “manliness,” it made him rather ridiculous to be the “Bräutigam” of a mere baby like that—and his behaviour showed it. For Ludwig, on the contrary, she developed a shy friendship, which went straight to the boy’s chivalrous heart, and made her, in a manner, dearer to him than his blood-sister Agnes. For the rest, the little maid did not often see either Hermann or Ludwig, who were most of the day with their governor serving the first grade of their apprenticeship to the great profession of knighthood.
A mediæval nursery was a merry place, and mediæval children had nothing to envy their modern brothers and sisters, whether in the matter of toys or games. A lover of the romantic Middle Ages, Zingerle, in his wanderings through the Märchenwald of Middle High German poetry, or over the more prosaic lands ploughed by the MiddleHigh German Moralists and “Didaktiker”—Thomasin von Zirclarie, Freidank, Hugo von Trimberg, and others—has found many a happy group of children, and gathered themselves and their games into a very charming book: “Das deutsche Kinderspiel im Mittelalter.” With the aid of it, we can easily reconstruct the life led by little Elizabeth in her nursery at the end of the “Kemenate” (women’s apartments).
While she and Agnes played with their dolls (“tocken”), or kept house with their toy cooking-vessels, Heinrich and Conrad jousted rather noisily on hobby horses, or, failing these, on two mettlesome steeds, which, outside the nursery, would have been taken for sticks. Nurse (“amme”) was as important a personage then as now, and had as many rôles to fill. Sometimes she presided over tourneys where wooden swords wrought frightful havoc on wooden shields. If anybody came out of the combat with bruised knee or finger, it was hers to dress the warrior’s wound—and, maybe, make it well again with kisses. At the tourneys where she presided there were nothing but victors. Everybody won the prize of painted egg or apple. (By the way, did you ever notice that the Christ Child of mediæval artists has always anapple in His chubby hand?) Sometimes she went visiting the stately “halls” where Elizabeth and Agnes played Châtelaine, and ate the wonderful things they cooked for her, and inquired about their doll-children, just as nurse does to-day. In a carved wooden box she kept the “best” toys, the birds and animals in coloured clay, or wood, or metal, which were too fine to be played with every day. In the nursery door there was always a hole cut near the ground, just large enough for a tiny dog or a cat to creep through. That, I am sure, was a kind thought of nurse’s. When games got too noisy, and little boys and girls were tiring themselves into crossness, she had a way of gathering them into the shelter of the great fire-place, and telling them the most fascinating stories. Some of the tales that are prime nursery-favourites to-day were told, without a doubt, by her “Amme” to Saint Elizabeth when she was a little girl. “The Seven Wild Swans,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” “Clever Else,” “The Fox and the Geese,” and many, many others. Some of the “Lügenmärchen” (of the kind definitely associated in later years with the name of the immortal Munchhausen) go back equally far. Nobody knows, for instance, how old is the legend of“Schlaraffenland”—“the Land of Cockayne”—of which our Middle Irish “Vision of Mac Conglinghe” is an interesting variant.
Young wits were sharpened by guessing riddles. Here are some Thirteenth Century ones, which Saint Elizabeth may have tried to guess:—
“The Full of the Valley, the Full of the Land,But never the Full of a little girl’s Hand.”
“The Full of the Valley, the Full of the Land,But never the Full of a little girl’s Hand.”
“The Full of the Valley, the Full of the Land,But never the Full of a little girl’s Hand.”
“The Full of the Valley, the Full of the Land,
But never the Full of a little girl’s Hand.”
The answer to that must often have lain before her, making her feel, as she stood in her high window-niche in the Kinderstube of the Wartburg, as if she were looking out from a tall ship on a great sea, beneath which towns, and fields, and woods lay buried, and unseen. For it was the Mist—above which the Wartburg, on its high crag, stood upraised.
Here is another which helped little boys and girls (who would presently be studying their “Comput”) to remember the divisions of time.
In my father’s garden stands atree;(The year).Upon it twelve finebranchessee.(The months).Thirtybirdson every bough;(The days).Eggsenough for each I trow—(The hours).Four-and-twenty in each nest.Hurry up and guess the rest.
In my father’s garden stands atree;(The year).Upon it twelve finebranchessee.(The months).Thirtybirdson every bough;(The days).Eggsenough for each I trow—(The hours).Four-and-twenty in each nest.Hurry up and guess the rest.
In my father’s garden stands atree;(The year).Upon it twelve finebranchessee.(The months).Thirtybirdson every bough;(The days).Eggsenough for each I trow—(The hours).Four-and-twenty in each nest.Hurry up and guess the rest.
In my father’s garden stands atree;
(The year).
Upon it twelve finebranchessee.
(The months).
Thirtybirdson every bough;
(The days).
Eggsenough for each I trow—
(The hours).
Four-and-twenty in each nest.
Hurry up and guess the rest.
Little stammerers and lispers had their tongues exercised in difficult sound combinations, like our “Three grey geese in a green field grazing.” This one is very old, though I give it in a modern form: “Meiner Mutter Magd macht mir mein Mus mit meiner Mutter Mehl.”
The ceremony of “being put to bed” was not very different in mediæval nurseries from what it is to-day. Mediæval children, like their modern counterparts, probably got cross with sleep, and were naughty, andwould notsay their prayers or go to bed. And mediæval nurses had to threaten them with the “Wolf,” or the “Man,” the great bogies of the period; and, when they had captured their small refractory charges, they had to coax them into good humour again with rhymes about their little bare toes, or their ten small fingers, like our “this is the one that went to the market.” One comes across these rhymes in grave books of German erudition with the oddest effect.
Before the child went to sleep, of course, he or she had his or her prayers to say. Even the smallest child had to repeat the “Our Father” and the “Apostles’ Creed.” The “Hail Mary” was learned later. The great preacher, Berthold von Regensburg, says that, if a child of seven can say the Ave Maria, as well as the Pater Noster, and the Credo, “daz ist vil wunderguot,” “better than good,” as we say in Anglo-Irish.
Mediæval children commissioned a bigger troup of angels “to guard their bed” than ours do, who are content with a protector for each corner:—“There are four corners on my bed.” Elizabeth claimed twelve angels when she “laid her down to sleep”: “Two at my head, two by my sides, two at my feet, two to cover me, two to waken me, two to show me the way to the Heavenly Kingdom.”
And, if the mediæval child awoke in the night, there was always the night-lamp burning before the Crucifix, or the picture of the dear Mother, just as it burns in so many Catholic homes to-night!
The joys of child-life in the Middle Ages only really began with the spring. We who have, in our comfortable houses, learned to rob winter of his terrors, have paid theprice by losing much of that joy in the spring, which is so persistent a note in Middle High German poetry. One must realise how dreary the winter must have been in those mediæval castles to realise the “Wonne des Frühlings”—for mediæval souls—the children’s especially. Think of being shut up in semi-darkness all the winter; for there was no glass in the windows, and if the storms raged (and how they must have raged round the Wartburg!) there was nothing for it but to pull down the heavy wooden shutters, and crouch round the fire for light, and heat, and comfort. And sometimes the fire smoked, for mediæval chimneys did not “draw” well; and how little eyes must have smarted, and young nerves suffered! The heavy clothes, too, one had to wear in those cold draughty rooms must have been a torture to little bodies. No wonder they greeted the spring as the “Freudenzeit.” There was a great ceremony when they went out into the spring woods in search of the first violet. The coming of swallow and stork was treated as a great event. Many games, too, “came in” with the spring; and if a little boy of to-day could, by any chance, have a chat with a little boy of the Middle Ages, he would find that the samerigid convention which makes it impossible for a self-respecting lad to play marbles, when “it is the time” for spinning tops, or to spin tops when “it is the time” for rolling hoops, ruled in the Middle Ages. Except that it was not a “convention” then, but the result of hard necessity. Little girls play jack-stones and skip with ropes to-day at certain seasons, because their small ancestresses of seven or eight hundred years ago were forced to confine these games to this season.
But do modern children get the same delight out of nature that the children of olden times did? Except the story of little Eoin in Mr. Pearse’s exquisite book of studies of Irish childlife,Iosagan, I know of nothing in modern literature that at all reminds one of the glorious passage in which Wolfram describes the effect of the bird-song on his child hero, Parzifal. I wish I could take some dear little boys and girls I know, a-roaming the spring woods with those little German children of so many centuries ago, and see them consult their flower-oracles, and catch butterflies, and bore holes in the birch-tree and drink the sweet sap, and learn to whistle a tune on a leaf, and look for strawberries in the glades. But, alas! space is limited, and Imust try to get as much of a wide subject into it as possible.
There is one amusing ceremony I must mention, particularly as it forms a convenient stepping-stone to the next division of my subject. It was a ceremony which lasted quite to the end of the Middle Ages, and fittingly belonged to a period when Grammar, the first of the Seven Liberal Arts, was always represented with a rod. On a certain day in the early summer, mediæval children went out to the woods to cut the rods, which were afterwards to be used with such effect on their own sturdy little persons. The mediæval schoolmaster had no need of a proverb to convince him that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. And even when Walther protests against the abuse of the “Gerte,” he, by no means, desires its abolition.
At the age of seven the boys passed out of the women’s apartments and were given into the hands of a governor. The girls stayed behind with a “Meisterinne”; and it was the custom at princely courts to receive the daughters of the vassals to share the lessons of the Princesses. Thus we know that, among the companions who studied with Elizabeth was her faithful friend of the bitter years to come, Guta.
Though girls and boys were educated separately, it is impossible to separate the ideals of education in the case of the two sexes. In order, indeed, to arrive at any comprehension of the ideals towards which the educators of girls in the Catholic Middle Ages strained, we must strive to realize the mediæval conception of the “verie parfit gentil knight.” For if ever it needed a certain type of woman to help to produce a certain type of man, it was during the Age of Chivalry. Moreover, the Catholic Church, the one great pedagogic authority of the Middle Ages, has always held that Education must concern itself with the Soul as well as the body of man. And “there is no sex in soul” to side with Bishop Spalding against Francis Thompson. The educational ideals held up by the Church before those who set themselves to train her sons, were for those who trained her daughters, too. The knightly virtues, “Staete” and “Maeze” (Steadfastness and Moderation) were womanly virtues, too. The pillars of chivalry, “theumuot” (= Demut, humility), and Treue (fidelity) are the pillars of all true womanhood.
Something of the spirit of the education of the period may be gathered from thedefinition of the word Zûht (Zucht) in the Middle High German vocabulary: “that lofty culture of the mind, which is a fruit of education, and which expresses itself in outward modesty, inward chastity, self-restraint and self-denial, and in the externals of good breeding.” The chivalrous education aimed at cultivating “Self-Knowledge, Self-Reverence and Self-Control” in a man or woman whose corporal form had been developed to something as nearly approaching the ideal of perfection as possible. And it sought perfection in all things, because of Him Who is Infinite Perfection.
While the boys were undergoing that thorough course of physical training, and practising the Seven “Brumicheiten,” which correspond in the education of the future Knight to the Seven Liberal Arts in the education of the future cleric—riding, swimming, running, jumping, wrestling, shooting with bow and arrow, and hunting—the girls had also their physical exercises, carefully designed to develop the grace of the body. Much attention was paid to deportment. To walk with great strides, to swing one’s arms, to sit with one’s legs crossed, to take the initiative in addressing a strange man, to look at him boldly, tospeak loud, to laugh noisily, were all great offences against “Zucht.” A girl was drilled to walk gracefully, with downcast eyes, to hold her mantle on her breast with a certain gesture, to lift her train with another. She had, moreover, to learn to ride, to tame falcons, and to acquire the ritual and language of the chase.
Book-learning for a woman was held of more importance than for a man. Little Elizabeth must have been stirred to great efforts in this direction by her eagerness to read the beautiful psalter which she loved to open in her frequent visits to the chapel. The old chaplain who taught her had no difficulty with her. When she had learned to read, she had a whole new world open to her, which, alas! is closed to us now. For which of us can Natural History have the same appeal, for instance, as for one who studied it in the fascinating pages of the “Physiologus”?
The Middle Ages did not lay a very great stress on the school-room as a factor of education. A great part of the training of boys and girls was got by what I might call the system of “direct apprenticeship to life.” Elizabeth and Agnes were being trained for the noble profession of wife and mother, Christian Châtelaine and greatlady. They were early set to acquire the womanly arts and crafts, spinning, and tapestry, and embroidery. In the garden, where sweet-scented flowers and herbs were cultivated, they gathered simples, and made them, under skilled guidance, into unguents and potions. They took their places in the hall, and had the privilege of hearing the best poetry the period produced. They followed the direction of the great world-currents of the century from the talk of the travellers who claimed the Wartburg hospitality—returned crusaders, and pilgrims, or wandering scholars from some of the universities which were just then springing up. And once upon a time two men came to the Wartburg, two men in grey habits, with bare feet and a cord around their waist. And the story they had to tell was of the “Poor Little Man” of Assisi, their master! Oh! story to be remembered by Elizabeth through all her life!
It was never the custom of Duchess Sophia to keep her girls shut up in the women’s apartments. We are constantly meeting her and them, making the long descent from the Wartburg to the town of Eisenach. Sometimes it would be to take their part in a church festival; sometimes, perhaps, to listen to the preachingof a “Kreuzzug prediger,” and sometimes for that direct training in Christian Charity, which was so characteristic of the Middle Ages. There was no hiding away of the poor in those days in their own slums. They displayed themselves, and their sores, and their nakedness at the doors of Princes, and claimed the noblest as their servants. So Duchess Sophia and her girls went into the huts of the poorest, and tended them like sisters.
And all this time the great realities of life were playing their part in Elizabeth’s education. She had hardly been two years in the Wartburg when the dreadful news of her mother’s assassination was brought to her. Was she too young, little six-year-old girl that she was, fully to understand?
But on the Saint Sylvester Day of the year 1216, another blow befell, not her alone, but all those who dwelt on the Wartburg—young Hermann, her betrothed, died suddenly, and amid the wailing of the “Media Vita,” which surrounded the bier of his son, Duke Hermann lost his reason. For a year he sat in darkness and the shadow of death, murmuring ever the terrible psalm: “In the Midst of Life we are in Death.” He died in the year following, 1217. He was laid to rest in the conventhe had founded, and young Ludwig reigned in his stead.
What was to become of Elizabeth? There were many who said, “let her be sent back to her father. The Arpad rule is weakening in Hungary, as witness Queen Gertrude’s murder. Her dowry, too, hath never been paid in full.” Duchess Sophia was of this way of thinking. She was nervous and irritable after the terrible strain of her husband’s illness, and the shock of her son’s death.
But there were two people who were determined that justice should be done to the little stranger, who had left home and kindred, on the promise of becoming, one day, Landgräfin of Thuringia. One of these two was old Walther of Varilla, who had brought her from her Hungarian home, and watched over her tenderly ever since.
The other was Landgraf Ludwig, into whose heart she had stolen, all unknown, when she was a tiny girl; and whose chivalrous soul could not bear to inflict an ignominy on her.
So it came to pass that, in the Burgkapelle, whither Elizabeth had turned so often from her play, she stood one day with her hand in Ludwig’s, and plighted her eternal troth.